What's Left of My World (Book 2): This We Will Defend Read online

  This We Will Defend

  The Continuing Story of a Family’s Survival

  Book Two of the What’s Left of My World Series

  By C.A.Rudolph

  License Notes

  Copyright © 2017 All rights reserved.

  Cover Art by Deranged Doctor Design

  Formatting by Deranged Doctor Design

  Editing by Sabrina Jean, FastTrack Editing

  Proofreading by Pauline Nolet, PaulineNolet.com

  ISBN-13: 978-1541030633

  ISBN-10: 154103063X

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Dedication

  For Delaney Grace

  You’ll forever be my firstborn. And you’ll forever be my first love. Thank you for never giving up on me.

  ― Dad

  Prologue

  Charlie Marcel had thrown and smashed more dinner plates than he or anyone else in his family could attempt to count. His oldest son knew this fact all too well, as he happened to be Charlie’s most sought-after target.

  There weren’t many things about his life that didn’t make Charlie angry. He hated his job at the brake pad factory and his successful, asshole boss, who, at approximately half Charlie’s age, seemed to make it a point to make Charlie feel like less of a man every day. Charlie detested his family’s run-down home on Armor Dale Drive, which always seemed to suck out every last penny he had left because of its constant need for repair. He hated the fact that he was never allowed time to relax when he got home after a long day of work. He never had any time to just do ‘Charlie’ things. His family always seemed to need him at the worst possible times, and it was always for bullshit reasons.

  Despite Charlie’s best efforts at discipline, his oldest son was a habitual troublemaker. He was always fighting or getting kicked out of school for one reason or another. With no other recourse at his disposal, Charlie chose to follow in his father’s footsteps, and vicious beatings were a daily occurrence. Hopefully one day, his son would understand the seriousness of his wrongdoings and find his way back to the straight and narrow, just like Charlie had.

  Charlie had two daughters—each equally slender, charming, and beautiful. And they were equally flirtatious and boy-crazy—Charlie having often referred to them as ‘walking aphrodisiacs’. They always seemed to bring home the worst male specimens alive and call them their boyfriends. The older of the two had gotten pregnant by her boyfriend at the age of thirteen, like a dumbass.

  His youngest son was a truant, a thief, and a recreational drug addict—his drug of choice being prescription narcotic pain medication. Charlie had sciatica and had suffered with chronic lower back pain nearly all his life—the result of his having to literally break his back every day at work to provide for his ungrateful family. He’d been prescribed so much opiate pain medication over the years that his body had developed a tolerance to almost every garden-variety narcotic. The ten-milligram Percocets he’d been taking, up until recently four to six times daily, might as well have been sugar cubes. Charlie’s doctor recently upgraded him to Dilaudid and it was working well for him, so long as he could keep them hidden from his son, the junky. It didn’t matter where he hid the meds. His youngest son would find them, and they’d end up being crushed and snorted up his nose, despite Charlie’s efforts.

  Charlie’s wife was just plain ugly and never seemed to care, even the slightest bit, about her appearance anymore, at home or anywhere else for that matter. She’d been his high-school sweetheart and, at one time, the love of his life. Now, he viewed her as nothing more than a burden to him. She kept the house clean and the kids fed, and she still made him dinner on occasion. Thank God for the microwave he’d gotten them for a steal at the thrift store. Charlie truly felt his life was shit and had no idea what the hell he’d done to deserve it.

  Charlie’s hatred for his life was usually worse in the summer months. After sweating it out in a non-air-conditioned metal building for ten hours a day, all he wanted when he got home was to sit in his recliner, prop his feet up, and maybe watch some television. He’d eat whatever microwaved dinner his wife would make for him, and gulp down a few delicious cold ones. Above and beyond those things, Charlie just wanted to be left the hell alone. He didn’t feel he had a drinking problem, or any other problem for that matter. The stress of work didn’t end when he came home, and the stress of dealing with his family’s nonsense made him want to drink himself into oblivion every night. So that was just what he did.

  Charlie’s favorite beer was Old Milwaukee’s Best. He loved the taste because it reminded him of better times, back when he didn’t have responsibilities like a family to take care of. The beer was cheap and that made him love it even more because money was something he didn’t have in abundance. Even with his less-than-modest paycheck, he found ways to afford a case of ‘the beast’ nearly every night. If he didn’t have the cash, he’d find another way. It was something that he needed—a priority. It was a ‘Charlie’ thing.

  When Charlie walked through the door every evening, it was a standing order in his home that no one was to bother him with their problems until he was at least six beers in. If they did, there would be hell to pay. He didn’t typically take his aggressions out on his girls. They were his princesses, and even though they pissed him off every day, he couldn’t bring himself to lay a finger on them—especially when his grandson was around. Charlie loved that little boy. The girls loved and respected their father in spite of his lack of patience and good moods. They often played games with him as he drank his beers. His youngest son was a junky—a little shit—but he was still Charlie’s baby boy. If he did wrong, he’d get a spanking or an occasional belt across his butt—hardly what would be considered abuse. What his wife would receive, on the other hand, was an entirely different story.

