Minus America

by E. E. Isherwood

  “General, please,” the VP replied.

  He wasn’t letting it go. “He says everyone is dead, but his partner is gone. The Service guys were conveniently left behind, too. This man could say anything without anyone to back him up.”

  Ted wasn’t in the mood for the armchair general. “Sir, with all due respect, I almost lost my life getting this information to you. That missile would have killed me, the same as everyone else on this bird. I’m telling you: a weapon was used out there. It might have taken down the whole city. Those must be the guys who did it.”

  The gray-haired general gave him the stink-eye but relented a small bit as he thought through the logic.

  “Sir, if this is a weapon, and those are the culprits, it is safe to say they are actively working to take down our government.” He purposefully looked at the vice president. “That’s why they put at least one sleeper agent aboard with her. The first missile and this shoulder-fired attack were the backup plans.”

  Emily spoke up after listening to his explanation. “They aren’t going to stop. We have to warn the others. The Speaker of the House. The Secretary of State. All of them.”

  The general motioned to some aides behind him, and they scurried off. For a moment, he traded looks between Ted and the vice president, but then he settled on Ted. “Sorry about your partner.” He spun around and followed his people toward the front of the plane.

  Emily leaned closer again. “Don’t worry about it. He’s too proud to say it, but he thought this trip was a waste of time. Flying with number two isn’t exactly a plum assignment, you know?”

  Her smile suggested she wasn’t only talking about the other guy.

  Ted found comfort in her friendly expression, but his brain was stuck in a loop trying to solve the most frightening part of his recon. Strangely, it wasn’t the bullets or missile that jabbed the fear of death into his gut. It was the stillness of the world beyond the airport. They’d lost radio contact with all stations on the East Coast. Was every city suffering under the same attack?

  He came out of his reflective funk to respond, but she was already out of her seat and moving forward.

  “Come on,” she directed. “I have another mission for you.”

  Amarillo, TX

  Brent leaned against a wall while Trish rewound the security tapes. He’d run down from the second floor and trundled along the sub-level back to the security station. He ignored the shouts and pleas of the caged prisoners the entire way. Exertion was a foreign thing for him, so he needed to catch his breath.

  “Here, sit your ass down,” Trish insisted.

  A few other guards hovered around them, curious as to what he saw on the top level.

  “Thanks,” he said with mild embarrassment.

  By the time he was situated, the tape started playing.

  “This is twenty minutes ago,” Trish reported.

  The scene showed a lengthwise view of the upper floor. A guard was in the foreground, and another was in the distance. The men in the first few cells were visible, but those in the more distant ones were blocked by the walls.

  She clicked a button to switch to a different angle. “Here’s the view of the crow’s nest.” The security cage on the main floor was larger than the one they were in. There were six correctional officers in plain view up there.

  “And here—” She switched the view. “—is the yard.”

  As expected, the outside yard had men standing around talking, throwing footballs, and shooting hoops.

  “Here we go,” she said dramatically. Trish pushed some buttons and the screen went into fast-forward mode. She’d left it on the men outside. The basketball game accelerated as men ran back and forth bouncing the red ball at what looked like a hundred miles an hour.

  It was comical for a few seconds, but then the ball shot out of view.

  “What the fuck?” Trish blurted.

  The man bouncing it was gone.

  A defender squaring up in front of him also disappeared.

  The whole court emptied out.

  “Back it up!” he cried out.

  Trish cued up the video to a few seconds before the ball bounced away.

  For this replay, the event happened in real time: the man ran toward the hoop while bouncing the ball, then he wasn’t there. His shoes and socks tumbled a few feet until they lost their momentum and stopped. The rest of his clothes fell to the ground a short way back. The ball continued off screen.

  She reversed it again, and they watched it another time.

  Each of the men was gone, leaving only a pile of clothing, or, in the case of the fast-moving ball-carrier, creating a short trail of clothes.

  Trish changed views. They watched the crow’s nest as gray-uniformed guards carried out their duties in the cramped office. They sat at computers. Filled out paperwork on desks. Watched the hallway.

  Then they weren’t there. Uniforms fell to the ground. Utility belts careened off chairs and slid onto the tiles. Hats fell nearby.

  “Hallway, please,” he asked the young woman.

  She switched it to the long view of the cell block. His pal Toby Greer was saying something to one of the men in a cell near the camera. It looked like the guy they always called Popeye, because he worked out his arms almost around the clock.

  He closed his eyes for a few seconds because he already knew Greer’s fate. When Trish clicked the computer to play the video, he opened them again. Brent rolled his chair to get as close to the screen as possible.

  “I want to see it happen,” he whispered.

  Greer was there on the screen, then he wasn’t. There was no transition, or fade away, or white light, or anything else that might be responsible for the event. It was as if some supreme being snapped their fingers, and the men in the hallway were no more.

  Popeye turned to a pile of clothes, too.

  He backed away from the screen, feeling the bile rise in his stomach. He’d seen men die in Vietnam, so he was no stranger to violence and death, but this hit him from an unexpected direction.

  “I’ve got to go,” he blurted.

  His stomach heaved, and the others stood back as if he might hurl on them.

