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

of Arc from central casting to rescue his boy, she would be it.

The girl screeched up to the back of the big, green tent, and leapt out of the OHV with a lunch sack—presumably for the gruff, old sergeant from Full Metal Jacket.

A sign from god?

Cole didn’t hesitate. He slipped around the side of the tent, kissed Johannes one last time, ran his fingers through his cornsilk hair and plunked him down inside the passenger door of the empty off-road vehicle.

Then he walked away sobbing uncontrollably with a smile on his face.

Once he’d gone far enough, he turned and watched as the pretty blond bounded out of the tent, hopped in the OHV and zoomed away. Halfway up the road, the brake lights blazed and she came to a stop, likely discovering Baby Johannes. After a few excruciating moments, the red lights winked out and the OHV continued its roaring ascent up the hill.

Cole felt so much joy and relief that he fairly burst, crying open-faced as he worked his way through the crowd and away from the tent city.

Ross Homestead

Oakwood, Utah

All of her paying clients were dead, of that much Jacquelyn Reynolds was certain. She hadn’t traveled outside the Homestead perimeter, but she heard tales from those who had. The valley below them had devolved into a cess-pit of violence, suffering and death.

People with psychological pathologies barely survived in the former, post-modern world of tolerance; where every personality disorder had a name and where every sexual preference had its bathroom. All that modern sensitivity had blown away like flowers before a brush fire with the two nuclear blasts that had ended western civilization.

Yet even in the Homestead, a shocking number suffered debilitating psychological breaks. If anything, a “LMHC,” or Licensed Mental Health Counselor, had more work after the collapse than before. Every day, all day, she counseled people mired in this new, stripped-bare world, many of them suicidal and barely hanging on. She’d lost two patients already to suicide—or probable suicide—and she had three more living on the edge.

All the “head shrinker mumbo jumbo,” as her husband, Tom, once called it, proved more handy after the collapse than a safe full of guns and ammo. Almost three months after the stock market failure, Jacquelyn was valued by the Homestead more than almost anyone. She kept more people functional, and more guns pointed downrange than the best Special Operations trainer. Not everyone understood therapy, but everyone understood the difference between a man lying in bed, crippled with depression and one guarding his post on the perimeter.

“Head shrinker mumbo jumbo.”

Jacquelyn smiled at the memory of Tom. He’d been killed by friendly fire in a night skirmish. He gave his life to protect their family. Enough time had passed since his death that she could breathe again, but not enough time had passed that she didn’t long for his dopey colloquialisms and blue collar wisdom. A dull pain rose in her gut as she remembered how she’d taken him for granted; how she quietly under-estimated him, degrading his horse sense with her spit-and-polish intellectuality. These days, intellectuality wasn’t worth the calories it took to speak it.

Tom’s aw-shucks wisdom would come in handy right now. Jacquelyn had reached the end of her rope with a number of patients. The old approaches to talk therapy weren’t working with many of the mentally-drained Homesteaders. Some of the therapeutic approaches seemed patently ridiculous. How could she convince a person of their self-worth when they lacked even the most basic ability to handle their own survival needs? It was painfully obvious when a member of the Homestead dragged the group down. How could she convince them not to judge themselves when they were confronted with their lack of competency on a daily basis? Jacquelyn needed a bigger mental health toolbox.

“Jackie…” The only person who knew where to find her, hiding behind the goat enclosure in the forest, was Jenna Ross, the Grand Dame of the compound. Jenna tromped through the snow field toward Jacquelyn. The tree boughs of the forest hung with new snow, forming cloisters in the forest, like a chapel made of snowy maple limbs.

Jacquelyn would normally correct anyone calling her “Jackie.” Her ears prickled at the sharp tone of her nickname, but Jenna was the exception.

“Hey Jenna,” Jacquelyn stood up from her favorite log, swished across the snow, and gave Jenna a long hug.

“I’m sorry, sister, but I have bad news.” Jenna held the hug while she spoke in Jacquelyn’s ear. “Audrey Wade took her life this morning.”

Jacquelyn’s hug tightened, driving the air from Jenna’s lungs. Then she relaxed her grip and cried into Jenna’s shoulder. Nothing about this news came as a surprise, but it hit her like a last straw—like the final, sucking descent into a pit of quicksand. The apocalypse had finally punched her directly in the spot below the solar plexus where all the air whooshed out and the lungs forgot how to inhale. The news crushed her even though it wasn’t a surprise.

Three days ago, Audrey Wade, ex-wife of Chad Wade, had accidentally killed her daughter. Really, the malignant fucking apocalypse killed little Samantha, but Audrey Wade had been the one to put the propane tent heater in the tent with their three-year-old daughter while she ran to check on the Homestead alarm. That was when a thousand starving people rushed the compound. Audrey had gone to her post and was knocked out cold by one of the intruders. By the time she came to and checked on little Samantha, the girl had succumbed to carbon dioxide poisoning.

How was a woman like Audrey supposed to know that a Coleman consumer product could never be left in a tent without leaving a flap open? Jacquelyn hadn’t even known that and her husband owned half a dozen of the things.

Audrey Wade struggled with depression. She was one of the many people who saw themselves as dead weight at the Homestead. She’d come to Jacquelyn with suicidal ideation.

Chad Wade was