From: cofax Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 23:05:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: xfc: NEW: Cheating the God of Fire, a Wartime story by cofax, R 1/1 Source: xfc Title: Cheating the God of Fire, a Life During Wartime story Author: cofax Email: cofax7@yahoo.com Rating: R Distribution: Spookys, Ephemeral, Gossamer fine, otherwise please link to the Wartime site. Disclaimer: Not mine. Summary: the dead stand between them with empty eyes Notes: This story follows almost immediately after "Whose Frail Warmth". The rest of the series can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Derby/5520/Wartime.html. Beta by Maria Nicole and Virginia. Feedback makes me do the wacky. Send it to cofax7@yahoo.com. *** Cheating the God of Fire A Life During Wartime story by cofax June 2000 "Shit." Scully jerked awake as the truck swerved and jolted. She rubbed the side of her head where it had jarred against the window, then smeared a hand across her eyes. Mulder, separated from her by the width of the bench seat, was hunched over the steering wheel as he guided the suddenly lurching truck to the shoulder. Blocking traffic really wasn't a problem anymore, but Scully decided not to point that out. She pulled herself part of the way out of the fog she'd been in since they left . . . whatever that town had been, and rubbed her hands together. The truck was cold and dark. "Flat tire?" She looked incuriously at her partner. He'd been driving for the past six hours; it was probably close to two a.m. She supposed she should care about that. "Yeah," he grunted. "Fuck!" He slammed his hand against the wheel and the horn went off. Scully winced as the sound sawed across her nerves. "Well, that'll help." But it came out flat, and Mulder's shoulders hunched. A muscle under Mulder's beard twitched but he didn't answer and instead got out of the truck. Scully sighed, pulled a flashlight out of the daypack on the floor at her feet. When she dropped out onto the road, Mulder was already lugging the jack around to the driver's side of the truck. He left it there and went back toward the tailgate for the spare while Scully tried to set up the jack. It had been years since she'd changed a tire, she realized as she wrestled one-handed with the jack, her flashlight in her other hand. Finally she gave up and stuck the flashlight in her mouth. There was a clatter and a muffled "shit!" from the back of the truck. She snorted, smiling around the flashlight until she realized it was the first time she'd smiled since . . . since. By the time Mulder reappeared, stooped over the tire that he was rolling along, she had the jack positioned properly and was ratcheting it upward in hard fast strokes. The flashlight was propped against a nearby fencepost, lending only a modicum of light. The late moon was partway up the sky, and supplied a little more light to the proceedings. Mulder stopped the tire and let it thunk down on its side, kicking up a little puff of dust. "Hey." He laid his hand over hers on the jack handle. His palm was as warm as it had always been, but its rough calluses gave it an unfamiliar feel. He'd abused his hands in Heniston, and they'd barely had a chance to heal before he tore them open again. She thought he probably needed some antibiotic cream for them, and started to straighten, taking his hand with hers as she released the jack. But his hand was gone before she opened her mouth to make the offer. "You're doing this wrong. You have to loosen the bolts before you start jacking it up -- didn't you ever change a tire before?" His voice was level, but strained, as if he were fighting to keep from snapping at her. He didn't look at her as he slid in front of her and began to lower the jack. If she thought about it, he hadn't looked at her at all in the past few days, no more than he'd had to. She raised her hands in defeat and stepped away. "You do it, then." He didn't seem to hear her. Scully scooped up her flashlight and stuffed her hands in her pockets. After a moment, watching Mulder struggling with the jack -- I didn't have that much trouble with it, she thought -- she looked around. The cold air had woken her up and she couldn't go back to sleep in the truck while Mulder was working on the tire anyway. Thin shadows of the bare trees danced across Mulder's back. They were back in embattled agricultural land. Run-down fencing, with rusted barbed wire and grey timbers, paralleled the road. The field on the other side of the fence was stubble; maybe corn, she thought. About one hundred yards down the road was a farmhouse with a barn; two cars were parked in the yard. There were no lights or smell of woodsmoke, but it was after midnight. Scully looked at Mulder crouched next to the truck, swearing to himself as he wrestled with the jack and the crowbar. She slipped a hand behind her back and checked her weapon. Nothing moved in the moonlight. She