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

Forces, the Salt Lake Valley had been cursed with a seventeen mile wide, twenty-five mile long, two mile deep gunky haze. The longer the period between snowfalls, the heavier the haze became. Something about the bowl shape of the valley and the high altitude caused the fog and pollution to form an ugly, brown blanket, hovering a thousand feet over the town.

Each new snowfall dragged the inversion away and the whole process began again— November through April. In the days after a snowfall, the valley gleamed like a Monet painting. Or, maybe it would be a Cézanne. Evan couldn’t remember. On mornings like this, he always thought of the impressionist paintings he’d seen in Italy while on leave.

The sun shot through a gap in the Wasatch Mountains and the valley floor—crystal clear and sparkling in snow—lit up like God had dropped a hundred billion tons of glitter from the sky.

A flicker of movement caused Evan to pick up his binos and scan the street below. He settled on a storefront between two buildings. It appeared to be an upscale pawn shop, which made sense in Murray. They’d passed the seediest pawn shops farther downtown.

The door of the pawn shop was open and Evan was sure it’d been closed before. An arm shot out from the door and a dark-haired woman appeared, looking up and down State Street. The face drew back inside, and to Evan’s wonder, a little girl bolted through the doorway, running down the street with a plastic bucket in her hands.

Evan followed the girl with his binos. Her long, brown hair whipped side-to-side with each footfall. She ran as if her life depended on speed. As the cloud of hair swirled about her head, Evan glimpsed a pretty, little face frozen in animal fear. He placed her age around nine years old.

She ran a hundred yards down the sidewalk, the empty bucket occasionally breaking the morning silence with a thunk and a ka-chunk against the sidewalk. The girl reached the edge of the buildings, to some kind of neighborhood park and plunged down, out-of-sight, into a dip in the landscaping. Evan reasoned that it must be a creek or a canal. The little girl had been sent to get water.

Moments later, as Evan sipped his coffee, the girl popped up again, both hands on the wire handle of the bucket. She struggled to run, but the counterweight of the bucket tangled with her feet.

Step, step, rush, rush, trip, stop, set the bucket down. Switch hands. Rush, rush. Step, step.

Evan perched his coffee on the edge of the rooftop, set his binos down, and scanned the area for threats. She was making a lot of noise. The hairs on his arms stood up and his skin flushed warm even in the icy cold of morning.

“Come on. Get moving.” he urged the little girl, now five hundred yards away.

Evan caught movement on the side of the street opposite the girl. He grabbed the binos and searched. A man’s head poked out from between two buildings.

“Move! Hustle!” Evan hissed. He reached unconsciously for his rifle. Jake had taken his bolt-action gun with him when he left. No sniper would leave his rifle with another man, so Evan had his own AR-15 instead. He wouldn’t have known the bullet drop on Jake’s rifle anyway.

The little girl had covered half the distance to the door of the pawn shop.

Another man came up beside the first, talking quietly and motioning toward the girl. Evan switched to his rifle optic instead of the binos. He put his crosshairs on the men. He scanned back to the girl every few seconds, then returned to the threats. One of the men ran up and ducked behind a pickup truck. Evan flicked off his safety.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He re-safed the rifle, and swirled back to the pawn shop in the rifle optic. The girl still had fifty yards to go. The woman peered around the doorframe and waved the girl toward her.

“Why send a fucking kid?” Evan asked the mother, four hundred yards away.

Evan rotated back to the men. They were still crouched behind the pickup truck and they obviously saw the woman in the pawn shop now. They motioned excitedly between them. The little girl had revealed a ripe plum for the vagabond men—a shop with a woman hiding inside.

Evan's safety flicked off again, the decision to shoot already made. One man stood straight and shuffled to the corner of the truck, getting ready to sprint in the direction of the girl and the now-open pawn shop.

Boom, boom, boom, boom… boom!

Evan unleashed a string of .223 rounds. The men ducked behind the truck and vanished out of sight. Evan had no idea if he’d hit them. He could only guess at the distance; maybe 550 yards, give or take a hundred yards.

With only a 3x tactical scope, Evan had no way to validate his range. He knew the rough holds on his AR, but without splashes of dirt, frag or blood, he didn’t know where the rounds were hitting. Bullet sometimes just disappeared into blacktop. He hadn’t planned on long-shooting this morning or getting involved in anything farther out than the edge of the dealership, so ranging his AO beforehand hadn’t occurred to him.

Evan swiveled back to the girl—she was still struggling with the bucket. He turned back to the men. They’d disappeared, but they’d definitely seen the girl and the pawn shop. They would bide their time and take it down at their leisure, once Evan had moved on.

He caught movement and turned to the men behind the truck, now sprinting for the gap between the two buildings. Evan didn’t bother to shoot, more concerned with the radio going bonkers in his ear.

“Shots fired. What’s going on??”

“Who shot? Jake? Come in.”

“Jake here. I’m in the sack. Evan’s on the roof…”

Evan let the lurkers escape between the buildings and clicked his transmit button. “This is Evan. I shot at