The Supplication Of A Dead Man's Hand - Part Three
Title: The Supplication Of A Dead Man’s Hand
Author: memories_child
Spoilers: This is post The Truth so everything goes.
Warnings: Character death.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Word count: 12,299
Disclaimer: As much as I’ve begged CC and co. The X Files still doesn’t belong to me.
Summary: Colonization has come and Mulder and Scully are powerless to stop it.
Author's Notes: This was written as a 2009 xf_santa gift for thediagnosis. I’m sorry it’s so long after Christmas, but RL has been a bit manic. Nevertheless, I hope you had a great holiday, and wish you all the best for the new year. I hope you enjoy. Thanks to cadiliniel for the beta. All remaining mistakes are mine.
III
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Mulder wakes, instantly alert, hands groping for the gun that lies on the bedside table. It’s not there and his heart starts pounding in his chest until he realizes that he’s not in the Bureau anymore. Hasn’t been for quite some time, and there is no gun on the table. All their guns are hidden, out of plan sight - just in case the FBI come knocking. He lies back in the bed, concentrating on the silence in the house. Other than Scully’s quiet breathing next to him there is no noise. He isn’t sure what woke him, and judging from the pre-dawn light curling around the curtains he should still be asleep.
He rolls over, watching the rise and fall of Scully’s chest, listening to the rhythm of her breathing. And then he realizes what woke him, what made his heart pound in his chest; December 21st 2012. It’s here.
He pulls the covers off himself and pads to the window. His hands don’t shake as he pulls the curtains back but he takes a deep breath before he lifts his eyes and turns his gaze to the world outside.
Snow lies thickly on the ground, tinged with blue and purple from the rising sun. At the edge of the garden, where the trees border the land, a deer noses the snow, snuffling for grass. The trees are bare, this time of year, their branches stark against the pale winter sky. Mulder’s breath condenses on the cold glass as he stares outside. Nothing has changed. There are no ominous clouds in the sky, no troops of super soldiers crowding over the rise that leads down to the house, no thrum of otherworldly machines soaring across the horizon.
He doesn’t like it.
X
Will is bored. More than bored. The kind of mind-numbing bored where watching paint dry would be as incredible as watching a rocket launch or stars being born. His mom is standing in the doorway watching him. Will knows she’s watching him, even though he’s got his back to her. Lately she’s done nothing but watch him when she thinks he’s not looking. Stop it, he wants to shout at her. Stop watching me like I’m some kind of insect under a giant microscope. But she’s his mom so he doesn’t say anything, just smiles at her when he catches her eye. She doesn’t smile back.
Will shifts in his seat, the weak sunlight filtering through the blinds highlighting his copper red hair. He thumbs the buttons on the remote control listlessly. Television is boring, he thinks. This house is boring. Today should be fun; it’s the first day of the holidays and he doesn’t have to go to school. But his dad’s told him he’s not allowed out, so he can’t play in the snow or go tracking with John and Al. He can’t sit in the kitchen because he’ll get under his mother’s feet, and he can’t sit in the garage and watch his dad tinker with the car because it’s a twenty foot walk to the garage and he’s not allowed to go outside. Will sighs. He’s bored.
He flicks the button on the remote control again, flicking through the channels on the TV. Cartoon, documentary, news, film, news. He pauses as he recognizes the hospital on the screen. It’s the hospital in town, the one where his mother took him to see Gramma when she was ill and she gave him sweets because she said she was too ill to eat them. His mother had frowned at that but let Will take the candy anyway. He hears her gasp now as he leans forward in his seat. The newscaster looks cold as she holds the microphone to her chest and stares at the camera.
“The federal flu vaccination program has begun in earnest today. Delays in pharmaceutical companies being able to produce the vaccine for this stronger version of seasonal flu has meant that immunizations were only being offered to those in high risk categories; the elderly, young children and those with a lowered immune system. But today the vaccines were rolled out across the country, and people have been lining up for the last few hours to receive the injection.”
X
Mulder turns away from the television in disgust.
“So colonization has begun,” he hears Scully murmur behind him. He doesn’t look at her, can’t look at her, and he stares mutely out of the window instead.
“It was so obvious,” she says. “Why didn’t we think of that? We were so sure it would be bees, men in black…”
“I was so sure, Scully.”
“So what do we do now?”
“I don’t know.”
Mulder turns to look at Scully as she joins him at the window. Her face his pale, hair mussy - rumpled from sleeping. She lifts a hand to her face, stifling a yawn, and rubs the sleep from her eyes. It is in moments like this, he thinks, that he knows utterly what true love is, and then she becomes businesslike; the old Scully - rational and methodical. And that is true love of a kind as well.
“Provided they haven’t made any major alterations to the virus, which is unlikely given its successes previously, we know we’re immune to it. We have to assume William is as well.”
Mulder nods.
“I think we need to make him as our first priority,” she continues. “We need to try and get in touch with Skinner again. We have to assume we can’t reach him by email so we’ll have to try calling him. John and Monica too. And Yves, if we can. We have to find out where William is.”
As Scully heads for the shower, Mulder makes his way to his office. He hopes, for her sake, that she’s right; that they’ll be able to get hold of Skinner or Dogget, that they’ll find William unharmed. He tries not to think of the effect the virus will have on the rest of the population, tries not to think of the gaping wounds left in the chests and abdomens of those who weren’t immune to it. He doesn’t succeed.
X
Will has been banished to his room for getting under his mother’s feet. It wasn’t my fault, he thinks as he stomps up the stairs. If she won’t let me go out to play then what else am I supposed to do? He nearly slams the door when he reaches the bedroom, before thinking twice - he doesn’t want to be punished for something else as well - and pulling faces at it instead.
There’s less to do in his bedroom than there was downstairs - no TV, no snacks, no board games - and he slumps morosely against the bed. If only he was older, they wouldn’t be able to boss him around so much then. He’d be able to go out when he wanted to, watch TV when he wanted to... He sighs; being eleven is hard work.
With nothing else to do he picks up the copy of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn lying on his nightstand and turns to the page he’s on. Huck has escaped from Miss Watson’s under cover of darkness, Tom Sawyer helping him out, and Will imagines how happy Huck must have been to get away from all that civilizing. He’s reading about the adventurous crimes Tom Sawyer’s gang are plotting when the realization hits him: he could escape under cover of darkness as well. Huck and Tom made it sound so easy, and Will figures it can’t be that hard to get out of the house. His bedroom window is only twelve feet off the ground; he could jump down without breaking a leg. And he could head east. The furthest he’s been in that direction is Denver; this time he could make it all the way to New York.
Will grins. That would teach them to stop him from going outside, if they woke up in the morning to find him gone. Tossing the book onto the bed he hurries to the wardrobe. He’ll need to take a backpack with him, some warm clothes, boots, a torch maybe, and food as well. If his mother lets him go downstairs for supper he can get some chips from the kitchen. If she doesn’t, well he can wait until he’s sure they’re fast asleep - say four in the morning - and slip downstairs. It’s a plan worthy of Huck himself.
X
Dawn has settled over the yard and Scully stands at the doorway watching the snow glisten in the pale light. They had stopped making phone calls after midnight; messages left again and again for Skinner, Dogget and Reyes. There is nothing they can do now but wait.
Mulder joins her on the porch, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders.
“Do you think they’ll pick any up?” she asks.
“I don’t know, Scully. It’s nearly daylight; if they were going to call they’d have done it before now.”
Scully settles into the comfort of Mulder’s chest. She wraps herself more tightly in the blanket as she watches birds hurtle over the sky. She can feel a tight knot in her stomach working its way upwards. Please let them be okay, she thinks. Please let them call.
