Among Us, Part One
Title: Among Us
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Characters/Pairing: Prentiss, Reid, Morgan, Garcia - gen
Genre: Suspense/Supernatural
Summary: The SUV breaks down three miles from a small town with a big secret. Nothing is as it seems.
Author’s Note: Betaed by Windy City Dreamer, who I’m pretty sure I owe my first born child by now.
...
They were driving down Nevada State Route 375, on their way to Warm Springs. With some amusement in his voice, Spencer Reid mentioned that the road had been officially designated as the Extraterrestrial Highway, almost thirteen years earlier, due to travelers reporting “alien” activity. This, though, he continued, was almost certainly due to the highway’s proximity to Area 51, a place that not even Spencer Reid really knew anything about. He knew the conspiracy theories, of course, which he recounted with unfettered enthusiasm.
Emily laughed at Morgan’s horrified expression. They were three hours out of Vegas, and Reid had been talking for a good portion of that time. Though the young profiler had grown up in Nevada, he had rarely been out of the Entertainment Capital of the World. He was like a kid going to the zoo.
She figured that Garcia, too, would have been pretty excited at the thought, had the technical analyst not been fast asleep, with her head resting against the window. It wasn’t often that Garcia accompanied them, but some evidence had come up that required her unique expertise - at first she’d been thrilled at the opportunity to become Supreme Master of the Jet, but the last two weeks had finally caught up, and she’d zonked out completely not long after they’d gotten in the SUV. This was their third case in a row, with barely more than a chance to shower and do ready-bag laundry.
Reid, it seemed, still found the time to learn some of the most obscure facts about alien abduction that Emily had ever heard. She had to admit, though, some of it was pretty interesting stuff. Interesting enough that she didn’t mind engaging in an expository conversation, though it wasn’t so much a conversation as it was Reid talking and Emily listening.
‘…some scientists use the Drake equation in order to determine the viability of extra-terrestrial life elsewhere in the galaxy.’
It was dark - a little after 9 p.m. The dry daytime heat had long since been replaced by the nighttime chill. In the driver’s seat, Morgan’s was still slightly sullen. He had been like that since they’d left the Vegas city limits. Reid’s endless exposition hadn’t helped much. After all, what were alien abductions when compared to warm glow of neon lights and the endless amusement that the city was famous for?
Emily still remembered the last time she was in Vegas. Still remembered the pounding of her head, the feeling of nausea. What she couldn’t remember was the night that had led up to that point, a fact which she blamed entirely on Morgan. This time - if they did manage to fit in a “this time” after the case - she would make a point of not accepting his offer of a night on the town. She’d get wasted in her own time, sitting at the bar of whatever hotel they happened to occupy. That, of course, was all contingent on the case affording them a night off afterwards.
They could only hope.
That said, it didn’t look like it was going to be as bad as the last Vegas case. Well - the last Nevada case. All the cases were terrible, when it came down to it, but there was just something so much more heartbreaking about dead kids that made them want to go to the nearest alcohol provider and wash the memories away.
Emily leaned forward to check the GPS; she didn’t mind listening to Reid’s endless facts, but she tended to get fidgety on long drives, and without anything to do, she was getting restless. The absence of light didn’t allow for reading and by the time they actually made it to Warm Springs, it would be too late to get started anyway. They had half a dozen dead women on their hands. Sexual sadist, probably. A time sensitive case, yes, but there wasn’t much they could do in the middle of the night that they hadn’t done on the jet ride.
Morgan gave her a look - the kind of look that silently asked why she was touching the GPS while he was driving. He got a little possessive over the SUVs sometimes - she was surprised he’d even consented to letting the GPS be turned on. After last time, though, when they’d ended up a good thirty miles from where they needed to be, Hotch had insisted on it.
‘You see those lights up ahead?’ Morgan asked, interrupting Emily’s thought process.
‘Gas station?’ she wondered aloud.
‘Flying through the air at low velocity?’
‘What?’ She furrowed her brow, letting her gaze wander until they caught the moving white glow in the distance. ‘Oh. Those lights. Huh. Weird.’
Reid leaned forward between the passenger’s seat and the driver’s seat. ‘You know what it could be?’
‘I’m pretty sure it’s just a light show or something,’ shrugged Morgan, ‘Kids mucking about with flashlights.’ Emily knew that he’d already set Reid off.
‘It could be a UFO,’ he said excitedly, ignoring the roll of Morgan’s eyes. ‘How cool would that be? Being abducted by aliens so close to Area 51.’
‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure that would actually be terrifying,’ Emily pointed out. ‘Being probed by slimy green things…’
‘Actually, since the 1980s, most alleged victims have described their attackers as grey,’ he started, and was no doubt about to continue before Emily interjected.
‘Yeah, Reid, I’ve seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I’m just saying that alien abduction is right above roadside motel torture on my list.’ And right below “Zombie Apocalypse,” but she didn’t actually say that. The enthusiasm with which Reid and Garcia would respond would likely have Morgan burying all of them in shallow graves at the edge of the highway.
There was a yawn from the other back seat, and Emily noticed Garcia sitting up out of the corner of her eye. ‘’s going on?’ the tech yawned, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
‘Reid thinks that the lights up ahead are a UFO,’ Emily said matter-of-factly, words laced with her own level of skepticism; she found the topic interesting, if not entirely believable.
‘Oooh,’ Garcia said excitedly, any tiredness she might have been experiencing suddenly falling away. ‘Do you think we’re about to be abducted?’
Emily laughed at the look on Morgan’s face - it was bad enough that Reid was taking this so seriously. The combination of Reid and Garcia was no match for them.
‘Maybe we should have flown over in the morning, instead of repacking our bags,’ Morgan said gloomily.
‘Why?’
‘Because if it was daytime, then you’d be going over the case files instead of talking about aliens,’ Emily told him.
As if fate was intent on screwing them over, the SUV engine gave a loud wrenching noise.
‘What was that?’ Reid asked, his voice still a little high.
‘Aliens,’ said Garcia jovially.
‘Yeah right,’ Morgan said. ‘Probably nothing.’ He pulled to a stop on the edge of the road anyway; if there was something wrong with the engine, then they really needed to know.
Emily pulled her jacket tight as she stepped outside. Flashlight in his hand, Morgan popped the hood. ‘I can’t see anything wrong with it,’ he said eventually, after having checked each component in turn. He gave the three of them a questioning look.
‘My knowledge is mostly theoretical,’ Reid supplied.
‘The only machine I can dig has a keyboard,’ Garcia chimed in.
‘You do realize I know nothing about cars, right?’ Emily asked, to which Morgan shrugged. ‘Rossi’s our go-to guy for engines,’ she added, in lieu of nothing else. It wasn’t as though it made a difference.
‘Maybe it wasn’t the engine?’ Garcia suggested. ‘Maybe we’re just getting desert madness. Goes with seeing the strange lights.’
‘I think we should keep moving,’ Morgan told them decidedly. ‘I can’t see a problem, and we aren’t going to solve anything by standing around in the cold all night.’
