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

had consolidated all the barrels in their camp. He’d probably seen fifty barrels in the bazaar the night before. Evan could’ve asked for one, hypothetically, but bullets flew before he’d thought it through as bullets often do.

In decades of pitching his wits against the immovable wall of radical Islam, he’d designed ever-more-elegant ways of destroying his enemies. He might need to update his old playbook for this new mission in upside-down America.

After spending a little time with Tanya and her kids (Harvard, Reagan?), Evan couldn’t bring himself to leave them high-and-dry, and he had little interest in going back to negotiate with the zombies in Zombietown.

Good morning. We’re the guys who shot you up last night. We’re wondering if you have a rain barrel to spare. If you’ll give us the barrel and move out of the county, we promise never to kill you again.

Going back and negotiating with the zombies bugged him. They were the same douchebags that’d stalked the little girl. That place was a den of thieves and and murderers, maybe led by a flatulent warlord sitting on a thrown like a post-apocalyptic Jabba the Hut. Negotiating with them could go six ways from Sunday.

He would love to recover the NVGs, but that assumed succeeding in negotiations first, then taking time to find the NVGs, assuming that the zombies hadn’t already picked them up.

Don’t mind us. We need to find something we dropped here last night.

He imagined zombies searching for anything and everything with survival value. Chances were good they already found the NVGs near the dead dude with his wang out.

All those factors added up to fifty-fifty odds of getting in another gunfight if he went to Zombietown with his hat in his hand, this time during daylight hours. But he didn’t see that he had much of a choice. He couldn’t leave a cluster of criminals directly along the route between north and south valley and he’d have to put a gigantic dogleg in the route to get around it. His team would have to neutralize the threat of Zombietown one way or another.

Evan turned to Tommy, his second in command, and said, “We hit them tonight and roll the whole place up.”

Both Tommy and Tanya objected at once.

“But there were kids…Dude, they can’t all be criminals…they’ll just come back after you leave.”

Nothing irritated Evan more than disloyalty.

Five second before, he’d been open to all suggestions, but now that he’d stated his decision out-loud, that was the end of the debate. Apparently, neither Tommy nor New Girl cared about the chain of command, or his fifteen years of expertise in warfighting.

Tommy kept talking while Evan ground his teeth. “Dude, just let me go in there in civilian clothes. I can talk to whoever’s in charge and figure this out.”

“No way,” Evan interrupted flatly. “If you go in there and don’t come out, then we have a hostage situation. Do you know who dies in a hostage situation?” Evan pointed at himself, “The operators who go in to rescue the hostage.”

Tommy argued, “A lot of people will die if we go at that camp with guns blazing.”

“You haven’t even tried talking to them,” Tanya added on to Tommy. “They might be totally reasonable.”

Evan closed his eyes and breathed through his nose, composing himself.

“I’ll give the zombies one chance to parley tonight and then we’re hitting them with everything and the kitchen sink. That’s my final word.”

Evan fielded a total of eighteen guys, including himself. Tommy had been assigned by Jeff to be Evan’s second-in-command, but that was a situation he would soon remedy. Soft-heartedness, he could forgive. Disloyalty was another matter entirely.

They waited until the fire drums burned down in Zombietown before encircling the camp. Evan’s platoon moved into position at 2:30 am. Jake had pre-positioned himself on the roof of the A+ Automotive an hour before.

“Everyone looks like they’re zonked,” Jake checked in on overwatch. “Fires are all cold.”

Only Evan, Jake and Tommy wore NVGs. The rest would shoot through electronic point sights, which were still a huge advantage over iron sights at night. So far, their recon hadn’t turned up a single assault rifle in what everyone on the platoon now called Zombietown. Handguns, revolvers, shotguns and hunting rifles had been all they’d seen so far, but Evan knew from past experience that the top dogs kept the best bang sticks for themselves.

“Execute, execute, execute,” Evan radioed his team leaders.

Four of the five elements of Evan’s team pushed through the shanties into the central courtyard of Zombietown. They held one team back as QRF.

Within seconds, people rousted, shouting. Two gunshots ripped through the night—probably his guys putting down attackers. They weren’t supposed to shoot unless threatened.

Evan rolled into the courtyard behind the Ferret, herding sleeping zombies before the armored vehicle like floodwaters pushing the trash. The Ferret crushed abandoned shanty huts beneath its huge tires.

They’d forgotten to bring a megaphone from the Homestead, so Evan shouted over the cacophony of panic-stricken zombies in his best Green Beret “command voice.”

“Get on the ground or we will shoot you!” Evan pointed at the gunner behind the 1919 Browning. The guy let out a roaring cone of flame that reached thirty feet into the bazaar. He’d been ordered to send the burst from the machine gun high—a first and final warning.

“In three minutes, we’re going to shoot anyone still here. If someone’s in charge, speak up now,” Evan yelled over the whimpers.

“Hold on, Cowboy,” a man stepped through the back door of the strip club, pulling up his pants. Evan could see through his NVGs that he wore no shoes. “We’re a peaceful group of traders, here. No need to shoot anyone. Hold up.” The guy sounded remarkably calm given that the roar of the belt-fed still echoed in their ears.

Flashlights flicked on inside the bar and around the bazaar. Someone hit Evan in the face with the beam of a tac light.

“Turn those lights off,” Evan growled and pointed his AR at the light.

The