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He had dialed the first five digits of Reggie Purdue's phone number before he remembered that the other man was dead.
He held the phone gently, pressing the disconnect button carefully with his thumb; his other hand held the keys to the truck so tightly that they made grooves in his palm.
What would he have said anyway? Reggie, get out of town, you and anyone you love. Now. "You're my inside source on any upcoming alien invasion," Reggie had once joked with him, the only member of the ISU to make alien jokes without malice. Five years after the other man's death, Mulder could not remember whether Reggie's banter had ever held a hint of belief; he didn't know whether the other man would have laughed or gone if Mulder had made that phone call.
Down on the street, the other truck pulled away from the curb, left turn signal blinking properly. That meant Byers was driving, then, this strange new jeans-clad Byers whose hands had been disturbingly competent on the gun. Had he ever seen Byers in jeans before? Yes, but rarely. (Two years ago. Langly, waving him in, had muttered, "Byers is in a mood. Dry cleaning disaster." "What constitutes a dry cleaning--" Mulder had started to say, and then, catching sight of Byers in jeans and a flannel shirt-- "Jesus, it's one of the signs of the apocalypse.")
The phone was ringing in his ear, one, two--he didn't even remember dialing; who had he called?--three, four, a breathless female voice on the other end that he could almost place. "Hello?"
"Hello?" he said.
"Yes?" Polite curiosity, the same tone that tinged her daughter's voice when he presented her some scientific puzzle to solve.
"Mrs. Scully. It's Fox Mulder."
"What's wrong? Is Dana--?" The note of barely controlled panic was familiar to him from all the times when he had relayed the message that her daughter was hurt, or missing.
"She's fine." A sudden terror exploded in him, that she wasn't okay, that what was happening had caught up with her first because of the chip. No. If she wasn't okay, he would know. The uncertainty, though, took over his body and sent him to pace restlessly around his living room. "She's fine," he repeated. "But we have to...Mrs. Scully, I need you to listen carefully. This...we're not going to be safe for much longer. You have to pack. I'm going to pick up Scu--Dana, then you. We have to get out of town." He moved around the coffee table and skirted the pair of shoes that he'd left in the middle of his floor. God, the place was getting to be a mess again.
"Out of town? Why?" He heard her catch herself, the Navy wife accepting the lack of explanation. "What do I need to pack? How long will I be away?"
He shook his head. "No. No, you need to pack anything you want to keep."
"To keep...this is...we won't be *back?*"
"No. I don't think so. Pack what you need, and call your sons. Tell them--the cities won't be safe. Tell them to get as far away from the cities as they can. And be ready to go in an hour. I've gotta call Scully."
"Fox!" Her voice was peremptory. It slowed his pacing to a restless, temporary halt. "What are you saying? The cities won't be safe? Are you saying this isn't some kind of...witness protection thing?"
"No. No, it's not that at all." His voice was flat. *Although it is a witness protection program, in a way, isn't it? Scully and I have been witnesses to half the shit that's been going down, and we're damned well trying to protect ourselves from it.* He started moving again, stopping by the TV to wipe the dust off the top of the VCR with the bottom of his shirt.
He heard her draw in a breath, and then expel it in an almost-laugh. "Fox, you're talking nonsense."
He almost laughed himself. "Your daughter's been telling me that for six years. She was wrong."
"I'm not listening to this. I've--I've never mocked your beliefs, but this is ridiculous. I'm not--"
He found himself shouting. "Do you think your daughter will step a foot outside of this city if you aren't safe? Do you think if Scully stays, that I'll go? For all our sakes--"
"Don't you dare yell at me!" Irish temper, the one that Scully never admitted to having. "Don't you accuse me of putting my daughter in danger."
"I'm sorry," he said, and he was. He made a conscious effort to lower his voice. "But you've...just listen. If I'm wrong on this, okay, you've lost a weekend. One weekend. But if I'm right and you don't go, you're dooming all of us because of that damned Scully stubbornness." He stopped abruptly, waited.
