Life During Wartime: What You Don't Know (XF)
Writing this nearly killed me. I exaggerate, of course, but it was really difficult. Almost as difficult as the fact that right now, somewhere in this, my bedroom, is a massive wolf spider that I just failed to murder, and which has gone to ground under the bed somewhere. I don't mind huge spiders as long as they are not under my bed. That's too much of a childhood nightmare.
Anyway, to return to the topic in hand: this story was part of the Life During Wartime saga. We'd wondered why you saw Bill but never Charlie on the show and in our LDW world-killin' convention in SF, we decided that this is because he was gay and had dropped out of the military, and so was persona non grata with his parents. I quite liked the idea of idealistic Charlie, stuck somewhere he didn't want to be because of his kids, and alone at the end of the world. I like the idea of him investigating what his beloved sister is doing through FOIA requests. I like the little scene with Mulder and Scully and Mulder's non-denial denial. What I don't like is the way the narrative never feels quite organic. It's essentially a chase sequence with a little more chase sequence. I'd have preferred his narrative voice to be a little less... I don't know, generic. I think that's a product of uncertainty. The betas had conflicting opinions on this one -- the sure sign of a narrative not firing on all cylinders -- and to me it felt like wrestling with elastic bands wrapped around me.
Odd story: I like to put Scandinavian names in my stories. I just do. After I posted this, I got an email from a man called Andrew Aslaksen, a rather irked email all the way from California, explaining that he had got the right hump with me. He had been shown this story by his students, and what was I doing using his name, what did I mean by it? I wrote him a polite letter explaining I didn't know him from Adam, it just happened that I had been reading An Enemy of the People and liked the name Aslaksen. I had no intention of labelling him a traitorous, crazy, potentially Nazi militiaman who betrays Scully's lovely gay brother.
He didn't reply.
SUMMARY: Charlie Scully finds out that what you don't know *can* hurt you
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WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW
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When I was a kid, no phone was ever left unanswered just in case it was Dad
calling from on board ship. He got so little time and called so infrequently
that every one of us knew the procedure from the minute we could reach the
phone: (a) pick up; (b) get mom immediately, no matter where she is. Even when
he was home we used to do it; maybe we wanted to prove to him what well-drilled
brats we were.
To this day when I hear the phone, the old man's low baritone rumbles through
my head: "You should always answer the telephone, you never know when it might
be important."
Sorry, Dad. Charlie's messed up again.
I can't stand to stay still in here. If I lie down the eardrum buzz of the
strip lighting fills my brain but there's little point standing up. I can touch
the walls on both sides of the bed and you can't get a whole lot of exercise
pacing the 12 ft from outside wall to door. I know. I've tried.
I catch sight of my reflection in the tiny, high window. One of the many
reasons I left the Navy was that I was tired of being some pale Xerox of Dad
and Bill, never able to match up to their expectations. So it's ironic that the
guy staring back at me resembles the old man so much -- the way he looked when
we were kids, in the hours before he went to sea: all scowling, pinched
features and worry lines. My hair is even receding in the same places as his
did.
Bill always said I would look like Dad when I was older. It's a shame we don't
see each other these days because there's nothing he likes more than being
proven right.
My brother, being the obedient son, would have answered the call; he would have
heard the warning. Of course, the obstinate asshole would've ignored it because
it originally came from Mulder...
I grin at that thought for all of a second before I remember Tara and Matthew,
which leads me back to my own sons, I start wondering whether David and Mark
are all right and before I know it, my goddamned hands are shaking again.
I think perhaps if I knew what was going on, I could cope better -- the reality
is usually less traumatic than the scenario your imagination conjures up. But
perhaps I already understand too much about what is happening outside these
four walls.
I wish I could speak to Dana.
When we were teenagers, and Missy and I were competing for the title of Scully
family fuck-up, I thought she was the most insufferable know-it-all on God's
earth. I know her better these days and I think her calm logic would be
comforting right now. She's the only one who could explain this.
I think about the messages I left for Jon. I tried to warn him, told him not to
go home because the cities weren't going to be safe, but the minute the words
came out of my mouth I knew how foolish I sounded.
In the end I ran out of ways to phrase it. In my last call I just told him I
loved him. If that doesn't make him realize something is wrong, nothing will.
It would be easy to blame him for this. Easy but unfair.
It started with a phone call five days ago.
Jon and I had fought, the same fight we'd been having for more than six months.
Jon wants me to move west with him. He thinks you should never have to hide who
you really are; I think it's imperative if I want to keep teaching -- and I do,
it's the only job I've ever loved.
Family and duty bound me to Moscow, Idaho. It's only a little college town but
I like it there.
We reached a temporary truce, as we always do. The power went out for the
fourth or fifth time that day so we lit a few candles round the bedroom and got
on with patching up our differences.
"I don't just want this to be a part-time thing any more," he whispered as he
moved across my body, but I pretended to be too lost in the moment to hear what
he said.
Some time later, the phone rang in the hallway and we both groaned, heads
thumping back on the pillows.
"Leave it," Jon said, pouting prettily and running a hand through
sweat-darkened hair.
I untangled myself anyway, ready to answer the phone just as I was taught. I
had the bedroom door half open by the third ring but something made me turn.
The look he cast after me reeled me back in. "Leave it," he said again, and
this time it was more like a plea.
I didn't want to argue with him -- he had to leave that evening to visit his
folks and I knew I might not see him for days. I wanted those last few hours we
had to be sweet.
The machine was already halfway through its spiel: "...not here now, please
leave a message and I'll get back to you."
I made my decision and pushed the door shut. There were three short beeps as I
leant back against it, enjoying the cool solidity of wood against hot, bare
skin.
One long tone as I grinned at Jon.
"Are you screening? Look if you're there, pick up...
Mom. We don't speak much, perhaps because I'm sick of dealing with the hum of
disapproval that underlies every word she says.
I filtered out her voice and padded toward the bed, anticipating Jon's touch.
The last thing I heard was her saying, in that formal tone she takes with me
these days, "Charles, there's something I have to tell you..."
Quick quiz: your mom is on the phone and the guy you love is sprawled naked on
your bed, licking his lips. Which way do you jump?
Exactly.
She had called at a little before four. A little after eight, as Jon sped off
north to visit his family, I pressed 'play'. Four hours too late.
I was mentally preparing for another conversation full of awkward questions and
arid silences. Instead I got a message that made my legs fold under me.
"I want you to listen to me, listen carefully now, Charles..." she had said,
her odd tone coming through despite the scratchiness of the tape.
"Pack a bag, like we did when we used to go camping with your dad, and go up
into the hills with Mark and David. Adrienne too. I know you don't like guns
around the boys but if you can get hold of one, grab it. Take as much as you
can carry, honey, pack like it's for weeks, take everything you would want to
keep."
She had tried to sound calm. "I know how you and Bill feel about Fox Mulder but
he thinks there's going to be some kind of emergency this weekend."
Even now I feel a brief flicker of irritation that she lumped me in with Bill
again, that she knows me so little.
"Mulder says we have to get away from the towns because it's not going to be
safe soon. Don't worry about me, I'm going to go with your sister and Mulder.
Please believe him, Charlie. Please believe me."
There was a pause so long I thought the damned machine was on the fritz again.
Then: "Charlie... I know we've disagreed over the way you live your life, but
I'm your mother and I love you."
And that was it. She was gone.
"Please believe me," she had said.
The thing was, I already believed. I'd been following my sister's career for a
long time.
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When you hear bad news there are always a few minutes when your brain is in
shock and refuses to process the information in any useful way. In this case, I
switched on the TV. In between brief buzzes of static and the college football
scores, they were saying that an unknown group of hackers had infiltrated power
and telecom company computers and were causing havoc -- but hey, not to worry,
the blackouts and communications problems would all be over by Monday morning.
I knew even then that this was probably the truth. Everything would be over by
Monday.
Once I'd had my moment in the stupid zone, I picked up the phone. There was no
reply from Mom or Dana to confirm the weird tale but even as part of me was
saying it was ridiculous, I knew it was true.
Next I called Adrienne, but there was no reply. That immediately worried me;
she'd told me she planned to stay in because her new guy, Irvin, might be
coming over. Her subtle way of telling me not to drop by to see the kids just
because I was at a loose end.
I wondered if she might have left Mark and David with her mom, so I called Mrs.
Slovo. My former mother-in-law hated me the entire five years I was married to
her daughter and she sure as hell detests me now, but I was pretty sure she
wasn't lying when she said she hadn't seen Adrienne or the kids for a couple of
days.
Adrienne only lives five blocks away from me, so I sprinted down the
rain-slicked back streets to her house, tired muscles jittering from the
adrenaline.
This went against all the ground rules we established when I moved here and it
certainly wouldn't do anything for our friendship, which has its fragile days.
All the time my feet were pounding into the road I was thinking 'I hope I get
there and David and Mark are asleep and she gets furious at me for waking them
up. I hope she's got that pompous asshole Irvin Ridley there, even though he's
not good enough for her. I hope she answers the door with a red face and
bedhead and tells me to go to hell.'
Anything would have been better than the scenarios playing out in my head.
At Adrienne's the lights were blazing. I hammered on the door and pressed my
cheek against the window trying to see past the slats of the blinds. Nothing.