  Charlie’s bride, as the only other adult in his home, received the blame for everything that was wrong with his life and, therefore, was the recipient of Charlie’s wrath virtually every living day. As the true definition of a codependent spouse, she remained with him regardless of the cruelty he demonstrated. If the police were called and Charlie was hauled off to jail, she’d e
ventually come to her senses and find a way to bail him out.

  The abuse always started out as verbal, and the tongue-lashings he’d administer varied in severity. They just weren’t enough sometimes. When Charlie needed to escalate his point, he wasn’t opposed to beating her with his fists. Sometimes she would fight back, but Charlie would simply overpower her—forcing her back into her place of subservience beneath him. Charlie’s wallopings tended to be exceedingly brutal, and with no will to defend herself and no one to help her, his wife’s only option was to somehow endure them—and end up cowering in the remote corners of their home, bruised, beaten, and completely broken.

  Charlie’s oldest son, Darrell, was the closest thing he’d ever considered to being his nemesis. Darrell was old enough and big enough to stand up to him. Charlie, of course, was older, wiser, and more cunning, but their encounters were almost always commensurate—so much so that Charlie had been forced to find other alternatives to gain the advantage.

  After the typical evening’s events were well on their way and Charlie was good and drunk, his next calculated move was taking out his aggressions on his wife. If Darrell came to her aid, Charlie’s hostilities would revert to him, and a struggle would ensue. Darrell would go toe-to-toe with his father, but Charlie was always willing to escalate the conflict to a point Darrell wasn’t confident enough to go beyond. At the point Charlie gained the upper hand, he’d throw Darrell to the floor at his feet in the presence of everyone in the house. He’d berate, antagonize, and ruthlessly humiliate him. And, as the coup de grâce, Charlie would throw his empty dinner plate at him.

  The plates occasionally made contact, but Charlie’s preference was for them to sail mere inches from his son’s head and shatter against the plaster, showering the surrounding areas with shards of porcelain in all shapes and sizes. He’d perfected his form so well that his stance resembled that of a champion Frisbee thrower. The loud crash and the look of fear in his oldest son’s eyes was all Charlie needed to feel he’d gotten his point across and asserted his position as the disciplinarian in his home.

  On the night of Darrell’s seventeenth birthday, Charlie had walked in the door in a full-on drunken stupor after being laid off from his job and spending his afternoon drowning his sorrows at a local watering hole. The joyous festivities that usually accompanied a birthday in the Marcel home were thus postponed indefinitely. Completely unprovoked, Charlie let loose with a drunken, abusive tirade of epic proportions. He slapped both of his daughters repeatedly and called them the most profane things he could think of, while in the company of his young grandson. Charlie kicked his youngest son out of the house and tossed what little possessions he had into the front yard like garbage. And then he attacked his wife. He beat her senseless, bloody, and almost into a coma.

  Later that evening, when Charlie had conclusively passed out in his recliner, Darrell escorted his badly beaten mother and hysterical sisters to an elderly neighbor’s home across the street. He told them to stay there no matter what they heard or what they saw, because it wouldn’t be safe to return home the rest of the night. He then went back to his house and to his bedroom and pulled a shoebox out from under his bed. Inside the shoebox was a collection of razor-sharp remnants of almost every broken dinner plate that Charlie had ever thrown at him. Darrell had wrapped the bases of each shard with layers of electrical tape to create handles, thereby modifying the crude fragments into formidable weapons.

  Darrell took the box into the living room and set it down beside Charlie’s recliner. He then put a porcelain shard in each hand and gripped them tightly. The first shard was about six inches long and found its way swiftly into Charlie’s esophagus. The second shard was plunged into his abdomen. A third shard followed and then a fourth. And then a fifth.

  When Darrell was done stabbing his father to death, there were dozens of dinner-plate daggers jutting out from the man’s body. Blood covered the brown leather recliner, and an opened beer, the last one Charlie would ever drink, had spilled and mixed its contents with it. Darrell’s face, chest, arms, and clothing were covered in gore. He could sense the warmth of it.

  As he knelt there, a feeling overcame Darrell at that moment that was like nothing he’d ever felt before in his life. It was surreal. Indescribable. It was beginning to make him salivate. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he knew he liked it. It made him feel powerful. He’d taken a life. This was a powerful thing.

  “I guess you won’t be touching them again, will you, Charlie?” Darrell questioned his deceased father, his voice emotionally detached and distant.

  He hesitated, as if waiting for the dead man to offer a reply. Darrell stood up, put his bloody hand behind his ear and moved closer.

  “I’m sorry—what’s that? I didn’t hear you. You’re going to have to speak up.”

  Darrell hesitated again before pulling away and leisurely pulling together a smile.

  “Oh, my apologies. It appears as though you have something stuck in your throat.”

