From: cofax <cofax@mindspring.com>
Date: 2 Dec 2002 02:32:25 -0800
Subject: [all-xf] NEW: Fimbulwinter by Marasmus & cofax (0/12)(Rated
Source: atxc

TITLE: Fimbulwinter 
A Life During Wartime story

WRITTEN BY: cofax (cofax@mindspring.com)
and marasmus (marasmus_k@yahoo.com)

RATING: R (language, disturbing images)
KEYWORDS: M/S relationship. Mid-colonization. Angst.
SUMMARY:  After an arduous journey, Mulder and Scully find the
Gunmen's hideout, just in time for a cold December. But are they safe
even there?

DISCLAIMER: 1013 and Fox own 'em. Used without permission.

GET THE NEXT INSTALLMENT VIA LIST: http://groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/L
ifeDuringWartime

BETA by Fialka, Melymbrosia, and Sarah Segretti.  Other notes at end.

-------------------------------

THE BACKSTORY, A SUMMARY:

This series was begun at the back end of season six, therefore all
canon stops just before Biogenesis (though we have tried not to
contradict any canonical personal information about the main
characters which appeared in later seasons of XF). 

Therefore some people are alive once more, including WMM, Teena Mulder
and, of course, Alex Krycek. 

Many of the titles come from the Talking Heads song, Life During
Wartime.

If you want to read the other stories, they can be found here:
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Derby/5520/Wartime.html, or
http://mouldiwarps.shriftweb.org/Wartime.html.

 
They are (narrator/main characters in brackets):
"High On A Hillside" (Mulder)
"What Good Are Notebooks" (Scully) 
"A Place Where Nobody Knows" (Teena Mulder/CSM)
"No Time for Dancing" (Lone Gunmen/Susanne Modeski)
"Held Nor Free" (Skinner)
"What You Don't Know" (Charlie Scully)
"Things To Do in Dulwich When You're Dead" (Well-Manicured Man)
"Getting Used to Gunfire" (Maggie Scully/Mulder/Scully)
"Whose Frail Warmth"  (Mulder/Scully/Maggie)
"Cheating the God of Fire" (Scully/Mulder)
"Breakdown" (Mulder)

Some of these are extremely short, some not. So, the Cliff Notes
version of the story so far is:

One ordinary Saturday, Mulder is told that colonization is on its way.
The Lone Gunmen know few details but warn him to get the hell out of
Washington that weekend, before the breakdown of civilization begins.
They give him the names of some hideouts maintained by friends of
theirs who have prepared for the end. 

He calls Scully and convinces her, warns Skinner, then drives by to
pick up Maggie Scully, who hardly believes what they are telling her
but agrees to the roadtrip because her daughter and that peculiar
partner of hers are so insistent. 

Meanwhile, Maggie tries to warn her other children. Bill is at sea.
Charlie, who is better informed than his sister might think, is picked
up by the bad guys.

The Gunmen head north to pick up Susanne Modeski. Byers, dreamer that
he is, kept in touch with her after she went into hiding and refuses
to go into hiding until they pick her up from Pittsburgh. 

Frohike and Langly discover that this relationship also included
entrusting her with the copies of Scully's notes and samples,
detailing everything, from what she knew about her abduction to the
black oil. Susanne had planned a return to her old place within the
consortium after colonization, but her former colleagues decided
instead to have her killed.

Frohike and Langly drag Byers away, and after a night in a safe house
in upstate New York, they head inland towards the safest of the
boltholes they know, in Indiana. 

Meanwhile, Mulder, Scully and Maggie begin an awkward, meandering
journey toward Louisville. On the Sunday, they stop off at a bunker in
the West Virginia hills, hiding themselves and their pick-up truck.
That night, nuclear warheads are detonated high in the upper
atmosphere, creating an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) across the globe
which knocks out all unshielded electronics and electrical systems,
from car systems to televisions to all civilian and commercial
communication systems. 

As they continue their journey along the back roads to meet the Gunmen
in Indiana,  they realise that someone is trying to stop the birth of
a resistance in general and stop them in particular. Large ships
appear in the now silent skies, and it appears that the chips
implanted in the necks of abductees are being activated. Scully
escapes one such activation.

In Washington, Skinner tries to warn others, but to no avail. He is
only convinced to leave after a visit from Alex Krycek, who tells him
he is finally free of the nanites, thanks to the EMP. He gives Skinner
a piece of paper which details how the world is to be cleared of
humans, using wave after wave of engineered disease. Skinner realizes
he has to get this to Scully, as she's the only person he can think of
who would understand how to start battling it. He resolves to track
Mulder and Scully down.

Mulder and Scully's backwoods route takes them into Tennessee, where
the local doctor warns them not to come near as there is a strange
sickness in the town, a strange new infection which leaves people
coughing, wheezing and sweating their way to an unpleasant death. 

Scully volunteers to try to help fight it, and Maggie and Mulder try
to help the citizens of Heniston adjust to this strange new world.

But they soon realize that this is no normal infection. It has
deliberately been engineered to pick off a large section of the
population -- and it is being spread by the National Guard, who are
unwittingly delivering care packages containing the infection. 

They are forced to leave the town when they realize that the military
are serious about capturing them, to the extent that their photographs
have been circulated to the local authorities. But even as they leave,
Maggie develops the cough. In a small rat trap of a roadside motel,
she dies, just like the people of Heniston.

Mulder and Scully have no choice but to continue their journey, but
Maggie's death and its aftermath has driven a wedge between them. Even
as they approach what they once hoped would be safety and a reunion
with their friends in Indiana, they are at the end of their endurance
-- and moving ever further apart... 


****
1/12
--------------------------- 
FIMBULWINTER 
---------------------------

by cofax and Marasmus
November 2002

**"The war could have been happening for years. Maybe it's been going
on just out of sight, and we just caught glimpses of it from the
corner of the eye, like seeing the shadows move in a darkened room.
The old legends say that the wolves Skoll and Hati will quench the sun
and devour the moon. The world will start to shake and everything that
is bound will be freed. This is our fimbulwinter.

"Look up at the moon, Sean. See the haze around it, the halo of frost?
That's the fimbul moon. And this how it begins, your grandfather told
me, with the winter that lingers until the earth is chilled to its
very core. Fimbulwinter: a cold that signals the end of everything."**

---------------------------

//December 5//

He was the lookout but it wasn't much of a job. In the distance,
nothing to see but bare trees, white fields and acres of gray sky
laden with more snow. Ten yards away, the metal perimeter fence
slicing everything into neat little squares. 

He blew on his gloved hands and stamped his boots into the gravel.
Melvin Frohike, reporting for The Lone Gunman from Freezingmyassoff,
Indiana. Who knew the end of civilization as we know it would be so
much fun? And why was it so damned cold anyhow?

He prayed that he wouldn't see people because any news he had for them
wasn't going to be good. 

His gloves were nowhere near warm enough. Something caught on his
eyelash and he swiped at it, irritation growing. Now it was snowing
again. Jesus H. Christ. 

He retreated inside the drafty old army gatehouse, sat down on a
wooden box and leaned his gun against the wall. He left the door open
so he could scan the empty horizon.

Out there, people were dying in their cold houses, dying without
medicines or doctors or clean water and instead of being out there,
doing something about it, he was safe inside the compound. 

All because they had welded the gates shut.

Jack had given the order: turn away everyone you don't know. And even
though this was nominally an anarchistic collective, Jack Hughes was
the boss. 

Jack, with his parade-ground bark and his military swagger. Jack the
ex-colonel. Jack, his old friend from too many years ago to count.

