What's Left of My World Read online

  What’s Left of My World

  a story of a family’s survival

  By C.A.Rudolph

  License Notes

  Copyright © 2016 All rights reserved.

  Cover Art by Deranged Doctor Design

  Formatting by Deranged Doctor Design

  Editing by Sabrina Jean, FastTrack Editing

  This is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are either the product of the author’s imagination or are otherwise used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the expressed written consent of the author.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Dedication

  For Emma

  Despite several personal failures in the parenting department for varying reasons, in 2008 God decided to permit me another chance at being a dad when He gave me you. From the moment I first saw your eyes gaze into mine, I swore to myself that I would be the best dad I could be or I would die trying. I hope that I haven’t let you down.

  I feel as though I’ve taught you a lot about this world and about life and I cherish the closeness we have and the moments when we talk. I hope that what I have managed to teach you goes a long way into making you an amazing woman someday. Even as young as you are as I write this, I know for certain you are off to a great start.

  You are the inspiration for everything I do every day. You were the chief inspiration for me writing this book. Always stay true to yourself. Always be strong. Never stop fighting. Keep stoking the fire that’s burning inside you. Never forget how beautiful you are to me. I love you.

  ― Dad

  Preface

  As a self-employed contractor for many years, I was fortunate enough to be able to maintain a very close proximity with my home and my family. Due to financial reasons several years ago, I was forced into the unfamiliar world of career change. My new profession provided me with a solid weekly paycheck and all the accoutrements of working for a profitable company in a highly technical field, all of which I was more than grateful to have. I was provided with a company vehicle—the caveat of which was that I now began travelling anywhere from one to two hours from home, either to my office or any one of many different job sites, most of which were located in the very populated metropolitan areas around and within the District of Columbia. I never realized just how much I had taken for granted being so close to home until acquiring a job that kept me so far away from it, and so distant from those I loved the most.

  With all the added time I was spending on the road, I wanted to come up with a way to use the time constructively, so I began listening to audiobooks. As an avid backpacker and outdoorsman, I started with books about hiking and the Appalachian Trail and before long, progressed to classic works by Henry David Thoreau and John Muir; where I found a new appreciation for the outdoors in general.

  One day, I read an article that regarded a book in a completely different genre. The article intrigued me enough that I downloaded the book and listened to it, and it forever changed the way I viewed my life, the lives of those I cared about the most, and the world we all lived in and enjoyed. It made me realize just how fragile things really were. That book was One Second After by William Forstchen.

  After listening to One Second After, I began listening to other audiobooks with similar post-apocalyptic storylines, such as The Survivalist Series by A. American and The Borrowed World Series by Franklin Horton, as well as many others. Listening to these audiobooks inspired me to begin thinking long and hard about what my family and I would do if placed into a similar or even an identical catastrophic situation. I quickly came to the conclusion that we didn’t have anything even remotely close to a plan. As such, we needed to get off our butts and start preparing.

  What you are about to read was written based upon my somewhat limited familiarity of such a disaster, my intermediate knowledge of the outdoors, and the simple understanding of the true virtue of family. My expertise, while not nearly as technical in nature as the previously mentioned authors, relies on personal experience and my relationship with the characters, some of whom are based on my closest friends, family members, and people who have left a lasting impression in me over the years. I feel, that the will to fight and survive can exist in anyone, in any situation, regardless of age, knowledge, or training.

  This book and the books that will follow it are about what I personally believe a fairly well prepared and equipped family would do if suddenly placed into a situation that changed their lives forever—and were forced to make decisions as a family that had been separated from their husband and father, and him from them. I hope you enjoy reading What’s Left of My World as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  C.A.Rudolph, December, 2016

  Chapter 1

  “Our most basic instinct is not for survival but for family. Most of us would give our own life for the survival of a family member, yet we lead our daily life too often as if we take our family for granted.”

  ― Paul Pearsall

  Big Schloss Spur Trail

  George Washington National Forest

  Hardy County West Virginia

  Present day

  The brisk winds blew Lauren Russell’s hair across her face occasionally. Her feet were sore and achy. Her calves burned almost as much as her shoulders did from the weight of her backpack. She had just reached the peak of a steep mountain approach trail she had been hiking on for the past thirty minutes or so. Not long after crossing a familiar wooden bridge, she scrambled to the top of a large rock outcropping, and did so rather enthusiastically, in spite of the nagging pains. Taking in the view, she rested for a moment to gather herself and to catch her breath. These hikes were a part of what had become her daily routine and she truly enjoyed the physical workout almost as much as she enjoyed the solitude. An experienced hiker, she wasn’t an athlete by any means, but she welcomed the rise in heart rate and the exercise-induced endorphins that made her feel invincible. She had been following this routine ever since her family had moved to the cabin earlier on that year. Her stamina had gotten better over time and she noticed. The paths she followed in this area were very rocky, like most trails along the Appalachians, and in spite of her experience with them, there were times when she would stumble or otherwise injure herself inadvertently. She did so especially in her earlier travels. The more trail time she got, the more predictable the trails were to her, and she knew what to look out for and when to tread lightly. She was to a point now where she felt she could almost hike them blindfolded.

