Two Wolves and a Sheep: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (Minus America Book 4)

by EE Isherwood

  Two Wolves and a Sheep:

  Minus America

  Book 4

  E.E. Isherwood

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  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?”

  He glanced over to her but seemed more interested in looking up and down the hallway. She expected him to reply…

  “Sir?”

  A moment later, she figured out he’d been badly beaten. His face was bruised and bloody; one of his eyes was swollen shut. A dried river of blood coated one side of his neck. Yet, the man wasn’t tending to his wounds. He was looking for someone.

  “Who’d you lose? Maybe I can help you find him.”

  “Well, duh!” the man snapped back. “You couldn’t help me find him. My bird is a her, you stupid normal. Not that you would know the difference if you saw her. No one ever sees her.”

  “Oh,” she deadpanned. You’re a nut, she didn’t add, though she wanted to.

  He looked at her again, then shook the bars of his cage door. “Poppy! I need you to come back! Get me out of here! Don’t let this bitchy woman hurt you.”

  “Hey,” she cried out, not willing to take abuse from some idiot who didn’t know a thing about her. “Watch what you say to me. My name isn’t bitchy woman. It’s Tabitha.”

  The man harrumphed. “I’m Dwight. If you’re the one who hurt Poppy, I’m coming through both these cell doors and I’m going to burn you where you stand. I did it to Bernard and the other Bernards. I can do it to you, too.”

  Without another word, she took the tray off the shelf and went back to her cot. She could still hear Dwight calling for his avian friend, but he no longer seemed interested in her. It was a minor thing, but she chalked it up to being the first victory of the day.

  An hour later, she looked up and saw David and his gleaming golden jumpsuit at the cage door.

  Time to escape.

  CHAPTER 2

  Westby, MT

  While Uncle Ted sat at the kitchen table and chatted with Emily and Meechum, Kyla excused herself under the pretense of gathering her few belongings for the ride south. Since it was going to take all day to get to Colorado, and they’d be in the truck the whole time, she figured it was the last chance she’d have to be alone.

  She closed and locked the door to the bedroom where she’d spent the night. The things she owned amounted to one pistol, which she kept stuffed in her waistband, the stolen uniform, and one computer tablet. She pulled the tablet from where she’d stashed it under the bed.

  If any of the others found it, she’d be raked over the coals for sure, since her uncle had instructed her to destroy it back at the swamp. However, she knew how close she’d been to accessing the entire defense mainframe with the valuable piece of tech, so instead of tossing it in t
he water, she yanked out the little battery, rendering it useless.

  Kyla wasn’t a fool. It was a dangerous tool to be used only by a trained professional. But she was also more than aware they were in the middle of a world war. There were no professionals. Only her.

  “I’ll just pop on and call for help.” Uncle Ted had gone on and on about how NORAD was the target of their day—it contained the leader of the enemy forces and controlled the nuclear arsenal of the regular United States military. He’d also talked a lot about how difficult it had been to find a way to communicate with US forces overseas. They were the only ones with the power to swoop in and take care of business.

  She slid in the thin battery pack and the tablet showed a boot screen. The colorful logo displayed the Southern Cross emblem, which was a globe tilted toward the continent of Australia and a fancy X in the water to the west of it. Finally, it brought her to a screen showing the hacked admin level login. Once inside, she started a command prompt, which let her interface with the code directly. It was how she’d fool the enemy about her identity.

  “Excellent. Here we go.” She checked the door out of habit, though it was closed. She couldn’t get caught at that second, or she might not have time to complete the shadow executable to scrub her location. It made her type fast and with reassurance she was doing the right thing. Only when the command prompt showed her success did she relax a bit. Anyone looking would see her node as being on the mainframe network, not outside it. It was how she could have worked from home while she did her programming for the Navy, though she never dared do anything so dangerous back in those days. If caught, it would have been instant termination, and possibly legal trouble. Today, the stakes were a lot higher.

  Kyla intertwined all her fingers, cracking the knuckles of both hands, before typing some more. At first, she only wanted to explore the network traffic within the NORAD system, but it surprised her to learn someone on their end had a link with what was left of the civilian internet.