Even Byers had given in to Jack's argument and helped weld together
the chains that locked every other gate to the compound. God, the
fight they'd had about that. Fucking Byers, following orders like a
good little soldier. Truth be told, he was still mad at Byers over the
way he trusted Susanne too.

And the problem was that he'd never budgeted for any of this. He'd
never expected to sit in a place of safety, a gun in his hands, and
tell a mother with two sick children that she couldn't come in. That
had been the day after Thanksgiving.

But they'd all heard the stories about the disease in Louisville --
something that spread faster than a filthy email and killed almost
everyone it touched. It couldn't get in here or they were finished.

He blew on his hands and wished he had a bottle of scotch. Then at
least he wouldn't be so cold and hungry. Or he might be just as cold
and hungry but he would give less of a shit.

He checked his watch. Two hours to go. Then he saw them: two stick
figures, a guy and a kid, walking down the road.

"Shit," he muttered out loud and picked up the shotgun. The other guys
did guard duty and never saw a soul. His turn, and every loser in
Louisville hiked up to see him.

He squinted in the weak afternoon light. At least these two were
dressed for winter, although the kid looked overwhelmed by the size of
his pack.

Wait a minute... that wasn't a kid. 

"I'll be damned," he breathed. "Scully."

He stood up and waved, feeling the hope swell in his chest at their
mere approach, but they didn't respond in kind. They just looked up
and walked a little faster.

They looked battered and moved like they were carrying bruises
bone-deep, injuries that hadn't begun to heal. 

No wonder he hadn't recognized Mulder at first. A straggly beard
covered the lower half of his face and made his reactions harder to
read than ever. 

"Man," Frohike said, a grin splitting his face as he walked out of the
gatehouse. He'd almost given them up for dead. "It's so good to see
you guys." 

"Hey, Frohike." Mulder nodded and leaned up against the fence,
rattling the gate. Scully, hooded and fat round the middle with layers
of clothing, hung back a few feet. 

He had almost got the gate open before he remembered Jack's order --
and if the reports Jack brought back from Louisville about the illness
hadn't been so terrifying, he would have said "fuck it" and let them
in anyway. "Um... I have to ask you this. How are you both doing?"

Could he be vaguer?

"We're fine, Frohike. Just tired," Scully said, all gravel-voiced like
Marlene Dietrich. Could be that she hadn't talked much lately. Or
maybe she had a bad throat. Wasn't that how it started?

Frohike hesitated for a second but that was long enough for Mulder's
temper to snap like ten feet of bad rope. "Frohike, we're not carrying
anything, we're not sick. We just want to get the fuck out of the
cold."

So much for tearful reunions.

Frohike stripped his gloves off to unlock the gate to the compound,
fumbling a little because his fingers were numb, and then hurried them
up the long drive to the first world war-era office building that was
their HQ and living quarters. He offered to take Scully's pack but she
didn't seem to see or hear him.

Once inside the building, Scully shook off her hood and he gaped for a
moment before looking away. Mulder looked thin and tired too but
Scully... Christ. They must have had a terrible journey for it to make
one of the strongest people he knew look like that.

They needed time to feel they were safe. Christ knows, it had taken
him a while to get used to it.

Of course, what they really needed first was a shower. From downwind
Mulder smelled like the badly-stuffed alligator his grandfather used
to display over the mantle. He thought Scully was a little better but
he wasn't sure whether that was because she was cleaner, or because
Mulder's reek had killed his sense of smell.

He changed his mind about giving them the grand tour and led them
across to the second block.

"C'mon, you two," he said with half a leer. "You'll appreciate this, I
promise."

+-+-+-+

Scully had tuned out Frohike's chatter as soon as they got inside the
heated building. He was pointing at things but she walked in a daze.
Her cheeks and fingers felt pinched and swollen in the warm air but
she turned her face toward it anyway like a plant following the sun.
She'd been cold for weeks, but today's long silent hike, battling snow
all the way from Louisville after their truck broke down, had been the
worst. 

She trudged after Frohike, meltwater dripping in her wake. She'd been
expecting to find the Gunmen holed up in a makeshift underground
warren, like the first hideout they found, not something as solid and
well-established as a recently decommissioned military compound.

Frohike led them to a small brick building with no windows and thrust
open the main doors before Scully had a chance to read the sign in the
dim light.

He flicked on the lights to reveal an echoing space floored with a
tasteful blue carpet. Angular shapes broke up reflections from the
mirrored walls about them. She blinked once or twice but nothing more
sensible took their place.

It was a weight room. This was a small health club. She wasn't
hallucinating.

Mulder shifted his backpack and coughed. Despite the distance between
them she could read exactly what he was thinking: Frohike on a
stairmaster. She bowed her head and burrowed her nose into her scarf
to stifle the smile.

"We decided it made no sense to heat water in all the buildings we
were using, and the facilities here are the best in the complex."
Frohike looked defensive. 

Hot water, she thought, and stopped thinking. 

"Locker room is right over there, Scully," Frohike said after a short
pause. "I think there are some towels in there." With a shrug, Scully
hefted her pack and headed for the door Frohike had indicated.

She crossed the floor, her reflection flickering in the mirrors.
Behind her she saw Frohike, his face a mixture of concern and
confusion, and Mulder, a long shadow unmoving by the door. 

God, he wasn't going to follow her, was he? The memory of the showers
in Fort Marlene burned again for a moment and she prayed he wouldn't.

Then she realized he was only staring at her. She paused and looked at
herself.

Dear God. Lost in the oversized green parka was a rail-thin woman, her
face pale and smudged with exhaustion. Under two layers of coats, she
was wearing a stained Oxford sweatshirt that reached halfway to her
knees and a pair of cotton pants that might once have been blue under
the grime.

She sighed. There were no clean clothes in her pack. They'd had to
leave a lot behind when the truck broke down, and her pack had more
equipment and files than clothes in it.

"Fro--"

"I'll get you some," he said before she had the words out of her
mouth. He waved reassuringly. "Linda must have something that will fit
you. Go take your shower, I'll put something inside the door." And
with that he turned away.

Mulder was still there, though. His eyes met hers for a moment in the
mirror, inscrutable and dark. Then he turned away, to her relief. 

Hot water, she thought again, and shoved open the door to the women's
locker room.

It was bright white, nearly new. Clean tile covered the floors and
went partway up the walls, and the pale wooden lockers were fronted
with neat benches. Scully began to undress, piling her clothes on the
bench. There was a stack of towels, mismatched but clean, on a shelf
by the showers, next to several half-empty bottles of shampoo. Add
half a dozen sweating overachievers and it could have been the women's
locker rooms at Quantico.

It was completely quiet. She was alone for the first time since they
had buried her mother.

They had arrived. 

She paused, her hands full of stained clothing. They were finally
here. 

The thin woman in the mirror was no one she recognized: a bruised
wraith in dingy underwear. Her mother ... her mother would have
insisted she come over for a meal of lamb stew and homemade pie, and
would have quizzed her on whether she was taking her vitamins.

Scully grabbed the nearest shampoo bottle, Walgreen's own brand for
normal hair, and the remains of a bar of soap she had been carrying
around for weeks. The shower sputtered and then broke into a fierce
pelting spray, the first truly hot water she'd washed with in more
than six weeks. A pool of muddy brown formed around her feet and
drained away. 

She worked the soap into a thick lather and the strong scent of
lavender caught her off-guard. Claire, the doctor they had met in
Heniston, had pressed this soap on her when the epidemic was at its
height and they were losing three or four patients a night. Fellow
medics knew the value of small comforts in a war of attrition. Claire,
who had helped send them to safety even though she was overrun with
dying patients. And then...

