Minus America Box Set | Books 1-5

by Isherwood, E. E.

  “No, I don’t—”

  She interrupted him with a kiss.

  The intimacy took him by total surprise, but before he could fully appreciate what had taken place, a girlish giggle interrupted them from close by.

  “I knew it!” Kyla crowed.

  ###

  To Be Continued in Minus America, Book 4

  If you like this book, please leave a review—even though it is book 3. The series has gotten awesome reviews, and I’m committing to at least a book 5, but if I keep getting great feedback from you, the readers, I might be able to write more.

  So, you see, your review makes a huge difference to my writing decisions!

  But wait! There’s more. I have a short author note to follow.

  This book is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Rebel Cause (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds)

  are Copyright (c) 2019 by E.E. Isherwood

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of E.E. Isherwood

  Version 1.0

  Cover by Covers by Christian

  Editing by Mia at LKJ Books

  Author Notes – E.E. Isherwood

  Written December 12, 2019

  Thank you for reading,

  My computer desk has two monitors. One is for my writing, the other is for the plot outline, web browser for research, and my email. As I type this note in one window, I have the outline for book 4, Two Wolves and a Sheep, up and running in the other. As soon as I have the plot solidified, I’ll start banging on my keyboard to crank out the next volume of this series. I love these characters as much as any I’ve written, so I can’t wait to crack into the story and see where they take me.

  I hope you’ll continue with the adventure, too.

  We now have a heroine, Tabby, at the heart of the terrorist’s operation. When I started writing book three, I had no idea she was going to end up there. In fact, I changed the whole outline when I realized she’d gotten herself into trouble inside that old warehouse. Now that she’s captured, it gives us a look into the enemy’s operation. Their plan should start to become clear as she pokes around inside their base… At the same time, help is coming for her from multiple directions, even if she doesn’t know it.

  If you’ve seen the cover, you know it’ll be epic.

  The year is racing toward its own grand conclusion. Only two weeks and a few days until 2020. It will be my fifth year of writing as a full-time author. In fact, looking at the calendar, I’m a couple days away from my four-year publishing anniversary. It was almost four years to the day I hit publish on my first book. Since then, I’ve written about a million and a half words… If you’ve read the first three books of this series, you’ve made it through about 230,000 of them.

  At this point, I usually ask readers to leave reviews for my book (they’ve been incredible), but this time I would like to request a different favor. Would you consider sharing my books with your friends and family? Mention me at your book club? Leave a request at the library or bookstore to carry my novels? Anything you can do to show off my post-apocalyptic thrillers to one more reader would go a long way to ensuring I’m doing this for another four years.

  Finally, we’re a few short days away from Christmas break for my kids. I’m looking forward to having them around for two weeks, even if I don’t get quite as much work done. Aside from visiting with family, we’re planning to go bowling, see the new Jumanji movie, and my son is preparing to go to Philmont Scout Ranch (New Mexico) with the Boy Scouts soon. I’m one of his troop’s leaders going with him, so we’ll be fitness training over the break. Wish us luck!

  Again, thank you for reading this series. I’m honored you’ve stuck with it for three books. I plan to make the next stories even better.

  EE

  E.E. Isherwood’s other books

  Minus America, Empty Cities, Rebel Cause, and Two Wolves and a Sheep.

  End Days (co-written with Craig Martelle) – A post-apocalyptic adventure about a father and son on opposite ends of a continent ravaged by a failed science experiment. Four books in the series.

  Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse – A teen boy must keep his great-grandma alive to find the cure to the zombie plague, but what if the only people immune are those over 100? Seven books in the series.

  Connect with me

  Amazon – amazon.com/author/eeisherwood

  Facebook – www.facebook.com/sincethesirens

  My web page – www.eeisherwood.com

  I would be thrilled to have you join my newsletter.

  That’s all the time I have. The next book calls to me!

  MINUS AMERICA BOOK 4

  Two Wolves and a Sheep:

  Minus America

  Book 4

  E.E. Isherwood

  Connect With E.E. Isherwood

  Website & Newsletter: http://www.eeisherwood.com

  Facebook:

  https://www.facebook.com/SinceTheSirens/

  Copyright © 2020 by E.E. Isherwood

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Illustration by Covers by Christian

  Editing services provided by Mia at LKJ Books

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  CHAPTER 1

  Westby, MT

  “Good morning, beautiful.” Ted stood at the window of the house where he and the others had spent part of the night. After escaping from the Minot Air Force base and surviving a few hours of darkness hunkered down in the marsh, they’d hiked through tree cover until reaching a remote homestead. More importantly, they’d found a working SUV. He’d driven them north until reaching the Canadian border, then he turned west. Two hours later, they were in Westby, Montana, which sidled up to the North Dakota state line.

  “Ah, Ted, you’re too kind,” Emily said with an amusing I-see-a-cute-puppy tone of voice.

  He turned to face her, staying serious. “I was talking to the beautiful state of Montana out there. It’s sunny, probably sixty degrees, and absolutely gorgeously free of men wearing black who want to kill us.”

