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

Jeff would have to fire the committee, probably at gunpoint, and either put Jason out to pasture, exile him or kill him. It’d be a giant mess, and it would leave the Homestead weak for a week or two. The way Murphy’s Law had been screwing them since the collapse, some new threat—and Jeff could name several candidates—would arise and destroy them while they haggled out leadership. He had no doubt that folks in the Homestead would object and oppose him, either aggressively or passively.

He could picture the window of time it would take to put down the resistance, and he could imagine Murphy rising up to capitalize on that distraction.

Perhaps he and Tara should leave the Homestead.

He considered leaving, then set the thought aside. Moving on would mean gathering his men, taking the supplies they needed, then finding a new place to hole up. Once they settled in, they’d have to build a support crew of people to provide the beans, bullets and band aids they would require. In other words, it would be like creating the Homestead all over again.

He grimaced at the relentless nuisance of supply chains. Oh, that fighting men could just fight, without bowing to the dogged gods of calories and comfort.

He already knew the punchline; they would stay at the Homestead, one way or the other. The unsettling truth was that his warriors needed a stack of humans backing them up, or their ability to fight would dry up like grapes left too long on the vine. In the history of warfare, it’d always been so. Jeff had been left high-and-dry without his supply chain once or twice, and it hadn’t been pretty. He had no illusions about being able to fight without “regular folks” supporting them. It was an unfortunate reality of war.

Jason Ross had intentionally misled him about what had gone down with the Mills County bureaucrats. Bradley had immediately reported the grocery store shooting to Jeff. Ross imagined that Jeff wouldn’t find out, which was another sign of his failing judgement. In what universe would Jeff not find out about a gunfight that involved his SOF guys?

Ross had gone on to suggest that they sideline Bradley by sending him to the hospital. That had been some bush league, nefarious shit.

Ross was trying to cover for his cock-up at the meeting. Jeff had given him the chance to go after Bradley by sending him off to the hospital, and Jason had jumped on it with both feet. He’d taken the bait, and now Jeff had the measure of the man.

In theory, Jeff didn’t disagree with Jason’s choice to kill the men who were extorting supplies from the Homestead. In a warfighter’s calculus, Ross had chosen a valid option. Jeff hadn’t been present at the meeting to judge the county mens’ resolve or their intent, but if those double-breasted thieves weren’t going to take a reasonable bribe, Han Solo-ing them under the table might have been the best course of action. Jeff didn’t love it, but he hadn’t been there to second-guess it, either. He made it a point to never judge a combat decision from a distance. He’d had enough men second-guess his own combat decisions, that he would never be that guy.

As a political outcome, the thing with the county could go either way: Jason lied to Jeff, which meant he’d probably lie to everyone. That wasn’t a bad thing, since it kept the murders a secret and served the Homestead’s interests. Jeff hadn’t pulled the trigger himself, so he wouldn’t get his panties in a wad over the moral implications. What’s done is done.

From how Bradley told the story, Ross had admitted to shooting Tim Masterson on the man’s own front lawn. Ross lost his temper and bragged about it to the county men. Jeff had suspected as much all along—that Ross had long-balled that Masterson prick—but now he knew for certain.

A part of Jeff admired it—Ross had done his own killing when killing needed doing. The other part of Jeff chalked it up to another lie between the two of them. A man didn’t cover up his actions without a solid, tactical reason. He might lie to secure a complete victory, but he never prevaricated out of shame, ego or self-interest. Ross had no good reason to lie to Jeff about what he’d done.

When Ross invited Jeff and Tara to join the Homestead, back before the collapse, Jeff absolutely distrusted the man. That surprised no one who knew Jeff, since he distrusted almost everyone. Over time he and Ross had developed rapport. Ross began to show up on Jeff’s list of “possible friends.”

But reality had come full-circle, and Ross revealed himself to just another “tool” in Jeff’s toolbox; a liar and a manipulator, but one that Jeff might utilize to complete the mission. Jeff didn’t waste any time feeling bad about it. He plugged the new information into his decision-making matrix like ticking off the features of a rifle. He didn’t get all weepy that Ross had let him down. Most men weren’t reliable tools. It wasn’t breaking news.

The one piece that refused to fit into Jeff’s utilitarian schema was the damned Mormon equation. Even with growing instability at the Homestead, he felt confident time would somehow prove that taking the command job was the right decision.

The dude in his dreams would approve, and that moved Jeff’s needle more than it should’ve.

Homestead Infirmary

Oakwood, Utah

Emily Ross could reach only one conclusion: the flu had passed into the Homestead and it was her fault.

Her shift at the infirmary went into double overtime as people flooded in. Fever. Coughing. Chills. Fatigue. The doctors were evenly-split on whether the collapse—with lowered immunity in human populations—had resulted in a more-virulent flu or the dice roll of influenza mutation had come up snake eyes and it just happen to strike during armageddon. From initial observations, it looked like something on the order of the