What's Left of My World (Book 1)

by C. A. Rudolph

  “I take it that you know these woods pretty well?” Christian pondered.

  “Like my backyard,” Lauren responded confidently with a nod.

  “You must live close then—again, not pressing you for info, just an observation.”

  “Not really,” she said as she shook her head. “It’s about two or three miles as the crow flies…makes it ten miles or so on foot. Pretty treacherous in spots, too.”

  “Ah. So it is your backyard,” Christian said.

  “For about a year now,” Lauren offered. “We used to live in Winchester. When things got bad in our neighborhood, we moved to Woodstock to be with my grandparents. Things got bad there, so we came here.”

  “What happened to make you leave home?” he probed, “if you don’t mind me asking…my throat is drying out from all this talking. Need to take a break and hydrate.”

  “I don’t mind at all, actually.” Lauren paused, took a deep breath and exhaled. She decided to give in. “We got caught keeping to ourselves,” she said with a sigh and raised eyebrows. “A few weeks into the event, a bunch of our neighbors were trying to start a socialist micro economy. They wanted everyone to join and combine resources for the ‘greater good of the neighborhood’. We just ignored them and didn’t budge. We had enough stored to go on our own for a while, and possibly ride it out. We stayed in our own yard, ate our own food, and drank our own water. We had stored food and we pulled water with a hand-crank well. We had a garden, a pantry full of food, and a chicken coop. We didn’t ask for anything from anyone, and that wasn’t cool with everyone. Before long, it became obvious that we had something that everyone else didn’t.” She paused. “My dad was one of those crazy conspiracy-theorist prepper types that everyone hated—that is, until the shit hit the fan…then everyone wanted a piece of what we had.”

  Christian nodded and stirred the rice and beans as the pot began to boil. “Sounds familiar. You were guilty because you were more prepared than they were,” he said.

  “Exactly. People who didn’t prepare, suddenly thought we owed them something because we did. Absolute fucking bullshit progressive America.” Lauren paused. “So one day, I guess about three months after the collapse, the pot boiled over. A huge group of people came to our house, looking like they were going to start a riot. They demanded to come inside or they were going to burn the house to the ground with us in it. They also had found out somehow, that my dad never made it home from work and it was just my mom, my older sister, and me. They took that to mean that we were defenseless. Well, they thought wrong.”

  Christian stopped stirring the rice and beans and looked at Lauren’s eyes which were gazing deeply into the fire. A tear rolled out of her left eye and she quickly wiped it away. She looked up just as he looked away, not wanting for her to notice that he had seen the sudden emotion. Lauren composed herself quickly and continued.

  “The self-appointed leader of the neighborhood was our next-door neighbor and believe me when I tell you, he was a total bastard,” Lauren said. “He owned a wholesale restaurant supply store downtown and won everyone’s loyalty when he delivered his food and drink stock to them, which I have to say was pretty substantial. But that of course, meant that they owed him, so people pretty much did whatever he asked them to. Take care of this for me and here’s a six-pack of beer. Do this and here’s some pasta or some beer. He managed to curry favor with just about everyone, except us because we weren’t buying what he was selling. He also constantly made passes at my mom, in an effort to get inside our house. He figured since my dad wasn’t there, she needed a man to help her. She wasn’t having it, though.”

  “What happened?” Christian asked.

  Lauren paused and swallowed over a lump in her throat. “I shot him,” she uttered softly. “I shot him in the head.”

  “Wow,” Christian said in a low, comforting tone allowing Lauren to pause. “I’m sorry. It’s not easy taking a life.”

  “He deserved it. He forced his way into our house that day and went right after my mom. She was fighting him off, but he was bigger than her. She was yelling for help and no one would help her. The entire group stood outside our front door, watching him hit her and did nothing. My mom managed to push him off of her and that’s when I turned the corner and shot him. Then, I went outside and told the crowd that if they didn’t get off our property, I would kill every single one of them. They didn’t believe me at first and started yelling that they were going to take us until my sister brought me this,” Lauren said as she pointed at her AR-15 beside her. “Somehow, they got the picture and dispersed, but we knew that was only the beginning. We knew that eventually, whatever he had given them would run out, and when they got hungry they’d become more and more desperate. They would try anything to get what we had. So, we packed up and left that night. We met up with a few close family friends and booked it to my grandparents’ house.”

  “Sorry to hear that happened,” Christian offered, “but you made the right decision. There’s no recovering normal again after something like that. It would have only led to more violence. Neighborhoods use to be the safest places.”

  “Yeah, they used to be. My dad used to preach about being the first to act in a life-or-death situation like that,” she said. “He used to say reaction is always slower than action.”

  “Your father is a smart man,” Christian said.

  “Yes, he is.” She paused with raised eyebrows. “I miss him,” Lauren said quietly as she looked away with a sullen smile.

  The two said nothing for a couple of minutes. The wind continued to pick up speed as it rushed through the valley. It was completely dark now and aside from the wind and occasional crackle of the fire, the water in Cedar Creek could be heard rushing over the rocks.