  “Aw shucks.” Emily feigned being hurt as she slapped a pillow on the pull-out bed. He’d let her take the sofa sleeper while he’d alternately kept guard and slept in a recliner chair nearby. “Is it because I’m not looking my best? Running through airports and swimming in swamps has gotten me too far in front of my presidential makeup artists.”

  The hard miles had not been kind to either of them, which was why they’d all taken showers when they broke into the abandoned house. Her hair was frizzy and unkempt from the night’s sleep, though he was extremely curious if she was in or out of her stolen uniform. He stood there only wearing his borrowed black trousers. “These black clothes aren’t too flattering, huh,” he said, to keep from dwelling too long on her attire. Then, realizing there was no point in holding back his feelings while in private, he added in a quieter voice, “I might have been also talking to you when I said good morning.”

  Her smile radiated brighter than the sun. “Thanks. You’re not too shabby yourself.”

  “Should we wake up the kids?” he asked, meaning Kyla and Meechum. The two young women had taken the bedrooms at the rear of the house, giving them privacy.

  “Us kids are already up, thanks,” Meechum said from the kitchen, not sounding pleased to be compared to kids, even as a joke.

  Kyla laughed. “Good morning, gorgeous people!”

  He and Emily shared a humorous “oops” look with each other
, then he finished getting dressed. Once he had his shirt on, he strode out the door and didn’t look back. Emily was getting out of her covers, and while confirming her sleeping attire, or lack thereof, was of keen importance to his male brain, it was critical he keep his head on the survival of his niece.

  “Hey, Kyla.” Her smiling face made him forget about their desperate situation for a few moments. It reminded him of the times he’d been at Rebecca’s kitchen table. For many years, Kyla greeted him with that smile, though there were some rough patches in those middle teen years. Today, she was the old Kyla, without her warrior face of the recent past.

  “Heya, Unk. We made breakfast.” She pointed to a box of nacho cheese-flavored Pop-Tarts on the table.

  “Yuck. Who thought up such a hideous combination? What’s in the water up here in Montana?” He eyed the open cupboard and pulled out some beef jerky. “Now, here’s a meal.”

  Neither woman seemed bothered by their injuries. “You two doing all right?” he asked.

  Meechum had been shot through the shoulder, though she’d toughed out a motorcycle ride and a long night in the marsh. It impressed him to no end. She barely bothered to look at him to reply. “I found a first aid kit in this house. It wasn’t much, but Kyla helped me clean my wounds and bandage ‘em up. I did the same for her.”

  Kyla wore a bandage on her neck where she’d been nicked. Both were lucky to be alive.

  “Good work,” he said. “If you need us to stop to rest today, let me know.”

  “We won’t,” Meechum replied, remaining serious.

  He looked at Kyla, evoking a smile in reply. “I’ll be fine, too, Unk. You worry about the prez.” After making sure Meechum wasn’t watching, she winked at him. The girl had it in her mind to play matchmaker between him and Emily and was thoroughly enjoying the effort. He figured it was innocent fun, especially if it took her mind off the wound.

  He was done eating by the time Emily entered the kitchen. In the few minutes since he’d seen her, she’d brushed out her brown hair, so it no longer looked like a wild animal mane. When she came in, Ted stood up. “All rise for the honored president of the United States of America, Emily Williams.”

  She waved them off. “Please. Are we going to do this for the whole trip? As your leader, I should be able to change the rules of decorum for the office of the president. As my first act, please stop with the pomp and circumstance.” Her eyes betrayed her words. He figured there was some appreciation of the recognition given by him and the others. No one could deny being the leader of the free world was a big deal, even if her nation’s citizens could fit around an old Formica table.

  She plopped into an empty seat, grabbed one of the Pop-Tarts, and chowed down. “Tanager would have never given up the regal nature of the office. He loved this stand-for-me crap. I think he would have dialed it up if he could.”

  Ted knew a little about the former president. As a pilot for Air Force Two, his paths sometimes crossed with the leader of the free world, though he’d never had much of a chance to socialize outside of his formal duties. He’d gotten his picture taken with him once, which was as close as he’d gotten to an informal setting. The presidential challenge coin had fallen into his possession after his recent trip to the White House. It was the last symbol of a dead national leader. “We struck a blow for the rebel movement yesterday by taking the nuclear briefcase offline, but I’m concerned at the way it happened. How was it ER, uh, Lieutenant Ramirez knew to be at the base in North Dakota? And how did the defense mainframe know Emily was ranked as the president, instead of vice president?”

  Emily chomped on another Pop-Tart, seemingly oblivious to the hideous taste combination. “You said you had a theory about that.”

  “I do,” he said before taking a pause. “These guys are big on technology. They use it to compensate for their relatively low force numbers. If that’s the case, then they may have programmed the mainframe to default to the person on the line of succession list who wasn’t confirmed deceased. Ramirez knew Tanager was dead, but someone must have reported the alive-and-well Emily when we were in New York City. That put you back on the computer’s list.” He twitched his head sideways, toward Emily.