Emily raised an eyebrow at his authoritativeness, but dutifully got back in the car. Reid and Garcia followed, the technical analyst giving Morgan a playful nudge. ‘Maybe aliens stole the engine and replaced it with a changeling.’ It was a statement that packed a little more punch the moment Morgan turned the key in the ignition and was greeting with nothing more than a persistent whir.
‘Oh dear,’ whispered Garcia. ‘Does this usually happen when you drive along isolated highways at night?’
‘Well we don’t really do it that often,’ Emily frowned. This was getting a little weird - Garcia had a point. Broken-down SUV combined with a highway in the nighttime - not a good combination.
‘I’ll check the engine again,’ said Morgan.
Emily pulled out her phone.
‘I’ll call Rossi,’ she said. ‘They shouldn’t be too far ahead of us.’ She frowned at the phone - no reception. That was definitely weird.
‘There’s not much coverage out here,’ Reid provided. ‘Try the satellite phone - I think it’s in with the first-aid kit.’
She sighed, unbuckling her seatbelt and stepping back out into the night air. Morgan was busy checking the engine again - the frown on his face a sign that things were not going well.
She rolled her eyes as she heard Reid explaining how satellite phones worked - something she was pretty sure Garcia already knew about. She had some experience with the things herself, a side effect of having lived in so many countries growing up. Not all of them had the most effective landlines.
‘I can’t get through,’ she said, after several tries. She stared at the phone, as if waiting for something to happen.
‘Let me try.’ Reid and Garcia were both at her side in seconds, neither of them having any more luck, despite their technical experience.
‘Still can’t find anything wrong with the engine,’ Morgan called out.
‘Satellite phone’s busted too,’ Garcia told him, as they congregated at the front of the SUV; it was colder, but it was better suited to conferencing than the seat configuration. There were a few moments of silence before Reid spoke up:
‘Did you know that in the past three decades, there have been over five-hundred murders on major highways, most of which are unsolved?’
‘I think that’s probably a good cue to get back in the car,’ said Garcia, giving Reid an annoyed glance. Emily rolled her eyes - Reid may have found solace in his genius, but there were some things that were better left unsaid.
‘How far is it to the nearest town?’ Morgan asked.
‘The only town along this stretch of highway is Rachel - the closest settlement to the Nellis Air Force Range and Area 51. If we are where I think we are, then it’s about twenty miles from here.’
Emily remembered her quick look at the GPS, not ten minutes before. ‘I think there’s a gas station a little closer. Five miles, maybe.’
Morgan looked around. It was pitch black, the only light coming from the SUV.
‘Probably shouldn’t walk at night.’
Garcia nodded. ‘And thanks to Boy Wonder’s little spiel, I don’t think we should be taking lifts from strangers, either, even if all three of you are armed.’
‘So what?’ asked Emily, frowning slightly. ‘Wait here until morning? Is that any safer than walking down a highway in the middle of the night?’
‘It’s a defensible position,’ Morgan said decidedly. ‘We can take turns keeping watch.’
Emily wasn’t entirely convinced, but she did trust Morgan’s judgment; he was the most tactically minded out of the four of them.
Morgan took first watch - she expected nothing less of him - while the rest of them attempted to get some rest. There were a few blankets in the back for emergencies, but that didn’t change the fact that it wasn’t going to be the most comfortable of sleeps. Of course, sleeping in strange places was part of the job.
She adjusted her position in the front passenger’s seat while Reid and Garcia lowered the back seats in order to maximize sleeping space. Morgan was still sitting in the driver’s seat, flashlight in his hand, and, though she knew he wasn't going to admit it, his holster was unsnapped.
…
It was just before dawn when Morgan woke, his entire body sore from the surface on which he’d slept. He was lying in the back of the SUV, while a tightly cocooned Garcia used his chest as a pillow. There’d been a game of musical beds with each sentry change, Reid now sitting in the driver’s seat, looking much more alert than Morgan felt. He wouldn’t be surprised if the younger profiler kept a portable coffee maker in his go-bag.
‘Anything?’ he asked, stretching his limbs, trying as hard as possible not to dislodge Garcia from her resting place.
‘We didn’t get probed by little green men in the night, if that’s what you’re asking,’ Reid replied, with a little less mirth than he might have done the previous day. It hadn’t been a comfortable night for any of them.
‘Green men?’ Garcia asked, her head shooting up. ‘You saw aliens, and you didn’t tell me?’
Morgan gave a slight chuckle. ‘Morning, baby girl. Reid’s just having some fun - nothing happened.’
‘No,’ conceded Reid, ‘But you do snore like a freight train, Morgan - you should probably look into that.’
‘And Emily sleep-talks,’ Garcia added, nodding towards the still-sleeping profiler in the passenger’s seat. ‘Which reminds me - why didn’t I get woken up for sentry duty?’
Morgan gave her a slightly guilty look. ‘You told me you don’t like guns,’ he said. ‘I thought that if something happened…’
She shook her head slowly. ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’
Morgan’s mind went briefly blank - he knew a bit of Latin from when he’d done his J.D., but the meaning of that particular phrase was eluding him. He really needed coffee.
‘“Who watches the watchmen?”’ Reid provided, in that knowing tone of voice.
‘I’m stuck with a bunch of nerds, aren’t I?’ grinned Morgan, stretching properly now that Garcia had awoken. He sat up, pushing aside the go-bags at his feet in order to reach the door mechanism. It was a little hazy outside, but the imagery of the sun sitting just below the horizon was impressive. There was a little more to deserts than just the sand.
‘Oh, baby, you know you love it,’ Garcia told him in reply, giving a playful nudge.
Scanning the plains that seemed to surround them, something caught his eye. Something that, if they were where Reid said they were, absolutely shouldn’t have been there.
‘Hey Reid…you said Rachel was the only town along this stretch of highway?’ He didn’t move his eyes, only hearing as a door clicked open, and then shut at the front of the SUV.
‘Yeah, why do you-’ Reid came up at his side, stopping the moment he saw what Morgan was staring at.
‘Oh jenkies,’ whispered Garcia. ‘What is that?’
‘It looks like a small town,’ said Reid, frowning at the group of buildings in the near distance. ‘But…that can’t be right - it’s not on the map.’
‘How long has it been since you looked at the map?’ Morgan queried. He had absolute faith in Reid’s memory, but a misplaced town was something that needed to be examined twice, at the very least.
‘Yesterday, before we left.’ The frown hadn’t left his face, as though this town was a piece of the profile that didn’t quite fit into place.
‘I think maybe we should check the GPS again,’ Garcia said, with some disbelief in her voice. ‘Just to be safe.’
Morgan nodded, retreating to the passenger’s seat. There, he opened the door and nudged Emily awake. As she opened her eyes with a lengthy groan, he reached past her to the GPS unit.
‘What’re you doing?’ she mumbled, her words half caught in a yawn. She slipped off the seat, one hand rubbing the back of her neck.
