Ashley Fox - Ninja Orphan
Chapter 39 – No Quarter
In his basement, preparing for the young child's subsequent dismemberment, Dunkirk quite clearly heard the upstairs kitchen door close. He stood, head-tilted and staring at the ceiling.
His ruined ears were hardly to be trusted, but it appeared that the child had heard it too. She had paused in her crying. Had he forgotten to lock the kitchen door?
The child wailed with all she had.
Dunkirk struck her hard enough to knock her senseless, ceasing the lyrical scream. He listened for some time before he eventually wrote the sound off to fatigue and physical trauma. The burned Dunkirk turned back to the child.
Gauging her size and weight, he wavered between several wicked-looking tools, trying to define the most satisfying for the job ahead. He narrowed it down to a few favorites and set them within easy reach.
An upstairs floorboard creaked.
It could have been a normal noise houses make. He meditated on the sensation of sound and tried to block out his pain.
Hearing nothing further he returned to his preparations and removed the unconscious child's shirt. He lifted her frail body and laid her on the cold metal worktable.
She stirred and woke. He grinned at her, and the child shrieked.
When Dunkirk raised a long silver knife, she screamed louder still. He relished the sound. He felt her terror measurably improving his otherwise miserable mood.
Just before the down-stroke Martin heard the distinct sound of crashing glass on the hardwood floor, directly overhead. This time, he didn’t look up, he just lowered the knife.
Then he heard the crunch of broken glass under a booted foot.
Martin flew across the room to the spiral staircase, the child forgotten. He flung his gorilla-like physique up the narrow spinning stairwell with reckless aggression.
On the first floor, moving through the bedroom, he heard calm footsteps on the stairwell heading up to the second floor.
Dunkirk moved down the hall and paused in the living room. He listened, but the house was silent again.
Martin looked down at the shattered fragments of colored glass. The scattered and crushed shards were the remains of a glass clown knocked from its central place on the shelf. The clown had occupied the place of honor in this, his oldest of homes.
It had been there all his life. He had grown up here and that glass clown had been the only remaining souvenir of his first victim, his mother.
Martin looked about the room, to see if anything else was out of place. The room was covered with a thick layer of dust, the front door securely nailed shut.
Martin's eyes drifted to the stairwell, leading up to the second floor. Determined to root out the intruder, he approached the stairs, the long blade clutched in a death grip.
Halfway up the stairwell he paused, listening.
Hearing only silence, he continued.
Dunkirk sniffed at the air, the smell of decay was stronger here, but there was something else. Even his ruined nose could detect it.
He made a mental note to purchase more deodorizers. The rot was obscuring the intruding odor, making it difficult to identify.
At the top of the stairs, he stopped. All three doors to the upper rooms were open. He never left them open. Never. Not once.
The bathroom door, on the right, mostly closed, was the only one that should be fully open.
Martin walked to the first door, on his left. The room was filled with corpses wrapped in heavy plastic. The smell was overwhelming. That was why he'd smelled it on the stairs.
He peered inside, but there was nowhere for anyone to hide. He closed the door. Martin didn't need to check the closets. The doors were difficult to reach and they were packed anyhow. There was no room to fit anybody else in, not even a child.
Martin crept to the bathroom door. He pushed it open with his elbow. The scent that had escaped him earlier revealed itself. Alcohol, Rum, he was sure of it. The shower curtain had been pulled back, just as he always left it, open, exposing everything. He could see the rest of room in the mirror.
Satisfied it was empty, he turned back to the hallway.
Martin went to the top of the stairs and waited to see if the intruder would perhaps reveal himself below.
Behind Mr. Dunkirk, Reverend Wolfe slipped out of the bathroom and stepped into the hallway. He raised a terillium edged saber and pistol at Dunkirk's back and quietly crept toward him.
From the top of the stairs, Dunkirk watched the daring preschooler walk into the living room below. She had courageously come upstairs. How brave. This one would be sweet.
She walked around the broken glass, careful not to step on any of it. Martin began to descend the stairwell, followed by the stealthy Reverend.