  “So, it was a simple explanation?” she replied.

  “Maybe,” he cautioned. “But it almost seems too simple. Why wouldn’t they assign a new person to the list? Someone they knew would be on their side?” Ted glanced over to his niece. “Kyla, are you positive you deactivated the briefcase?”

  She was forced to chew and swallow to answer him. “I’m positive. That whole place was trying to break into the briefcase coding. It looked to me like they weren’t making much progress. Having Emily in the server room and using her eye biometrics is what short-circuited the whole affair. Unless they somehow figured out how to fake the entire interface and the code behind it, I’d say I’m close to one-hundred percent sure the suitcase is dead.”

  Ted leaned back in his chair, surprised at how the uncomfortable wooden slats drilled into his ribs. “Well, now I guess we can say for sure Tanager is dead. It’s something that’s been on my mind since Washington D.C.” He pulled out the challenge coin and spun it on the table. “It was Ramirez who gave me the president’s coin. He was the guy who told me the president was dead. I guess I always held out hope somehow, for whatever reason, Ramirez was lying about that. I wanted to believe the president survived.”

  Kyla seemed interested in his line of thought. “But how do you know for certain he didn’t?”

  The coin twirled around on the wooden table for a few seconds, then flopped over on its side. “Because if he was alive, Ramirez would have taken him directly to Minot to force him to hand over control of the nuclear codes to David.”

  They all ate until they were full.

  “So, what’s next?” Meechum asked as if wanting to get to it.

  He looked out the window again. There were a few trees behind the house, and a smattering of homes on the street of the tiny town, but beyond was the open farmland of Montana. As he’d said before, it was truly beautiful when the bad guys weren’t around. Unfortunately, they had to go find those bad guys. Even if their strike into Minot Air Force base was a small win, it wasn’t total victory. To finish it, they’d need to go to David and remove his ability to access the nuclear arsenal. They’d also have to figure out how to disable the superweapon that had destroyed his picture-perfect nation.

  Why not make it more difficult?

  “We drive south. We’re going to NORAD.”

  NORAD Black Site Sierra 7, CO

  I’ve got to get out of this place.

  Tabby looked up at the ceiling of the business office serving as her jail cell. Yesterday, she’d been shown her future when David brought her to see the formation of other young women in their blue Buck Rogers’s skintight uniforms. The war against America was over, he’d said, and she was going to help repopulate the continent. Before she’d had a chance to do more than recoil, he’d whisked her away and stuck her in the room to “think it over,” as he’d stated. As tired as she was after all her travels, she’d barely slept at all. Thoughts of Audrey and Peter kept her brain in overdrive as much as the fears about being made into someone’s baby-making machine. Escape was the only item on her agenda for the new day.

  The jail may have once been an office, but the solid door of her cage had been replaced with a swinging metal grate with a wide hole for sticking in food trays. One sat on the shelf of the entryway at that moment.

  And she wasn’t alone. Outside her cell, she counted at least five other metal doors on what must have been other offices in the complex. At times last night, she saw men and women stand at their doors as if waiting for the mail. Now it made sense; they’d been waiting for food.

  She got off the cot, intending to see what was being served, but observed the thin, gray blanket had fallen to the floor. Last night, she’d needed it to cover up and protect her from the chilled air of the NORAD facility David had
taken over, but it must have slipped off the silky-smooth material of her jumpsuit. However, seeing it on the ground gave her an idea. “Nobody says I have to accept this as my uniform.”

  Tabby was a modest young woman. The form-hugging neck-to-ankle body suit was made for someone who didn’t mind the whole world knowing her business. She’d already unraveled her braids, so the long locks obscured her chest, but she saw how to do one better.

  If there were cameras in the room, which she prayed wasn’t true, they would know what she was going to do as she slid the blanket underneath one of the legs of the cot. After lining up the rectangular sheet the way she thought was correct, Tabby sat on the cot and yanked as hard as possible. The material ripped with a satisfying zerrrp.

  “Gotchya!”

  Cut shorter, she was able to wrap the two-foot by five-foot piece of material around her waist and tuck it in, creating a somewhat fashionable skirt for herself. There was no mirror in the office to see how she looked, but the covering made her feel a million times better than how she’d been dressed before. Satisfied at her act of rebellion, it was time to go for her meal.

  A bowl of soggy Cheerios sat next to a banana. The drink was a small cardboard carton of milk, which could have come from her high school cafeteria. Still, it could have been worse, she reasoned, so she made like she was going to grab the tray and return to her bed. However, the man in the office directly across the hall caught her attention by his manner of speaking, though he wasn’t talking to her.

  “Poppy, where’d they take you? Come back! I’m sorry!”

  The guy didn’t seem very old, but his medium-length black hair almost stood up straight like he’d been electrocuted. His face and hands were dirtied with soot, and he wore a baggy white jumpsuit with huge orange stripes from head to toe, as if prison bars had been painted on him. He was locked in, like her, suggesting he was a fellow prisoner. “Excuse me, mister, are you all right?”