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

sat on the edge of town, and it’d just been topped off. Now that all the outlying farmers were crammed into town for protection, the propane could last for years if they were judicious.

Formerly, the town had placed a lot of hope in their stack of solar panels. In the weeks that followed the collapse, the town had been given a crash course in how hard it was to turn solar, DC power into “normal” AC power. It would’ve been fantastic to pump water into the town cisterns with solar power, but for love or money they couldn’t find the right DC water pumps, or big enough inverters to run AC.

Even with lots of propane, the generator struggled to run the huge water pumps—and there were only two large, propane gennies in town: one primary and one spare. The townspeople practiced volunteer water rationing so as not to burn them up. The old luxury of daily showers became the new social virtue of body odor. If you smelled bad, you were being a good citizen.

Mat arrived at the committee meeting with a plan for blunting the threat of the refugees, but it wasn’t a simple plan. It was the kind of thing the CIA tried on-the-regular in Afghanistan—the kind of thing that sometimes ended with really pissed-off Afghans.

After the formalities, the sheriff turned the floor over to Mat.

“We can get the refugees to go look for food elsewhere, if we can convince them the grass is greener on the other side. We sow rumors of FEMA supply warehouses far enough away that they can’t make it back here.”

The committee stared back with confusion.

Confusion was never good.

“When their scouts follow our directions to the first food cache, about thirty miles north of here, they’ll find plenty of evidence to support the FEMA story. We’ll stock a warehouse with food and make it look legit.”

Benny Miles from the local hardware store interrupted. “I don’t see how a pile of our supplies is going to look like a FEMA supply depot.”

Mat repeated himself, “We use an empty warehouse outside of a town. We fill its shelves with dry food—the stuff we’ve been setting aside because it’s expired. We make a FEMA sign and hang it inside; really sell the idea that it’s a long lost supply depot. We leave clues pointing to another supply depot even farther away.”

The hardware guy shook his head. “If we give them our food, won’t the rats just come back to us for more?”

“They won’t know it’s our food. The food cache will be thirty miles from here—a two or three day walk. It’ll look like a lot of food, but it’ll only be a couple days worth. Then we leave a map for them to find another location.”

The more Mat said it out loud, the more the plan sounded cockamamie even to him, but he was fully committed. And wasn’t this the kind of shit the CIA brewed up to destabilize indigenous populations?

“If there are FEMA supply warehouses, shouldn’t we go get the food and bring it back to town?” a woman asked. Her salt and pepper hair was piled on her head in a bun.

Mat stopped himself from groaning. “There aren’t any real FEMA supply warehouses. We’re just telling the rats that so they go someplace else. Once they walk far away, it’s unlikely they’ll walk back. The farther they walk, the better. They become another town’s problem.”

“So we lie to them?” she asked. Her face screwed up in a twist.

“In intelligence, we call it disinformation.” Mat had never been in intelligence. He’d been an assaulter. But he’d been around CIA shenanigans long enough to have a feel for the business. Still, he was doing a piss-poor job of pitching it to these hayseeds. Mat decided to punt.

“Here’s the vote: can I use 3,000 of our oldest, crappiest dried meals? The expired stuff?”

The last meeting, the hardware guy had given a report of their food stores. They had enough food to last the winter and the spring if they butchered half the pigs. By then, they could replace the butchered pigs with new, weaned piglets. In short, they were okay on food if they didn’t lose the pigs and if the town wasn’t overrun by rats.

Hardware Guy finally picked up on Mat’s plan and nodded. The other six food committee members glanced at him and a couple more appeared amenable, whether they understood the plan or not.

“If we don’t want to spend bullets on these people later, we need to spend a little expired food now.” Mat put the final shine on his argument. “Can I have the food?”

The food committee people voted in favor. Some of the security committee people voted for the idea too, even though it wasn’t their decision.

Slam!

Jim Jensen, the newest member of the security committee, slammed a glass jar on the table. Everyone startled at the dramatic gesture.

“This is mustard gas.”

“Good Lord in heaven,” bun lady exclaimed. Her hands flew to her mouth.

Mat hadn’t sat down yet, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. He’d been caught off-guard and upstaged by Science Guy.

“Don’t worry folks, so long as I don’t crack this lid, we’re all one hundred percent safe.”

Mat doubted the yellow dust filling the jar was really a nerve agent, but given that Jensen was a scientist, it was possible.

“You brought that shit in here?” Mat asked.

Jensen smiled as though proud of himself. “I produced it with the sheriff’s permission to develop poison weapons for future use. We’re now in the future.”

Mat wondered if Jensen had a conversation with Sheriff Morgan other than the one he’d heard because the sheriff hadn’t given permission to do anything, and they had been talking about botulism at the time. Something about Science Guy’s white-knuckle grip on the jar made Mat withdraw any objection for the time being. Best to let things roll, he decided. No need to get in an argument with the dude using nerve gas as a gavel.

“Okay,” interrupted