Minus America Box Set | Books 1-5

by Isherwood, E. E.

  “Thanks,” she huffed.

  “Welcome,” the sanitation worker replied with a tip of his Blues hat.

  Gus was already inside, hunched over like he’d run himself out of oxygen. She was winded, too, but not to such an extent. The two boys appeared fine, but Audrey seemed as exhausted as the old man.

  “You okay?” she asked the girl. “You need your meds?”

  “I’m fine,” Audrey replied.

  “Anyone know where to go?” she asked.

  Vinny pointed the way. “When we did our work, we went down this hallway, past the sound booth.”

  It was unnaturally quiet in the building, though there was a low hissing sound coming out of speakers hung from several of the walls, like they were supposed to be broadcasting but no one was at the microphone.

  Vinny and Gus went into the cheery hallway filled with broadcasting awards and posters of famous events in the city’s history. She hardly recognized any of them, except for the giant poster of the Stanley Cup, which the Blues had recently won. Hockey wasn’t her thing, but Dad had repeatedly told her about it the past few weeks.

  Vinny touched the poster of the trophy, then pointed through tall glass windows to a big room with numerous cameras angled toward a desk with the number 5 on the wall behind it. “Right in there.”

  Tabby pushed through the double-doors, glad they were unlocked. She strode up to the desk but paused when two sets of clothes caught her eye. The news anchors had been in the chairs behind the desk, like they’d been live on the air when things happened.

  She continued marching forward and went to the set of clothing for a woman. Tabby pulled the small lapel microphone out of the blouse, then pushed the rest of the ensemble onto the floor.

  “Hello? Is this thing on?”

  “I hear you!” Audrey shouted. “Your voice is coming through the speakers outside.”

  Tabby looked at the big camera pointed at her. She thought of how far she’d come since missing that elevator in the mine shaft. Would Mom and Dad see her on television? Were they watching safely in some motel outside the disaster cordon? She had to believe they were.

  “Say something,” Peter cajoled.

  “Here we go…” she exhaled.

  CHAPTER 16

  Poor Sisters Convent, Oakville, MO

  Sister Rose sat in the front seat of the van, unsure what to do. The floating machine had asked for her name, but she didn’t feel comfortable interacting with such an unusual piece of technology. It could be dangerous.

  “Are people still alive?” she asked it. “Can we get to safety?” Tabby had been convinced help was out there and took off to go find it, but Rose didn’t believe it was true. Couldn’t believe it. Now there was potentially a second source who could confirm it.

  “Please state your name,” the machine requested.

  Rose glanced over at Deogee. She had her head cocked to one side with an ear perked up. The dog seemed to be confused as to whether this was a threat or not.

  “I’m Sister Rose,” she said in a mouse-like squeak.

  “Please increase volume when speaking.”

  It was the oddest feeling for Rose. It was like talking to the order-takers in a fast-food drive-through, but this time, there was no human around. Was it really a computer or were people somewhere nearby? She had to know.

  “Can you tell me where you are?” she asked it.

  “This is the Poor Sisters Convent, in Oakville, Missouri.” The machine gave her the address and included what it called GPS coordinates. It appeared to be very thorough about listing every detail for her location. She figured out during this data dump the white copter was responding with precision to the question she’d asked.

  “Please state your name,” the computer said in the same patient tone as before.

  “Sister Rose. My given name is Becky Hatcher. I’m a novitiate nun in the convent. Who are you?” She kept her voice pleasant and courteous. Whatever it was, it would do no good to be rude to it or whoever controlled it.

  “Please confirm social security number,” the box requested.

  She hesitated for twenty or thirty seconds because she’d always been taught not to give out that information for anyone unless you were sure it wouldn’t be used for identity theft. This strange device could be controlled by criminals.

  “I’m afraid I only give that out over the phone.”

  The floating box spun around, but the orb underneath remained stationary from her perspective. It was almost impossible to read the mood of the little aircraft, but she imagined it was upset with her.

