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

threatened his life, while he still had stand off distance. Now Jeff would have to react. Still, he saw it coming.

The haymaker started in Big Cop’s hip and curled up into his shoulder. The fist sailed round the bend, barreling for Jeff’s face.

Jeff bobbed left and under. The big paw swooshed over his head and carried Vanderlink around. If the attack had been any less clumsy, Jeff might’ve let himself tip into wild violence. Besides being a giant, Jeff hadn’t thought of Big Cop as a serious adversary.

With Vanderlink spinning away with the energy of a reckless punch, Jeff hooked his right foot on the man’s ankle and gave him a shove in the direction he was already going. Vanderlink stumbled heavily once, twice, three times then toppled to the snow-crusted pavement with a loud Boof!

“That’s your mulligan, Officer Vanderlink,” Jeff warned. “You won’t get another.”

The fall hadn’t humbled Vanderlink, Jeff could see from the wild-eyed rage as he climbed to his feet. Big Cop was angrier now than ever. The world hadn’t served him enough humbling losses, which struck Jeff as odd considering the dude was an epic asshole. Maybe his size had allowed him to escape his results. Maybe the badge had protected him too.

Jeff shouldn’t have been surprised, he realized, considering how assholes like Vanderlink had driven the world into the toilet, feeding their egos at the expense of others while good people like Tara suffered. Egomaniacal douchebags were to blame for the apocalypse, and as fate would have it, he had just such an egomaniacal douchebag in front of him.

Time for Beast Mode.

Jeff’s anger notched up to match Vanderlink’s, powered by visions of his wife laying in the hospital bed, her muscles atrophying. The Vanderlinks of the world had shafted the perfect American dream—the dream Jeff had spent his adult life defending. He’d come home from war to find it all ruined.

This petulant bull, gathering himself for another run at Jeff, had been feeding his outsized ego with Big Macs and driving the world into Turdville while Jeff had been shooting Taliban to make the world safe for America.

It looked like Vanderlink’s weight shifted down, and he sprang toward Jeff’s midsection, intent on taking him to the ground. The big man came at him with his head low, like the prow of a fighting ship.

Jeff took the momentum straight on, his feet sliding backwards and widening to increase his base, his elbows landing on the back of Vanderlink’s shoulders. He channeled the big man’s momentum down to the ground with Jeff on top. Vanderlink hit the street without a bounce. Jeff’s dense weight drove him down and held him face-down on the filthy road.

With the man under Jeff’s control, killing Big Cop felt like it might scratch some back for the good guys. It could count toward some justice for the wasted lives and the soul-weariness that’d followed Jeff home. Leaving reckless maniacs like Vanderlink to roam free, behind them a trail of menace, did no one any favors. This world had already paid a steep price for tolerance. Time to cut losses. Time for the Vanderlinks of the world to take a dirt nap.

Jeff popped up, using Vanderlink’s head as his leverage point. His knee ground Vanderlink’s nose into a bloody spot on the asphalt. Jeff stood and stepped back, creating space for a killing shot. Jeff pushed his hand into the Glock’s grip.

Vanderlink scrambled to his knees, keening and huffing with rage.

“Quit now or you die,” Jeff gave him a final warning. “I do not make idle threats.”

Jeff saw no quit in the man, more stupid than brave.

Time to die, Big Cop. Jeff would greet the next salvo with maximum violence.

Vanderlink’s eyes rolled into savagery, like a mortally-injured dog snapping at anyone near. Without masking his intention, Vanderlink’s eyes drilled into the handgun in Jeff’s holster. He sprang again, ragged with pain and injury.

Jeff’s face hardened. Vanderlink lunged for his Glock. Jeff let him. Vanderlink’s right hand crossed in an awkward grab. As his enemy’s hand hit the grip of the handgun, Jeff’s own hand lifted then clamped down, trapping Vanderlink on the pistol. With his right arm locked in the grab for the gun, Vanderlink’s eyes opened in surprise, finally understanding the fatal mistake, perhaps knowing for the first time that he could be killed.

With his right hand mashing Vanderlink’s hand into the holstered pistol, Jeff rotated the big man around, using Vanderlink’s shoulder as his lever and ended the movement in an arm bar. The big man’s elbow slammed against its stopping point.

Big Cop’s face pitched toward the pavement.

Jeff wrenched his hand off the gun, twisting it into a backwards curl, compounding the arm bar and driving Vanderlink’s face and body into a vicious collision with asphalt. Following him down, Jeff cranked the arm, the hand and the shoulder in a curl, wrapping Vanderlink’s hand up so tightly that he touched the back of his own head. As the connective tissue in his arm and shoulder tore, Vanderlink shrieked and gurgled. Jeff’s right knee came down hard on the back of Big Cop’s neck, grinding his face into the blacktop for the second time.

Now swimming in rage, Jeff’s right hand drew his Glock from the holster and placed it in the hollow of Vanderlink’s skull. He turned away to prevent brain and skull fragments from hitting him in the eyes.

“Mister Jeff,” Wali shouted. “Mister Jeff!” he shouted.

Jeff blinked. The pressure on his trigger relaxed slightly. Vanderlink continued to buck, his shrieking reduced to sobs of helplessness.

Another hand rested on Jeff’s hand holding the Glock. Jeff looked up, blinking away murder. President Thayer crouched beside him in a black track suit.

“He needs to die,” Jeff explained, knowing that he didn’t have the words to describe his grief and his hatred for all the men like Vanderlink.

“Are you sure?” Thayer asked. “I created this conflict. Not you.”

Jeff discovered that he wasn’t actually sure. His uncertainty cut through the brume of violence that had overtaken