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

snap his fingers and return to being the successful businessman who traveled the world, catering to her whims. That man was long gone, and it infuriated Jason that his wife didn’t care to know it. Nobody understood the price in blood and conscience he’d paid, and nobody ever would.

“Sweetheart,” Jason softened his voice by force. “I’m totally slammed with work. We have to put this place back together after the flu. I won’t bother you with details, but we’re also facing some new threats, and I can’t break away, maybe not for a while.”

She stared at the tops of her shoes.

She wants something else. Something I haven’t figured into the calculation.

Jason knew his wife as much as any man could know his wife, but he’d lived long enough to understand that women had six thoughts to every one thought by a men. In terms of psychological complexity, men showed up with a knife to a gun fight. Jason was smarter than most in that he knew his wife out-gunned him when it came to this kind of interaction.

She hadn’t come into his office wanting time together, per se. He’d bought that package, at first, but now he saw the truth. That’d just been an opening gambit; a first move in a string of moves intended to maneuver him into position. For the life of him, Jason didn’t know what she wanted, and if he asked her directly, she would move deeper into her layers, not closer to the truth.

In rough terms, Jason knew what his wife wanted. He always knew what she wanted. She wanted more. He didn’t always understand more of what, but it usually came down to a thickening of the security hedge around herself and her children. Not literal, physical security. Not usually. Most often, she gamed toward more emotional security. She hungered for more and deeper attention to her and the children.

Jason supposed the compulsion to add to the buffer of safety evolved in women over ten thousand years. For the most part, he didn’t mind. He’d always been a workhorse for those around him, and it didn’t bother him too much. He liked being a useful human being.

What bothered him, to the point of wanting to scream, was her soft insistence that he do both at once; twist himself into the sort of monster demanded by this holocaust, then drift off with her like some light-footed paramour. She didn’t get that his life resembled a bloody debris field, nor did she seem to care.

The silence stretched, but Jenna didn’t retaliate against Jason’s rejection, deepening his belief that he’d missed something fundamental in her strategy.

“Let me know if you find some time. I’ll be around,” she said, finally standing up to leave.

“Okay. I’ll see you at dinner,” Jason maneuvered toward the mundane, away from the emotional minefield.

“Love you. Bye.” Jenna left his office.

Jason closed his eyes and sat back in his chair. Most men would’ve considered that conversation a win; a close call, an artfully avoided conflict. But he knew better. The Jenna he knew wouldn’t have allowed him to turn her down without a prickly rejoinder, even if subtly played. He hurt her feelings by turning down sex, and typically, she would retaliate.

Instead, she took the rejection as though it had no emotional content, like a true scheduling conflict—which they both knew it wasn’t. More was going on than met the eye. He considered the possibility that she might be having an affair—but then why would she ask to slip away together?

No, it was something else, and whatever it was, it was bound to screw with his chi.

In his mind, his wife moved from the safe category to the threat category.

As if he needed any more threats.

Residence of President Richard D. Thayer

Prophet Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Orchard Heights, Utah

The flu abated.

Like a bell tolling, the flu pealed through the people in waves then dropped off suddenly—the silence descending more like a funeral than a celebration. President Thayer watched another body carried in a sheet from one of his neighbors’ homes. About two-thirds of the condos on his street were now empty. Mostly retirement-age residents, they hadn’t been as likely to get the flu, but on top of the lack of proper medical care and with a bit of malnutrition, even a light case of the flu had been fatal to the elderly.

The world had seized up for three weeks, waiting for the deadly flu to do its deadly work. Like the Destroying Angel, it passed over the Thayer residence. Because of Melinda’s diabetes, they hadn’t invited anyone into the condo, nor had President Thayer held any meetings, other than sitting with the dying Brother Tennison.

Hopefully, the fundamentalists had ceased their efforts to make war, since it seemed likely that the flu had gone through Utah County too. Richard Thayer wouldn’t wish the plague on anyone, but a sanity break might save more lives than it had cost.

Dare he wish the flu had taken Elder Burnham?

President Thayer couldn’t help but chuckle. In his gut, he knew this turn in the history of the Church wouldn’t be that simple, or that convenient.

They were now in the middle of February—the peak of the snow season in Utah. From here on, the storms would diminish and the mountainous passage between Salt Lake and Utah Valley would thaw.

The Quorum of the Twelve, the governing body of the Mormon Church, numbered only nine so far. They needed fifteen men to constitute a full quorum; fifteen men to fill a body that was supposed to be the same as Jesus’ twelve apostles. Fifteen wasn’t the same number as twelve, as any child knew, but the organizations of men change with time. Ideals give way to practice. Symmetry breaks down with use.

These days, Richard Thayer asked many questions about his religion. They weren’t doubts, exactly. They were moments of humility. Moments of uncertainty.

Whether the church had twelve or fifteen men in the governing body didn’t bother him so much,