  “This area has been designated as inhospitable due to an industrial accident. Social security ident requested to ensure proper dispatch of emergency services extraction vehicle. Please confirm social security number to ensure speedy recovery.”

  The voice showed no signs of impatience or anxiety, but she began to feel both. If someone was coming to rescue her, that would be wonderful, but, for some reason, talking to the computer woman didn’t make her feel comfortable about it.

  Deogee seemed to pick up on her emotions; she got up on her seat and walked in a circle. Then she sat on her haunches while facing the menacing box floating outside.

  With great reluctance, she gave her social to the computer woman. No matter how bad she felt about it, she wanted to be totally sure rescuers could find her and the nice dog. She’d also tell them about the other dogs nearby. Maybe now she didn’t need to go to the pet store to buy food for them, if rescue was close.

  “How long will I have to wait?”

  “Computing travel time… Approximately seven minutes.”

  “Wow! Okay. I need to get my stuff. Thank you so much for telling me.”

  “The St. Louis County Police Department thanks you for your cooperation.”

  She breathed out a sigh of relief. If it would have told her up front it was with the police, she wouldn’t have had so much trepidation about it.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Rose pulled the keys out of the ignition, feeling a lot better about the exchange. The little drone rose in the air and waited at the edge of the parking lot. She thought there was a new window open on the side of the little machine’s frame, but it was hard to be sure in the daylight. It almost looked like a little beam of red light pointed at the convent’s front door.

  “Sorry, Deogee. We’ll get food for you when we get to the police station.”

  She opened the door to get out, but the hound didn’t move. It sat with teeth bared and stared at the white box.

  “Oh, you. No need to be worried. It’s with the authorities. We’re saved!”

  Newark, NJ

  Ted’s stomach twirled a few times as he figured out how exposed they were.

  “Lincoln Tunnel, ten miles!” Emily pointed at the green sign above the eastbound lanes as they raced along the edge of the airport. He got a better look at the dozens of commercial jets, mostly A380s and 777s, taxiing back and forth, as well as scores of military recon drones lined up in one stretch of tarmac.

  “Damn, Emily, this looks like an invasion,” he blurted as he kept the car between the white lines.

  “And look at those shipping containers,” Emily remarked, “over at the port.”

  Beyond the wide-open expanse of runways and taxiways, huge cranes lifted tractor-trailer-sized shipping containers off a massive ship stacked high with them. The level of activity at the docks matched the ant-like fervor at the airport.

  Ted barely had time to see where she’d pointed because he had to slow and dodge a wrecked fuel truck. He locked his elbows and jammed on the brakes.

  “Hang on!” he croaked.

  It wasn’t only a wrecked truck, but a medium-sized jet had come down, clipped vehicles on the highway, then crashed into a field. The stretch of highway was the start of the debris field.

  Metal and rock clattered off the undercarriage as he did sixty through a patch of charred pavement. If they caught some bad luck and blew
a tire, they’d have to stop on the exposed stretch of highway. They’d be visible to the entire airport.

  Ted went a little slower toward the far edge of the mess, hoping they’d get through. A metal bar made a pair of loud thumps as the tires struck it, but then it went silent. After a few tense moments waiting to see if they still had tire pressure, he kicked the Camaro in the gut to get it back up to escape velocity.

  The highway turned north, away from the airport.

  “We’re up to one-fifty,” he announced proudly. Ted checked in the rearview mirror, but the small windows and bad angles didn’t allow him to keep tabs on the airport. “You tell me if anything is following us. They’ll never catch us on the ground, but that Predator is still out there, and there’s plenty more at the airport.”

  He wondered how many ships were behind those already dockside. Did the US Navy know these were converging on the coastline before the event struck yesterday? How many people could fit on a ship? How did they survive whatever death ray killed everyone else?