The tile floor was slick under her as she sat back against the wall,
and wept for a long time. There was no need for silence now, and the
gulps and sobs echoed in the tiny space of the shower stall. 

When she stopped at last her fingers were wrinkled, her legs were
shaky and she felt light-headed but she felt a little better. 

Scully washed her hair quickly, then shut off the water. Grabbing a
towel from the stack, she padded back through the locker room, wincing
from the pain of the cold tile floors on her newly warmed feet. She
intended to dress and find hot food if possible; it seemed longer than
three hours since she and Mulder had eaten the last of the apples. 

Then she paused. That wooden door with the dial. 

It couldn't be. It was. Oh, glory. 

A sauna, here. Surreal. Perhaps their rooms would have four-poster
beds and HBO. The end of the world as we know it, but they'd all be
feeling just fucking fine. She laughed and the echo of it startled
her. She clapped a hand over her mouth. 

Calm down, she told herself, and let out a shivery sigh. Tiredness was
pushing her towards hysteria.

Food or sauna? No question, especially if guys like Frohike were
cooking. Scully pulled the door open.

"Come on in, you're letting the heat out." The soft voice came from
the far corner of the small room, and Scully stifled the urge to reach
for her gun as her heart rate accelerated. 

She blinked through the darkness, feeling off-guard, woozy and
vulnerable. Relax, she told herself, you're among friends now. She
shut the door behind her and let her eyes adjust. The only source of
light was the single fluorescent tube in the corridor outside.

"You must be Dana," said another richer, deeper voice. A naked woman
on the upper shelf propped herself on her elbows. "Mel said you might
be in here," she said, then lay back on the bench, eyes closed and her
hands resting comfortably across her abdomen.

It took Scully a moment to work out that Mel was Frohike. "I'm Linda
Carlyle," the woman went on. "That's my daughter Aracelis." 

The owner of the first voice, a round-faced girl in her late teens who
was sitting against the wall, nodded at Scully. "Ari," she said. "No
one can remember Aracelis and it sounds like a cheap Chilean wine."
There was a soft snort from the upper bench.

Scully sat on the lower bench across from Ari, feeling more than a
little self-conscious, and wondered what was appropriate
post-apocalyptic sauna etiquette. She settled on hello and an
attempted smile. It felt as weird as her laughter a few minutes ago.
"I'm Dana Scully."

"Mel's been wondering where you were," said Linda from her spot on the
top bench, her eyes closed. "Just about every day, actually. You guys
came from DC, right?"

The heat settled over Scully like a blanket. The sauna was dimly lit
by the tiny window in the door. She pulled her legs up onto the bench
and lay down on her back. It was the first time in weeks she'd felt
completely warm.

"That's right, D.C.," she finally responded. She couldn't make her
voice any stronger, and it came out in a whisper.

There was a long pause, punctuated only by the hiss as Ari sprinkled
some water on the hot stones in the corner. 

Scully breathed deeply, allowing the heat to soak some of the tension
from her muscles. For once she didn't see anything when she closed her
eyes but the darkness behind her own eyelids. No bodies, no faces.

"We live -- lived -- in Louisville," said Ari. "It's a long way from
DC. Was it bad?" She sounded tentative, her voice soft.

"Ari -- " Linda's voice warned from above Scully. "Let her be."

Scully waved a hand gently and dropped it back onto her stomach. She
traced the ridges of her gunshot scar, even now unused to the rude
interruption of smooth flesh. She was beginning to sweat, and her skin
was slick.

"It was bad," she answered after a moment. "And we didn't even go
through the cities. We saw -- we saw a lot of death."

"But surely it's not so bad," Ari began. "I mean, in the country..."

"It's bad everywhere," Scully snapped and then pressed her lips
together so she couldn't say anything else.

No one answered her; what was there to say, after all? They were lucky
to have been locked away here, Scully thought with a touch of
bitterness. She squeezed her eyes shut.

"So how long have you known Mel?" 

Scully blinked at Linda's voice; she might have dozed off. "Oh,
Frohike? Um, about six years now." She craned her neck back but she
couldn't see Linda's face from here.

"And you're with the FBI, right?"

"I was." She murmured. "Uh, how about you?"

There was a rustle above as Linda moved, then a pair of feet with
bright purple-painted toenails swung down next to Scully's face. "I'm
a geneticist. I'm doing my post-doc here in Louisville, studying
slugs. Or I was, at least." Linda shrugged, and grabbed a towel, got
ready to leave. "Guess I should have studied infectious diseases
instead."

Linda was a strong-bodied woman in her late forties, Scully guessed.
If you didn't see her face or hands you might think she was no older
than thirty-five. She was stocky and blonde where her daughter was
tall, dark and curvy but the two women had the same warm, brown eyes.

"Dana." Linda's voice interrupted her reverie. "Don't stay in the
sauna too long, you'll get dehydrated."

"Sure," she said softly, and raised a hand as the two other women
left. "Sure."

And then she was alone in the dark and the warmth, and it was nearly
enough.

+-+-+-+

If this was the start of a brave new world, they were going to have to
get rid of the mirrors. Too depressing. Mulder turned his face this
way and that. He looked black and white in the flickering candlelight,
as if he were a desperate, thin-faced criminal caught on grainy
surveillance footage. 

He had emerged from the shower rooms, his skin itchy inside
ill-fitting borrowed clothes, to find Frohike leaning against a wall,
waiting to show him around.

"You kept the beard, huh? I heard Grizzly Adams is the hot look this
fall." Frohike grinned, scarily cheerful now. "Come on, I got to show
you this place."

It was almost dark as they walked from the small shower block into the
larger building. This was a decommissioned military compound and bore
all its hallmarks -- like long featureless hallways painted in sludgy
colors. Only every third or fourth fluorescent tube was lit.

Frohike was babbling enthusiastically about electricity and water
supplies. Mulder was trying not to tune him out but everything felt so
unreal. Frohike looked just as he always had the day after the paper's
deadline, weary, scruffy and eager to share the latest scoop.

"Jack picked this place because it's easy to defend than most places
-- you got the fence all round, the river blocking one approach," he
said. "There are empty houses nearer the river but most people prefer
to stay here in the main building, it's safer and he knew it would be
the only place we could get the power going."

Frohike stopped and looked at him, expecting a response. Mulder
nodded. "We got a generator rigged and the fuel should tide us over
the winter and into spring if we power just this building and the
gym," he went on, then gave a twisted smile. "We've even got a sauna.
We heat stones in the furnace or in the back of the ovens when we
cook, carry 'em over in firebuckets."

What did he want, a standing ovation? Mulder grunted and tried to
readjust the straps of the backpack so they came down on unbruised
skin for a change. 

"Want me to take that?" Frohike asked, holding out his hand.

Mulder shook his head. Frohike shrugged and led him further through
the complex. "Ain't so far to your room now, anyhow. It's arranged so
that we're all in corridors off the main living area. Jack thinks it's
easier to get a community going that way."

Well, wasn't Jack the all-knowing fucking messiah? 

The carpeting matched the walls and the cubicles: a dusty mauve,
scuffed and scarred from years of use. The paint on the woodwork was
cracked, and the ventilation system wheezed as it pumped warm air
through the rooms. They walked through a small maze of cubicles, some
with pallets under their desks, until they reached the cafeteria.

The main body of the hall was filled with long tables with chipped
melamine tops. Some had bench seats next to them, others had rickety
chairs pushed beneath. "This is the best place to meet. We usually all
eat dinner together here. Saves food and energy, plus we get to
talk."

