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

“I’m afraid I’ll throw up if I eat anything right now,” he explained.

“No. You both need to eat. Right now.” Cameron didn’t know if he spoke from wisdom or shame. “Your bodies can’t recover, heal or...anything without some energy. Force yourself to eat.” Cameron unwrapped the fig bar for Isaiah. Leah tore into hers and ate in great, greedy swallows, barely chewing. Isaiah took his in a bloody hand and nibbled, chewed, then swallowed.

“You were right. That hit the spot,” Isaiah muttered around bites. It was a discordantly-cheerful thing for a gut-shot man to say. Cameron grimaced. He truly wanted to hate Isaiah because he would not be carrying him back to the homestead.

Cameron decided when he heard the wounded man call out: Isaiah was a played-out hand of cards. He’d drawn twenty-two in the blackjack game of life and death. Dragging his gut-shot ass back to the homestead would wipe out any survival advantages from the little pile of food and the big pile of guns. Cameron was the sole survivor of this battle. This was his stuff. The spoils of war go to the victor, not the casualties. Survival went to the hard case, not the sob story. He’d not allow the group to waste focus and calories tending to Isaiah. They must prepare themselves for the next band of marauders.

“Cam…” Isaiah must’ve sensed the internal monologue. “I know it looks bad but I’ve got to get back to the homestead and heal up.” The poor bastard actual managed a smile as he said, “Ruth Is pregnant: we’re having another baby. She’s going to need me.”

Cameron looked away to hide the crush of feelings. “Well, congratulations,” he mumbled, looking off into the forest.

“Thanks. And, thank you, Brother Cameron, for getting her back.”

It took Cameron a second to realize that Isaiah meant the daughter.

As soon as he could, he escaped them and returned to the pile of gear. Even with fresh calories pumping him full of life, he couldn’t sort the feelings. He retreated to the granular arithmetic of survival: four AR-15 rifles, fifteen magazines, a hundred and ninety-six rounds of rifle ammunition. Four handguns, two revolvers, nine magazines, two pipe bombs. Knives, paracord, fire-starters. Two pump-style water filters and one gravity-style filter. Very little in the way of medicine or first aid supplies.

There wasn’t as much food as he’d hoped. The raiders traveled light: Top Ramen, backpacker meals, survival rations, processed foods and cereals. It might be enough to get the clan healthy for a couple weeks, but not enough to get them to Spring. Not even close.

The guns and supplies would be game-changers, though. No longer would they be helpless mice, victims to passing hawks. Cameron would’ve traded all the water filters for a battery-powered DeWalt drill and a solar panel, and he’d definitely swap the handguns for food—which might be a possibility if Rockville had any food left.

They’d been so helpless, these past two months, that they’d been forced to maintain a no-contact rule with the warring towns. Better to keep their heads down than stick them up and get them shot off. Maybe with this level of firepower, they could trade even-Steven with Rockville or Hurricane.

He glanced over at Isaiah and his daughter. She nursed him with a water bottle. Cameron came over and made a show of checking out the gunshot wounds.

The gut wound had entered Isaiah’s belly near the belly button, but had exited out the side. There was a chance it hadn’t ripped a hole in his actual guts, but Cameron had no way of knowing. He knew enough to know that infection was likely in any case. It’d be certain death if the contents of the intestine blew into the body cavity. He’d watched enough Western movies to know a gut-shot wound was a slow, but inevitable death.

The calf wound hadn’t bled very much, but might’ve been the worst of the two. The bullet went in-and-out, but the exit wound had chips of bone sticking out. The bullet had struck one of the lower leg bones. Cameron couldn’t imagine how a blown-apart leg bone would be set, even in the best of times.

He needed time to think. The adrenaline rush had gone fetid and rank in his stomach, and the dry Top Ramen he’d wolfed down felt like it’d expanded to the size of a beach ball in his belly. The girl would be mewling over her doomed father until he died, so Cameron was on his own, schlepping newly-acquired gear back to the clan. He could use that time to plan.

Instead, he used the time to worry, and twist himself up in guilt, like a panicked rat in a beach towel.

There was no way Isaiah was the father of the baby. Cameron had been screwing Ruth for two months. That baby had to be his.

Ruth hadn’t said anything to Cameron about being pregnant, but that didn’t surprise him. He and Ruth never talked and they certainly hadn’t discussed what their coupling meant. He assumed it meant nothing, which suited him fine.

Now there was a baby. Didn’t these polygamists understand birth control?

Cameron hadn’t thought about the women getting pregnant until this very moment. It wasn’t something grown adults worried about in the modern world. It was something the women handled, medically, and needn’t be discussed until someone wanted to have a child. This was fucking ridiculous.

Tough decisions needed to be made, and this time, Cameron would make them alone. First, he would get the supplies completely under his control. With Isaiah dying and the girl—possibly—lost to her family, he could return home and tell whatever story he chose, but he needed to cache the supplies in a secret spot, half-way home and well-concealed.

He knew of a jumble of logs, far enough from the homestead that Isaiah’s other kids wouldn’t happen upon them. Cameron shrugged into the straps of two, consolidated backpacks—both packed with food—picked up one of the AR-15s, and trudged toward his