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

men had mustered with hunting rifles of assorted calibers, most of them with glass optics. Scoped hunting rifles had already proven fearsome weapons in the apocalypse. If a rifle could kill a two-hundred-pound mule deer or seven-hundred-pound elk at distances upwards of four hundred yards, that rifle could definitely kill a man.

“Bishop Decker,” Jeff called forward the leader of the neighborhood congregation.

“Yes, Brother Kirkham.” Bishop Decker stepped up from the second row of new recruits. He wore duck hunting pants and an old T-shirt. Jeff shook his hand.

“You can call me ‘Mister Jeff.’ They look like fine men. Thank you for joining us.”

“Yessir, Mister Jeff,” the Bishop replied.

“Are they ready to work?”

“Yessir,” the Bishop answered again.

“All right, then.” Jeff turned to Wali, his Staff Sergeant from the Homestead. “Let’s see if they can run. Five kilometers for today. Run ‘em with their rifles. Go!”

6

Shortwave Radio 7150kHz 4:00pm

“This is JT Taylor and I’ve been digging deep into my network of friends to figure out what the hell happened to the President? He was in the air on his jet when the bomb went off in California and they kept him aloft for at least six weeks according to Drinkin’ Bro sources in the Air Force.

I’ve heard several reports about the army sending a full regiment of M1 Abrams Main Battle tanks from Fort Bliss to Albuquerque, New Mexico to meet the President, but he never showed up. After a month without word, the guys from Bliss left the tanks where they sat, split up and wandered home.

Troops were pre-staged at Mountain Home, Idaho and Colorado Springs, also to meet the President. We lost contact with those Drinkin’ Bros, so we’re still in mystery. Air Force One must’ve landed eventually—the refueling planes couldn’t go on refueling it forever and I’m sure the first family didn’t return to the eastern seaboard. The reports I’m getting say it’s like Lord of the Flies anywhere within a thousand miles of Washington, D.C..

Somewhere in America, the President of the United States and his family are on the ground living like the Ingalls family from Little House on the Prairie. That thought is just so damn weird that we should definitely get to the bottom of it. Where’s the friggin’ president? Inquiring minds wanna know.”

Ross Homestead

Oakwood, Utah

Jeff’s sheets were soaked when he woke up in the middle of the night.

“Are you okay?” Tara asked into the dark, apparently she’d noticed the battle he’d fought in his sleep.

“Yeah. Bad dream.”

“You want to tell me about it?” she asked, probably more to be a good wife than anything. The couple had been through dozens of combat deployments. Waking up from a bad dream wasn’t a new thing.

“No. Sorry. Just the standard craziness my subconscious mind cooks up,” he lied.

“Okay. Goodnight. I love you.”

Tara worked her ass off every day, dawn to dusk, preparing food, washing clothes and attending to the ten thousand duties needed for survival while living with one butt cheek in pioneer times and the other in the modern world. She needed her sleep.

Tara quieted and her breathing slowed. Jeff stared into the dark ceiling and bled off stress with a deep breaths.

This time, the norseman hadn’t been on a horse, and they hadn’t met on a Scandinavian battlefield. Rather, Jeff and the norseman had fought back-to-back on the Homestead grounds against savages, like those Jeff had fought less than two weeks before.

In dreamtime, Jeff pulled a broadsword from the chest of a man he’d just impaled, the blood bubbling from a hand-span wound as he hauled his blade free. The norseman’s shoulder blades occasionally brushed against his own as the great man fought at his back, undoubtedly dealing out death.

Jeff felt like he’d been fighting for hours, maybe days. Bodies littered the ground in the swath the two warriors had cut through the battlefield, yet Jeff wasn’t fatigued. He could kill at this pace forever.

The norseman at his back laughed as Jeff felt him parry against an unseen assailant.

Two wretched adversaries stepped up to face Jeff: one with a taped-up butcher knife and the other with a brick and an oriental butterfly knife. Jeff’s mind worked through the tactical problem like a puzzle; manslaughter as a brain teaser.

The man with the butcher knife moved first, stepping into Jeff’s range with wild swipes, trying to get inside the reach of the broadsword and slice through Jeff’s sword arm. A split second later, the guy with the brick shifted his weight to throw. Abandoning his previous plan, Jeff kicked out with his booted foot, racking butcher knife’s shin and driving him back. The butcher knife nicked harmlessly at Jeff’s boot.

With his weight moving forward, Jeff carried through with the broadsword, driving the top half of the blade across the brick-thrower’s shoulder and throat, opening up a two-foot long gash that revealed bone, tendon, muscle and a variegated tube that must have been the man’s trachea.

Blood spurted from the deep cut and drained the man a split-second after the brick hit the ground.

Jeff swept his sword around and stepped toward the man with the butcher knife, now pinwheeling backwards in a mad hobble to escape Jeff’s big weapon. Brick man gurgled on the ground.

Jeff backed away until he felt the norseman behind him again, resetting for the next foray. The injured man with the knife away ran into the crowd.

“I can do this forever!” Jeff exulted, awash in the difficult victory he’d just wrought.

The norseman chuckled, moving sideways against Jeff’s back.

The next adversary stepped toward Jeff; a wastrel of a man, gray haired and begrimed. The old man gathered his strength to throw himself against Jeff’s leather armor and thick arms. He carried only the broken leg of a piano bench as a weapon.

Jeff blanched. The man was his father-in-law. Tara’s dad. He’d fled the collapse to hide in his doomed cabin in the woods, too proud to submit to Jeff’s superior experience and command.

As his father-in-law charged, Jeff blunted his sword, turning it sideways. He curled