Then I tried the handle; the door was unlocked. The kitchen was still warm with
the smell of cooking. Two small plates were on the table with the messy remains
of half-eaten meatloaf congealing on them. The glasses of coke on the table
were flat. In the living room the hazy blue flicker of the TV revealed nothing
but empty shadows.
I moved upstairs, the back of my neck starting to ice over. In each room the
drawers were open and half-emptied, closet doors were ajar.
David's room looked as though a thief had ransacked it. Unfortunately it always
looks that way but I could tell his closet was near empty. I checked by his bed
and shelves for his favourite book. It's one Bill sent him a couple of months
ago, knowing it would piss me off, one of those glossy kid's books full of
exploded schematics of world war two planes, tanks and ships -- part of Bill's
recruitment drive for a third generation of Scully servicemen, no doubt. David
loves it. I closed my eyes as I realized that it was gone too.
I slipped into Mark's room. Something crunched under my boots and I stepped
back to see a spray of Lego pieces like bright pebbles on the dark blue carpet,
the plastic container lying on its side on the shelf. Little Lego men smiled up
at me from the folds of the few T-shirts left in the open drawer below.
It was as though Adrienne had decided to take off on the spur of the moment.
Sure, I'd take off in a second if I knew Irvin Ridley was going to stop by, but
my ex-wife isn't like that. It didn't compute that Adrienne would get the same
kind of message as I had, yet the house was empty; there was no note, no clue
and the only message on the answering machine was mine.
I ran back to my place. I was going to pack, like Mom told me to, and then go
talk to everyone Adrienne knew and find out where she might have gone. And if
that didn't work... well, I wasn't thinking that far ahead.
Back at my place I flicked on the TV again -- just in case the president came
on air to announce we should all kiss our asses goodbye -- and hurled
possessions into my big sports bag. Clothes. A first aid kit. A hunting knife
the old man gave me that has never once been used for its rightful purpose. I
threw in four or five family photos, still in their frames. Not much to show
for a life.
I left the bag open on the bed, in case I thought of anything else and went
into the room the boys share when they stay over, thinking I could pack some
stuff to give them next time I saw them.
I was clinging fiercely to that thought when I heard a noise from downstairs.
I stopped breathing, moving, for a second but the only sound was the indistinct
mumble of the TV. Then there it was again, a muffled thump and a man's soft
curses.
I picked up the baseball bat I bought Mark for his ninth birthday last summer
and hefted it in one hand to gauge its weight, the damage it could cause.
I slipped out of the room and edged down the stairs.
A fuzzy dark shadow fell across the hallway carpet as I reached the bottom.
I flattened myself against the wall and my fingers tightened on the rubber
grip.
A figure emerged and I raised the bat, ready to knock this fucker's head into
next week.
"For Christ's sake, Charlie, it's me!"
A strip of light from the street lamp outside fell across the intruder. A lean,
tall man, wearing jeans, cowboy boots and a wide-brimmed hat, more than 20
years older than me and looking every one of them right now, with his hands up
and his watery blue eyes wide with panic.
Andrew Aslaksen -- your friendly neighbourhood hacker.
Aslaksen has lived next door to me for the past four years. He's a strange guy
and his ideas are way out there but at least he's not one of those militia nut
jobs that see the hand of Satan in everything from PBS to Pokemon.
He runs a small computer business from his garage; everything from repairs to
tutoring. At times over the past year or so I've needed information --
classified information -- and he taught me how to get it. He knows I've been
looking at things I shouldn't.
The fear that had been building up in me tipped my temper over the edge.
I grabbed a fistful of his black shirt and pushed him into the wall with one
hand, the bat raised high in the other. Aslaksen's hat hit the wall, slid over
his nose and off his head, revealing stringy gray hair. "What the fuck are you
doing creeping around my house?" I snarled.
"Charlie, get your hands off me! I'm here to help you."
"Then tell me, what the hell are you doing in here?" I wanted to shake the
answers out of him.
"I'm looking for you, you stupid asshole," he barked. "I came to warn you."
My fist unclenched, leaving a stretched twist of fabric on Aslaksen's chest. I
let the baseball bat fall back on my shoulder, but I didn't back away. "Go on,"
I said.
Aslaksen let out a puff of air and assessed me, running his thumb and index
finger down that stupid zapata moustache of his. There was a long pause. "You
know already, Charlie, don't you?"
"Know what?" I snapped, much more comfortable with irritation than this clawing
fear.
"They're moving the troops out at Ellens and Mountain Home. Phones and power
keep going out. Goon squads picking up troublemakers across the state. It's
starting, man. *They* are taking over."
I wasn't entirely sure who "They" referred to, as Aslaksen had previously used
the term to refer to "evil forces" as varied as the federal government,
Microsoft and the New York Yankees. "How do you know?"
"Encrypted email from my compadres," he said, "before the phone lines went
down. How do *you* know, man? Your sister?"
"My mom." Suddenly I had the urge to giggle at the absurdity of that. "Can you
believe it? My mom told me."
"You need to get out of here, Charlie."
"I can't find my sons or Adrienne and their place is cleaned out. I don't have
time for this, Andy," I snapped, turning my back on him and going back upstairs
to my bedroom.
He followed me, talking to my back the whole way.
"I gotta tell you something. While you were out I saw a couple of suits
sniffing around this place. Big-ass car with out of state plates. Have you
thought that they might have taken them? People are being taken all across the
country."
I felt pressure building behind my eyes like a headache, and a desire to lash
out at anything. "What would they want with a part-time waitress and two kids?
That makes no sense at all."
"Keep your voice down," hissed Aslaksen. "It's because of you. It's because of
your sister."
"Because of me? Why?"
"Guys like us, we know too much," he said.
Dark laughter bubbled out of me before I could stop it. "Would you listen to
yourself? We *know* too much? I teach fucking high school math and you're a
right-wing paranoiac with a Clint Eastwood fetish. We've hacked a few files
together, that's all."
"Pull yourself together. And I'm not a rightwinger, I'm a techno-anarchist,"
Aslaksen replied sourly. "Big difference."
"Whatever," I said. "We are not important."
"Who are you trying to convince?" Aslaksen asked in a harsh whisper. "I don't
see your kids. I see men watching the house."
He walked over to where my bag lay open on the bed and picked up a
silver-framed picture of Dana, me and Missy at Mark's christening. He pointed
at my younger sister.
"I know what she's into and so do you. They don't want guys who know -- people
like you, me, your sister -- causing panic, so they take someone close for
leverage. I don't have anyone close -- you do."
I grabbed it from his hands and put it back, almost breaking the zip as I shut
the bag. "So what do you suggest?" I snapped.
Aslaksen was eager to share his plan. "I know some people who prepared for
this. They're holed up maybe 90 miles out of town. It's safe, a bunker."
"Andy," I said, a warning note in my voice, "I have to find my kids."
"These guys know what's going down; they may know where your kids have been
taken." There was an odd pleading note in his voice. "Come on, man. It's not so
far and I need you to read the map. If they can't tell us anything I promise
we'll drive back into town tomorrow, keep looking. What else are you gonna do?"
Eight hours later, we were deep in a hilly, featureless forest somewhere in the
Sawtooth Range. It was dank with last night's rain and dark in the grey morning
light.
We had driven for hours in Aslaksen's battered pick-up. As we crawled along the
tracks, my few possessions bounced around behind the seats, stowed on top of
Aslaksen's shotgun.
Aslaksen and me, we barely spoke the whole journey. I was so wound up, and
really, what was there to say? Aslaksen was unusually twitchy but these were
weird circumstances. I felt sure I was missing something important, as if it
was on the very edge of my peripheral vision and if I wasn't so tired, if I
just turned for a proper look...
"We're here." The sudden rumble of Aslaksen's voice startled me.
"Here" was a compound, built into the rock where mountain escarpment met the
rising forest floor, invisible even from the air. There was a stockade with
wide, heavy wooden doors, the timber darkened and weathered as if it had been
built years ago. I could see the glint of razor wire where the top of the
stockade merged with the forest canopy. The only part that didn't blend in was
a flagpole, with a red and white something draped damply around it.
At the sound of the engine cutting, a short, balding, barrel-chested man
dressed all in black emerged from behind a broad trunk. He trained a
semi-automatic on the mud-encrusted pick-up.
Aslaksen's knuckles whitened around the wheel. "Let me deal with this."
"What? No red carpet?" I said lightly, as my pulse accelerated.
Aslaksen plastered a smile on his face, his voice all false bonhomie. "Hey,
Donald," he called. "You remember me. Andy Aslaksen. There's not much time.
Let us in."
The other man tossed his head back and lowered the gun by maybe five degrees.
"I thought we already told you to get lost."
"I had a deal with Venables."
I tried to recall Aslaksen mentioning the name.
"Yeah? Venables thinks you're an asshole," Baldie scoffed, raising the gun
again. "This isn't the ark and Venables isn't Noah. We don't just let you in
because you came along two by two."
Aslaksen's temper gave way and he reached back behind the seats. I thought,
Jesus, the idiot's going for the shotgun, we're going to get killed here. A
quick glance forward revealed that Baldie thought so too. "Get your fucking
hands where I can see them," he shouted, snapping into a firing stance.
There was a second guy with a gun up on a parapet about 50 yards away, crouched
low. Shouts from inside the stockade hung in the still air. There was a rasping
sound behind me.
I turned back to Aslaksen to say something but he'd already grabbed something.
My bag gaped open, a pair of sweats half pulled out.
