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

“Fuck all of them.” William fed the tempest in his belly. “I’m taking you away.”

The two sat next to the fireplace, drying her sweats and her waterlogged sneakers. Her sweet, feminine smell surrounded William. It overcame the smell of smoke from the fireplace. She was like cookie dough and fresh laundry. Her tears seasoned her breath with nutmeg. He would fight the world for her. He would die for her. He would kill for her.

She nodded and wiped her nose. William burned to get her a tissue, but they’d run out of tissues weeks before. He didn’t know how to touch her, now that she’d been touched by evil. He didn’t know how to love her, now that her love had been tainted with arsenic.

“Wait here,” William said, and went to gather supplies. He might not know yet how to fight for her, but he knew how to rescue her. They would run, tonight.

It was very late—well past midnight as Mat wandered the streets, alone in the rain. He told himself that he was running a one man, unscheduled night patrol. He wore his rifle and his plate carrier vest, of course. He never went anywhere without them, as was the rule for QRF fighters. He looked the part of the soldier and the town defender, but really he was just a wanderer—a gunfighter with no idea where to point his gun. If someone had leapt out in front of him, brandishing a weapon, he wouldn’t know whether to piss himself or dance the hula. He couldn’t identify tonight’s enemy on a bet.

Was it the committee? The mad scientist guy? The rats? The sheriff? Was Mat the enemy?

He found himself in front of the home of Gladys Carter, and lo and behold, she sat on her porch, in a wicker chair in the dark, enjoying the rain.

“Well I feel safer already.” She chuckled. “Patrolman Best walks the streets at night, soaking himself to the bone.”

He tipped his bump helmet like a top hat. “Good evening, Miss Carter.”

“Get over here and out of the rain,” she ordered. “You should be resting, not wandering like an alley cat.”

He plodded up the walk, up the steps and dropped into a chair beside her. His kit rattled and he adjusted the pockets on his belt so the various bits of metal didn’t stab him in the butt.

“Tell me why you’re walking the streets like a fool,” she said. “Then, I’ll get you a nice, hot tea. I already got water goin’ on the stove.”

Mat tried to gather his thoughts, but gave up. Instead, he blurted the first thing that bubbled to the surface. “There’s no way I’m ordering my men to deploy poisoned food outside the wall.”

“Mm-hm,” she agreed, though she clearly had no idea what he meant. Gladys wasn’t on the committees. She didn’t know about the bio-chem weapons. “You definitely should not do that.”

“You really think so?” Mat stared at her dark face across the pitch-dark porch.

“I don’t really know the ins-and-outs of what the hell you’re talking about, but I’m a reasonably-educated, sensible woman and I can say with total certainty that you should not put poisoned food where people will find it. That’s just crazy.”

“Yeah, but it might be the only way,” Mat said, airing the debate inside his skull.

Gladys chuckled again. “It never ceases to amaze me how quickly people abandon hope and focus on one bad option or another. It’s a big universe, with thousands of solutions to every problem. Scared people are stupid people.”

“When I’m a hammer, everything’s a nail,” Mat heard himself agree.

“Yessir. When you’re a hammer, every damned thing’s a nail. That’s the God’s honest truth.”

“You’re saying I should refuse the committee’s order to place poisoned food near the camps?”

“Of course you should.” Gladys laughed. “You were never going to do that anyhow.”

The tea kettle whistled. She raised herself out of her Adirondack chair and moseyed into the house. As she passed Mat, her hand touched his shoulder.

The screen door creaked open, then clacked shut. Mat was alone with the rain and the night, but her touch had landed on him like a blessing, and his shoulder buzzed with the ghost of her hand. The feeling spread, like a warm, summer wind in the face, fresh with the scent of lilac.

In that moment, Mat didn’t feel so alone.

19

Cameron Stewart

“. . . as a blacksmith plunges a glowing ax or adze

in an ice-cold bath and the metal screeches steam

and its temper hardens—that’s the iron’s strength—

so the eye of the Cyclops sizzled round that stake!”

Odysseus, The Odyssey

Grafton Ghost Town,

Southern Utah

Cameron and Julie hid, burrowed at the base of a knot of blackbrush. Ruth stood on the highway, beneath the speed limit sign, trading with Rockville for the third time. Cameron’s clan had enough guns and ammo to trade one more time after this. Isaiah insisted it was less risk to dribble out the trade goods in multiple deals, never giving any indication of when they’d run out. Once the other side knew the trade was over, they’d have no reason to cooperate. They could shoot Ruth and seize the final delivery. The only reason for Rockville to trade in good faith was to keep the trades coming. They had no way of knowing if the supply of guns would continue for a week, a month or a year, so fair dealing made sense—for now.

The swap had settled into a routine, with the short, fat man and one of his gunmen bringing four buckets of grain to each meeting; two fresh and two stale. Ruth checked the food for quality, walked two buckets into the tree line and returned with the guns, ammo and survival gear. Then, she’d return to the treeline with the final two buckets.

This time, Cameron asked Julie to sit with him in his blind rather than sitting in her own blind, fifty yards away. Originally, he’d thought it better to separate overwatch