Chapter 43 – Run, Rabbits, Run
Ash and Geoff ran down the familiar paths at full speed. The forest was warm and inviting.
They ran, taking corners at dangerous speeds; Ashley discovered she could almost get horizontal while ‘banking.’ And still they ran.
All downhill, they ran at top speed, Geoff almost flying.
They ran until she couldn't breathe anymore and Ashley finally slowed down. She released Geoff's hand.
Ash was winded, but Geoff seemed relaxed. They walked for a while, both reluctant to break the wordless spell of their natural temple.
Ash could tell the reality of their situation hadn't yet sunk in for Geoff. He walked beside her, calm and easy. There was no point in talking about it and upsetting him. Even though her stomach was doing somersaults and she was close to panicking, that was no reason to provoke the same response in Geoff.
In fact, Ash noticed his calm was influencing her, helping her to relax.
Feeling better, she glanced over to Geoff. "Want to keep going?”
Geoff nodded. They resumed a mellow jog, hands free.
"Where are we going?" Geoff asked.
"To the ocean," Ash answered.
"And then Mexico?" Geoff asked.
"Yeah, sure. Mexico," Ashley laughed.
"Otherwise they're going to catch us," Geoff said.
"They're not going to catch us," Ashley said.
"Probably they are," Geoff said.
"Okay. You're right, probably they are," Ashley answered.
"So then we won't know until it's too late," Geoff replied.
"Right, so let's go back to being calm.”
"And Mexico?" Geoff asked. "What's wrong with Mexico?”
"Technically, we're still at war with Mexico," Ashley answered.
"No, we're not," Geoff said, parroting their father. “They were at war with us, and it’s been over for seven years. Dad said.”
Ashley shook her head. "War is war. Heading toward it sounds stupid to me.”
"Dad says we'll be safe with them," Geoff argued.
"You don't believe that," Ashley answered. "And I don't speak Spanish.”
"You can learn, it's easy," Geoff said, smiling.
Ashley froze, the color drained from her face. In the distance, she could hear the soldiers closing, heavy boots and the rattle of weapons, sounds alien to the forest.
"We have to run, now!" Ashley said. She clutched Geoffrey's hand and hauled him along. It was all he could do to stay upright, planting one foot after the other, catching himself as they fell down the canyon trail.
A half-dozen turns ahead they came around a sharp bend and found themselves face to face with Mr. Dunkirk. He was covered in blood.
They skidded to a halt, Ashley's right hand found the prototype in her back pocket, but she didn't pull it out. Geoff stood behind her, right where she'd have told him to be.
Mr. Dunkirk stood still, apparently as afraid of the children as they were of him.
Then he snapped out of it and smiled.
It was the grin of a lunatic.
Ashley grabbed Geoff's hand, and they were gone, down a branching trail. They heard no sounds of pursuit, but the soldiers had to be getting closer.
Ashley and Geoff had no idea they were supposed to be invisible. It certainly seemed like Mr. Dunkirk had seen them.
Before they got much further, the brother and sister came upon Bobby Dunkirk. He was standing on the path with his hand in his pocket. Ash slowed to a walk, Geoff beside her.
Bobby looked stunned stupid, much as his father had.
Suddenly, Ashley knew. She knew what it was.
She pulled out the rectangle. She watched Bobby's eyes fixate on the dark metal obscured by her thin fingers.
"Bobby, Bobby? Are you all right?" Ash whispered.
His eyes were glued to her fist. She put the prototype back in her pocket. Once it vanished, Bobby seemed to come to his senses. His gaze snapped up to her face, as if he hadn't recognized them until that moment.
Ash ignored the fact that they had just come upon Bobby’s father, covered in blood, and treated him as she would any of the neighboring children, in an emergency situation.
"Bobby, There are soldiers coming. We have to run right now. You should come with us.”
Ashley grabbed Bobby's free hand and moved down the trail. He didn't resist. Ash moved downhill as fast as she could pull Bobby and Geoff.
After a few minutes, Bobby began to struggle against her. "No. No, it's okay. They're not coming for me. He's going to get them.”
"What?" Ashley slowed, but kept moving.
"We don't have to run. Once he gets them, we can sit. I want to sit on the rock.”
Ashley looked at Bobby as if he'd lost his mind, but she kept moving, slowing to a walk.
"He'll get them, watch." Bobby was getting loud, and pulling away from Ash.
Ashley was afraid the approaching killers would hear him, and stopped. She let go of his hand.
From the trails behind them, near where they'd run into Mr. Dunkirk, there came a heavy crash with a yelp. The cry was cut short.
Then came the sounds of wild gunfire.
Ashley took both Geoff and Bobby's hands and ran for all she was worth. The cries and gunfire continued until they were extinguished, one at a time. With the forest quiet behind them, Bobby began to drag his feet.
Ashley had no choice but to stop and let him go.
"He stopped them." Bobby looked out into the forest.