"Regular scout camp," Mulder muttered. "Do we get to sing songs and
roast weenies round the fire too?"

There was a small creaking sound as fists wrapped in leather
fingerless gloves clenched and flexed but when he answered he sounded
good-humored enough. "Only on special occasions." 

After days of dead air between him and Scully, Mulder was pleased to
see that he could still push someone's buttons -- then guilt hit.
"Uh... how many people did you say are here, Frohike?"

Frohike smiled. "Almost fifty."

Mulder shook his head. Only fifty, holed up in a grimy labyrinth like
lab rats, with no idea what winter would bring. The height of their
achievement had been getting the power on again. Was this what he had
dragged Scully across hundreds of miles of country for?

He wandered over to the corner nearest the door where there were two
moth-eaten sofas, a couple of grubby easy chairs and two shelving
units crammed with books. Mulder ran a finger along the mismatched
spines, an awkward glissando. 

When he first looked at it, it appeared to Mulder that there was no
order at all, but look closer and it was arranged with a weird kind of
logic. An Austen omnibus edition was next to Astrophysics, Shakespeare
sharing shelf space with the collected Sandman editions.

He studied the shelves. It reminded him of a brain-mapping system he'd
tried with his X-Files before Scully came along and insisted on
prosaic A-Z cabinets and everything in its right place. All that
information he'd had, all the links he'd made, and he still hadn't
been able to make sense of it.

"Alphabetical by title and/or author," he murmured. "That's...
innovative."

He was surprised to see Frohike wince. "Yeah. That's Langly. We pooled
most of our books and he decided this is how they should be filed.
He's kind of insistent about it. It's one of his ..." Frohike waved a
gloved hand as if that would conjure up the right word. "...things."

"Conan the Librarian, huh?" Mulder's mouth turned up in a brief smile.
This time Frohike didn't return it. "God. Here be geeks. How many
copies of Lord of the Rings?"

"Eleven at the last count. Don't worry, man, I'm sure someone brought
their Playboy collection." 

Mulder wasn't in the mood for wisecracks. He wasn't in the mood for
company of any kind. "Can we finish the grand tour later, Frohike?"

"Uh. Yeah. Sure." Frohike looked disappointed, but nodded and led him
out of the hall, down another featureless corridor. In one of the
rooms someone was playing something plaintive on a guitar. They
rounded a corner and Frohike pushed open a brown door.

Mulder hoped that it was a trick of tired eyes that made him see small
shapes scuttling into dark corners.

It was a small office with a single mattress on the floor against one
wall and some blankets and a pillow tossed on it. There was a desk and
chair against the other and a small sink in the corner with a doorless
cupboard below it, a mirror above. Frohike held a hand out, like the
gracious hostess displaying a sumptuous guest room. Mulder wanted to
laugh at the absurdity of it. 

"We saved you this," Frohike said.

"Hey, Fro, you shouldn't have." 

Frohike frowned. "It *was* cleaned out, Mulder, I swear. It's just
that we were expecting you a whole lot earlier than this."

"Sorry, Global armageddon does tend to put a crimp in a guy's travel
plans." 

He felt a mess of anger boil up inside him, and willed Frohike to go
away, but his friend just looked at him with something a little too
like pity. Mulder turned away before any questions could be asked.

Light barely seeped into the narrow cinderblock room past thick wool;
a ragged square of brown blanket had been stapled across the high,
wide window. Frohike saw Mulder staring at it. "Blackout curtain. We
were worried about other people knowing that a whole lot of us are
here. We're using candles where we can. All the lights everywhere go
off at 9 o'clock anyhow."

"Frohike, this is a broom closet."

Frohike looked awkward. "Well, janitor's office, technically but --"

Mulder looked at the scuffed paintwork, the upturned beer crate that
served as a bedside table. "Jesus. Are we all in places like this?"

Frohike's expression turned thunderous. "No, the rest of us are booked
into the fucking Hilton. What do you think?"

Mulder grimaced, and tried to pick up his pack. A strap broke and an
embarrassing sprawl of dirty clothing tumbled out to make bright
patterns against the gray. 

Frohike's face softened a little. "Okay, it is small, but least you
got your own room, man. Most of us are sharing space and it'll only
get worse as the fuel begins to run out. What happened to you guys
anyhow? And I thought you were bringing Scully's mom."

"Damn it, Frohike, not now." Mulder leaned against the desk. "Scully's
mom died a couple weeks ago," he added. "It's part of the reason we're
late."

"Aw, Jesus," Frohike murmured, laying a hand on his shoulder, and his
sympathy made the emotions surge up through Mulder, until grief felt
like a logjam in his throat and the pressure behind it building,
building.

"Look I'll give you the full report later. Just... not now."

Frohike nodded, backing away. "Sure, Mulder, take it easy. It's only
half an hour before dinner. I'll come get you then, introduce you." 

And somehow it was twilight and Mulder was in the safe place he'd been
running towards for weeks -- and he didn't feel any different. He
wondered how Scully was, whether she was finding it as hard to adjust.
She'd disappeared inside herself, so deep that it worried and
infuriated him at the same time.

Voices moved down the corridor outside. A couple of moments later
there was a light rapping on his door. Frohike peered around the jamb.
"Hey, Mulder, chow time," he said. 

"Be right there," Mulder replied, giving his reflection one last
baleful glare before leaving the room. In the hallway, a single
fluorescent tube buzzed and flickered, its light harsh after the warm
glow of the candle.

Conversation echoed faintly through the corridors accompanied by a
sweet scent that it took his brain some time to identify as cooked
meat. His mouth watered at the thought of something he hadn't
personally pried out of a can and burned over a portable stove.

"Mulder!" The voice was a reedy tenor, unusually high with delight: he
recognized it immediately and turned. Byers strode down the corridor,
his face stretched in a broad smile. He looked a little thinner but
his beard was still trimmed, his open-necked cotton shirt was
unrumpled and he still looked as if he had ironed the creases into his
gray pants with a ruler and a set square. It was comforting somehow.

For one scary moment, he thought Byers was going to hug him, but by
the time he reached Mulder, he was simply reaching out for a
handshake. "Good to see you," Byers said, taking Mulder's right hand
in both of his. "It's really, really good to see you." 

Byers gestured towards the dining room and they began walking towards
the source of the noise. "So, Mulder, we were expecting you weeks ago.
What happened to you?"

Byers' voice trailed off and Mulder's peripheral vision caught Frohike
grimacing and making a gesture -- probably hacker semaphore for "leave
it alone, man." 

"Food first," Byers said firmly. 

"So, where's Langly?" Mulder asked.

Byers shuffled his feet, looked down for a second. "Probably in the
dining hall. He likes it in there." Mulder spotted the glances that
flashed between his friends but neither was revealing anything. He
filed the question away for later.  Looked like he wasn't the only one
with stories that hurt too much to tell.

+-+-+-+

FIMBULWINTER (2/12)
----------------------

Somehow, now that it was soaked in lamplight and filled with the chink
of metal on plates and the hum of chatter, the cafeteria didn't seem
so scruffy and pathetic. There were about forty people in there, of
all ages. 

Mulder watched from the doorway as a couple of girls and a boy, all
under 10, were playing with a battered Connect 4 set near the
bookshelves. A blonde woman wearing jeans and a blue sweater sat close
to them, reading a dog-eared copy of The Economist but keeping half an
eye on the children.

They were a ragtag bunch, as if a gaggle of college computer majors, a
MUFON conference and a survivalists' group had treble-booked a lecture
hall. 

