Until Nothing Remains: A Hybrid Post-Apocalyptic Espionage Adventure (A Gun Play Novel: Volume 1)

by C. A. Rudolph

  My dismay must’ve been evident because Natalia picked up on it right on the spot. “Do you require assistance?” she asked, a look of mild concern coupled with a sheepish grin displayed on her face.

  “I might need you to order for me,” I replied. “Everything in here looks like hieroglyphics.”

  Natalia tilted her head. “Maybe you should take the plunge and learn some German. You do have a semipermanent residence here, after all.”

  “Or maybe you could just translate for me and save us both the frustration.”

  Natalia sat up and reached for my menu. After a quick glance to verify mine was an identical copy of hers, she said, “A lot of these older-style cafés don’t have visual cues in their menus like the commercial Biergartens you’re used to. What are you in the mood for?”

  I thought for a moment. What was I in the mood for? Most times I was a sucker for the basics—sausage and beer, but I’d already had that for breakfast. “Suggest something. Something different than what I usually go for.”

  She sent along that smile again, then sat back in her chair, taking the menu with her. “You’re feeling markedly ballsy today. You sure you’re up for it?”

  “Hit me with your best shot. I trust you.”

  Natalia shook her head as her smile dissipated. After a moment, she pointed her index finger at the page and said, “Schmalznudel.”

  “What the hell is Schmalz…noodle?”

  She giggled quietly. “It’s a pastry. Kind of like a cross between a donut and a croissant, but deep-fried. Tastes like a funnel cake. You’ll love it.”

  “So, a pastry, then. For lunch…”

  “Quinn, please. You eat brats and drink Weissbier for breakfast nearly every day when we’re not working.”

  I shrugged indifferently. “What’s your point?”

  Natalia only stared at me crossly.

  “Okay, apparently there’s nothing wrong with eating pastries for lunch in Germany. But will it make me fat?”

  “Babe, you’re in your early forties now,” she mused. “Everything you eat and drink makes you fat.”

  There was a lot of truth to that statement and she knew it. I knew it, too, I just didn’t like it. In fact, I hated it. And she knew that, too.

  “Fine. Order me a Schmalz…whatever, then,” I said.

  “It’s Schmalznudel. Say it with me.”

  We spent the next minute going over the proper articulation of the word. I tried my best but gave up soon after, the specific emphasis on each syllable having gotten the best of me. The entire German language seemed overemphasized to me, along with being loud, somewhat obnoxious, and unnecessarily boisterous. I wound up mocking her attempts at tutelage until she sent me a clear indication to discontinue.

  When Ingrid came back to take our orders, Natalia kept her there and entertained a short conversation with her. At times during their dialogue, Ingrid’s eyes got wide and she pointed to her face, her mouth, and to her teeth. Natalia responded with looks of disbelief and, occasionally, looks of disdain. After the conversation concluded, Ingrid took our menus, bid us a farewell of mixed German and English, and skipped off.

  “What was that about?” I asked, watching her bounce away.

  Natalia shook her head and scowled. “Mostly small talk. But I wanted to know what happened to her teeth.”

  My reply, carrying a tone of mild disinterest, followed. “Okay…”

  “She was attacked,” Natalia said flatly, her expression hardening.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She said a group of migrants did it.”

  “Like the ones on the train?”

  Natalia nodded slightly. “She was walking home after work and they surrounded her on the street near her flat. When she wouldn’t give them what they wanted, they took turns beating her up. One of them punched her in the face a few times…knocked one of her teeth out and jarred another loose. It was irreparably damaged, and a dentist had to remove it.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “What did they want? Money? Or something else?”

  Natalia closed her eyes and shook her head. “Hell no. They’re animals. And animals only want one thing,” she muttered, turning her head away. “She’s lucky she wasn’t raped. Usually, those attacks are way worse than what she endured. I’m surprised they even bothered to solicit her before they jumped her.”

  “What the fuck?” I said somewhat louder than I’d intended.