  Lauren had been a trail junky since she was a child. She seemingly had no choice in the matter, since her family practically lived in the outdoors and brought her up to do the same. Her dad was an avid outdoorsman and had been a hiker and backpacker since his youth. Her mother had followed suit since marrying her dad, but growing up in the mountains of Germany, it came naturally to her. It seemed as though just about every weekend, there would be an outdoor adventure for the family to go on. It was camping and day-hiking mostly but on occasion, her dad would plan an overnigh
t backpacking trip and sometimes an excursion that lasted a week or more, and that was what she truly loved. There was something amazing to her about being able to go anywhere she wanted to go, carrying everything she needed on her back. Her dad had taught her just about everything she knew about the outdoors. Other skills had been self-taught. She thought often about her first backpacking trips with him. She remembered how he used to insist on holding her hand on the more rough and treacherous trails. If she tripped, he was always there to stop her fall. If she fell, he would pick her up, dust her off, and encourage her to continue. Her world had changed so much. Things were indeed different now. On these hikes she was on her own and had to be cautious with every step she took. One wrong move could mean injury, and depending on the circumstances, even death. There was no one there to hold her hand now.

  Lauren’s favorite thing of all were the views that the mountain peaks provided. In addition to the solitude, it helped take her mind off of things and send her thoughts to better places. It was the only thing that worked to clear her mind. Where she was standing today provided one of the best payoffs, in terms of the vistas she had seen with her own eyes, in all of her hiking and backpacking career. It was a true panorama, and it was breathtaking. As she surveyed the landscape below her through the conifers and leafless trees, Lauren took mental photos of what she saw, especially noting if anything had changed since she had last visited. Today, things looked normal to her—or as normal as they could be for the times. There wasn’t even the tiniest bit of human-generated noise. The only thing she could hear was the sound of the wind whipping through the trees and the trees dancing with one another when their branches would rub together. She pulled out a pair of small binoculars from the waist pack that hung over top of her backpack’s hip belt and had a look around. Below her on the west side of the mountain was Trout Run Valley, the area which her family and the small community within considered home. On the other side of mountain was a small valley in the Virginia side of the George Washington National Forest, followed by Little Sluice Mountain, and after a few more hills and valleys to the east was the town of Woodstock, Virginia. This was where her grandparents lived and a place she’d called home for a short time before moving further west. The town was blocked from her view by the mountains, but she knew it was there.

  The sun was starting to show itself over the horizon. She was a true early-riser and had been since childhood, leaving the cabin before dawn nearly every morning on her hikes. It used to take her a few hours to get from the cabin to the top of Mill Mountain, using the switchbacks of a steep game trail, but her times had truncated as her speed and stamina increased. Without a wristwatch or any true method of telling, she would estimate time using the sun’s position. It was the middle of autumn and the days were beginning to shorten. From what she remembered, the sun would usually rise around 7 o’clock and set around 5 o’clock this time of year. She assumed it was around 7am, but there really was no way of knowing exactly. Time didn’t seem to matter much anymore. There was morning and there was evening; day and night.

  This was how Lauren’s days began and it had become a steady routine for her. The hikes she took were special journeys to her, and in addition to allowing her a temporary escape from reality, they served a very important purpose in the current world she and her family now lived in. That purpose was reconnaissance. The area they lived in was sparsely inhabited. The individuals that she and her family knew as their neighbors were for the most part, a compassionate, hardworking people, and they looked out for one another. They all had families of their own to provide for and protect. They were a very self-sufficient people, and that trait had unfortunately made them targets. Areas surrounding them were now peppered with takers. Takers were people who survived by taking what they wanted, most often by force, from others whenever it suited them. Shortly following the events that occurred a little over a year ago, now known to many as the collapse, groups began migrating out of the densely populated areas heading west to the mountains, thinking they could find what they needed to survive there. It was understandable—they simply had no other choice, and desperation was their fuel. No city was capable of supporting its own population. No store contained more than three days of food at most, and when the deliveries stopped, it didn’t take long for inventory to disappear from the shelves. When food began running out, they were forced to look elsewhere. As densely populated as the area was in Northern Virginia and the nation’s capital, it wasn’t long before the takers began migrating into the rural areas to the west, soon ending up in the territories that surrounded Lauren’s home.

