Minus America (Book 3): Rebel Cause

by Isherwood, E. E.

  It looked like they were still inside the giant house where the newest of her human friends had brought her. The alpha, Tabby, had been yelling and screaming. There were also much louder noises she could not identify. And Deogee had been chewing on one of the metal monsters.

  “Where are my humans?” she asked Biscuit.

  “I saw them,” the black lab replied. “They were right over there. An annoying sound came next. Then, they weren’t over there.”

  Her friend’s simplistic retelling matched her own experience. The humans had been there a moment before, but a sudden pain had caused her to shut her eyes. Everything went black for less than a bark. When her vision came back, the humans and the metal machines had disappeared.

  “Does anything smell familiar?” she asked.

  Biscuit nosed at some trash on the floor, but managed to say no.

  “Follow me. I know where we can see everything.” She ran for the stairs to the roof and started up.

  “I’d love to play, but the stairs are broken,” Biscuit replied, climbing the first few steps. “Well, they were broken, honest. I had to jump when I came down them.”

  Nothing felt right to Deogee. The air didn’t smell right, either. The world around her had changed in the handful of barks since she’d been with the humans. Was it the air? The light? Did Biscuit notice it, too?

  Deogee came out on the roof but didn’t recognize where she was. The feeling of waking up from a puppy dream overcame her, but she wasn’t waking up.

  “Whoa!” Biscuit barked.

  It had been nighttime when she arrived there with the humans, but now it was day. She knew the connection between the time of light and the time of dark, but the daytime sky was all wrong. It was no longer the usual shade of blue, as she’d heard Melissa describe it many times. To Deogee’s eyes, the color was closer to those yellow shoes.

  The sky is sick.

  The rest of the world wasn’t much better. The stones standing up on the other side of the river were still there, as was the tall, silver arch, but many of those rocks were broken. Some had fallen over. Smoke rose from some of them, like the fire had been trapped inside.

  Closer to her, an incredible number of the small houses on wheels were strewn over the ground below her. In fact, looking around, she found some of those houses had been tossed on top of the building. She went over to sniff one of them but turned away when the smell of death came out of it. The human was still stuffed inside the house, but he’d been squished.

  Deogee barked incessantly, trying call out to her missing pack. Trying call out to anyone within the sound of her voice. Someone had to know what was happening. “Biscuit, where are we?”

  The lab ran in circles, misinterpreting her excited manner of speaking. “Who cares? Let’s play!”

  Upper Souris Wildlife Refuge, ND

  Ted stood watch over the three ladies, content they’d done the right thing by ditching the motorcycles and hiking into the wildlife preserve. They’d heard drones overhead a few times, but they seemed to go to the west, where his team was last seen riding. Once darkness fell, he knew they’d managed to give the enemy the slip.

  Until tomorrow, he thought.

  He’d taken a big risk flying Kyla and Emily across the country, and he’d made some mistakes along the way, but he’d been proven right. The trip saved lives. They’d fought back. They gave the rest of the American population a small victory, even if no one knew about it yet. Passing on the opportunity to take over the entire NORAD system remotely had been the right call to save Kyla. As it was, they’d only made it out with seconds to spare. If they’d gone back inside the “maintenance” building, they’d be sitting in an enemy detention center right now. Or they’d be dead.

  Ted looked over at Emily. She was supposed to be asleep on the sleeping bag he’d given to her, but, at that moment, she was sitting up with legs crossed. The bag was fully spread on the ground, making it a large, square blanket. All was quiet in the marsh, so he crept back to talk to her.

  “Can’t sleep?” he asked.

  Even in the middle of the night, he noticed the ring she’d been manipulating with her fingers. The big diamond seemed to gleam in the moonlight. She glanced up at him. “I’ve been holding onto this ring since I last saw Roger back in my apartment. Once, it meant the universe to me, but not for a long time. For several years, I mostly kept it in my nightstand.”

