by John Carrick
Not forgetting the need to be careful, Ashley left the house the same way she'd come in, through the back and into the forest.
“Take us up above the halo,” Von Kalt ordered.
“Yes, Sir.” The pilot merged into the afternoon cable traffic. “Sir, the Director said we should…”
Von Kalt stared into the pilot’s eyes.
“Yes, Sir,” the pilot said, reconsidering his question.
The traffic above the central hub of the city was sparse, they could see in all directions. Von Kalt pulled up the teams’ vehicle and helmet cameras. The Fox residence was quiet.
Von Kalt triggered his radio. “Status checks with a pause for course correction.” He pulled the Metachron device from his pocket.
“Foxtrot: We’ve got nothing at the residence.”
“We just reported an access at the residence!” Von Kalt interrupted. “Logs say it was the daughter. You missed her, or you’ve given yourselves away. Remove to a circular patrol, five miles out. Do not screw this up!”
“Copy, Foxtrot Out.”
“Golf: holding position at the school.”
“Very Good, Continue.”
“Hotel: We’re on the labs, all quiet here. “
Von Kalt’s phone rang, it was Stanwood. “Hold,” he said over the radio to his soldiers and accepted the incoming call. “Yes, Director.”
Stanwood appeared to be riding in a transport of his own
“I heard you had a run in with our little superstar?” Stanwood asked.
“Yes, sir. She killed three agents at a shopping mall.”
“And then what, she escaped?” Stanwood asked.
“She jumped, sir.”
Stanwood laughed.
“I already forwarded you the footage.”
Stanwood continued laughing. “Keep me informed.” He disconnected the call.
“Of course, I’ll keep you informed.” Von Kalt hung up and tossed the new phone out the window.
With the Metachron in hand, he dove into the digital maze that was the Child Services Department.
All he had to do was find the brother, and she would come to him. He will rewrite the other, the first one, The Micronix. He will rewrite it, and he will kill her if he has to. She will give it to him, or she will die.
Chapter 68 – Calistan Canyon
Sunday, August 2, 2308
Ashley flew down the paths, making her way toward the far side of the neighborhood. In her excitement, she overshot the street leading to the security house and drifted too far down into the canyon. She needed to go uphill.
The kite wasn't helping anymore. The fall had drained the charge and she wasn't able push it up the steep canyon walls. It was shredded. While it would be fine for riding downhill, that wasn't helping now, she needed to cross the canyon and go up the other side.
Ash knelt and disconnected the kite from the board. She collapsed the whip and folded up the sail. The kite had saved her life, but it was worthless to her now. Ash wrapped the sail around the mast, and tied it with a bit of guideline. She buried the whole mess in some brush at the base of a big tree.
Returning to her board, in the middle of the path, Ashley had the intense feeling of being watched. She knelt to tie her shoe, scanning the trees and paths around her. She saw no one, and discovered that her shoe did indeed, need to be tied.
When Ashley looked up, she saw Oscar, the Dunkirk's cat. What was he doing out here?
Ashley turned to grab her board, and found Bobby Dunkirk standing just down the path from her. She couldn't understand how he'd gotten behind her, but there he was, dressed in all white, and he was staring at her. Oscar had come with him.
Ash noted how much Bobby had changed since she'd last seen him, weeks ago. His hair was slicked down close to the scalp, and his clothes were white, clean and pressed. He looked as if he were ready for picture day at school. Bobby's expression was also quite formal, no smile, his hands folded behind his back. This was not the same boy she had known. This Bobby was different. He seemed more adult than most adults did.
"What happened to Jack?" Bobby asked, without any sort of greeting.
"He died," Ash answered.
"It was the very next day, wasn't it?" There was something eerie about Bobby, from his dead-white suit to his ultra-smooth demeanor. He didn't seem drugged. In fact, he seemed wide-awake.
Ashley found herself strangely calm. "Yes, it was the next day."
"Do you miss him?" Bobby asked.
"Very much," she answered.