"You know," she said, very quietly, "I've even defended you to Bill. To both her brothers."
He wheeled and started for his bedroom, where the box where he kept extra ammunition was lying open on the bed. "Do you think I would ask this of you--of Scully--if I didn't *know* her life was in danger?" he responded, equally quietly. His gym bag sat, still packed from yesterday's basketball game, shoved into a corner. He tossed it to his bed and unzipped it roughly.
"No," she said. "I know that you wouldn't."
"Then be ready in an hour," he told her. "And pack as if you believed me."
"I'll call my sons," she said, and hung up the phone. He let his drop on the bed, and returned to the bag, emptying it out and then tossing the shoes back in. He moved to his dresser next, pulling out socks, underwear, jeans, a sweater, t-shirts. Packed one-handed, until he realized that he still held the keys clenched in his fist. Stuffed them in his jeans pocket, where they crackled against paper.
("Try to get to one of these places as soon as possible," Byers had told him. "They're all out in the country, and most of them have some sort of underground bunker. Tell them," and here he'd had a long-suffering look on his face, "tell them that Lord Manhammer sent you, and show them the keyring." He'd held up the keychain, pewter, axe-wielding dwarf dangling, a match to the figurine that hung from the rearview mirror in the Gunmen's Explorer.)
The phone was in his hand again, and he punched the second number on the speed dial. Although this was futile; this was stupid; this was beyond stupid, and probably cruel.
"Hello. This is Teena Mulder. I'm not home right now. Please leave a message after you hear the beep and I'll get back to you. Thank you."
"Mom? This is Fox. I'm calling because..." Why was he calling? She wasn't near any major cities, was as safe in her home as anyone was anywhere, and he did not have time to go and bring her with him. Should he tell her, risk another stroke, when neither he or she could do anything now? "Mom, there's going to be some...bad things happening. It...go to the store and stock up on food, okay? And make sure the locks are secure. There might be riots. There might be a lot of things. I'm leaving town now, because the city's not going to be safe. If I can find a safe place, I'll come back and get you. I promise. I love--" The machine beeped and cut him off, and he stared numbly at the phone, and then moved slowly back to his bag.
Full now; he pulled a knapsack out from his closet. Gun in its holster. Extra ammunition in the bag. His second gun and ammunition for it had gone to Byers, the only gift he had been able to offer in exchange for the warning, and the truck with its full tank of gas, its hastily cleaned windows, its carefully checked-for-pressure tires.
Toiletries. Extra soap. Tylenol. Hydrogen peroxide. She was an old and defenseless woman, and he was leaving her to fend for herself. Flashlight. Extra batteries. He shook the batteries out of his clock radio. These might work, after. What else had batteries? Walkman. Cassettes. Elvis. Bach, the Brandenburg Concertos, which he had bought as a form of hope or punishment after Arecibo. Ellington. Hendrix. He found the phone in his hand again.
"Skinner."
"Sir? This is Mulder."
"Christ, Mulder, don't tell me you're calling about the Paneski thing. I know it's a weekend, but--"
"No, I'm not."
"Don't tell me you're not. This may not be a fascinating mutant, but they're short-staffed right now, and--"
"That's not why I'm calling." He moved to the bookshelf next, pulling out Carl Sagan, H.G. Wells, Edgar Allen Poe. The Golden Bough. Borges. A book on Jewish customs; another on comparative myths. "Sir, you have to get out of town. Now. We all do."
"What?"
"I can't talk. I have to go. You have to get away from the city."
"Mulder, what are you--"
"It's coming. It's here. Get as far away from the city, as fast as you can."
There was a long silence, and then Skinner spoke again. "Take care of Scu--take care of each other." Disconnect.
He pulled the scrapbook out of his desk drawer, and the framed picture of Samantha.
Samantha's file. Scully's file. He ended up in front of the bookshelf again, wondering what to save.