  He got immediately uncomfortable. “I’ll leave you to it…”

  “No, wait,” she pleaded quietly. Kyla and Meechum were asleep about twenty feet away. Close enough for protection, but far enough away to give the prez a little privacy. “You misunderstand. I’m holding the last piece of my old life. The life I had before I was President Emily Williams…”

  Ted saw an opening. “So, you’re calling yourself the president. Does that mean you accept your promotion, finally?” They’d been haggling over whether she was legally the president almost since they’d first met. She tolerated being called the top dog, but she always kept something back, like it wasn’t real. Her admission seemed like a huge concession.

  “The NORAD system asked for my biometric data. I saw the words ‘President of the United States’ by my name. I figure that sealed the deal. I can’t refuse it any longer.” She sighed deeply. “And, if I’m making life-altering changes these days, I might as well take this a step further.”

  She tossed the ring over her shoulder into the tall grass.

  “Wow,” he replied. “I don’t know what to say, Madame President.”

  Meechum stirred across their camp site, standing and stretching as he and Emily remained by her sleeping bag. A few seconds later, the Marine called out, “I’m on watch.”

  Ted was happy to hand it over, though he was never going to stop his amazement at the pain threshold of the warrior woman. A bullet had sliced through her shoulder a few hours ago. She should be out cold, not out on patrol.

  Emily tapped the empty half of her sleeping bag. “I saved you a bit, so you don’t have to sleep in the weeds.”

  He crouched next to the bag, not sure if it was proper to sit down with his boss, but when he looked at her in the nighttime glow of the moon, he was flooded with emotions. She’d lost a husband. He’d lost a sister. The nation had lost everyone else. But there, in that quiet patch of forest, the two of them were just people. Living people.

  He plopped down next to her, accepting it was just a sleeping arrangement, not an engagement proposal. However, before he let himself get too comfortable, he realized her earlier statement had an obvious flaw.

  “Emily, you said the computer system listed you as the President of the United States. Are you positive that’s what it said?”

  She leaned back on her elbows. “Of course. I told you, it was at that moment I finally accepted the title. Why?”

  His stomach hardened as his mind rolled over to anti-conspiracy mode.

  One side of his brain said, “Don’t ruin the moment, Teddy, old boy.”

  The other side thought, “How did the hacked NORAD system know she was the president? She was supposed to be dead, along with everyone else. Van Nuys knew she was alive, but he died before he could report it to anyone else. Did someone intercept the captain’s radio chatter with the two sailors who almost killed Kyla and Emily? And even if someone did, how could they have known she would end up at an air base at the ass-end of an empty America?”

  Emily waited, but he’d taken enough time it became a concern to her. She reached over and touched him on the arm. “What is it?”

  He sighed heavily, almost as she had done a moment before. “I have a theory about what’s happening at NORAD. Remind me to tell you about it in the morning.”

  She seemed impressed. “What? You aren’t going to hash through all the bad things facing us tomorrow? Haven’t you been chewing on a million different problems in the time you’ve been keeping watch over us?”

  He chuckled softly. “I guess you’ve taught me how to let go
a little bit, at least when people need to get some sleep. Everything points to Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, and NORAD. Tomorrow, we’ll make our way to Montana. You said your parents have property there, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “We’ll stay as far away from there as humanly possible. That’s your only hint about what I’ve been thinking.”

  “Sounds interesting,” she replied matter-of-factly. Emily patted the sleeping bag again, clearly urging him to lay back and make himself comfortable. He did as she requested, mindful of how difficult it was to shut down his brain. Sure, he’d told her he wasn’t going to talk it all to death, but the fact was his officer’s mind didn’t have an off switch.

  He was shocked when she put a hand on his chest and rolled to face him.

  “Ted, thank you for making this all possible. I owe you my life several times over, and I’m grateful at all the expert decisions you’ve made to get us here, but there is one piece of intel you seem to have an enduring blind-spot about.”

  “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!