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

them wearing their temple garments—caught Latter-day Saints flat-footed.

“I’ve called us together in the middle of this plague to reach an answer to the question: what would the Lord have us do?” President Thayer let the question settle on the quorum before proceeding. “But the flu isn’t all. Not nearly all…I’m deeply saddened to tell you that Elder Rex Burnham of Provo has anointed himself President of the Church and is preparing to invade Salt Lake City to take control of the Church.”

Half the men in the room stood up. Everyone exclaimed. When the din died down, one of the brothers put words to their astonishment. “How could that be? Have you spoken with Elder Burnham directly?”

“Yes. I spoke with him over ham radio and I informed him that I was alive and have assumed the role of the President of the Church until I can be properly sustained. His response was to ask me to step down.”

It took several minutes before the quorum quieted. President Thayer waited patiently.

“Brethren. I would like to organize a military defense as soon as the flu abates.”

“Are you suggesting that the Church will engage in a civil war?” one of the elders bemoaned.

“I have military counsel who thinks the best way to avoid this conflict, in historical terms, is to gather our own army and make the cost of a fight too steep to contemplate.”

“Saints pointing guns at saints…” another man lamented. “Our prophets are rolling over in their graves.”

“Indeed.” President Thayer agreed.

“Who would we place in charge of our army? President Thayer, I hope you plan to follow Joseph Smith and Brigham Young’s example and take command yourself.”

President Thayer motioned for them to slow down. “I believe we live in an age of military sophistication that would be beyond me. I’ve asked Jeffery Kirkham, a former Army Special Forces noncommissioned officer to assume command of our forces. He currently commands the largest private force of militiamen in this region. Brethren, Master Sergeant Kirkham does not hold a temple recommend nor a calling in the church. Even so, I feel inspired to call him to this position. I need your sustaining vote.”

The men murmured. The notion of placing a Jack Mormon in command of the largest gathering of priesthood men since the Nauvoo Legion, would be inconceivable in other circumstances.

“Perhaps I should explain how I came to feel directed to extend this unusual calling,” President Thayer quieted the group. “I believe you would each feel the same way in the presence of Brother Kirkham. He carries a special anointing. I cannot explain it beyond that. And as a practical matter, he’s a man who has led men in battle many times. While my sons were serving missions, Brother Kirkham fought for the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has trained men and led men for decades in conflicts not unlike the one we face.”

“Even so,” one of the brethren challenged, “how can we trust a non-member or an inactive member to know God’s will when saints might be called to sacrifice their lives?”

“I don’t know except to say that things are changing in the church…things have already changed, and we must bow our heads and accept that Christ has not fulfilled our prophecies—at least not how we thought He would. We need to humble ourselves before the utter truth that, as saints, we do not know half of what we thought we knew. We may have predicted this, but we’re helpless before it. For some reason understood only by God, we’ve been caught blind to His will. Our members are dying and our church is split. I, for one, have been shown my transgressions and I must admit: I don’t know what this means.

“All I believed about the Kingdom of God is upon the altar of humility along with my confession that I might have been wrong about many things.

“It’s a little thing, really, for the Lord to call a non-Mormon to be the commander of our army. Perhaps it’s just the beginning of the humbling that is coming.” President Thayer felt he’d said enough. He sat back in his chair and folded his hands.

Infirmary

Ross Homestead

Oakwood, Utah

Emily Ross stood over the first to die, wallowing in her secret guilt.

The young woman—“Francesca,” Emily remembered—had died within eighteen hours of displaying symptoms. Her eyes bugged out in death, forcing her eyelids back in morbid surprise, as though death had taken her completely unaware. Her skin was the color of Emily’s grandmother’s art deco wallpaper. Her grandma called it “bikini martini blue.”

Emily had never seen anyone die of suffocation. She said a prayer the girl would find Emily’s grandmother in heaven and have a little afternoon cocktail together.

“Is this the first time you’ve seen ARDS?” Doc Erik appeared by Emily’s side.

Emily had studied immune reactions at med school.

“You’re classing this as an immune disorder? I assumed pneumonia,” Emily flipped into the robotic professional-speak of healthcare professionals. Since conducting several surgeries herself, the med staff had begun calling her “Doctor Ross” though she hadn’t completed half of the dozen years of medical training the title would’ve required.

“Bacterial pneumonia doesn’t kill nearly this fast. We’ll see that too, I fear, over the next two weeks. This is something different. This is the first wave. The girl’s own immune system took her out.”

Emily nodded, seeing the sense in Doc Erik’s assessment. “It’s like the Spanish Flu,” Emily remarked.

Doc Erik nodded. “Influenza has come a long way since H1N1, but it’s a gift that keeps on giving. Our current scenario very closely parallels the conditions of World War One.” He listed the similarities. “We live close together. We spend most of the day cold and hungry even here in the Homestead. And we’re near a vulnerable population of starving people. The collapse set the pins up and now influenza is knocking them down.”

Emily picked through the mental dump of information she absorbed at Johns Hopkins University, sorting models of this epidemic.

She pictured the virus, invading a human cell, replicating