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

Hopefully, you would do so prayerfully, but otherwise, there would be no other requirements. I will have to check with the brethren before a formal calling is extended, but I wanted to ask you first.”

Jeff sputtered. “But I’m not what you would call ‘Mormon temple worthy.’ I drink alcohol and coffee, and have no plans to stop. I couldn’t tell you whether I think Joseph Smith cooked up the Book of Mormon or not, because, honestly, I don’t care. I’m not a Mormon.”

President Thayer smiled. “Master Sergeant, we all have things in our lives that are here to humble us. I know I have them. If you’re not opposed to it, I would like to submit your name to the Quorum of the Twelve. There aren’t twelve of them yet, but we’re re-forming. I appreciate your candor about your issues of faith and I’ll make sure everyone is clear where you stand. In my heart, I feel good about extending this calling; as good as I could feel, given the circumstances.”

“Vanderlink’s going to think the job is his,” Jeff gave words to the obvious wrinkle.

“Yes. Brother Jack Vanderlink…I don’t suppose you would have a place for him in your command?”

“President, I think that would be a very bad idea.”

The Mormon president sighed. “I imagine you’re right. I’m not sure anything we do will make him happy. Maybe it’s time Brother Vanderlink finds some humility.”

“I think it’s probably going to come down to a confrontation,” Jeff said. “I don’t picture him rolling over on this.”

The Mormon prophet tapped his finger on his chin. “We don’t usually know how things will work out. Sometimes, we take a leap of faith and entrust the rest to God.”

Jeff didn’t know about that, but he did have a sixth sense for when a fight was coming.

And a fight was definitely coming.

215 Freeway and Redwood Road,

Salt Lake City, Utah

Before the sun set on the day of the killing of the county men in the parking lot of Beesley Grocers, Chad Wade raged south on his motorcycle. He barreled toward Utah County and the southern Mormon army without a helmet and without a plan.

On some level, Chad had known, from the first moment he heard about the fundamentalist army, that he would go to them. Their story resonated with him: strange and persecuted, outcast and resolute.

He didn’t care about the polygamy and the supposed racism that infuriated the post-modern whiners. He liked that the world hated them.

Today, he sought blood redemption. He’d had his fill of half measures and the will-o’-the-wisp freehand Jesus of modern evangelists. Chad’s god demanded pain. He lifted his face to the biting wind, exposing his ears to the razor slices of the cold. Part of him wanted to lay the bike down and grind his flesh in the ice-basted asphalt, just to feel the holiness of it.

He’d killed again in unrighteous combat, taking lives with his gun for other mens’ dreams of domination. He had killed police officers trying to feed their families and government men stealing just to survive. None of the stinking scene in the grocery store parking lot held any honor whatsoever for him. God hadn’t cared a whit for the contest of money, wagered over a plastic table in the middle of a grimy world.

Chad held the throttle wide open as he rocketed over the overpass. The freeway that crossed below his highway stretched toward the bleak sand lands of eastern Nevada. The howl of the high-powered dirt bike made a cocoon of violence and fury around Chad, and then vanished as he passed, like an apparition forgotten.

His burning need to feel something—anything hard—drove him south. He’d been told about the pockets of stiff-necked fundamentalists hiding in the Utah hinterland, hanging onto a gospel so weird and arcane that not even the modern cult of inclusiveness could hold it. He got the picture, and felt drawn to it—hard men and thick women with a death grip on explanations of the universe so blasphemous and complex they took a lifetime to learn.

The fundamentalists thought Adam in the Garden of Eden was really God. The he had become mortal, had sex with Eve, and literally sired the human race.

The fundamentalists believed that the only way to the highest heaven was through a half-day ritual of incantations, chants and gestures that unlocked the pearly gates at the moment of one’s death.

The fundamentalists held that some sins were of such a heinous nature that forgiveness was possible only if the blood of the sinner was poured out on the ground.

That doctrine sealed the proverbial deal for Chad. Whether or not any of it was true, the fundamentalists had to be kick ass to believe hard core shit like that. He expected he would either find his path, or at least the doorway to his path among them.

The details were a little foggy, but the musk of his redemption drove him, riding at breakneck speed through the detritus of Salt Lake City.

He may not have been able to keep his word to Audrey or her father, but he would lay his life upon the altar of service to God, like a grizzled prophet of the Old Testament—full of vengeance and righteous passion.

Chad inhaled the biting, gnawing cold. It seared his lungs, icy and dry. But instead of shrinking from it, he sang into the thrumming roar of the engine and the gnawing wind, the anthem of the heretic.

And though this world, with devils filled,

Should threaten to undo us,

We will not fear, for God hath willed

His truth to triumph through us.

8

Shortwave Radio 7150kHz 4:00pm

“This is JT Taylor, the spider that tinkles the web of the ham radio network, working side-by-side with my Drinkin’ Bro Zach in the cradle of the Rocky Mountains, Salt Lake City, Utah, dead center in what used to be the American West.

Fair warning, Zach and I have been hammering the peach schnapps this evening and we’re in a fine pickle, despite the newest horror in the