  “I’ve got to get out of here!” he cried out.

  Brent pushed through the others and ran out the side door. The residents were shouting for answers, but he wasn’t able to give them. He went up the stairwell to the main floor, then headed for the fresh air of the visitor’s entrance. The gates were all unlocked because there were supposed to be guards going in and out when the event took place.

  He made it to the front foyer before his stomach punched out of his nightmare.

  “Oh God!” he cried out when he was able.

  The intense burning and watery eyes were caused by the mess he’d created for the janitor, but they did nothing to cancel out his fear.

  The exit was right ahead.

  He intended to use it.

  CHAPTER 13

  Air Force Two

  “You want me to find out if the president is dead?” Ted wasn’t surprised that it had to be done, but he was shocked she would ask him. The result of such a recon mission would have implications for America, and probably the world.

  The VP and a female assistant sat in the row ahead of him. Ms. Williams glanced between the seats to speak with him in low tones. “Yes. There are men and women on this plane who I would have asked in a heartbeat two hours ago. Now, I need someone I trust.”

  Air Force Two flew over Washington D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland, at an altitude Ted thought was too risky. However, the veep insisted the pilots fly low enough to break off treetops, so she and the others could see the ground.

  He must have stared out his window for too long, because Emily kept talking. “I wanted to prove you and your sister wrong, you know. We’re flying low because I was hoping to see cars moving on I-95 a few miles outside of DC. Then we’d confirm the attack was bad, but local to our capital. However…”

  “We aren�
��t seeing a damned thing,” he said sadly. He’d been watching for activity the whole time.

  “Nope. And the pilot is still only hearing radio call signs out over the Atlantic. The nearest working tower is apparently in extreme eastern Canada. Newfoundland, if I recall.”

  “Shit, this keeps growing,” he said with awe. “I’ll go wherever you tell me, ma’am. I’ll get in there and report what I find.”

  “Do you want any help out there?” she asked.

  He turned to gaze at the still roads down below. Having a wingman was usually a good thing, but his partner had died on the last outing, and he wasn’t sure he could deal with losing someone else. Being alone would probably make him harder to spot.

  “Nah, I found that running truck without even trying. The highways are filled with cars that are in the medians and off to the sides. It should be a simple matter of picking one and driving it the thirty miles to the White House. I’m not paying any tolls, though.”

  She thought he was serious at first. He could tell by her expression. However, when she figured out he was joking, all he got was a sad headshake.

  Emily replied in a serious voice. “And here I thought you were a Boy Scout.”

  They shared a brief moment, then she turned back around.

  Eventually, the plane went up to a safer altitude, which seemed to make everyone feel better. After an hour of flying in random circles north of Washington D.C., Ted and the others met in the conference room for the final plan.

  The vice president, the general, Mr. Auger, and a handful of aides were in the room. Emily stood at the front of the wooden table and gave out the details.

  “Major MacInnis has volunteered to debark the plane when we touch down at Dulles. He’ll be responsible for finding a car, driving it through Tyson’s Corner, and then into DC. His singular mission is to visually confirm President Tanager is dead. If possible, he is to find and identify his…clothing.”

  She didn’t seem comfortable describing it.

  “I recommend snapping photos with your phone, if you’ll take one.”

  “I will, ma’am,” Ted replied.

  Emily nodded and maintained her professional face. “People, this is important because we have no idea what’s going on out there. If the president is gone, it means I’ve got to renumber this plane.”

  People nervously chuckled with her.

  “And it means your lives will become more complicated, do you understand? We have to figure out who did this to us, assuming it was a who.”

  Ted cocked his head, which she noticed.

  “I honestly don’t know how this could have happened. The general was right: this could not have been a weapon because no one has this kind of technology. Was it aliens? Was it a heavenly creator? Maybe it was the devil…”

  In his view, it had to be human-caused mayhem. If a nation secretly built a weapon that could wipe out the country in a heartbeat, they’d use it. Those guys with guns weren’t acting alone.

  “Pfft,” the general interjected. “If this is God’s doing, I’d say he was pretty sloppy. Why are we on this plane still around? Why only attack our home turf and not the rest of the world?”

  “You have ideas, sir?” the veep replied.

  “My comms guys have confirmation from our bases around the world. All of them are solid. Unhurt. Unchanged. No responses are coming from the lower forty-eight states, but we’ve made contact with a training unit on the North Slope of Alaska and we’ve established the base at Pearl, in Hawaii, is still fully functional. No one in Hawaii has been touched.”

  He laughed.

  “So, unless you’re telling me God stole every American except those beach combers out in the Aloha State, I’d say we have to look somewhere else for answers. My bet is a rogue nation.”

  Ted was behind the general one hundred percent.

  “That’s why I want to send one of my people with Major MacInnis on this mission.”

  That caught Ted off guard. He sat up in his chair. “Sir, I’d really prefer—”

  “I don’t care. No one goes out alone. You know that, pilot.” It always came down to backups of backups.

  He clamped his teeth shut and briefly considered passing a look to Vice President Williams. He was certain she would back him up if he pressed her on letting him go alone, but he decided not to put her into that position. He was part of a chain of command, and even though the Army brigadier general wasn’t his direct supervisor, he was in charge.