As if hearing her thoughts, Mulder tightens his hold on her shoulders. “If they can get to a phone they -”
He is interrupted by the ringing of the phone inside. Mulder sprints indoors, knocking a vase off a table in his rush to reach it before it stops ringing.
“It’s me, Mulder,” Skinner’s voice crackles down the line.
“Where are you? What the hell’s going on?”
“Listen, I don’t have much time. William’s gone.”
Mulder freezes. He hadn’t realized how much he didn’t want to hear those words until now. He’d assumed - he and Scully had assumed - that William would be all right.
“What do you mean he’s gone?”
“He’s run away. We’ve had surveillance on the house for the past few weeks -”
“You’ve been keeping tabs on them?”
“I’m a member of the Federal government. I can keep tabs on whoever I want.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because I didn’t know if anything would happen. As far as we knew the Van der Kamps were safe.”
“And now William’s gone.”
“He left a note. Said he’s heading east. We’ve got teams heading out now. We don’t know how far he’s gone, or which way he’s going, but we’re going to find him.”
“What about the Van der Kamps?”
“We’ve taken them into custody, put the story out they’ve been arrested in connection with child pornography. With William gone we don’t know who’ll go after them and this way we can make sure they’re secure.”
“What will the neighbors think?”
“By the time we’re sure they’ll be safe, there won’t be any neighbors.”
“What about the vaccine, colonization?”
“Vaccine’s voluntary for the moment. Virus has an incubation period of two days, if we’re lucky,” Skinner pauses. “Mulder, I have to go.”
“Shit.” Mulder swears as he put the phone down. Scully hovers next to him, her eyes dull sockets in the pale of her face. “We need to go west,” he says.
X
Will stamps his feet and huffs, watching his breathe coalesce in the air. The bus had left him at Denver bus station half an hour ago and, if he’s being honest with himself, he’s not sure what to do next. Running away had seemed like such a great plan last night, but now - alone, cold and hungry in the middle of a strange city - all he wants is to go home.
Shrugging the bag off his shoulders he counts the money in his wallet. Fifteen dollars. Nowhere near enough fur a bus back to Burns, but maybe it’ll be enough for him to get some food. He picks up his bag and starts trudging through the slush lining the sidewalk. It’s cold, but it feels good to be walking somewhere, the wind whipping at his cheeks and numbing his fingers. He keeps his head down as he walks, avoiding any curious glances from passers-by. The key is to look like you belong, he tells himself. Don’t talk to strangers. Look both ways before crossing the road.
He tries not to think about home as he walks, about his parents and how they must be feeling. He decides to head for the museum. He remembers passing it once, when he and his parents drove through the city. It’ll be somewhere warm to stay for a while, if nothing else.
X
Scully answers the phone with a sharp ‘yes?’, glancing at Mulder who grips the steering wheel, knuckles turning white.
“Latest intell suggests he’s in Colorado.” Skinner sounds tired as he speaks, and Scully frowns.
“Colorado?”
“Denver, Colorado. He had a hundred dollars in his piggy bank. It’s all gone and nothing’s been taken from either of the Van der Kamps. It would be enough to get him as far as Denver.”
“But you’re not certain he’s there.”
“No. But this is a best guess. It’s all we’ve got, Scully. I suggest you take it.”
Mulder glances at her when she hangs up and she turns to the window, not wanting him to see the tears that are threatening to well up in her eyes.
“Scully?” his voice is soft.
“I’m fine, Mulder.”
She isn’t sure how she feels, but some part of her doesn’t want to admit that to Mulder yet. She can’t quite believe that after ten years she will be meeting William, can’t believe that their failure to stop colonization is the only thing that has given her a chance to see her son again. The chances of finding him in Denver, if he has gone there, are slim, but something - some motherly instinct, some sixth sense - tells her he’ll be there.
“We need to get to Denver,” she says when she’s sure her voice won’t break. “As soon as possible.”
“It’ll take us days by car.”
“We need to get to an airport.”
Mulder frowns. “The virus -”
“Skinner said the incubation period lasted for a couple of days. It’s a chance I’m willing to take.”
They arrive at the airport in record time and hurry to the ticket desk. It’s times like these Scully wishes she were FBI again, able to flash her badge and demand a ticket, but thankfully the plane is only half full and they board minutes later.
X
The exhibits are better than Will thought they’d be. The museum in Cheyenne, which he’d visited on school trips, was full of threadbare, stuffed animals and replication Civil War pistols; Denver museum has dinosaur bones and genuine flint arrowheads. Will takes his time following the green arrows through the ground floor of the building, pausing to press his nose against glass cases housing T-Rex skulls and saber tooth tigers. This is better than watching his dad fiddling with the car in the garage, he thinks. Better even than tracking through the snow with John and Al.
He makes his way to a case which contains a scene of a Neolithic man painting a mural on a cave wall. Will stops, staring at the painting. It is taller than the stone age man standing beside it, and as long as the cave itself. Will frowns, puzzled. It looks like a painting of a UFO, a big ball of white, with what seem to be aliens walking down from it. They look like the aliens Will saw in Close Encounters when he stayed up to watch it last Christmas, and the look on the stone age man’s face is one of fear.
He hovers at the exhibit for a few minutes, trying to make sense of the drawings, but the little placard giving information about the exhibit tells him nothing. Replica of a Stone Age cave painting found in what is now Africa, dated 7000 BC. Paintings like this were commonly found in clusters in areas containing magnetite. Their meaning is so far unknown. Will shrugs; there are better things to see.
As he picks up his bag to leave, a blinding pain shoots through his head. He lets out an involuntary gasp and drops his backpack, clutching at his head. Through the pain he can hear voices, just on the edge of hearing. A woman, who sounds vaguely familiar. Not his mom, but there is something mom-like about her.
“William was a bullfrog…”
A song? It’s not one his mom’s ever sung to him. But he knows it. Somehow, he knows it.
“William, after your father.”
But his dad’s dad is called Fred. Will is the only William in the family.
Just as suddenly as the pain began it stops, leaving Will crouching, breathless, on the floor. He staggers to his feet and stumbles to a bench a few feet away from the exhibit. As he sits down he realizes that he’s crying, his breath harsh in the quiet room. Stop it, he tells himself. Stop acting like a baby. But the tears continue to roll as he clutches his backpack and shakes.
X
Scully is quiet as they walk out of arrivals at Denver airport. Mulder eyes her with concern; she had barely said a word to him on the short flight, gazing instead out of the window at the white clouds below. He wants to reach out and touch her, offer assurances and tell her everything will be ok. But even before he says it he knows the words will sounds false.
They step into the cool of the Colorado winter and Scully shivers. Mulder wraps an arm around her shoulders; even now, years after their time in the FBI, it feels good to be able to touch her in the open.
“Where to, Batman?” he asks as they hover on the sidewalk.
“I’ve no idea, Mulder. We don’t even know if he’s here.”
He can hear the tremor in her voice and squeezes her shoulder. “Let’s assume he is. If you were an eleven year old boy, on the run in Denver, where would you want to go?”
“Home,” she whispers.
He squeezes her shoulder once more and hails a cab.
“We may as well start in the middle,” he says as they bundle in. “Downtown,” he tells the driver. “As fast as you can.”
The phone rings as the cab driver slows for a red light. Scully snatches it up.
“Yeah,” she says. “Uh-huh… Okay.” Mulder suspects he sees her smile.
“The museum,” she says to him after she hangs up.
“What?”
“If you were an eleven year old boy with a model of a velociraptor in his room, on the run in Denver, where would you want to go?”