Aslaksen slammed the truck door hard and walked over to Baldie. I squinted to
see what he had in his hands and caught a glimpse of silver as he thrust the
object in Baldie's face. He said something I didn't catch.
"So what?" Baldie snapped.
"Are you blind?" Aslaksen jabbed a thumb at me, looking indignant. "He's her
brother, Donald."
Baldie stared for a moment and signalled to the other shooter. "Hand me your
guns and drive on through," he sneered.
It was like a thousand small bugs skittering across my skin, a powerful sense
that something was very wrong.
Aslaksen opened the truck door and handed me the picture. "What was all that
about?" I asked.
He wouldn't meet my eyes. "Nothing," he said. "Some of those guys are assholes,
that's all."
"No, Andy. The photo. My sister." I was pleased by the steadiness of my voice,
everything considered.
"I was supposed to come alone but these guys... they know Mulder and your
sister and they owe them a few favors, so that's why they're letting you in."
Aslaksen was like the kids I catch sneaking out of school for a smoke or
writing on the bathroom wall, he had the same half defiant, half ashamed look
on his face. Frustration and fury were building up in me in equal measures.
"Andy," I said, clamping a hand around his wrist. "What's going on?"
"I need to hand over the gun," Aslaksen replied dully, shaking his hand free
and collecting the shotgun from behind the seat.
There was shouting and the stockade doors opened, revealing lines of parked
pick-ups and, on an inner set of doors, a large painted symbol: a red
background, a white circle, inside it a swastika.
I must have muttered every swearword I knew in a long, low litany. These people
killed FBI agents, they didn't owe them favors.
Aslaksen hadn't brought me here because I was a friend, to help me find anyone
or even because he needed some stupid asshole to read the goddamned map.
It was because he thought I was his ticket to safety.
It only took a couple of seconds to slide across into the driver's seat, a
moment more to gun the engine and reverse backwards in a spurt of mud and dead
leaves. The wheel span under my sweaty hands as I turned the pick-up and roared
away, even as Aslaksen ran back towards me, yelling panicked obscenities.
Five shots rang out.
* * *
As I drove through the twisting maze of logging roads, watching the gas gauge
slip towards zero and praying that I would hit a town soon, I ran through every
possible explanation for what could have happened to the kids. Aslaksen's
explanation still seemed the most plausible, that they had been taken by some
shadowy, nameless Them.
And why would two kids from small-town Idaho be of any consequence to Them?
Because their dad got curious and decided to find out what his sister was up
to.
I drew attention to myself. No matter how you play it, this is my fault.
Maybe this was how it felt all the time for Dana. I'd never realized how the
weight of fear like this could suffocate all other thought.
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It started after Dana got sick; maybe it was a manifestation of guilt because I
only managed to get there to see her when she was already on the mend, maybe I
thought I could understand properly what happened to Melissa that way, but I
vowed I was going to find out just what was going on.
Tracking down what Dana was doing wasn't easy but it wasn't impossible either.
You wouldn't believe the messy electronic fingerprints we leave over
everything. I get all the reports I can under the Freedom of Information Act.
Since she got better we email or phone each other every week and I use
references she's made to where she is and what she's doing to cross-check
everything, although she's not the easiest person to extract information from.
But if you're willing to plough through pages and pages of dull documents and
the sight of the words "[material redacted]" doesn't bring you out in hives,
you can piece it together.
I've never been too good with computers -- never had the interest until now --
but Aslaksen taught me how to hack a little and then I started retrieving my
own information.
At first it was like a game, trying to puzzle it out. But the more I discovered
about what was going on, the more there was to find -- and the more sinister it
all seemed: allegations of secret experiments, gene mutation, deadly diseases
and at the center of the vortex, my sister and this man, Mulder.
I couldn't buy Bill's theory that Mulder was a madman and Dana was playing
Tammy Wynette. She just isn't like that. Never has been. And Missy, whose
judgment I still trust best, always said that he was a good man. Mom seemed to
like him at first but has gotten less enthusiastic as the years have gone by. I
think she's afraid he leads Dana into danger -- which is ridiculous because no
one has ever led my sister anywhere she didn't want to go.
By the time I finally got to meet Mulder, a year ago, I was almost insane with
curiosity.
They were on some shitty job near Pullman and one night I opened the door to
find Dana on my doorstep. That alone was uncharacteristic behavior so I knew
something was wrong. She introduced me to a tall, good-looking guy she had in
tow.
So this was Mulder. Oh Dana, honey, you have taste, I thought, taking in the
rangy height of him, the swimmer's shoulders encased in what was, if I wasn't
mistaken, a very expensive suit.
They stayed for dinner, I called Adrienne and she brought the kids over, and
for once, we had a great evening. I was expecting him to be arrogant but he
turned on the charm. David practically hero-worshipped him and announced his
intention to join the FBI as soon as possible, Mark was delighted to be the
center of his aunt's attention and even Adrienne and I remembered why we'd once
liked each other so much.
Later I asked them if they wanted to stay overnight rather than go back to some
crappy motel. I only have one spare room and they argued over who would take
the couch in the den, which answered at least one of my questions.
When Mulder was upstairs washing up, I talked to Dana. She admitted the job was
depressing her -- they were being punished for some mistake to do with the
bombing in Dallas, she said -- and she just needed to see a friendly face.
I wanted to tell her I admired the hell out of her for what she was doing but I
knew what kind of reaction I'd get if she knew I had been checking up on her.
So in the end all I said was: "Your choice -- the FBI -- it wasn't a mistake. I
know what dad said, but it wasn't."
"I hardly think investigating manure in Idaho was what he had in mind for me,"
she said, leaning her head back on the sofa and closing her eyes.
"You're doing something good. You and Mulder, what you do, it is important."
"Oh Charlie, that's sweet of you, but we catalog fertilizer deliveries and do
background checks on janitors."
"But you haven't always, have you? The X-Files were more than that."
I don't know why I expected an answer. What was she going to say? No, I chased
mutants and UFOs and monsters I don't believe in? I proved six impossible
things before breakfast?
She sat up and stared at me steadily. "Yes. Yes they were. But that's in the
past now," she said, her look giving me a clear 'back off' signal.
For a second it was as if we were children again. I half expected one of us to
start singing 'I know something you don't know'. I gave in.
One day, I thought, I'll tell her what I know, but not today.
"I like Mulder," I said slyly.
For the first time that entire evening, she grinned and I finally recognised in
her the brace-faced brat who had always been annoyingly good at keeping
secrets. "Oh you do, do you?"
"Very charming, Dana. He's a good-looking man," I said. "I'm surprised Bill
didn't mention it."
"Yeah. Mysterious, huh, Charlie?"
Mulder strode into the room. I handed him a beer and winked at Dana. She
rolled her eyes, which only made me laugh more. He sat in the chair opposite
us. "What?" he asked, thrown off-balance by our expressions.
Dana shook her head, kissed me on the cheek. "I'll leave it to you to field
that one. Good night."
She stopped by Mulder's chair and bent towards him and for a second I thought
she was going to kiss him as well. Maybe he thought so too, he looked panicked.
But at the last second she leaned towards his ear and whispered: "Watch it,
Mulder, I think you're his type."
His eyes widened, then he looked up, saw her face and it was as if that gave
him permission to enjoy the joke. He smiled back at her and she put a hand on
his shoulder. His automatically came up to meet it, sweeping her fingers
gently. She gave his shoulder a quick squeeze and then she was gone.
I thought, Dana, who the hell are you trying to fool?
"So," he said a little awkwardly.
"Don't worry about the wisecrack. You're not really my type," I said. "We just
have a lot in common."
His eyebrows lifted. "Really?"
"Yeah, Bill thinks we're both assholes."
He laughed and relaxed a little and I thought, now's my chance. "You and my
sister, you've been together a long time."
He nodded, puzzled as to where I was going with this. "You'd go to the ends of
the earth for her, right?" I said pointedly, thinking of a weird expense report
I'd dug up a week ago.
His expression was hard to read in the dim light. "Charlie, are you asking me
if my intentions toward your sister are honorable?" He sounded amused.
I nodded, just to see what response that would provoke.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "Such as they are, and in as far as she'll let me."
His mouth quirked up into an odd little smile as he raised his beer to his
mouth and his eyes to the ceiling.
"I know what's going on, Mulder."
He laughed softly. "There's nothing going on. Scully and me, we're just
partners."
I shook my head, still finding it odd to hear my sister called by her surname.
After all those years in the Navy I kept thinking he was talking about me. "I'm
not referring to that," I said.
"Then what are you referring to?"
"I'm talking about the X-files."
"Not my province any more," he said, taking a swig of beer, his voice bitter.
"They'll always be your province."
He set the half-empty bottle down on the table and fixed me with a stare.
"What -- *exactly* -- has Scully told you?" he asked, his voice flint-hard.
"If you think she'd tell me anything about her professional life you don't know
her very well," I retorted and his nod acknowledged that was true. "I've been
doing a little background reading on the cases you work."
"Why?" he snapped.
"I'd like to know how my sister ended up almost burning to death at Ruskin
Dam."
I realized I was starting to use my classroom voice and turned down the volume.
"I'd like to know how come there was a dying child that Dana thinks was hers,
that no one knew about until last year. I'd like to know how come Melissa got
killed."
