Honor Road - Jason Ross (phonics story books .TXT) 📗

had sent the one dude he hadn’t killed—the talker—back to the women and children two nights before. Then he hightailed it down and out of the canyon in the dark. The moon had been waxing, so he had an extra hour of light. At all costs, he wanted to avoid facing the women and the kids of the men he’d killed.

The barricade guards arrested Sage at the mouth of the canyon. They handed him over to the officer—a forty-something-year-old guy with a paunch, wearing old-school, green and brown military camouflage. They locked him up in an office at a plywood factory that appeared to be the centerpiece of town. The “jail cell” was just a room with a deadbolt; not much of a jail, really. It was cold in the room, but they gave him a couple blankets and warm food. His toes came back from being numb for a week. Nothing seemed frostbitten. Some skin sloughed off, but the flesh underneath looked pink and healthy.

When Sage told the officer he wanted a job with the militia, and that he had firearms training, the man cocked his head and nodded. It seemed to be the right thing to say. They fed him real food and told him to wait until the police captain could come around and “get an eyeball full of him.”

The captain leaned up against his cruiser in the parking lot of the burger joint, never casting a glance toward Sage, laughing it up with his friend. Sage took the opportunity to wolf down the rest of the burger and start in on the fries.

Through the glass panes, the sound of the conversation clarified and Sage picked up bits and pieces: the militia had mixed it up with a Mad Max gang from “south-a-Boise.” The militia had known the gang was coming and had shot them to pieces as they passed through Powder River Gulch, wherever that was. Apparently, it’d been a one-sided engagement. The militia slaughtered the biker gang and left their corpses on the asphalt of the interstate as a warning to the next biker gang.

That probably explained how a string of farming communities like Union County, Oregon, hadn’t been overrun by starving city folk—they killed anyone who tried kicking in the door.

The captain wrapped up with his buddy, in perfect time to catch Sage licking the grease off the wax paper in the bottom of the burger basket. Sage dropped the paper when the captain came through the glass door.

“So, young man, they tell me you know how to shoot? They say you killed Joey McCullum and his brother with one shot. That true?” The captain looked too carefree to be the man in-charge. He had a little gray showing on the fringes of his full head of hair and his jaw was a sharp, square line. He looked like a casual athlete who hadn’t given up his every-day run, even during the apocalypse. The man exuded vitality.

“I guess so. I didn’t mean to hit them both, but the first guy definitely pulled his gun on me.”

The captain waved away the explanation. “Neither of those boys were going to make it out there. These days, you’re either part of the team or you’re dead. The McCullums were never part of the team. They were the losers selling weed under the bleachers at half-time. They actually did that in high school. Those boys weren’t going to survive in this new, improved world.” The captain smiled his winning smile, which must’ve been a habit, since he didn’t need to sell Sage anything.

Sage didn’t know what to say. He felt like he might be a murderer, so he just nodded.

“We’re looking to hire out-of-towners,” the captain said, changing the subject. “Ya know, for the department.” He indicated the police cruiser. He wasn’t wearing a uniform—just a captain’s department coat and a T-shirt underneath that said Ironman Coeur d’Alene Finisher. “We got all the locals we need on the force, and we’re bulking up the squad with new blood. You want in?”

Sage hadn’t been prepared for it to be this easy, but he liked the captain. In any case, there was nothing to think about. He nodded eagerly.

“We’ll get you all your stuff back. Your rifle too. Ferguson already topped off your 30-30 ammo and we’ll get you set up with fatigues—that’s the department uniform now that we’re the police, army, navy and air force, all rolled up in one.” The captain got up from the table and held out a hand. “Welcome aboard, Sage Ross. You’ll be on my personal cadre.” Sage shook on it.

He hadn’t been this lucky in a long time. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have things click. He’d been carving out his existence with sheer force of will for months. This turn of events felt like normal life. It felt like all those years when his mother made sure he had no complaints. Easy street.

“Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down.” It sounded cheesy.

The captain smiled and punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Just because it’s the apocalypse, doesn’t mean it’s gotta suck.” He smiled again and Sage smiled right along with him.

Grande Rhonde River Settlement Ponds

La Grande, Oregon

The other guys in the police called him “Stack,” and Sage hated it. Word spread around the militia that he’d killed two men with one bullet, and that became his calling card, whether he liked it or not: Stack.

Today, he ran security on work parties putting up the greenhouses. He wished he could help with construction, but his orders were to stand around the workmen and “look like you’re paying attention.” Apparently, theft had been an issue in the past.

To Sage’s eye, La Grande city teetered on the edge of being too big to control. He didn’t know the population numbers—maybe ten thousand or so—and there seemed to be fissures in the spirit of cooperation, to put it mildly. An us-and-them gulf persisted between the law enforcement and the