  “Yes, sir,” he said in a dutiful tone.

  “It’s settled then,” the VP remarked. “I’ll tell the pilot to initiate the landing. While we wait for touchdown, I suggest we all say a few words to our higher powers. There is nothing moving out there. Nothing. For now, it doesn’t matter what caused it. We’re all going to need help picking up the pieces.”

  “Amen,” Ted replied.

  Bonne Terre, MO

  Tabby stopped the motor again and let the pontoon boat drift for a while. She pulled out the key and spun sideways on her captain’s chair. Immediately, a little of the smell came back, but it wasn’t as strong, and her eyes weren’t burning. It was almost as if the boat dragged it along behind them. For the kids’ sake, she ignored the implications.

  “You guys want—”

  Audrey shivered uncontrollably.

  “What is it, honey?”

  “I’m freezing,” she replied.

  Tabby kept her face neutral. Dad always advised schools to tell their kids to dress warm for the mine. It was a constant 65, but it was always damp. It chilled people to the bone when they were in there for an hour. That was why she wore her stretch pants, long-sleeved shirt, and a fleece jacket.

  Audrey was dressed for the beach. Tabby badly wanted to ask the girl if she even glanced at the recommended attire section of the waiver sent to each student, but that wouldn’t change the hand she’d been dealt.

  “Here, take my warmy,” she offered. “I wish you would have said something earlier.”

  The boat ride, slow as it was, must have made the chill even worse.

  “Thank you,” Audrey said as she took the coat. “I’m also feeling the effects of my, uh, diabetes. I really need to get to my backpack.”

  “Would it help if you had a snack bar? We keep a few on the boat.” She reached into a small glove box under the steering wheel. “For the children.”

  Audrey smiled and took it, but she crinkled her nose a few moments later. The chemical spill wasn’t letting up. It was like the smell of a forest fire traveling on the wind miles away from actual flames.

  Tabby tried to be nonchalant. “Hey, how are you guys with swimming? It’s summer and all. I figure you three would spend time doing fun-in-the-sun type stuff.”

  Peter harrumphed. “You must think we’re fourth graders. You bring us out here on the boat, loaded with SCUBA gear, and then you ask if we can swim. You are going to throw us in the water, aren’t you?”

  Audrey moved closer to Peter, though there already wasn’t much space between them. The boy seemed to revel in it.

  “No,” she said a bit defensively. “I’m not throwing anyone over the side, but I keep smelling that stinky stuff from the burning chemical. I think we should put on the oxygen tanks and breathe from them again. That should tide us over until the smell goes away.”

  “Oh,” he replied. “That’s different.”

  She got one of the tanks. “Who wants to be first?”

  Audrey and Peter looked at each other, but Donovan was seated toward the front. He raised his hand immediately.

  “Okay, let me show you how it’s done,” she said with haste.

  While she helped the young boy get in the harness and cinch it around his waist, she kept her eye on Audrey. The jacket helped a little, but her short shorts left her legs exposed and vulnerable. Her shivering continued.

  After pulling the regulator over his shoulder and holding it next to Donovan’s face, she coughed. The gas was getting stronger, but she played
it off as if she wanted everyone’s attention.

  “This is so easy to use. I’ve adjusted each of these, so they’ll provide air when you breathe normally through this mouthguard. It helps a lot if you try to relax. Like, go Zen, or something.” She coughed so hard it made her eyes water. The odor was definitely getting worse again.

  Donovan put the mouthpiece in, but then spat it back out. “Eww, it tastes like a frisbee!”

  Tabby flung her head back like she was horrified. “How do you know what a frisbee tastes like?”

  He didn’t miss a beat. “Now you know, too. It tastes like one of these. Yuck.”

  Peter laughed. “It’s a hick thing, you wouldn’t understand. Just put it in, Donny, you big baby.” He hacked up a cough after he’d said it, instantly worrying Tabby.

  “Okay, y’all. Please get into these as fast as you can. The air isn’t as good as I thought back here.”

  She expertly put on her own tank, strapped it up, and took a drag off the regulator to make sure it was working all right. It made her light-headed how fresh it was, compared to the poisoned air around her.

  It took a few more minutes to get Audrey and Peter ready to go, but when she had the three of them in their harnesses, she gave them the thumbs-up sign. They practically gulped down the clean air.

  Tabby popped out her mouthpiece. “Guys, breathe normally, okay? I know it’s really hard when you’re scared, but I assure you there is nothing to worry about as long as we have these tanks on. Just sit in the boat and take it easy. Close your eyes to protect them. We’ll get through this.”

  They all returned to where they’d been sitting before. She thought it was actually cute seeing Audrey and Peter no longer pretending they didn’t like each other; they held hands as they waited.

  For her, however, the interlude gave her time to think of how she’d taken them all the way to the back wall of the place and they still weren’t in the clear. She had to think of how to save them, if the situation didn’t improve.

  Tabby shined her light directly down into the water. The black shape of the sunken train was barely visible in the darkness thirty feet below. The ancient piece of equipment had long fallen off its track and was now useless in the gravel.