  If an enemy wanted to come to America, Newark was a good place to start. Everything was free for the taking. Just as he and Emily were scavenging their way up the coast of the northeast, any invading force would find lots of goodies ripe for the plucking. Maybe the bad guys here were preparing transport for the follow-on forces waiting at airports elsewhere in the world.

  If any of the intel spooks had survived on Air Force Two, they’d have a field day with this.

  There was nothing but questions for him as his Camaro thundered along the wide-open highway. The needle nudged higher, toward one-sixty, but the steering wheel started to vibrate because of the poor surface conditions.

  “I see aircraft back there,” Emily gulped. “At least two.”

  “How far?”

  She studied the sky for a few seconds. “They’re still by the airport.”

  He thought about their situation as a classic math word problem. How long would it take to go less than ten miles while doing 160 miles per hour? The solution was ever-changing since he ticked off another mile every forty seconds.

  “We can make it,” he said hesitantly. It wasn’t that he was being wishy-washy, but there were more wrecked cars up ahead.

  “Okay, now they’re definitely coming our way.” Emily had her face up against the glass of her window as she surveyed the skies behind them.

  “They can’t launch at us,” he said with another dose of barely-contained hesitation. They probably would if they knew Emily was in the car, but not for two joy-riding nuts. Missiles were expensive.

  The Camaro sounded happy to be going fast, and it coaxed him to try for even more speed. He held the wheel as tight as he could while they sped across a long, curving bridge over a river. The sweeping turn collected the abandoned cars in the far lanes, so he was able to maintain his speed until he was across. Then the highway turned to the left, and more junk cars were in his lanes.

  “Five miles!” Emily pointed to the road sign.

  “Madam President, hold on. It’s going to get bumpy.”

  Ted feathered the brakes to take off some speed, then he switched lanes to avoid a T-bone collision with a school bus. As he came around the back bumper, he had to brake again; a second bus was behind the first.

  “That way!” Emily pointed to the right shoulder, by a concrete barrier, because it was the only lane open. The buses must have turned sideways and caught other vehicles.

  He jumped in his seat when the tires rubbed up against the median wall.

  “One more deduction,” Emily remarked with dark humor.

  His heart pounded in his chest with the same ferocity he’d experienced on his first deployment. People depended on him to do a good job and pull through this.

  “I’m getting the job,” Ted reassured her. He exhaled a deep breath because he’d been holding it since before the bus wreck.

  She pointed to another overhead sign that alerted drivers of the need to be in the right lane to get to the Lincoln Tunnel.

  “C’mon,” she encouraged him, “you’ll get us there.”

  They blew through another toll booth, then went up and onto a flyover ramp. For a few moments, they had a front-row view of the mega-fire burning to the north. It was only a few miles away. So close they could smell it.

  “Glad we aren’t going that way,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road.

  The curved ramp took them off the first highway and onto one heading directly for the city. Many of the cars had rolled into the wall, making it easier for them to use the cleared inside lane, but once the highway straightened out, it became more difficult to see a path through the wrecks. Both directions of roadway were stuffed with abandoned vehicles.

  “We aren’t stopping,” he deadpanned.

  Ahead, the skyscrapers of New York City beckoned them from three or four miles away. However, as they headed due east through the ever-narrowing gaps in the stalled traffic, Ted had to keep dropping speed. It gave the enemy a chance to close the distance.

  Emily tapped on her window with a fingernail. “The planes are coming.”

  Amarillo, TX

  When Brent got inside the trailer, he immediately found Trish on the floor next to the kitchen table. Her phone was crushed on the linoleum next to her, and she’d been crying.

  “Are you okay?” he asked after he’d rushed over to her.

  “She’s fine, pops,” Curtis assured him. “Why would we hurt someone we wanted to treat real nice? We need her.”

  Trish smiled weakly. She was normally a cocky, self-sure woman, but a few punches had beat her down. Still, there was fire behind those eyes, like she was ready to get even.