started walking, paused, and without looking at her partner announced, "I'm going down to that farmhouse. Maybe they have a well." He grunted. Scully walked down the road. She took long strides, stretching the legs that had been cramped in the truck for the past few days. It had been weeks, she realized, since she had been entirely alone for more than a few minutes at a stretch. Either Mulder or her mother or Claire or one of the volunteers had always been there. Before -- before this had all started, she had luxuriated in the silence of her apartment, in the solitude where she could drop all pretense and merely be. She missed that. A walk down to an abandoned farmhouse was probably all the solitude she was going to get for some time. There wasn't actually a driveway in front of the house; instead it was a bare dusty space with rusted machinery piled against the wall of the barn. A pickup and an old station wagon were parked at odd angles to one another. There was a small fenced enclosure around a hutchlike structure next to the barn; after a moment she identified it as a chicken coop. The barn door was closed, but Scully thought she heard something inside. She stepped closer to the door and listened. The old wood was splintery, the paint peeling under her hand. She could hear animals inside, moving restlessly. Several muffled bleats. After looking around for a few moments, she opened the door. Inside were two goats and a cow, all extremely unhappy. The goats were loose in the barn; the cow was closed in a stall. When she opened the door wider, the goats forced their way past her to the outside and rushed to the old-fashioned trough at the edge of the yard. Uncertain what to do but reluctant to leave it caged, Scully opened the stall door and let the cow out as well. It mooed a few times then left the barn as well, wandering across the yard and into what looked like the garden. Scully followed it outside. She looked at the animals, then at the house. Still no lights, despite the noise from the animals and the squeaking barn door. Scully crossed the yard and climbed the steps to the porch. The house was neat and well-kept but battered by years. There was actually a rocking chair on the porch, with a throw hanging over its high back. Scully pictured summer here, humid and green, and imagined baskets of flowering plants hanging from the rafters above the porch. There was no sound from down the lane. She hoped idly that Mulder hadn't managed to drop the truck on his head. She turned on the flashlight with one hand and turned the doorknob with the other. Pulling her weapon, she edged the spring-loaded screen door open with her foot. She found them in the kitchen. The smell had warned her; the weather had been cold but not cold enough to stop the decay or the flies. It had not been a particularly attractive kitchen. The appliances were chipped white porcelain, the kind Scully remembered vaguely from when she was a young child. The table was cheap and battered, peeling chrome border around linoleum: it looked like it had been liberated from a 40's era diner long before the retro craze hit. A window over the sink looked out into the rear yard, with three dying plants suspended between checked curtains. Most of the kitchen's surfaces were mottled with the black splatters of dried blood; even the crayon drawings taped to the front of the refrigerator were speckled with it. Corpses were everywhere. Scully felt the shift as the investigator's protective membrane dropped before her eyes. Everything became clear but far away; her emotions were shunted off to be dealt with later. The man had obviously been shot in the head. The older woman had been shot twice in the back, and lay where she had died, one hand still stretched out toward the back door. The gun lay by the man's side where he was sprawled on the linoleum. There was a plastic juice bottle on the counter. It was still half-full of liquid and the cap was off; the top layer of the liquid was dark with the bodies of flies. She noted that for later investigation. The gun had been in the man's hand; Scully played her flashlight beam over the woman by the door. Unarmed. He had shot her first, and then himself. As she was trying to leave, to escape -- escape? Yes. Because she had realized what he had done. The children -- of course there were children, she thought bitterly, there were always children -- were seated at the table. The beam cast by the flashlight began to shake. Three of them. Two boys, 10 and 12 perhaps, and a girl. Not a little girl; this one was about 9, perhaps, and chubby. Her hands, dimpled with fat, were clasped around her plastic Power Ranger cup. Liquid was still pooled in the cup, spilled on the floor at her feet. She would have looked asleep if it weren't for -- "Scully?" Scully dropped her gun. Her partner was behind her, blocking the doorway, filling the only exit from the kitchen that didn't require stepping