The girl saw them and backed away.
Dunkirk stopped at the base of the stairwell, facing her. She looked over his shoulder, at the Reverend behind him.
Martin spun and caught the pommel of Wolfe's sword in the mouth. The strike lifted him into the air and delivered him directly onto the pile of fractured glass. His head struck the floor with enough force to render him unconscious.
Shocked by the corpses she'd left at each post, Staff Sergeant Splitter drifted along behind the lethal Ashley.
He knew she'd been instructed to secretly approach the HQ, which wouldn't have been difficult. Instead she'd chosen to wreak bloody carnage.
He was having a difficult time following orders. These citizens were just children themselves. His job was to protect them. Of all the people he’d killed or seen killed, none of them had been civilian citizens.
This was wrong.
The Mayor, in his office, sat in a comfortable chair turned toward the open balcony, a large glass of red wine in his hand. The lights of the city around him burned far brighter than the stars above.
Westbury was alone. He'd charged Leonard with Detective Cole's termination, and the secretary was dutifully searching for the wounded civil servant.
Unable to communicate and relatively helpless from their place in the command center, Keller's majors watched Ashley murder her way closer and closer to the elevator banks.
They watched as she crouched behind a pillar and drew a second handgun. Two guards walked right past her. Ashley raised her weapons and dropped both the young soldiers with what appeared to be a simultaneous shot.
That post only had a single guard left. Ashley didn't even bother with any subterfuge. Dressed as a soldier in vest and forearm bracers, she boldly walked up to the young man and shot him three times. She tossed his badge into her pack, fat with so much glittering brass.
At the next post she coldly killed four men without blinking.
Her pack grew fatter.
Only half a dozen left now, which normally would have been the world, but Ashley treated them like speed bumps.
In Martin Dunkirk's childhood home, the Reverend tucked his pistol into his belt. He knelt and picked up Dunkirk's knife.
The Reverend set down his saber and with his free hand, pinned Martin's arm by the wrist. He spread the hand flat on the ground.
Wolfe looked over to the little girl and said, "Close your eyes.”
She shook her head and continued watching.
"Please?" the Reverend asked.
Again she shook her head.
"Oh my God, what is that?" he exclaimed and pointed behind her.
Already jittery and terrified, the toddler fell for it, spinning around.
Reverend Wolfe forcefully drove the knife through Dunkirk's hand, deep into the wood below, pinning it to the floor.
The child turned back, realizing she'd been tricked and caught her breath at the sight of blood spreading from beneath the twitching hand.
Wolfe stood, sheathed his saber and crossed over to the little girl. He knelt before her, careful not to make any sudden movements. "I'm going to take you to the police and they're going to call your parents," he said.
She stared at him with wide unbelieving eyes.
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"Would you like that?" he smiled.
She blinked and nodded, exhaustion washing over her. He stood, picked her up and carried her from the living room, out through the kitchen.
Outside, they crossed the street to a black SUV. He laid her in the back seat. "You'll be safe here," he said. "I'll be right back." He smiled and closed the vehicle door.
He walked around to the back of the truck and picked up two tanks of liquid fuel. The girl watched him carry the heavy tanks across the street and back into the evil man's house.
Wolfe set the tanks in the kitchen, pulled all the knives from a decorative wooden block and carried them into the living room. He kicked the waking Dunkirk forcefully in the ribs.
Dunkirk attempted to sit up, but his hand was stuck to the floor. He screamed, or rather howled, without functioning lips.
The Reverend stepped forward with another boot, this time to the face. What remained of the man's nose released a fountain of blood.
The Reverend sat on a nearby ottoman and fired the knives into the floor before him, standing them from their points like a small forest of sharpened steel.
"I'm going to ask you some questions. For every question you get wrong, you get a knife. For every question you get right, you get another question. We play till we run out of questions." Wolfe smiled and gestured to the knives. "They're all yes or no questions, but there's only one right answer. Understand?”
Dunkirk silently glared at him.
"Okay, that one doesn't count. But this one does.”
The Reverend pulled the smallest knife from the floor. "Do you know the difference between good and evil?" he asked.