  He tried to reason with them. “Boys, this is ridiculous. The whole world has gone to shit. People have disappeared. You’re free of your old lives. You don’t have to be criminals.”

  Curtis strode into the kitchen with a shotgun over his shoulder. It was one from the armory, which meant the men he’d come with had truly betrayed him. The young man moved a chair across the floor so he could look directly at him and Trish. “I’ll never be free, pops, don’t you get it? No? Try this on for size…”

  He threw the gun on the wooden table, then sat down.

  “I got caught dealing last year. Small-time stuff, no big deal. It was in some West Texas town I don’t even remember. As I’m sitting in the police cruiser, some asshole in a suit comes up to me and says I work for him now. I gave him the finger, but he opened the door in front of the deputy, pulled me out, and held a gun to my head.”

  Brent shifted uncomfortably on his sore knees.

  “Are you getting the point?” Curtis said with exasperation. “The guy whispered in my ear, giving me marching orders for his operation. He said if I didn’t follow them to the letter, he was going to kill my whole family. The officer told him my home address, as a way to let me know he had me by the balls.”

  Curtis touched his bandana. “If I cross them in any way, I’m screwed big time. So, I figure it’s better to embrace my job and survive this thing as top dog, you know?”

  Brent was caught in a crouch, but he had to stand up to relieve the pressure on his legs. He groaned on his way up.

  “You need help, pops. Why are you even here?” Curtis pointed to Brent’s legs. “We’ll let you go if you simply walk away.”

  That made some of the other prisoners mumble in disagreement.

  “No, it’s fine,” Curtis assured them. “He’s one guy, and we’ll send him packing with a butter knife for a weapon. No one has to get hurt over this girl.”

  Brent shook his head in disappointment. “Would you get out of your arrangement with those assholes if you could?”

  Curtis nodded. “Of course, but I can’t.”

  “You can,” Brent insisted. “Everyone is gone. Don’t you get it? The top level of the prison was cleared out. The surrounding towns are empty. Amarillo and Austin aren’t picking up their phones. No one is on any of the radio stations. The world has
gone quiet.”

  Curtis squinted at him. “Can you prove to me all the cartels are gone?”

  He shrugged. “How the hell should I know? But I’d bet anything the dickhead threatening you is gone. Everyone in Texas is apparently…gone.”

  The man seemed to think about it.

  “Naw, I ain’t falling for that. I’m—” Curtis didn’t get a chance to finish. Paul put a pistol on Curtis’s cheek, which caused a chain reaction of gun pointing throughout the rest of the prisoners.

  Brent’s six friends hadn’t abandoned him after all, but everyone was in danger of being killed.

  “Don’t shoot!” he yelled.

  CHAPTER 17

  West Portal, Lincoln Tunnel, NJ

  “I can see a problem developing,” Ted remarked as the traffic continued to get thicker. He wasn’t able to do more than fifty and had to brake and swerve every few seconds, though they were still moving forward.

  “Let me guess this one. They know where we are and where we’re going.” Emily remained fixated out her window.

  They were close to the tunnel now. To his right, through the trees and brick homes of this New Jersey neighborhood, the highway wrapped around in a spiral as it went down into the tunnel entrance.

  “You’re pretty smart, for a politician,” he mused.

  “Well, pilot, what are you going to do now?”

  There was no time to think of elaborate schemes. In his view, there was only one viable way to end this before they would be forced to stop anyway.

  Ted scraped against a parked car, startling himself in the process. When he gave it some more gas, he glanced over to Emily. “Hold onto your gun.”

  She turned and held onto her rifle, then he steered the expensive Camaro to the right—toward the median. He stood on the brakes to remove some of the danger, but he also jammed the wheel so the car would spin around next to the barrier. It reminded him of wiping out on a kid’s bike.

  “Whoa!” Emily screeched.

  The Camaro was in-line with the rest of the traffic, so it wouldn’t stick out.