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

brown hair as he journeyed away, forever, from the Holland farm. His ultimate destination would be Utah, but he would mount a mighty struggle against the space in between.

Sage recalled the promise he’d made to his dad, the last time they’d spoken over the phone. It seemed like years; another lifetime ago, but it’d only been six weeks. He’d promised his father that he would do whatever it took to survive. Somehow, his old man had known the journey would crumble into a gauntlet of terrors. The world had only just begun to burn at that point, but his dad must’ve sensed it falling into a pit of chaos that would devour cities and render men down to blood and grease.

In that nearly-forgotten world of telephone calls, before the collapse and while still a rebellious teenager, Sage’s word hadn’t meant a hill of beans, so he hadn’t considered his promise overmuch at the time. He’d broken his word to his parents more often than he could count. Now, after all he’d survived, he made good account of his promise, every word. He would claw a living from the nap of the earth in order to survive, but in the ice fields of winter, he wasn’t fool enough to believe he could do it alone.

Those lonely young men who dwelt in caves and hunted wooly mammoth had undoubtedly learned the same lesson as Sage in the stoney swales of eastern Washington: foraging alone through the winter was a death sentence. Cooperation was the first, elemental tool of survival. Without the ties that bind men to clan, Sage would forfeit his promise to his dad, and surrender his ghost somewhere on the snow-bound plains of Oregon or Idaho. He’d learned enough to be useful, but survival would require much more than skill. He must wrap himself in the threads of civilization—find a tribe, a town, or a family with a fighting chance of survival, and then ally himself to them.

The entire region—the eastern onion fields of Washington—had been too close to the pandemonium issuing from Seattle and Portland. The frank physics of the internal combustion engine and the size of a tank of gas doomed the Hollands and their farm, along with every hearty family between the Cascades and the Blue Mountains. The death throes of the old, broken society plowed them under. Sage had no choice but to cross over the towering dam of earth that’d held off the blood tide from Seattle. The tsunami of feckless men and their huddled women couldn’t venture beyond the limits of a tank of gas, but with his new knowledge and his backpack, Sage likely would.

Beyond the Blue Mountains lay a mystery. Sage regarded the snow caps in the distance, peeking over the ledge of his irrigation canal. It’d take him a week to reach the foothills, and he knew he could survive that far. He had less confidence in the five thousand-foot climb over the snow-socked crags, but what lay beyond offered him a chance to reconnect with real people—and to resupply his backpack.

Sage glanced over his shoulder, hurrying away from the red and orange painted sky. With the icy hands of sunset already pawing at the back of his neck, he searched for a nighttime refuge. He wouldn’t have time to set many snares before sleep, but he would try a few. His own tracks in the light snow, overlaying the tiny tracks of the rabbits, might betray his passing, and attract the human carrion-eaters. He would craft a way for his tracks to lead away from his sleeping den.

He sighed again, the only complaint he allowed himself these days. Everything in this new, ancient way of life required meticulous consideration. He wondered how many calories he burned just thinking about it all: minimize threats, conserve energy, and reap life-force energy from the land. Survival was a colossal pain in the ass.

He smiled against his internal bitching. He’d been alone for a long time, and his mind, he supposed, had subdivided into several personalities in order to argue with itself.

Good God, he swore. He’d give his left nut for someone to talk to.

He swept a too-long lock of dark hair out of his eyes and kicked a tumbleweed, then chided himself for the wasted energy.

He spotted the rotted, hanging door of an old root cellar, and in the distance, an abandoned-looking farmhouse. The root cellar had been dug into a hillside, probably fifty years before, ten yards off the irrigation canal. No cars, other than a rusted-out old truck, sat around the farmhouse. Sage thought he might take shelter in the root cellar. Refugees would hit the farmhouse before they’d search the surrounding grounds. He’d hear them and make his escape if it came to that.

Sage adjusted the straps over his shoulders again and backtracked along the canal bottom until he cut a rabbit trail. He traced it to a den, set two snares, then looped around in the dark, in a spiral pattern, to the half-collapsed cellar. He’d leave enough prints circling his final sleeping place that anyone following would alert him passing by. He’d learned not to walk straight to his bed.

Surviving alone was a lot of work. He wouldn’t miss that part if he ever found a new home, or God-permitting, made it back to his family.

3 Mat Best

Highway 79

Northeast of McKenzie, Tennessee

The rats had human faces. Mat Best caught glimpses as they vanished, screaming, under the bumper of his behemoth, deuce-and-a-half truck. His knuckles popped white on the steering wheel. The face of the third rat of the morning flicked from anger to defiance to horror as it grunted and disappeared beneath the army green hood. His rat companions dove off to the shoulder at the last second. They must’ve convinced themselves that the truck would stop or swerve, and that they’d score a tasty meal—maybe a roadside BLT or a ham sammich.

Not today pals. No stopping this train between here and the slaughterhouse.