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

Cabrera described four dead adults and three dead children. The bodies lay where they were killed. Two of the adults were in bed, and all the children were in bedrolls on the floor. Dan Monroe was the only victim found out of his bed. The fourth adult corpse was filthy, and it gave off a corrupt odor, more than blood and the stink of bowels and bladder—one of the murderers.

There was one missing adult from the dead family. In old America, an investigator’s first thought would be that any missing adults would be prime suspects for the murders. But the house had been ransacked. It’d clearly been raided from the outside; murder by strangers, not a family member on a domestic violence rampage. Somewhere in McKenzie there was a man or a woman working at a clinic, or helping a friend repair a water pipe and that person had just lost their entire family. They didn’t even know it yet.

Mat went inside and surveyed the scene. “This guy’s a rat,” Mat said as he kicked the reeking man over. “Looks like the raiding party bludgeoned the family in their sleep. Mr. Monroe got to his gun. He killed this one and another rat shot him. I guess they were hoping to kill them all quietly, then take their time looting the house.”

“QRF Four to Sarge,” the radios growled.

“Go for Sarge.”

“The other three houses on the street are empty except, well, we’re at 427 Whittle. It’s the Simms. It’s bad.” Mat knew Marjorie Simms from security committee.

One of the QRF inside the Simms place inadvertently “stepped on” his push-to-talk button. Everyone on the channel heard his ragged inhale and a shuddering exhale. It sent a chill down Mat’s spine. Then the guy continued.“They killed them all. All of them, even the baby.”

With the coming of the wet, steel-sky morning, word of the murder of the Simms, Monroe and Davis families flushed throughout the town. Around nine a.m., an agitated crowd gathered outside of the McKenzie Sheriff’s office. News traveled even without cell phones and internet; the small town “wireless” had hummed for a hundred years before electronics, and murder most foul sent neighbors scurrying to their mutual defense.

Mat Best stood next to Sheriff Morgan on the front steps of the station, looking out on two hundred angry citizens.

“They want blood. We need to come up with a response, or one of these hotheads is going to lead a mob against the Brashear Camp.”

“Maybe we should let ‘em,” Mat said, deadpan. Anger was the only thing keeping him standing. He’d been awake for sixty hours. “Me and my boys could use the break.”

The sheriff didn’t bother to reply. They both knew Mat wasn’t going to allow pissed-off vigilantes to do his job. Half of them would accidentally shoot the other half in the confusion of battle.

The closest camp, and the most likely culprit, was squirreled away in the middle of the Brashear woods, a quarter mile beyond the south edge of town. Mat didn’t think there was any question what they should do. His QRF was gearing up for an assault. “We have to hit them—if for no other reason than to show the refugees what happens when they murder our people. They have to know that hunger is better than bringing down our wrath.”

“Wrath?” The sheriff tucked in the front of his shirt. “I don’t condone revenge missions.”

“Whatever you want to call it, the rats need to know we’re pissed. The HESCO’s only one-third done. We can’t protect the town from night raids. We gotta show them that we hit back hard. We’re Israel and they’re Palestine. We’re screwed if they don’t fear us. Deputy Stamets traced the raiders back to Brashear Drive and that’s where we should strike.”

“What if Stamets is wrong? What if we shoot up a bunch of families that had nothing to do with the killings?” Sheriff Morgan countered.

“We’ll never know, and the message will still be sent.” Mat shrugged. “Intel is never ironclad.” Mat knew it was his exhaustion talking, and his anger.

But fuck it. War and anger went together like pizza and beer. There was a yawning gulf between law enforcement and war—the difference between violence dolloped out like castor oil medicine and violence heaped upon your enemy to make them rue the day they picked up arms against you. The defense of the town was never going to be a law enforcement gig. It was always going to be war.

“What are your rules of engagement?” the sheriff asked with resignation in his voice.

“We’ll kill whoever passes for leadership in the camp. We determine who’s responsible for the raid and cut them down where they stand. This won’t be investigate-arrest-convict.”

“And the rest of the Brashear wood refugees?”

“It would be nice if the bad guys wore name tags, but this is war. We’ll try to limit the mission to leadership, or what passes for leadership. But lines blur and the enemy gets a vote as to how things go down. What I know: we have to put the fear of God in them. That’s a given.”

Sheriff Morgan looked out over the crowd. It had swelled to three hundred, and more streamed down the streets toward the station.

“The fear of God,” Morgan said in a low voice. “I wonder who will learn that lesson.” He took a deep breath and held it for a second, then released it with a sigh. His sad, jowly face hardened as he turned to Mat.

“Okay. But help me preserve the heart of this town.”

“The inner town?” Mat asked.

“Not the center of town. The heart of the town. We will not survive if we become frightened, vicious animals. We’re trying to preserve civilization here, not just our lives.”

Mat hadn’t been hired to preserve civilization. He’d been hired to keep citizens alive and to protect assets. Part of him knew the old lawman was right—the part of Mat’s mind that noticed the women in battle and saw imaginary,