"Uck you!" Dunkirk replied, his burned lips inhibiting his attempts at meaningful dialogue.
The Reverend pulled his arm back and let the knife fly. The blade sunk into Dunkirk's shin.
He screamed.
The Reverend pulled a medium sized knife from its place in the hardwood floor. "Are you willing to confess your crimes and ask for the forgiveness of your victims?”
Dunkirk glared at the Reverend. "All dead.”
"I can help with that." Wolfe threw the blade at Martin's face.
Dunkirk's free arm came up, the blade sinking deeply into the forelimb. He screamed again.
"You've killed dozens of people, is that right?”
"Hundreds!" Dunkirk leered.
The Reverend plucked another blade from the floor. "Are you willing to ask our victims for forgiveness?”
Dunkirk caught his breath. "Ouu said Our. Our!" He laughed, his grim rictus a shredded tapestry of black and red.
"I won't ask you again," the Reverend said.
Martin began tugging at the hand pinned to the floor, desperately trying to work it free.
The Reverend hurled the next knife at him. It bit deep into the meat of Martin's pinned shoulder. The arm fell limp and ceased its bid for freedom.
"Okay. Now we get to the hard ones." Reverend Wolfe pulled one of the long blades from the floor. "These you can't throw so well. It needs to be more of a stabbing motion." He stabbed the knife into the air before Dunkirk's face.
Martin scowled, as well as he could without lips or eyelids.
"Do you accept the Lord Jesus as your personal savior?" he asked.
"Uck you," Martin sneered.
The Reverend knelt and deliberately stabbed the knife through one of Dunkirk's meaty thighs, driving it into the floor beneath.
"This one is important, so I'll give you another chance." Wolfe pulled up another knife.
"Are you willing to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal God and Savior?”
Martin hissed in the Reverend's face.
Reverend Wolfe pulled the man's leg flat and stabbed the knife clean through his second thigh. "Only a couple left and they're pretty big. You wanna keep fucking around?”
Dunkirk didn't answer.
Wolfe laughed. "That one doesn't count either.”
In a massive display of strength, Dunkirk reached over and pulled the knife from his pinned hand.
Reverend Wolfe leaned forward and stabbed Dunkirk in the chest, between the ribs, puncturing a lung.
"Wrong answer," Wolfe said.
Dunkirk dropped the small blade.
Wolfe pulled the last blade from the floor. It was the largest, the thick heavy butcher knife. "You haven't gotten any right yet.”
He let Dunkirk get a good look at the blade. "Ready for another one?”
Dunkirk scowled and struggled to breathe.
"Are you sorry for the pain you've caused?”
Dunkirk tried to lift his arm, but could not.
The Reverend knelt before him. "Are you sorry?”
Dunkirk scowled with his ruined brows.
"Are you sorry?”
Dunkirk took a deep breath, summoning his strength. "Kill Ouu!"
The Reverend drove the butcher knife deep into Martin's other lung.
Dunkirk fell back against the floor, gasping for breath.
Wolfe stood and exited the room.
Dunkirk blew blood bubbles from his mouth.
Wolfe went down to the basement and scanned it with an infrared camera, confirming that the house was empty.
In the kitchen, he unscrewed the cap from the first of the fuel containers and splashed it onto the floor and walls. The Reverend toured the house, dousing it with the high-octane gasoline.
He then returned to Dunkirk, pinned to the floor, splashing the fuel in a circle around him, around the walls of the living room, but leaving the floor directly around him relatively dry.
Reverend Wolfe knelt next to Dunkirk. "Mysterious ways, you know.”
Wolfe then exited and lit the hallway behind him. Fire leapt up the walls, across the floor and up the stairwell, it surrounded Dunkirk and appeared to growl at him, they way a pack of hyenas might.
Outside, the Reverend didn't look back. "Forgive me, Lord. Your servant is weak.”
He crossed the street to the SUV. The child was asleep in the back seat. He reached over and tussled her hair as they lifted off. "Sleep tight, darling. He'll never hurt anyone again.”