From: Sean Young Date: Sat, 08 Aug 1998 00:42:24 -0400 Subject: The Hollow Men An X-Files/ Apocalypse Now crossover, interesting, but the writing could use improvement. blackchopper Title: All Futures Apocalypse Author: Black Helicopter diastar@bigfoot.com Rating: R Classification: C Spoilers: Apocalypse Now. Keywords: X-File/ Crossover, Apocalypse Now. Summary: A murder in the horror of Vietnam, 30 years later Mulder and Scully investigate, meeting two killers, one sane, one insane. Disclaimer: Mulder, Scully, The X-Files, etc. don't belong to me, they belong to surfer dude Chris Carter and 1013 Productions, Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda, etc. Apocalypse Now, the best film ever made, is property of Paramount and created by Francis Ford Coppola. I'm not that smart- yet. All Futures Apocalypse 1/2 "Helter skelter, children! Apocalypse is at hand!" - Charles Manson PROLOGUE The quiet. The black. The burning. I scream. I cannot scream. SCREAM! I howl like a creature of primordial rage, but my screams go unanswered. I am waiting for the one. The man, the deliverer. I must stop the evil, end the total apocalypse that is engulfing us, one by one, two by two, four by four. It grows stronger with its hungry consumption. The terror wells up, and we cease to be humans. We are animals. They take that, and destroy us. It is close. He is close. He is here! Part 1 ************************************************************************ Knock! Knock! Someone was pounding at the door. Willard rose, threw a robe around his nude body, and went to answer the pounding that was jackhammering his hangover from last night. He threw open the door. "Yeah, what the hell do you want?" There were two. A tall, lanky, no-nonsense man who seemed to be so disgruntled that one last problem would push him over the edge into oblivion. The other, a woman, stood a few inches shorter than the first. Her shocking red hair burned- as William Blake put it- like a tiger in the night. The man stepped forward. "We're special agents Scully," He nodded toward the woman, "and Mulder, FBI. You're Captain Willard aren't you? a We've come to talk to you about a man named Kurtz." Willard's skin chilled at the mention of that name. "Come on in. This is all new to me." Willard lied. "Can I get you folks any thing. Coffee, whiskey, anything?" Try to be the polite host, he thought, through a rainstorm of similar thoughts. Of Kurtz, the CIA, the Trang, Lance, Chef, Mr. Clean, and the Cap. But mainly of Kurtz. Finally the red head stepped forward, the one named Scully. "No, thank you Captain." She seemed to sing, the sound a mother's love, displaced somehow as if she had unfinished business somewhere else. "Well, at least let me get myself some coffee." Willard said. He needed it. "Sir," Mulder spoke, disturbing Willard's discreet sprinkling of Jack Danials into the Mr. Coffee pot. "did you know Major Kurtz?" "Never heard of him, sir." He lied for the second time. "Were you not assigned to kill him?" "No sir." Shit, this was getting to be habit forming. "I have government clearance level 4, sir." "Sir, I would tell you if I knew anything, but I'm more in the dark than you are." The orders he was given specified that the mission did not exist. Those secrets transcended clearance of any level. "What makes you think I'm even capable of killing a man?" "You were in special forces-" Willard cut him off, "No sir. I was in special communications and control. Who told you I was in SpecFor?" "A man named Lance." Lance. That boy was too loose for the military. "A statement was found in his personal safe after he was killed." "Killed, sir?" Lance? Dead? Never. "He was the victim of an auto-accident. Except we both know it wasn't an accident." "Excuse me, sir, I don't follow." And he didn't. At least he didn't think he did. "The US Government has killed off members of secret operations before. This one is particularly touchy. Here, look at this." It was a document, signed by Lance. Apparently he had become a lawyer, and a very powerful one at that. It was a confession of the entire mission. It omitted nothing, and when he was done reading, he seemed to understand everything. "How did you find me?" Willard wondered, partly out of concern, partly out of self preservation. "You're a vet. Your name and address is registered in the National Vietnam Veterans Database. It's a matter of public record." "Could anyone find me?" "As I said, it's a matter of public record." "All right, I'll tell you. Have a seat." "I'd prefer to stand." "Sit down!" Mulder was really getting on Willards nerves. Mulder found a chair, and sat in it. "So, let's begin." And Willard did. The whole painful story. And when he was done, both FBI agents were thoroughly shocked. All Futures Apocalypse 2/2 "History is the vast and tangled web of conspiracy." - Anon. "I'm just a patsy in all this!" - Lee Harvey Oswald "My God." That was all Mulder could say. He was astonished with the story, the story of a psychopath playing God, all his "children" as stoned and crazy as he was. Willard killed him, slaughtered him like a calf. They got the hell out and naped it. That was typical. "You said it, sir." Willard intoned. "Sir, if you'll just sign this, we can get you out of here, and into-" "Where, a secure place. No one is secure. They can get us, anywhere, any time. Why don't I just stay here." "We have to try." "I'll sign it, but you gotta promise me you'll let me live normally. Good guys don't hide." "I knew a KGB agent who said the same thing. 