What's Left of My World: A Story of a Family's Survival

by C. A. Rudolph

  Christian removed the magazines from the waist pack and handed it back to Lauren. He then motioned for her to remove her backpack. She unsnapped it and laid it beside her, opening it up and reaching for the AR magazines that she kept inside it. Handing them to him, he placed all of the extra magazines in the cargo pockets in his ACUs. Lauren took off her rifle sling and set it aside. Christian helped her to her feet, placing Lauren’s right arm around his neck and the two began walking to the rocks.

  “Take out your pistol and get all of the spare mags that you have ready,” he said. “This could end quickly or end up being a firefight. If they get past me, unload on them. Make every shot count, but be ready to empty all your magazines at them. I assume you can shoot…”

  “Yes, I can shoot. What are you going to do?” Lauren asked as she began to see Christian for who he really was. He wasn’t the enemy at all. His true intentions were revealing themselves to her, and it appeared that this man truly intended to protect her. He was going to help her get back home. She had placed her trust in him and given him a chance and was being rewarded for it, even though she had done so unwillingly. In this new world that they both lived in, this was truly a remarkable thing.

  “I’m going to rain on their parade,” he said. “Keep your head low.”

  Christian smiled as he took off with Lauren’s M&P 15 and began climbing to the top of the rock outcropping. He nested in between two large sandstone boulders and lined the rifle up toward the noises he’d been hearing down the trail. It was as good a place as any to find some sort of ballistic cover. Lauren pulled the Glock from her waist pack, along with the two spare fifteen round magazines. She dropped the waist pack to the ground and pushed the spare magazines into her right jacket pocket. She then limped over to a rocky spot below him where she could not be seen, making sure not to put too much weight on her injured ankle. She lined her weapon up with the black uniform clad group, but they were still too far away for her to get a good sight picture. At this distance, her rifle was indeed, the only practical method of ending this conflict.

  Christian placed the scope to his eye and brought the group of men on the trail below them into view. There were five of them total and as well two dogs, both German Shepherds. Two of the men were dog handlers and it appeared that they were each only carrying a sidearm. The other three were agents he recognized from the FEMA camp, and they each had a suppressed M4 rifle, a sidearm, and small backpack. They were also wearing chest rigs with several extra rifle magazines in pouches. As the men stopped to take a look around, Christian lined the crosshairs of the scope up with the lead agent, snapped off the safety and fired, immediately scoring a head shot. Skull fragments and tissue exploded as the bullet tore through his skull, and splattered onto the other two agents, who stood in close proximity. The agents were all stunned, but immediately raised their rifles as the dead agent’s body fell to the ground. Christian lined the crosshairs again and fired two more shots back to back, dropping the second agent immediately as a burst of pink mist from the back of his head erupted. As the dog handlers turned to run away with their barking K9s in tow, the third agent began firing suppressed shots wildly into the woods in all directions, appearing to not know where the gunfire that had killed his two fellow agents was coming from. Just as the second body hit the ground, Christian fired a three-round burst that killed the last standing agent instantly. The agent’s rifle fired a single shot as he went down backwards into the dirt and rolled down the steep embankment behind him. As the dog handlers struggled to control their flustered K9s in the chaos, Christian ended their lives, too. The dogs immediately began to whine and bark at their now dead handlers, who were laying in a lifeless heap almost on top of one another. The dogs sniffed around them and then took off running back down the trail, their leashes dragging behind them, occasionally getting caught on a root or some mountain laurel. Christian had hoped for this, as he had no intention of shooting the dogs.

  Lauren didn’t know what to think or what to say. Her mind was racing and her heart was pounding nearly out of her chest. She had seen men die from gunshot wounds before and had even killed before, but she had never seen anything quite like this. This was an ambush set up on the fly by the underdogs, and she was on the team who’d won. She gulped loudly as she could start to feel her adrenaline rush begin to lessen in intensity.

