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

he came into the cell block below the town hall, Sheriff Morgan had Jared, the rat leader from the ambush, in a chair with his hands zip-tied behind his back. He’d been “simmering” in a jail cell for weeks, and looked a lot better-fed than when Mat first grabbed him.

After the Reedy Grove incident and the B.S. about Memphis refugees being somehow better than St. Louis refugees, it occurred to Mat that they might have a glossy, vague idea of the rats—as though they were one, homogeneous enemy. Like the bands of Afghan goat farmers, there might be more to the rats than he beheld. Maybe they could be turned like a wagon, instead of swatted like flies. Then he’d remembered the prisoner… Jared Loudmouth. Mat had radioed the sheriff and suggested they take another crack at intelligence gathering from the guy. It was the least the fucker could do, given what he’d cost the town.

The town cell block hadn’t been modernized, and it reminded Mat of every jail he’d seen in movies; low-slung, concrete, with slit windows peeking above the ground outside. It was past midnight, and the sheriff had two kerosene lamps lighting the cold, gray room.

“He refuses to give me his last name,” the sheriff’s grin looked ghoulish in the light of the lamp.

Jared, the deposed rat leader spoke with more confidence than the situation warranted. Feeding him three meals a day hadn’t made him any more cooperative.

“Names should be stories that tell you who a person is. I’m writing my story, and making my name. You can’t intimidate me. I studied political philosophy at Penn State. I fought in the streets with Antifa.”

Mat laughed. “Have you been down here communing with the ghost of Nelson Mandela? Have you been writing your prison memoirs on the back of toilet paper?”

The big sheriff leaned his chair back against the wall and smiled. He said, “Sergeant Best, I think maybe the right ear.“

Mat’s gloved fist smashed into the side of Jared‘s head. Cartilage crumpled flat against his skull. Jared’s chair flew sideways to the ground. Mat hauled him upright, and stood behind him again where he couldn’t see the next blow coming. The guy sputtered, cried and coughed.

“Young man,“ said Morgan, “I don’t think it’ll be necessary to torture you.“ Morgan stood up and settled his bulk in a crouch in front of the prisoner. “I don’t know what you think you’ve wandered into, son, but this ain’t a story about a young Che Guevara, hero of the apocalypse. Your ears will never be the same after Sergeant Best is done with you. They’ll look like cauliflowers, and it’s the first thing the ladies will notice from now on.”

“Screw you and screw this town,” Jared seethed

“Left ear please.“

“Wait no! Damnit!” he cried as Mat pivoted and delivered a soul-crushing blow to the other ear.

Jared gasped for a full minute, sideways again on the floor, then said, “I thought you weren’t going to torture me.”

The sheriff chuckled. “Son, this isn’t torture. Sergeant, here, learned how to break men in Afghanistan. He knows how to destroy the body and the mind of true believers. Water boarding. Electric shock. Even those fanatical hard cases eventually became babbling babies. So far, I’m in charge of this interview. If I find your attention wandering again, I’ll leave you with Sergeant Best for the real deal. You cost a friend of mine an eye, and Sergeant Best asked me for both of your eyes in trade. You don’t need eyes to talk.”

It was all bullshit, of course. Mat had never interrogated anyone. His army job had been to snatch the bad guys out of their compounds and hand them to legitimate interrogators.

“What do you want me to talk about?” Jared mewled.

Morgan nodded his big head in the lamplight. “If you’re helpful, then we’ll see about getting you a better meal and maybe even a shower.”

“That’s your best offer?” Jared spat.

“It’s the only offer you’re going to get, son. Now you’re going to tell us what’s happening in the refugee camps. We already know plenty, so don’t even think about lying. If we know more about how the camps form and organize, we can save lives—theirs and ours. We just killed two dozen of them this afternoon. It was probably unnecessary. Now, please educate us. Pretty please. With a cherry on top.”

The eastern horizon grayed with the coming dawn as Mat trudged down Center Street on his way home. The nighttime rain had tapered off to a sprinkle. He was exhausted, but the breaking dawn made the streets seem peaceful. The smoldering camps hadn’t yet colored the sky with their columns of daily smoke, ringing the town with peril.

The night patrols confirmed Jared‘s intel—at least the locations of some of the larger camps. A lot of days had passed since Jared had been locked up. Mat needed to act on the intel now, before it became even more stale.

Mat would move on the higher value targets that coming night. He needed to split forces and send one team, probably made up of deputies led by Rickers, to roll up leadership of three camps. Mat could lead the QRF to hit the big one.

The HESCO wouldn’t be done for at least a couple months, even with the whole town working on it every day. Mat was no mathematical genius, but he’d learned: when you drew a circle around a town, that perimeter ended up being fuck-all long. Two times pi “r” equals fuck-all long. That’s what his high school geometry teacher should’ve taught him. That would’ve been good to know.

Even if they cut away the “suburb” neighborhoods, Science Guy estimated it was twelve miles of perimeter, plus another five miles around the Tosh pig farms. To put it in grunt terms: if Mat jogged the perimeter during his morning workout, he’d be dragging ass by the end.

The townspeople were a wonder with heavy equipment, and they seemed to have a ton of raw materials to