The screen of the GPS was blank. He tried the on switch, but to no avail. ‘This was working alright last night?’ he asked her, to which she gave him a look of confusion.
‘Yeah, why?’
‘Well it’s not working now.’ He tossed the now useless piece of technology on the seat that Emily had just vacated.
‘Why’s it important?’ she asked, yawning again.
‘Take a look,’ he told her, gesturing towards the object of their curiosity. ‘According to Reid, we should be miles from civilization.’
‘I don’t think it’s a mass shared hallucination, or anything’ she responded, frowning. ‘I’m pretty sure I know a drug trip when I see one.’
He raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing.
‘College,’ she shrugged, at his unasked question, adding, somewhat quieter, ‘and high school.’
‘So what do we do?’ asked Garcia, once Morgan and Emily had both rejoined the group. ‘We have no way of contacting Hotch - they’ll definitely be wondering where we are.’
‘They’ll start looking, though,’ Emily pointed out. ‘I mean, we were right behind them until Reid needed to stop for a bathroom break.’ Though her words weren’t spoken with malicious intent, Reid still gave a slight blush.
‘I’m just saying there are only so many places they’ll be looking,’ she amended.
‘If we check out the town, they might have a phone we could use,’ Morgan suggested.
‘The town that doesn’t exist?’ Garcia’s voice was a little bit anxious, and Morgan responded by putting a hand on her shoulder.
‘Just because it isn’t on any maps doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,’ he said, still skeptical at the thought that anything other than poor cartography could be responsible for their present situation.
‘I think we should check it out.’ Emily wiped her brow, blinking back the sweat beads that were starting to form. ‘We don’t know how long it’s going to take for the others to get here, and it’s not going to get any cooler. Besides,’ she added, at the rumbling of her stomach. ‘I’m starving.’
On that matter, at least, there was little disagreement; it wasn’t long before Morgan found himself coordinating the repacking of the backpack that had contained the first aid kit and other emergency supplies. They couldn’t afford to take all their stuff with them; even though the town didn’t look much more than two or three miles away the desert heat was already beating down, dehydrating them a little more every second.
Garcia’s laptop went in the bag - for both communicative and security purposes - along with a few other things, including two full bottles of water. The tech had tried accessing the web by some process Morgan didn’t even try to understand - all he knew was that they couldn’t get online, either. But, as Garcia had said, “Hopefully someone in Strangetown has an addiction to internet porn.”
Reid’s messenger bag remained eternally glued to his shoulder, the young profiler obliging to carry certain things that didn’t quite fit in the backpack. From the implementation of their plan, it was less than half an hour before they managed to actually set off towards the phantom town.
Though they’d estimated the town to be no more than three miles away, it seemed to take so much longer in the desert heat. Were it not for the small cluster of buildings growing closer and closer, it would almost have seemed as though the walk was endless; nothing but that particular stretch of desert-surrounded highway for all eternity. Like some kind of twisted purgatory.
Morgan stopped when they were less than two hundred yards away; if there was something dangerous about the place, then he wanted to know before they marched straight in there. There was no cover, and if anyone happened to be looking in their direction they would be seen, but there were few alternatives.
The town seemed to be made up of no more than a dozen buildings, the dirt road from the highway, and a couple of junctions off of it being routes of transportation. From the angle they were standing at, he could just make out the sign at the entrance to the town, reading “Welcome to Walton.”
‘Walton…’ an almost out of breath Reid said, the frown evident in his voice.
‘Heard of it?’
‘It wasn’t on the map,’ Reid shrugged. ‘But it was a pretty old map.’
‘I didn’t see it on the GPS,’ Emily provided, adding, ‘But then, I wasn’t really looking that hard.’
‘What do we think?’ Morgan asked Emily, who stood at his right, one hand on her hip.
‘Well it doesn’t look like a town full of Tralfamadorians,’ she said drily, causing him to grin.
‘Actually that depends on whether you’re referring to the Tralfamadorians of The Sirens of Titan or Slaughterhouse Five,’ Reid commented. ‘Though both Vonnegut creations, they’re actually markedly different in each appearance they make.’
Emily rolled her eyes. ‘I meant that the town doesn’t particularly look like a hub of alien activity - trailers, a couple of houses, a motel, maybe. No suspicious looking satellite dishes, or hovering UFOs. I say we go in - with caution.’
Morgan nodded. He turned to Reid and Garcia, asking, ‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t see any other option,’ Reid pointed out. ‘We can’t just stand around out here.’
Morgan nodded again - he was still slightly skeptical, but Reid was right. They couldn’t simply stand around in the desert waiting for the rest of the team to show up. In any case, Morgan kept his hand at his holster as they walked towards the small town.
…
The town seemed deserted as they drew closer, but then, there can’t have been more than a hundred people living there. What they actually did with their time was anybody’s guess.
‘You folks look a little lost there,’ a voice came from the building nearest to them. Emily noticed out of the corner of her eye that Morgan’s hand edged a little closer to his holster. Emily had to admit, though - the statement wasn’t a lie: they were dressed to work, not to walk through deserts.
‘Our car broke down,’ she provided, a hand gesturing off-handedly in the direction of their SUV. ‘Is there a phone that we could use?’ She adjusted her gaze until her eyes caught the source of the voice - a middle-aged woman standing on a porch not twenty feet from them, a cigarette between her fingers. She chuckled.
‘Phones don’t work too well here.’ The statement was short, and yet Emily found her curiosity piqued almost immediately. ‘There’s one in the diner, here,’ the woman on the porch said, ‘But the line hasn’t been working too well lately. Doubt you’ll be able to get a call through.’
They shared an exasperated look. ‘What about a mechanic?’ Morgan asked. ‘Is there anyone that could take a look at our SUV?’
The woman gave a sympathetic smile. ‘Only person around here who can fix a car is Joe, and he’s outta town right now. He’ll be back in a couple of days - he and Maxine are out stocking up. Nothing here but the general store.’
She seemed friendly, and Emily had no doubt that if they asked - and Reid probably would, later - she would rattle off the history of the town, as well as the dossier of every single resident that ever lived there. In a way, that was good news for them.
‘If we can’t contact the rest of the team…’ Morgan said softly. ‘Who knows how long it’ll be before they find us - for all they know, we really did get abducted by aliens.’ He gave a slight snort, just in case any of them were under the impression that he actually harbored such beliefs.
‘We should get the rest of our gear,’ Garcia nodded. ‘I have a few things that would definitely object to being left in a hot SUV all day.’
Emily looked back in the direction of the car. In any other conditions, it would have been a breeze, but she didn’t want to walk back to the SUV in this kind of heat if they didn’t have to.
‘Breakfast first,’ the woman on the porch ordered, stepping down as she stubbed the butt of her cigarette on the railing. ‘You look like you haven’t eaten in days.’
Morgan started to protest, but he was interrupted. ‘I’ll talk to Bill about taking you back to your car - but food first. On the house.’