He flinched at my harsh tone so I added hurriedly: "Not that I take Bill's line
on that. I know who was to blame for that and I'm glad the bastard is dead. But
it's about more than just the stuff that affects my family. What about that
flight that came down? What about Max Fenig? I've been to the memorial website
for that guy and, believe me, it tells some very weird stories about his life."
Mulder gave a tiny smile. "Well, he was a very weird guy."
"There are ways of finding out these things, Mulder. I think you're involved in
some dangerous shit and I think I know what's happening here."
His face hardened. "No. You don't."
"But..." I began.
He cut me off. "You don't know anything, Charlie. Keep it that way."
I recognized the expression. Like Dana's, it told me there was no point in even
asking. I'd blown my chances.
I sighed. "Then at least tell me you'll look out for Dana."
"I try," he said, "but most of the time it's her looking out for me." He stood
up. "Gonna turn in now. Thanks for dinner."
When I went to the bathroom at 4am that morning, the light in the den was still
on. I heard whispers and started to smile until it became clear that this
wasn't sweet nothings, it was a full-blown argument.
"You're being paranoid," I heard Dana hiss. "How could he?"
He said something but it was low, short and hard to make out.
"Mulder, my brother's a smart man but he can barely program the video."
I felt a brief flush of brotherly superiority that she'd got that wrong.
"I'm telling you, he's doing it," I heard Mulder say, his voice twisting up an
octave in frustration. "You've seen his computer."
"My Mom has a computer," she replied. "It doesn't mean she's the next Donald
Gelman or Kevin Mitnick."
His reply was too low to hear.
"Very funny," she said sourly. "And don't you dare, Mulder. I don't want him
involved. Don't you dare say anything to him."
Say what? I tried to shuffle closer to the doorway but I stepped on the loose
board without thinking. The voices stopped and I crept hurriedly into the
bathroom.
When I got up the next morning they had gone, leaving only a sweetly bland
thank you note. Dana was much more cagey in what she said to me about work
after that but I carried on digging, thinking that one day I'd understand
enough to force her to talk to me about it.
Now I wish I'd pushed harder for answers.
------------------------------------------------------
I got back to Moscow at 8pm and everything was so normal that the events of the
last 24 hours seemed like a bizarre dream. I wanted to run through the streets
shouting 'wake up, don't you realize what's going on?'
But in the end I had two objectives: First, to find out what Aslaksen had on
where they would take my sons and on Dana; and second, to destroy all those
notes I had kept, just in case they could be used to trace Dana and Mulder.
Just because I couldn't work out the cryptic references, it didn't mean others
would have the same difficulty.
Then I planned to listen to my mom for once and get the hell out of the town.
Maybe from the mountains I could figure out the pattern of troop movements and
work out where they were taking people. As long as I could be doing rather than
thinking, I would be fine.
I sneaked into the back of my own place like a thief.
A thief who had been preempted -- someone had been through the place, emptying
drawers, smashing the crockery and ripping the backs of my chairs and sofa. The
den was in the worst mess. They had taken the hard drive of my computer and all
the disks as well as every bit of paper I had in my files.
Luckily I always keep the important information out of the way of far better
snoopers than these guys -- two insatiably nosy boys. I lifted the loose
hallway floorboard and there was my little stash of information and reports,
covered in my blue scrawl. I put the floorboard back.
In the hallway, the answering machine registered one message, which had already
been played. I hit the button and Jon said he loved me too but what the hell
was I talking about? "Call me, Charlie," he whispered at the end, "I mean it.
Please."
Against my better judgment, I tried but the phones were out again.
Then I crept to the back of Aslaksen's house. The door was locked so I wrapped
my shirt round a brick and put it through the back kitchen window. Somehow I
squeezed all 5ft 10in of me through the gap.
As I jumped from the window ledge onto the glass-strewn kitchen floor, I
imagined what would happen if I got caught and the world didn't end: the
humiliation of the local math teacher getting arrested for burglary.
They hadn't tried to disguise the fact that they'd been through Aslaksen's
place in a hurry either. There were papers all over the floor, his pictures had
been pulled off the wall and out of their frames and the three computers on his
dining table were all also minus their hard drives. Luckily I knew Aslaksen's
secret -- like every good paranoiac, he keeps his favorite system well hidden.
A minute later I'd broken the small lock on the door, pulled down the ladder
and climbed inside his attic. I didn't dare switch on the lamp as there's a
tiny skylight at the gable end of the house that would have given away my
presence if any watchers came back, so I booted up the computer and worked by
its light.
Aslaksen hid his passwords at all times, so this really was a challenge of my
newfound skills. Three times I had to reboot after his system shut me down, but
the fourth, I did something right, I'm not sure what, and the data began to
flow for me. I clicked through his directories and finally found the
motherlode. An entire directory marked "Scully". I opened it.
Holy shit. There were files marked with my name, Dana's, Melissa's -- even Bill
had his own little domain on Aslaksen's system. I didn't have time to read this
here so I bent to switch on the printer.
At that second there was a white-hot flash that cracked open the night sky and
flooded the room with light. The computer screen shattered and I heard a boom
like thunder. It was suddenly darker as the street lamps winked out. I think I
realized even then that the power had gone off for the last time.
I hurried back to my house, pulled up the floorboard and retrieved the papers,
then ran out into the yard to climb into the car. Every light in town was off
by the look of it. I remember thinking that I had to get out of there. But when
I turned the ignition key in my car there wasn't even the faintest sputter from
the engine. I cursed Japanese shit-heaps and ran to Aslaksen's pick-up but his
was the same. It was dead.
The only thing to do then was to destroy my notes back at the house. I was
going to walk into the woods and I couldn't carry them with me. I ended up
sitting on the floor with all the curtains shut, tearing a year's work into
confetti by candlelight and feeding the pieces into the fierce blaze I had
stoked in my woodstove.
At some point, the lack of sleep caught up with me. I woke close to dawn on
Monday morning, lying on the floor, as boots kicked my front door in. Five
soldiers armed with semi-automatics surrounded me before I could even reach for
the hunting knife. They hauled me into the back of a van with a couple of
frightened looking guys. It was the only vehicle moving on the empty roads. A
kevlar-covered slab of muscle stressed the need for quiet by waving his AK-47.
We were quiet.
Eventually the van stopped at what looked like a military installation. They
led me into a squat cinder block barracks that skulked low against the autumn
skyline and dragged me into a small room with no natural light. They questioned
me for hours, always two of them, in shifts. Three of them were army, all
ranked Major or above, the fourth wore no uniform but was military. He may have
been ONI -- he knew an awful lot about me and my background.
Every question led back to Dana: where was she, had she told me anything, had
she been in contact? I told the truth -- I didn't know, I hadn't spoken to her
in almost two weeks.
Then they asked why I ran on Saturday, who did I meet on Sunday, why did I
drive back to Moscow? I told them everything. All the time I thought I was
being smart and evading them, I think they were tracking me. They must have
thought I'd lead them to Dana.
Then they brought out the pictures. First the pictures of us all when we were
kids: Missy with me on her knee and Dana and Bill standing by our side that day
we left Miramar for the last time; a picture of Dana from her high school
graduation with me jealous and sulking in the background because I'd overheard
one of the teachers telling dad I was fooling around in class and I knew he'd
be furious when he got home; pictures from when we went to Connemara during the
drought summer of 1977.
One from my wedding day 12 years ago: me in the dress whites of a junior
officer, my hair in an ugly buzz cut, trying to convince myself that my best
friend was also the love of my life. Adrienne looking heavily pregnant and
anxious, Dad and Mrs Slovo glowering at the camera.
These were pictures they could only have got from mom, which meant they had
been through her place at some point.
Then they brought out pictures of me from maybe four years ago, just after I
left the navy and just before I finally came out; surveillance shots of me
looking incredibly shifty and awkward as I tried to slip into a gay bar. There
were also pictures of me and Jon draped over each other when we were on holiday
in St Kitts more than a year ago, shot with a telephoto lens.
I felt a ripple of revulsion, maybe fear, as I tried to work out how long they
had been watching me.
But the pictures that scared me were of Adrienne, Mark and David. They were
taken recently, in a barracks like this one. Mark looked as though he was about
to bawl his head off, David looked like the defiant teenager he's just a month
away from becoming and Adrienne -- well, Adrienne just looked terrified.
After seeing those I would have been ready to admit to anything from that time
I shoplifted when I was 11 to the Kennedy assassination, if only they'd let me
see my sons.
But it went on and on until I heard someone scream: "I don't know anything and
I don't know why the hell I'm here."
I swear to God I didn't realize it was me until a full five seconds after I'd
said it.
Then they told me politely that the interview is over and led me away to this
cell. I've been here ever since.
And now I remember the last thing one of the interrogators said to me before
they left me for the last time.
He was an older man, straight-backed and fit even though his hair was grey.
High-ranking, judging by how fast the guard on the door skipped to attention
when he left, even though he was wearing a nondescript dark suit. I asked him
why I was there.
"Why?" he said, and I looked up to see his thin lips twitch. The son of a bitch
was amused, you could see it in his eyes. "We think you'll be useful to us."
"What for?" I asked, my voice stretched thin and cracking. "I don't understand.
What for?"
The man smiled but his face gave no clues. "Leverage, Mr Scully," he replied
and left the room.
------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES:
Without the wise advice, great suggestions and generous help of Cofax, MSebasky
and Fialka this would never have left the hard drive. Remaining errors are my
own.
