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

After Sage wiped out the burger, the commissioner spoke. “Sheriff Tate will be coming by in a minute with your rifle. He’ll take you to the county line.” He got up from the table. “I wish you well, Sage Ross from Salt Lake City. Keep your eyes open, son. There’s more than one way to cannibalize people. I think we’ll see them all. Even here.”

12

Mat Best

McKenzie, Tennessee

Southwest HESCO Barrier

He should’ve fought harder to cut the Reedy Grove neighborhood outside the wall. Mat swore at himself for his moment of weakness, six weeks before. It’d cost them over a mile of HESCO barrier and they were way behind schedule on the south side of town. They were way behind schedule everywhere.

“Nobody will come looking for a handout from Memphis,” the longstanding residents promised. “Memphis people are better than that.” Mat didn’t know Memphis people from Martian people, but he knew even a noble race like the Afghans—mountain warriors all—would tear the throats out of a troop of Girl Scouts if their families were starving and it meant feeding them. People from Memphis, it turned out, were not better humans than Afghans.

The first wave of the mob came straight up Highway 79 from the direction of Memphis. Who knew if they actually came from the city or if they’d circled around from one of the “less reputable” cities like Louisville or St. Louis? They were a mob, and hunger was their birthplace.

The first wave of a thousand rushed up the highway and into the HESCO barrier. They were repulsed by a few shotguns and the ram rods. That’s when the perimeter guards called Mat and the quick reaction force for help.

The QRF were a group of twenty pipe-hitters—high school and college boys with more grit than good sense. Mat trained them a few hours a day. His well-fed twenty could hold off a mob of a hundred; from behind a HESCO, maybe three times that many.

Up to that point, the rats were too uncoordinated to attack the town all-at-once from multiple points of the compass. Mat could hold his best guys in reserve, in the center of town, on a two minute alert. When a push came—and they came every couple of days now—the QRF rushed to the hotspot and hit them with the town’s best guns, best shooters and the strongest hand-to-hand fighters. The QRF all ran AR-15s from the sheriff’s gun locker, wore soft body armor and trained daily on radio communications. Radio waves were free. Bullets were irreplaceable.

The town of McKenzie had more food than firearms, given the partnership with the town of Henry. They had more hogs than people, with more piglets born every day. They traded dried pork at the highway barricades for guns and ammo, but that added to their stock of bullets and forced them to use them. Handing out pork led to arguments, theft and riots. Riots always turned against the town. That was exactly what’d happened at the 79 South gate; they’d been trading dried pork for bullets and a fight broke out in the refugee camp up against the HESCO wall.

Mat and the QRF arrived just in time to see the mob overflow into the flooded hay fields, and churn toward the Reedy Grove neighborhood. Construction on the wall hadn’t made it that far. It was still only a quarter-mile long on that side of town— inching across the Bartlett’s hayfield from the Hilltop trailer park toward the cluster of suburban homes called “Reedy Grove.”

Mat argued as hard as he dared at the security committee back when they’d decided the boundaries of the wall. He wanted the wall tucked up against Hopper Lane—which would’ve saved them over a mile of HESCO. It would’ve also required the mayor’s brother to move his family to a shitty, abandoned home in town instead of his pretty Reedy Creek rambler.

The mayor didn’t get much for his trouble, serving as mayor. He was considered an empty smile and a free handshake, particularly when compared to the larger-than-life personality of Sheriff Morgan. This time, the mayor had thrown down: the Reedy Grove subdivision would be wrapped snugly inside the HESCO barrier “or his name wasn’t Bradford P. Caldwell.” Mat relented and the line on the map became yet another political boondoggle.

Now a thousand pissed off vagabonds trudged around the unfinished wall and straight toward the mayor’s brother’s home.

“Your brother’s shitting in his Levis now, Mister Mayor,” Mat said under his breath. He clicked the push-to-talk button on his radio. “QRF. This is Mat. Move out to Reedy Grove Road. Let’s flex our muscle.”

The QRF made a series of turns in their off-road vehicles and got them pointing back toward town. The fight wasn’t going to be at the HESCO this time. They’d be fighting between swing sets and trampolines—exactly what Mat had hoped to avoid.

By the time they looped back south into Reedy Grove, the opportunity to rake the mob with gunfire while they slogged through the muddy field had elapsed. The front wave of incursion had already reached the trees and the backyards of Reedy Grove.

Mat and his fire teams poured around the five homes that bordered the hayfield. Rifle fire crackled. It sounded like 5.56 from his boys, but Mat listened hard for handguns or shotguns. The rats would have firearms. Hopefully, not more than a few.

He rounded an air conditioning unit to catch a cluster of bat-wielding rats bursting from the trees and onto the dead grass of a family’s backyard. Mat lit them up, one-at-a-time. The last figure was a woman in a bright, green wrap. The tasseled edges were painted in mud.

They’re forcing me to slaughter them, Mat screamed inside. They were literally on the porch of that house. The family was probably inside, scared half-to-death. No choice but to shoot the intruders. No choice!

Three more rats sprinted from the trees for the house. Mat shot a man’s knee out the side