X
Will wipes his eyes as he walks into the gift shop. That last exhibit freaked him out and he’s glad to get away from it in the bright, cheerful shop. He pauses at the case containing dinosaur fossils. What he wouldn’t give to have a real raptor claw. Or to discover one. He pictures himself - khaki-clad - in the far reaches of some desert, proudly holding an intact skeleton.
“Well, nothing like this has been found before,” he imagines himself saying. “It’s quite possibly a new species. Yes, I have thought of a name - the Willosaurus.”
He smiles to himself, and then remembers the raptor model in his bedroom at home. He can’t hang around here much longer. He’s running out of food - a sandwich and a carton of apple juice in the museum’s café set him back six dollars - and he wants to go home.
He turns away from the case and trails past a box containing crystals and gemstones. A black bracelet catches his eye and as he reaches out to touch it the pain in his head returns.
“Argh,” he cries as he falls to the ground. The voices are stronger this time and he can see faces swimming in and out of his vision; a tall man holding a baseball bat; a red-haired woman smiling at him.
“William,” she says. “William.” Her voice is familiar, the same voice he heard by the cave exhibit earlier.
“Mom?” he tries to say. Because she is his mom. Not the mom he grew up with and who he desperately wants to see again, but his mom just the same.
“Mom.”
“I’m here.”
X
Scully wraps William in her arms and strokes his hair.
“Ssh,” she murmurs. “It’s okay.”
“You’re my mom,” he mutters into her shoulder. Scully feels the tears threatening to well up again. She had tried to tell herself that she would be calm, collected when she met William, but nothing could have prepared her for the way she’d feel when he called her mom. She doesn’t question how he knows, after all this time, simply holds him more tightly and lets the tears fall.
They sit that way for several minutes, Scully losing track of time, of the reason they’re in Denver, of everything but the weight of her son in her arms. She hears Mulder cough behind her and turns, smiling at him.
“I’m sorry, Mulder. I -” she gestures at William.
“It’s okay, Scully. But we need to get to D.C.”
William looks up at Mulder’s voice and Scully finds herself searching for any resemblance of him in William’s face. His eyes, she thinks finally. He has his eyes.
“You’re the one whose father I’m named after,” the boy says. Mulder nods.
“That’s your father,” Scully says. “His name is Mulder. Fox Mulder.”
William wrinkles his nose.
“Mulder is fine,” Mulder says. “Or dad. You’re lucky your mom has better taste in names than mine.”
Scully notes the change in William’s expression. “We have to get to Washington D.C., William. We’ll be safe there.”
“Where are my parents?”
She winces at the question but tries not to let William see the hurt in her eyes. She gave him up ten years ago - she has no right to expect him to accept her as quickly as he has, much less ask for me. But the question still stings.
“They’re safe. We had some friends of ours pick them up when we came looking for you.”
“Will I be able to see them soon?”
“Yes.”
Mulder places his hand on Scully’s shoulder and squeezes. She nods at him and rises, holding one hand out to William.
“We’re going to get there as quickly as we can.”
They make their way out of the museum and head west down the street. Scully walks as closely to William as she possibly can, Mulder hovering next to the boy’s other shoulder.
“How do you want to play this?” Mulder asks.
“Head to the airport as quickly as we can and get the next flight to D.C.”
“Can we risk flying? We don’t know how much longer the virus needs to incubate.”
“We got out here okay. It will take a few hours to get back, if we can get a flight straight away. I think we can risk it.”
Mulder nods but Scully can see the doubt in his eyes.
“We’ll make it, Mulder.”
Mulder flags down the next cab they see and the three of them climb into the rear seats. William’s hand snakes into Scully’s as they wind their way towards the airport, and she squeezes. William squeezes back.
Halfway to the airport, the driver starts coughing, a rough, rattling chest cough. Mulder glances at Scully and she catches his eye, worried.
“Hell of a cough this one,” the driver says. “And I got vaccinated. They say there’ll be side effects but I think I’d rather the flu to this.”
“When did you get the injection?” Scully asks.
“Two days ago. You had it yet?”
She shakes her head.
“Well I’m telling you, don’t bother.”
Scully catches Mulder’s eye again and raises her eyebrows. He shrugs in return. They’re on the freeway heading out of town and there’s no place to stop. It’ll be ok, she tells herself, squeezing Will’s hand again. We’re nearly there.
The driver’s cough gets worse the further out of town they go, and it’s not long before he has one hand permanently in front of his mouth. Come on, come on, Scully thinks. Just let us get there in one piece.
The driver lets out another cough and then clutches his chest. The car swerves across the road as he grabs for the wheel, clawing at his throat with one hand. Scully throws her arms around William, covering his head with her hands. Mulder reaches for the cab driver as his eyes roll back in his head and the skin under his t-shirt begins to undulate.
“Shit!” Mulder yells, diving back in his seat. Not in front of William, Scully wants to say but it strikes her as too absurd, even for her.
The driver reaches for the steering wheel again, as his chest explodes and the car hits the central reservation.
They come rolling to a halt only moments later, and Scully’s first thought it for William; they can’t have come all this way only for him to die in a car crash. She hears moaning and reaches out, groping for human contact.
“William, are you okay?”
“My head hurts.”
“You can’t be too badly hurt if you can talk,” she hears Mulder say, and she lets out a sigh of relief. “We need to get out of here, Scully,” he add. “The car could go up any minute, and we don’t know what else is in here.”
Scully worms her way out of the smashed rear window, pulling William out behind her. Mulder clambers through the opposite side and crouches down to peer at the driver.
“He’s dead,” he says. “And there’s no sign of that thing either.”
Scully inspects a graze on William’s cheek as Mulder talks. Other than being in shock the boy seems okay, and she’s thankful that the crash wasn’t worse.
“We’re going to have to head to D.C. another way. I don’t think we can risk flying now; if we were to be in the air when the pilot started showing symptoms…”
“You’re right, Mulder.” Scully rises from her crouching position and brushes her hair away from her face. “We’ll have to drive. But we need to get there as soon as we can.”
X
They commandeer a car on the outskirts of Denver after walking six miles down the freeway. The number of cars speeding past has decreased the further from the city they get, and Mulder wonders whether the virus’ incubation period is now over, whether other people all over the city are suffering the same fate as their cab driver.
He had glanced at Scully and William often as they walked. The boy was quiet, his hand clutched tightly in Scully’s, and Mulder couldn’t help seeing her in him. His walk, his quiet way of watching everything unfolding, the way his hair falls in his eyes - everything reminded him of Scully.
That’s my son, he said to himself. But the words hadn’t seem real, somehow. He’s tried for so long to pretend that William doesn’t exist because it’s easier than dealing with the ghost of a child he never said goodbye to. Walking next to him now felt like a dream.
“How are you two feeling?” he asks when they stop to rest. He pulls into a parking lot and they open the car doors, stretching their legs. The wind isn’t as bitter here as it had been in the city, the snow piled less thickly, but they are all tired and cold.
“’M okay,” William replies, scuffing his feet in the snow. Scully doesn’t answer.
“We can stop for ten minutes. If you need to use the restroom, William, do it now. I’m going to find a coffee.”
He walks away from the car with William in tow. There are too many thoughts crowding through his mind, and he hasn’t had time to process them all. They need to get back to D.C. as soon as they can. They need to find Skinner and then they need to find somewhere to hide. But it will take them at least a day to get there, and that’s if they push on through the night. Mulder could do with a rest, and Scully’s silence worries him.
“I could use a rest, Mulder,” she says when he and William return to the car. “And a shower. It’s been a long day.”
