White Wasteland by Jeff Kirkham (best color ebook reader .txt) 📕

Law of Consecration had been like spiritual Communism. During a twenty-five year period in the mid-eighteen hundreds, the LDS Church took control of all assets of its members and redistributed them according to each member’s need and ability.

“After talking about the Law of Consecration, the radio said that the Army of Helaman was being called up to battle evil forces in Salt Lake City coming to plunder Utah Valley and southern Utah. They called for all righteous men over the age of sixteen to come bearing arms and marshall their army on the football field of Brigham Young University stadium.”

Brother Davis looked down at a small notepad in his hands and double-checked his notes, “then, the radio operator quoted Helaman eleven, verses ten and eleven.”

President Thayer believed he knew the verses, but reached across his walnut desk and slid out his four-in-one scripture book. He turned the well-worn pages and found the verses in the Book of Mormon.

“O Lord, behold this people repenteth; and they have swept away the band of Gadianton from amongst them insomuch that they have become extinct, and they have concealed their secret plans in the earth.

Now, O Lord, because of this their humility wilt thou turn away thine anger, and let thine anger be appeased in the destruction of those wicked men whom thou hast already destroyed.”

Thayer thought about the implications and tried to picture the scenario from the perspective of the latter-day saints in southern Utah.

From Provo south, Utah was an agricultural wonderland—crystal clear creeks pouring from the foot of the Wasatch and watering huge tracts of alfalfa, corn and fruit. Salt Lake City, on the other hand, had long been an urban center with little, if any, farming.

Utah Valley and Provo were the gateway to the agriculture south. Even right from the county line, suburban housing developments interspersed with green fields and laden orchards. From Provo to Saint George, the state grew food everywhere water cut the high desert. The southern two-thirds of the state would fare much better than Salt Lake during economic collapse, and they appeared to be provisioned well enough to consider waging war.

Rural Utah practiced a somewhat-different style of Mormonism than urban Salt Lake City, and President Thayer could sense the chords of dissonance in the words of the radio announcement. Rural saints took their orthodoxy more seriously than urban saints, and they were often more inclined to accept “deep doctrine,” embracing the strangest Mormon ideas. President Thayer admitted to himself that southern Utah Mormons could easily add polygamists back to their ranks. Given the apocalypse, hardly anyone would object south of the Salt Lake county line. In the southern half of Utah,“feminism” was the ultimate “f-word.” Very few would object to the practice of a man taking more than one wife.

The LDS church of the twenty-first century had rejected polygamy. In fact, practicing polygamy meant instant excommunication from the Church and it had been so since 1904. Yet everyone in the church begrudgingly understood, polygamy had been Mormon doctrine for many decades—almost sixty years. Most faithful church members expected the law of polygamy to be restored in heaven, at very least. Re-establishing plural marriage during the apocalypse wasn’t at all far-fetched, especially not in the south.

It made sense that southern Utah saints might look toward Salt Lake City as the enemy. The Gadianton Robbers quoted in the Book of Mormon scripture had been a dark culture of thieves opposed to righteousness. President Thayer sometimes had similar thoughts about Salt Lake City: that Liberals, LGBTs and anti-Mormons had plotted to undermine the Church and Utah’s faith culture at every turn.

In the Book of Mormon, the Gadianton Robbers were a far-reaching criminal organization, controlling the Nephite government like a Russian mafia. God brought a famine to punish the permissive Nephites for allowing the Gadianton criminal organization to flourish. The Nephites cracked down on the Gadianton gang and wiped them out, hoping that God would restore prosperity. The gambit was successful, and the eradication of the Gadiantons restored the favor of God to the Nephites.

Apparently, the saints in southern Utah, and Rex Burnham himself, compared the urbanites of Salt Lake City to the Gadianton Robbers in the Book of Mormon. If President Thayer understood the inference, it meant that Salt Lake City would be held morally responsible for the entire, global collapse and would be destroyed in order to restore God’s favor.

Words were tricky beasts. Richard reminded himself not to overreact to a secondhand radio broadcast—to the possibility that the saints in southern Utah might punish Salt Lake City. But if the radio announcement was true, the Black Autumn collapse was only the beginning of their problems. The southern LDS church could be the next wave of carnage and misery.

Yet words were misunderstood as often as not. He needed to speak with Elder Burnham personally, and pray that his radio operator had misunderstood.

“Brother Davis. As President of the Church, I’m begging you. Please. Please put me on the radio with Elder Burnham.”

Brother Davis’ eyes opened wide. “I’ll do my best, President.”

Staggering slightly, Brother Davis showed himself to the door.

Ross Homestead

Oakwood, Utah

Emily Ross knew she had a serious streak of the “fuck its.”

Ninety-five percent of the time, she completed her responsibilities like the perfect adult: intense, hard-charging and rule-following. Her obsessive compulsive personality had carried her through the state’s toughest private school, through a top-ten university and on to medical school. She ruthlessly produced an almost uninterrupted train of successes, right up to the moment her attitude took a hard, left turn.

Like clockwork, she would work her butt off for months, then reach a moment of psychological exhaustion. When that moment arrived, all bets were off.

This was one of those “fuck it” moments, and the baby girl in her arms seemed like the best decision she’d ever made; even though it might end with Emily starving in a refugee camp.

No way. That could never happen. That wasn’t how her life worked, Emily told herself.

She remembered a lecture from her cognitive