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

by EE Isherwood

  Victor did turn around. They locked eyes, for a split-second, before the onrush of men took him down.

  A white light flicked on and off. The brightness overwhelmed her for a few seconds. When she blinked the glare away, she found herself in the box, but Victor and the guards were gone.

  However, the room was not empty.

  A man in a white-and-orange prison uniform ran up to the cube, surprising her. He had a tablet, same as the other man, and he tapped at it, so it released the door.

  “Come on, get out of there!” he advised in haste. “Go to the wall!”

  The line of prisoners she’d seen go into the box were now lined against the wall of the auditorium. They all sat next to each other, hunched over with hands over their heads, as if participating in a tornado drill.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “There’s no time!” the guy shouted. “You have to get against the wall!” He rushed her to the end of the line. On the way, she passed Peter and Audrey.

  Audrey glanced up and smiled when she heard Tabby’s voice.

  Tabby tried to stop and hug her, but the guy yanked her rudely to the rear. “You’ll understand in a second. A voice on the PA system said we don’t have much time. Were you the last one or was there one more in the line after you?”

  She was fairly sure it was only her and Victor. “Victor’s the only one in the gym, but he was in a fight.”

  “Sit down!” The guy showed her where to go, waited for her to sit, then flung himself into the next spot. He tapped his tablet once he was down.

  Tabby craned her neck to see up the line. She was so happy to see her friends. It also surprised her to see the man with the bird already sitting next to her. He cradled his green-and-red friend in his arms, as if protecting it.

  “Good to see you again,” the man said, sneaking a peak. His sores seemed to be gone.

  “Uh, yeah, you too. What’s going on?”

  He laughed and touched the Macaw on his shoulder. “My bird is real now. I think we died...”

  People had lost their marbles.

  A woman’s voice came on a speaker system as the man had said. “WARNING: NUCLEAR STRIKE IMMINENT.”

  “Seriously? We’re in a nuclear strike?” Tabby looked up, intending to get feedback from the bird man, but the lights flickered off.

  In the same instant, the floor seemed to drop out from below her, leaving her hanging a foot off the ground. She bounced off the rear wall, then dropped back to the hard floor. A thunder-like clap reverberated around the giant room.

  Red emergency lights blared from several fixtures near the doors.

  “What the hell!” she screamed, falling out of crash position. Everything vibrated. The walls. The floor. Her teeth.

  In the middle of the chaos, Victor appeared inside the cube. A white beam of light illuminated the dark room for a split second. Before it went dark, she saw a snapshot of the boy’s shape on the floor of the machine.

  Tabby crouched in fear as four more impacts shook the foundations. Each one was felt as much as heard, making her wonder if David’s fortress had, in fact, been targeted. Those men at the exit of the bunker acted like there was no threat. Maybe her people had outsmarted them after all and sent a nuke right in those open front doors.

  She waited a full minute to see if a sixth impact would happen. People seemed to claw their way back to the wall from wherever the vibrations had moved them. It seemed funny to think tucking her head would do the slightest to help her survive an actual nuclear blast. It was the rock above her doing all the heavy lifting.

  The PA system woman came online, somehow with less stress in her mechanical voice. “ADVISORY: Outer door offline. Inner door secure. Early warning systems online. Zero incoming airborne threats. Reminder: Radiation protocols recommended.”

  “What the heck is going on?” she finally asked.

  “Tabby!” Audrey called out.

  She jumped up and went over to her teen friends. “Do you know what this is all about?” There was no one in charge, as best she could tell.

  Audrey shrugged in her frumpy white prison suit. “I have no freaking idea what’s going on here, but I see you’re still looking good in your hot pants.”

  Tabby sensed her cheeks light up. “I’d be happy to trade with you.”

  They hugged again.

  She hugged Peter, too. “Nice to see you.”

  “Same. Are we free from those guards?” He kept one arm wrapped around his girl but had the look of someone who’d been crying a lot.

  Tabby shrugged. “The guards are gone. I say we make a break for it, unless that radiation warning is for us.”

  Audrey and Peter shared a look, then started walking toward the front door.

  She went over to the cube to collect Victor. Several men were already standing around the box when she arrived. The man with the tablet saw her approaching. “I’m so sorry. Your friend didn’t make it.”

  “He wasn’t my—” she started to say, before seeing Victor’s bullet-ridden body inside the machine. A small note with the word ‘traitor’ had been attached to his shirt. “—friend,” she finished glumly.