Emily raised an eyebrow at the gesture of generosity, but did not argue. After all, she was pretty damn hungry, and she knew that the rest of them probably were as well.
As they stepped inside the smallish diner, Reid pulled a towel from his messenger bag, wiping the sweat from his brow. Garcia grinned.
‘“There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is,”’ she quipped, eliciting a short laugh from Emily, a half smile from Reid, and a look of complete and utter confusion from Morgan.
‘I don’t even want to know,’ he said, checking out the diner with some suspicion before they were directed to a booth near the back by the cigarette-smoking woman. The diner looked barely frequented, but by no means derelict. There was only one other customer there - a young man in his thirties who seemed more engaged in their activities than in his breakfast.
‘What can I get you then?’ the woman asked - Mary-Ann, her nametag said. ‘We’ve got pancakes, bacon, half a dozen different kinds of eggs - not dinosaur though, we’re out of those.’
There was half a second’s silence before the joke sunk in, and Emily found herself giving a grin. They put their orders through, and watched as Mary-Ann bustled behind a saloon-style door to what was apparently the kitchen.
‘I have to ask,’ started Garcia, a look of curiosity on her face. ‘No phones, no internet, hot during the day, freezing at night. I can’t see the appeal of living here.’
‘The peace and quiet?’ Emily suggested. ‘Even as a town near one of the biggest supposed extra-terrestrial hotspots, it doesn’t seem that much of a tourist destination. Makes me wonder why they’ve even got a motel.’
‘That, my friend, must be for poor lost souls like us,’ Garcia replied. Emily didn’t seem to disagree; they were all lost souls, in a way.
‘You guys mind?’ Emily asked, gesturing towards the jukebox. There were no objections from them, nor the other patron of the diner, who seemed to eye Emily with a little more than a passing glance. Morgan raised an eyebrow as the opening riffs of Hendrix started, and Reid and Garcia suddenly began talking about robots.
‘You’re with the government?’ the other man in the diner suddenly asked, which elicited Morgan’s curiosity even more than robots did.
‘FBI,’ Emily provided, a little too quickly. ‘Our car broke down.’
He stood, knocking a glass of orange juice into his plate of scrambled eggs. ‘Oh, crap,’ he muttered, righting the glass and grabbing a napkin from the table to clean the spill on his pants. ‘I, uh…Eric Reber,’ he introduced himself, holding out a hand. ‘I’m an investigative journalist.’
They made a round of introductions, Morgan doing so with some hesitation.
‘What are you doing in Walton?’ Reid asked, in that tone of voice he always used when questioning witnesses. He was genuinely curious.
‘Aliens,’ he said excitedly, with a slight twinkle in his eye, laughing at the subsequent expression from Morgan. ‘I’m kidding. I came to Walton because it’s a small town with very little to distract me from writing the article that I was supposed to turn in two days ago.’
Morgan raised an eyebrow. ‘Missing deadlines? That seems a little counterproductive.’
‘I stumbled onto something much, much more interesting,’ he said.
At that moment, Mary-Ann came to their table with two plates, which she set in front of Morgan and Garcia. She gave Eric a look, as though telling him not to scare away the customers.
‘Tell them,’ he urged her.
‘Oh no,’ Mary-Ann shook her head. ‘This is your paranoia, Eric, not mine.’ She tipped them a wink, before going to retrieve the remaining plates.
‘I’ve been in town for four days,’ he told them. ‘In that time, three residents have disappeared. No trace. In any other town, you might think “sure, no biggie.” This place has eighty-three residents, and it’s in the middle of the desert. No cars are missing, all possessions left behind. Almost as though they’d been…spirited away.’
‘So it could still be aliens,’ Garcia pointed out, stabbing a piece of bacon on the end of her fork. Mary-Ann returned with Reid and Emily’s breakfast, making no show of hanging around to listen to their conversation.
‘Well…’ Eric shrugged. ‘Theoretically, yes - but people disappearing for no reason. My first thought isn’t aliens, it’s serial killer.’
‘Disappearances with no signs of a struggle, no suspicions from any other residents…Would have to be an organized killer.’ Reid put down his silverware, mind suddenly lost to the possibility of a serial killer in the midst of the small town.
‘Either someone charismatic, or isolated enough that no-one notices their strange behaviour,’ Emily continued. ‘In a town this small, it seems probable that most people should have some kind of contact with the other residents.’
‘FBI?’ Eric asked again, with the slightest amount of incredulity.
‘We’re a part of the Behavioral Analysis Unit,’ Reid elaborated. ‘We hunt serial killers.’
The journalist gave a nervous laugh. ‘Well I guess it’s a good thing you showed up then.’
Morgan shared a look with Emily. ‘We’re in Nevada for a case,’ he said, a little pointedly. ‘In Warm Springs. The rest of our team should be coming back to pick us up sometime today.’
‘The least we can do is look into it while we’re here,’ Emily argued, to which Morgan raised an eyebrow. She rolled her eyes at him.
‘At best, we have a few coincidences, at worst, a serial killer,’ she told him. ‘If we don’t do anything…’
Morgan sighed. ‘Fine,’ he conceded - it was his permission that they needed. Technically speaking, he had seniority out of the four of them. ‘You said you’d talk to “Bill” about taking us back to our car?’ he asked Mary-Ann.
She nodded. ‘I’ll go round him up - he’ll only be able to fit two of you in his truck.’
‘That’s fine,’ Morgan said. ‘Reid, Prentiss, you two go with Bill to bring our gear back here. Garcia and I will set up home base and take a look at what intel Eric has.’
‘There are a couple of vacancies at the motel,’ Eric told them. ‘They don’t really get so many tourists around here.’
‘So why bother with a motel?’ Emily asked, to which he gave a shrug.
‘It’s been around for as long as the town has,’ Mary-Ann provided. ‘People thought that the location might bring in the tourists, but we barely break even. Make just enough to keep the place running.’
Morgan seemed a little apprehensive at the thought of staying the night, and Emily couldn’t blame him - by booking into the motel, it almost seemed as though they were acknowledging that it might be necessary for them to stay for more than the rest of the day, if indeed, the team did arrive to pick them up.
‘You don’t have to stay the night,’ the diner owner told him, as if interpreting his looks. ‘Even if you just want a place to keep your things, it can’t hurt.’
‘It’s like The X-Files,’ Garcia said excitedly, ‘Small town, mysterious occurrences, motels.’
‘So who’s Mulder and who’s Scully?’ asked Eric, with the slightest amount of amusement.
‘He’s Mulder. He’s Scully,’ said Emily, indicating Reid first, and then Morgan. He raised another eyebrow.
‘Why do I have to be the chick?’
‘Not the chick,’ corrected Garcia. ‘The skeptic.’
‘Well forgive me for looking for the more rational explanation,’ he said defensively.
‘There’s a fine line between rational explanation and outright denial,’ Emily replied with a grin.
Morgan shook his head, his expression matching hers, in spite of the ribbing. ‘Alright.’ He finished off the last of his breakfast with a few quick bites. ‘Let’s move.’