over the bodies of the dead. He was in the way. She had to get out. Mulder was in the way. "Don't mind me --" He started to say as Scully pushed past him, knocking him against the doorframe. His voice cut off as he saw the bodies. "Christ." Scully couldn't tell if he said anything more -- she was out the door, across the porch, and in the middle of the yard. For a long time, she just stood there, breathing hard. Trying not to think at all. Most specifically, not thinking of the children dead. Of the father dead. Of the grandmother dead. Of her mother dead. Eventually the shudders and the nausea went away. She looked around the yard and noticed the goats, which had not strayed far. The goats were alive: a brown one and a white one. They moved along the fence, nibbling at the weeds there. The brown one crossed to the garbage piled next to the basement door and began digging through it with large determined teeth. It was a long time and the stars had moved before Mulder emerged from the house. The beam of his flashlight sliced across her at the knees, then went dark. He had her weapon, pressed it into her hand without a word. She slipped it into her holster but kept her eyes straight ahead. He stood next to her, his empty hands loose at his sides. He flexed them once; she couldn't see his face, only his body, his hands, from this angle. She wondered if his hands missed the shovel or something from their lost past -- a keyboard, a briefcase, the steel handle of a filing cabinet. "I laid them out. But we don't have time to bury them." "No." "There was another body upstairs, a woman. I couldn't -- I -- it looked like TB." His voice faded. He turned to face her now, his eyes probably roaming her face. She wasn't looking at him, but she couldn't see the goats anymore either. She could still see his hands. Something dark was caught under his nails. She wasn't looking at him, but there was nothing else to see. "Scully --" the quiver in his voice yanked her eyes up to meet his. She had never quite seen the expression in his eyes before. She didn't know what he saw in hers. Nothing. He should see nothing. He raised his hand towards her face; it was shaking. No, she thought. Don't do this now. It's too late for this. He didn't hear her. His hand smoothed along her mandible, the fingers skimming the sensitive skin joining her throat to her jaw. "Scully --" And then it really was too late. His lips were damp, the beard oddly soft under her fingers. "We're alive, Scully, we're alive," she heard him whispering, but his voice was a lost child and it was too late for reassurances. He is alive, alive, she agreed, and his lips were alive, and his large hands were alive, and she tried to feel them, tried to bring his blood to the surface so she could taste it. His skin was cold but his mouth was warm and his hands were rough and warm under her coat and his eyes were so dark so dark -- but it was the warmth of decomposition and the dark of the grave and all she could smell was death and all she could see were the maggots crawling out of the pudgy girl's eyes and even Mulder's white teeth nipping at her skin and his desperate hands clutching at her back and the taste of him on her tongue couldn't bring her past that. She twisted her head away. Mulder's hands dropped as soon as she moved, but he didn't step back. He raised his head; the moon hit his face, bringing his absurd nose into sharp relief. The beard hid his expression from her, but his eyes were wide. He brought a shaky hand up toward her, then dropped it to his side. He had laid them out with those hands. "We're dead too, Mulder. We just haven't begun to rot yet." He didn't say anything in response, and she knew that she was right. Scully turned her back on her partner as he stood staring at his raw and blistered hands. The moon was high in its last quarter, and the road was colorless but bright in its light. She didn't need her flashlight. Scully walked through the yard, past the goats among the garbage, and headed down the road toward the truck. Maybe there was a well up the road. *** End "Hourglass" Measuring time is the work of those who haven't loved. I forgot the sand that was falling grain by grain by grain. That's how I accomplished love. When my time comes I won't know if it's my arrival or my departure only that in life I paid relentlessly what the god of fire charged me. - Ana Ilce Gomez NOTES: I can't thank the Wartimers, Maria Nicole, Marasmus, and Magdeleine, enough for beta, inspiration, and friendship, and for putting up with my madness. And Virginia, of course. Special thanks to Ropobop for beta on a story she hadn't read. To Token Chris for his first ever public machete. To Luperkal for beta from the sickbed. To Alicia for getting on line in time to help. To Livia for the pov-catches. You folks are the best. ===== - Life During Wartime: Killing Everyone, and Proud of It - cofax7@yahoo.com http://cofax.freeservers.com