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

The world floated free from everything Richard ever considered immovable. His earlier contemplations mingled with the violence of the confrontation; his soul in a supernal haze.

“Everything is okay, but I honestly don’t know how it’s okay.” Richard stood up from his leather couch, embraced his wife, then returned to the window, conferring silently with the chickadees and with their god.

Ross Homestead

Oakwood, Utah

Jeff and Wali had been inspecting the day’s progress on the earthworks. As the flu relaxed its ogre grip on the Homestead, work on defenses had slowly resumed.

The 11-foot wall, crowned with an 8-foot fence, topped with a curling corkscrew of razor wire would stop any future mob, if not a dedicated army. Now that the HESCO barrier had begun to climb up the rugged hillside, progress would be measured in feet per day instead of sixty foot sections per day, as had been the case on flat ground. The hulking wall of fencing and rubble dominated the winding road up to the Homestead, implying asylum to those lucky enough to live inside. Given another few months of work, they would enclose the inner grounds and transform the Homestead into a castle. Jeff would sleep better knowing he had 400,000 tons of rubble between his family and the half-million zombies of the Salt Lake Valley.

But no amount of rubble, steel and concertina wire would protect his Tara. From the inside out, her own body had ripped her to shreds.

She had survived; and in that God met the terms of Jeff’s bargain. But like every shitty deal Jeff had ever made with men of authority, the devil still demanded his due. The Tara he loved and admired would not rise whole from the hospital bed, not according to the doctors.

Before the flu, and as long as Jeff could remember, Tara was a powerful woman in both body and soul. Jeff knew few women as physically strong as his wife, her toned arms and cut lats marked her as a serious woman. She never backed off at the gym, even through three pregnancies. Never once had Jeff worried about her being raped by an urban predator; Tara could beat the shit out of most men.

As the doctors described the immune response Tara’s own body had thrown against the virus, Jeff could picture the filaments massing in her lungs, smothering the flu but also scarring her for life. She would live, but she would never again enjoy more than ten or twenty percent lung capacity. The flu had maimed the mother of his boys.

Something interrupted his thoughts—a spark from his internal barometer of combat.

“Mister Jeff,” Wali spoke, then nodded down the serpentine road.

A large man stormed toward them. Jeff rested his hand on his Glock. His combat reflex—after thousands of hours of training and hundreds of fights—installed focus and calm. The barricade guards had likely disarmed the big man, and Jeff could see both his hands, gun-free, pumping emphatically as he stomped up the middle of the street. He recognized Vanderlink.

Jeff had been looking forward to this, and it had something to do with his helplessness in the face of Tara’s wounding. He nodded at Wali, whose hand rested on his AK-47. In the unspoken language of men who had fought together, Wali knew to stand down.

The fight coming his way, huffing up the road, wasn’t one Jeff hoped to avoid. It felt overdue. Vanderlink towered over him, but both men weighed in, even after four and a half months of the apocalypse, around two-hundred and fifty pounds. It would be a fair fight and Jeff’s anger over Tara’s loss hungered for it.

“What did you tell him?” Vanderlink raged, barely able to shout given how hard he was breathing after the climb.

“What did I tell who?” Jeff asked, hand still resting on his Glock. Jeff knew full-well what Vanderlink wanted, but his gut told him that this confrontation wasn’t just another fight against a lesser-trained man. Fate teetered in the balance in a way Jeff didn’t fully comprehend. If not for that feeling, Jeff would’ve already drawn his gun.

“What did you tell Thayer?” Vanderlink shouted as he closed the gap.

“Are you talking about your prophet?” Jeff challenged. “Since when do you call him Thayer?”

“Don’t screw with me!” Vanderlink stepped nose-to-nose and punctuated his rage with four steel-hard pokes to Jeff’s chest.

Jeff let it happen but his fighting stance hardened.

“What did you promise the prophet in exchange for giving you command? What do you have over him?”

“Ah.” Jeff stepped back. “You think I coerced President Thayer into asking me to command the Mormon army? Do you think it would take coercion for him to trust someone more than you? Brother, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but you’re off your rocker. No one in his right mind would put you in command over so much as a Girl Scout troop.”

“Answer my question,” Vanderlink huffed with menace. “What do you have over him?”

Jeff ignored the question. “What do you think is going to happen here? You rolling up on me like a raging bull? Are you going full-psycho on us, Jack-o?”

Vanderlink lowered his head and rounded his shoulders. “I’m going to kill you.”

Wali’s hand slipped to the pistol grip on the AK and Jeff held out a flat hand, again motioning for Wali to stand down.

“You’re not going to kill anyone, Big Boy. You’re going to calm down and think this through.” Jeff turned the calming motion toward Vanderlink. Jeff’s right hand pressed into the tang of his handgun. At this distance, Jeff knew that his gun play would be limited, especially if Vanderlink moved first. First mover always had the advantage.

Wali could be trusted as Plan B, no matter what happened in a close fight. Jeff didn’t think the big cop could do much damage before Wali shot him or beat him senseless.

Jeff’s hesitation led him to compromise his first rule of fighting—never give up the initiative. Under normal conditions, he would’ve shot Vanderlink the moment he