Honor Road by Jason Ross (best non fiction books of all time TXT) 📕

hold six men and a girl captive against the town side of the barrier. Five more rats flew over the top and bolted for the cover of the homes. The lady blasted one of them, maybe by accident. Half the people she had “arrested” got up and ran for it while she went to see if she’d killed the guy she’d shot.

“Hold the line,” Mat ordered into his radio. “We’ll deal with the ones that got past later.”

Mat had seen at least a hundred rats make it over into town. If enough of them got in, the town would be done. He had no idea what that number might be. But if they overwhelmed them, the HESCO wouldn’t matter. The rats would eat everything not protected by a gun, and all the guns were on the wall.

“Hold the HESCO. Even if they’re getting past. Slow them down.” Mat didn’t know if it’d work, but he began to think of the HESCO, not as a medieval wall, but as a semi-porous barrier, like a fleece jacket in the rain. It wouldn’t keep out the weather, but it might be just enough to keep from getting drenched. The rats weren’t turning to attack his men once inside the wall. They ran for the pork instead.

Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk.

Mat’s attention turned back to the sodden hayfield. He expected to see flying missiles, arching over the battlefield, then wispy clouds of yellow smoke. Instead, he saw nothing; just rambling, clotting masses of filthy people.

Maybe the jars didn’t break when they hit the mud.

That wouldn’t surprise him. Random shit happened all the time in war, even with a multi-trillion-dollar military-industrial complex. With Kerr jars and potato guns, who could say?

Then, a knot of twenty rats wavered in the middle of the field. They stumbled, fell to their knees, then pitched over. Some writhed in agony in the mud, others went still.

Another patch opened in the sea of rushing rats, then another. There were no explosions, no smoke, no sign of poison gas except men, women and children scythed down to the mud.

Mat slung his rifle and snatched his binoculars.

A ten year-old boy went down, clutching his throat. A woman rolled in agony in the filth, coating her hair with sludge. An old man fell to the ground, like a chopped pine and didn’t twitch a muscle; dead upon impact.

Mat dropped the binos and whipped his head left and right, giving the sensitive skin on his ears and cheeks a chance to test the wind. It was still blowing from the southwest, at about five knots. But he knew from long-range shooting school that the wind in one part of the field didn’t guarantee wind in another part. Wind swirled. A lot.

What would happen if the wind turned? Could the poison reach the HESCO, or the town? The prevailing wind would definitely carry the poison across the Carroll’s homestead.

There were no hills or trees in no-man’s land—just tilled mud—so Mat prayed the wind would behave and not blow it back across his men. But a five knot wind was close to no wind at all. Light wind had a mind of its own and could whirl around at the slightest provocation. Gas attacks were notorious for killing “friendly” forces. Mat kept one eye on the waves of starving rats and another on the fickle wind.

That psycho motherfucker, Jensen. He’d gone kinetic without even a by-your-leave from Mat or the security committee. He’d taken it upon himself to bring the whole town with him on his little journey of mass murder.

But they might just win. Mat’s eyes narrowed to see if the tide of oblivion could be turned.

Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk.

Jensen had dialed in his pneumatic mortar because the next wave of death cut across the heaviest wave of rats. Mat saw several of the jars flying through his binos this time, falling from the heavens like tumbling capsules of malevolence. They slapped to the ground and blew into fragments. Thirty seconds later, men, women and children began to drop like flies passing through the flame. Mat sagged, jerking his binos away from another child strangling on her own vomit.

The battle wavered as the possessed mobs stumbled over piles of their dead. Newcomers inhaled the gas, twisted, and added to the twitching layers of bodies. Thirty meter-wide sweeps of the rough-turned hayfield twisted with the struggle of the doomed.

The mass of rats finally reckoned with the invisible destroyer in their midst and slowed their advance. Thousands tarried, screamed terror, then choked on the swirling, silent, chemical weapon.

For a moment, it looked to Mat like the poison gas might stem the tide. The overwhelming thousands flooding across the field thinned and slowed. Rats poured back across the field toward the tree line, like vermin caught between the brushfire and the exterminators.

Hundreds, maybe a thousand refugees contorted, screamed and thrashed in the mud. Mat’s radio had gone silent. Every man on the HESCO line stood, mute and boneless, as they watched the destruction of their enemy.

Tears welled up in Mat’s eyes, finally overcoming his adrenaline.

The town might be saved. All it’d cost them was their immortal souls.

Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk.

Gladys Carter pushed into a balls-out sprint, turning into the final mile to the football field. Her tactical vest clanked and bobbed on her thin frame. The AR-15 pumped in her hands. She caught glimpses of the Carroll hayfield, and she turned away from the sight of it. People were dying en masse. There was no time to lament. Her run would end face-to-face with a mass murdering motherfucker. What happened next would be up to Jensen. Either way, he was going down.

The football field lay in a depression; better for the halons to shine those Friday night lights. But Jensen wasn’t on the football field. It was empty and overgrown.

Gladys veered away from the entrance to the fenced stadium and angled toward the raised roadbed of University Drive—toward the thumping rhythm.