  I had never been fond of hearing about things such as this—women falling prey to vicious organisms with one fascination occupying their feeble, puerile minds. The stronger taking advantage of the weaker for no aim other than the fact it could was a concept of nature I had always found intolerable. It utterly infuriated me. And Ingrid’s predicament was no different.

  “It’s the way things are around here now, apparently,” Natalia lamented. “Attacks like that have become commonplace and almost an acceptable behavior, if you can fathom it. There are reports of women being attacked and sexually assaulted and even disappearing almost every day in Munich. The attackers are almost always identified as migrant males of Middle Eastern descent. Rapes, assaults, stabbings, all have become rampant, and die Polizei are beleaguered by it and seem powerless to do anything. Ingrid says incidents such as these are happening in cities all over the country—and all over the EU now, for that matter.”

  “Why the hell can’t the police do anything about it?” I asked.

  Natalia’s smile had traveled miles away. “Because this is Europe. And bureaucratic bullshit rules here above and beyond a citizen’s right to defend his or herself. It’s due in part to hidden agendas, globalist politics and far too much political correctness. Our progressive leaders have been allowing these things to ensue for years. It became our responsibility to provide asylum to the refugees—those poor people fleeing the civil wars and atrocities committed by ISIS.” She paused. “Despite what you saw on the news, not all the citizens living here were altogether for it—but our votes were rendered null and void, and the EU began forcing refractory countries to welcome refugees or face consequences. Parliament sold it to the German people as a humanitarian effort, initially. It’s the new Europe, after all—the inception of two consecutive World Wars occurred here. It’s the reason we renounced the use of force and disarmed our citizens and moved to solve all our conflicts through diplomacy and pacification. A lot of good that did us.”

  My eyes locked with hers as I took it all in. “A lot of good that ever did anyone.”

  Natalia smirked grimly before continuing. “The depiction was they were all Syrian refugees in need of aid—families of husbands, wives, and their children. But what came were largely single men—young, strong, virile men with no families to speak of. Some appeared Syrian, but others looked Somalian or even Nigerian. Some of them had cell phones and wallets filled with euros, and some were even wearing designer clothing. You’d think since the war in Syria is being perpetrated by Islamists, the majority of refugees would be Christians or Jews. But they’re not. They’re Muslim, many of them radical. And it’s not difficult to distinguish because they pester whites, Christians, and Jews, and they berate and attack women, like Ingrid.

  “Our government welcomes them here and allows them to live on our welfare system. They’re given money and respectable places to live, and free rein because of their theoretical plight, so we’re told, but when they get here, all they do is start trouble. They refuse to work and they’re completely incapable of integrating into our society…but they never had any intention of doing so, anyway.” She paused and rubbed her nose. “When I was a kid, I remember my dad throwing a fit over the Turkish moving into Germany by the thousands. He called it a politically sanctioned unarmed invasion of Europe. Now, looking back, I’m almost certain he was right.”

  I shook my head, taking all of what my wife was telling me into consideration. “I know what you’re saying is true…but it doesn’t make any sense. The why doesn’t make sense. I just don�
�t get it.”

  “That makes two of us, Q,” Natalia said while running her fingers through the glossy layers of her hair. “The people here are being played for fools, being told to just suck it up and deal with the situation as it stands. If you don’t want to be attacked, better to just stay home.”

  “Easier said than done,” I said. “How is anyone supposed to live their lives like that? Waking up every day constantly in fear?” My curiosity was now fully engaged with this whole mess of a situation. “The why is still confounding me. There has to be an endgame—a purpose for allowing this to happen.”