"I need your help," Bobby said, without a pause.
"My help?"
"You were there that day, in the canyon. That's when it all started. It touched you, I can tell. You're the only one who can help me."
"What are you talking about?" Ashley asked. She knew he was talking about the Micronix, the prototype in her pocket. The same way she'd known her father was involved when Jack died.
Oscar seemed oblivious to all of it. He sniffed the grass and weeds, watching everything and nothing.
"He's after me. He killed them and now he's after me." Bobby looked up the hill toward their street. He sounded a little more normal, but the words he was saying were disturbing.
"Who's after you?" Ash asked.
"My dad, he killed them. He’s killed so many."
"Your dad?" Ashley asked, pulling out Ross's phone. "Do you want me to call the police?"
"No. They can't help me. He kills the police. That night you were running, he killed lots of them. You're the only one who can help me."
"I'm just a girl. What am I going to do against your dad?"
"You have the power. You can stop him. You have to stop him," Bobby was growing more impatient.
"You sound crazy, you know that?"
"Please just come with me, I'm begging you." Bobby had gone from weird monotone creep to panicked and terrified little boy.
Ash almost laughed but caught herself.
"Please, Ash," Bobby was almost in tears now. "He's going to kill my Mom! Please, you have to help me. He's gonna kill them." Bobby paused and composed himself. "Please, just talk to him, Ash. He'll listen to you."
"Why do you think he'll listen to me?"
"I can feel it. You're different. When the man fell you found something. You found something, and it's in your pocket right now. That's why he'll listen. You have all the power. You can cure him."
Bobby seemed more normal now than Ash had seen him so far. He sounded okay. He was a little keyed up, but he wasn't doing his weird zombie monotone and he wasn't panicking. "What do you mean cure him?"
"Like you cured me," Bobby said.
"When?" Ash asked.
"Just right now," Bobby answered.
Ashley looked at him. He certainly seemed less uptight.
"Everything will be all right, I'm sure of it. If you just come with me. Evan and Anne and my Mom will all be okay. If you talk to him, he won't hurt them."
Ash walked forward and put a hand on his shoulder. She looked Bobby in the eye. "It's going to be okay, I'll help you."
Bobby seemed to calm down. "I have to show you, then you'll understand," Bobby said.
As Bobby walked through the forest, Ashley followed on her board. Her hand found the hard metal rectangle nestled in her pocket. Somehow she was not reassured by its flat texture under her fingertips.
Ashley stood with Bobby atop a small rise, past where the old asphalt street stopped. They stood, looking at the side of the modern-art fiasco Bobby called home. Ash could see her own house, just down the road.
Ash looked over at Bobby, he was terrified. She felt awful for having left him in the forest, that night a few weeks ago. It would be difficult to say that Bobby was okay. Ash didn't think he'd ever been normal, but he seemed better at the moment than when she had run into him ten minutes ago.
Bobby lived in one of the most expensive homes for miles. The white structure stretched out into the canyon, vast and angled. The rooms intersected in odd a
rrangements, walls and ceilings set together in disturbing ways, resulting in massive amounts of wasted space. For a prosperous slumlord and art connoisseur, Ashley felt Mr. Dunkirk had exhibited zero taste in choosing the family domicile.
Ash hadn't seen Bobby's older brother, Evan, since the Pierce incident, and she rarely saw Anne outside of family barbeques. This summer, the Dunkirk’s' hadn't thrown any of their trademark parties. Mrs. Dunkirk loved to host giant events, inviting hundreds of people. Shirley worked as a professional coordinator, served as head of the PTA, and was a member of the neighborhood homeowners' association. She planned school field trips, coordinated weekend outings to amusement parks, and organized multiple-family gatherings at local restaurants.
The Dunkirk’s also had a habit of slipping away for fancy trips. Upon their return, the neighborhood kids would be tortured with story after story about how they went tiger hunting in India, or fishing for giant carp off the Sea of Japan. "And did you know that, in Japan, they have red dragonflies?" Bobby would go on and on, repeating the same trivial facts day-after-day.