  Tabby’s feelings were as unsteady as the shaking room had been. She hated that the two of them had been forced together, but she couldn’t quite muster the energy to hate Victor anymore. In retrospect, he’d been on her side almost from the beginning. He went out fighting against men with guns like he was in a movie; that was how much he wanted to prove himself to her.

  “Thank you, hero,” she whispered.

  She caught up to Audrey and Peter, who watched her come over.

  “Did you know him?” Audrey asked, looking around Tabby to see Victor.

  After a brief pause, she told the truth. “Not really. But I kind of wish I did.”

  Minutes later, after a walk up a few flights of stairs and a stroll down a big tunnel illuminated by those same red emergency lights, she came to the conclusion she didn’t know where she was. It wasn’t the same layout as David’s base. “Um, something isn’t right. There should have been an elevator outside the room with the white cube. We should have been able to use it to get to an exit door…”

  “Well, where the hell are we?” Peter asked.

  “And what the hell is that?” Audrey added, pointing ahead.

  A huge, metal, three-story office building sat inside a cave-like vault. It wasn’t built on the ground, however. The entire edifice sat on top of dozens of coiled springs. A set of yellow steps led up to the front doors.

  “There’s your answer,” Tabby declared, not sure what it meant.

  Three giant logos adorned the outside wall of the structure, announcing they were indeed inside NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain facility.

  They were overtaken by the man with the tablet. “You’ve just seen David’s technology in action. The David Cube transported us here because this facility was about to be nuked. I think we were supposed to die in those blasts.”

  The guy with the bird walked by next. When he saw her looking confused, he stopped. “That was Jacob. He used to work for David. One time, he was even kind to me. He’ll know what to do now.”

  Jacob cackled. “We’ve been transported a hundred miles into a mountain bunker now glowing with radiation. I think we’re safe in here for the time being, but as far as knowing what to do…I’m not your guy.”

  A male voice spoke from the dark passage ahead. “You people aren’t with David?”

  Tabby tensed up. “I’d sooner die than go back to him.”

  Audrey and Peter, plus some of the others, also replied in the negative.

  A man and woman walked out of the shadows, holding rifles. She had no idea who either of them were, though their black uniforms suggested they might have been part of the guard contingent. The man immediately recognized the fear in her eyes. “Don’t worry, we’re not with the invaders, I promise you.”

  “Who are you with?” Tabby asked, still wary.

  T
he pair held their rifles low, not aiming at her or her friends. The man motioned for his partner to step closer, then he spoke up. “I’m with the President of the United States, Emily Williams.”

  ###

  To Be Continued in Minus America, Book 5

  If you liked this book, please leave a review! I like to think of my indie writing gig as a team sport. I have an editor, cover designer, and you, the reader, on my side. But only the reader has special powers for Team Isherwood. Only you can leave a review.

  “Why bother?” you might ask.

  Reviews are how indie authors get found. They’re proof-of-life when movie producers search for the next big film. They help ensure the audiobook versions get made. In short, they are critically important at keeping a series successful.

  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.

  Two Wolves and a Sheep (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds)

  are Copyright (c) 2020 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 Illustration by Covers by Christian

  Editing services provided by Mia at LKJ Books

  Author Notes – E.E. Isherwood

  Written May 7, 2020

  Thank you for reading,

  In the old days, when I told people I write Post-Apocalyptic books, they often gave me a polite nod and went about their business. Now, after the Wuhan Virus affair, they spend time asking me questions. Usually, one of the following variants.

  Is what we’re going through today anything like what you write about?

  Is this going to be good material for your next book?

  What advice do you have for us, since you’re an expert on the apocalypse?

  That last one is funny. Even the toughest prepper in the deepest bunker of remote Idaho isn’t truly an expert prepared for the end of the world. Anyone who tells you different is a showboating poser. Sure, they know more than most of us, but no one can see every possible risk, even when it’s right in front of you.

  I could tell you to stock food, plant a garden, and carefully gather a small arsenal to help you defend it, but then we may get struck by locusts who eat absolutely everything you own. This is happening in Africa as we speak.

  I might recommend stocking up on food, water, and to buy a hardened shelter. Then you could hide in the woods when the aliens show up. But we might have an eruption of the Yellowstone super volcano instead of an invasion, making it a very bad day for humans and aliens alike.