Skinner would be on his own, no friends or friends of friends looking out for him. Mulder closed his eyes in something that felt like grief but might have only been guilt. Skinner, who had been ally and enemy and friend and suspect, who could not know their plans now; he would have risked himself, but he could not risk Scully to possible betrayal.
He was abandoning her, old and alone and defenseless.
Christ, he had to get a grip on himself, shake himself out of this paralysis. He had given up once in Diana's apartment and hated himself for it later, but he might not get a chance to hate himself this time.
And Scully, Scully was waiting, although she didn't yet know it.
("Take care of her," Frohike had said. "We'll see you in a month at the rendezvous point, if we can. They might set up roadblocks, but the route we're sending you by will avoid any major roads." "We might even meet en route," he had said, and seen the look that Langly and Frohike had exchanged. "We'll be coming a different way," Frohike had said quietly. "We're going to try to pick up Suzanne Modeski." And all of their faces had forbidden him to comment.)
He reached to the bottom shelf of the bookshelf, where he'd stashed back issues of the Lone Gunmen because he hadn't yet had time to shred them, and Frohike always had a fit of pique if he just threw them away.
If these survived and little else did, the world was going to have one hell of a new belief system.
His eye snagged on a book on the second shelf, crammed in the middle of his abnormal psych books. Scully and her mother would want--but surely, one of the women would--hell, both of them would--but in the rush they could forget. He turned away, turned back, and pulled it out. The spine was cracked; the book fell open automatically to the phrases that Mulder had underlined and circled and pored over for three weeks in a stifling hotel room, back when he had been the baby profiler of the ISU. Phrases whose poetry he had dimly appreciated even as they sickened him, because Thomas Kevin Riker had left them written in green calligraphy on the mutilated bodies.
Closing the book, he pushed the Gideon's Bible that he'd confiscated from the hotel in Tennessee to the very bottom of the backpack.
He started moving towards the kitchen. They would need water, and canned food that would keep, and a can opener, and--the world spun and then tilted to meet him, and the floor was suddenly hard under him. Faintness? Panic attack? The beginning of what was coming? Belated heavenly retribution for stealing a Bible?
No, he'd left his shoes in the middle of the goddamn floor again.
The fall had knocked some of the numbness away, and he felt pain and awareness seep in.
*Holy shit, I was right all along.*
And what was he thinking, getting food from the kitchen? When was the last time he'd even gone shopping? They'd have to get food from Mrs. Scully: if they relied on Mulder, they'd end up with iced tea mix, a half a loaf of bread, a jar of salsa, two gallons of ice cream, and three cans of tuna.
*And I don't even like canned fucking tuna.*
Turning himself over painfully to his back, he looked up at the ceiling. Scott Ostelhoff had once spied on him through a hole in that ceiling, and died at his hand; Philip Padgett had shared that wall, and died in the basement; X had come in response to a signal in that window, and died in his hallway. And Scully had sat on that couch and exchanged Christmas presents with him; Scully had lain on that floor and clutched his shoulders after Padgett; Scully had put ice on his broken finger here, and announced her resignation, and threatened Skinner with a gun, and once, in that mushroom-induced hallucination, told him that she believed in his aliens.
He pulled himself to a sitting position and reached for the phone again, to make it real.
"Scully."
"Scully. It's here."
Her voice was half-amused, half-annoyed. "What's here? This month's issue of Playboy?"
"Scully--the guys came by. We have to go. We have to go now."
"Go *where*? Another trip to Vegas? I have plans for a nice normal Saturday afternoon, Mulder, and they don't include a case that the Lone Gunmen dreamed up."
"This isn't a damn case! This isn't the dress rehearsal. This is the real thing. It's here. We have to get out of the city. I've already called your mom. I'll be by to pick you up as soon as I can. You need to get packing--" Springing to his feet, he resumed his pacing, kicking his shoes out of the way and under the coffee table.
"Mulder, slow down. Do you even have proof of this? Did they give you anything besides the word of some shady informant?"