Someone laughed and Mulder expected a shocked hush to fall across the
tables but others joined in. It was all so ...normal. 

His eyes were drawn to the far side of the room. It was the first time
since Heniston that he hadn't seen Scully with her hair scraped back.
Instead, it curled damply around her reddened face and appeared to be
several shades lighter. She was sitting with a couple of women, two of
maybe fifteen women in the room. The other two were talking, darting
glances at her; Scully was looking out across the packed tables, her
mind a million miles away again.

He felt a hand on his upper arm. "Come on, Mulder, the food'll get
cold," Byers said, leading him in. "And to be honest, one of its few
charms is that it's hot."

Frohike grunted. "Its only freaking charm, more like. Cynthia's sick
again so Jon is cooking tonight."

"Oh, Lord," Byers muttered faintly. 

At that moment Scully looked directly at Mulder and her mouth curved
upwards in a tight, awkward smile. He became aware that the hall had
fallen silent and forty pairs of eyes were trained on him.

"Should I be hearing dueling banjos?" he asked.

"It's just that not many people know how to find us and you're our
only new arrivals in more than a week," Byers said.

"The only ones we let in, you mean," Frohike muttered. "And anyway,
they know who you are."

"They *know* who I am?" Mulder let displeasure thread through his
tone. "How would they 'know' me?"

Byers looked a little embarrassed. "Well, these are our kind of
people, Mulder. Hackers, truth-seekers, independent thinkers..."

"Psychos," muttered Frohike.

"...and they keep a track of events. There's only one person here who
had never heard of The Magic Bullet newsletter or The Lone Gunman."

"Wow. All 47 of your readers in the same place."

"Fuck you, man," Frohike said, but smiled.

"Put two and two together and add in the 'net, and M.F. Luder's forays
into the journalistic arts and most people know who you are," Byers
added. 

"You have a certain notoriety in this sort of community, Mr. Mulder."
The voice behind him was low, throaty and commanding, like Skinner's,
every word clipped as if the speaker resented time spent talking when
he could be doing something.

Mulder turned. The owner of the business-like voice was black,
powerfully built, maybe five foot eight. Close up, Mulder could tell
that the man was older than he had first thought, perhaps late 50s. He
was clean-shaven with skin like worn, creased leather; laughter lines
scored deeply into it as he smiled. 

He wore a blue cotton shirt and navy pants like it was a uniform, a
bunch of keys jangling like windchimes at his belt. "Your reputation
precedes you," the man said and for a second, Mulder was reminded of
Kersh and his headmasterly disdain for everything Mulder stood for.

Then Mulder sensed a familiar presence by his side as if it were a
source of heat. Scully had joined him in the center of the hall and
was staring at the man with the same blend of interest and cool,
detached scrutiny she had used to disconcert a thousand suspects.

"As does yours, Dr. Scully," the man added, and the smile finally
reached his narrowed brown eyes. He held a hand out. "Jack Hughes."

So this was the great and all-powerful Jack, Mulder thought.
Everything about him proclaimed him to be a soldier, from his
ramrod-straight back to the way his hand had snapped forward, as
though the handshake was an aborted salute. 

There was a beat of silence and then Scully stepped forward and took
Jack's hand. "Pleased to meet you, sir," she said, then looked abashed
as if she could sense Mulder's irritation flickering at the honorific.

"Age..." Mulder began, stretching out his hand, and then paused.
"Mulder. Just Mulder these days."

Jack nodded. "We're a small community as you can see," he said,  and
then, raising his voice to encourage all the hall to listen. "But Mr.
Mulder, Dr. Scully, you're welcome here."

There were murmurs of assent from the people sitting around them. Jack
ushered them back towards the table Scully had left. The rest of the
group seemed to take it as a sign that the show was over. They still
attracted curious glances but the talking and clatter of cutlery on
mismatched china resumed.

+-+-+-+

Frohike listened as Jack began to ask his friends about their journey,
polite questions but in a tone that demanded answers. Scully's answers
were clipped and shorn of all but the most basic information. Mulder
wasn't speaking unless addressed directly.

Yes, they'd come from Washington right after the electromagnetic pulse
that knocked out the electricity and every damned thing else. 

No, they hadn't taken the direct route. They had stopped off in
Heniston for three weeks to help out, then carried on to Louisville,
where the truck broke down. They'd walked the rest of the way. 

Yes, they'd encountered the sickness in Heniston but no, they couldn't
do anything about it. No, they hadn't been ill.

Even Jack knew he was getting the heavily abridged version but Frohike
wasn't sure he was capable of letting it alone. Jack felt that every
scrap of information was vital, debriefing was a dish to be served
immediately and all that other military horseshit, but Frohike could
tell that Mulder's patience was wearing thin.

Frohike contemplated telling Jack to back off but decided that a
subtler approach was best. "You guys must be starving," he said,
addressing Mulder and Scully. "C'mon and get something." He led them
toward the serving hatch. "The food may taste like the scrapings from
between my toes but it goes fast."

He caught Linda's eye as he passed; she appeared amused by his mother
hen act. He shot her a quick grin and set off across the hall.

He stopped in front of the hatch and Mulder shuffled into him -- he
must be so tired that he was on autopilot. Frohike peered into the
serving hatch and banged on the half-closed metal shutter.

"Yo! Service!"

Today's cook appeared from round the corner. He was whipcord-thin,
balding, very tall and in his mid-30s. He flashed a grin at Frohike.
"See, you *want* my food now," he said, a thick glottal accent slowing
the words.

"Yeah, well, I hear you're moving towards the edible end of the
cuisine spectrum this evening and I need to taste this miracle
myself."

Jon raised his eyebrows. "Hah. You're lucky we're still speaking to
you after your last turn on the cooking rota. What was that anyhow?"

"Boeuf bourgignon. And jealousy is an ugly emotion, my friend,"
Frohike replied. "Jon Kjartansson, this is Mulder and Dana Scully."

Jon held out a large spindly-fingered hand streaked with dishwater.
"Glad you got here. We've heard a lot about you," he said with a broad
smile.

Mulder shot Frohike a pointed look but smiled at Jon and shook his
hand. Scully nodded politely. Jon doled out two bowls of a thick brown
stew larded with gray lumps vaguely reminiscent of meat. Frohike
looked over his shoulder and saw that Jack was three tables away
talking to Grant about plans for the gardens. The man never did know
when to let up. Crisis averted, for now.

"So how's your boy?" he asked Jon.

Jon scowled. "Not good. Still wheezing."

"Scully's a doctor. She'll get him well again."

"I'll do what?" Scully asked from behind Frohike. He turned to see her
taking a bowl of stew from Mulder. She was swaying on her feet, more
tired than he had seen her in years.

"We got a couple of people ill. Some nasty flu and stuff."

The bowl tilted in Scully's hands, a wave of brown sauce spilling over
its edge, splattering onto the grimy black and white tile. 

"Scully, it might not be the same thing..." Mulder said, as if trying
to convince himself.

She ignored the plea in his voice, and set the bowl on the table,
looking as grim as she had when they first arrived. "Show me," she
demanded.

Her hands had a slight quiver. They probably were both in that stage
of fatigue where walls bend around you and your eyes conjure specters
out of shadows. Frohike had been there himself. 

"It's not this plague thing," he told her. 

"Frohike, I've seen this in action. If this is..."

"It's not." Frohike cut her off. "Trust me. No one's dying here. It
can wait until after dinner."

He looked at Mulder for support. There was a long moment of silence.
Then Mulder sighed and then said: "Scully, come eat. Five minutes
won't make a difference." He shambled off to the table like a
sleepwalker.