He nods his assent and scans the building surrounding the parking lot. Somewhere there has to be a motel where they’ll be safe from the aliens.
X
They head out early in the morning, rising as the predawn light filters through the motel room blinds. The road is eerily quiet as they walk to the car, and Scully scans the parking lot, one hand placed protectively on William’s shoulder.
“There aren’t many people around,” he says as they reach the car. “Is it because it’s so close to Christmas?”
Scully debates - for a second - lying to him, telling him that yes, people are staying at home because it’s the holiday season. But she’s only had him back for a day and lying to him now, about something this important, would be wrong.
“No, it’s not. William, have you seen anything on the news about a flu vaccination program the government is carrying out?”
He nods.
“Well, that’s the reason why it’s so quiet. The vaccination isn’t a vaccination. It’s a virus. The government are deliberately infecting people with it.”
“Why?”
She pauses, unsure of how he will react to her answer. “Because they’re working with a group of extra-terrestrials to colonize the planet. They want to turn humans into a sort of slave race.”
William simply nods.
Mulder is driving again as Scully sits in the passenger seat, her eyes constantly flicking to where William sits in the back.
“Have you tried Skinner again?” Mulder asks.
“I can’t get through. There’s no signal, or they’re not picking up.”
She pauses, ‘or the virus has got to them first’ resting on her tongue. She forces herself to swallow the words. They will all be okay. It’s just a technical problem.
Mulder glances at her and she smiles wanly at him. In the back seat, William hums a tune.
X
They reach D.C. late morning on the third day after they left Denver. Traffic had thinned progressively the further east they headed, and the sedan is now the only car moving on the Georgetown street.
Mulder parks in front of the FBI building and the three of them get out in silence. The lobby of the building is deserted, the security desk unmanned. Mulder glances at Scully as they walk through.
“Do you and William want to wait here?
“No.” Her answer is emphatic. “We’re in this together, Mulder.”
He nods and heads for the stairs, taking them two at a time as they make their way to Skinner’s office.
Mulder can feel his pulse beginning to race as they get closer to the office. The corridors are deserted, and even on Christmas Eve that’s unusual. He motions to Scully to stand back as he creeps up to the door, and she pulls William to her side. He raises three fingers, lowers one, and then another. Scully nods, and he rams the door with his shoulder.
“You need to get out of here,” Skinner says as Mulder bursts through the door. Mulder stares at him.
“We’ve only just got here.”
“I’ve been trying to reach you. We were infected the day before yesterday. There’s no telling when…” he pauses.
Mulder feels the shock hit him like a sledgehammer and reaches out a hand to touch his former boss on the shoulder, the arm - anything to let him know how grateful he is for what he’s done. Skinner shrugs him off. “There’s no telling when we’ll die. You need to leave.”
Mulder nods. As much as he’d like to stay in D.C. after the cross-country trip, he knows that Skinner’s right. They have to get out of here now. He and Scully are immune, and William probably is too. But there’s no sense in staying here and running that risk.
“I’ll try to keep them safe,” Mulder glances at Scully and William, who entered behind him and are now sitting on the other side of the room. “I won’t let you down.”
“There’s one more thing,” Skinner says as Mulder turns away. “They want you alive.
Mulder turns back and stares at Skinner. His face is lined, his eyes tired, but there is a spark of defiance there still.
“That won’t happen.”
Skinner nods. “We have snipers who are loyal to the cause. We can post them on your route as far out of D.C. as possible. If you’re in danger -”
“Tell them to shoot to kill,” Mulder’s voice is firm as he adds, “but I don’t want Scully to know. It’s better this way. She needs to concentrate on William,” he glances at Scully again. “She’s waited so long to be with him.”
He turns away from Skinner and walks away.
“Hey,” he greets William and Scully as he joins them by the window. “We need to head out of here, the city’s not safe now that they’re infecting the population. We’re immune - as far as we know - but we should head west, just in case.”
“Mulder,” Scully’s voice has a hard edge to it. “What aren’t you telling us?”
“Nothing. I’ve spoken to Skinner and he agrees we need to go. The sooner the better. Come on.”
He rises and walks away, hoping they’ll follow him. He hears Scully getting to her feet, William shuffling his backpack onto his shoulders behind her. Keep walking, he thinks. Don’t ask any questions, don’t stay for a long goodbye. He walks past Skinner, meeting the other man’s gaze with a silent ‘thank you’ and heads for the door. Scully and William are close behind.
“Okay, Mulder, what’s going on?” Scully is questioning him before they’ve walked ten feet from the building and he scans the rooftops as he turns to her.
“We’ve got to get out of here. They’ve all been infected with the virus and Skinner told me they don’t know if the antidote will work. It’s safer for all of us,” he nods towards William, “get as far away from the city as we can.”
“There’s something else,” Scully says and he sees for the first time the fear in her eyes. She’s worried it’s William, he thinks, and the resolve inside him weakens.
“They want me. Alive. Skinner thinks we’ll be safer heading West.”
“No, Mulder. No. If they want you surely we’re safest here. There are weapons, labs. We can fight it out.”
“Scully,” he pauses. He has to admit that her arguments - rational as always - make some sort of sense. They’re appealing; it would be so easy to hide in the city, stock up on guns and food and dig in for the long haul. But he can’t risk her and William, not when it’s him they want. “We have to go. And we have to go now.”
They trudge through the slush that lines the sidewalks, William walking between them. Scully holds his hand and Mulder notes with pride that he doesn’t let it go, no matter how embarrassing it might be to hold your mom’s hand in public. He ruffles the boy’s hair and William smiles up at him. Be strong, Will, he thinks. For your mom’s sake.
Although it’s rush hour the city is deserted; streets which would normally be busy on Christmas Eve are lined with stalled vehicles, the ghosts of newspapers. They pass row after row of cars, windshields lined with ice and snow, gas tanks bleeding out from where their scared owners tried to ram through lines of traffic to get home. Mercifully, their bodies are hidden inside. Mulder has no desire to see
From somewhere up ahead comes a faint noise. Just on the edge of hearing, Mulder wonders for a second whether he’s actually heard it. And then it comes again. A rhythmic, steady march.
“Scully,” he grasps her hand and pulls her to a stop.
“What is it, Mulder?”
“Can you hear that?”
“I can,” Will pipes up and Mulder and Scully stare at him. “It’s coming from that direction, down the street.”
“We need to get out of here,” Mulder looks around, scanning the rooftops again. He catches the flash of dim sunlight on metal before the sun is obscured by cloud again, and nods. “We should split up. Scully, you take William and hide. A store, if you can get into one, a doorway if not. Make sure you’re out of sight, the both of you.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll head them off. If it’s me they’re after then they’re in for a chase.”
“Mulder,” Scully lets go of Will’s hand and pulls his face down to hers. Her lips graze his and he wraps his arms around her, savoring the taste of her. It’s not goodbye, he tells himself as he pulls away. Dammit, it’s not goodbye.
“Be good now, Will,” he tells his son, ruffling the boy’s hair. Will gazes at him, silent. “I’ll be back for you. Okay?”
He watches as they run to a nearby building, the tramping sound getting louder. Scully shakes the door handle but it doesn’t budge, and she glances behind as she and William run for the next one.
There’s no time, Mulder thinks. “Get into the doorway, Scully,” he calls. “The car will protect you. Just stay down.”
He watches them as they hunker down in a doorway, behind the ruined hulk of a car. Will gives him the thumbs up sign and Mulder returns it, trying to ignore the knot in his chest. “I’ll be back,” he whispers. “It’s not goodbye.”
