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

them to pieces. The truck could probably blow past, right now, but only because Rockville thought they had them cornered. The jig was up.

“Cameron, there’s no time to debate. I’ll tie them up here. Take Ruth and the kids, and everything we have, and go. Run toward Saint George. It’s your best chance. You are this family’s best chance.” Isaiah put a hand on his ruined leg. “You are their father now. Her husband. Promise me.”

Ruth overheard, sobbed in agony, but worked feverishly inside the house, nonetheless.

“Promise me,” Isaiah asked him again. “Be her husband. Their father.”

“I will.” Cameron looked into the eyes of the man he’d once planned to kill. “I promise.”

“Brothers in Christ,” Isaiah said, and held out his hand to Cameron. “Husbands unto the Lord.”

Cameron took the hand and pulled himself into Isaiah’s chest. He hugged him hard. He would’ve liked to crack a joke, but the sob trapped in his throat wouldn’t allow it.

Isaiah pushed him back upright. “Go, before they see you drive away. Go now.”

Cameron ran inside, grabbed the heavy pack with the survival supplies, and sprinted for the truck.

Cameron, Ruth and the five children pulled over in the truck after they flew past Rockville and reached the top of the butte. They stood where they could see into two valleys—the Virgin River and Colorado City, both. Cameron got out and leaned against the truck, and watched through binoculars as their homestead was overrun by riflemen. The crackle of gunfire reached two miles, delayed and echoey.

Rockville men fell in the pasture. They fell surrounding the cabin. They fell on the porch as they kicked in the door of the cabin.

Isaiah made a good showing for himself—a man’s man, when it counted. He exacted a steep price from the Rockville thieves for their trespass.

Cameron turned the binoculars on the town of Rockville. The truck had made it past before the assholes could block the road. The militia was probably just now realizing that Isaiah had been alone in the cabin—that the clan had fled with the guns and supplies.

Still, Cameron knew they were the furthest thing from safe. They’d slipped the noose of Rockville only to throw themselves onto the mercy of the angry, red desert. There was only one dirt road and it’d take them back toward Colorado City—the polygamist enclave where Cameron had killed over a dozen men to free his family.

Isaiah once told him that this dirt road emptied onto Highway 59, north of Colorado City. Hopefully, it was far enough north to avoid a confrontation with the colony. The last time Cameron drove through Colorado City, they’d shot him in the throat.

It was early afternoon. Colorado City—the polygamist town—was a gridwork of homes painted across the red sands. Parts of the town belched black smoke. Tanks—actual army battle tanks—stood in a mile-long column through the center of town.

A shiver ran up Cameron’s spine. He hated that town, and all the polygamists of Colorado City. In his book, they deserved to be crushed by the Army. But his hate paused mid-flush, and he checked himself: one of their favored sons had just given his life to save Cameron and his boys.

Perhaps the United States Army had come up against the roadblock outside of town—the same one that’d put a bullet through Cameron’s throat. Maybe the Army had smashed it flat and set fire to the town. Maybe the the polygamists had reaped what they had sowed; unforgiving, mechanized death. Yet he couldn’t celebrate the destruction of his enemies—not with Isaiah dead and his wife standing beside him against the truck, between their children and death. He could only bear witness.

“I don’t think that’s the American Army,” Ruth muttered, perhaps reading his mind.

She watched with the same, shared binoculars, but she saw with different eyes. She probably didn’t see a cult. She probably saw her home and her religion in flames.

“Look.” She pointed. “The soldiers aren’t wearing uniforms. They’re regular guys. Maybe...Mexicans?”

Cameron didn’t know if Mexico had tanks, but she was right about the uniforms. The men milling around the column of parked tanks weren’t wearing camouflage. He couldn’t tell what nationality they were, just that they weren’t behaving like American army. If they weren’t the government, who the hell were they? If they were the Mexican Army, wouldn’t they be wearing Mexican uniforms?

It didn’t matter if they were U.S., Mexican or Martian, Cameron would avoid them at all costs. He’d avoid everyone. Their clan were now refugees, with barely enough food to make it to spring. The food and guns made them strong, but it also made them a target; a neon sign saying “Look at Me. I’m not Starving. I have stuff.”

They needed a place to hide, to sit out the winter. That meant getting down off the butte before the column of tanks moved north and cut off their escape. He had no idea what they’d find north of Colorado City on Highway 59, but it couldn’t be worse than the Rockville militia or a column of plundering tanks.

What’s behind Door Number Three, Bob?

Throw it open, Cam, and find out! It could be a brand new car, a washer/dryer or a roadblock bristling with cannon. Try your luck! Spin the big wheel!

“We need to go,” Cameron said.

“Yes.” Ruth climbed back in the cab of the truck. The children were piled on top of each other in the back seat. Ruth pulled Cameron’s youngest son onto her lap. Cameron wondered if the passenger side airbag had been disabled. It could be dangerous in a wreck.

He looked one more time at the smoldering town through their binoculars.

Tanks. Airbags. Starvation. Crucifixion. Marauders. The many faces of rollicking death. He’d lost his wife and his friend so far today. Who else would die before nightfall? One of the children? All of the children?

The pickup truck’s gas gauge was almost on empty. Saint George wasn’t far—maybe thirty miles as the crow flew—but he’d have to take detours to avoid the