Scully's eyes were squeezed shut. She breathed heavily for a moment.
Then she drew herself up straight, and Frohike sensed that she was
about to argue again.

He picked up her bowl and handed it to her, one corner of his mouth
curling into an encouraging smile as he sucked a droplet of spilled
stew from between his finger and thumb.

"Come on, be brave," he said. "The food ain't that bad."

She let out a soft choke -- call it half a laugh if he felt generous.

"Scully, it's just the usual winter stuff -- colds, flu,
bronchitis..." This time she surrendered, and turned to follow Mulder
to the table.

Frohike offered up a silent prayer: Let me be right.

+-+-+-+

Oh, God. Not again.

Scully stood in the doorway, unable to make herself take the last step
forward. She should have known they would have sickness here, too.

It was one of the larger conference rooms, filled with an assortment
of cots. There were still a couple of old Army flow charts tacked up
on the walls, yellowing at the edges. A table pushed against the far
wall under the windows held bottles of water, a slim assortment of
medicines, and a small camp stove. Someone had rigged up clothes lines
across the room and sheets stamped faintly with "Property of the U.S.
Army" could be drawn across and pegged in place to form curtains
around several of the beds.

"Excuse me, Dr. Scully?" 

She started at the touch on her shoulder and moved into the conference
room.  She looked around more slowly before turning her attention to
Jack, who was accompanied by a balding young man dressed in a long,
thick multi-colored sweater of the kind usually worn only by
fashion-impaired students. "This is Alan. He's been looking after
things here."

It wasn't as bad as she had feared -- only three of the cots were
occupied, and none of the patients appeared to be in any distress.
Certainly there wasn't any of the painful coughing that had been the
soundtrack in Heniston. 

"I'm glad you're here," Alan said, smiling nervously. "I've been
filling in -- did a year at med school --but none of us have any real
medical training." He crossed the room to the table and lit the small
stove. "This is the only way we have to sterilize our equipment at the
moment; I'm afraid we're very short on anything but basic medical
supplies." He inserted an elderly glass thermometer into the pot
balanced on top of the stove, and then looked back at her. "Would you
like to meet your patients?"

Jack hung back, studying her reactions. Scully fought the urge to
close her eyes in denial, and simply nodded. 

In the end, it was much better than Scully had expected. None of the
three had the mutant tuberculosis she had seen in Tennessee; instead
they suffered from a bad head-cold, a nasty case of bronchitis
exacerbated by smoking, and asthma. There wasn't much she could do for
the young man with the cold, but at least she could reassure everyone
they weren't about to die. The woman with bronchitis needed
antibiotics, but she wasn't in any danger at the moment. 

The last was the asthma patient. This was a boy of maybe seven or
eight, with hair that looked almost white in the dim lighting. He was
crouched over a large, battered book, reading it by the light of a
cheap keyring flashlight.

"This is Sean, " said Alan. The boy looked up; his eyes were a
remarkable dark blue and his lashes were long and dark. 

"What are you reading?" she asked. He picked the book up and handed it
to her wordlessly. She didn't recognise the language but the
illustration was familiar: a woodcut image of a warrior on his horse, 
staring out of the page, two ravens flying in his wake. "Odin?" He
nodded solemnly. 

He flinched a little as she put the cold stethoscope against his chest
and asked him to breathe out. She dug deep and found a smile for him,
which he returned, shyly. The boy's dark blue eyes focused on her as
she listened to his lungs, and checked his pulse and temperature. She
was sure his eyes followed her as she turned away.

Finished, Scully moved over to the table, and nodded for Alan to join
her. Jack stood by the door, watching. Scully had the sense that she
was being measured for this task, judged. It wasn't a feeling she
cared for.

"Is this it for your medical supplies?" She asked, casting a bleak eye
over the array. There were some bandages, a bottle of hydrogen
peroxide, and an assortment of painkillers. Nothing prescription, and
no antibiotics. Alan nodded.

Jack walked toward her. His manner was gentler now, very different
from the colonel demanding answers that he had been in the hall
earlier. "Pretty much. We -- I had expected a local doctor to join us,
and he had promised to bring an extensive supply of medical equipment
and drugs, but . . . well, he never showed. I don't know what happened
to him."

Scully could see how tired he was. She wondered how much willpower it
took to hold a community like this together and felt the odd need to
reassure him, to make him feel better. 

"All right. Alan's done a good job. I think Cynthia's going to be
okay; we need to build up her immune system again. And we definitely
need antibiotics but none of them have the tuberculosis I saw out
there."

Jack didn't smile, but his face relaxed enormously, and Scully
realized what a frightening thing it must have been to allow those who
were sick to stay in the compound, given the infection and death rates
of the illness outside. Jack had taken a great risk, one that might
not have paid off. She wasn't sure she would have taken that risk
herself.

"Dr. Scully, you have no idea --" He broke off as another man entered
the room. 

"Hey, Jon," said Alan. Scully looked up. It was the cook from earlier.
He crossed to Sean's cot, and crouched down to talk to him. It looked
as if the boy was asking for a bedtime story from the book. Alan
crossed over to sit by Cynthia's bed. Their conversation was soft and
punctuated by her wheezy laughter.

Scully and Jack were silent, watching. Scully looked out the window
when Jon leaned forward to kiss Sean's forehead. The sky had cleared
after sunset, and a hint of color remained on the western horizon,
painting the sky faintly with orange and purple stripes. Alan lit a
candle. The room was quiet enough that Scully could even hear the
faint honking of an over-late flock of geese on its way south.

It was early in the winter yet; the worst of the weather hadn't hit.
She wondered if this little group of anarchists had thought to lay in
enough fuel to get them through the winter. If they didn't have enough
fuel, they would have to close off a lot of these buildings and rooms,
maybe move everyone into one place to conserve heat. She didn't want
to. She wanted to stay quiet in the little room Linda had shown her on
the second floor. She didn't want to deal with people, with patients,
with Mulder.

She realized Jack was speaking to her again. "--to be okay, right
Doctor Scully?"

"Oh. Yes," she said, turning to face Jack and Jon. "Cynthia and your
son should both be fine. And you both should call me Dana, or just
Scully. 'Doctor' seems so formal here." 

Jon was absurdly tall, Scully realized; he had several inches even on
Mulder, and when he looked at her he canted forward at his hips. She
was reminded of the wire-frame birds some people kept on their office
desks, that rocked back and forth for hours.

"Doctor-- excuse me, Dana," he said, and smiled. "Thank you very
much."

"I haven't done anything yet, Jon," she responded. "But I think he'll
be fine as soon as we get some medicine for him. Jack, do you think we
can get some medical supplies soon? Winter is coming and people will
be getting ill, even if it's not the epidemic."

Jack nodded briskly, his dark eyes intent. "It sounds like it's time
for a trip into town. You'll need to tell me what to look for. I'll
start making arrangements." With a rapid-fire smile at them both, Jack
headed out the door. The room seemed oddly silent then, as if Jack had
taken the air with him, and they were left with vacuum. 

After a long moment, Scully turned to the table and began to sort
through the meager supplies, inventorying what they had and
calculating what they might need. "How did you get here, Jon?"

"I was at a biochemistry conference in Chicago when a friend of mine
called me. He said I had to leave immediately, and come here."

"And you did?" They had very little in the way of bandages or
disinfectants. "You must trust your friend greatly."