  Darrell turned away and scanned all the picture frames on the walls, taking note of all the forced and counterfeited smiles on his siblings’ faces and especially on his mother’s face. His smile sluggishly disappeared. He then turned and spit on Charlie.

  “Thanks for nothing. Burn in hell, you filthy piece of shit.”

  Darrell went upstairs to the bathroom to clean himself up and then went to his bedroom to begin packing his things. After what had transpired tonight, he knew it wouldn’t be long before the cops showed up, and he had to get out of there. His father was dead, and regardless of what had motivated Darrell to kill him, the scene would dictate the crime was deliberate and possibly even premeditated. He’d be taken into custody, held without bond, and eventually tried for murder. Darrell knew he couldn’t allow that to happen. He needed to go away now—far away, never to return to this place. He needed to forget this life forever and disavow the person he’d been all his life to this day. He needed to become a ghost.

  As he walked out the back door of his family’s dilapidated home for the last time, Darrell wondered what his first move should be. If he was truly to become a ghost, he needed to change some things—beginning with his name. He was fond of his last name, though, and didn’t want to forsake it. Charlie’s father had been an honorable man—a war veteran that Darrell had been told plenty of heroic stories about.

  As Darrell edged past the grave where he’d buried his beloved pit bull years ago, the wooden cross that once stood upright came into view. The letters spelling out the name Damien were still detectable on the weathered crossbar where he’d etched them with his Barlow knife. Darrell thought back to the day he’d brought Damien home as a puppy when he was just old enough to be weaned from his mother. He’d been a runt, a leftover from a cherry-picked box of giveaways that a neighbor had been forced to rid herself of. Initially, everyone in the house was overjoyed at the prospect of having a pet—everyone, that is, except Charlie. Charlie had hated the dog from the word go. He’d detested Damien’s very existence and the senseless delight that having the animal brought into his home. Dogs were for guarding a man’s property—a fierce deterrent to keep thugs from stealing your stuff—they weren’t meant to be objects of affection or playthings.

  The first time Damien had an accident in the house, Charlie had beaten him. After subsequent mishaps and follow-up beatings, Damien was no longer allowed indoors. He remained chained to a tree in the backyard for the remainder of his short life. Occasionally, Damien would break free from his bonds, wander the neighborhood, and kill another animal, sometimes even a neighbor’s pet. Charlie would trounce him mercilessly each time it happened. Damien received beatings so often that over time, he learned to develop a taste for abuse, and for blood. He’d transformed from the loving, affectionate pet he’d once been. He became mean. Bloodthirsty. Vicious. Any animal friendly enough or stupid enough to get within Damien’s reach was decimated.

  Darrell reached down and picked up the crucifix
and then shoved it back into the ground with a grunt, remembering how much he’d loved that dog. He still loved that dog, even now, even years after the day he’d watched his father beat Damien to death with a steel baseball bat. The gears in Darrell’s homicidally newborn mind began to grind. He and his deceased companion had a lot in common. They both had been abused, even tormented. Damien had transformed because of it. Maybe he needed to transform too, Darrell thought. Maybe he needed to become bloodthirsty. Vicious. Ferocious. Maybe Damien could somehow be…resurrected.

  *

  Katie Anderson covered the top of a Maglite flashlight with the palm of her free hand to limit the distance the beam would travel through her home’s interior. She crept as quietly as she could in her sock-covered feet across the hardwood hallway floor. She had to be careful, as the floor tended to surprise her with a loud creak if she stepped on the wrong spot. It was at least an hour before daybreak, and as far as she knew, both her parents were still sound asleep. The last thing Katie wanted to do was wake them. If they knew what she was doing, neither of them would be pleased with her—namely her father.

  Upon reaching the doorway that led to the basement, she opened it slowly and continued downstairs, making sure to close the door gently behind her. Turning a corner at the bottom of the staircase, Katie stood in front of an ominous reinforced security door with a combination-style lock on it about the size of her hand. The house her family had called home for several years was more like a mansion. In addition to being generous in size, it was secure and formidable. The menacing iron door was a small, yet robust representation of the walls and foundation that surrounded it. Her home had been built like a fortress, and her father had spared no expense making it so.

  Katie twisted in a combination she’d memorized and opened the door, exposing a large unfinished concrete cavern in the basement. She shined her flashlight at the poured slab foundation walls that surrounded the room. She closed the door and walked over to one of the many pallets of black plastic buckets that advertised the brand name Wise Foods on their flanks. There were hundreds of them—possibly even thousands of them in the room. Katie often wondered how her father had afforded to pay for all the provisions he had stored here. She knew his job paid him well before, but most of the money he made was spent on her family’s extravagant, often flamboyant lifestyle. Upgrades to their home, shiny new high-end automobiles, and vacations to exotic places around the world usually topped the list of expenditures. Katie’s family had recently purchased a vacation home in Corolla, North Carolina, the summer before the blackout, and had made plans to spend Christmas there, but their plans hadn’t panned out.