by Ursula
The garage lights were dimmed for energy conservation. My car was
the only one left at this time at night except the motor pool
loaners and my footsteps echoed in the emptiness as I walked toward
my car.
Steadily, I walked on by the vacant eye of the security monitor,
thinking grimly of the tapes from those very cameras that I had
doctored earlier. Mulder had not said a word about the cover-up when
I told him. Then again, I can't tell what's going on in his head. I
hardly know him these days since he returned from his abduction and
the grave.
Getting into my car, I turned the ignition and heard the spluttering
start of the engine. My father would have been disappointed. He was
the great God of maintenance and I was many miles past the sixty
thousand-mile major tune-up. I've had a lot on my mind lately... too
much to bother with my father's sense of what an orderly and
organized life should be.
The rubber gloves and lab gear that I had borrowed were concealed in
my briefcase. Everything else I would need was already at the farm.
It was miles outside of the city. Time to think. Time for my mind to
race around and around about what I could have done, should have
done. I always came back to one central fact. In a short time, I
would be taking the body of a man that I had loved and hated out of
the trunk of my car. I would carry it to an incinerator located in a
locked room, in the barn of an abandoned tobacco farm, and would
fire up the huge furnace to destroy the evidence, that beautiful,
mutilated body.
The edited surveillance camera tape would go with it along with the
plastic bags with which I had lined the car. Mulder had offered to
help, but I knew Scully needed him and I had refused. It didn't take
any insight to see his relief. I'd watched that tape to edit it on
the computer. I had seen what was in Alex's eyes, in his voice, and
shaking hand. The bastard had never stopped loving Mulder and maybe
now that weighed on Mulder's mind as my own guilt did on mine.
The first two times I had fired were the acts of a man defending a
friend, a colleague, and so much more than that. The third...my soul
already burned in hell over it. I went over and over it in my mind,
trying to second-guess myself, but I come to the same conclusion. I
had gone trip-wire. That's what we called it in Vietnam, when you
couldn't stop firing until your gun was empty. It was not the
assistant director of the FBI that fired that shot; it was a scared,
lonely, and panicked nineteen-year old kid.
I couldn't deal with the consequences. I couldn't drag Mulder or
myself through it. I couldn't face a review board. I couldn't face
them asking about my state of mind when I fired. I couldn't stand
them asking about my history with Alex.
Pulling over, I grabbed the Sight Savers from my pocket, wiped my
eyes with some tissues, and then cleaned the fog of grief from my
glasses. Leaning forward on the steering wheel, I grimly considered
my trip to the hospital. After all was said and done, he had done it
to me one more time. I found the damned palm pilot in the garbage
with that Coke can. I found out that an anonymous caller had called
the paramedics. It didn't take genius to figure out whom that had
been.
Whatever had been going on behind the azurite eyes, he had fucked me
again.
Came from so far out of the blue that I still couldn't fathom his
plan. Why me, Alex? Why use me to die?
Maybe you wanted to give me your death as a gift...your swan song to
your mate?
Possibly you expected it to be Doggett who came down to see what had
happened to Mulder? I wonder what he would have done? Would he have
been manipulated to do what you wanted? Or would you have ended up
behind bars? I know you would have rather died, my love.
I drove on down the dark miles of country highway, seeing nothing
but the occasional flash of wild green eyes that make me think of
yours. When I turned off onto the dirt and gravel road that was so
deeply worn with ruts, my afflicted nerves jolted with every bump. I
slowed, driving with extreme care as if now...as if now, I could
avoid hurting you.
Getting out in front of the barn, I opened the doors, drove inside,
and closed them. They were clever men, your former employer's
minions. I could drive in, swing the car into place and unload
within a few steps of the locked metal door. You know, when I found
the records of this place and had a forensic investigation; they
couldn't find a trace of human remains in that furnace although I
knew that was its purpose.
The furnace burns hot, my darling, as heated as your incandescent
passion. I sometimes wondered how your flesh could contain you at
all...you were like some wild raptor beating wings on the cage of
life. I hoped that you were free now. I hoped that I would see you
again if there were an afterlife. Heaven would not be paradise
without you. Hell would be Eden if only you were there. I love you.
My hands shook so badly when I put the key in the lock that it took
me long minutes to get the trunk open. I crinkled my nose, ready for
the expected sour stench of death. I smelled oil. For a shocking
long moment, I stood there thinking that the damn car had betrayed
me and burst a seal. Then I saw the slow movement of black creeping
toward my hand.
Uttering a horrified cry, I stumbled back, grabbing my gun in
foolish futile gesture. Darting forward, I shut the trunk and
grabbed my cellphone.
"Mulder, get the hell over here. I'm at the tobacco farm that I
bought from Spender's estate. 1150 SR 106. There's something wrong
with the body. There's oil coming out of him..."
Mulder's voice shook as he said, "Setting it on fire will work so
will freezing it. Don't touch him or the oil. If there's a fire
extinguisher, you can use the spray to slow it down. Then set fire
to it."
Grabbing the fire extinguisher from the wall, I aimed the nozzle at
the creeping oil. It worked, slowing the movement to a crawl. Thank
God that it was not the other form, the swift moving oil worms. This
thing must be desperate to come out of his body like this. Mulder
said that it usually transferred by physical contact. I watched with
queasy stomach and shaking legs as it crawled back into the trunk
through the crack. Every hair on my neck and back stood straight up.