  Natalia shrugged. “Endgame?” She hesitated. “I can’t imagine it’s for anything other than the eventual takeover of Europe. We appear weak to them now and therefore vulnerable and easily attainable. And as I’ve heard you put it before, we pissed in their Cheerios…a long time ago. Islam isn’t just a religion, it’s an ideology. Its original basis was to explicitly pursue political and societal dominance over every living individual on the planet. It’s about submission and a primitive social hierarchy, and the elimination of human rights. Women must submit to men, men and women Muslims submit to Allah, and non-Muslims must submit to Islamic rule. We were told the refugees were being allowed into developed European nations to escape the atrocities of sharia law—beatings, stonings, amputations, beheadings and such. Most of the cruelties affected women, yet the vast majority of refugees have always been men. I don’t know. I’ve never had the time to fully study the Quran. Maybe I should now.” She paused. “I know it’s a big world and there are many different sects of Islam, some being much more peaceful than others. But I have yet to see any modernists stand up to their fundamentalist relatives.”

  “So…rapes and attacks on women?” I asked while motioning to Ingrid, who had her back turned to us. “Is that how they intend to achieve their primary objective?”

  Natalia shook her head impassively. “I think their primary objective is genocide, in one form or another, and that could include breeding us into extinction. Rape, especially when accepted as normal behavior and gone unpunished, is an efficient way to accomplish that.”

  “That’s some sick shit. Europe certainly has changed since the glory days.”

  “The glory days?”

  “Yeah. Like the Berlin Wall, and so on.”

  She smiled softly at me. “How much do you know about European history?”

  I didn’t answer her. She already knew how uninformed I was.

  “It hasn’t always been like this,” Natalia continued. “But it has gotten a lot worse over the years. We natives have become a minority in our own country. People like Ingrid are afraid to leave their homes at night for fear of what might happen to them, all in the name of solidarity and compassion. Islamophobia has even become a prosecutable crime now. It’s such bullshit.” She fidgeted a moment as her eyes narrowed. Her shoulders drooped, and her stare became distant. “If you don’t mind, Q, I don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay? It’s just too much right now. We have a lot to consider and get done in the days coming, and I don’t want my mind clouded by this.”

  I held up my hands and capitulated. “Then we won’t talk about it anymore.”

  It had been a while since I’d seen her this caught up or saddened about something, but Germany was Natalia’s native soil, and seeing it in this condition had to be disheartening for her. I imagined she’d already begun constructing ideas on viable solutions—no doubt the type that ended with a lot of dead bodies strewn about. The gears of perdition inside Natalia’s mind never stopped grinding.

  Now, I’d never eaten a Schmalznudel before, and after having one, I wondered why it had taken me so long to take the plunge. It was fantastic. It tasted just like a funnel cake—or at least something very similar to one. And the Hacker-Pschorr Weissbier I’d washed it down with was delicious, even though it had been served at room temperature, something that was customary here and I still hadn’t gotten used to.

  After we finished lunch, Natalia and I grabbed our shopping bags and headed back outside and onto the sidewalk paralleling Hanauer Straße. We passed a half-dozen shops before something she didn’t care for very much came into view. I followed her eyes, and when I saw what she was seeing, I understood immediately, especially after our most recent verbal exchange.

  Burkas. Lots of them. And from the look on Natalia’s face, it was lucky for those wearing them that the street traffic separated us.

  Natalia shook her head with repugnance. “I swear to God, Q. It’s taking every bit of self-restraint I have left to keep from walking over there and eviscerating them where they stand.”

  “Hey…easy there. We don’t know for certain they’re jihadists,” I said. “They could be carrying anything under those drapes…and I don’t mean explosive suicide vests, either. It could be books or groceries—”

  “I don’t care if it’s AKs, Type 81s, and full battle rattle underneath,” Natalia said, cutting me off. “They’d be carcasses before they knew what hit them.”

  What she was saying was true. She knew it, and so did I. Natalia wasn’t generally this insufferable, but the maelstrom of problems affecting her home was really bugging her.

  I started imagining her approach and actions in my mind, based on prior performances I’d been witness to. Like a small game of personal trivia, I tried to guess what she would do first, who she’d pick as her initial target, and what her choice of weapon would be—if any.

  Natalia was a master of both Systema Spetsnaz and Krav Maga, and what her hands alone were capable of was usually more than enough to incapacitate a foe. Come to think of it, I didn’t remember ever seeing her lose a fight before.