  “Any idea where he is, or what happened?”

  “He never came home, that’s all I know. He was working at a job site in Washington DC on the day of the collapse. I know the cities were the first places that the craziness and panic would start—it was bad enough in our little hick town that day. People literally went nuts when they realized there wasn’t any internet and their cell phones didn’t work. The grocery store a mile away from our house was looted after the first day. People lost their minds when there wasn’t any more food. I can’t imagine what it was like in a big city.”

  “Maybe he made it out,” Christian said. “Maybe he’s still trying to get to you and your family.”

  “We’ve pretty much lost hope in that,” she muttered. “We’re all so spread out now. He would’ve had to make it here on foot and not knowing where we were, he’d have to make several stops—that’s even if he made it out of Washington.” She paused. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore, ok? I’ve done enough crying.”

  “Ok,” Christian relented. “So, your grandparents—you made it there and then what happened?”

  “It was fine for a while, but people started acting shady and downright dangerous. My granddad had plenty of food and a lot of weapons. He was a prepper just like Dad. We could protect ourselves from most people, but it wasn’t long before we started noticing federal agents in the streets. They were dressed in riot gear and they all were carrying weapons. It went from bad to worse. Signs started going up about the entire state of Virginia being under martial law because of the riots happening around DC, and the federal government came in and started taking over everything. A DHS agent came to our house one day and said they were empowered by executive order to search our house. He said they were going to impound our truck because it ran. Then, he said they were going confiscate guns, and anyone caught with large food supplies would be taken into custody and their food supplies would be seized.”

  “Yep,” Christian said. “You’d be charged with hoarding. It’s a crime against the state, punishable by incarceration. Possession of a firearm is even worse—it can be punishable by death now.”

  “Yeah. Suffice it to say, we were more than freaked out. My grandfather played dumb and the f
irst chance we got, he sent us into the mountains in West Virginia to our family’s cabin,” she said. “We’ve been here ever since. I still don’t know how we managed to get away, but I’m thankful we did.”

  “You were lucky. Woodstock has changed quite a bit. Massanutten Military Academy has been turned into a regional headquarters for FEMA and the DHS.” Christian said.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “And—the area that surrounds the three schools from Route 11 all the way to the Interstate is where the camp is,” he said. “Fifteen foot high double fences with razor wire surrounds the entire compound.”

  “I guess they needed a place to put all those people,” Lauren said.

  “It’s just a place where they can controlled—where they can be used for manual labor until they die,” Christian said unapologetically. He placed the lid on the cook pot and set it off to the side of the fire. “That’s where the town is now, well, what’s left of it. Most people have been forced out of their homes and if they haven’t, it won’t be long before DHS gets to them. There’s a barricade with heavily armed guards at the I81 bridge and at both ends of town on Route 11. They have automatic weapons and have been instructed to use lethal force, if they deem it necessary.”

  Lauren sat up and adjusted her posture. Her Glock was now laying on the ground beside her, no longer in her hand. Her guard was down at this point, whether she liked it or not. It was obvious now that this person was quite possibly someone she could indeed trust. He definitely was a wealth of information, which was scarce in the times they were living in.

  “I guess, I just don’t understand what all of this is about,” Lauren said. “Why aren’t they helping?”

  “It’s about control,” Christian said. “It’s the mantra of every totalitarian regime in history. Like I said—more for them and less for you. Control the population…make them reliant. Give them a little bit of something, provide for them, allow them to become dependent little worker bees. There’s a lot of people out there who want to be told what to do. They’ll do anything just to have a place to sleep and three squares a day—totally willing to give up their freedom to feel secure and taken care of.”

  “It’s prison,” Lauren offered. “People are working to be prisoners and calling it survival.”

  “Yes. And most are doing so willingly,” Christian said. “We’re talking about people who would probably even fight us if we tried to free them because they don’t know how to take care of themselves on their own. I mean—can you imagine living the rest of your life in captivity for doing nothing wrong? I sure can’t.”

  “That is so fucked up.”

  “I don’t disagree,” he said.

  “What about the Police, Sheriff’s Departments, and the damn military? Why aren’t they doing anything?”

  “Some of them did from what I gather,” Christian said. “I know some officers were federalized into DHS agents and went directly to work for DHS. Others abandoned their posts to take care of their families, and most of those guys ended up being rounded up. They are now living in the camp with zero privileges. There’s supposedly several citizen movements against the federal government out west that involves several companies of National Guard, Army and Marines, along with veterans, Oath Keepers and militia groups. The areas of the country that were unaffected by the EMP strikes are referred to as the Promised Land, or the Redoubt. They were letting in refugees for a while, but they had to stop because they couldn’t support all of the people in need. It’s rumored there’s a civil war going on out there now because of it. We’re so far away, it’s not even worth considering or hoping for. Truth is, Lauren, we are all on our own here and could be for a long time.”