He wished he had some rumbling of the earth, some bright light, to make her believe. "They've been keeping an eye on Senator Matheson, who left town in a helicopter two hours ago. Some of their people intercepted a military frequency that's talking about evacuations of bases. Others have told them about disappearances of scientists that have been under suspicion, of men associated with the Consortium. Heading for safety."
"That doesn't necessarily mean--"
"They can give you proof, but not if we're both dead. We need to go."
He heard acceptance begin to creep into her voice, even as she protested. "There's been no announcement, no--"
"I don't even know if the President knows. We've got to get out of the city before people know, before there's a panic, before the electricity goes. You know the fastest way to disable everything would be an EMP. We've got to get out of here before then."
"You've called my mom?"
"Yeah. I'll be there in half an hour."
"I'll be ready," she said, the Navy daughter who had moved twelve times in her childhood without complaining, the partner who had gone with him to stake out Leonard Betts's mother's house, to explore a haunted house on Christmas, to investigate any number of phenomena that couldn't, of course, be real.
He should have disconnected, but he stood in the middle of the floor, listening to her breathe. If the cell phones went, and they would, this would be the last time they spoke like this. The closeness of her voice in his ear, her breathing, had sometimes been more intimate than her presence in the same office; he had told things to her level, bodiless voice that he could never have told her flawless face.
She inhaled sharply, and he knew she was steadying herself, restoring equilibrium. "I should warn you, Mulder," she said finally, her voice only a little shaky, "that if you're right, you're only allowed a certain number of I-told-you-so's. If you say it too often, I'm going to find another ride."
He managed a short laugh. "But will another ride bring you the Rocky Road that's in his freezer?"
"So hurry up and get here, Mulder."
"I will," he said. "I'll see you as soon as possible."
He disconnected without saying goodbye; they never said goodbye.
Ice cream from the freezer, then, and spoons. He threw in a half-empty bag of sunflower seeds as well. Gym bag, knapsack, sleeping bag. Cell phone in his pocket, leather jacket on his back, gun in its holster, keys in his hand.
The phone rang, and he reached for his pocket before he realized that it wasn't his cell.
Goddammit, if this was Langly, telling him that this had all been an elaborate practical joke, he was going to kill them all. "Mulder."
"Agent Mulder, this is Charles Newman. I'm SAC on the Paneski case. As you may have heard, we're short-staffed right now, and--"
"I can't." He added, lamely, "I'm sorry."
"There's a child involved," said Newman. "A girl. We might have a chance at finding her alive. We might."
"I can't. I'm--"
"We already got permission from Skinner to borrow you. You're stuck with this assignment, Mulder, like it or not, and--"
"No, I'm not," he said. "Newman?"
"What?"
"You're not going to believe me, but--get out of the city this weekend. You and anyone you love. Now."
"What the--the fuck are you talking about? We don't have time for you to pull this Spooky shit on us now. Don't be an asshole."
"Get out of the city," he repeated, helplessly, and Newman's voice rose, irate and frustrated, swearing at him, pleading with him for the life of a child whose last hours alive would be spent in Hell.
If she wasn't already dead. If he could save her and get her and her family away from the city before the whole world went to Hell, and death at the hands of a psychopath became a small thing by comparison.
No. That child's death would never be a small thing. The child, his mother, a man he had sometimes called friend: betrayals that he knew already he would tell Scully about only months or years from now, if ever.
If he and Scully were even alive and together and sane a month from now. A *day* from now.
A child, his mother, his friend, and if he didn't leave now, the rest of Scully's life would surely be spent in Hell, and the rest of his own.
He let the phone receiver drop gently on the sofa and shouldered his backpack, picked up the gym bag and the sleeping bag and the plastic bag holding the ice cream. Newman's voice continued to come tinnily from the receiver, calling his name as he walked out the door and closed it gently behind him. And started down the hallway.
Gun in its holster, keys in his hand.