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

three hundred acres of wilderness bordering on the lovely neighborhood, he couldn’t pass it up.

The “Upper Barricade” where Jason headed had become a squalid street bazaar. The Lower Barricade was more of an itinerant workers camp. Both were packed with thousands of refugees.

They were the two primary entry points into the Oakwood neighborhood. The organization and well being of the Homestead and the once-wealthy Mormon people that surrounded it had drawn squatters like a carcass draws flies.

Both barricades on the outer perimeter of the neighborhood had become tent cities stretching up and down the sides of the road and creeping into the roadway itself. Each day, the barricade guards would push behind the Ferret assault vehicle and force an open lane down the center of the boulevard. If they didn’t, the road would quickly become impassable.

The mob that’d cost fifteen Homestead lives had originated in the Upper Barricade refugee camp and had burst through the gates before anyone could stop it. Homestead forces already tried to get the camps to disburse by force, but the refugees filtered back into place within hours.

The two barricades served as entry points to the outer defensive ring, the “neighborhood ring” around the Homestead. Lower Barricade handled the hiring of day workers and Upper Barricade conducted all trade for scavenged goods. Both paid workers in loaves of bread. Bread attracted people, and that attracted crime, prostitution and disease.

While daily payroll was distributed at the Lower Barricade, one loaf of bread per day, the Upper Barricade had become an area-wide epicenter of scavenge and exchange. When the Homestead needed something, such as large cooking pots, the captain of the barricade would write the item on a dry erase board bolted to the chain link fence along with a “bid amount” in loaves of bread. The captain of the Upper Barricade had become a merchantman, coordinating not only the guard force, but the bulk of outside trade for the Homestead.

Scavengers flocked to the bazaar at the Upper Barricade from across the intermountain west, with items on the “trade board” and items they hoped to swap with other scavengers who had loaves of bread to spend.

Bread became money in north-eastern Mill County. One loaf equalled a day’s wage for a man lucky or skilled enough to be hired, which meant that a loaf was worth twenty times that much for a less-skilled, starving “zombie.” A zombie could barely hope to exchange a day’s work for even a slice of bread.

Skilled scavengers, valued tradesmen and armed security personnel—all wealthy men by collapse standards—traded in loaves, half loaves, quarter loaves and slices. The perishable nature of the currency made saving difficult, but almost nobody worried about accumulating wealth. Rarely did a slice of bread persist from one day to the next. True wealth found a home in livestock—chickens, rabbits, goats and the occasional cow. Few possessed the means to protect livestock from starving scavengers anyway. Anything with a pulse was a target of theft.

Petty crime and serious crime, like murder, were commonplace at the Upper Barricade. Any resident of the Homestead visiting the Upper Barricade came with guns loaded, dressed in full kit. Like knights of old, armed men and women were given a wide berth by the barely-surviving.

Pulling up to the barricade at the top of the neighborhood, Jason’s attention drilled into a lone man in a business suit, the first one he’d seen in months. He parked the OHV and walked toward him, adjusting his chest rig and centering his battle belt. The man’s suit had seen better days.

“Hello. I’m Jason Ross. How can I help you?” he asked, his words belying the dubious expression on his face. Ross had never been a big fan of meddling government, which was one reason he moved away from urban Salt Lake City in the first place.

“I’m LeGrand Moore from the Mill County government.” The men shook hands. “I’m here on a matter of unpaid taxes.” The government man had once been fat; Jason saw the signs. His skin hung loose under his chin and his suit ballooned around him, the pleats under his leather belt folded in on themselves like a khaki accordion.

Jason laughed, unconcerned about giving offense. “Taxes? No shit?”

“Property taxes are customarily paid in November and we’re now in January. We haven’t received property taxes on your parcels, Mr. Ross.” The man from the county stared at a clipboard with a printout.

Jason turned to one of the barricade guards nearby, with an eyebrow raised as if to say, “Is this dude joking?” The government man refused to look up from the clipboard.

“So you’re collecting property taxes?”

“Yes, for Mill County.”

Ross blurted out the first thing that popped into his head. “Property taxes were collected in September. I already paid for this year.”

“They used to be paid in September, but we shifted our accounting period to the first of the year.” The man glanced up, momentarily, but looked down at his printout again, as though searching for a piece of information that would make his demand for taxes sound less ludicrous.

“Who, exactly, is the county government?” Jason stalled while his mind worked. So many potential counter-arguments arose that he struggled to pick just one.

“Brad Contrell is the County Mayor. I’m making the rounds to collect.”

“Oh, really.” Jason Ross had experienced government shakedowns several times before as a businessman. “What other property owners are you collecting from today?”

“I have a few households on my list,” the man answered without conviction.

Jason saw him for what he was: a mule set on a path by more substantial men. Jason let his anger bubble over anyway, dropping the last veneer of respect for the dwindling man. He ripped the man’s clipboard from his hands.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the county man sputtered.

Jason drew his handgun casually with his free hand, not taking his eyes off the printout. He didn’t precisely point the pistol at the man; he pointed it at the ground between them. Taking Jason’s cue, the barricade guards moved their