  The truth is it’s impossible to prepare for the infinite dangers life poses for us. Even the relatively tame COVID-19 pandemic has ruined the global economy. Thankfully, the death toll has been a lot less than the experts’ forecast. Imagine what a more dangerous strain could be like. Or zombies…

  I will say I’ve been particularly interested in following different threads of this real-life viral outbreak. Some events mirror what I’ve written in my books. Some absurdities give me new avenues of chaos to explore in the future.

  --News has been useless. In many of my books, information that comes down from government or news broadcasters has been notoriously unreliable. In my first zombie book, Since the Sirens, the government tells people to flee violence in the city, but then blocks all bridges to the outside as a safety measure. If you read any news article up through February, especially here in America, we were told COVID-19 was nothing to worry about. If you read any news article today, you’ll think COVID is lurking on your front porch, ready to strike you down the second you walk outside…

  --Government is its usual self. In almost every story I’ve ever written, the government is a bumbling behemoth incapable of doing anything right. Nothing in the COVID-19 response has changed my opinion. Each of us may favor certain political flavors, but there’s no denying the government (comprising thousands of federal, state, and local elected officials) continues to foul the nest. They’ve wasted trillions in their “relief” packages, which are little more than pork-filled bills enriching themselves at our kids’ expense. They sling mud at each other, apparently unconcerned there’s an ongoing national emergency. They even put higher dollar values on COVID patients who die, which, to no one’s surprise, means every death out there is now a COVID death. About the only thing they got right was to enact social distancing, though no one can agree on what threat is acceptable before we can all go back to work. Some states are already opening; some states won’t open until July. Bottom line, the government has no clue.

  --The American people are good-natured and compliant, until they’re not. One of my favorite stories was about a skate park being shut down when a city dumped tons of sand into the pits. It wanted kids to stay away from the park. But it didn’t stop them. The clever kids cleared a portion of it by hand and used the rest of it as a BMX bike park instead. That’s the American attitude. Peaceful protests at state capitals. Workers starting up their businesses to support their families, risking jail time or fines. Citizens breaking records for the number of firearms purchased. A healthy mistrust of the press and our political class. A respect for expert advice, but not a blind acceptance of their unproven results. People creating endless online memes about how government tyranny is against our DNA. That can-do spirit is one of the main reasons I wrote my Minus America series. Never, EVER, count us out of the game.

  --Americans are kind, generous, and thoughtful. Discounting the nutjobs who go around licking ice cream lids at the store, or who wipe their nose on employees who ask them to wear a mask, most local stories are heartwarming and uplifting. Birthday parties are now done via car caravans of honking and cheering riders. I’ve noticed more people wave at me from their yards as I ride my bike around the neighborhood. We’re cheering for people who actually matter: truck drivers, nurses, doctors, food store workers, and those in the trenches with them.

  I don’t know if much of this will translate into future books. Maybe the shortage of toilet paper will show up at some point. It’s the least controversial aspect of the last few months of 2020. Other parts of the Wuhan virus have the potential to be divisive. This is why you’ll never see me explicitly name political parties, blame real-life people, or make statements hurtful to those I disagree with. It’s not that I don’t have my opinions, but I write books to bring people together.

  If there’s one sad truth I’ve realized from watching and reading the news over the past few months, it’s that this nation no longer truly unites in a time of crisis. That, more than any disaster, alien invasion, or plague, is what could finally end the great American experiment. I will not be part of that unfolding.

  You might be wondering about the name Two Wolves and a Sheep. It’s a callback to a quote often misattributed to Ben Franklin. The saying goes that democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for dinner. Liberty is an armed sheep contesting the vote. In this book, the heroes are rising up against the tyrannical invaders, ready to contest the takeover. The phrase also fits perfectly with our current reality and everything I’ve observed above. “Contesting the vote” remains at the heart of the American people. As long as we don’t lose that spirit, we’ll get through COVID-19 just fine.

  I’ll get started on the next book, Hostile Shores, as soon as this goes off to the printers. With a little luck and American can-do attitude, the nation will be back to its old self by the time you read it at the end of the summer. In the meantime, I’d be honored if you signed up for the pre-order so you don’t miss it when it comes out.

  As always, thank you for being a reader.

  EE<
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  E.E. Isherwood’s other books

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

  Impact – (co-written with Mike Kraus) – A post-apocalyptic thriller about an asteroid slamming across the heartland of America. Six books.

  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.

  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.

  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!