Ash found their familial enthusiasm nauseating. Her family never took vacations. Ashley's father rarely took breaks of any kind from his work. As a result, Ashley hardly knew him, but as her mother put it, he made the sun shine and the grass grow. "If your father stopped going to work, the world would fall apart." Small comfort, even when the she believed it.
Now her world had come crashing down. Her parents no longer existed. She had lost her brother. This was a new world she was living in. Here, the rules were different.
Bobby reached into his back pocket, produced a key card and handed it to Ash.
"Is there a code," Ashley asked.
"No code, just swipe it. Go in through the back."
"Look Bobby, I'll go in there. I'll check on your family, but I want you to understand, it might already be too late. If your Mom is in there, if she's hurt, I'm calling the cops, okay. If anyone is hurt, it's nine-one-one, images attached."
"Please, just check, okay?"
Ashley rode her hoverboard right up to the back door and leaned it against the house. She used the key Bobby gave her and entered the kitchen.
Chapter 69 – Martin Dunkirk At Home
Sunday, August 2, 2308
Inside the house, everything was white. From the walls to the furniture, it was all white, off white or a tranquil blue-white. Only the floors were not white. The kitchen was a deep maroon stone. The hardwood floors of the living room and stairwell, an earthy variety of mountain lion, a pale, sandy grey.
Ashley noticed the trim of the home. Crown moldings, runner boards, the railing on the stairwell, all bone-bleached, smooth wood.
By the time Ashley had crossed the kitchen, she'd picked up an odd coppery smell. She breathed shallowly, looking for an abandoned sandwich or forgotten plate of food, anything that might contradict her overwhelming instinct.
A sound came from upstairs, movement.
Oscar meowed behind her. He'd slipped inside and was now contentedly cleaning a paw.
Another sound came from the second floor, heavy lifting.
Ash moved down the short hall from the immaculate kitchen and into the main foyer. She prepared to call out, but her voice caught in her throat. Bright crimson streaks stained the impeccably white walls.
Mrs. Dunkirk lay at the bottom of the stairwell, her head at the foot of the stairs, white-clothed body curving up over the wide circular staircase. If the fall to her present position didn't kill her, the deep stab wounds to her torso certainly did.
Ash heard Oscar drinking water behind her in the kitchen.
The bright crimson stains stood out sharp and crisp. Several hand prints and smears marked the railing and stairwell around Mrs. Dunkirk's body. Ash felt guilty for having disliked her so much. No one deserved to be butchered on the stairs like that.
Behind her, Oscar crunched his food into bits before swallowing.
Ash turned to her right and discovered Evan's decapitated corpse sprawled across the white downstairs couch. Neatly placed on the coffee table, his head sat in a pool of blood and plasma. It looked altogether different from Mrs. Dunkirk on the stairs.
The blood was not so scattered about. There were no bloody prints around the corpse. Evan's sprawled body was also dressed in white from head to foot. Ash suspected perhaps there had been some family photo scheduled, because this was not Evan's normal attire.
The killer had grabbed Evan by the hair as he sat on the couch and cut his head from his body. It had been done with a significant amount of surprise.
After decapitating his son, Mr. Dunkirk, (Ashley realized there was no reason to guess about it anymore), had chased his wife, Shirley, to the front foyer where he got a bit more aggressive.
Ashley snapped a couple of pictures of Mrs. Dunkirk, followed by a couple of Evan. She attached them, typed MURDER, 1826 CALISTAN WAY, and dialed 911.
Forgetting the phone, Ash found her eyes drawn to the top of the stairwell.
Mr. Dunkirk stood, watching her, from the open two-story flight. The short, overweight, and usually harried businessman had gone triumphantly mad.
Previous to this moment, Martin Dunkirk always appeared perfectly combed, coifed, and perfumed. He was usually attired in garments worth an affluent banker's salary.
