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

The head nurse, Alena James, had marshaled gardeners to collect and prepare the two natural remedies in Utah that were proven in clinical studies to help against the inflammation: elderberry and echinacea.

Years before, Emily’s dad insisted his gardeners plant hundreds of echinacea plants and elderberry bushes. Both grew naturally in the high-altitude climate zone. For many years, the Ross family had gathered elderberries in the surrounding canyons to make their family recipe syrup. Nothing compared to elderberry syrup drizzled over vanilla ice cream; likely a pleasure that wouldn’t be seen again in her lifetime. Vanilla ice cream required several disappearing technologies. God only knew where vanilla beans were grown.

Still, someone had gathered a crop of elderberry before the collapse, and the Ross family had a pantry full of elderberry syrup, now being spooned out as medicine.

The echinacea had proven less convenient. Nobody thought to harvest the drying stalks and seeds of the dying flowers as winter descended and the collapse solidified into an undeniable reality. The gardeners struggled to remember where the echinacea flowers had been planted so they could uncover the roots buried beneath snow. As they found patches, the roots were dug up, dried and boiled in cubes. The decoction would be given to the sick as tea as the disease progressed.

It was far too soon to know if the potency of the herbal remedies would come anywhere close to proper medicine. Emily felt hopeful, but the strength of modern pharmaceuticals was a thing of wonder; an impossibly high bar for a natural remedy. She feared no amount of elderberry and echinacea would replace Tamiflu.

The medical staff put their flu plan into action that morning—quarantining flu carriers in rooms throughout the Ross mansion, with plastic-divided bedrooms and tight rules about touching patients, their bedding and their crockery.

The med staff would isolate new cases for at least four days before releasing them back into the general population. They doubled their numbers, using anyone available to act as “candy stripers” for sufferers. It was anyone’s guess if the supply of rubber gloves and respirator masks would hold out for the assault on their medical capacity.

But none of her work serving flu-stricken patients could quiet her growing concern that her orphanage might’ve been to blame for the flu reaching the Homestead. Emily and the other women had broken the rules.

Whether or not the orphans had introduced the flu to the Homestead, they would never know. The orphanage was one of few pathways still open between the Homestead and the outside world. The flu hit the orphanage two days before hitting the Homestead. Two of the kids got sick almost as soon as they arrived from the refugee camp. By the time the threat was known, the damage had already been done. As more than a dozen new patients checked in sick to the clinic, Emily’s dread grew.

Her mother, Jenna Ross, was volunteering as a candy striper when they passed one another in the hall. Jenna pulled her daughter into a bathroom, one of the few places not occupied by the sick.

“Emily. I need you to promise me you will not tell anyone that you were involved with the orphanage.” Apparently her mother had been worrying too.

“But Mom, I started it. This might be my fault. What if people die?” Emily choked on her tears. “Flus like this usually kill the very old and the very young. What if children die because I broke the rules.” She sobbed and her mother pulled her into a hug that also muffled her tears.

“Sweetheart. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. How were we to know a flu would hit us?”

“I knew that the flu comes with hunger and sanitation breakdown. I should’ve foreseen this. I’m a med student, Mom. I just didn’t think it through.”

“No, love. You didn’t think it through. You do that sometimes. But that’s in the past. Look at me.” Jenna Ross cradled her daughter’s face, eye-to-eye. “You need to promise me that you will not tell anyone that you were involved in the orphanage. Jacquelyn and the others agree with me on this. We’re prepared to face the consequences. You cannot be blamed for what happened. You’re too young. We won’t allow it.”

Emily sobbed. “Why, Mom? Why do I get a pass? This is my fault…Dad wouldn’t let anything bad happen to us?”

“Baby. I can’t say. He hasn’t been himself. I don’t know what he can or would do to protect us from…our decision. I wish I could tell you that he would protect us, but I don’t know anymore.”

“You think he would let the committee throw us out? This is our home. Daddy will protect us. He will!” She’d almost screamed the last two words. Anyone walking outside the door would certainly have heard.

“Shhh. It’s okay. It’ll all be okay, Em. But promise me that you will not tell anyone that you were involved with the orphans. Promise me.”

“I don’t understand why, but I promise. I would die if anything happened to you, Mom.”

“I know, baby. Clean yourself up and head back to work. I love you, and I’m very proud of you, no matter what happens. Those little babies—they would all be dead right now if it weren’t for you. You are exactly the woman I raised, and if I pay the price for that, I’ll gladly pay it.”

Redwood Road

Utah County Line

As Redwood Road transitioned from suburbia to wind-stunted fields of knapweed, Chad Wade hit the outer pickets of the fundamentalist army.

An armed Navy SEAL on a powerful dirt bike had little trouble threading Salt Lake Valley. The stored heat of the sun on the blacktop had burned off the snow over most of the highway, and riding eighty miles per hour felt like the wind of God sucking him toward destiny. As Chad roared closer to the Salt Lake County line, a deuce and a half military truck shimmered in the distance, parked across both lanes of the highway.

The Mormon