For Cofax, because she asked for it.
------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Derby/5520/Wartime.html
Mailing address: endoftheworldnews AT googlemail DOT com
Anyway, to return to the topic in hand: this story was part of the Life During Wartime saga. We'd wondered why you saw Bill but never Charlie on the show and in our LDW world-killin' convention in SF, we decided that this is because he was gay and had dropped out of the military, and so was persona non grata with his parents. I quite liked the idea of idealistic Charlie, stuck somewhere he didn't want to be because of his kids, and alone at the end of the world. I like the idea of him investigating what his beloved sister is doing through FOIA requests. I like the little scene with Mulder and Scully and Mulder's non-denial denial. What I don't like is the way the narrative never feels quite organic. It's essentially a chase sequence with a little more chase sequence. I'd have preferred his narrative voice to be a little less... I don't know, generic. I think that's a product of uncertainty. The betas had conflicting opinions on this one -- the sure sign of a narrative not firing on all cylinders -- and to me it felt like wrestling with elastic bands wrapped around me.
Odd story: I like to put Scandinavian names in my stories. I just do. After I posted this, I got an email from a man called Andrew Aslaksen, a rather irked email all the way from California, explaining that he had got the right hump with me. He had been shown this story by his students, and what was I doing using his name, what did I mean by it? I wrote him a polite letter explaining I didn't know him from Adam, it just happened that I had been reading An Enemy of the People and liked the name Aslaksen. I had no intention of labelling him a traitorous, crazy, potentially Nazi militiaman who betrays Scully's lovely gay brother.
He didn't reply.
SUMMARY: Charlie Scully finds out that what you don't know *can* hurt you
------------------------------------------------------------
WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW
------------------------------------------------------------
When I was a kid, no phone was ever left unanswered just in case it was Dad
calling from on board ship. He got so little time and called so infrequently
that every one of us knew the procedure from the minute we could reach the
phone: (a) pick up; (b) get mom immediately, no matter where she is. Even when
he was home we used to do it; maybe we wanted to prove to him what well-drilled
brats we were.
To this day when I hear the phone, the old man's low baritone rumbles through
my head: "You should always answer the telephone, you never know when it might
be important."
Sorry, Dad. Charlie's messed up again.
I can't stand to stay still in here. If I lie down the eardrum buzz of the
strip lighting fills my brain but there's little point standing up. I can touch
the walls on both sides of the bed and you can't get a whole lot of exercise
pacing the 12 ft from outside wall to door. I know. I've tried.
I catch sight of my reflection in the tiny, high window. One of the many
reasons I left the Navy was that I was tired of being some pale Xerox of Dad
and Bill, never able to match up to their expectations. So it's ironic that the
guy staring back at me resembles the old man so much -- the way he looked when
we were kids, in the hours before he went to sea: all scowling, pinched
features and worry lines. My hair is even receding in the same places as his
did.
Bill always said I would look like Dad when I was older. It's a shame we don't
see each other these days because there's nothing he likes more than being
proven right.
My brother, being the obedient son, would have answered the call; he would have
heard the warning. Of course, the obstinate asshole would've ignored it because
it originally came from Mulder...
I grin at that thought for all of a second before I remember Tara and Matthew,
which leads me back to my own sons, I start wondering whether David and Mark
are all right and before I know it, my goddamned hands are shaking again.
I think perhaps if I knew what was going on, I could cope better -- the reality
is usually less traumatic than the scenario your imagination conjures up. But
perhaps I already understand too much about what is happening outside these
four walls.
I wish I could speak to Dana.
When we were teenagers, and Missy and I were competing for the title of Scully
family fuck-up, I thought she was the most insufferable know-it-all on God's
earth. I know her better these days and I think her calm logic would be
comforting right now. She's the only one who could explain this.
I think about the messages I left for Jon. I tried to warn him, told him not to
go home because the cities weren't going to be safe, but the minute the words
came out of my mouth I knew how foolish I sounded.
In the end I ran out of ways to phrase it. In my last call I just told him I
loved him. If that doesn't make him realize something is wrong, nothing will.
It would be easy to blame him for this. Easy but unfair.
It started with a phone call five days ago.
Jon and I had fought, the same fight we'd been having for more than six months.
Jon wants me to move west with him. He thinks you should never have to hide who
you really are; I think it's imperative if I want to keep teaching -- and I do,
it's the only job I've ever loved.
Family and duty bound me to Moscow, Idaho. It's only a little college town but
I like it there.
We reached a temporary truce, as we always do. The power went out for the
fourth or fifth time that day so we lit a few candles round the bedroom and got
on with patching up our differences.
"I don't just want this to be a part-time thing any more," he whispered as he
moved across my body, but I pretended to be too lost in the moment to hear what
he said.
Some time later, the phone rang in the hallway and we both groaned, heads
thumping back on the pillows.
"Leave it," Jon said, pouting prettily and running a hand through
sweat-darkened hair.
I untangled myself anyway, ready to answer the phone just as I was taught. I
had the bedroom door half open by the third ring but something made me turn.
The look he cast after me reeled me back in. "Leave it," he said again, and
this time it was more like a plea.
I didn't want to argue with him -- he had to leave that evening to visit his
folks and I knew I might not see him for days. I wanted those last few hours we
had to be sweet.
The machine was already halfway through its spiel: "...not here now, please
leave a message and I'll get back to you."
I made my decision and pushed the door shut. There were three short beeps as I
leant back against it, enjoying the cool solidity of wood against hot, bare
skin.
One long tone as I grinned at Jon.
"Are you screening? Look if you're there, pick up...
Mom. We don't speak much, perhaps because I'm sick of dealing with the hum of
disapproval that underlies every word she says.
I filtered out her voice and padded toward the bed, anticipating Jon's touch.
The last thing I heard was her saying, in that formal tone she takes with me
these days, "Charles, there's something I have to tell you..."
Quick quiz: your mom is on the phone and the guy you love is sprawled naked on
your bed, licking his lips. Which way do you jump?
Exactly.
She had called at a little before four. A little after eight, as Jon sped off
north to visit his family, I pressed 'play'. Four hours too late.
I was mentally preparing for another conversation full of awkward questions and
arid silences. Instead I got a message that made my legs fold under me.
"I want you to listen to me, listen carefully now, Charles..." she had said,
her odd tone coming through despite the scratchiness of the tape.
"Pack a bag, like we did when we used to go camping with your dad, and go up
into the hills with Mark and David. Adrienne too. I know you don't like guns
around the boys but if you can get hold of one, grab it. Take as much as you
can carry, honey, pack like it's for weeks, take everything you would want to
keep."
She had tried to sound calm. "I know how you and Bill feel about Fox Mulder but
he thinks there's going to be some kind of emergency this weekend."
Even now I feel a brief flicker of irritation that she lumped me in with Bill
again, that she knows me so little.
"Mulder says we have to get away from the towns because it's not going to be
safe soon. Don't worry about me, I'm going to go with your sister and Mulder.
Please believe him, Charlie. Please believe me."
There was a pause so long I thought the damned machine was on the fritz again.
Then: "Charlie... I know we've disagreed over the way you live your life, but
I'm your mother and I love you."
And that was it. She was gone.
"Please believe me," she had said.
The thing was, I already believed. I'd been following my sister's career for a
long time.
-----------------------------------------------------
When you hear bad news there are always a few minutes when your brain is in
shock and refuses to process the information in any useful way. In this case, I
switched on the TV. In between brief buzzes of static and the college football
scores, they were saying that an unknown group of hackers had infiltrated power
and telecom company computers and were causing havoc -- but hey, not to worry,
the blackouts and communications problems would all be over by Monday morning.
I knew even then that this was probably the truth. Everything would be over by
Monday.
Once I'd had my moment in the stupid zone, I picked up the phone. There was no
reply from Mom or Dana to confirm the weird tale but even as part of me was
saying it was ridiculous, I knew it was true.
Next I called Adrienne, but there was no reply. That immediately worried me;
she'd told me she planned to stay in because her new guy, Irvin, might be
coming over. Her subtle way of telling me not to drop by to see the kids just
because I was at a loose end.
I wondered if she might have left Mark and David with her mom, so I called Mrs.
Slovo. My former mother-in-law hated me the entire five years I was married to
her daughter and she sure as hell detests me now, but I was pretty sure she
wasn't lying when she said she hadn't seen Adrienne or the kids for a couple of
days.
Adrienne only lives five blocks away from me, so I sprinted down the
rain-slicked back streets to her house, tired muscles jittering from the
adrenaline.
This went against all the ground rules we established when I moved here and it
certainly wouldn't do anything for our friendship, which has its fragile days.
All the time my feet were pounding into the road I was thinking 'I hope I get
there and David and Mark are asleep and she gets furious at me for waking them
up. I hope she's got that pompous asshole Irvin Ridley there, even though he's
not good enough for her. I hope she answers the door with a red face and
bedhead and tells me to go to hell.'
Anything would have been better than the scenarios playing out in my head.
At Adrienne's the lights were blazing. I hammered on the door and pressed my
cheek against the window trying to see past the slats of the blinds. Nothing.
Then I tried the handle; the door was unlocked. The kitchen was still warm with
the smell of cooking. Two small plates were on the table with the messy remains
of half-eaten meatloaf congealing on them. The glasses of coke on the table
were flat. In the living room the hazy blue flicker of the TV revealed nothing
but empty shadows.
