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

survivors. Lots and lots of survivors. They will be outraged and brimming with revenge. If we kill their families, the gloves will come off.”

Mad Scientist Guy went to interrupt and Mat held up a hand. “Let us remember: the refugee camps drift around out there in the forest and fields. It’s tough for my patrols to even keep track of them all. They’re spread over fifty square miles. I couldn’t attack them all-at-once if I wanted. We, on the other hand, are very easy to locate. We’re stuck to this spot. All they gotta do is decide on a day and a time and ten thousand pissed off rats with nothing to lose will come screaming over our junkyard wall. I am very reluctant to give them a reason to do that. Revenge, by the way, has started more wars than money. Keep it in mind.”

Mat delivered his whole speech leaning back in his chair while Mad Scientist Guy stood at the front of the room twiddling his thumbs. When Mat finished, Mad Scientist Guy seized control.

“The supply depot trick is too risky to be our only plan. If it works at all, it’ll move a small percentage of the rats away from town. The majority—thousands of them—will still think of us as their meal ticket.”

“All right,” interjected Sheriff Morgan. “Let’s vote.”

“Wait a minute, Sheriff. We haven’t heard from you,” Greg Schultz said. He always voted with the sheriff.

“No, you haven’t, and I plan on keeping it that way. I’ll be the seventh vote. Who votes to approve the manufacture of biological and chemical weapons, with approval specifically denied for the use of those weapons until we have another vote?” The way Sheriff Morgan framed the vote, it contained nods to both experts; Mat and the Mad Scientist.

Chris Jackson drifted back into the room, now composed. Five of the committee voted “yes.” Mat raised his hand as the sixth. The sheriff didn’t vote.

Mat looked over at Mad Scientist Guy. Jensen would’ve probably preferred that his weapons get carte blanche from the committee, but this was almost as good. He had permission to make the nasty shit in his basement—every science nerd’s dream. For his part, Mat was glad that the sheriff had put Jensen on a leash. Something about the guy felt askew, like when a confidential informant in Afghanistan compulsively picked his ear while giving up intel.

It was obvious by their body posture; the committee members regarded Jensen differently than before—like a demigod with terrible powers of destruction. The man’s street cred in the community had risen dramatically, and the shifty tosser seemed well-aware of it. He barely suppressed a grin as he scooped his jars off the table and placed them in a plastic bottle carrier, each jangling like a milkman walking up the step. Mat didn’t know the first thing about the manufacture of those substances, but he figured it must be difficult, and must require a long list of chemical agents. The slick prick hadn’t made mustard gas from Liquid Drano, baking soda and Axe body spray. Mad Scientist Guy had produced not one, but three weapons all by his lonesome in his damned basement. Mat wondered what other secrets he might be keeping.

13

Cameron Stewart

“Nevertheless I long—I pine, all my days—to travel home and see the dawn of my return.

And if a god will wreck me yet again on the wine-dark sea, I can bear that too, with a spirit tempered to endure.

Much have I suffered, labored long and hard by now in the waves and wars.

Add this to the total—bring the trial on!”

Odysseus, The Odyssey

Grafton Ghost Town,

Southern Utah

Cameron jerked awake to screaming, but the first thing he noticed was the hunger, thrumming in his ear and thundering in his overtaxed heart. His blood felt like mucus and his mucus felt like sand.

“What, wha, what’s happening?” he asked the darkness, but the single room of the pioneer home jolted from sleep into chaos, a melee of shouts and cries.

“Stop talking,” Isaiah shouted. “Where’s Leah?”

Nobody replied.

“Leah?” he called, terror vibrating in his voice.

Nothing. Cameron could hear the cries of his own two boys, as familiar to him as the sound of the wind.

“You in there,” a man shouted outside, from a distance.

Cameron struggled to orient himself toward the door. He stepped on a child in a sleeping bag as he scrambled in the pitch black for the Mosin-Nagant against the door frame.

The magazine carried five rounds and nothing more. His pockets were otherwise empty. He knew it for a fact since he slept in his pants now. As thin as he’d become, he wore every article of clothing to bed to keep warm.

Cameron slammed into Isaiah on their way to the door. He pushed the polygamist out the door first.

The moon flooded into the room. Cameron finally found his rifle, next to Isaiah’s twenty gauge shotgun, he grabbed both and stepped onto the porch behind the polygamist.

“You in there,” the voice repeated. “We have your girl. If you want her back, give us a box of food. A heavy box.” A muffled girl’s scream carried between the tree line on the river and the homestead. Cameron guessed they’d grabbed her when she went out to use the privy.

“We’ll give you everything we have, but it’s not much,” Isaiah shouted into the darkness. “Just give her back.”.

“No we won’t,” Cameron hissed.

“They could rape her,” Isaiah argued.

“We don’t have enough anyway. They won’t give her back, no matter what we do.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do. Men who take a girl would kill a girl.”

“You don’t know that,” Isaiah repeated himself, panicked.

“Give us the food now or we take her as our toy,” the man in the trees threatened.

Cameron rushed back into the house, and a chorus of barks and shouts followed as he bumbled through the dark, searching for the last of their food. All they had left was a few handfuls of wheat and one can of beans.

Cameron let Isaiah get all the way