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

hands to their rifles. Someone released their safety with an audible click.

Jason read the printout and saw a list of households and addresses, together with what he presumed were amounts of property tax. The list was from some neighborhood on the other side of the town. It was last year’s printout—just a prop.

“Show me my property on this list.” Jason kept his handgun out, feeling a powerful desire to poke the man in the chest with the boxy slide of the Glock. Instead, he handed back the clipboard.

“Show me my goddam tax, LeGrand Dickhead, from Mill County.” The swearwords accelerated his emotion and the rush of anger hit Jason’s head like a shot of heroin.

Jason held all the power, here. He loomed over the man’s silly demand.

The taxman stammered. “Well, it’s not here on this sheet,” he said flipping through the pages aimlessly, “but I’m sure it’s a lot of…of money.”

Jason seized the clipboard again and flung it away like a frisbee. The pages flared in the air, causing the clipboard to twist away. It struck a dead, parked car and broke a chunk of plastic off the driver-side mirror.

“Please tell Mayor SHIT HEAD that if he wants to talk about taxes, he can start by collecting the trash. Let him know that I have a few dozen dead bodies of men we’ve killed TRYING TO STEAL FROM US and he can start providing county services by picking up their bodies. THEN we can talk about taxes.”

The man stepped back a pace, his eyes jerked between Jason’s apoplectic face and his gun. Jason wiped a speck of spit from his mouth, now embarrassed at the tirade. He looked down and holstered his handgun.

“They have guns and a tank,” the county man stammered.

“Wait. Are you threatening me?” Jason’s voice went deep. “Did I just hear you threaten us if we don’t pay you money? Did you say you have a tank? Like an armored vehicle?”

The government man straightened his back and stuck his chin out like a tom turkey showing his waddle. “The county sheriff’s department will come and collect your taxes. And they have a tank,” he repeated.

“County Sheriff?”

“They will come and collect if you don’t pay me… us.”

Jason shook his head and let the moment hang in the foul-smelling air. “You go back down the hill and get your scam figured out before you come up here again. Tell the mayor, or whomever is pulling your strings that if they want to shake me down for money, they’re going to have to do it in person.”

Jason watched silently as the man in the suit, four sizes too large, turned and stumbled back down the street, weaving between refugee tents.

Jason agonized over what his guards might think. He’d been cruel to an inferior man. He’d been a classic rich prick and he’d done it in front of his fighting men. He ran his hand through his hair. He couldn’t take it back now.

When the county man walked out of sight around the bend in the road, Jason turned to the nearest guard. With feigned humor, he held out his hands. “What the hell? Were they giving out armored vehicles in cereal boxes? That’s like the fifth one to pop up this week.”

Jason forced a plastic grin and walked back to his OHV.

Ross Homestead

Dynamic Shooting Range #2

Gabriel Peña finally admitted to himself that being part-gangbanger didn’t mean he knew anything at all about firearms. He’d begun to wonder if anyone in his brother’s gang had firearm training of any kind. No wonder they did so poorly in fights against SWAT teams and the police. There actually was a LOT to learn about operating a gun. He’d been training for three days solid, and he still felt like he was juggling porcupines. It didn’t help that every time he learned a new skill, his “instructor” would add another wrinkle, and then another, and then another.

“Wake up, Morenito. Time to pull your head out of your ass.”

This white girl, Emily, the one insulting him and swearing like a pinche vato…he wanted to scream at her. Make her slow down. He wanted her to stop calling him racist epithets like morenito—“Little Brown Guy.” He wanted some alone time on the shooting range to get his head around the thirty new things she’d taught at him that morning.

Clear and safe-handgun…

Proper magazine reload…

Sight alignment, sight picture, trigger press…

Proper grip…

Five-step presentation from holster…

Tactical mag change…

Emergency mag change…

Tap-rack-bang…

Type one malfunctions…

Type two malfunctions-stovepipe…

Type three malfunction…

Transitioning rifle-to-handgun…

After three days of handling guns for six hours a day, virtually living with the guns like a carpenter would live with his hammer, his hands were hashed with blisters and hot spots. The first thing he would acquire, if it was even possible at this point, would be a pair of gloves.

“Morenito. Wake up. Prep for Crazy Indian drill. Last time, you looked like you were trying to jerk off inside a garbage bag. This time, I want to see you smooooth on your mag changes and perfect on your sight alignment and trigger press. Get your little brown ass ready!”

This white girl had the foulest mouth he’d ever heard on a woman. His mother would beat her with a sandal if she heard a young lady talk like that. What was his mother going to think when she found her son hopelessly in love with a girl like that?

“Wakey, wakey, Spanky. Get an empty mag in your gun. Let’s go. You want them to kick you out of here? Time to make yourself useful. Last time you got in a gunfight, a damned girl blasted three holes in your brown ass before you even got your gun up. Get with the program or get out.”

He blinked back a wave of adoration. Emily Ross was the most amazing woman he’d ever met. Beside having saved his life—after she shot him—and beside having conducted two of the five surgeries on his gut, her perfect curves and her lively temper hit him dead