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

do everything necessary to survive and make it back home.

Pete Lathrop, over in Wallowa, could tend to his own survival. Truth and justice were not Sage’s job. Keeping a promise to his father trumped all questions of truth and honor.

He’d grown up enough, in the last two months, to understand he couldn’t right the wrongs of this grated-flesh world. A man couldn’t throw a stick in America without hitting a kid dying of dysentery or an old lady being raped. A tidal wave of defilement had washed over the once-pristine land, and now the most noble pursuit was to breathe another day, eat another meal.

In Sage’s case, he would keep his promise to his father, and keep his damned mouth shut.

15

Mat Best

Creek Camp

Outside McKenzie, Tennessee

The Creek Camp founders arrived, and Mat asked them for a private audience.

“I have information for you—something that I won’t be telling the other camps. They lack the leadership to take advantage of it, and this opportunity should not go to waste,” Mat said, rolling out his best CIA-inspired performance.

“You have our attention, Sergeant Best,” said a man with unkempt hair and a ragged, handlebar mustache.

Mat fired up the engine on the Bullshit Express. “I first heard this story back when I was at Basic in Fort Knox. I assumed it was one of those army legends that gets repeated one grunt generation to the next, but then I started to see a consistent pattern. I actually did a little research at the base library and I was surprised to find out it was real.”

Mat launched into the story he’d concocted with the help of Deputy Rickers. Mat told of a trail of military depots dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century. As the tale went, the U.S. Cavalry positioned supply depots every twenty miles to support army mule trains crossing the Old West to San Francisco. They passed through Tennessee and Fort Knox before venturing out over Indian lands.

The next part would be the pitch; the mule train bit was weird enough to create a hook—to generate intrigue. But he needed to put meat on the bones of the fable.

Mat dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “I heard versions where the depots, at one time, held thousands of gallons of whiskey or bars of gold. One guy claimed the depots hid bales of confiscated marijuana.” His audience fidgeted. He was in danger of losing them. “When I mentioned the story to one of the McKenzie deputies who also served in the Army, he said, ‘Those depots are real, and they’re in places nobody would look. Small towns and out-of-the-way side roads. The closest one is thirty miles north of here outside a one-horse town called Sedalia. We should go up there and clear it out,’ the deputy said.”

Mat had their full attention.

“The depots belonged to FEMA before the economy collapsed. It’s where they stored the government reserve; supplies hidden away for local disasters. They’re in nondescript, heavily-secured warehouses, packed to the rafters with dry food, HAZMAT suits and medical supplies.”

Mat took a breath and forced his shoulders to relax. “Crazy story, right? Mule train supply depots still operational in the twenty-first century? I was skeptical myself.” He paused and let the drama build. “Three days ago, I checked out the depot in Sedalia with Rickers. It was there. Untouched. Dry food. Water purifiers. N95 masks.”

Mat paused to let it sink in. “We brought back all of the medical supplies for our town clinic. We have our own pig farms, so it’s not worth the exposure to make multiple trips with semi trucks to bring back the food. Plus, a lot of it’s expired.”

Dr. Hauser looked unconvinced. “If you can’t transport the food, what makes you think we can?”

Mat looked at each of them. They were good people. These were the rats who cooperated, which was why they were more likely to buy his story.

I’m killing them with a story. It’s slower than botulism, but I’m killing them just the same.

It was better than poisoning, and better than starvation, and he wasn’t lying about one thing: there was food there. Mat had gone to Sedalia and placed the food on the racks himself. Alongside the food he left maps, FEMA brochures and fake evidence that the next warehouse was twenty miles away. By the time the rats figured out the story was fiction, they’d be marooned fifty miles from McKenzie and too hungry to walk back.

“You can move your camp to Sedalia until you exhaust the warehouse. Your base of operations is mobile. Ours isn’t. But let me know by dusk if you’re going. If you’re not interested, I’ll pass the word to the Buford Woods camp.”

Mat struggled to read their faces. He closed his argument by adding, “Send scouts to the first depot. See for yourselves. I brought five gallons of gas so a couple guys can drive there, and maybe bring a truck load back for you to test.” Mat shook the red, plastic gas can that he’d brought with him.

The rats exchanged glances: their faces filled with trepidation and hope.

Hauser spoke. “Thank you, Sergeant Best. We’ll get back to you by nightfall.”

Candice stared at the bloody mess until her eyes got dry and sticky.

The rabbits in the glass cages were twisted into knots. The blood from their mouths and anuses striped their white, fluffy coats. Candice’s stepfather had left the dead rabbits in there, now going on three days. There was no reason to remove them, he explained. The fan loop was air-tight and the experiment had been successful. The mustard gas worked. The dead rabbits could rot in their cages forever.

Inside the HAZMAT suit, her stepfather couldn’t see her gnawing fear. She’d been trapped alone with him for forty-eight hours. They slept only in snatches, waking every two hours to climb back into the HAZMAT suits and start a new batch of poison.

They worked together to combine the sulfur dichloride with ethylene in