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Characters/Pairing: Prentiss, Reid, Morgan, Garcia - gen
Genre: Suspense/Supernatural
Summary: The SUV breaks down three miles from a small town with a big secret. Nothing is as it seems.
Author’s Note: Betaed by Windy City Dreamer, who I’m pretty sure I owe my first born child by now.
...
They were driving down Nevada State Route 375, on their way to Warm Springs. With some amusement in his voice, Spencer Reid mentioned that the road had been officially designated as the Extraterrestrial Highway, almost thirteen years earlier, due to travelers reporting “alien” activity. This, though, he continued, was almost certainly due to the highway’s proximity to Area 51, a place that not even Spencer Reid really knew anything about. He knew the conspiracy theories, of course, which he recounted with unfettered enthusiasm.
Emily laughed at Morgan’s horrified expression. They were three hours out of Vegas, and Reid had been talking for a good portion of that time. Though the young profiler had grown up in Nevada, he had rarely been out of the Entertainment Capital of the World. He was like a kid going to the zoo.
She figured that Garcia, too, would have been pretty excited at the thought, had the technical analyst not been fast asleep, with her head resting against the window. It wasn’t often that Garcia accompanied them, but some evidence had come up that required her unique expertise - at first she’d been thrilled at the opportunity to become Supreme Master of the Jet, but the last two weeks had finally caught up, and she’d zonked out completely not long after they’d gotten in the SUV. This was their third case in a row, with barely more than a chance to shower and do ready-bag laundry.
Reid, it seemed, still found the time to learn some of the most obscure facts about alien abduction that Emily had ever heard. She had to admit, though, some of it was pretty interesting stuff. Interesting enough that she didn’t mind engaging in an expository conversation, though it wasn’t so much a conversation as it was Reid talking and Emily listening.
‘…some scientists use the Drake equation in order to determine the viability of extra-terrestrial life elsewhere in the galaxy.’
It was dark - a little after 9 p.m. The dry daytime heat had long since been replaced by the nighttime chill. In the driver’s seat, Morgan’s was still slightly sullen. He had been like that since they’d left the Vegas city limits. Reid’s endless exposition hadn’t helped much. After all, what were alien abductions when compared to warm glow of neon lights and the endless amusement that the city was famous for?
Emily still remembered the last time she was in Vegas. Still remembered the pounding of her head, the feeling of nausea. What she couldn’t remember was the night that had led up to that point, a fact which she blamed entirely on Morgan. This time - if they did manage to fit in a “this time” after the case - she would make a point of not accepting his offer of a night on the town. She’d get wasted in her own time, sitting at the bar of whatever hotel they happened to occupy. That, of course, was all contingent on the case affording them a night off afterwards.
They could only hope.
That said, it didn’t look like it was going to be as bad as the last Vegas case. Well - the last Nevada case. All the cases were terrible, when it came down to it, but there was just something so much more heartbreaking about dead kids that made them want to go to the nearest alcohol provider and wash the memories away.
Emily leaned forward to check the GPS; she didn’t mind listening to Reid’s endless facts, but she tended to get fidgety on long drives, and without anything to do, she was getting restless. The absence of light didn’t allow for reading and by the time they actually made it to Warm Springs, it would be too late to get started anyway. They had half a dozen dead women on their hands. Sexual sadist, probably. A time sensitive case, yes, but there wasn’t much they could do in the middle of the night that they hadn’t done on the jet ride.
Morgan gave her a look - the kind of look that silently asked why she was touching the GPS while he was driving. He got a little possessive over the SUVs sometimes - she was surprised he’d even consented to letting the GPS be turned on. After last time, though, when they’d ended up a good thirty miles from where they needed to be, Hotch had insisted on it.
‘You see those lights up ahead?’ Morgan asked, interrupting Emily’s thought process.
‘Gas station?’ she wondered aloud.
‘Flying through the air at low velocity?’
‘What?’ She furrowed her brow, letting her gaze wander until they caught the moving white glow in the distance. ‘Oh. Those lights. Huh. Weird.’
Reid leaned forward between the passenger’s seat and the driver’s seat. ‘You know what it could be?’
‘I’m pretty sure it’s just a light show or something,’ shrugged Morgan, ‘Kids mucking about with flashlights.’ Emily knew that he’d already set Reid off.
‘It could be a UFO,’ he said excitedly, ignoring the roll of Morgan’s eyes. ‘How cool would that be? Being abducted by aliens so close to Area 51.’
‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure that would actually be terrifying,’ Emily pointed out. ‘Being probed by slimy green things…’
‘Actually, since the 1980s, most alleged victims have described their attackers as grey,’ he started, and was no doubt about to continue before Emily interjected.
‘Yeah, Reid, I’ve seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I’m just saying that alien abduction is right above roadside motel torture on my list.’ And right below “Zombie Apocalypse,” but she didn’t actually say that. The enthusiasm with which Reid and Garcia would respond would likely have Morgan burying all of them in shallow graves at the edge of the highway.
There was a yawn from the other back seat, and Emily noticed Garcia sitting up out of the corner of her eye. ‘’s going on?’ the tech yawned, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
‘Reid thinks that the lights up ahead are a UFO,’ Emily said matter-of-factly, words laced with her own level of skepticism; she found the topic interesting, if not entirely believable.
‘Oooh,’ Garcia said excitedly, any tiredness she might have been experiencing suddenly falling away. ‘Do you think we’re about to be abducted?’
Emily laughed at the look on Morgan’s face - it was bad enough that Reid was taking this so seriously. The combination of Reid and Garcia was no match for them.
‘Maybe we should have flown over in the morning, instead of repacking our bags,’ Morgan said gloomily.
‘Why?’
‘Because if it was daytime, then you’d be going over the case files instead of talking about aliens,’ Emily told him.
As if fate was intent on screwing them over, the SUV engine gave a loud wrenching noise.
‘What was that?’ Reid asked, his voice still a little high.
‘Aliens,’ said Garcia jovially.
‘Yeah right,’ Morgan said. ‘Probably nothing.’ He pulled to a stop on the edge of the road anyway; if there was something wrong with the engine, then they really needed to know.
Emily pulled her jacket tight as she stepped outside. Flashlight in his hand, Morgan popped the hood. ‘I can’t see anything wrong with it,’ he said eventually, after having checked each component in turn. He gave the three of them a questioning look.
‘My knowledge is mostly theoretical,’ Reid supplied.
‘The only machine I can dig has a keyboard,’ Garcia chimed in.
‘You do realize I know nothing about cars, right?’ Emily asked, to which Morgan shrugged. ‘Rossi’s our go-to guy for engines,’ she added, in lieu of nothing else. It wasn’t as though it made a difference.
‘Maybe it wasn’t the engine?’ Garcia suggested. ‘Maybe we’re just getting desert madness. Goes with seeing the strange lights.’
‘I think we should keep moving,’ Morgan told them decidedly. ‘I can’t see a problem, and we aren’t going to solve anything by standing around in the cold all night.’