'Good guys don't hide.' She ended up with a bullet in her liver. You gotta go." "Fine. Give me an hour to get cleaned up. And if you don't mind, I'm gonna take a shower." Willard ambled off to the left. Scully turned to Mulder, her eyes reading as 'This man is serious psycho.' She spoke. "Mulder, you never knew anyone from the KGB." "No, but I saw it in a movie. It's the same thing." "So, what to you think?" "He's an alcoholic, a manic depressive, but on the whole I think he's telling the truth. Do you smell that?" "What?" "I think it's... English Leather?" "He has good taste, than." Dana Scully suddenly remembered an advertisement from long ago. 'All my men wear English Leather or they wear nothing at all'. As if reading her mind, Mulder said "He wasn't wearing cologne when we came in." "So? Mulder, other people have a right to wear cologne." "So they say..." Mulder would have continued, but already he knew he had lost the argument. Still... Wait! He thought he said it aloud. "What?" Not Scully, but Willard, standing in the bathroom doorway "Shadows. Under the door. Shit! They're waiting for us. I know!" Fox Mulder, paranoid rambler. "Yea. I feel 'um. Their presence." Willard nailed the idea perfectly. Scully considered the situation briefly. "This is crazy. I believe you, but it's still crazy." "Lets go. Here," he motioned to a cedar chest, "There used to be a dumb waiter pulley rig over on this side. After '65 they all got plastered over but when I got this place I opened this back up again." "This is crazy," Scully was still making up her mind about this, "I think..." But Willard cut her off. "SHUT UP. JUST SHUT THE HELL UP." This was a time for doing, not for thinking. He moved the chest over to the wall, squeezing through the hole which had opened up to swallow them all. They all allowed themselves to be swallowed. They made it to the bottom in record breaking time, mostly crawling hand over hand to the kitchen outlet, the iron door squealing like a slaughtered hog as it opened. Willard broke for the street at once. The agents were at his side as the building exploded. KA-BOOM. Not with a whimper but a BANG! The explosion shook the earth, just as a giant waking from 40 thousand years of imprisonment. The explosion threw thousand of pieces of smoldering debris everywhere, smashing and crushing all in its path. "Ho-ly fuck." That was all that Willard could manage. They knew they were discovered, so they destroyed the building, killed everyone who could help him, or them for that matter. "You said something about a safe place?" Willard asked. Neither agent was in a position to argue. **************************************************************************** The evil eyes stared at him, growing larger, larger, stifling large. Huge, evil, terrifying. It stared, glared at him. He tried to call out "Let me be no nearer in death's dream kingdom," But his mouth was stuffed, and a burning straw-man, hollow man, shape without form, shade without= color. ************************************************************************* Willard awoke sweating. He had to go. The dead lands lay ahead, death's kingdom must be fulfilled. He ran out, slamming the door behind him. He scurried out onto the street, feeling as a rat, a crow would feel approaching and stalking its prey. At the same time feeling as a roach, a grass hopper, about to be taken up by a carnivore. And the voices, calling to him: WILLARD! WILLARD, STOP, COME BACK. He turned, watching the form approach him. Mulder, his mind associated the word with the form. It didn't matter. Willard turned and ran, harder and faster. Suddenly a shot cried from the darkness, Willard turned, not thinking, just acting. Primal. He turned, but the eye was approaching him, and he stopped. Then another shot screamed at him, not missing him, burying itsself deep in his chest. He subdued his primal soul, and the shape took form, the eye, a car, and the form, Mulder, leaning over him. "Oh, my God." Mulder started, seeing blood, gushing out of Willard, leaking into his shoe. Willard's hand shot up and grabbed Mulder. Willard pulled him down, so Mulder could feel Willard's last breath. Willard spoke. "The hollow men. The stuffed men. Leaning together, heads 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." Willard coughed, loosening his grip on Mulder slightly. Mulder thought the worst was over, for both of them, but then Willard= croaked "Shape without form, shade without color. Paralyzed force, gesture without motion." Then Willard let go, and died. Mulder found himself solemn over a man who, five minutes ago, he hardly knew at all. And he was still crouched there forty-five minutes later, when Scully found him. EPILOGUE "Agents, I have no understanding of the matter at hand," Assistant Director William Skinner seemed to be lecturing, "as to what Capt. Willard's importance was to the "Forces" mentioned in your report. However, I trust your judgment in dealing with this matter and the loose ends." "Thank you, sir," Agent Scully spoke for both her and her partner, "for trusting our judgment. Will that be all?" "Yes, thank you." And so, Dana Scully and Fox Mulder left without another word. Letting the tall, handsome man just brush by without question. The man brushed by Skinner also. Into the adjacent door. Suddenly his nostrils were bombarded with the acrid odor of tobacco smoke. "Is Willard dead?" The man behind the infinite cloud of smoke asked. "Yes, sir. Took care of it myself." "Good. And are your--- arrangements taken care of?" The man hesitated. "Quite satisfactorily, sir." "Then this matter is closed. It never happened." "Never heard about it, sir." "Quite. Than you may leave General, um, Kilgore." "Yes, sir." Kilgore liked the smell of strange things, but cigarette smoke was not one of them. He waltzed away, humming Wagner and thinking about surfing at Ocean City. FIN