White Wasteland, Jeff Kirkham [ebook reader with highlight function TXT] 📗

really are criminal, aren’t they?” Clawson asked, looking north. “They’re not Latter-day Saints anymore over there. They’ve been taken over by something else. The anti-Christ.”

Oh shit. Things just got real.

Chad didn’t know what to say.

Did he want them to go to war or not? He wasn’t sure.

Did he want the fundamentalists to win or not? He had no idea.

He’d been pretty certain that Burnham was a bad dude—a real ass clown. But Clawson, his CO, was NOT a bad dude. He was a solid guy. A police chief in a past life. A born leader and a good man.

Chad hadn’t thought this far ahead—that Clawson might go high-order if they smoked the fundamentalist prophet. Clawson had been in command of the army, at least officially, and he was super pissed now that they’d cooked his prophet.

Chad’s calculations didn’t include the “anti-Christ angle.” It hadn’t occurred to him that Elder Clawson might get it in his head that their Armageddon Party might still be on-like-Donkey-Kong. He’d assumed that the fight would go out of this Boy Scout Jamboree if he took out the Grand Poo-bah Scoutmaster.

For the moment, there seemed to be more fight in the fundamentalists than ever before. This fifth column shit was hard to keep straight.

Traverse Mountain

Draper, Utah

If the fundamentalists attacked today, as planned, Jeff’s army would lose.

He’d worked all night positioning cars on the I-15 and setting up concrete Jersey barriers. The fake artillery was set. All the hardscape of battle was in position. The only things missing were their soldiers, their napalm, their claymores and their IEDs. The battle plan was a hollow ruin if it happened today.

It was Tuesday morning, and If the fundamentalists attacked now, like Chad told them they would, it’d be a hundred guns against three thousand. If the fundamentalists attacked now, Jeff would be forced to run.

All his hopes were pinned on the half-baked idea of one, rather-precarious Navy SEAL. The assassination of the fundamentalist president had gone down textbook. Assuming the man had been inside his tent, he was very likely dead. Assuming he was their leader-in-fact, assuming that he was dead, assuming that an assembled army would just go home even though they were primed to fight…

Assuming, assuming, assuming.

Assuming all that and a dozen other fluttering prayers for salvation, Jeff wouldn’t be asked to lead men into battle today.

Zach handed Jeff the handset of the mobile ham radio. “Wali’s calling for you.”

“This is Jeff. Go ahead.”

“Good morning, Mister Jeff. Half the IEDs and half the canisters of napalm are on their way. ETA noon.”

“Good copy, Wali. What about the claymores?”

“Only six are done. We should have the rest completed by midnight tonight.”

“And the men?” Jeff asked.

“I don’t know. He—the Mormon chief—said, maybe.”

“No copy. Please repeat.”

“The Mormon chief—he’s coming with men. But maybe only a hundred men, I think. Over.”

Jeff saw no reason to continue the conversation. They were on a ham frequency and anyone could be listening. It would take an hour of face-to-face planning and practice to set up a list of short codes with Wali, and they simply had not had time. So they’d been forced to discuss battle preparations on an open channel.

Desperate times, desperate measures, and all that.

“Thank you. Jeff out.”

16

Barkley’s Sand & Gravel Pit

North Frontage Road

It was morning and Chad stood with Elder Clawson and a dozen church leaders considering the blackened, smoldering blotch that had been President Rex Burnham, prophet, seer and revelator.

A mound of ash and gristle had been the former leader’s cot, his body forever intermingled with the remains of his sleeping bag. Chad thought maybe he could see the cheekbone protruding through the wet, black flesh. He hoped he’d died instantly from the rain of bullets. Nobody was a big enough asshole to be burned alive.

Around the edge of the circle, men from the encampment filtered in, becoming a crowd around the funeral pyre.

“Do we press on?” an apostle Chad had never met asked.

“This doesn’t change anything,” another man added. “This is the work of the Anti-Christ, the Korihor. Killing President Burnham proves it.”

Chad wanted to scream, “This changes everything! Without this dead maniac, you have no reason to fight!”

Instead, he remained silent. He had no idea what they meant by “Korihor” and “Anti-Christ.” He’d only skimmed the Book of Mormon, after all. He hadn’t memorized it. He’d have lost his mind if he’d read the whole thing word-for-word. So, Chad just nodded and pretended to know what the hell they were talking about.

Elder Clawson finally spoke. “Brigham Young promised that a prophet would never lead his people astray. President Burnham prophesied that we would unite the Church by clearing Salt Lake City of evil, and so it shall be.”

The crowd had grown to a hundred men. One voice broke the silence in a clear tenor, singing the anthem of crusade.

“Onward Christian soldiers,

Marching as to war,

With the cross of Jesus,

Going on before…”

The crowd took up the song, as though it was a divine answer to the question of war.

Chad had been to war. There was nothing divine about a man dying with his shit filling his pants. There was nothing noble about a man with his leg blown off and half his guts laying in the dirt. War was no place for wistful thinking, and yet here they were singing about how “hell’s foundations quiver at the shout of praise.”

They’re going to do it. They’re going to get themselves killed because of words on a page in a book written by ghosts.

When the song ended, Elder Clawson raised a hand. He wasn’t the next in line for the prophet’s chair, but he had been set apart by the prophet as commander of the army.

When he spoke, it carried. “We’ll take this day to mourn our prophet. Tomorrow, we fight.”

Chad’s assassination had bought his friends a single day.

17

Traverse Mountain Range

Draper, Utah

“Jeff. This is Evan. We’ve got movement. Men are gathering and making their way down the freeway. They’re all armed,” Evan released the mic on