  Christian hobbled down from his perch, being very careful to tread lightly on his injured leg. He walked over to Lauren who turned to him, her face white and expressionless. He pressed the magazine release on Lauren’s rifle and pulled out the half-empty mag, then replaced it with a full one from his hip pocket.

  “You ok?” Christian asked.

  “Yeah,” Lauren said with a blank stare, “I’m good, I guess. Just not used to seeing men die like that.”

  “I completely understand,” he confirmed.

  “I guess I should start getting used to it,” Lauren uttered grimly.

  “Don’t lie to yourself. There’s no getting used to it. I’m going to go down here and make sure these guys aren’t moving,” he said. Without waiting for Lauren to respond, he darted around the rocks and down the trail, surprisingly spry for having a hole in his calf.

  As Christian approached the scene, he kept the rifle at low-ready and surveyed the area closely, looking for any signs of a reaction force. Even though the agent’s shots had been suppressed, he knew that the ones he had fired from Lauren’s rifle were not and therefore, could be heard for some distance. After a minute of looking around, he finally approached the first agent he had shot. Half of the man’s head was missing. Christian placed Lauren’s rifle on the ground and unsnapped the agent’s rifle from its sling. It was a Larue suppressed M4 with a ten-and-a-half-inch barrel. He lifted it up to check the EOTech optic and magnifier and was pleased upon finding that they hadn’t been damaged. When he saw that the selector switch had an “auto” setting, he grinned. He removed the sling from around the agent’s neck and placed it over his own head. He then turned the body over and pulled off the agent’s backpack by unsnapping the quick disconnects from the shoulder straps. Going through the backpack, he noticed that it was full of the same typical items that he would have packed on one of his own patrols, outside the confines of the FEMA camp. There was a Camelback hydration bladder full of water, several MREs, and other assorted comfort and survival gear. He removed the agent’s belt accessories which included several pairs of zip-cuffs, a Spyderco folding knife, and an individual first-aid kit or IFAK, and placed them all in the backpack. He removed the agent’s sidearm, a Glock 19 9mm, as well as extra mag pouch which held two magazines, and snapped them both to his belt. Setting the backpack down, he then began removing the agent’s chest rig, which had the spare M4 magazines attached to it. As he was doing so, he immediately felt the added weight of the rig which signified that it was indeed a plate carrier that held four plates of body armor. This made him grin as well. After removing the plate carrier, he slid it over his head and wrapped it around his body, securing it with the Velcro attachments. He attached the suppressed rifle to the sling around his neck and slung it behind his back. Picking up the backpack and Lauren’s AR, he then walked over to the second agent he had shot and began going through his things in the same fashion.

  Lauren watched Christian from above and noticed him going through the agent’s belongings, but couldn’t see anything in detail. She decided that it was time to do some work on her newly sprained ankle. Pulling out her wilderness first aid kit from her backpack, she removed the one-inch athletic tape and began tearing off strips in different lengths and sticking them to her jacket. She then removed her boot and both of her sock layers and could immediately see the swelling. She sighed and began placing the strips of tape on her foot, calf, and ankle until it was supported as best as she knew how. She then placed her liner sock on, an Ininji toe sock that her father had insisted she wear under thin hiking socks to prevent blisters. His insistence had paid off for her many times. She coul
dn’t help but smile a bit, remembering how adamant he had been about it. She then put on her wool outer sock and slid her boot over her foot, remembering to loosen the laces around her swollen ankle.

  Christian stood up after removing all of the second agent’s belongings and placing them in his backpack. He immediately could feel that it had gotten much heavier, mostly due to the agent’s body armor that he had stuffed into the pack, along with the other items. He was now carrying three rifles, after taking the second agent’s suppressed M4 and slinging it over his shoulder. He looked down the embankment where the third agent had fallen after he had shot him. Not wanting to carry all of the gear with him to check on the third again, he removed everything and laid it all in a pile with the exception of the body armor, which he chose to keep on. Using trees to support himself, he reached the third agent. He reached for the agent’s rifle and broke it open, separating the upper from the lower. Pulling out the bolt carrier group, Christian removed the firing pin and put it in his pocket, then reassembled the rifle, rendering it unfirable. Using an armorer’s tool that he’d found in the second agent’s backpack, he began working to remove the suppressor from the barrel. After a bit of effort, he unthreaded it and put it in his pocket. He could feel that it was still warm from the panic firing the agent had done before he’d died. He laid the rifle down beside the agent’s body and tossed some leaves over it. He then removed all of the spare magazines and tossed them, one at a time, up the hill to where his pile of gear was.

