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

as the Homestead therapist, she’d signed up to be the proverbial catcher’s mitt for the Mormon church’s system of crime and punishment.

How the hell did she get here? Jacquelyn wondered. How could she help this young man—losing his shit because he whacked off like every other young man on the planet?

Of course, she knew the answer. She just didn’t like it.

“Tell me about the process of repentance, as you see it.” Jacquelyn skirted the question she knew she should be asking.

“First, feel sorrow. Second, confess the sin. Third, stop sinning. Fourth, do restitution, and fifth, obey the commandments,” he rattled off the answers, straight from the Mormon Sunday School handbook. Jacquelyn’s skin crawled.

She gathered herself in the strange confluence of her past, her professionalism and her yearning to help. “Okay. So what’s next for you?”

“Well, I guess I’ve already confessed, right?”

She hesitated. “Yes. I suppose you have.” She knew full-well that confessing to one’s therapist was not the same as confessing to one’s Mormon bishop, but she felt inclined to let it be what it was. The young man apparently wanted to believe it. Good enough for government work, she figured.

“Then, I guess I need to do restitution. Should I talk to the women I’ve been thinking about when I…”

“NO,” she answered a bit too loudly. “I don’t believe that would be helpful. Maybe just try as best you can to stop, okay?” Her duplicity shredded her on a gut-level.

What the hell was she saying?

She wanted to scream—just quit worrying about it! Okay? Spank it when you feel like it!

Instead, she sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap.

“Thank you, Misses Jackie,” he exhaled.

They stood, shook hands and hugged. The young man headed out of the room she used as an office, composing himself as he left.

She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d recently washed his hands.

Ross Homestead

Oakwood, Utah

“I don’t know who screwed up. Nobody will cop to it,” Tye explained to Jason Ross.

Jason ground his face with his hands. People were morons, life-and-death consequences or not. This was the same conversation he and Tye had half a hundred times before the collapse. Human stupidity, carelessness and blame-shifting remained constant in the apocalypse, like the sulfur stink that came off the Great Salt Lake when a west wind blew. Nobody wanted to use their brains, because using the brain took extreme effort.

Now, the Homestead had a colossal problem. Of course, the problem landed on the desk of the only person willing to think for everyone else: Jason Ross.

“I want to know who killed the buck rabbit, and I want them out of the Homestead, Tye. We can’t afford to have people who refuse to think touching our resources. Do I even have to explain how fucked we are now?” Jason seethed. Sweat sprung up on his scalp; heat poured off his salt and pepper hair.

Tye sat down in the office chair across Jason’s desk. Livestock was Tye’s responsibility. The wellbeing of the rabbits was his job. “Everyone chipped in and helped with the butchering. There were like ten people involved. Nobody even knows who pulled the buck out of its cage.”

Jason had designed the rabbit hutch system three years before and he’d done all the critical thinking ahead of time. There was no reason on earth this had to happen. There was a sign on the buck’s cage that said, “Buck #2, Do Not Kill.” It had been sheer stupidity—stupidity they could no longer afford.

When things ran optimally, they should’ve been able to produce a hundred and sixty meat rabbits every six months, winter or summer. Rabbits were incredibly efficient producers of protein, converting grain and grass into meat at a rate that put the chickens and cows to shame. But rabbits had to be managed. Someone with half-a-brain had to pay attention or the system spun off into disease, waste and collapse. Survival was not a dumb man’s sport.

Yet Tye and his band of idiots had turned the rabbit harvest into some sort of Homestead harvest party and they’d killed the only healthy breeding male. Without a breeding male—particularly one of their California/New Zealand crosses—the whole system would crash. They wouldn’t be able to breed the females and the 50,000 calories pure year of protein would vanish off into calorie heaven.

Without protein, people would weaken. Disease would flourish. Morale would take a nose dive. People could survive—barely—on carbohydrates. It took a great deal more forethought to keep people in proteins, and it appeared Jason was the only person willing and able to supply that forethought.

Jeff Kirkham wanted to piss their resources away on military adventures. Tye only cared about drinking booze, playing his guitar and allowing his happy band of boneheads to run amok. All the work of thinking of this godforsaken endeavor landed on Jason’s shoulders. If he’d been smart, he would’ve required an IQ test before he’d let anyone join the Homestead.

“There’s still that old buck rabbit. He’s not very good at breeding does, but maybe if we sprout his feed grain and add vitamins to his water he’ll perk up,” Tye said hopefully.

“Yeah. Let’s see where hope gets us this time,” Jason spat out the words, a ragged edge to his voice. “Let’s see what happens when I turn the thinking over to you guys on the short bus. How about this, instead: right fucking now, put a male rabbit on both trade boards at the Upper and Lower Barricades. THEN, try your wing-and-a-prayer attempt to salvage the old buck. This time, how about we put some damned thought into survival? How about we use our brains and make contingency plans? I mean, what do we have to lose, here? All our lives? I don’t know. Maybe it’s time to GIVE A FUCK!”

Tye stood up. “I don’t have to put up with this shit. Get someone else to do the job.”

“No,” Jason stood up too. He leaned over his desk. “YOU are going to manage the animals or you and your family will