Today he looked exactly as Ashley had always imagined him, drunk, unshaven, a rat's nest of greasy, tangled hair, dirty tank-top concealing his massive gut, wrinkled work pants held aloft by a single strained suspender.
In his left hand, where Ashley might have pictured a newspaper or a doughnut, Martin held a large, finely serrated kitchen knife.
The young girl and the homicidal murderer stared at each other.
Martin blinked first, and Ash sprinted for the kitchen door, pocketing the phone as she ran.
Behind her, she heard the blood-crazed lunatic, thundering down the stairs. The pursuit went silent for a brief moment, as he leapt to clear his wife's corpse. Then he crashed on, chasing after her with a series of hard thuds.
As the Micronix naturally monitored all frequencies, Captain Snow and Chief Warrant Officer Reid both heard the 911 call go out and saw the images Ashley forwarded to the cops.
Snow was still looking at the images when Ashley burst from the house.
Ashley slammed open the back door.
Outside, momentarily blinded by the afternoon sunlight, Ash panicked and made her first mistake, sprinting across the deck and forgetting her hoverboard, leaning against the house.
She ran for the low, adobe wall where the property met the sloping canyon, as Mr. Dunkirk barreled down the kitchen hall behind her.
Bobby was nowhere to be seen.
Ash cleared the wall as Mr. Dunkirk burst through the kitchen door. As she ran, she heard him pound his way across the wooden deck and down the stairs. The heavy steps went quiet as he crossed into the foliage-carpeted dirt.
Ana and Reid were both caught off guard by the fleeing Ash and pursuing Dunkirk. Ana immediately chambered a round and fired on Dunkirk but missed. She fired twice more before he vanished into the undergrowth.
Ana signaled Reid, gesturing for him to flank Dunkirk at ground level, from the East, so he’d be outside her field of fire as she lined up a shot from the air.
Ash recklessly sprinted down the paths, her feet hardly touching the ground. She didn't know she could move so fast. If she fell, the impact would fracture bones. She morbidly joked with herself that if ballet didn't work out in the long term, she might follow in her mother's footsteps and enjoy a career running track.
Well over two hundred pounds, wide-shouldered and thick-necked, Marty Dunkirk hurled himself after her. She didn't risk looking back, but she could hear him gaining on her.
She could hear the knife-wielding hand, chopping and hacking at the obstructing vegetation.
The leafy trees obscured the sky overhead as paths cut through the forest. Ashley ran, downhill mostly, turning often enough to sl
ow down and avoid losing control all together.
She heard Dunkirk fall, twice, then again a third time.
She thought she’d lost him, but he’d come down the mountainside the hard way, and she could now hear him approaching from a different angle.
Ashley ran harder. She heard him burst onto the path behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. He followed, closer than she'd imagined.
She accelerated, moving faster, but he kept coming.
Ashley took a turn to her right, a slight upward angle, past the glen where Bobby liked to sit with his disciples. Of course she didn’t know that.
She slid down a sharp defile, the grass and weeds coming loose under her feet, luckily reaching the bottom without a twisted ankle.
To her left, where the defile became narrower and continued up the mountainside, there was an area that had recently collapsed.
From her place at the bottom of the stack, Ash could see the bodies, piled atop one another, surrounded by loose dirt. Dozens of bodies, stacked almost twenty feet high, loose earth poured in between them, like mortar. A thick funk of decay and rot hung in the air.
Behind her Dunkirk roared with laughter as he clumsily made his way down the hillside.
Ash turned to run, but vomited after the first step.
She dragged on, stumbling and spitting out the remainder of her lunch, as she fled the lumbering psychopath.
She took another uphill path, dense with trees and underbrush.
She didn't think, she just ran. The mistake hit her too late.
The path led to a narrow sliver of high ground, a peninsula with sheer-drop cliffs ahead and to both sides.
Mr. Dunkirk howled with primal blood lust as he pursued her.
To her back and both sides, a few sparsely covered feet of dirt was all that stood between Ash and a fall of forty meters or more.