  Reaching into the agent’s backpack, he dug around and pulled out a small nylon pack that felt very heavy. When he unsnapped and opened it, he smiled broadly.

  “Oh, this is beautiful,” he said to himself. “Beautiful.”

  Inside the pack were six hand grenades. He tossed the pack up to his pile of gear and spent a few more minutes digging around in the agent’s backpack, before climbing back up the embankment.

  Now on her feet, Lauren began to walk around on the trail, feeling out her ankle and the tape job she had completed. She could immediately tell that she couldn’t put as much weight on it as usual, but this was to be expected. As she limped around, she began to think deeply about how much of a delay this would place on her getting home and with that, worry began to set in. She had already spent one unplanned night away from home and her family. She knew that they would already be worried, and if she had to spend another night away, they would most certainly come to look for her. She hated to admit it to herself, but that was undoubtedly exactly what was going to happen. She was about ten miles from home, on some very uneven and rocky trail. She could maybe make it half of that distance in her condition. She wondered about Christian and his injury, but after seeing how well he had moved on the trail this morning, she pushed the thought away. It was obvious to her that he either had a high tolerance for pain or he had decided that his injury wasn’t going to get the best of him.

  After a few minutes of pondering, Christian emerged around the rock outcropping that had provided them cover near the trail intersection. She noticed he had procured quite a bit of extra gear and with that, had two new black rifles hanging on him and a sidearm on his right side. He looked at her with an eerie grin. Lauren couldn’t help herself and had to comment.

  “Rambo, I presume?” she quipped.

  “Not quite…but pretty damn close,” Christian responded. “I got us some stuff.”

  He began laying the items on the ground in between them. He then handed Lauren back her rifle and her spare magazines. She took it from him, looking it over closely. Placing the magazines back into her backpack and waist pack, she then looked back at him and eyeballed his new outfit. Christian had taken one of the agent’s field jackets, in addition to the body armor. Lauren noticed he had removed the DHS patches from it, like he had done with his uniform the previous night.

  “Nice, digs,” she said. “I take it, they’re all dead?”

  “Indeed,” he said, “and since that’s the case, I figured they wouldn’t need any of this stuff.”

  “Glad to see you have a jacket now,” she said, “but you could’ve used a hat, too.”

  Christian beamed at her sarcastically with a smirk. “I thought about that,” he said, “for a second, until I remembered that I shot them all in the head.”

  “OH,” Lauren said. She then smiled a bit, before the mental picture of what a hat would look like after the fact came to her. Her smile dissipated. “Gross.”

  Christian pulled out the other body armor vest he had taken from the second agent from his pack and went to hand it to Lauren. She looked at it quizzically. “Here. Put it on. If we’re attacked, it will stop a rifle bullet,” he said.

  Lauren held up her hand at first and then went to take the vest, immediately noticing its weight. She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows. “You do remember that I just sprained my ankle, right?”

  “Oh, shit—that’s right,” Christian said.

  “Yeah. I don’t think this is going to happen, as much as I would really like to stop a bullet with my body and all,” Lauren poked.

  Christian smiled and placed the armor back into his backpack. “Well, we’ll keep it, in case we end up needing it,” he said.

  “Are those silencers?” Lauren asked, pointing to the two Larue M4s Christian had laid beside his pack.

  “They are,” he replied. “And both rifles are full-auto. True government issue.”