Turning his back on the two people he’s loved most in the world, he begins to jog down the street.
Part Four
Author: memories_child
Spoilers: This is post The Truth so everything goes.
Warnings: Character death.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Word count: 12,299
Disclaimer: As much as I’ve begged CC and co. The X Files still doesn’t belong to me.
Summary: Colonization has come and Mulder and Scully are powerless to stop it.
Author's Notes: This was written as a 2009 xf_santa gift for thediagnosis. I’m sorry it’s so long after Christmas, but RL has been a bit manic. Nevertheless, I hope you had a great holiday, and wish you all the best for the new year. I hope you enjoy. Thanks to cadiliniel for the beta. All remaining mistakes are mine.
III
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Mulder wakes, instantly alert, hands groping for the gun that lies on the bedside table. It’s not there and his heart starts pounding in his chest until he realizes that he’s not in the Bureau anymore. Hasn’t been for quite some time, and there is no gun on the table. All their guns are hidden, out of plan sight - just in case the FBI come knocking. He lies back in the bed, concentrating on the silence in the house. Other than Scully’s quiet breathing next to him there is no noise. He isn’t sure what woke him, and judging from the pre-dawn light curling around the curtains he should still be asleep.
He rolls over, watching the rise and fall of Scully’s chest, listening to the rhythm of her breathing. And then he realizes what woke him, what made his heart pound in his chest; December 21st 2012. It’s here.
He pulls the covers off himself and pads to the window. His hands don’t shake as he pulls the curtains back but he takes a deep breath before he lifts his eyes and turns his gaze to the world outside.
Snow lies thickly on the ground, tinged with blue and purple from the rising sun. At the edge of the garden, where the trees border the land, a deer noses the snow, snuffling for grass. The trees are bare, this time of year, their branches stark against the pale winter sky. Mulder’s breath condenses on the cold glass as he stares outside. Nothing has changed. There are no ominous clouds in the sky, no troops of super soldiers crowding over the rise that leads down to the house, no thrum of otherworldly machines soaring across the horizon.
He doesn’t like it.
X
Will is bored. More than bored. The kind of mind-numbing bored where watching paint dry would be as incredible as watching a rocket launch or stars being born. His mom is standing in the doorway watching him. Will knows she’s watching him, even though he’s got his back to her. Lately she’s done nothing but watch him when she thinks he’s not looking. Stop it, he wants to shout at her. Stop watching me like I’m some kind of insect under a giant microscope. But she’s his mom so he doesn’t say anything, just smiles at her when he catches her eye. She doesn’t smile back.
Will shifts in his seat, the weak sunlight filtering through the blinds highlighting his copper red hair. He thumbs the buttons on the remote control listlessly. Television is boring, he thinks. This house is boring. Today should be fun; it’s the first day of the holidays and he doesn’t have to go to school. But his dad’s told him he’s not allowed out, so he can’t play in the snow or go tracking with John and Al. He can’t sit in the kitchen because he’ll get under his mother’s feet, and he can’t sit in the garage and watch his dad tinker with the car because it’s a twenty foot walk to the garage and he’s not allowed to go outside. Will sighs. He’s bored.
He flicks the button on the remote control again, flicking through the channels on the TV. Cartoon, documentary, news, film, news. He pauses as he recognizes the hospital on the screen. It’s the hospital in town, the one where his mother took him to see Gramma when she was ill and she gave him sweets because she said she was too ill to eat them. His mother had frowned at that but let Will take the candy anyway. He hears her gasp now as he leans forward in his seat. The newscaster looks cold as she holds the microphone to her chest and stares at the camera.
“The federal flu vaccination program has begun in earnest today. Delays in pharmaceutical companies being able to produce the vaccine for this stronger version of seasonal flu has meant that immunizations were only being offered to those in high risk categories; the elderly, young children and those with a lowered immune system. But today the vaccines were rolled out across the country, and people have been lining up for the last few hours to receive the injection.”
X
Mulder turns away from the television in disgust.
“So colonization has begun,” he hears Scully murmur behind him. He doesn’t look at her, can’t look at her, and he stares mutely out of the window instead.
“It was so obvious,” she says. “Why didn’t we think of that? We were so sure it would be bees, men in black…”
“I was so sure, Scully.”
“So what do we do now?”
“I don’t know.”
Mulder turns to look at Scully as she joins him at the window. Her face his pale, hair mussy - rumpled from sleeping. She lifts a hand to her face, stifling a yawn, and rubs the sleep from her eyes. It is in moments like this, he thinks, that he knows utterly what true love is, and then she becomes businesslike; the old Scully - rational and methodical. And that is true love of a kind as well.
“Provided they haven’t made any major alterations to the virus, which is unlikely given its successes previously, we know we’re immune to it. We have to assume William is as well.”
Mulder nods.
“I think we need to make him as our first priority,” she continues. “We need to try and get in touch with Skinner again. We have to assume we can’t reach him by email so we’ll have to try calling him. John and Monica too. And Yves, if we can. We have to find out where William is.”
As Scully heads for the shower, Mulder makes his way to his office. He hopes, for her sake, that she’s right; that they’ll be able to get hold of Skinner or Dogget, that they’ll find William unharmed. He tries not to think of the effect the virus will have on the rest of the population, tries not to think of the gaping wounds left in the chests and abdomens of those who weren’t immune to it. He doesn’t succeed.
X
Will has been banished to his room for getting under his mother’s feet. It wasn’t my fault, he thinks as he stomps up the stairs. If she won’t let me go out to play then what else am I supposed to do? He nearly slams the door when he reaches the bedroom, before thinking twice - he doesn’t want to be punished for something else as well - and pulling faces at it instead.
There’s less to do in his bedroom than there was downstairs - no TV, no snacks, no board games - and he slumps morosely against the bed. If only he was older, they wouldn’t be able to boss him around so much then. He’d be able to go out when he wanted to, watch TV when he wanted to... He sighs; being eleven is hard work.
With nothing else to do he picks up the copy of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn lying on his nightstand and turns to the page he’s on. Huck has escaped from Miss Watson’s under cover of darkness, Tom Sawyer helping him out, and Will imagines how happy Huck must have been to get away from all that civilizing. He’s reading about the adventurous crimes Tom Sawyer’s gang are plotting when the realization hits him: he could escape under cover of darkness as well. Huck and Tom made it sound so easy, and Will figures it can’t be that hard to get out of the house. His bedroom window is only twelve feet off the ground; he could jump down without breaking a leg. And he could head east. The furthest he’s been in that direction is Denver; this time he could make it all the way to New York.
Will grins. That would teach them to stop him from going outside, if they woke up in the morning to find him gone. Tossing the book onto the bed he hurries to the wardrobe. He’ll need to take a backpack with him, some warm clothes, boots, a torch maybe, and food as well. If his mother lets him go downstairs for supper he can get some chips from the kitchen. If she doesn’t, well he can wait until he’s sure they’re fast asleep - say four in the morning - and slip downstairs. It’s a plan worthy of Huck himself.
X
Dawn has settled over the yard and Scully stands at the doorway watching the snow glisten in the pale light. They had stopped making phone calls after midnight; messages left again and again for Skinner, Dogget and Reyes. There is nothing they can do now but wait.
Mulder joins her on the porch, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders.
“Do you think they’ll pick any up?” she asks.
“I don’t know, Scully. It’s nearly daylight; if they were going to call they’d have done it before now.”
Scully settles into the comfort of Mulder’s chest. She wraps herself more tightly in the blanket as she watches birds hurtle over the sky. She can feel a tight knot in her stomach working its way upwards. Please let them be okay, she thinks. Please let them call.