  For unknown reasons, the belief of nearly every city-dweller, suburbanite, and the like was that the woods were full of plenty and there was enough for everyone, even though nothing could’ve been further from the truth. Technology had been the only reason that people in large populations were able to live and thrive like they had. The populations were forced to learn over time that this was indeed the case, and without that technology, they slowly met their demise. Anyone who relied on technology for survival had perished a long time ago. Most of those who had survived to this point, had done so by practicing subsistence as a part of their normal lives before the collapse, using skills that most generations had forgotten long ago. Survivalists and those known as preppers that had set aside supplies during good times, in order to prepare for the possibility of bad days ahead, were also able to find ways to sustain life without technology. Finally, there were the takers—the people who took what they wanted because they could. Most of their victims were chosen specifically because they had no way to defend themselves against an opposing force. Lauren’s family was learning to subsist and live off the land. They had begun their plight as fairly well-equipped preppers, thanks to decisions made by her father over the years. Her family and other members of their community had come in contact with takers before. The confrontations had always turned deadly, and her family and neighbors were lucky to have survived. She knew that one day they would certainly meet some of these people again. It wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when.

  With the lack of communication outside of the local community being the new normal, one of Lauren’s motives for her early-morning travels in and around the mountains was knowledge of the outside world, or at least the area that surrounded her community. Her community had chosen to isolate itself, in the name of safety during the first summer after the collapse, by setting up a barricade on their southern border. Takers had come in from the more populated Virginia side of North Mountain and something had to be done to prevent that from happening again. This offered some protection, but being knowledgeable about the area around them and what was going on within it served to keep them all alive, and that required patrolling it on a regular basis. Lauren felt she had a tremendous responsibility now to herself, her family, and in a broader sense, her community. She was so aware of this fact that it was literally tattooed to her soul. Each member of her family had a responsibility to each other now. Each family had a responsibility to the community. They had to work together or they would not survive these hard times. There was safety in numbers—no single person was capable of protecting his or herself now. At eighteen years old, Lauren had more responsibilities than she had ever dreamed—they just weren’t the responsibilities of a typical eighteen-year-old. It wasn’t about getting good grades in school, getting accepted to a good college, and finding a lucrative career anymore. It wasn’t about popularity or social status. It was about staying alive. It was about survival.

  After getting a decent magnified view of the area, Lauren placed the binoculars back into her waist pack and zipped up the outer zipper to secure them. She unzipped a side pocket, pulled out a small bag of deer jerky and removed a couple pieces out of the plastic bag before returning the bag to the waist pack. She placed both pieces between her teeth to dangle as she decided to take a load off and rest her tired feet and knees. In order to do this, she made some quick adjustments and lifted
her AR-15 carbine over her head, after loosening the sling and placed the rifle on the rock just beside her, making certain to keep it within her reach. She then reached behind around to her back and unsnapped the belt of her waist pack, laying it just to her right. She unbuckled the hip belt of her backpack and then, slid it off of her shoulders to the ground with a slight thud. As she did this, she giggled a bit, knowing how heavy it was. Lauren’s pack seemed very large compared to her slender five-foot-six-inch stature. She always carried more than she needed in there, just like her dad always did. His belief was that it was better to have more than you needed than to not have what you need in any situation. His belief became hers, just like so many others.

  Her eyes took in the view as she took a seat on the enormous slab of cold white sandstone that made up the peak known as Big Schloss. She had guessed she was sitting on the part that was geographically located in West Virginia, but was not completely certain as the border with Virginia arbitrarily divided the area. Lauren had been to Big Schloss many times growing up on day hikes with her family. It was one of her dad’s favorite places to hike. She knew it was around three-thousand feet in elevation and got its name from German families who had settled in the area in the 1800s, some descendants of which still lived in the valleys below to this day. Some of those families were her neighbors. She chewed on the deer jerky slowly and took a couple sips of water from one of her Nalgene bottles that she kept in the outer pockets of her backpack. The air was cold and crisp and the view was breathtaking to her. It was hard for Lauren to believe how bad things had gotten in the world she’d known while looking down at nature’s beauty. It was nearly unfathomable to her that in such a small amount of time, her entire world had been turned upside-down. As usual during times that she was alone, her memories began hitting her hard, and she drifted away into a daydream.