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

Worries about this jumbo-sized irrigation system sprouted like weeds in his mind. For one thing, there were no fasteners to lock the pipes together. Someone had come along before the apocalypse, unbolted the couplers, took them away and left the pipe corroding in the sand. Cameron found a few rusty nuts and half-moon brackets hidden in the weeds, so he knew that’s how the pipes were supposed to be connected. Without couplers, they just nested each ten-foot section of pipe, precariously, inside the other. He hoped water would rush down the bottom of the pipes and only splash out a little at every seam. He figured it’d be less water loss than just letting it go down the dirt canal, but he had no way of judging how much of the water they’d lose before it reached the pasture. He supposed they could build a bigger dam if the water petered out too soon.

There was a stack of old, three-quarter inch PVC tubing on the edge of the pasture, and every plastic section came with a one-to-one straight connector. He didn’t think they’d have a problem getting the water from the stock tank to the trenches with that tubing, but he had no idea how they were going to attach the PVC to the drain spigot at the rusty tank.

They had a single envelope of turnip seeds from the “survival seed bank”—maybe two hundred of them—but he didn’t know what percentage of those seeds could be expected to sprout. The seed bank looked to be at least five years old. Would seeds last that long in a can?

Then there were questions about winter. It seemed like greenhouses should work in Southern Utah—it mostly only froze at night. The days were moderately warm, even as Christmas approached. But what about the daylight hours and the angle of the sun? Cameron could swear that the days were shorter and the light was a little more autumn-like than summer. Did vegetables mind less sun? Did the angle of the sun matter?

The irrigation plan could be a catastrophe—tens of thousands of calories sweated away for nothing, or it could be their salvation. His worry soured his stomach.

“If you’re not the prophet, then why does my father do most of the work?” the little girl’s voice yanked him out of his whirlpool of worries.

He’d dropped his end of the pipe, but Isaiah continued yanking on it like a stubborn dog with a rope. He tugged the pipe three inches, rested, tugged the pipe three more inches, rested again. The man wasn’t much of a physical specimen, but he was no quitter. Cameron’s old man would’ve admired the kooky dipshit. He had spent half his childhood getting reamed out by his dad for running lackluster Little League laps, hating his math homework or slacking off on make-work chores his dad gave him at home. “Stewarts never quit!” his old man would scream from the bleachers while little Cam pumped out sluggish, floppy burpees. Little Cameron seethed against his dad when he did that. He wanted to smash his fucking face.

Someday, Cameron had promised himself. Someday he would be big enough to shut that mouth with his fist. One-two punch combination. Blood jetting from the lips of his old man. The nose too. He pictured his pops toppling to the side, surprise in his eyes.

“Brother Cameron,” she repeated. “Are you quitting? Should I tell my dad it’s time to quit?”

Had she read his mind? She turned and watched her father yank at the pipe, worry in her brows. She walked toward him, as if to pick up the end of the pipe.

“I’m not quitting.” Cameron lurched away from the cottonwood that’d been holding him up. “I needed to catch my breath, is all.” He stepped past her and resumed carrying his end of the pipe.

“Cameron,” a woman’s voice floated from the distance. It was Julie. “Cameron. Come quick.” She burst through a stand of reeds. “Denny’s sick. He’s in a lot of pain.”

Cameron and Isaiah dropped the pipe at the same time, and it clattered to the ground. They rushed to the farmhouse.

This is where it begins, Cameron fretted as he broke into a run. This is where the dying starts. Not Denny. Anyone but Denny.

Cameron burst into the dim cabin and the dust motes swirled in the shafts of light from the door. Denny was on the floor, twisted in a sleeping bag.

“Ow, ow, ow,” he moaned. “It hurts.”

“What hurts, little man?” Cameron dropped to the floor beside him. “Tell me what hurts.”

“It’s my stomach. It hurts so bad.”

“Is anyone else sick?” Cameron asked the gathering.

Julie and Ruth shook their heads.

“Everyone else seems fine,” Ruth answered. “But come look.” She waved them outside.

The farmhouse had been a restored structure—an artifact from when the Grafton ghost town had been part of the Mormon cotton mission. The outhouse had been restored too, but not to any useable standard. When they arrived, Isaiah had made a half-hearted attempt to carve the pit toilet a bit deeper, and that’d been the extent of their effort toward proper sanitation. The outhouse smelled like raw, human sewage, freezing and reheating with each night and day. At least the cold at night killed off all the flies.

Ruth had apparently climbed down into the shallow pit and displayed a scoop of the sewage on the chunk of wood she’d used as a shovel.

“Look close.” She pointed at the watery slop, her finger trembling.

White worms threaded through the turd like maggots in the compost.

“Roundworm,” Isaiah said, and Ruth nodded. They’d obviously seen it before.

“Is that bad?” Cameron’s throat tightened like a noose.

“We don’t know if this is his poop,” Ruth said. “This could be from one of the others. We might all have it. It’s not a big deal, usually. The infirmary back home would give the kids Vermox for it. They’d sometimes get the white worm from playing in the fertilizer or swimming in the canal.