As if hearing her thoughts, Mulder tightens his hold on her shoulders. “If they can get to a phone they -”
He is interrupted by the ringing of the phone inside. Mulder sprints indoors, knocking a vase off a table in his rush to reach it before it stops ringing.
“It’s me, Mulder,” Skinner’s voice crackles down the line.
“Where are you? What the hell’s going on?”
“Listen, I don’t have much time. William’s gone.”
Mulder freezes. He hadn’t realized how much he didn’t want to hear those words until now. He’d assumed - he and Scully had assumed - that William would be all right.
“What do you mean he’s gone?”
“He’s run away. We’ve had surveillance on the house for the past few weeks -”
“You’ve been keeping tabs on them?”
“I’m a member of the Federal government. I can keep tabs on whoever I want.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because I didn’t know if anything would happen. As far as we knew the Van der Kamps were safe.”
“And now William’s gone.”
“He left a note. Said he’s heading east. We’ve got teams heading out now. We don’t know how far he’s gone, or which way he’s going, but we’re going to find him.”
“What about the Van der Kamps?”
“We’ve taken them into custody, put the story out they’ve been arrested in connection with child pornography. With William gone we don’t know who’ll go after them and this way we can make sure they’re secure.”
“What will the neighbors think?”
“By the time we’re sure they’ll be safe, there won’t be any neighbors.”
“What about the vaccine, colonization?”
“Vaccine’s voluntary for the moment. Virus has an incubation period of two days, if we’re lucky,” Skinner pauses. “Mulder, I have to go.”
“Shit.” Mulder swears as he put the phone down. Scully hovers next to him, her eyes dull sockets in the pale of her face. “We need to go west,” he says.
X
Will stamps his feet and huffs, watching his breathe coalesce in the air. The bus had left him at Denver bus station half an hour ago and, if he’s being honest with himself, he’s not sure what to do next. Running away had seemed like such a great plan last night, but now - alone, cold and hungry in the middle of a strange city - all he wants is to go home.
Shrugging the bag off his shoulders he counts the money in his wallet. Fifteen dollars. Nowhere near enough fur a bus back to Burns, but maybe it’ll be enough for him to get some food. He picks up his bag and starts trudging through the slush lining the sidewalk. It’s cold, but it feels good to be walking somewhere, the wind whipping at his cheeks and numbing his fingers. He keeps his head down as he walks, avoiding any curious glances from passers-by. The key is to look like you belong, he tells himself. Don’t talk to strangers. Look both ways before crossing the road.
He tries not to think about home as he walks, about his parents and how they must be feeling. He decides to head for the museum. He remembers passing it once, when he and his parents drove through the city. It’ll be somewhere warm to stay for a while, if nothing else.
X
Scully answers the phone with a sharp ‘yes?’, glancing at Mulder who grips the steering wheel, knuckles turning white.
“Latest intell suggests he’s in Colorado.” Skinner sounds tired as he speaks, and Scully frowns.
“Colorado?”
“Denver, Colorado. He had a hundred dollars in his piggy bank. It’s all gone and nothing’s been taken from either of the Van der Kamps. It would be enough to get him as far as Denver.”
“But you’re not certain he’s there.”
“No. But this is a best guess. It’s all we’ve got, Scully. I suggest you take it.”
Mulder glances at her when she hangs up and she turns to the window, not wanting him to see the tears that are threatening to well up in her eyes.
“Scully?” his voice is soft.
“I’m fine, Mulder.”
She isn’t sure how she feels, but some part of her doesn’t want to admit that to Mulder yet. She can’t quite believe that after ten years she will be meeting William, can’t believe that their failure to stop colonization is the only thing that has given her a chance to see her son again. The chances of finding him in Denver, if he has gone there, are slim, but something - some motherly instinct, some sixth sense - tells her he’ll be there.
“We need to get to Denver,” she says when she’s sure her voice won’t break. “As soon as possible.”
“It’ll take us days by car.”
“We need to get to an airport.”
Mulder frowns. “The virus -”
“Skinner said the incubation period lasted for a couple of days. It’s a chance I’m willing to take.”
They arrive at the airport in record time and hurry to the ticket desk. It’s times like these Scully wishes she were FBI again, able to flash her badge and demand a ticket, but thankfully the plane is only half full and they board minutes later.
X
The exhibits are better than Will thought they’d be. The museum in Cheyenne, which he’d visited on school trips, was full of threadbare, stuffed animals and replication Civil War pistols; Denver museum has dinosaur bones and genuine flint arrowheads. Will takes his time following the green arrows through the ground floor of the building, pausing to press his nose against glass cases housing T-Rex skulls and saber tooth tigers. This is better than watching his dad fiddling with the car in the garage, he thinks. Better even than tracking through the snow with John and Al.
He makes his way to a case which contains a scene of a Neolithic man painting a mural on a cave wall. Will stops, staring at the painting. It is taller than the stone age man standing beside it, and as long as the cave itself. Will frowns, puzzled. It looks like a painting of a UFO, a big ball of white, with what seem to be aliens walking down from it. They look like the aliens Will saw in Close Encounters when he stayed up to watch it last Christmas, and the look on the stone age man’s face is one of fear.
He hovers at the exhibit for a few minutes, trying to make sense of the drawings, but the little placard giving information about the exhibit tells him nothing. Replica of a Stone Age cave painting found in what is now Africa, dated 7000 BC. Paintings like this were commonly found in clusters in areas containing magnetite. Their meaning is so far unknown. Will shrugs; there are better things to see.
As he picks up his bag to leave, a blinding pain shoots through his head. He lets out an involuntary gasp and drops his backpack, clutching at his head. Through the pain he can hear voices, just on the edge of hearing. A woman, who sounds vaguely familiar. Not his mom, but there is something mom-like about her.
“William was a bullfrog…”
A song? It’s not one his mom’s ever sung to him. But he knows it. Somehow, he knows it.
“William, after your father.”
But his dad’s dad is called Fred. Will is the only William in the family.
Just as suddenly as the pain began it stops, leaving Will crouching, breathless, on the floor. He staggers to his feet and stumbles to a bench a few feet away from the exhibit. As he sits down he realizes that he’s crying, his breath harsh in the quiet room. Stop it, he tells himself. Stop acting like a baby. But the tears continue to roll as he clutches his backpack and shakes.
X
Scully is quiet as they walk out of arrivals at Denver airport. Mulder eyes her with concern; she had barely said a word to him on the short flight, gazing instead out of the window at the white clouds below. He wants to reach out and touch her, offer assurances and tell her everything will be ok. But even before he says it he knows the words will sounds false.
They step into the cool of the Colorado winter and Scully shivers. Mulder wraps an arm around her shoulders; even now, years after their time in the FBI, it feels good to be able to touch her in the open.
“Where to, Batman?” he asks as they hover on the sidewalk.
“I’ve no idea, Mulder. We don’t even know if he’s here.”
He can hear the tremor in her voice and squeezes her shoulder. “Let’s assume he is. If you were an eleven year old boy, on the run in Denver, where would you want to go?”
“Home,” she whispers.
He squeezes her shoulder once more and hails a cab.
“We may as well start in the middle,” he says as they bundle in. “Downtown,” he tells the driver. “As fast as you can.”
The phone rings as the cab driver slows for a red light. Scully snatches it up.
“Yeah,” she says. “Uh-huh… Okay.” Mulder suspects he sees her smile.
“The museum,” she says to him after she hangs up.
“What?”
“If you were an eleven year old boy with a model of a velociraptor in his room, on the run in Denver, where would you want to go?”