You have no idea how badly I wanted to run out of there like a
terrified animal.
Good Lord! As I stood ready with that fire extinguisher, I heard
small sounds thudding from the trunk. I fought the instinct to open
it, telling myself that it was not Alex, could not be him, but
mingled with the fear and repulsion, I found a thread of hope.
Calling Mulder again, I said, "Bring that vaccine Marita Covarrubias
gave us."
"What? Walter, why? You can't be thinking that he's still alive? If
he's moving at all, it must be the Oilien." Mulder argued.
"Just bring it. If there's a snowball's chance in hell, I want it. I
want it, Mulder," I screamed.
Goddamn it. I still loved Alex. The bastard! Through life, death,
and back again for us both. I was living a fucking Faustian
nightmare, but my soul sang with the chance that I could have him
back.
Even in the middle of my panic, my brain wrapped around the thought
that everything he had done to me since he left my bed that last
time, when he came to me after beating me in that stairwell, might
not be his fault. Alex had borrowed enough money to flee Cancerman,
had kissed me and said he was sorry. I didn't believe it after he
left; but now, to quote Mulder I wanted to believe.
Mulder arrived, looking like an astronaut, putting the helmet on the
isolation suit as he barreled out of that car. He yelled, "Stand
back. Get back, Walter."
Grabbing his arm as he jetted by, I shouted, "I want him alive.
Don't fucking kill him unless you want to put a mercy bullet in my
head right afterwards. I can't do this, Mulder. I wasn't over him.
There's no over him."
Tearing out of my grasp, Mulder ran like a Spartan soldier at
Thermopylae, dashing in front of me, shielding me. Stunned, I
watched the sure grace of his movement, as he turned the keys I had
left dangling in the lock, jerked Alex's body out and stabbed home a
loaded needle.
The body reacted almost immediately, convulsing in huge clonic
seizures. He was arching and falling, head to heels, my Atlas
breaking under the weight of the world. A thin chattering wail,
inhuman and awful came from his gaping mouth. Oil poured out of
him...from his nose, his mouth, and his ears, sweating from his very
pores. Mulder swore steadily as he watched.
I wasn't sure if it was dying so I pulled him back. We clung
together for a moment before both of us jumped for the blowtorch
hanging from the bench. I hated to think why Spender kept that here,
but I was glad that it was there.
"Use the fire extinguisher on him! Don't let him burn!" I roared as
I lit the torch.
It burned like diesel. I think it must have been dead because the
thick rolling fumes seemed no more abnormal than any other type of
oil set on fire. I still carefully destroyed every patch, the flames
reddening my skin as jets of heat leaped back at me.
Mulder roughly, quickly, stripped off Alex's garments, wiping as
much of the oil as he could from him. Even the prosthesis was added
to the blaze. Quickly, Mulder turned a hose on the still quivering
body, ruthlessly driving off the remains of the oil. The white body
shook and I heard a whimper from the tormented throat. It sounded
like the mewling of a wounded kitten, but it was human. I was sure
that it was human.
The billowing smoke was unbelievable, but the fans kicked in,
drawing the fumes efficiently away. The only things that remained
were the metal fragments and charred plastic of the arm. I looked
around carefully, making sure that no trace remained.
We were all coughing as the sprinklers kicked in, drowning out the
fire. Wet and cold but exultant, Mulder and I carried our burden
from that place up the path and into the American Gothic farmhouse,
sturdy and macabre in its ordinariness.
Lying him on a table in the light of a bare bulb in a cracked
fixture, I stepped back for a moment as I saw the closing wounds. In
particular, the last bloody, oozing hole had healed to the point
that it looked like no more than a purple bruise. The lesser wounds
had stopped bleeding, but they were still in need of care.
"Go have Ms. Covarrubias arrange for a doctor. I'll wait here with
him," I said.
Alex's eyes opened at that moment. I saw him look at Mulder and back
to me. He smiled a weary, but happy smile as if a child woke from a
nightmare and found his beloved parent at this side. I stepped
forward as Mulder leaned over him, brushed his cheek with trembling
fingers and said, "I didn't know, Alex. I swear I didn't know. God
forgive us all."
His kiss was a gentle balm over that healing wound. I saw Alex's
lashes flutter and he murmured, "Mulder...didn't kill you.
Walter...saved me."
My knees buckled then as his had shaken when the strength of his
mighty heart had warred one last time with the confines of his
flesh. Staggering, I made it to the table. My hand shook as tears
flooded my eyes, blinding me to all but the one thing I most wanted
to see, his living face, his eyes now meeting mine. The love in his
expression...the joy flooding him as he realized he was set free.
As Mulder hurried for help, I held myself up on that roughly scarred
wood table and pressed Alex's hand to my lips. Whatever happened
from here, I vowed no one would ever hurt him again.
"I knew I couldn't have really killed you," I said, when I pressed
the hand to my heart instead. "I knew."
Paraphrasing, I said, "We can believe in the nothingness of life. We
can believe in the nothingness of death. And of life after death.
But who can believe in the nothingness of Alex?"
I felt his fingers flutter against my chest and he smiled at me,
letting me know he knew the words.
Alex whispered, "Trust in me. I found my way back...the lost lane
end into heaven..."
Thank you, Thomas Wolfe, for your words.
And one more passage:
He will not die again.
hrist, I didn't want to do this. No matter what I've seen or done
in my life, this is horror.
In flower and leaf
In wind and music far
He will come back again.
