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

There were many mistakes a special forces operator could come back from making. But a negligent discharge—especially one that took the life of a teammate—wasn’t on that list. It was what they called “a career-ender.”

Fifty years old.

That was another idea that’d been flashing past in Jason’s mental merry-go-round. His knees hurt any time he exercised, which wasn’t very often these days. The muscle mass he’d carefully shepherded in the gym throughout his forties had drained away like melting butter. Sex…well, let’s just say sex hadn’t survived the collapse. He was fond of his wife, to be sure, but the busy thrum of the Homestead smothered out the finer things of life, particularly for him.

He got up from his rough-hewn desk (purchased in Paris) and poured himself a shot of rum (gifted to him by a Guatemalan politician.) He didn’t care that it was only eleven in the morning. He’d been staring at the wind power book for the last half hour without understanding a single word.

How long could he hide in his office? He’d never been a man to hesitate when it came to facing the music. Then again, maybe he’d never been the man he imagined himself to be. Maybe he was something far smaller. Something more laughable.

Jason’s brother Donald walked into the office without knocking.

“How’re you holding up?” Donald asked, eye-balling the tumbler of booze on the desk.

Jason tracked his gaze to the glass. “I’m fine.”

“I’m just going to say it,” Donald blurted, “shooting that boy was an honest mistake. You held the vault and that was worth a lot of lives. You can’t sit here and feel like you are at fault for a casualty of war, brother. People die in war.”

“Oh, really?” Jason swiveled his back to his brother, facing the dead computer screen. “I appreciate you saying that, but I don’t think you understand what it means to accidentally shoot someone. Not in the world of operators. Not in the world of shooters.”

Donald raised an eyebrow. “Since when are you an operator?”

Jason picked up the rum and took a big swallow. “I’m not an operator. I just know what it means. I’ve got blood on my hands and there’s not a lot more to say about it. Is that why you came in here without knocking? To make me feel better about killing that boy?”

Donald turned to leave. “You know, you are an asshole. I thought you’d changed over the years, but the truth is you’re still the same hard case. By the way, our brother Walt has been missing for four days. I thought you’d like to know.”

Donald slammed the door on his way out. Jason stared into his tumbler of rum, wondering where his brother Walt might have gone. The alternatives weren’t good. Walt had been coming apart at the seams because of his missing daughter. She’d been in California with Walt’s ex-wife when the shit hit the fan.

He could barely get his mind around all the people he’d lost in the last two months.

Two sons and one daughter. They topped the horrifying list. Truth was, he’d begun to get a little numb to it. Maybe Donald was right. Maybe people died in this shit-eating world, and getting all twisted up over it… maybe that wasn’t going to do anyone any good.

Jason downed the rest of the rum, grabbed his coat and headed out the door to find Richey Chapman’s mother.

“You sure you can spare the armor?” Evan Hafer asked Jeff as the team assembled outside the Homestead gate. They stood around one of the two Ferrets Evan had stolen from the National Guard Armory museum. The four-wheel mobile armor had a belt-fed 1919 machine gun behind a little steel turret. It wasn’t as tough as a tank, but it was more vicious than an armored personnel carrier. The British Ferret could easily have been designed with the post-collapse world in mind.

Evan’s eighteen-man reconnaissance team would take the Ferret, two up-armored OHVs with light machine guns, and a single motorcycle out into Salt Lake Valley for the recon mission.

“The Ferret didn’t do us a lot of good against that mob. We couldn’t very well let the belt-fed machine rip on Homestead grounds.” Jeff looked at the perforated heat shield of the 1919 poking out of the turret like an embarrassing erection.

“Yeah, but don’t make the mistake of fighting the last war.” Evan wagged his finger. “You know better than that. Fight the war you haven’t seen yet.”

Evan and Jeff had been to war together and they both knew: you almost never fought the same fight twice. The next thing to hit you would be something you never expected. The next thing was always a surprise.

“Roger that.” Jeff agreed. “I think we can hold down the fort with our new buffer zone around the neighborhood. The Mormon neighbors are coming through with some decent men. Plus, the new belt-fed machine guns you snagged from the Armory will help a lot at the barricades. I’m feeling pretty solid about our fixed positions. I’d rather have this Ferret out on a long range recon patrol with you guys. Understanding threats in south Salt Lake Valley is a top priority. We need to know what’s coming. We can’t stay burrowed into this mountain and imagine everything will just stay hunky-dory the places we can’t see. We need to reach out.”

“True. If we get lucky, my patrol might push all the way down to polygamist country and get our people back.” Evan nodded to Tommy Stewart, Jenna Ross’ brother. Tommy walked over. His brother, Cameron, and Cameron’s family had gone radio silent just before driving through a polygamist colony on the border of Arizona and Utah. Tommy signed up for Evan’s patrol in an effort to get closer to finding out what’d happened to his brother.

All the men going on patrol wore full kit: matching camouflage, plate carrier vests, six mags each and a side-arm. Every guy carried a tricked-out AR-15 assault rifle or a