X
Will wipes his eyes as he walks into the gift shop. That last exhibit freaked him out and he’s glad to get away from it in the bright, cheerful shop. He pauses at the case containing dinosaur fossils. What he wouldn’t give to have a real raptor claw. Or to discover one. He pictures himself - khaki-clad - in the far reaches of some desert, proudly holding an intact skeleton.
“Well, nothing like this has been found before,” he imagines himself saying. “It’s quite possibly a new species. Yes, I have thought of a name - the Willosaurus.”
He smiles to himself, and then remembers the raptor model in his bedroom at home. He can’t hang around here much longer. He’s running out of food - a sandwich and a carton of apple juice in the museum’s café set him back six dollars - and he wants to go home.
He turns away from the case and trails past a box containing crystals and gemstones. A black bracelet catches his eye and as he reaches out to touch it the pain in his head returns.
“Argh,” he cries as he falls to the ground. The voices are stronger this time and he can see faces swimming in and out of his vision; a tall man holding a baseball bat; a red-haired woman smiling at him.
“William,” she says. “William.” Her voice is familiar, the same voice he heard by the cave exhibit earlier.
“Mom?” he tries to say. Because she is his mom. Not the mom he grew up with and who he desperately wants to see again, but his mom just the same.
“Mom.”
“I’m here.”
X
Scully wraps William in her arms and strokes his hair.
“Ssh,” she murmurs. “It’s okay.”
“You’re my mom,” he mutters into her shoulder. Scully feels the tears threatening to well up again. She had tried to tell herself that she would be calm, collected when she met William, but nothing could have prepared her for the way she’d feel when he called her mom. She doesn’t question how he knows, after all this time, simply holds him more tightly and lets the tears fall.
They sit that way for several minutes, Scully losing track of time, of the reason they’re in Denver, of everything but the weight of her son in her arms. She hears Mulder cough behind her and turns, smiling at him.
“I’m sorry, Mulder. I -” she gestures at William.
“It’s okay, Scully. But we need to get to D.C.”
William looks up at Mulder’s voice and Scully finds herself searching for any resemblance of him in William’s face. His eyes, she thinks finally. He has his eyes.
“You’re the one whose father I’m named after,” the boy says. Mulder nods.
“That’s your father,” Scully says. “His name is Mulder. Fox Mulder.”
William wrinkles his nose.
“Mulder is fine,” Mulder says. “Or dad. You’re lucky your mom has better taste in names than mine.”
Scully notes the change in William’s expression. “We have to get to Washington D.C., William. We’ll be safe there.”
“Where are my parents?”
She winces at the question but tries not to let William see the hurt in her eyes. She gave him up ten years ago - she has no right to expect him to accept her as quickly as he has, much less ask for me. But the question still stings.
“They’re safe. We had some friends of ours pick them up when we came looking for you.”
“Will I be able to see them soon?”
“Yes.”
Mulder places his hand on Scully’s shoulder and squeezes. She nods at him and rises, holding one hand out to William.
“We’re going to get there as quickly as we can.”
They make their way out of the museum and head west down the street. Scully walks as closely to William as she possibly can, Mulder hovering next to the boy’s other shoulder.
“How do you want to play this?” Mulder asks.
“Head to the airport as quickly as we can and get the next flight to D.C.”
“Can we risk flying? We don’t know how much longer the virus needs to incubate.”
“We got out here okay. It will take a few hours to get back, if we can get a flight straight away. I think we can risk it.”
Mulder nods but Scully can see the doubt in his eyes.
“We’ll make it, Mulder.”
Mulder flags down the next cab they see and the three of them climb into the rear seats. William’s hand snakes into Scully’s as they wind their way towards the airport, and she squeezes. William squeezes back.
Halfway to the airport, the driver starts coughing, a rough, rattling chest cough. Mulder glances at Scully and she catches his eye, worried.
“Hell of a cough this one,” the driver says. “And I got vaccinated. They say there’ll be side effects but I think I’d rather the flu to this.”
“When did you get the injection?” Scully asks.
“Two days ago. You had it yet?”
She shakes her head.
“Well I’m telling you, don’t bother.”
Scully catches Mulder’s eye again and raises her eyebrows. He shrugs in return. They’re on the freeway heading out of town and there’s no place to stop. It’ll be ok, she tells herself, squeezing Will’s hand again. We’re nearly there.
The driver’s cough gets worse the further out of town they go, and it’s not long before he has one hand permanently in front of his mouth. Come on, come on, Scully thinks. Just let us get there in one piece.
The driver lets out another cough and then clutches his chest. The car swerves across the road as he grabs for the wheel, clawing at his throat with one hand. Scully throws her arms around William, covering his head with her hands. Mulder reaches for the cab driver as his eyes roll back in his head and the skin under his t-shirt begins to undulate.
“Shit!” Mulder yells, diving back in his seat. Not in front of William, Scully wants to say but it strikes her as too absurd, even for her.
The driver reaches for the steering wheel again, as his chest explodes and the car hits the central reservation.
They come rolling to a halt only moments later, and Scully’s first thought it for William; they can’t have come all this way only for him to die in a car crash. She hears moaning and reaches out, groping for human contact.
“William, are you okay?”
“My head hurts.”
“You can’t be too badly hurt if you can talk,” she hears Mulder say, and she lets out a sigh of relief. “We need to get out of here, Scully,” he add. “The car could go up any minute, and we don’t know what else is in here.”
Scully worms her way out of the smashed rear window, pulling William out behind her. Mulder clambers through the opposite side and crouches down to peer at the driver.
“He’s dead,” he says. “And there’s no sign of that thing either.”
Scully inspects a graze on William’s cheek as Mulder talks. Other than being in shock the boy seems okay, and she’s thankful that the crash wasn’t worse.
“We’re going to have to head to D.C. another way. I don’t think we can risk flying now; if we were to be in the air when the pilot started showing symptoms…”
“You’re right, Mulder.” Scully rises from her crouching position and brushes her hair away from her face. “We’ll have to drive. But we need to get there as soon as we can.”
X
They commandeer a car on the outskirts of Denver after walking six miles down the freeway. The number of cars speeding past has decreased the further from the city they get, and Mulder wonders whether the virus’ incubation period is now over, whether other people all over the city are suffering the same fate as their cab driver.
He had glanced at Scully and William often as they walked. The boy was quiet, his hand clutched tightly in Scully’s, and Mulder couldn’t help seeing her in him. His walk, his quiet way of watching everything unfolding, the way his hair falls in his eyes - everything reminded him of Scully.
That’s my son, he said to himself. But the words hadn’t seem real, somehow. He’s tried for so long to pretend that William doesn’t exist because it’s easier than dealing with the ghost of a child he never said goodbye to. Walking next to him now felt like a dream.
“How are you two feeling?” he asks when they stop to rest. He pulls into a parking lot and they open the car doors, stretching their legs. The wind isn’t as bitter here as it had been in the city, the snow piled less thickly, but they are all tired and cold.
“’M okay,” William replies, scuffing his feet in the snow. Scully doesn’t answer.
“We can stop for ten minutes. If you need to use the restroom, William, do it now. I’m going to find a coffee.”
He walks away from the car with William in tow. There are too many thoughts crowding through his mind, and he hasn’t had time to process them all. They need to get back to D.C. as soon as they can. They need to find Skinner and then they need to find somewhere to hide. But it will take them at least a day to get there, and that’s if they push on through the night. Mulder could do with a rest, and Scully’s silence worries him.
“I could use a rest, Mulder,” she says when he and William return to the car. “And a shower. It’s been a long day.”