I moved upstairs, the back of my neck starting to ice over. In each room the
drawers were open and half-emptied, closet doors were ajar.
David's room looked as though a thief had ransacked it. Unfortunately it always
looks that way but I could tell his closet was near empty. I checked by his bed
and shelves for his favourite book. It's one Bill sent him a couple of months
ago, knowing it would piss me off, one of those glossy kid's books full of
exploded schematics of world war two planes, tanks and ships -- part of Bill's
recruitment drive for a third generation of Scully servicemen, no doubt. David
loves it. I closed my eyes as I realized that it was gone too.
I slipped into Mark's room. Something crunched under my boots and I stepped
back to see a spray of Lego pieces like bright pebbles on the dark blue carpet,
the plastic container lying on its side on the shelf. Little Lego men smiled up
at me from the folds of the few T-shirts left in the open drawer below.
It was as though Adrienne had decided to take off on the spur of the moment.
Sure, I'd take off in a second if I knew Irvin Ridley was going to stop by, but
my ex-wife isn't like that. It didn't compute that Adrienne would get the same
kind of message as I had, yet the house was empty; there was no note, no clue
and the only message on the answering machine was mine.
I ran back to my place. I was going to pack, like Mom told me to, and then go
talk to everyone Adrienne knew and find out where she might have gone. And if
that didn't work... well, I wasn't thinking that far ahead.
Back at my place I flicked on the TV again -- just in case the president came
on air to announce we should all kiss our asses goodbye -- and hurled
possessions into my big sports bag. Clothes. A first aid kit. A hunting knife
the old man gave me that has never once been used for its rightful purpose. I
threw in four or five family photos, still in their frames. Not much to show
for a life.
I left the bag open on the bed, in case I thought of anything else and went
into the room the boys share when they stay over, thinking I could pack some
stuff to give them next time I saw them.
I was clinging fiercely to that thought when I heard a noise from downstairs.
I stopped breathing, moving, for a second but the only sound was the indistinct
mumble of the TV. Then there it was again, a muffled thump and a man's soft
curses.
I picked up the baseball bat I bought Mark for his ninth birthday last summer
and hefted it in one hand to gauge its weight, the damage it could cause.
I slipped out of the room and edged down the stairs.
A fuzzy dark shadow fell across the hallway carpet as I reached the bottom.
I flattened myself against the wall and my fingers tightened on the rubber
grip.
A figure emerged and I raised the bat, ready to knock this fucker's head into
next week.
"For Christ's sake, Charlie, it's me!"
A strip of light from the street lamp outside fell across the intruder. A lean,
tall man, wearing jeans, cowboy boots and a wide-brimmed hat, more than 20
years older than me and looking every one of them right now, with his hands up
and his watery blue eyes wide with panic.
Andrew Aslaksen -- your friendly neighbourhood hacker.
Aslaksen has lived next door to me for the past four years. He's a strange guy
and his ideas are way out there but at least he's not one of those militia nut
jobs that see the hand of Satan in everything from PBS to Pokemon.
He runs a small computer business from his garage; everything from repairs to
tutoring. At times over the past year or so I've needed information --
classified information -- and he taught me how to get it. He knows I've been
looking at things I shouldn't.
The fear that had been building up in me tipped my temper over the edge.
I grabbed a fistful of his black shirt and pushed him into the wall with one
hand, the bat raised high in the other. Aslaksen's hat hit the wall, slid over
his nose and off his head, revealing stringy gray hair. "What the fuck are you
doing creeping around my house?" I snarled.
"Charlie, get your hands off me! I'm here to help you."
"Then tell me, what the hell are you doing in here?" I wanted to shake the
answers out of him.
"I'm looking for you, you stupid asshole," he barked. "I came to warn you."
My fist unclenched, leaving a stretched twist of fabric on Aslaksen's chest. I
let the baseball bat fall back on my shoulder, but I didn't back away. "Go on,"
I said.
Aslaksen let out a puff of air and assessed me, running his thumb and index
finger down that stupid zapata moustache of his. There was a long pause. "You
know already, Charlie, don't you?"
"Know what?" I snapped, much more comfortable with irritation than this clawing
fear.
"They're moving the troops out at Ellens and Mountain Home. Phones and power
keep going out. Goon squads picking up troublemakers across the state. It's
starting, man. *They* are taking over."
I wasn't entirely sure who "They" referred to, as Aslaksen had previously used
the term to refer to "evil forces" as varied as the federal government,
Microsoft and the New York Yankees. "How do you know?"
"Encrypted email from my compadres," he said, "before the phone lines went
down. How do *you* know, man? Your sister?"
"My mom." Suddenly I had the urge to giggle at the absurdity of that. "Can you
believe it? My mom told me."
"You need to get out of here, Charlie."
"I can't find my sons or Adrienne and their place is cleaned out. I don't have
time for this, Andy," I snapped, turning my back on him and going back upstairs
to my bedroom.
He followed me, talking to my back the whole way.
"I gotta tell you something. While you were out I saw a couple of suits
sniffing around this place. Big-ass car with out of state plates. Have you
thought that they might have taken them? People are being taken all across the
country."
I felt pressure building behind my eyes like a headache, and a desire to lash
out at anything. "What would they want with a part-time waitress and two kids?
That makes no sense at all."
"Keep your voice down," hissed Aslaksen. "It's because of you. It's because of
your sister."
"Because of me? Why?"
"Guys like us, we know too much," he said.
Dark laughter bubbled out of me before I could stop it. "Would you listen to
yourself? We *know* too much? I teach fucking high school math and you're a
right-wing paranoiac with a Clint Eastwood fetish. We've hacked a few files
together, that's all."
"Pull yourself together. And I'm not a rightwinger, I'm a techno-anarchist,"
Aslaksen replied sourly. "Big difference."
"Whatever," I said. "We are not important."
"Who are you trying to convince?" Aslaksen asked in a harsh whisper. "I don't
see your kids. I see men watching the house."
He walked over to where my bag lay open on the bed and picked up a
silver-framed picture of Dana, me and Missy at Mark's christening. He pointed
at my younger sister.
"I know what she's into and so do you. They don't want guys who know -- people
like you, me, your sister -- causing panic, so they take someone close for
leverage. I don't have anyone close -- you do."
I grabbed it from his hands and put it back, almost breaking the zip as I shut
the bag. "So what do you suggest?" I snapped.
Aslaksen was eager to share his plan. "I know some people who prepared for
this. They're holed up maybe 90 miles out of town. It's safe, a bunker."
"Andy," I said, a warning note in my voice, "I have to find my kids."
"These guys know what's going down; they may know where your kids have been
taken." There was an odd pleading note in his voice. "Come on, man. It's not so
far and I need you to read the map. If they can't tell us anything I promise
we'll drive back into town tomorrow, keep looking. What else are you gonna do?"
Eight hours later, we were deep in a hilly, featureless forest somewhere in the
Sawtooth Range. It was dank with last night's rain and dark in the grey morning
light.
We had driven for hours in Aslaksen's battered pick-up. As we crawled along the
tracks, my few possessions bounced around behind the seats, stowed on top of
Aslaksen's shotgun.
Aslaksen and me, we barely spoke the whole journey. I was so wound up, and
really, what was there to say? Aslaksen was unusually twitchy but these were
weird circumstances. I felt sure I was missing something important, as if it
was on the very edge of my peripheral vision and if I wasn't so tired, if I
just turned for a proper look...
"We're here." The sudden rumble of Aslaksen's voice startled me.
"Here" was a compound, built into the rock where mountain escarpment met the
rising forest floor, invisible even from the air. There was a stockade with
wide, heavy wooden doors, the timber darkened and weathered as if it had been
built years ago. I could see the glint of razor wire where the top of the
stockade merged with the forest canopy. The only part that didn't blend in was
a flagpole, with a red and white something draped damply around it.
At the sound of the engine cutting, a short, balding, barrel-chested man
dressed all in black emerged from behind a broad trunk. He trained a
semi-automatic on the mud-encrusted pick-up.
Aslaksen's knuckles whitened around the wheel. "Let me deal with this."
"What? No red carpet?" I said lightly, as my pulse accelerated.
Aslaksen plastered a smile on his face, his voice all false bonhomie. "Hey,
Donald," he called. "You remember me. Andy Aslaksen. There's not much time.
Let us in."
The other man tossed his head back and lowered the gun by maybe five degrees.
"I thought we already told you to get lost."
"I had a deal with Venables."
I tried to recall Aslaksen mentioning the name.
"Yeah? Venables thinks you're an asshole," Baldie scoffed, raising the gun
again. "This isn't the ark and Venables isn't Noah. We don't just let you in
because you came along two by two."
Aslaksen's temper gave way and he reached back behind the seats. I thought,
Jesus, the idiot's going for the shotgun, we're going to get killed here. A
quick glance forward revealed that Baldie thought so too. "Get your fucking
hands where I can see them," he shouted, snapping into a firing stance.
There was a second guy with a gun up on a parapet about 50 yards away, crouched
low. Shouts from inside the stockade hung in the still air. There was a rasping
sound behind me.
I turned back to Aslaksen to say something but he'd already grabbed something.
My bag gaped open, a pair of sweats half pulled out.
Aslaksen slammed the truck door hard and walked over to Baldie. I squinted to
see what he had in his hands and caught a glimpse of silver as he thrust the
object in Baldie's face. He said something I didn't catch.