Ashley wasn't sure Bobby was playing with a full deck, but then again, those soldiers should have caught them already. If someone did stop them, it made sense that it was Mr. Dunkirk; he’d been covered in blood.
Ashley knew her father's work could put the family in danger.
Seven years ago, during the Battle of San Diego, her Uncle Geoff had been killed. She knew her father had engineered a dangerous weapon that had won the war. She knew he was still involved in military projects.
It wasn't too shocking that soldiers had come for them. This very predicament had long been a Fox family 'worst case scenario.'
What had now happened to the soldiers seemed even more menacing.
Bobby backed away from Ashley, as if she were dangerous to him. "Soldiers were chasing you,” he said. “They want what you have. You have the power.”
"They want to take us," Ashley answered.
"They want your power, but he got them. He got them all. They don't have the power. Not like you do.”
Bobby turned away from Ash and Geoff and began to walk back uphill. He paused to look back over his shoulder. "He got them. He got them all." Then he was gone, vanished into the trees.
Captain Analynn Snow hung above the earth, skimming the treetops of the little mountainside neighborhood. The phase-camouflage kept her invisible to the dog-walkers and their leashed companions. With the scanning suite provided by the Micronix, following people was easy enough. She registered the heat signatures of the children, as well as those in their immediate path.
When curious about the details, she raised her long bore rifle to her shoulder and peered through the scope. It had been easy for her to double check Ashley’s Micronix and make sure its phase-cam was functioning, allowing the children to more though the canyon, invisible to prying eyes.
There was an adult ahead, in their path. They wouldn’t know they were invisible to him, and Ana hoped they wouldn’t give themselves away.
She watched as Ashley and Geoff found themselves face to face with Mr. Dunkirk. They only faced him for a moment, and then Ashley led Geoff down a separate trail, avoiding the adult.
Captain Snow considered taking her revenge right there; she had Dunkirk in her sights, but the shot would alert the dozens of law enforcement officials to her location.
Even though it appeared that Dunkirk and the children had seen each other, Von Kalt’s pursuing alpha team was closing the gap. The four soldiers were heavily armed and moving downhi
ll as fast as their feet would carry them. He would serve as an obstacle for the soldiers.
Ana looked back to the children and discovered they had stopped. A boy stood ahead of Ashley and Geoff. They were talking to him. She considered that perhaps Ashley had somehow overridden the phase-cam effects. Then she realized the boy clutched something in his hand. He’d been exposed; this boy was carrying around charged terillium.
Uphill, then the soldiers ran into Dunkirk. For a brief moment, no one moved. Ana watched, as the neighbor to her children and ex-military surgeon, attacked the soldiers. Bare handed, he used their weapons against them. In moments, the four soldiers were dead.
Two groups of suited feds proceeded past the branching trail that would have led to Dunkirk and the murdered soldiers. Ana didn’t mind that fact that Dunkirk had survived. That ensured her another chance for revenge.
She stayed with Ash and Geoff as they continued in their flight, running down the mountainside with their new friend in tow. Ana recognized him from her other self’s memories of the neighborhood: Bobby, Dunkirk’s younger son. Before long, he’d pulled away and was making his way back up the hillside.
That night, far from their home turf, Ash and Geoff found a playground near one of the parking areas. They smoothed out the sand under a large playset and curled up against the chill mountain night.
"What do you think happened to Mom and Dad?" Geoff asked.
"I don't know," Ashley answered. "We'll find out in the morning.”
Ashley stared hard at the tree line.
Soon, it was warm and cozy under the jungle gym. She was tired, but she watched the woods for an hour before her eyelids fell shut.
Stanwood called off the search long before Von Kalt was satisfied. He’d forbid Von Kalt from going into the forest himself. Otherwise, the deputy was certain he’d have caught Ashley and Geoff. He couldn’t believe they had escaped. The feds had searched until the early morning hours but found nothing.
Thankfully, his men had been killed, the punishment for their failure appropriately embraced. There was one troubling fact. Their weapons and communicators had been found, but their bodies had not. The volume of blood and tissue suggested that no one survived, but they found no drag marks, no discernible tracks at all.
Clearly, the bodies were carried off in a transport, to conceal their murder, and the communicators had been left behind to prevent them being tracked and subsequently found.
Stanwood suggested that Dr. Fox had conspirators hidden in the forest; who had most likely rescued the children and killed his agents. The only thing they agreed on was that the children certainly hadn’t done it.
When the transport carrying the bodies of Dr. Fox and his wife was ambushed in traffic, there was little Von Kalt could do; as Stanwood had assigned a volume of tasks to his Deputy Director. He was bent on the acquisition of Dr. Fox’s technology and laboratories.
The corpses never arrived at their scheduled destination. Instead, First Sergeant King delivered an illegally acquired pair of overdosed junkies to an overcrowded mortuary. By the time Von Kalt looked into it, the corpses identified as Mr. and Mrs. Fox had long since been cremated.
First Sergeant King had been reassigned.