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 slow 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.
Back down the trail was the only safe way off the sliver of high ground. The sweat soaked Mr. Dunkirk appeared at the mouth of the trail behind her and stalked forward.
Ashley backed out further onto the plateau.
Dunkirk paused in the shadow of the trees, just a few meters away. He hesitated to reveal himself,
as the precipice could be seen by any of several residences, as well as passing traffic.
Ana waited, her scope was fixated on the big man, but the shadows, the heat of the afternoon and her angle unbalanced the shot. She waited for him to step out of the shadows and she would have him.
Reid watched from a lower position over her right shoulder.
With a muttered curse, Dunkirk stepped into the sunlight and raised the knife overhead.
Ash saw bits of green leaf streaked over dried blood. She backed away, moving further out onto the dangerous bit of mountain land.
Just as Ana’s finger tightened on the trigger, she was hit from the back. She released the trigger, the rifle stayed silent as she tumbled through the sky, trying to get her bearings.
Below her, two police cruisers filled the sky she’d occupied until a moment ago. The officers in the cockpits were focused on the action below. Utterly invisible, they hadn’t noticed her at all.
Ana’s back ached where the cruiser had punched her, killing her shot.
Below, Dunkirk continued forward, but instead of bringing down the knife, he surprised Ashley, leaping forward with a heavy knuckled backhand, knocking the girl from her feet.
So much for Don’t Get Hit, Ashley thought. She crouched where she had fallen, just a few inches from the edge. His rings had opened a wicked gash in her brow; blood ran into her eye. Her head rang like a tower bell.
He was so fast, she thought to herself.
"Sorry about your Mom," Dunkirk said.
Ashley didn't understand. She looked up at him but didn't reply.
"It was just a job, not like what you saw back there. Not like Shirley, that was spectacular."
Ashley and Mr. Dunkirk stared at each other.
He'd just admitted to killing her Mom! Ash was furious and near panicking. Her emotions were all over the place, but then something happened and she just shut off.
The words of Sihing Shou came back to her. It will be at that moment when you are weak, tired and probably very hurt, that is when you must act to save your life.
As Dunkirk stepped forward, she recognized his poor posture. He let his knees turn inward. They were weak, vulnerable.
Ashley struck. With her hands planted in the dirt, she kicked at Dunkirk's left knee. The joint gave with a splintering crack.
Martin crashed to the ground, screaming.
The knife lay between them.
Dunkirk clutched at his ruined leg, growling, howling and snapping at her. With a deep breath, he lurched up. Even on one knee, he towered over the small girl. He reached for the knife.
Ash moved, kicking again. Staying close to the earth, she unleashed a series of horizontal kicks to the large man's face, neck and chest.
Her persistence and coordination unbalanced him. She delivered the last three directly to his mouth and nose, stomping the deranged killer over the lip of solid ground and from her sight.
She heard him scream until his voice grew obscured by cracking branches and then silenced by a muffled impact.
The knife remained where it had fallen.
Ashley stood.
Above her, two police vehicles hovered, watching. Having just arrived, they were helpless to do anything but witness.
She saw the nearest officer grin and raise his fist in salute.
Ashley did not wave back or smile. She did not feel victorious.
They turned off to land in a nearby clearing.
Ash noticed her breathing had leveled out, her heart, calm.
Now, calm she did finally feel powerful, capable, more than just confident. She felt superior.
High above the action, Reid and Snow watched the cops land and check on Ashley.
“That fifth-wall…” Reid said.
“Completely intact,” Captain Snow answered. “Even at the cost of my spine.”
Reid laughed. “Nothing a little blue goo can’t fix, right?”
“Thank God for the blue goo,” Snow laughed.