  “I’ve never even seen a suppressed rifle in person before,” Lauren said. “Never fired a full-auto one, either.”

  “I may suggest that you take one of these,” Christian said. “They are much quieter than yours, and full-auto may come in handy.”

  Lauren thought a moment and then looked at her rifle. It had belonged to her father before it had become hers. There was no way that she was going to replace it. It may be loud and it may not be a machine gun, but it had quite a lot of sentimental value to her. In fact, anything that was once her dad’s had tremendous sentimental value to her. “I’ll hang on to mine for now,” she said. “Thanks, though.”

  “It’s cool. It’ll be here if you need it,” Christian affirmed. “I did snag an extra suppressor, so let me know if you want it.” Changing the subject, he said, “How bad is your ankle, by the way?”

  “It’s not the worst I’ve done to it, but it’s definitely swollen,” Lauren said. “I’ve got it wrapped in athletic tape so for now, it should be ok. I just can’t put a lot of weight on it. It’s going to take us a longer to get back now, though.”

  “We can take our time, Lauren,” Christian said. “I’m in no hurry to get anywhere, and rushing will only increase the chance worsening our injuries.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way because we’ve got quite a trip,” she said. “There is a locked cabin that was once owned by the trail club that maintained these trails before the collapse about half way back. That may be our destination tonight, if nothing else. It’s made out of stone and the door is really thick wood, so it should provide us some protection.”

  “How do we get into it if it’s locked?” Christian asked.

  Lauren just looked at him with a smirk and said, “After what we’ve just been through, I think that’s a minor issue. Besides, you’ve proven to be pretty handy so far today. I’m sure we’ll figure out something.”

  After donning their gear, the two continued straight onto the Tuscarora Trail, this time, at a much slower pace. Lauren’s sprained ankle was definitely taking a toll on the speed at which she could walk. Christian’s wound wasn’t helping him much either, especially now that he had taken on the added weight of the gear and rifles, and ammo he had acquired from the agents. The two took breaks often as the trail ascended gradually to the top of Little Sluice Mountain. Once there, they took a much longer break. Lauren needed to check on her ankle wrap; it felt like it was getting loose. Christian decided it would be a good time to put a fresh dressing on his calf. Now equipped with an IFAK, he had everything he needed to stay on top of
it—minus antibiotics, if it got infected. Lauren re-wrapped her ankle and watched Christian as he navigated the military-style first aid kit, as if he knew exactly what everything was and what to do with it.

  “Christian,” she uttered.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you…for saving my life,” she said with a modest tone.

  Christian looked up at her for a second and smiled, then went back to re-dressing his wound. “You would’ve done the same for me, I’m sure,” he said somewhat sarcastically, but with a tone that was still believable.

  “That’s just it,” Lauren said, “I wouldn’t have. That’s why I feel it’s more than necessary to tell you that I appreciate it.”

  “Why do you feel like you have to be such a hard-ass?” Christian asked. “I kinda like the humble Lauren.”

  Lauren leaned back onto her pack, brought her knees to her chest and didn’t respond immediately. Christian occasionally looked up at her for a second at a time, as he was finishing his work. “It’s completely involuntary. This is just who I am.”

  “So, you’re telling me that none of what I’ve seen so far is a façade?” Christian asked.

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” Lauren explained. “My dad taught me to be who I am. He always told me to be strong, even when I wanted to feel weak and to never give up, no matter what the odds were.”

  “Sounds familiar,” Christian added.

  Lauren smiled. “He used to tell me that I didn’t need the world’s approval. He always encouraged me to be myself—to not just blindly follow the so-called ‘rules’. He was right about that and a lot of other things.”

  “And with him not here, you feel you need to honor him by adhering to what he’s taught you.”

  Lauren nodded and said, “Yes. That’s it exactly.”

  Christian repacked the IFAK and attached it to his vest. He didn’t say much after Lauren’s response and a peculiar look had swept over his face, as if something he hadn’t thought about in a while suddenly entered his mind.