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

grabbed a few last prizes from the hangar and hustled over as well.

JT could order the Afghans to guard the helo, but leaving men outside the Homestead ran too great a risk. He’d rather risk the helo than the men. He’d rolled the bird back inside and left the hangar locked exactly as it’d been, so the risk of looters was minimal, especially after the flu.

JT gave the area one, last scan and saw nothing to draw prying eyes.

“Let’s get back to the Homestead, boys,” JT exclaimed. “I got a hot date with a Mormon Mama. This flu and all that ‘social distancing’ has got my nuts backed up like a constipated hog in a paste factory.”

The Amigos laughed but the Afghans didn’t get it. They smiled to be polite.

“Home, Jeeves.” JT slapped Filemon, in the driver’s seat, on the shoulder.

13

“Not only did religion hold communities together, it also served to propel criminal organizations to geographical reach not seen since Genghis Khan and Hannibal. One of the most noteworthy was the mega-cartel that consolidated the Juarez and Gulf cartels just after the Black Autumn collapse.

In order to extend power beyond northern Mexico, the new cartel overlord, Gustavo Castillo, christened the criminal organization Los Caballeros Templarios or Knights Templar. Blending macabre bastardizations of Catholicism, ruthless violence and ancient Templar code, Los Templarios recruited or exiled all Catholic bishops and archbishops in northern Mexico during the months after the collapse, creating a cartel that seamlessly combined religion and violence in one organization. In the vacuum that followed the fall of the Mexican government, dioceses hungered for the Rule of Law and often welcomed Templarios, especially given their pledge to serve the poor and support the church.

The Cabellero Templario manual required them to ‘to help the poor, fight against materialism, not kill for money, and not use drugs.’ Of course, none of these pledges blunted the organized campaign of looting and terror the Templarios would launch into the former southwestern United States.”

The American Dark Ages, by William Bellaher North American Textbooks, 2037

State Street and 12300 South

Draper, Utah

As the flu lifted, they pulled out of the Expo Center. Just as they were closing the rolling, bay doors, Evan Hafer and his team received a change of orders from command.

A new threat had popped up—some loopy Mormons in the southern half of the state had gotten it in their heads they should make matters even worse by picking up arms and possibly invading Salt Lake City. They justified their military intentions by saying they needed to stamp out criminality.

This was not new news to Evan. Bored out of their minds for weeks, Jake and Tommy had scanned short wave radio and ham bands for anything that might entertain them. The southern fundamentalists had turned the radio waves into an up-at-dawn, butt-kicking rally for Jeeezus and Joe Smith—railing against the iniquity and unholiness supposedly pouring out of “the big city.”

For three weeks, they’d been doing the exact police action the fundamentalists exhorted. Yes, there were plenty of d-bags running around the hollowed-out remains of Salt Lake City committing travesties. He couldn’t deny it. Some of that nastiness must have leaked into Utah County. Criminals didn’t respect county borders. Evan would bet that the criminals would roll over the county line like the Dukes of Hazard running away from Boss Hog, every chance they got.

But the the whole radio rally smelled liked a cooked-up justification for something bigger. Jeff’s call didn’t come as a shock. Evan figured they’d be tasked with recon. If his team could hear the relentless radio chatter, so could the Homestead. The Homestead radio antenna reached half way to the moon.

So, like pretty much every other war, this brewing conflict came down to power. Evan didn’t care which Mormon church landed in charge of Utah, personally. They all seemed like wackos to him. But, they couldn’t allow the fundamentalists to bring an army into Salt Lake. It might lead to another battle at the foot of the Homestead, and they’d barely survived it the last time that’d happened.

Jeff ordered Evan’s team to make their way to the top of the Traverse Ridge—the mountaintop that served as a natural boundary between Salt Lake and Utah Valley. From there, Evan could monitor military preparations of the fundamentalist army and provide intel.

Jeff and Evan agreed: if they had to fight the southern guys, they would rather do it at the Point of the Mountain, the narrow passage that cut through Traverse ridge. It was a natural choke point and would give them their best chance at defeating a larger army penetrating Salt Lake Valley. The last thing they wanted was to fight an armed force spread across a twenty-mile-wide front in an urban environment. They’d both been in fights like that—urban melees—and it’d left a very bad taste in their mouths. If they were going to stop the southern boys, they’d best do it at the Point of the Mountain.

Evan’s recon team had grown by three: one woman and her two cute kids. Tanya still wasn’t talking to him. She wasn’t NOT talking to him, either. It was a standard denial of companionship attack—where the woman conducts all necessary family business with her man without any verbal fireworks, but not a single word more.

He’d been in plenty of relationships. He never married and he didn’t have any kids he knew of, but Evan had shacked up with enough women to know this area of operation. He was in the proverbial doghouse. Other than sending the kids’ Italian Stallion father off to exile, he had no idea what he’d done wrong. Tanya couldn’t possibly want the guy back. He’d been tomcatting it up like Huggy Bear. They didn’t even have names for all the post-apocalyptic VD that guy was probably packing.

For her part, Tanya threw off clear signals that she was into Evan, and that’s what’d got him hooked in the first place. Evan and Tanya hadn’t done the wham-bam-slam-in-the-ham, but Evan