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

That’s how you get hauled to the county line. Right?” She smiled again, as though she’d just told him her favorite band was Fallout Boy.

Sage nodded. He was in over his head. He had no idea what was going on here. Telling Aimee had convoluted the situation even further. What in the literal fuck was up with these people? He resolved that his best play was to follow her lead.

He nodded again, and packed his regrets away in a box in his mind labeled “She Said.” His shoulders released some of their tension and came down from up around his ears.

Aimee took his head in her hands and laid him down on the bed. She massaged the back of his neck for a long time. Then they went for a second go-round.

18

Mat Best

McKenzie City Hall

McKenzie, Tennessee

Another rat raid, more deaths. This time on Joy Drive in the northwestern corner of town. They were up to thirteen murders in town at the hands of desperate refugees, and that was aside from the hundreds of thefts. The town had experienced more crime in the last three months than in the previous thirty years by a factor of ten. Mat suspected the refugees numbered over twelve thousand now—four times the population of town.

McKenzie City Hall buzzed with the security and food committees. The latest murders on Joy Drive refreshed their terror. An elderly couple had been stabbed to death in their bed.

The massacre at Brashear wood camp hadn’t been widely gossiped. Those who participated in the killing weren’t bragging. Some had vanished from sight. Very few of the strike team came to Parker’s funeral.

Mad Scientist Jensen showed up to the committee meeting with another milk crate of jars, and a massive, white gun that had to be some kind of pneumatic launcher. Mat kicked himself for not insisting the science teacher come on the strike at Brashear wood. Maybe that would’ve pulled him up short.

Sheriff Morgan began the meeting and turned the podium over to Mat.

“During the strike on the camp at Brashear wood, we lost one man, Deputy Rickers, plus three wounded, all expected to fully recover.”

“How many’d we kill?” a man from the food committee interrupted.

“There were forty-six enemy casualties.” Mat looked down at notes he didn’t have. The room went still.

“At least now they know we mean business,” the same guy interjected, this time at half volume.

“Yes, to the extent that other refugees might learn what happened there, and if they know why we did it, they know we’re capable of wiping out a camp. But conducting military strikes against the camps is like swatting mosquitos on a dog. The more we swat, the more we’re going to get bit. If we try to put a bullet in every refugee, we’ll run out of bullets long before we ran out of refugees.” His last sentence hummed with frustration.

“So, then what the hell we gonna do?” the guy blurted out.

“Finish the HESCO barrier and continue to patrol, assess and strike—mostly around the corridor to the town of Henry. We’re being ambushed along the highway again, almost daily.”

“What about our neighborhoods?” the woman who’d replaced Marjorie Simms on the security committee asked. Gwen Sizemore—Mat remembered her name because she was a thin, older gentlewoman. The exact opposite that her name implied..

Mat held out his hands as though he wished he had a better answer. “We need to get that wall done and we need to increase our neighborhood patrols.“

It’d rained every day since Brashear wood. The townspeople had slacked off on HESCO work and on neighborhood patrols because of the discomfort of being outside in the weather. Mat and the team had a devil of a time getting people to work security in the rain.

“So, you’re saying we need to keep doing more of the same? The same thing that’s getting half-a-dozen of us killed every week?”

It was an exaggeration, but a fair assessment. Their town wasn’t secure. That was a fact.

Mat ticked off what they had accomplished. “The HESCO’s almost half done. We haven’t lost hogs in weeks. We’ve rounded up a dozen possible HVTs—rat leaders likely to start something against us. The Creek Camp has moved on, en masse, for greener pastures, many miles from here.”

The FEMA camp trick had been kept a secret—only the security and food committees knew Mat was responsible for drawing away Creek Camp. His trick worked, but only because Creek Camp and Dr. Hauser were so cooperative. The committee had talked about doing it again, but other camps were too hungry to travel even ten miles.

Mat ran out of things to count on his fingers after four, and he’d been standing in silence for a few seconds. He wanted to talk about his new camp spy initiative, but he hadn’t decided if he should keep it secret or not. He’d been recruiting informants from the camps by trading food for information. Would it leak back to the camps if he talked about it in committee?

“Um, Sergeant Best? If I may?” Mad Scientist Jensen stepped beside him with a jangling crate of ugly jars.

Mat would’ve rather dealt with a hundred angry hecklers than this guy. Mat normally carried himself with the confidence of a warrior, but he came off as flat-footed around Jensen. Whenever Jensen stood up in a meeting, Mat felt like he’d stumbled into an ambush.

Mat wanted the town to accept their losses and be patient. He wanted them to knuckle down, work harder, endure the rain and finish the damned wall. They were not quick, sexy solutions, but that was all Mat had. Mad Scientist Guy, on the other hand, could trot out weapons of mass destruction and monstrous guns.

Jensen set the milk crate down on the table. “Gwen, would you please pass me the launcher?”

The egghead had literally brought a bigger gun to the meeting. As much as he wanted to tell the town that whiz-bang technology could work out to be a very dirty means of victory,