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

funky allure— like the Old Testament had stopped in its tracks, done a one-eighty and came barreling back to modern America. The flu felt like another heart-warming chapter in God’s mighty wrath. As a high-performance dude, Chad liked it when God threw down.

Time to put up or shut up. Write a check your butt can cash. Walk the talk. Do the deed.

When it came down to it, Chad always landed on his feet, ready to kick ass and take names. He didn’t mind philosophizing, but ideas had to arrive at the tip of the sword eventually.

He’d mucked around with Christian theology in his young life. He bounced between Protestant sects that soothed the human epidemic of failure. In the end, it was all lots of breathy singing and upbeat chitter and very little ass-kicking.

This new thing, where firebrands called up a damned army; well, that appealed to Chad on a cellular level. He could smoke their whacky tabacky and drink their funny-tasting fruit punch so long as it eventually meant kicking some ass. If they were all one fry short of a Happy Meal, so be it.

So far as Chad gathered by skimming the Book of Mormon, it was the same story repeated fifteen times.

1. People got lazy.

2. People did it their own way.

3. God whipped their ass.

4. Whoever wasn’t face-down-in-the-mud got back to work.

The book came close to meeting Chad’s personal standard of galactic truth, right where fist meets mouth. He’d wanted to sign up for their lunatic church since Chapter One.

He spent the better part of three weeks reading the Mormon scripture while listening to a selection of Gregorian chants, Daft Punk and industrial dance music on his ear buds. He’d swiped one of the Goal Zero solar panels from the Homestead, and it kept the party going, right through the Monster Flu. Chad cranked the tunes and hammered down on his reading materials.

There was, however, one trifling problem. While Chad liked almost everything about the fundamentalist Mormon whack-a-doodles, he fundamentally disliked being told what to do.

He didn’t mind God telling him what to do. When God told him what to do, it usually sounded a lot like what he wanted to do anyway. When God told him what to do, it reminded him of being on assaults with the teams.

Head Shed: “Go jack up that compound full of dirt-eaters over there.”

SEALs: “Roger. We thought you’d never ask. We’re all geared up and ready to go.”

When God gave Chad a mission, it sounded surprisingly like Chad’s own thoughts on the matter:

God: “Go join the fundamentalist army, infiltrate them, then twist them up ninety-degrees from Sunday.”

Chad: “Roger. I’m on it. Easy day.”

The problem cropped up when another man told Chad what to do.

When another dude jammed himself into the gears between Chad and God, it didn’t always sound like Chad’s personal preference. Most of the time, it sounded like what the dude wanted Chad to do, and he didn’t like doing what other dudes wanted him to do. That kind of mission smelled like skank, and he’d had his fill of skank missions, thank you very much.

Already in this apocalypse, he’d accepted a mission from Audrey’s old man to provide personal protection for his wildebeest ex-wife (which had gone totally tits up), he’d been ordered to secure a WalMart shipping center by a local-yokel mayor (which had turned into a bloodbath), and he’d served as VIP protection for Jason Ross while he “negotiated” with some crooked fat cats (which had resulted in Chad blasting a couple of cops.)

Jumping into other mens’ agenda had been an all-you-can-eat donkey dick smorgasbord for Chad. To become part of this particular Old Testament crew of fire-breathers, he would once again have to get in line with another dude’s program. For starters, they wanted him to be baptized as a Mormon. Chad had half-a-dozen theological and personal reasons for hating that idea. Most of all, it violated Chad’s personal motto: don’t do stupid shit.

The Mormons liked to re-baptize people who had already been baptized, because the baptisms done by everyone else were supposedly bullshit. What he really didn’t like was that they wanted him to get baptized in a pansy bathtub inside some pansy church—more like an old folks’ home than a House of God. But if he was going to bow to their little agenda, he didn’t want to be baptized just like twenty million people before him. He wanted to be baptized like a crusader for a White Hot God. Like a bad ass.

When Chad pictured a man’s baptism, it was him and a stoney-faced holy man, wading into a rushing river dressed in animal hides, plunging under the ice-cold water with a fifty-fifty chance they’d get swept downstream to their deaths.

But nobody he’d talked to thus far could catch his vision of the thing. Once again, Chad would be forced to jump through hoops set by lesser men, like a croquet ball passing through six wickets before it could hammer the post and do some damage. This had always been the weak-ass truth faced by every man of action: the Dick Cheneys of the world always took their due before the real men got busy.

Chad would have to shake the proper hands, read the proper books, say the proper things and only then would he be allowed to go to freaking war.

So, the baptism circus-jerkus would probably happen, and he’d be grinding his teeth the whole time. But he’d be damned if he’d do it in a bath tub.

10

Shortwave Radio 7150kHz 4:00pm

“Here’s another great thing about America: we are surrounded by a shit-load of water. If you’re thinking that’s no big deal, then consider our Drinkin’ Bros in Europe. They’re within walking distance of ninety percent of the fanatical assholes on the planet. At the top of the list: radical Islam, otherwise known as the Caliphate.

I spoke over ham radio with a veteran Drinkin’ Bro in Spain, Charles Whilton. He got his ass stuck in Europe on vacation and