He nods his assent and scans the building surrounding the parking lot. Somewhere there has to be a motel where they’ll be safe from the aliens.
X
They head out early in the morning, rising as the predawn light filters through the motel room blinds. The road is eerily quiet as they walk to the car, and Scully scans the parking lot, one hand placed protectively on William’s shoulder.
“There aren’t many people around,” he says as they reach the car. “Is it because it’s so close to Christmas?”
Scully debates - for a second - lying to him, telling him that yes, people are staying at home because it’s the holiday season. But she’s only had him back for a day and lying to him now, about something this important, would be wrong.
“No, it’s not. William, have you seen anything on the news about a flu vaccination program the government is carrying out?”
He nods.
“Well, that’s the reason why it’s so quiet. The vaccination isn’t a vaccination. It’s a virus. The government are deliberately infecting people with it.”
“Why?”
She pauses, unsure of how he will react to her answer. “Because they’re working with a group of extra-terrestrials to colonize the planet. They want to turn humans into a sort of slave race.”
William simply nods.
Mulder is driving again as Scully sits in the passenger seat, her eyes constantly flicking to where William sits in the back.
“Have you tried Skinner again?” Mulder asks.
“I can’t get through. There’s no signal, or they’re not picking up.”
She pauses, ‘or the virus has got to them first’ resting on her tongue. She forces herself to swallow the words. They will all be okay. It’s just a technical problem.
Mulder glances at her and she smiles wanly at him. In the back seat, William hums a tune.
X
They reach D.C. late morning on the third day after they left Denver. Traffic had thinned progressively the further east they headed, and the sedan is now the only car moving on the Georgetown street.
Mulder parks in front of the FBI building and the three of them get out in silence. The lobby of the building is deserted, the security desk unmanned. Mulder glances at Scully as they walk through.
“Do you and William want to wait here?
“No.” Her answer is emphatic. “We’re in this together, Mulder.”
He nods and heads for the stairs, taking them two at a time as they make their way to Skinner’s office.
Mulder can feel his pulse beginning to race as they get closer to the office. The corridors are deserted, and even on Christmas Eve that’s unusual. He motions to Scully to stand back as he creeps up to the door, and she pulls William to her side. He raises three fingers, lowers one, and then another. Scully nods, and he rams the door with his shoulder.
“You need to get out of here,” Skinner says as Mulder bursts through the door. Mulder stares at him.
“We’ve only just got here.”
“I’ve been trying to reach you. We were infected the day before yesterday. There’s no telling when…” he pauses.
Mulder feels the shock hit him like a sledgehammer and reaches out a hand to touch his former boss on the shoulder, the arm - anything to let him know how grateful he is for what he’s done. Skinner shrugs him off. “There’s no telling when we’ll die. You need to leave.”
Mulder nods. As much as he’d like to stay in D.C. after the cross-country trip, he knows that Skinner’s right. They have to get out of here now. He and Scully are immune, and William probably is too. But there’s no sense in staying here and running that risk.
“I’ll try to keep them safe,” Mulder glances at Scully and William, who entered behind him and are now sitting on the other side of the room. “I won’t let you down.”
“There’s one more thing,” Skinner says as Mulder turns away. “They want you alive.
Mulder turns back and stares at Skinner. His face is lined, his eyes tired, but there is a spark of defiance there still.
“That won’t happen.”
Skinner nods. “We have snipers who are loyal to the cause. We can post them on your route as far out of D.C. as possible. If you’re in danger -”
“Tell them to shoot to kill,” Mulder’s voice is firm as he adds, “but I don’t want Scully to know. It’s better this way. She needs to concentrate on William,” he glances at Scully again. “She’s waited so long to be with him.”
He turns away from Skinner and walks away.
“Hey,” he greets William and Scully as he joins them by the window. “We need to head out of here, the city’s not safe now that they’re infecting the population. We’re immune - as far as we know - but we should head west, just in case.”
“Mulder,” Scully’s voice has a hard edge to it. “What aren’t you telling us?”
“Nothing. I’ve spoken to Skinner and he agrees we need to go. The sooner the better. Come on.”
He rises and walks away, hoping they’ll follow him. He hears Scully getting to her feet, William shuffling his backpack onto his shoulders behind her. Keep walking, he thinks. Don’t ask any questions, don’t stay for a long goodbye. He walks past Skinner, meeting the other man’s gaze with a silent ‘thank you’ and heads for the door. Scully and William are close behind.
“Okay, Mulder, what’s going on?” Scully is questioning him before they’ve walked ten feet from the building and he scans the rooftops as he turns to her.
“We’ve got to get out of here. They’ve all been infected with the virus and Skinner told me they don’t know if the antidote will work. It’s safer for all of us,” he nods towards William, “get as far away from the city as we can.”
“There’s something else,” Scully says and he sees for the first time the fear in her eyes. She’s worried it’s William, he thinks, and the resolve inside him weakens.
“They want me. Alive. Skinner thinks we’ll be safer heading West.”
“No, Mulder. No. If they want you surely we’re safest here. There are weapons, labs. We can fight it out.”
“Scully,” he pauses. He has to admit that her arguments - rational as always - make some sort of sense. They’re appealing; it would be so easy to hide in the city, stock up on guns and food and dig in for the long haul. But he can’t risk her and William, not when it’s him they want. “We have to go. And we have to go now.”
They trudge through the slush that lines the sidewalks, William walking between them. Scully holds his hand and Mulder notes with pride that he doesn’t let it go, no matter how embarrassing it might be to hold your mom’s hand in public. He ruffles the boy’s hair and William smiles up at him. Be strong, Will, he thinks. For your mom’s sake.
Although it’s rush hour the city is deserted; streets which would normally be busy on Christmas Eve are lined with stalled vehicles, the ghosts of newspapers. They pass row after row of cars, windshields lined with ice and snow, gas tanks bleeding out from where their scared owners tried to ram through lines of traffic to get home. Mercifully, their bodies are hidden inside. Mulder has no desire to see
From somewhere up ahead comes a faint noise. Just on the edge of hearing, Mulder wonders for a second whether he’s actually heard it. And then it comes again. A rhythmic, steady march.
“Scully,” he grasps her hand and pulls her to a stop.
“What is it, Mulder?”
“Can you hear that?”
“I can,” Will pipes up and Mulder and Scully stare at him. “It’s coming from that direction, down the street.”
“We need to get out of here,” Mulder looks around, scanning the rooftops again. He catches the flash of dim sunlight on metal before the sun is obscured by cloud again, and nods. “We should split up. Scully, you take William and hide. A store, if you can get into one, a doorway if not. Make sure you’re out of sight, the both of you.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll head them off. If it’s me they’re after then they’re in for a chase.”
“Mulder,” Scully lets go of Will’s hand and pulls his face down to hers. Her lips graze his and he wraps his arms around her, savoring the taste of her. It’s not goodbye, he tells himself as he pulls away. Dammit, it’s not goodbye.
“Be good now, Will,” he tells his son, ruffling the boy’s hair. Will gazes at him, silent. “I’ll be back for you. Okay?”
He watches as they run to a nearby building, the tramping sound getting louder. Scully shakes the door handle but it doesn’t budge, and she glances behind as she and William run for the next one.
There’s no time, Mulder thinks. “Get into the doorway, Scully,” he calls. “The car will protect you. Just stay down.”
He watches them as they hunker down in a doorway, behind the ruined hulk of a car. Will gives him the thumbs up sign and Mulder returns it, trying to ignore the knot in his chest. “I’ll be back,” he whispers. “It’s not goodbye.”
Turning his back on the two people he’s loved most in the world, he begins to jog down the street.
Part Four