Empty Cities

by E. E. Isherwood

  Once it got dark, the skies seemed to settle down. Now, in the fourth-floor apartment, he thought they’d avoided the worst of it and could get some rest.

  He stayed on his feet a little longer, keeping watch out the rear sliding door. Outside, a large swath of blackness was between them and the city across the East River. Fires burned over there, but it was most intense in the area where he estimated Rebecca had lived.

  “This is our last chance, you know.”

  “For what?” she asked.

  “To go north on the roads. We could cross the Throgs Neck Bridge and slip over into Connecticut. From there, we could go up the coast like we’d discussed.” He was exhausted, and his voice was hoarse from shouting much of the day. However, Emily was his boss, and he needed to give her options for their escape.

  “No. We can’t. If you saw your niece, we need to get you to her.”

  “Emily,” he said tiredly, “I can’t base our whole mission on my desire to find her. The safe play is to get as far from the big cities as we can, then go north to Canada.”

  It was almost painful to lie to her, because he desperately wanted to find out where the helicopter went, especially after seeing Rebecca’s neighborhood burn to ash. He’d made a promise to his sis he intended to keep, but, as a major in the United States Air Force, he constantly had to prioritize. It wasn’t yet time to bail on his duty.

  “You aren’t basing it on that alone.” She stood up and strode over to be next to him. “Ted, I can hear it in your voice. I see how you look at the city out this window. All you can think about is your niece.”

  “No, I—”

  She shushed him. “As Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, I order you to take me to Montauk, at the far end of Long Island. There, we will either find my husband’s family yacht, or we’ll steal another plane.”

  “There’s an airfield?” he said with excitement.

  “Yep. A couple, actually. One is where I’ve done some skydiving. They’re small, but they should have what we need.”

  “So,” he said with understanding, “we’ll have options when we get out there.”

  She bumped him on the hip. “We can fly, take a boat, or hunker down. See? My orders make perfect sense.”

  “Yeah, I guess they do. Hmm, this should help your performance evaluation.” He pretended to hold a pen and paper. “Needs work on physical fitness but has firm grip of planning ahead.”

  “What? No! I’m evaluating you. Not the other way around.” She mimicked his notepad routine. “Flight skills, top notch. High marks for evasion from bad guys. Physical appearance, presentable. Refuses to admit he wants to find his niece. Black mark for that.” She made an exaggerated check mark in the air, giggling the whole time.

  His exhaustion conspired with the soft lights of the living room to make him see her not as his boss, or the President of the United States, but as a pretty companion. For a few seconds longer than he knew was appropriate, he locked eyes with her.

  Ted’s heart pumped as fast as it did during any of the escapes they’d survived today. He wanted to tell her how right she was about Kyla. About how he worried he was going to get Emily captured by making a mistake. And, if he was listening to his fast-pumping heart, he wanted to tell her that it wasn’t only the romantic light making her glow.

  She didn’t break his gaze, and for a few seconds, he considered leaning in to kiss her. No matter what he ever thought of her politics, he could never deny the petite brunette was attractive. Plus, if you couldn’t find love in the aftermath of World War III, where could you find it?

  But before he could make good on his feelings, the television set came to life. She looked at him for a couple of extra seconds, but then she turned to the TV. A middle-aged man in a black jumpsuit sat behind a desk in the oval office of the White House.

  Emily appeared stunned. “What the flock is he doing there?”

  The Bad Place

  Deogee found herself pinned underneath her new human. She wasn’t anything like her last owner—she didn’t run, throw the ball, or take her to the park with all the other dogs. That was why it shocked her when she became agitated and tried to run from the strange floaty thing. It surprised her even more when she fell on top and crushed her to the smelly grass.

  “Ouch!” she complained.

  A strange heat brushed her fur, though only for a bark or two. It stung the worst anywhere the human wasn’t shielding her. It smelled strange, like a fire, but also like the mechanical juice left on roadways by cars. Before she could pin down the odor, the fire receded.

  She squirmed out from underneath the human, hoping this meant they would play some more. However, she had to force her own voice to stay silent because of all the pain in her rump where the fire burned the worst.

  When she’d finally made it out, she turned to see a fallen tree and lots of hot fire. She was on the edge of it, glad she didn’t have to run. Her legs shook terribly, and her ears hardly worked.

  “Come on!” she barked. “Get up!”

  The human was covered in black marks, and some of her coverings had the fire on it. She looked a lot different than she did a moment ago, though she smelled the same.

  No, there was something different. Deogee sniffed until she figured it out. It was the smell of death.

  “Not again!” she whined.

  Deogee paced around her lost friend for a long time, saddened at how the fire had taken her, even as she figured out the kindly woman had probably given her life so that she might go on.

  The fires were smoldering down to nothing when she finally got the courage to leave.