"So what?" Baldie snapped.
"Are you blind?" Aslaksen jabbed a thumb at me, looking indignant. "He's her
brother, Donald."
Baldie stared for a moment and signalled to the other shooter. "Hand me your
guns and drive on through," he sneered.
It was like a thousand small bugs skittering across my skin, a powerful sense
that something was very wrong.
Aslaksen opened the truck door and handed me the picture. "What was all that
about?" I asked.
He wouldn't meet my eyes. "Nothing," he said. "Some of those guys are assholes,
that's all."
"No, Andy. The photo. My sister." I was pleased by the steadiness of my voice,
everything considered.
"I was supposed to come alone but these guys... they know Mulder and your
sister and they owe them a few favors, so that's why they're letting you in."
Aslaksen was like the kids I catch sneaking out of school for a smoke or
writing on the bathroom wall, he had the same half defiant, half ashamed look
on his face. Frustration and fury were building up in me in equal measures.
"Andy," I said, clamping a hand around his wrist. "What's going on?"
"I need to hand over the gun," Aslaksen replied dully, shaking his hand free
and collecting the shotgun from behind the seat.
There was shouting and the stockade doors opened, revealing lines of parked
pick-ups and, on an inner set of doors, a large painted symbol: a red
background, a white circle, inside it a swastika.
I must have muttered every swearword I knew in a long, low litany. These people
killed FBI agents, they didn't owe them favors.
Aslaksen hadn't brought me here because I was a friend, to help me find anyone
or even because he needed some stupid asshole to read the goddamned map.
It was because he thought I was his ticket to safety.
It only took a couple of seconds to slide across into the driver's seat, a
moment more to gun the engine and reverse backwards in a spurt of mud and dead
leaves. The wheel span under my sweaty hands as I turned the pick-up and roared
away, even as Aslaksen ran back towards me, yelling panicked obscenities.
Five shots rang out.
* * *
As I drove through the twisting maze of logging roads, watching the gas gauge
slip towards zero and praying that I would hit a town soon, I ran through every
possible explanation for what could have happened to the kids. Aslaksen's
explanation still seemed the most plausible, that they had been taken by some
shadowy, nameless Them.
And why would two kids from small-town Idaho be of any consequence to Them?
Because their dad got curious and decided to find out what his sister was up
to.
I drew attention to myself. No matter how you play it, this is my fault.
Maybe this was how it felt all the time for Dana. I'd never realized how the
weight of fear like this could suffocate all other thought.
------------------------------------------------------
It started after Dana got sick; maybe it was a manifestation of guilt because I
only managed to get there to see her when she was already on the mend, maybe I
thought I could understand properly what happened to Melissa that way, but I
vowed I was going to find out just what was going on.
Tracking down what Dana was doing wasn't easy but it wasn't impossible either.
You wouldn't believe the messy electronic fingerprints we leave over
everything. I get all the reports I can under the Freedom of Information Act.
Since she got better we email or phone each other every week and I use
references she's made to where she is and what she's doing to cross-check
everything, although she's not the easiest person to extract information from.
But if you're willing to plough through pages and pages of dull documents and
the sight of the words "[material redacted]" doesn't bring you out in hives,
you can piece it together.
I've never been too good with computers -- never had the interest until now --
but Aslaksen taught me how to hack a little and then I started retrieving my
own information.
At first it was like a game, trying to puzzle it out. But the more I discovered
about what was going on, the more there was to find -- and the more sinister it
all seemed: allegations of secret experiments, gene mutation, deadly diseases
and at the center of the vortex, my sister and this man, Mulder.
I couldn't buy Bill's theory that Mulder was a madman and Dana was playing
Tammy Wynette. She just isn't like that. Never has been. And Missy, whose
judgment I still trust best, always said that he was a good man. Mom seemed to
like him at first but has gotten less enthusiastic as the years have gone by. I
think she's afraid he leads Dana into danger -- which is ridiculous because no
one has ever led my sister anywhere she didn't want to go.
By the time I finally got to meet Mulder, a year ago, I was almost insane with
curiosity.
They were on some shitty job near Pullman and one night I opened the door to
find Dana on my doorstep. That alone was uncharacteristic behavior so I knew
something was wrong. She introduced me to a tall, good-looking guy she had in
tow.
So this was Mulder. Oh Dana, honey, you have taste, I thought, taking in the
rangy height of him, the swimmer's shoulders encased in what was, if I wasn't
mistaken, a very expensive suit.
They stayed for dinner, I called Adrienne and she brought the kids over, and
for once, we had a great evening. I was expecting him to be arrogant but he
turned on the charm. David practically hero-worshipped him and announced his
intention to join the FBI as soon as possible, Mark was delighted to be the
center of his aunt's attention and even Adrienne and I remembered why we'd once
liked each other so much.
Later I asked them if they wanted to stay overnight rather than go back to some
crappy motel. I only have one spare room and they argued over who would take
the couch in the den, which answered at least one of my questions.
When Mulder was upstairs washing up, I talked to Dana. She admitted the job was
depressing her -- they were being punished for some mistake to do with the
bombing in Dallas, she said -- and she just needed to see a friendly face.
I wanted to tell her I admired the hell out of her for what she was doing but I
knew what kind of reaction I'd get if she knew I had been checking up on her.
So in the end all I said was: "Your choice -- the FBI -- it wasn't a mistake. I
know what dad said, but it wasn't."
"I hardly think investigating manure in Idaho was what he had in mind for me,"
she said, leaning her head back on the sofa and closing her eyes.
"You're doing something good. You and Mulder, what you do, it is important."
"Oh Charlie, that's sweet of you, but we catalog fertilizer deliveries and do
background checks on janitors."
"But you haven't always, have you? The X-Files were more than that."
I don't know why I expected an answer. What was she going to say? No, I chased
mutants and UFOs and monsters I don't believe in? I proved six impossible
things before breakfast?
She sat up and stared at me steadily. "Yes. Yes they were. But that's in the
past now," she said, her look giving me a clear 'back off' signal.
For a second it was as if we were children again. I half expected one of us to
start singing 'I know something you don't know'. I gave in.
One day, I thought, I'll tell her what I know, but not today.
"I like Mulder," I said slyly.
For the first time that entire evening, she grinned and I finally recognised in
her the brace-faced brat who had always been annoyingly good at keeping
secrets. "Oh you do, do you?"
"Very charming, Dana. He's a good-looking man," I said. "I'm surprised Bill
didn't mention it."
"Yeah. Mysterious, huh, Charlie?"
Mulder strode into the room. I handed him a beer and winked at Dana. She
rolled her eyes, which only made me laugh more. He sat in the chair opposite
us. "What?" he asked, thrown off-balance by our expressions.
Dana shook her head, kissed me on the cheek. "I'll leave it to you to field
that one. Good night."
She stopped by Mulder's chair and bent towards him and for a second I thought
she was going to kiss him as well. Maybe he thought so too, he looked panicked.
But at the last second she leaned towards his ear and whispered: "Watch it,
Mulder, I think you're his type."
His eyes widened, then he looked up, saw her face and it was as if that gave
him permission to enjoy the joke. He smiled back at her and she put a hand on
his shoulder. His automatically came up to meet it, sweeping her fingers
gently. She gave his shoulder a quick squeeze and then she was gone.
I thought, Dana, who the hell are you trying to fool?
"So," he said a little awkwardly.
"Don't worry about the wisecrack. You're not really my type," I said. "We just
have a lot in common."
His eyebrows lifted. "Really?"
"Yeah, Bill thinks we're both assholes."
He laughed and relaxed a little and I thought, now's my chance. "You and my
sister, you've been together a long time."
He nodded, puzzled as to where I was going with this. "You'd go to the ends of
the earth for her, right?" I said pointedly, thinking of a weird expense report
I'd dug up a week ago.
His expression was hard to read in the dim light. "Charlie, are you asking me
if my intentions toward your sister are honorable?" He sounded amused.
I nodded, just to see what response that would provoke.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "Such as they are, and in as far as she'll let me."
His mouth quirked up into an odd little smile as he raised his beer to his
mouth and his eyes to the ceiling.
"I know what's going on, Mulder."
He laughed softly. "There's nothing going on. Scully and me, we're just
partners."
I shook my head, still finding it odd to hear my sister called by her surname.
After all those years in the Navy I kept thinking he was talking about me. "I'm
not referring to that," I said.
"Then what are you referring to?"
"I'm talking about the X-files."
"Not my province any more," he said, taking a swig of beer, his voice bitter.
"They'll always be your province."
He set the half-empty bottle down on the table and fixed me with a stare.
"What -- *exactly* -- has Scully told you?" he asked, his voice flint-hard.
"If you think she'd tell me anything about her professional life you don't know
her very well," I retorted and his nod acknowledged that was true. "I've been
doing a little background reading on the cases you work."
"Why?" he snapped.
"I'd like to know how my sister ended up almost burning to death at Ruskin
Dam."
I realized I was starting to use my classroom voice and turned down the volume.
"I'd like to know how come there was a dying child that Dana thinks was hers,
that no one knew about until last year. I'd like to know how come Melissa got
killed."
He flinched at my harsh tone so I added hurriedly: "Not that I take Bill's line
on that. I know who was to blame for that and I'm glad the bastard is dead. But
it's about more than just the stuff that affects my family. What about that
flight that came down? What about Max Fenig? I've been to the memorial website
for that guy and, believe me, it tells some very weird stories about his life."
