Honor Road Jason Ross (any book recommendations .TXT) 📖

moving. Sage couldn’t see any blood on the front of his green jacket, but the guy’s eyes were open, staring hard at the blue-on-blue sky. The black handgun had vanished into the snow.

The third man writhed in a fan-pattern of blood and snow. Thousands of red droplets surrounded him, vivid against the sparkling whitescape. Most of the blood must’ve come from the man in front of him in line, who still hadn’t moved.

The third guy mewled, “I’m shot, I’m shot…”

Sage kept the 30-30 trained on the group, mostly on the first man who didn’t seem to be injured. He’d only shot one round, but two men were down. He’d never seen a bullet do that, but he’d only shot men twice before in his life, and all since Black Autumn.

The mewling guy rocked back and forth on the snow, holding in his guts. The rocking slowed, then slowed some more. He stopped mewling. His hand fell away from the ragged hole in his jacket. Tufts of white down lifted in the breeze. The guy’s face went slack and his head rested against the snow. Sage focused on the first man. The only one left alive.

His eyes darted around wildly, like a leg-snared rabbit. “Don’t shoot me, dude. I didn’t mean any harm by it. Look, my gun’s right here on my hip and I haven’t touched it. I haven’t even tried. See? I’m a good guy. I’m no threat.”

Sage didn’t know what to do. When the second guy went for his gun, Sage’s hand automatically made the decision to kill. Somewhere between his lower brain stem and his finger, his body acted on its own. But this man didn’t have a weapon—not that he’d touched.

“Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it,” the guy yammered. “I promise. What do you want me to do?”

“Just wait. And shut up,” Sage said, the iron sights danced across the guy’s chest.

His bare feet were blocks of ice and he needed to get them warm very soon.

“Check your friends’ pulse. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

The guy struggled up out of the snow. He didn’t stop talking the whole time. He remonstrated Sage in a loop about how much of a good guy he was, how he didn’t mean to steal his gear, so-on and so-forth.

The talker looked to be in his late thirties. He wore expensive-looking winter-wear, like stuff from REI. It was noteworthy that none of the guys were wearing rugged clothes: Carhartt or Wrangler, like rural folks would. These were all white collar guys.

The third man, who’d probably bled out now from the gut wound, was much younger. Maybe twenty.

The talker put a finger on both of their throats, one after the other, and declared, “Dude. They’re dead. You killed them both. Please don’t shoot me. What do you want me to do with my gun? Please don’t shoot me.”

Sage realized that he’d let him keep his pistol on his hip this whole time. The crushing pain in Sage’s feet—locked in four feet of snow—was beginning to cloud his judgment.

“Pull your pistol out with TWO FINGERS, and drop it on your buddy’s chest.” Sage motioned to the guy laying on his back.

He complied.

“Now, put everything back in my backpack. Take off that guy’s clothes and bring them to me.” He waved the gun barrel at his gear, spread around the snow. “Are there more of you?”

“No. I mean, yes,” the guy sputtered as he loaded dirty clothing, freeze-dried food, and the JetBoil back into Sage’s pack. “There are women and kids. No other men. We’re just travelers, man. We weren’t going to hurt you.”

Sage doubted that very much. Desperate men with women and children would almost always hurt a solo person if it meant their family got to eat.

“Pick up all that stuff and walk back to my campfire,” Sage ordered. Before anything else, he needed to un-freeze his feet and put on some dry clothes. He had no doubt: his toes were now frost-bitten. As he walked by the bodies, one dressed and the other one naked, Sage picked up the handguns. He had no pockets, so he hooked the stiff fingers of his left hand through the trigger guards. At least that way he could still keep two hands on the rifle.

As he moved past, he stole a glance at the two dead men—just regular guys. There was no sign of evil in their slack faces.

Sage worked the tactical dilemma in his mind as he forced the talker at gunpoint to rebuild the campfire and light it with the JetBoil. He ordered him to sit opposite him, across the fire, while Sage sat on his pack and put his bare feet toward the flame. The pins and needles were excruciating.

He considered his situation: a gun had gone off in the canyon, and now there was woodsmoke. If anyone was within a mile, they would come to the ruckus like coyotes to a wounded rabbit. These days, people gravitated toward distress, and humans were the worst kind of opportunists.

Others could follow the well-trodden path in the snow and come across the two dead men. They’d either turn back, at that point, or stalk up on him while he had his shoes off. For the thousandth time since the world died, Sage wished he had a dog.

The women, and maybe the kids from the camp might come, and that’d be a holy mess.

“How many women and children?” Sage asked the talker.

“Um. Joey’s wife, Becky. Their five year-old boy, Robin and a toddler, Gershwin. Ryan didn’t have any kids. Just his wife, Tanya.”

Sage hated this. He’d killed a father and a husband, but what the hell else was he supposed to do? They had guns. The one guy had drawn on him.

“Switch sides with me.” Sage needed to watch the trail and put his back up against a tree. A stalker would probably shoot the talker first.

They switched sides around the fire, which was a