  She limped over to the clothing of her prior friend. One sunrise ago, she and Melissa were walking the neighborhood, as they always did, and the human had disappeared mid-stride. All she’d left behind were the coverings she’d always used in place of fur. And those had blown into the nearby bushes, making it hard for her to remember her human’s scent.

  “Is it me?” she wondered. “Did I get my friendly humans killed?”

  The world had been a noisy place, at least until Melissa went away. Now, it was silent, which spooked her.

  “I don’t want to be alone…”

  Deogee walked around the property of the convent, barely noticing the white machine flying by as it left. She searched for another human she remembered as coming to the bad place before the fire struck.

  There were four of them, and one of the youngest females slathered herself with a flowery scent. Deogee didn’t particularly like it, but it was so powerful, she easily found it near the parking lot.

  “She left the bad place,” she thought. If she could get away from where two of her humans perished, so much the better.

  “So nice of the girl to leave a trail.”

  She ran into the street, ignoring the pain of the burns.

  Deogee made one stop at her friend Biscuit’s house. She was the pretty black lab she and her human had briefly freed a short time earlier. She stood up on her hind legs and pressed the latch on the front door, as her human had done.

  When the door opened, her loneliness went away.

  No one was around to complain about all the playful barking.

  Queens, NY

  “Greetings, fellow human beings. I was once known as Dr. Jayden Phillips—a college professor, Nobel-prize-winning physicist, multi-million-selling self-help author, industrialist, and, my personal favorite, Time magazine’s person of the year…”

  “You know who he is?” he asked during a pause in the guy’s speech. The man looked familiar, like he’d been on cable news channels many times before this, but Ted only caught the news while running through airports, so his recollection wasn’t good.

  “Mr. Phillips runs Southern Cross Industries. They have their hand in everything—robotics, finance, computers, radio, space launches, and the guy’s immense self-help publishing empire. He’s been to the White House numerous times seeking tax breaks from President Tanager.”

&n
bsp; The man’s speech continued, and he referenced himself as David and America as Goliath. He talked about taking down the nation and offering up the remains to the rest of the world. Then he gave his ultimatum to other countries to kick out the surviving citizens of the United States.

  “Fuck,” Ted remarked when it looked like it was over. “We have to do something.” It wasn’t enough that this asshole had wiped out everyone on the continent. He wanted to finish the job overseas.

  “Wait—” Emily leaned close to the television. “I don’t think he’s in the real Oval Office.”

  “Are you sure?” he said, glancing at the image.

  “That’s the wrong desk. Believe it or not, it’s a big deal for a president to change where he sits. Several recent presidents sat at the Resolute desk. Tanager wanted to break with tradition, so he—”

  “Built his own,” Ted finished.

  “You nailed it.”

  “So, is this guy in a replica Oval Office?”

  “Almost certainly,” she replied. “I’ve been to a few. It’s one of those things VPs get to do. I take tours, get my picture taken with donors, and so on. I look like I’m doing something, you know?”

  He acknowledged her, remembering his second-class role for so many years.

  She went on. “There’s a replica in the Bush Library in Texas. There’s one in Virginia. Some private citizens have built their own. But I think this creep was broadcasting from Cheyenne Mountain, in Colorado.”

  “NORAD?”

  “Yes. I’ve been there on one of my tours.” She chuckled as if remembering those simple times. “But it is underground, so the curtains have to be drawn, like we just saw. And, if you really pay attention, the light never looks quite right outside the drapes. That’s because it’s fake.”

  “Wow. You have an eye for detail.”

  She patted her hair as if trying to get it to look perfect. “Trust me, when you are in the public eye twenty-four/seven, and they take endless photos, you take notice of good and bad light.”

  “Sounds like a lower circle of Hell if you ask me.”

  Emily shrugged.

  The speech ended and the signal faded back to the colored bars on the screen, prompting Ted to wonder how the transmission reached them in the first place. “If he killed everyone in these homes, why is this guy talking to us?”

  She seemed to think on it. “We saw all those people in Newark. Maybe he’s talking to them, but we are in the same viewing area.”

  He paced across the room. “Yeah. They’re trying to take over. They’ve somehow snuck in while we were busy dying. But this signal had to be sent with the help of technicians at the cable company, right? Someone has to be monitoring things there. Maybe we can hunt them down and confirm this David guy is transmitting from NORAD. If we can take him out…”

  Emily gave him a sideways look. “Just the two of us?” She got out her fake pen and paper. “Note to self: subject wants to win war single-handedly.”

  Ted smirked but didn’t let her diminish his enthusiasm for solving the riddle. He followed the wires from behind the television to what he assumed was going to be a cable box. However, they went to a small white piece of equipment painted with a fancy S logo. “Oh, shit. This isn’t a cable television.”

  “Satellite?” she asked.

  “Not satellite, exactly. You said this guy was into everything. I don’t suppose he was in with Southern Solar, was he?”

