“I didn’t mean it like that, Christian,” Lauren said quietly. As she attempted to sit up, Christian held up a hand.
“I was kidding. Seriously, take a load off. I’ll get all of our gear inside and get some food going,” Christian assured her.
Lauren smiled. She truly felt now that she had managed to find a friend in Christian. He had saved her life and was now helping to take care of her in an injured state. It was endearing. It was almost like having an older brother around again. Her own older brother was a half-brother that she didn’t see very often, due to their living situation. He was a year younger than her half-sister Grace and was a student at a local community college. He had been living with his mother and step-father several miles outside of Winchester on the day of the collapse. She hadn’t seen him in at least a year before that day. She missed him because she grew up knowing him, and even though it pained her to lose touch with him, she knew there was nothing that could be done about it. She often wondered if she’d ever see him again. If she did, it would make her family all the more complete. She knew getting him back, and maybe someday seeing her dad again, would take nothing short of a miracle.
Christian dropped his backpack on the floor of the cabin and went to collect Lauren’s pack and rifle. Once he’d brought everything inside, he began to look around a bit. He picked up Lauren’s rifle and laid it beside her, moving her hand to the grip, so she knew it was there. He then placed her instant ice pack on her ankle and elevated it with some of the folded blankets at the foot of the cot. She didn’t complain and her eyes were still closed, but he doubted she was asleep. In his own backpack, he pulled out two MREs, opened the boxes and dumped the contents out onto the table.
“I’m going to forgo making a fire here,” he said. “I don’t want to draw any attention to us.”
“That’s fine. I don’t mind eating cold MRE stuff.”
“Well, it’s not exactly cold. My body heat took care of that for us,” Christian said.
“And that’s kinda gross,” Lauren said.
Opening a packet of macaroni and cheese, he placed a plastic spork into it. He said, “Here you go,” and handed it to Lauren. She sat up and began devouring its contents.
“My favorite,” she said with a mouth full of food.
“I figured you for a mac and cheese girl,” Christian said.
“I usually like mine with chopped up hot dogs, but in light of our situation, I can live without them,” Lauren said amusingly.
“There’s nothing more American than mac and cheese with cut up hot dogs,” he said with a smile, then asked, “Question, though—is there a water source close by? My water situation is getting pretty desperate.”
“Yeah, so is mine. There’s an old spring about a tenth of a mile down the hill on the left,” Lauren replied.
Christian nodded. He took a seat on one of the old wooden chairs and opened a packet of beef chili. “I have to say, I’m pretty worried about your ankle, Lauren.”
Lauren paused before replying, in order to swallow a bite of food. “It’s an old injury,” she said. “I’ve hurt this ankle pretty bad before.”
“Did it look like that?” he asked as he nodded toward her ankle, pointing out the purple blotches on her skin.
“Not that I remember,” she replied quietly. “I’m hoping it looks worse than it really is.”
“You might need to drop your pack entirely tomorrow and get some of that extra weight off of it. We can come back another time and retrieve it.”
“No. Forget it. I’m not leaving this pack behind,” Lauren said definitively.
“Ok,” Christian accepted. “It was just a suggestion.”
The two remained silent for a few minutes while they finished their entrees. Christian held up two more packets, one of mashed potatoes and one of rice. Lauren pointed to the potatoes and he handed the packet to her. He then tossed her a pack of crackers.
“This is almost like a gourmet meal,” Lauren said with a grin.
“Not used to this five-star menu, I take it?” Christian jested.
Lauren snickered. “When we moved here, we had a trailer on the back of our truck with about a year’s worth of food on it. My grandparents had another year of food already stored at our cabin—most of which was just rice and beans in five-gallon buckets. Dad was adamant about us having a long-term food storage system. He always said that if you control the food, you can control an entire population. He failed to mention how limited the options were.”
Christian nodded. “He’s right,” he said. “It’s astounding what a person is willing to do when they are starving. Even more so when someone they love is starving.”
Lauren took a bite of her potatoes and stirred the packet. “Dad said that too all the time,” she began. “He said that the best way to live free is to figure out how to live without technology, goods, and services. He also said having adequate firepower was absolutely vital to remain free.”
“I have got to meet this guy,” Christian said. He then looked at Lauren, who looked away. He remembered this was a touchy subject for her, so he decided to not to elaborate further.
“Christian, what happened to your dad?” Lauren asked after a long pause.
Christian sighed and nodded. “How did I know that question was coming…” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Lauren said quietly. “If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand. Lord knows, it hurts to talk about my dad, so if you want me to drop it, it’s cool.”
“My dad fought them and lost, Lauren,” Christian said. “They wanted to federalize his department and he wasn’t having it. It went from being handled diplomatically, to him being given no choice in the matter. When they came to dismantle the local government, he and all of his deputies tried to stop them from moving in. Homeland’s storm troopers marched into downtown with riot gear and mine-resistant vehicles to put down any armed resistance. I was there that day—working for DHS, of course. Some of the local police force fought alongside of the sheriffs, but they were no match for what DHS had.” He paused. “I watched my father get ripped apart by machine gun fire from one of those MRAPs. He died on the street in front of me and I couldn’t do anything about it. If I’d blown my cover, I would’ve died right beside him.”