  Lauren closed her eyes and shook her head slowly in response to what was being said. She didn’t want to believe this was really happening to her country. Once the rice and beans were ready to be eaten, Christian spooned out a portion of the food into a bowl that had been nestled inside of Lauren’s cook pot. He handed her the bowl of steaming rice and beans. Lauren reached into her waist pack and pulled out the remainder of the deer jerky she had been snacking on all day and handed some to Christian. She also pulled out a titanium spork and placed it into the bowl along with the deer jerky.

  “Is this what I think it is?” he asked.

  “If you think it’s deer jerky, then yes.”

  “Wow. I haven’t had venison in a very long time.”

  “The valley we live in is full of deer. It makes up the majority of the meat we eat now,” Lauren said.

  Christian noticed she had mixed the jerky in with the rice and beans and did the same. He pushed his spork into the mixture and took a bite. Lauren was devouring her meal. The long day of hiking had had a profound effect on her appetite.

  “Lauren, I don’t want to continue being the bearer of bad news, but I have to tell you that life as you knew it, as I knew it—normal every day American life is just gone,” Christian said grimly. “We aren’t free anymore, and it looks like they’ve won. If you ever read books or saw movies about the concentration camps in Nazi Germany, that’s the best visual I can offer you for the current conditions. It’s authoritarian control. And it’s like that in populated areas now, all over the state. Soon, it will come to the rural areas. No one is safe from it.” He paused. “Every day, the camp sends out patrols that go out to an area of homes, looking for people who are holing up. If the inhabitants don’t go peacefully, they are taken by force. Their homes are ransacked and anything martial law has deemed illegal is taken. If they find weapons that haven’t been turned in, they take them and put the owner in solitary confinement.”

  “Unbelievable,” Lauren said almost under her breath. “So, we really can never go back.”

  “It doesn’t look like it,” he said. “But if you could, would you?”

  “That’s an impossible question to answer for me,” she said. “Living like this is hard, but at least we are free. I miss the world the way it was. I miss so many things about it I can’t begin to think of them all. I just want to be free. I want my family to be free and I want them to leave us alone.”

  Christian paused. “I don’t want to believe it any more than you do, but they will come for us. For you, me, and everyone you know that is living free right now. They won’t allow it to happen for much longer.”

  “I don’t want to hear that,” Lauren said, “understand—my family and my neighbors mean everything to me. They are my entire world.”

  “You need to hear it. And you and your family and neighbors need to be ready,” he said sternly.

  “We don’t have anywhere else to go, Christian,” Lauren said. “We’ve moved twice already and we actually feel safe now where we are at. We have good neighbors who subsist along with us. We help each other and we watch each other’s backs. There are people out there who try to take what we have, and they have yet to be successful because we stick together and fight. If that’s what it takes to live in this world, then I’m all for it. But I’m not just going to bow down to what these men in black uniforms tell us we have to do. To hell with that. I’ll fight them.” She paused. “I would rather die than be a slave.”

  “I agree. I’m not interested in being told how I have to live either,” Christian offered. “My problem now is…I don’t have any other choice. Either I find a new way, or I’m dead. They know me and after what’s happened, they will kill me if they catch me.” He paused. “And I have no doubt, they will find the worst way possible to do so.”

  Lauren said nothing as the feeling of hopelessness overcame her. There was a pause before Christian asked, “How big is your group?” just before taking in a large bite of food.

  Despite reaching a fair level of trust with him, Lauren cringed upon hearing his curiosity concerning her family. She began to think of how this encounter would end and what could happen if she brought this stranger home with her, and the possible repercussions not only from her own family, but from the community as a whole who
did not take kindly to outsiders. Despite appearances, his true intentions remained hidden to her. He could easily be one of them. She knew that Christian could be an asset, but just as easily could be a Trojan horse for the DHS, and the next thing he infiltrated would be her community. Maybe that was his mission. Maybe it wasn’t.

  “Big enough,” she said.

  Christian paused and held a hand up in surrender. “Look, I’m not trying to join you. I just want to help if I can,” Christian said slowly. “I think we can help each other.”

  “Joining us is impossible,” Lauren said as she shook her head. “I have no idea if the community would accept you…they are leery of outsiders and the people in my group know each other and have for years. We are blood to one another. We have a trust built on longevity, something you and I do not have at the moment.”

  An uncomfortable silence befell the two as Lauren put her hand on the Glock handgun that had sat on the ground during the last part of the conversation. Her mind didn’t know what to think or what to do, and on top of it all, she was exhausted. Christian had been through quite a lot as well in the past day. He placed both of his hands over the fire pit and shivered a bit. He wasn’t dressed for the weather and wasn’t wearing a jacket or even a hat.

  “So, what happens now?” Christian asked as he stared into the fire with no visible emotion.

  “I don’t know,” Lauren said. “This whole thing is a lot to take in. I don’t know what to do about this or about you or about anything right now. I know that it’s dark now, and my family will be worried that I’m not home with them. I shouldn’t have stayed. I shouldn’t have gone this far away from home. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.”

  Lauren reached into the top of her backpack again and pulled out a roll-top stuff sack that held her sleeping bag. She then pulled out a smaller stuff sack and tossed it to Christian. He picked it up off the ground and looked at it.