"Yes, I do. And it worked -- I am safe, with my son. But my wife is at
home, in Reykjavik. She still had classes, you see." His voice
dropped. "She was supposed to meet us in Chicago in three more days so
we could visit her parents. I don't know where she is. Whether she is
safe. "

The sky was almost fully dark now. Jon pulled a pack of matches out of
his pocket and lit two more candles in the middle of the table. The
light didn't go very far, but it was enough to illuminate the scrap of
paper on which Scully was taking notes. After a long moment she looked
up at Jon. He was picking at the wax built up on the table, glancing
at her and then down again. His eyes, even in the dimness, were the
same color as his son's.

She was the doctor, the expert, the FBI agent. She was supposed to be
the one who knew.

"I'm sorry, Jon, I don't -- we haven't heard anything from overseas.
We haven't heard anything from just about anywhere." Scully couldn't
look at him as she said it. Stars were coming out. There was one spark
of light, probably a planet, resting on the top of the oak tree
outside the building.

She didn't know if they would.

+-+-+-+

//December 6//

The remote December sun hung low and pale in a sickly sky as Mulder
let the door to the main block swing shut, trying to remember the way
from yesterday.

Frosty air pinched at his face and his breath billowed from his
nostrils. Seven-thirty am and the compound was stirring. He had wanted
to get away before everyone else was up but he'd slept badly until
about 4, then like the dead after that, so his only option now was
stealth. 

It was weird. They'd kept going for so long, hoping to find the others
and now all he wanted was time on his own, to process. 

He began the short walk to the gate, boots crunching on frost-glazed
snow, working out what he would tell the guy on guard duty as he
left.

"Yo, Mulder!" 

Shit. Frohike. He turned. The little man had emerged from the gym
block with a towel draped over his shoulder. Mulder nodded as Frohike
came to meet him.  "Pumping iron again?"

"Oh yeah, I'm The Rock's tougher buddy, I'm a man mountain," Frohike
flexed a arm, then fell into step with Mulder. "You think Scully will
appreciate my manly physique?"

"I'm sure you're filling her wildest dreams as we speak."

Frohike shot him a wry grin. "So, what gives?"

"Just taking a morning stroll."

"In the snow?" Frohike asked. Steam was rising from his wet hair.

"Okay, so it's a long, cold morning stroll," Mulder said, lengthening
his stride. "Gotta go."

Frohike moved into his path again, like a headmaster blocking the
escape route of a rebellious student. Mulder sighed. "I'm just gonna
walk back to the truck, see if I can get it started. If I can't, I'll
drag the stuff back myself. Can't leave it there or it'll be stolen."

"Did you leave much?" Frohike asked. "Looked to me yesterday like you
were carrying the contents of a Kmart on your backs."

Mulder shook his head. "Well, no, we already carried most of it. But
there's stuff I wouldn't want to lose. Stuff I wouldn't want Scully to
lose."

"Scully not going with you?"

"No." He knew his voice was too taut, a giveaway, but the last thing
he wanted was to repeat the miserable trudge of yesterday, the way her
silence had felt like blame.

Frohike was staring, sympathy in his eyes. Mulder felt his temper
snap, as if it were a plank that had given way under his weight,
rather than something he could control. 

"No, Frohike. She's a doctor, she's busy, she's already tired and
she's got people to look after now, a job to do. Whereas me, I could
sit on my ass reading eleven versions of Lord of the fucking Rings and
no one would notice -- or else I could do something useful and fetch
the damned truck."

Frohike held his hands up in surrender. "Okay, okay. A laudable aim,
my friend, but she's gonna be mad. It's not safe out there."

"I'm a big boy now, they let me out on my own a lot." He sighed as he
saw Frohike frown again. "It's okay, if anyone comes near me I'll
shoot them."

Frohike appeared unmoved by the sarcasm. "What about the sickness?" he
asked. "You gonna shoot the bugs too?"

"Maybe, if I see 'em first."

Frohike sighed and a jet of white air shot upwards like the plume from
a steam train. "And you didn't ask her, right? What the hell is with
you two anyhow, you have a bust-up?"

Mulder shook his head. He could have handled an argument but he
couldn't stand her defeated silence. The last time he had tried to
reach her, she'd been repelled.

"I have to go," he said, and made to walk away. 

Frohike wrapped a hand around Mulder's forearm. "Wait. You can't go
alone. I'll grab the van. There's about enough gas left in there to
get us there and back. When I get the truck fixed, you can follow me
home."

There was no way round it, he was going to have company. He sighed.
"*When* you get it fixed? That's confidence."

"I have a talent for auto mechanics," Frohike said. "It's one of my
many gifts. Failing that, we'll tow."

+-+-+-+

FIMBULWINTER (3/12)


Almost eight am, and they were making slow progress. Yesterday's snow
had partially melted and then frosted over until it rose in ridges
over the pavement like reptile skin. The wheels of the van hummed and
jigged as they slithered past fallen branches and abandoned cars.

Mulder sensed the questions simmering in Frohike's mind, none of which
he felt like answering. He flicked the cassette deck on, and hiked up
the volume.

"Twenty, twenty, twenty-four hours to go, I wanna be sedated..."

Wincing, he flicked it off again.

"Ah, The Ramones..." murmured Frohike, "a perfect song for every
occasion."

"I guess there's no point trying the radio."

"I don't think the radio'll be playing the Ramones any more, man."

"Frohike," Mulder said, "what's going on with Langly?"

Frohike's knuckles tensed into whiteness around the wheel. 

+-+-+-+

Eight-thirty and fields dotted with farmhouses were giving way to
lines of neat but silent suburban houses. The van crawled along in a
low gear so it made as little noise as possible. It was just as well,
as Mulder had to listen hard to catch Frohike's words; his voice was a
scrape of broken glass, scratchy and low.

"...we all saw it, man, but Langly ...  he took it bad.  They were all
dead, all of them, and Mikey -- well, they kept Mikey alive a long
time."

He drew in a sharp breath. "Bad as anything I've seen and I've seen
some nasty shit in my time. And then we found a wreck a few days later
-- a bus and three cars.  Looked like a couple of kids had survived
the crash but no one was alive when we got there. And you know what
he's like about kids..."

Actually, Mulder didn't know what Langly was like about kids. He'd
always thought he knew his friends pretty well but it appeared he'd
got that wrong too. 

"We did what we could, which was practically fucking *nothing*. And
then we split. Byers was driving, I was navigating and neither of us
wanted to speak. Langly went wonky about when we found Mikey, and only
got worse after that for a while.  Didn't want to talk, didn't seem to
know where he was, doing weird shit. 

"Sometimes, he'll like, snap out of it for a couple hours or maybe a
day, and you get a glimpse of the inner punkass we know and love and
then, boom, nothing again. Disappears off inside himself."

Mulder heard Scully's voice in his head, wry and warm like it used to
be, as she'd told him how Langly had keeled over at an autopsy. "I
think it was all the blood. Maybe he's squeamish." And then, because
she'd forgiven them for the Las Vegas incident by that point: "Poor
guy."

+-+-+-+

By eight-fifty, Frohike had turned the van onto a state route running
parallel to the highway. Based on what Mulder had told him, Frohike
thought it would shorten the trip to the truck. 

"...she just got sicker and sicker, and there was nothing Scully could
do. Of course, she didn't see it that way."

"Of course not." Frohike would lay bets that Scully hadn't slept that
whole time.

"We ended up waiting it out in a Motel 6 two, three days out of
Heniston. Maggie was too sick to move. She lasted maybe two days. I
buried her in the woods. No marker."

"Jesus, I'm sorry, man." Frohike clasped Mulder's shoulder for a
second and then returned his hand to the wheel.