Emily raised an eyebrow at his authoritativeness, but dutifully got back in the car. Reid and Garcia followed, the technical analyst giving Morgan a playful nudge. ‘Maybe aliens stole the engine and replaced it with a changeling.’ It was a statement that packed a little more punch the moment Morgan turned the key in the ignition and was greeting with nothing more than a persistent whir.
‘Oh dear,’ whispered Garcia. ‘Does this usually happen when you drive along isolated highways at night?’
‘Well we don’t really do it that often,’ Emily frowned. This was getting a little weird - Garcia had a point. Broken-down SUV combined with a highway in the nighttime - not a good combination.
‘I’ll check the engine again,’ said Morgan.
Emily pulled out her phone.
‘I’ll call Rossi,’ she said. ‘They shouldn’t be too far ahead of us.’ She frowned at the phone - no reception. That was definitely weird.
‘There’s not much coverage out here,’ Reid provided. ‘Try the satellite phone - I think it’s in with the first-aid kit.’
She sighed, unbuckling her seatbelt and stepping back out into the night air. Morgan was busy checking the engine again - the frown on his face a sign that things were not going well.
She rolled her eyes as she heard Reid explaining how satellite phones worked - something she was pretty sure Garcia already knew about. She had some experience with the things herself, a side effect of having lived in so many countries growing up. Not all of them had the most effective landlines.
‘I can’t get through,’ she said, after several tries. She stared at the phone, as if waiting for something to happen.
‘Let me try.’ Reid and Garcia were both at her side in seconds, neither of them having any more luck, despite their technical experience.
‘Still can’t find anything wrong with the engine,’ Morgan called out.
‘Satellite phone’s busted too,’ Garcia told him, as they congregated at the front of the SUV; it was colder, but it was better suited to conferencing than the seat configuration. There were a few moments of silence before Reid spoke up:
‘Did you know that in the past three decades, there have been over five-hundred murders on major highways, most of which are unsolved?’
‘I think that’s probably a good cue to get back in the car,’ said Garcia, giving Reid an annoyed glance. Emily rolled her eyes - Reid may have found solace in his genius, but there were some things that were better left unsaid.
‘How far is it to the nearest town?’ Morgan asked.
‘The only town along this stretch of highway is Rachel - the closest settlement to the Nellis Air Force Range and Area 51. If we are where I think we are, then it’s about twenty miles from here.’
Emily remembered her quick look at the GPS, not ten minutes before. ‘I think there’s a gas station a little closer. Five miles, maybe.’
Morgan looked around. It was pitch black, the only light coming from the SUV.
‘Probably shouldn’t walk at night.’
Garcia nodded. ‘And thanks to Boy Wonder’s little spiel, I don’t think we should be taking lifts from strangers, either, even if all three of you are armed.’
‘So what?’ asked Emily, frowning slightly. ‘Wait here until morning? Is that any safer than walking down a highway in the middle of the night?’
‘It’s a defensible position,’ Morgan said decidedly. ‘We can take turns keeping watch.’
Emily wasn’t entirely convinced, but she did trust Morgan’s judgment; he was the most tactically minded out of the four of them.
Morgan took first watch - she expected nothing less of him - while the rest of them attempted to get some rest. There were a few blankets in the back for emergencies, but that didn’t change the fact that it wasn’t going to be the most comfortable of sleeps. Of course, sleeping in strange places was part of the job.
She adjusted her position in the front passenger’s seat while Reid and Garcia lowered the back seats in order to maximize sleeping space. Morgan was still sitting in the driver’s seat, flashlight in his hand, and, though she knew he wasn't going to admit it, his holster was unsnapped.
…
It was just before dawn when Morgan woke, his entire body sore from the surface on which he’d slept. He was lying in the back of the SUV, while a tightly cocooned Garcia used his chest as a pillow. There’d been a game of musical beds with each sentry change, Reid now sitting in the driver’s seat, looking much more alert than Morgan felt. He wouldn’t be surprised if the younger profiler kept a portable coffee maker in his go-bag.
‘Anything?’ he asked, stretching his limbs, trying as hard as possible not to dislodge Garcia from her resting place.
‘We didn’t get probed by little green men in the night, if that’s what you’re asking,’ Reid replied, with a little less mirth than he might have done the previous day. It hadn’t been a comfortable night for any of them.
‘Green men?’ Garcia asked, her head shooting up. ‘You saw aliens, and you didn’t tell me?’
Morgan gave a slight chuckle. ‘Morning, baby girl. Reid’s just having some fun - nothing happened.’
‘No,’ conceded Reid, ‘But you do snore like a freight train, Morgan - you should probably look into that.’
‘And Emily sleep-talks,’ Garcia added, nodding towards the still-sleeping profiler in the passenger’s seat. ‘Which reminds me - why didn’t I get woken up for sentry duty?’
Morgan gave her a slightly guilty look. ‘You told me you don’t like guns,’ he said. ‘I thought that if something happened…’
She shook her head slowly. ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’
Morgan’s mind went briefly blank - he knew a bit of Latin from when he’d done his J.D., but the meaning of that particular phrase was eluding him. He really needed coffee.
‘“Who watches the watchmen?”’ Reid provided, in that knowing tone of voice.
‘I’m stuck with a bunch of nerds, aren’t I?’ grinned Morgan, stretching properly now that Garcia had awoken. He sat up, pushing aside the go-bags at his feet in order to reach the door mechanism. It was a little hazy outside, but the imagery of the sun sitting just below the horizon was impressive. There was a little more to deserts than just the sand.
‘Oh, baby, you know you love it,’ Garcia told him in reply, giving a playful nudge.
Scanning the plains that seemed to surround them, something caught his eye. Something that, if they were where Reid said they were, absolutely shouldn’t have been there.
‘Hey Reid…you said Rachel was the only town along this stretch of highway?’ He didn’t move his eyes, only hearing as a door clicked open, and then shut at the front of the SUV.
‘Yeah, why do you-’ Reid came up at his side, stopping the moment he saw what Morgan was staring at.
‘Oh jenkies,’ whispered Garcia. ‘What is that?’
‘It looks like a small town,’ said Reid, frowning at the group of buildings in the near distance. ‘But…that can’t be right - it’s not on the map.’
‘How long has it been since you looked at the map?’ Morgan queried. He had absolute faith in Reid’s memory, but a misplaced town was something that needed to be examined twice, at the very least.
‘Yesterday, before we left.’ The frown hadn’t left his face, as though this town was a piece of the profile that didn’t quite fit into place.
‘I think maybe we should check the GPS again,’ Garcia said, with some disbelief in her voice. ‘Just to be safe.’
Morgan nodded, retreating to the passenger’s seat. There, he opened the door and nudged Emily awake. As she opened her eyes with a lengthy groan, he reached past her to the GPS unit.
‘What’re you doing?’ she mumbled, her words half caught in a yawn. She slipped off the seat, one hand rubbing the back of her neck.
