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

be shown the door. Only, this time when you supervise the livestock, you’re going to pay-fucking-attention to what your morons do with our vital resources. DO YOUR JOB, Tye! And quit telling me all the ways your screw ups are going to magically work out. As you can tell by the state of the world, THINGS DON’T MAGICALLY WORK OUT ANYMORE!”

Tye stormed out the office and into the courtyard.

The inside door, the one that led into the house, creaked open. It was Jenna Ross.

“I heard shouting,” Jason’s wife said.

“So what? Is there something you need from me? Do you need me to do your thinking for you too?” Jason raged.

Jenna stepped inside and quietly closed the door. “Why are you talking to me like that?”

“I don’t even know what you do around here. Do you just breeze around looking pretty? Is that the job description in your head?”

“Whoa. You need to ratchet down. Nobody talks to me like that,” she pushed back.

“Oh really? And why is that, Jenna? Is it because you’re the queen? Because, let me tell you exactly how you became queen—flat on your damn back. Nothing more. Nothing less. For the sheer fact that you’re married to me—the one person who thought ahead and saw what could happen to the world—you get to float around here like some sort of hood ornament. You hooked up with ME and that’s ALL you have going for you. If not for me, you’d be another starving skeleton in the valley.”

Jenna narrowed her eyes and stepped back. “I don’t know why you were yelling at Tye or at me, but you need to check yourself.”

“Okay, then, why don’t you tell me how you’re part of the solution and not part of the problem?” Jason reached for a bottle of cheap whiskey and poured it into the same dirty glass he’d been drinking from all week. “Justify your existence. Go ahead.”

Jenna shook her head. “I’m not going to do that. You’re drunk with anger and this would be a destructive conversation.”

He slammed the whiskey down his throat and poured more. “I wouldn’t want to talk about it either, if I were you. Even if all you did was to sit in the rabbit house all day and make sure nobody killed the breeders, you’d be useful. Instead, what? What do you do around here?”

“I’m not going to justify myself to you right now. If you have something you need me to do, I’m happy to do it. We’ll deal with the way you’re treating me later.” Jenna moved toward the door.

“Genius idea! Why don’t you go find more food. We’re down to seven months’ food and we’re blowing through wheat like shit through a goose. Why don’t you find other bored people, and all of you go dig up acorns from under the oaks. Look it up in the Foxfire library downstairs; how to eat acorns. Good bye. Good luck.”

Jenna stomped through the door and closed it quietly behind her.

Jason sipped at his tumbler, sat back in his chair and thought about rabbits.

How the hell did they mistake the breeding buck for one of the fryers? The buck was three times their size. Damned Half-wits. Stupid people should’ve been the first to die in the apocalypse.

He wondered how many people still lived on dumb luck on this world. In his experience, luck always ran out, but not before the dumb shits took other’s down with them.

State Street and 104th South

Murray, Utah

Half the team took up covering positions on State Street, while the other half stood overwatch on the roof of the car dealership. Evan felt confident they could leave the dealership half-staffed during daylight hours.

Evan crossed the five lane street, and pounded on the door of the pawn shop. He stepped back and posted up behind a dead Honda Civic parked in front of the shop. Having no idea who else might be in the shop besides the woman and her little girl, he was wired tight for this thing to go off.

If somebody wanted to, they could shoot him from the door or the window of the pawn shop. The threat he knew for sure came from four hundred yards down State Street—where the vagabonds had ducked under cover—so he covered the area of greatest likelihood of threat, hoping the woman wouldn’t blast him in the ass while he tried to make contact.

Someone folded back the edge of a newspaper taped over the window and peeked out of the pawn shop.

“We’re here to help,” Evan shouted. “We’re part of the United States military, and we’re helping women and children,” he stretched the truth. He hoped their camo and gear would sell it.

Evan heard a rattle and the lock clicked open. He turned to cover the door, holding his rifle at the low ready. The woman he’d seen earlier peered through the gap in the door, fear and hope flitting across her face in alternating waves.

“I’m Evan Hafer, 19th Group Special Forces, and we’d like to speak with you. May we come in off the street?”

The woman hesitated, apparently understanding that this might be her best decision or her last mistake. “Come in,” she decided, throwing the door open to the mercies of fate.

Evan ducked inside, walked the woman against the wall and patted her down to make sure she had no weapons. He cleared the pawn shop one room at a time and found the same little girl cowering in a corner, and a baby sitting in a cardboard box surrounded by blankets.

A pair of fake swords were displayed on the glass counter in front of a row of rifles, all cable-locked to the wall.

Pawn shops had experienced a lot of theft prior to the collapse and their anti-theft measures could withstand the apocalypse. The windows and doors were shielded with metal grates and über-tough glass.

Next trip, if they brought an acetylene torch and bolt cutters, they might score some guns from pawn shops like this one. All ammunition,