“Oh my dear God,” Lauren said. She placed her hand over her mouth as her face presented a look of total astonishment.
Christian looked up at her. “I was on the wrong side, Lauren…I was on the wrong fucking side,” he said. “I should have fought with him. Instead, I was on the side that killed him.”
“But you didn’t kill him. They did,” Lauren pointed out.
“I didn’t do anything to stop it—” Christian began before he was interrupted.
“—Because it wasn’t in your power to do so,” Lauren said firmly. “You did what you did and saw what you saw for a reason, Christian. You can’t take it back, so just stop it. My dad isn’t here because of a lot of reasons—one being that he needed the overtime and was working when he normally wouldn’t have been. I fought the notion for a long time that maybe if I didn’t need so much stuff, he wouldn’t have needed to work so hard and he would have been with us, instead of a hundred miles away. All the stuff we needed then is useless now. It’s hard…trust me, I know. But I also know that you cannot blame yourself.”
“I have to do something to honor him. I have to avenge him somehow. But now, with my cover blown with DHS, I honestly have no idea how to go about it.”
Lauren scooted on the cot to get closer to Christian, who now looked very close to tears. She placed her hand on his shoulder. “He’d want you to live your life,” Lauren said. “He’d want you to survive and keep moving forward—just like my dad would want me to do.”
Christian looked down and then up again. He looked to Lauren, raised his eyebrows a bit and smiled at her gratefully. “I’m all alone now,” he said matter-of-factly.
Lauren shook her head in disagreement. “You were alone. Wer
e,” she said. “You saved me. Now, I owe you something in return. Let me help you like you helped me.”
Christian nodded and smiled. He stood up and helped Lauren lay back and get comfortable again. Knowing her ankle would need to be re-wrapped before they could move again, he pulled off the remaining pieces of athletic tape while she grimaced. He then placed the ice pack back on her ankle. He turned around and pulled the hydration bladder from Lauren’s pack and stuffed it into his.
“I’m going to head down the hill and get us some water,” he said. “After that, I’m going backtrack a bit and set up some booby traps.”
Lauren gave Christian a peculiar look and asked, “Booby traps?”
Christian reached into his backpack and pulled out the grenade carrier that he had pulled off one of the agents earlier that day. He opened it and showed its contents to Lauren, who looked them over with profound interest.
“Are those what I think they are?”
Christian smiled. “Yep. It’ll slow the bastards down when they come for us,” Christian said. “Once they see what happened back there, they’ll be coming for sure. Traps won’t keep them out of your backyard forever, but it’ll help. These little puppies will do quite a bit of damage.”
Lauren began remembering her encounter with the woman and her daughter the day before. She then said, “Christian, we can’t just set explosives in the woods. There’s innocent people out there who might get hurt.”
Christian looked at her, a bit confused. “You know this for a fact?”
“Yes. I met a mother and her daughter yesterday. They were foraging for food.”
“You’re sure they were friendly?”
“They didn’t have weapons,” Lauren replied.
“Fair enough, then. I’ll save them for something else. Get some sleep and keep your gun ready. I’ll call for you before coming back in. If anyone comes through this door but me, you know what to do.”
Christian gathered his pack and his rifle and walked outside of the cabin. Before closing the door behind him, he looked down at his calf which he had completely forgotten about. Lauren watched as he humbly shrugged his shoulders, sat down again and began to re-dress his injury.
As she rested her head on the pillow and closed her eyes, she could hear her companion fiddling with his first aid kit and the occasional bird chirping outside of the cabin. After a few minutes, she heard Christian secure the door. Deciding it was the safest she had felt in a while, she allowed herself to drift off to sleep.
When Lauren woke up, she could see light peeking through the shuttered windows of the cabin. The rest of the cabin was very dark. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she looked around and noticed that Christian wasn’t there with her. She hopped down from the cot, placing all of her weight on her good foot and reached for her rifle. With her right hand, she pulled the door open with her rifle at low-ready. When the door opened fully, the morning brightness quickly overtook her eyes. She looked to the right of the door and then to the left, where she saw him. Christian looked up at her with two very worn-out eyes. Lauren lowered her rifle and sighed in relief.
“Good morning, sunshine,” he said with an early-morning raspy voice.
“You scared me,” Lauren said. “Why didn’t you come inside?”
“I can’t see anything coming from in there,” Christian replied.
“Have you been up all night?” she asked.
“Pretty much,” he replied. “Even when I sleep, I don’t really sleep.”
“Well, you look exhausted,” Lauren affirmed.
Christian nodded. “How’s the ankle?”
Lauren looked down to her still swollen ankle that still had plenty of purple blotches covering it.
“It’s not hurting right now,” she said. “It still looks like hell, though.”
Christian stood up and stretched, then reached into his pack and pulled out Lauren’s water bladder and handed it to her. She smiled and took a few sips from the hose, then hopped over and placed it into her backpack.
“Ready to go home?” Christian asked her with a smile.
“You have no idea,” Lauren said.