Mulder gave a tiny smile. "Well, he was a very weird guy."
"There are ways of finding out these things, Mulder. I think you're involved in
some dangerous shit and I think I know what's happening here."
His face hardened. "No. You don't."
"But..." I began.
He cut me off. "You don't know anything, Charlie. Keep it that way."
I recognized the expression. Like Dana's, it told me there was no point in even
asking. I'd blown my chances.
I sighed. "Then at least tell me you'll look out for Dana."
"I try," he said, "but most of the time it's her looking out for me." He stood
up. "Gonna turn in now. Thanks for dinner."
When I went to the bathroom at 4am that morning, the light in the den was still
on. I heard whispers and started to smile until it became clear that this
wasn't sweet nothings, it was a full-blown argument.
"You're being paranoid," I heard Dana hiss. "How could he?"
He said something but it was low, short and hard to make out.
"Mulder, my brother's a smart man but he can barely program the video."
I felt a brief flush of brotherly superiority that she'd got that wrong.
"I'm telling you, he's doing it," I heard Mulder say, his voice twisting up an
octave in frustration. "You've seen his computer."
"My Mom has a computer," she replied. "It doesn't mean she's the next Donald
Gelman or Kevin Mitnick."
His reply was too low to hear.
"Very funny," she said sourly. "And don't you dare, Mulder. I don't want him
involved. Don't you dare say anything to him."
Say what? I tried to shuffle closer to the doorway but I stepped on the loose
board without thinking. The voices stopped and I crept hurriedly into the
bathroom.
When I got up the next morning they had gone, leaving only a sweetly bland
thank you note. Dana was much more cagey in what she said to me about work
after that but I carried on digging, thinking that one day I'd understand
enough to force her to talk to me about it.
Now I wish I'd pushed harder for answers.
------------------------------------------------------
I got back to Moscow at 8pm and everything was so normal that the events of the
last 24 hours seemed like a bizarre dream. I wanted to run through the streets
shouting 'wake up, don't you realize what's going on?'
But in the end I had two objectives: First, to find out what Aslaksen had on
where they would take my sons and on Dana; and second, to destroy all those
notes I had kept, just in case they could be used to trace Dana and Mulder.
Just because I couldn't work out the cryptic references, it didn't mean others
would have the same difficulty.
Then I planned to listen to my mom for once and get the hell out of the town.
Maybe from the mountains I could figure out the pattern of troop movements and
work out where they were taking people. As long as I could be doing rather than
thinking, I would be fine.
I sneaked into the back of my own place like a thief.
A thief who had been preempted -- someone had been through the place, emptying
drawers, smashing the crockery and ripping the backs of my chairs and sofa. The
den was in the worst mess. They had taken the hard drive of my computer and all
the disks as well as every bit of paper I had in my files.
Luckily I always keep the important information out of the way of far better
snoopers than these guys -- two insatiably nosy boys. I lifted the loose
hallway floorboard and there was my little stash of information and reports,
covered in my blue scrawl. I put the floorboard back.
In the hallway, the answering machine registered one message, which had already
been played. I hit the button and Jon said he loved me too but what the hell
was I talking about? "Call me, Charlie," he whispered at the end, "I mean it.
Please."
Against my better judgment, I tried but the phones were out again.
Then I crept to the back of Aslaksen's house. The door was locked so I wrapped
my shirt round a brick and put it through the back kitchen window. Somehow I
squeezed all 5ft 10in of me through the gap.
As I jumped from the window ledge onto the glass-strewn kitchen floor, I
imagined what would happen if I got caught and the world didn't end: the
humiliation of the local math teacher getting arrested for burglary.
They hadn't tried to disguise the fact that they'd been through Aslaksen's
place in a hurry either. There were papers all over the floor, his pictures had
been pulled off the wall and out of their frames and the three computers on his
dining table were all also minus their hard drives. Luckily I knew Aslaksen's
secret -- like every good paranoiac, he keeps his favorite system well hidden.
A minute later I'd broken the small lock on the door, pulled down the ladder
and climbed inside his attic. I didn't dare switch on the lamp as there's a
tiny skylight at the gable end of the house that would have given away my
presence if any watchers came back, so I booted up the computer and worked by
its light.
Aslaksen hid his passwords at all times, so this really was a challenge of my
newfound skills. Three times I had to reboot after his system shut me down, but
the fourth, I did something right, I'm not sure what, and the data began to
flow for me. I clicked through his directories and finally found the
motherlode. An entire directory marked "Scully". I opened it.
Holy shit. There were files marked with my name, Dana's, Melissa's -- even Bill
had his own little domain on Aslaksen's system. I didn't have time to read this
here so I bent to switch on the printer.
At that second there was a white-hot flash that cracked open the night sky and
flooded the room with light. The computer screen shattered and I heard a boom
like thunder. It was suddenly darker as the street lamps winked out. I think I
realized even then that the power had gone off for the last time.
I hurried back to my house, pulled up the floorboard and retrieved the papers,
then ran out into the yard to climb into the car. Every light in town was off
by the look of it. I remember thinking that I had to get out of there. But when
I turned the ignition key in my car there wasn't even the faintest sputter from
the engine. I cursed Japanese shit-heaps and ran to Aslaksen's pick-up but his
was the same. It was dead.
The only thing to do then was to destroy my notes back at the house. I was
going to walk into the woods and I couldn't carry them with me. I ended up
sitting on the floor with all the curtains shut, tearing a year's work into
confetti by candlelight and feeding the pieces into the fierce blaze I had
stoked in my woodstove.
At some point, the lack of sleep caught up with me. I woke close to dawn on
Monday morning, lying on the floor, as boots kicked my front door in. Five
soldiers armed with semi-automatics surrounded me before I could even reach for
the hunting knife. They hauled me into the back of a van with a couple of
frightened looking guys. It was the only vehicle moving on the empty roads. A
kevlar-covered slab of muscle stressed the need for quiet by waving his AK-47.
We were quiet.
Eventually the van stopped at what looked like a military installation. They
led me into a squat cinder block barracks that skulked low against the autumn
skyline and dragged me into a small room with no natural light. They questioned
me for hours, always two of them, in shifts. Three of them were army, all
ranked Major or above, the fourth wore no uniform but was military. He may have
been ONI -- he knew an awful lot about me and my background.
Every question led back to Dana: where was she, had she told me anything, had
she been in contact? I told the truth -- I didn't know, I hadn't spoken to her
in almost two weeks.
Then they asked why I ran on Saturday, who did I meet on Sunday, why did I
drive back to Moscow? I told them everything. All the time I thought I was
being smart and evading them, I think they were tracking me. They must have
thought I'd lead them to Dana.
Then they brought out the pictures. First the pictures of us all when we were
kids: Missy with me on her knee and Dana and Bill standing by our side that day
we left Miramar for the last time; a picture of Dana from her high school
graduation with me jealous and sulking in the background because I'd overheard
one of the teachers telling dad I was fooling around in class and I knew he'd
be furious when he got home; pictures from when we went to Connemara during the
drought summer of 1977.
One from my wedding day 12 years ago: me in the dress whites of a junior
officer, my hair in an ugly buzz cut, trying to convince myself that my best
friend was also the love of my life. Adrienne looking heavily pregnant and
anxious, Dad and Mrs Slovo glowering at the camera.
These were pictures they could only have got from mom, which meant they had
been through her place at some point.
Then they brought out pictures of me from maybe four years ago, just after I
left the navy and just before I finally came out; surveillance shots of me
looking incredibly shifty and awkward as I tried to slip into a gay bar. There
were also pictures of me and Jon draped over each other when we were on holiday
in St Kitts more than a year ago, shot with a telephoto lens.
I felt a ripple of revulsion, maybe fear, as I tried to work out how long they
had been watching me.
But the pictures that scared me were of Adrienne, Mark and David. They were
taken recently, in a barracks like this one. Mark looked as though he was about
to bawl his head off, David looked like the defiant teenager he's just a month
away from becoming and Adrienne -- well, Adrienne just looked terrified.
After seeing those I would have been ready to admit to anything from that time
I shoplifted when I was 11 to the Kennedy assassination, if only they'd let me
see my sons.
But it went on and on until I heard someone scream: "I don't know anything and
I don't know why the hell I'm here."
I swear to God I didn't realize it was me until a full five seconds after I'd
said it.
Then they told me politely that the interview is over and led me away to this
cell. I've been here ever since.
And now I remember the last thing one of the interrogators said to me before
they left me for the last time.
He was an older man, straight-backed and fit even though his hair was grey.
High-ranking, judging by how fast the guard on the door skipped to attention
when he left, even though he was wearing a nondescript dark suit. I asked him
why I was there.
"Why?" he said, and I looked up to see his thin lips twitch. The son of a bitch
was amused, you could see it in his eyes. "We think you'll be useful to us."
"What for?" I asked, my voice stretched thin and cracking. "I don't understand.
What for?"
The man smiled but his face gave no clues. "Leverage, Mr Scully," he replied
and left the room.
------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES:
Without the wise advice, great suggestions and generous help of Cofax, MSebasky
and Fialka this would never have left the hard drive. Remaining errors are my
own.
For Cofax, because she asked for it.
------------------------------------------------------------
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