  “Can we get out of here?” she asked, turning away and letting out a tremendously drawn-out sigh. “Please? Before I lose my cool?”

  “Of course we can,” I replied. “But just so we’re clear, if I hear one allahu akbar, I won’t be walking over there…I’ll be running. And you’ll have a footrace on your hands.”

  Natalia looked to me agreeably. “Challenge accepted.”

  Three

  Dulles International Airport

  Monday, March 24, 7:30 a.m. EDT

  Nihayat al’ayam minus 3 days, 16 hours, 30 minutes

  True statement: I’ve never been a foremost fan of commercial flights, especially international commercial flights that spend an inordinate amount of time overtop hundreds of nautical miles of freezing, salty, ruthless ocean. Crash into a mountain or onto the hard, unforgiving earth and death comes instantly, whether in the form of a heart attack, blunt-force trauma, or suffocation, as the impending inferno sucks all the oxygen from your lungs like a superheated Dyson. The end comes, and you feel nothing.

  I’ve always laid claim that crashing into the ocean would serve to provide an entirely dissimilar set of horrors. The diligent pilot would hero up and try to save everyone, because that’s what he’s supposed to do. He’d attempt to land the bird as mellifluously as possible, and the plane would, in turn, glide and hop along the ocean for some distance before coming to a stop—intact, for the most part. There’d be no fire present to burn us alive and even if there were, it wouldn’t be a conflagration, since it’s physically impossible for flames to exist where water is present.

  So there we’d be. Afloat in the middle of a vast ocean, cruising around like a piece of driftwood, with no rescue in sight or in range, confined to a flimsy sarcophagus of plastic, titanium and other materials lacking buoyancy.

  If we somehow made it out of the plane, considering two hundred other people would also be endeavoring to do the very same thing—all while fighting for their lives in a panic, I envision an ending similar to the one in the movie Titanic. Natalia would be atop some floating section of airliner and I’d be the unlucky swimmer, immersed in seawater, developing frostbite and hypothermia at a rapid pace. I’d slowly lose my mind while uttering the most absurd things, transform into a human ice cube and sink a mile down to the ocean floor shortly
thereafter. Pleasant dreams.

  After making our way uneventfully through baggage check and pushing through the thick lines of disgruntled passengers at customs, we ended up outside the main terminal, where a car should’ve been waiting for us, but wasn’t. We stood there in the dry, frigid, winter air of the mid-Atlantic, both of us not saying a word, and we remained that way for several minutes until my wife couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Fucking Americans,” Natalia said indignantly, the humidity in her breath condensing in the air. “If you’re not overcomplicating the simplest things, you’re making a mess of them.”

  I shrugged and dropped my duffel to the ground beside our other luggage. “He said he’d be here. I’ve never known him to be late before.”

  “There’s a first time for everything,” Natalia stated. “This isn’t good, Q. We have a highly specific itinerary, and it’s imperative we adhere to it. This is a big job for us.”

  “It’s a huge job for us,” I said. “And you don’t have to lecture me about it. I’m just as invested as you.”

  Natalia sighed, turning to face me. “I’m sorry. I know he’s your friend. There’s just so many details riding on this, and we’ve allowed him so much in terms of leeway. I hope we can trust him.”

  “He’s more than a friend. And I trust him as much as I trust you.”

  As Natalia pouted and folded her arms over her chest, a freshly washed black Volkswagen Touareg with fully tinted windows pulled up in a flash in front of us. No sooner did it come to a tire-screeching halt, managing to snag the attention of two Metro Washington Airports Authority police officers behind us, the passenger door opened to expose the pristine, vacant, leather insides of the SUV.

  Jonathon Rockland, an old friend from my agency days, ducked his head low and waved to me as the new-vehicle scent tugged at my nose. “Sorry I’m late. Traffic was a bitch. All of Northern Virginia has transformed into the commuting scene from Office Space.”