  “I think so. Yes. All of his companies have the word southern in them. His publishing company was Southern Stacks, or something. I think his wife is from New Zealand and he likes things from south of the equator. Why? What are you thinking?”

  He organized his thoughts. “I know what radio station we’ve been hearing the past couple of days. It isn’t Super One Hundred. It’s Southern One Hundred. I thought they were different stations as we moved from city to city, but it was always the same one. The transmitter for S-O-H, FM, covers many states. That’s because it’s high in the air on an autonomous flying solar platform.”

  As a pilot, he was aware of the numerous solar aircraft that plied the skies without ever landing, but they were seventy thousand feet in the air. Far above the commercial and military lanes he flew.

  “I’ve heard of those. They stay in the air for years at a time.”

  “Yep. They have wingspans longer than a football field, and there’s a whole fleet of them up there. I bet he owns most of them.”

  She snapped her fingers like he was on to something. “He kept the radio playing because he owns the transmitter.”

  “He’s consolidated his position. Moved to the central US…” Ted knew he sounded deflated, because knowing who killed the nation wouldn’t bring back those children he and Emily saw in the city. “And a guy with his resources could probably figure out what to do with the nuclear briefcase. I bet Ramirez took it right to him.”

  She exhaled, then grabbed his hand. “Sit down, please.” She pointed to the sofa.

  “What?” he remarked as he crashed onto the couch like a pallet of bricks.

  “Ted, just listen,” she insisted.

  He did as she asked, then, based on her impatient tone, looked up at her with reservation. It seemed like she might scold him, possibly because she’d figured out he was winging this whole operation.

  Emily stood in front of him but leaned close. She looked him in the eyes with a mix of sorrow and gratitude, then gave him a peck on the lips, taking him wildly by surprise.

  “What the? Ma’am? What—”

  Emily laughed. “I know things look bad outside, but we’re not going to win the war with you falling asleep on your feet. You crash here on the couch. I’ll take the little bed in the other room.” She stood up straight. “And thanks for giving me space today when we found my husband. That’s why I kissed you. Tomorrow, I might even hold your hand and be seen with you in public.”

  He was at a loss for what to say.

  Emily pulled out her fake notebook. “Dear diary, I found out how to make Major Ted MacInnis go totally silent. A first.”

  That broke the logjam in his mind, and he let go with a hearty laugh.

  Ted leaned back on the couch, content to survive another day.

  Kyla was alive, too.

  And he now knew who was going to pay for destroying the country. The David fellow might have thought he was safe from retaliation, but he wasn’t. No matter how long it took, Ted intended to find out how he’d killed everyone. Then, it was time for payback.

  That fight would start tomorrow.

  ###

  To Be Continued in Minus America, Book 3

  If you enjoyed this second book, please leave a review. Since this is a new series for me, I need to decide if there is enough reader interest for me to write more books in this world. I’m working on book 3 as you read this, and I would love to write books beyond number 3, but only if I can still feed my guinea pig, hamster, corn snake, leopard gecko, cattle dog mutt, and, not be left out, myself and my family. So, you see, your review is literally mission critical!

  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.

  Minus America (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 July 9, 2019

  Thank you for reading book 2. At the risk of coming across with the m
usical grace of a dinner triangle, I hope you can take a moment to review this book on Amazon. Each review puts me closer to success, no matter how many reviews are already out there for this book. So, I’ll take a minute to pause this note while you crank that out…

  All good? Thank you!

  I love the element of randomness in my books. You never know what’s going to be around the next corner, and, I hope, characters experience challenges and behave in ways that might surprise you. I got a kick out of Dwight’s decision to sit in the crosswalk, because he thought he was invisible. And being guided by an imaginary bird was another piece that just seemed to fit him.

  If everyone around us disappeared one day, I’d guess we’d all have some unique takes on what might have caused it.

  Speaking of causes, we now know a little about who was behind the attack on America, though not why, or how. One of my poorest reviews for book 1 complained that I did not reveal the details of the attack up front. That’s a fair criticism, but I prefer to let the characters discover things on their own, and because I like to follow events in near real-time, it wouldn’t fit the story if they wrapped up all the mystery in the first twenty-four hours. Like any good conspiracy, it must be unwrapped in layers.

  On a related point about cause and effect, and as a student of history, I often wonder if humanity has ever developed a major weapon that it did not later use in warfare. We’ve used chemical weapons of the worst kind in the First World War. We’ve excelled at biological warfare (poisoning wells since antiquity, throwing plague-ravaged bodies at the enemy in the Middle Ages, and using bombs filled with fleas carrying bubonic plague during the 1940s). We’ve also harnessed and then weaponized the atom to destroy entire cities.

  The scale of destruction has gone ever upward, so creating a weapon capable of destroying a continent can’t be far away. We’re going to need some good guys keeping watch on those military science experiments, don’t you think?