The screen of the GPS was blank. He tried the on switch, but to no avail. ‘This was working alright last night?’ he asked her, to which she gave him a look of confusion.
‘Yeah, why?’
‘Well it’s not working now.’ He tossed the now useless piece of technology on the seat that Emily had just vacated.
‘Why’s it important?’ she asked, yawning again.
‘Take a look,’ he told her, gesturing towards the object of their curiosity. ‘According to Reid, we should be miles from civilization.’
‘I don’t think it’s a mass shared hallucination, or anything’ she responded, frowning. ‘I’m pretty sure I know a drug trip when I see one.’
He raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing.
‘College,’ she shrugged, at his unasked question, adding, somewhat quieter, ‘and high school.’
‘So what do we do?’ asked Garcia, once Morgan and Emily had both rejoined the group. ‘We have no way of contacting Hotch - they’ll definitely be wondering where we are.’
‘They’ll start looking, though,’ Emily pointed out. ‘I mean, we were right behind them until Reid needed to stop for a bathroom break.’ Though her words weren’t spoken with malicious intent, Reid still gave a slight blush.
‘I’m just saying there are only so many places they’ll be looking,’ she amended.
‘If we check out the town, they might have a phone we could use,’ Morgan suggested.
‘The town that doesn’t exist?’ Garcia’s voice was a little bit anxious, and Morgan responded by putting a hand on her shoulder.
‘Just because it isn’t on any maps doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,’ he said, still skeptical at the thought that anything other than poor cartography could be responsible for their present situation.
‘I think we should check it out.’ Emily wiped her brow, blinking back the sweat beads that were starting to form. ‘We don’t know how long it’s going to take for the others to get here, and it’s not going to get any cooler. Besides,’ she added, at the rumbling of her stomach. ‘I’m starving.’
On that matter, at least, there was little disagreement; it wasn’t long before Morgan found himself coordinating the repacking of the backpack that had contained the first aid kit and other emergency supplies. They couldn’t afford to take all their stuff with them; even though the town didn’t look much more than two or three miles away the desert heat was already beating down, dehydrating them a little more every second.
Garcia’s laptop went in the bag - for both communicative and security purposes - along with a few other things, including two full bottles of water. The tech had tried accessing the web by some process Morgan didn’t even try to understand - all he knew was that they couldn’t get online, either. But, as Garcia had said, “Hopefully someone in Strangetown has an addiction to internet porn.”
Reid’s messenger bag remained eternally glued to his shoulder, the young profiler obliging to carry certain things that didn’t quite fit in the backpack. From the implementation of their plan, it was less than half an hour before they managed to actually set off towards the phantom town.
Though they’d estimated the town to be no more than three miles away, it seemed to take so much longer in the desert heat. Were it not for the small cluster of buildings growing closer and closer, it would almost have seemed as though the walk was endless; nothing but that particular stretch of desert-surrounded highway for all eternity. Like some kind of twisted purgatory.
Morgan stopped when they were less than two hundred yards away; if there was something dangerous about the place, then he wanted to know before they marched straight in there. There was no cover, and if anyone happened to be looking in their direction they would be seen, but there were few alternatives.
The town seemed to be made up of no more than a dozen buildings, the dirt road from the highway, and a couple of junctions off of it being routes of transportation. From the angle they were standing at, he could just make out the sign at the entrance to the town, reading “Welcome to Walton.”
‘Walton…’ an almost out of breath Reid said, the frown evident in his voice.
‘Heard of it?’
‘It wasn’t on the map,’ Reid shrugged. ‘But it was a pretty old map.’
‘I didn’t see it on the GPS,’ Emily provided, adding, ‘But then, I wasn’t really looking that hard.’
‘What do we think?’ Morgan asked Emily, who stood at his right, one hand on her hip.
‘Well it doesn’t look like a town full of Tralfamadorians,’ she said drily, causing him to grin.
‘Actually that depends on whether you’re referring to the Tralfamadorians of The Sirens of Titan or Slaughterhouse Five,’ Reid commented. ‘Though both Vonnegut creations, they’re actually markedly different in each appearance they make.’
Emily rolled her eyes. ‘I meant that the town doesn’t particularly look like a hub of alien activity - trailers, a couple of houses, a motel, maybe. No suspicious looking satellite dishes, or hovering UFOs. I say we go in - with caution.’
Morgan nodded. He turned to Reid and Garcia, asking, ‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t see any other option,’ Reid pointed out. ‘We can’t just stand around out here.’
Morgan nodded again - he was still slightly skeptical, but Reid was right. They couldn’t simply stand around in the desert waiting for the rest of the team to show up. In any case, Morgan kept his hand at his holster as they walked towards the small town.
…
The town seemed deserted as they drew closer, but then, there can’t have been more than a hundred people living there. What they actually did with their time was anybody’s guess.
‘You folks look a little lost there,’ a voice came from the building nearest to them. Emily noticed out of the corner of her eye that Morgan’s hand edged a little closer to his holster. Emily had to admit, though - the statement wasn’t a lie: they were dressed to work, not to walk through deserts.
‘Our car broke down,’ she provided, a hand gesturing off-handedly in the direction of their SUV. ‘Is there a phone that we could use?’ She adjusted her gaze until her eyes caught the source of the voice - a middle-aged woman standing on a porch not twenty feet from them, a cigarette between her fingers. She chuckled.
‘Phones don’t work too well here.’ The statement was short, and yet Emily found her curiosity piqued almost immediately. ‘There’s one in the diner, here,’ the woman on the porch said, ‘But the line hasn’t been working too well lately. Doubt you’ll be able to get a call through.’
They shared an exasperated look. ‘What about a mechanic?’ Morgan asked. ‘Is there anyone that could take a look at our SUV?’
The woman gave a sympathetic smile. ‘Only person around here who can fix a car is Joe, and he’s outta town right now. He’ll be back in a couple of days - he and Maxine are out stocking up. Nothing here but the general store.’
She seemed friendly, and Emily had no doubt that if they asked - and Reid probably would, later - she would rattle off the history of the town, as well as the dossier of every single resident that ever lived there. In a way, that was good news for them.
‘If we can’t contact the rest of the team…’ Morgan said softly. ‘Who knows how long it’ll be before they find us - for all they know, we really did get abducted by aliens.’ He gave a slight snort, just in case any of them were under the impression that he actually harbored such beliefs.
‘We should get the rest of our gear,’ Garcia nodded. ‘I have a few things that would definitely object to being left in a hot SUV all day.’
Emily looked back in the direction of the car. In any other conditions, it would have been a breeze, but she didn’t want to walk back to the SUV in this kind of heat if they didn’t have to.
‘Breakfast first,’ the woman on the porch ordered, stepping down as she stubbed the butt of her cigarette on the railing. ‘You look like you haven’t eaten in days.’
Morgan started to protest, but he was interrupted. ‘I’ll talk to Bill about taking you back to your car - but food first. On the house.’
