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

The screaming of the pigs was deafening. Mat’s neck pulsed with the blow he’d taken when he’d hit the roadblock. Around the corners of his vision, he saw flashes of light and dark, squiggly shapes. He could barely see, much less think tactically.

“Sarge!” Deputy Smith screamed for Mat. “He’s hurt bad, Sarge! He’s... I think he’s dead! They killed Chuck Junior. They killed him!”

Smith cradled Chuck Junior’s green coverall-clad body against his chest. Chuck’s head hung in a position that made no anatomical sense.

“Goddamn rats,” raged Deputy Rickers.

The rats were in chaos after the violence of the collisions. They sprinted across the fields, ducked around the smashed up cars and generally flitted around like a flock of pigeons when an old man shows up with a bread bag. It gave Mat’s team time to recover the body of Chuck Junior and get it in the passenger seat of the police cruiser.

The six surviving men ran back to the capsized truck. Halfway there, some rats opened fire on them. A dozen rats had taken cover behind the roadblock. The majority carried improvised weapons like clubs, even a few spears, but few had firearms. What was left of the convoy—the deuce and two cruisers—was trapped on the McKenzie side—the flipped semi sealed the roadblock.

“Just leave! Take your people and go!” called a rat voice from the roadblock.

A chorus of hoarse, panicked voices joined. “Just leave. Don’t fight us! Please. We need the food! Just leave the pigs and go!” The rats pleaded rather than threatened.

“Shut up! Shut up!” boomed the first voice—a man behind one of the smashed vehicles. “It’s over, cops. Take your people. We won’t shoot you if you leave your guns.”

That last demand must’ve been a visit from the Good Idea Fairy. Mat doubted the original plan had anything to do with stealing firearms from cops. The rats had a leader, and he had a pair of brass balls, but the promise of food trumped all. The gun thing was icing on the cake.

Even through the thundering percussion in his neck, Mat felt pretty sure he had the measure of the enemy. They were near panic, and a counter-attack would flatten them like a pup tent. They sure-as-hell weren’t getting any guns from Mat and his guys. The rats would be lucky to leave with their lives. The two deputies carried AR-15s and the sheriff had loaned Mat a SCAR Heavy rifle. The brothers, Juan and Jesus Cabrera, had been issued pump shotguns from the sheriff’s gun locker. All six men wore soft body armor.

They could Alamo-up and try to hold this ground for the forty-five minutes it’d take to scrounge up another hauler from Henry and salvage the pigs. They only had the one hauler on the McKenzie side and now it was tits-up, blocking the road. Or, they could ditch the pigs and light out for McKenzie. But this wasn’t Indian country—this was their precious link to the pig farms. After his latest success, Mister Loudmouth Leader would ambush them again and again. Better to destroy the threat now. Mat knew right where to find the guy. He might never get this chance again.

Deputy Rickers shouted at Mat, “Sarge, they’re coming. Holy shit. They’re ALL coming.”

Thousands of refugees sprang from the muddy fields and rushed from the treeline. What Mat had mistaken for a vanilla tactical problem, flashed suddenly into an apocalyptic shitstorm.

He’d read stories about British soldiers fighting African tribal nations in the 1800s—when a handful of Brits would be attacked by thousands of spear-wielding natives. Even just reading about them, his throat had tightened; a couple dozen men, circled by the carcasses of their wagons, facing the fury of five thousand enraged warriors. But in real life, the cavalry never came. In most of those desperate battles, every white man died dangling from the end of the enemies’ spear.

Until that moment on the road, behind the dead big rig, witnessing waves of humanity pouring across the mud-soaked fields, Mat had thought of this as a standard contracting gig.

Teach a town to defend itself. Help them build a perimeter wall. Tighten up security, then get back on the road. One-and-done. Over-and-out. Mat Best rides off into the sunset, once again.

What his eyes beheld buggered that idea all to hell. He had not been trained for this. They didn’t teach Army Rangers how to defeat thousands of Zulu warriors with fifty rounds of ammo, twenty men and six, broke-axle wheel carts. The army had you read those Zulu stories so you wouldn’t be stupid enough to get in those situations in the first place.

Just the rats from the immediate vicinity of the ambush numbered in the thousands. The mud fields crawled with them—scrambling, high-stepping, clawing toward Mat’s position. The rats right in this bog outnumbered the residents in town. There had to be ten or more times that many refugees in the woods, surrounding McKenzie.

A filth-ridden man and woman launched out of a tall stand of grass toward Mat. They clambered onto the road and swung homemade clubs in one hand, steak knives in the other. She wore a filthy, gold and purple dress—like she’d fled the big city wearing the nicest thing she owned.

Mat’s hands operated automatically—they flicked off his safety and put two rounds, center mass, into each of them. The couple crumpled off the road and rolled back into the muck.

Two more nasty-looking creatures crouched in the bushes behind Mat’s position. He didn’t see weapons, but he couldn’t allow the flank. He fired two rounds into each through the grass, and they pinwheeled backward—a woman’s scarf trailed magenta and saffron. Mat shook his head at the weirdness of it, which sent his thundering neck ache up to his brain pan. The cacophony in his coconut went from bongo drums to acid rock.

The man he’d just blind-shot behind the bush cut loose with a soul-wrenching keen of anguish. The dude jumped up, alone now, and