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

She and Jeff met while they served overseas, she as army intelligence and Jeff as an SOF operator. Army girls were few and far between in the sandbox, and Jeff lucked into meeting one of the few who also happened to be a straight-up ass-kicker. His luck had been double, since no guy to make a run at Tara before Jeff had the stones to stand his ground against her considerable character. He knew right away he’d never grow bored of Tara, and he knew they’d go the distance as a couple, locked into one another like two stars chained together by massive gravity.

But now the microscopic, malignant feasting of the flu threatened to pull them apart, one cell at a time. Jeff knew it would kill more than half of him if he lost her.

Romance had never been a word between them, and their immense mutual affection resided as much in professional respect as sexual attraction. In a way known only to those who meet deep in their thirties, what Jeff and Tara’s marriage lacked in whistles and bells, it made up for in raw power. Nobody who knew them could picture them apart.

Three months before, Jeff had almost lost his son to a rattlesnake bite. Now he faced losing Tara to an insidious, invisible enemy.

Could he pull an ace card out of his sleeve four times in the same year? Was he touched by fortune enough to survive so many attacks on his family? Rattlesnake, gangs, mobs, virus. The enemy felt like a hydra with twenty invisible, gnashing heads. How was a warrior supposed to kill a beast like that?

There was one thing he knew for sure, he would not be commanding the Mormon army if he lost Tara. If he were totally honest with himself, she’d put him over the top on that decision. She’d been the one to say the final word on the matter, and put her finger on the Fates at work.

But without Tara, the Fates could fuck off. He would not climb out on a limb without her by his side.

Though he hadn’t told her about the weird dreams he’d been having, she sensed the tidal change in him. She’d recently began making sideways remarks like, “Mister Kirkham. What’s thawing out that ice-hard center? Whatever it is, keep it up—unless it’s another woman. then I’ll kill you both.”

Jeff chuckled at the memory—so very Tara. Of course, there’d never been another woman. But Jeff felt a little worried when she’d said it. He never wanted Tara to get the wrong idea. She tended to hang onto wrong ideas just as powerfully as right ones.

A week before the flu exploded within the Homestead, Jeff came up behind Tara while she worked in the cook shed and ran his fingers through the back of her short, brown hair. She whipped around and grabbed his face. “Damn if you aren’t becoming all the things my mother told me you would never become.” She smiled, squished his cheeks, then turned back to work. It’d probably reminded her that her mother was still out there somewhere, maybe alive. Maybe not. Like always in the apocalypse; every silver lining came with a black cloud.

Jeff hadn’t known what she was talking about when she’d said he was changing, softening. But, he wasn’t the kind of man who dug into compliments. He enjoyed them while they lasted and didn’t ask too many questions.

Now, watching her flu-ridden body struggle with self-destruction, he admitted to himself that she’d known more about how to protect their family than he did. She operated from a stoney sixth sense—not like something mystical, but more as a function of her granite self-confidence. He could always rely on her to make the intuitive calls, even when he was actually the one in command of the forces.

After the last dream, when he drifted ass-first into the thought that he might run the Mormon army, he’d made a bee line to bounce the idea off Tara.

“Of course, Einstein,” She laughed. “You’re the only choice. It’s why we’re here in this weird compound. You were always going to help lead this region toward a new America.” Jeff double-blinked. He hadn’t expected her to be so clear. “You were born for this.”

She had paused for a second, then continued. “I never told you; I saw you go down in that big fight against the mob on the Homestead lawn. The boys and I were up on the balcony, and I watched you fighting until you dropped. You pitched face-first in the snow… But I knew you weren’t dead. I knew you would be okay. I’ve known for months that you’re going to lead this place back from the abyss. You’ll stand at the head of the armies of peace and order. You’ll make this region whole again.”

Jeff hadn’t known what to say, so he said nothing. He took her hand, probably to borrow some of her strength and conviction for himself.

Soon thereafter, he trudged to the prophet’s house to see the idea through. When he got there, the Mormon prophet had already come to the conclusion that Jeff should lead; the same conclusion Tara reached when she saw him fall in battle.

It felt like fate at the time. But now she lay dying, surrounded by plastic and the smell of piss and vomit.

If she died in this bed, like the doctor said she likely would, “armies of peace and order” and leading a region “back from the abyss” wasn’t going to happen. Without her beside him, flicking the reins, Jeff knew he would never rise to anything. They were a package deal. God couldn’t expect him to run off chasing fate without Tara backing him up. If she died, Jeff’s world would draw back to their three boys, and the story would end right there.

If God wanted Jeff to lead men to peace, He was going to have to interrupt whatever the hell