Lauren sat down on one of the wooden chairs inside the cabin and began contemplating what to do with her ankle. She’d loosened the laces as much as possible on her boot, but had found that she couldn’t fit her foot into it, even with the thinnest sock she had.
“That’s great…that’s just great,” she said with a tone of disgust.
“Did your boot shrink?” Christian joked.
“Now is not the time, Christian,” she stated, not sounding the least bit amused.
Seeing that his attempts to add levity weren’t going to be appreciated, he turned away and started squaring away all of his gear. Lauren reached inside her pack for her first aid kit and removed an ace bandage. She wrapped the entire thing loosely around her socked foot and ankle. She then pulled a hank of cordage from her pack and cut off several feet. She tied one end of it to her belt just about her hip, and secured the other end of it to her pants near her shin with her leg bent slightly. She wrapped the shin portion with some duct tape and went to stand up. Her foot was now being suspended by the cord, unable to touch the ground. She knew she could hold it up well on her own, but this would keep her from inadvertently dropping her injured foot to the ground. It might even give her hamstring a break.
Christian looked in on her to see what she was doing. Lauren looked up at him humbly.
“I’m going to need you to carry some stuff for me,” she said, not wanting to admit that she needed help.
“Like what?”
“My rifle at least,” Lauren said. “I’m going to have to use my trekking poles as makeshift crutches the whole way back today.”
Christian looked confused and said, “You can do that?
“I’ve had to do it before—once before,” Lauren confirmed. “I can’t put any more weight on this thing and I can’t get my boot on.”
“I’ll carry whatever you need me to. Let’s just get you home, so you can rest for a while.”
“Thank you,” Lauren said gratefully.
After tying her unworn boot to her backpack, Lauren donned it and strapped on her waist pack. She then extended her trekking poles to a length that would make hiking this way as comfortable for her as possible. Christian had on his overloaded pack and had one of the suppressed M4s slung over his shoulder along with Lauren’s rifle. The other M4 he had slung in front of him. After securing Sugar Knob Cabin as best as they could, the two began the short jaunt back to the Tuscarora Trail. Once at the intersection, they turned left and headed back in the direction of Mill Mountain where Lauren’s adventure had begun two days ago. It was hard for her to believe that she had been away from home that long. She figured she had successfully scared her mother to death and guessed she’d never hear the end of it. As she hobbled along her mind went wild, making plans on how to explain everything to her and to the rest of her family. She also tried to imagine what her best option would be for how to explain this stranger that she was about to bring into the lives of everyone in her community. She knew it wouldn’t be easy. The fact that Christian had saved her life would certainly have to be the selling point.
After a couple hours of trudging, Lauren and Christian came upon Sandstone Spring. They took a short break there and Lauren spent a few minutes telling him about the times she had camped there with her family. The hike continued and for the most part went well, in spite of their injuries. It was not an easy hike by any means for either of them, but the terrain along Mill Mountain trail was mostly a ridge-walk and easy to traverse, in comparison to where they had been. As the two came around a small turn in the trail, Lauren heard a distinctive sound that alerted her, but also caught her completely off-guard. Just as she realized what it was, she spotted the barrel of a shotgun protruding from behind a large oak tree, about twenty feet in front of her. Behind the shotgun, she saw a person with short blonde hair. She quickly turned aro
und and noticed that Christian had heard what she had heard and was just now in the process of raising his rifle to the ready. Everything went to slow motion as her mind went into overdrive. The sound they had heard was the slide of a pump-action shotgun loading a round into the chamber. It was unmistakable. Lauren knew without a doubt that the man behind the oak tree was John. He had come to look for her, just as she had expected him to do. From his point of view, she knew that he could see that she was hiking with an injury and didn’t have her gun. A man he didn’t recognize was behind her in a black uniform with a government-issued M4 in his hands. That’s when the disaster that was about to take place played out in her mind. She dropped her trekking poles to the ground, raised her hands, and began to scream.
“JOHN, NO!” she exclaimed just as Christian moved to overtake her and push her out of the line of fire. He pushed her down into a pile of leaves just as the shotgun went off. As Christian was struck in the chest with buckshot, his aim went high and his rifle went off twice just before he flew backwards to the ground, grimacing in pain. As Lauren did her best to get back to her feet, she heard John yell from behind the tree. He had been hit in the shoulder by one of Christian’s shots and was reaching for the shotgun he had dropped to the ground after getting hit. Christian was in the process of rolling to his side with his rifle when he saw Lauren drop her backpack and move in between him and the other shooter. She turned to look at Christian with panic in her eyes, seeing that his body armor had taken the brunt of the damage that the buckshot had inflicted. He had seen this look before, but he was in too much pain to think clearly right now. She pulled his rifle away from him and he gave her a questioning look.
“Are you out of your damn mind?” Christian asked her with urgency. His voice was halved; the buckshot having knocked the wind out of him.
She turned away from him and held up her hand just as John strolled up to them both, with the muzzle of his shotgun pointed in Christian’s direction. When John noticed that Lauren had moved into his sight picture, he lowered his weapon and gave her the most dumbfounded look she had ever seen from him.
What's Left of My World (Book 1) Page 25