Emily raised an eyebrow at the gesture of generosity, but did not argue. After all, she was pretty damn hungry, and she knew that the rest of them probably were as well.
As they stepped inside the smallish diner, Reid pulled a towel from his messenger bag, wiping the sweat from his brow. Garcia grinned.
‘“There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is,”’ she quipped, eliciting a short laugh from Emily, a half smile from Reid, and a look of complete and utter confusion from Morgan.
‘I don’t even want to know,’ he said, checking out the diner with some suspicion before they were directed to a booth near the back by the cigarette-smoking woman. The diner looked barely frequented, but by no means derelict. There was only one other customer there - a young man in his thirties who seemed more engaged in their activities than in his breakfast.
‘What can I get you then?’ the woman asked - Mary-Ann, her nametag said. ‘We’ve got pancakes, bacon, half a dozen different kinds of eggs - not dinosaur though, we’re out of those.’
There was half a second’s silence before the joke sunk in, and Emily found herself giving a grin. They put their orders through, and watched as Mary-Ann bustled behind a saloon-style door to what was apparently the kitchen.
‘I have to ask,’ started Garcia, a look of curiosity on her face. ‘No phones, no internet, hot during the day, freezing at night. I can’t see the appeal of living here.’
‘The peace and quiet?’ Emily suggested. ‘Even as a town near one of the biggest supposed extra-terrestrial hotspots, it doesn’t seem that much of a tourist destination. Makes me wonder why they’ve even got a motel.’
‘That, my friend, must be for poor lost souls like us,’ Garcia replied. Emily didn’t seem to disagree; they were all lost souls, in a way.
‘You guys mind?’ Emily asked, gesturing towards the jukebox. There were no objections from them, nor the other patron of the diner, who seemed to eye Emily with a little more than a passing glance. Morgan raised an eyebrow as the opening riffs of Hendrix started, and Reid and Garcia suddenly began talking about robots.
‘You’re with the government?’ the other man in the diner suddenly asked, which elicited Morgan’s curiosity even more than robots did.
‘FBI,’ Emily provided, a little too quickly. ‘Our car broke down.’
He stood, knocking a glass of orange juice into his plate of scrambled eggs. ‘Oh, crap,’ he muttered, righting the glass and grabbing a napkin from the table to clean the spill on his pants. ‘I, uh…Eric Reber,’ he introduced himself, holding out a hand. ‘I’m an investigative journalist.’
They made a round of introductions, Morgan doing so with some hesitation.
‘What are you doing in Walton?’ Reid asked, in that tone of voice he always used when questioning witnesses. He was genuinely curious.
‘Aliens,’ he said excitedly, with a slight twinkle in his eye, laughing at the subsequent expression from Morgan. ‘I’m kidding. I came to Walton because it’s a small town with very little to distract me from writing the article that I was supposed to turn in two days ago.’
Morgan raised an eyebrow. ‘Missing deadlines? That seems a little counterproductive.’
‘I stumbled onto something much, much more interesting,’ he said.
At that moment, Mary-Ann came to their table with two plates, which she set in front of Morgan and Garcia. She gave Eric a look, as though telling him not to scare away the customers.
‘Tell them,’ he urged her.
‘Oh no,’ Mary-Ann shook her head. ‘This is your paranoia, Eric, not mine.’ She tipped them a wink, before going to retrieve the remaining plates.
‘I’ve been in town for four days,’ he told them. ‘In that time, three residents have disappeared. No trace. In any other town, you might think “sure, no biggie.” This place has eighty-three residents, and it’s in the middle of the desert. No cars are missing, all possessions left behind. Almost as though they’d been…spirited away.’
‘So it could still be aliens,’ Garcia pointed out, stabbing a piece of bacon on the end of her fork. Mary-Ann returned with Reid and Emily’s breakfast, making no show of hanging around to listen to their conversation.
‘Well…’ Eric shrugged. ‘Theoretically, yes - but people disappearing for no reason. My first thought isn’t aliens, it’s serial killer.’
‘Disappearances with no signs of a struggle, no suspicions from any other residents…Would have to be an organized killer.’ Reid put down his silverware, mind suddenly lost to the possibility of a serial killer in the midst of the small town.
‘Either someone charismatic, or isolated enough that no-one notices their strange behaviour,’ Emily continued. ‘In a town this small, it seems probable that most people should have some kind of contact with the other residents.’
‘FBI?’ Eric asked again, with the slightest amount of incredulity.
‘We’re a part of the Behavioral Analysis Unit,’ Reid elaborated. ‘We hunt serial killers.’
The journalist gave a nervous laugh. ‘Well I guess it’s a good thing you showed up then.’
Morgan shared a look with Emily. ‘We’re in Nevada for a case,’ he said, a little pointedly. ‘In Warm Springs. The rest of our team should be coming back to pick us up sometime today.’
‘The least we can do is look into it while we’re here,’ Emily argued, to which Morgan raised an eyebrow. She rolled her eyes at him.
‘At best, we have a few coincidences, at worst, a serial killer,’ she told him. ‘If we don’t do anything…’
Morgan sighed. ‘Fine,’ he conceded - it was his permission that they needed. Technically speaking, he had seniority out of the four of them. ‘You said you’d talk to “Bill” about taking us back to our car?’ he asked Mary-Ann.
She nodded. ‘I’ll go round him up - he’ll only be able to fit two of you in his truck.’
‘That’s fine,’ Morgan said. ‘Reid, Prentiss, you two go with Bill to bring our gear back here. Garcia and I will set up home base and take a look at what intel Eric has.’
‘There are a couple of vacancies at the motel,’ Eric told them. ‘They don’t really get so many tourists around here.’
‘So why bother with a motel?’ Emily asked, to which he gave a shrug.
‘It’s been around for as long as the town has,’ Mary-Ann provided. ‘People thought that the location might bring in the tourists, but we barely break even. Make just enough to keep the place running.’
Morgan seemed a little apprehensive at the thought of staying the night, and Emily couldn’t blame him - by booking into the motel, it almost seemed as though they were acknowledging that it might be necessary for them to stay for more than the rest of the day, if indeed, the team did arrive to pick them up.
‘You don’t have to stay the night,’ the diner owner told him, as if interpreting his looks. ‘Even if you just want a place to keep your things, it can’t hurt.’
‘It’s like The X-Files,’ Garcia said excitedly, ‘Small town, mysterious occurrences, motels.’
‘So who’s Mulder and who’s Scully?’ asked Eric, with the slightest amount of amusement.
‘He’s Mulder. He’s Scully,’ said Emily, indicating Reid first, and then Morgan. He raised another eyebrow.
‘Why do I have to be the chick?’
‘Not the chick,’ corrected Garcia. ‘The skeptic.’
‘Well forgive me for looking for the more rational explanation,’ he said defensively.
‘There’s a fine line between rational explanation and outright denial,’ Emily replied with a grin.
Morgan shook his head, his expression matching hers, in spite of the ribbing. ‘Alright.’ He finished off the last of his breakfast with a few quick bites. ‘Let’s move.’