"Scully's the one you should say that to. It was her mom."

"Yeah, but nevertheless, I'm sorry." 

Mulder shrugged. Frohike looked across and tried to catch his eye.
"Was there something else? Yesterday, you both seemed kind of, well,
off-whack."

Mulder stared resolutely ahead. "It's fine. We're just tired."

"Is that all?"

"Yeah. She's... well, we've been through a lot. It's fine, really."

Frohike let the lie go. Mulder and Scully had their own weird rhythms
of disagreement; during that business with the Fowley chick he'd
learned the hard way that intervening seldom helped. They'd be over it
soon enough.

"You do not want this back at the compound, believe me," Mulder said.
"Even if it means locking the whole world out. It's like a turbo
version of tuberculosis and it's engineered to be lethal."

Well, that about confirmed all their suspicions. Frohike nodded:
"Yeah. It's in Louisville already."

Mulder looked thoughtful. "How do you know for sure?"

"Jack goes to Louisville every week. "

"Just Jack?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because we're trying to maintain some kind of quarantine, even though
we let you guys in. And we're pretty well-stocked at the compound and
we don't want to lead people back there, sick or not. Jack has a
contact he speaks to."

"What sort of contact?"

"An old friend of his. Guy in the emergency administration." Mulder's
eyebrows began to raise. 

Frohike cursed to himself. Until they had met him, Jack had been a
hard sell even to Byers, who knew that he'd met the guy back at the
dawn of creation, let alone Langly. 

"It's okay, Mulder, I know it looks a little hinky but Jack's an old
friend of mine."

"Of *yours*?" Mulder asked incredulously. "Since when did you have
friends in the military?"

"He's a pal from way back."

"How far back?"

"Twenty-five years. No ... longer... we were in Europe at the same
time."

Mulder was still staring, obviously waiting for an explanation.
Frohike sighed. "Look, way back at the dawn of time, when dinosaurs
roamed the Earth, yadda yadda yadda, I was with the Company in Europe.
CIA surveillance. I didn't last long.  Jack and me, well ... we kept
in touch, kinda, after I turned away from the dark side of the
force."

Mulder nodded. "So, how well do you know him now?" 

"I'd vouch for him. The Louisville guys trust him."

"It's the military who are spreading this thing..."

"Yeah but..." Frohike began but Mulder cut him off almost
immediately.

"How do you know that Jack's not going to come back one day and say
'Hey guys, some nice warm blankets for you' and the next thing you
know, we're all coughing up a lung, that son of a bitch has skipped
off to join his friends and the Louisville area's little dissident
problem is all sewn up?"

Okay, that was enough. "Because I *know* him, Mulder, like I know you.
And contrary to your assumption, I didn't fall off the turnip truck
yesterday," Frohike said, riled because Mulder's questions were ones
he asked himself in dark moments. 

"We checked him out like he was a stranger. Several times and we ain't
amateurs at that, as you well know. His story checks out. We've been
compiling information on all of this for years; we haven't been
sitting around holding our dicks, investigating garbage monsters and
mutant dogs..."

"It was a wangshang dhole," Mulder muttered. "And you're out of
line."

"Wangshang what-the-hell-ever. He's clean."

There was a silence that stretched to breaking point. Mulder stared
out of the window, his eyes flinty and narrowed.

"Okay. Clean as far as we know." Frohike tried once more. "Look. I
believe he's a good guy and I keep my eyes and ears open. He checked
out. That's the best I can do these days."

It didn't seem to have much effect. Frohike sighed. After a moment
Mulder, sounding calm again, said: "Isn't Jack worried about coming
into Louisville, what with the disease here? Doesn't he ever seem
alarmed?"

Frohike thought back. Jack would usually take a motorcycle twice a
week and disappear. The man talked a good game about how dangerous it
was outside, how virulent the sickness was and how careful he was, but
he never seemed scared to go into the middle of Louisville.

Whereas Frohike, he was only here because Mulder would have gone alone
if he hadn't and he wasn't ready to lose his friend again.

Jack never even mentioned being worried at all, but Frohike had always
written that off to Jack played the stoneface, hero type -- but what
if...

"Okay, Mulder, what do you know?" he asked.

"Nothing," Mulder said. "This is our turn."

Frohike mumbled a few of his favorite oaths under his breath and swung
off to the left. 

+-+-+-+

When they reached the truck, it was a wreck. It had been stripped of
almost everything but the padding on the seats. Someone had wrenched
off the steering wheel. The remains of the camping equipment, the
supplies they had picked up along the journey, they were all gone. A
few scraps of clothing and odd pieces of paper were strewn across the
bed of the truck but they had large muddy boot prints across them.
Whatever else had been in the truck was gone.

"Dammit!" Mulder kicked the truck's remaining inflated back tire.
"What are these people, locusts? We were away, what, 18 hours?"

"You really pick your spots for a breakdown, Mulder. This part of the
city is bandit country. I'm going to have to work miracles. Keep a
lookout."

Mulder scuffed disconsolately at the tarmac with his shoe as he
scanned the neighborhood. "I should've come back last night," he
muttered. 

"Nah, you were dead on your feet, dude." Frohike popped the hood, then
buried himself deep in the engine, trying not to flash butt cleavage
at the cold sky. 

They were fucked. Mulder hadn't changed the oil since J. Edgar was in
charge and the engine had finally seized up. Absent access to a full
garage and a rebuilt engine, the truck was a complete loss.

"No good," he said finally, emerging sweaty and oil-streaked and
hauling his pants up by the belt loop with his clean little finger. 

Mulder rubbed his eyes, looking frustrated almost beyond words. "Well,
thank God we took the research. That was irreplaceable."

"They'd be a weird kind of looters to be after Scully's notes,"
Frohike said, darting looks to either side of them. "Probably out for
food." The mere presence of the wrecked truck was making him nervous.
"Let's go, before they come back for second helpings."

But Mulder was searching the floor of the cabin, obviously hoping to
find something worth salvaging. "Aha!" he said, a note of triumph in
his voice, and drew a small bag from deep under the seat. He opened it
and Frohike caught a flash of burgundy cloth as he stuffed in the few
intact scraps of clothing they had found in the bed of the truck.

Mulder climbed into the van, clutching the bag. He held it up.
"Scully's," he said and for the first time since he arrived, Frohike
thought he actually sounded pleased.

A shout echoed along the empty street. Frohike met Mulder's eyes for a
second, then hit the accelerator.

+-+-+-+

"Just find him and bring him up to the conference room," Jack said,
and stalked off down the corridor. 

Linda Carlyle rolled her eyes. "How the hell should I know where he
is?" she muttered at Jack's rapidly retreating back. She checked her
watch, which was keeping accurate time as far as she knew. Ten minutes
to find Frohike before the summit Jack had called. A summit at which
she planned to remind Jack that she wasn't some grunt he could order
around. 

Linda had been one of the first at the compound -- handed an ugly
keyring and a hand-drawn map late on a Saturday evening by Don, the
best friend she had made at the lab. 

She'd driven out to the decommissioned military compound on the Sunday
before the Pulse hit, feeling rather foolish for believing wild
stories of global meltdown. Only the fact that two plainly terrified
young men had greeted her at the gate and rushed her and Ari inside
had stopped her from turning right around and going home. 

She'd threatened to kick Don's ass but good if this was a stupid
practical joke and he'd promised to join her when he'd picked up his
brother and nephews. She'd stopped believing he would show up now. 

Like most of those who had arrived in those first days, she was
intensely curious about what was going on outside: she'd heard stories
about what Melvin had been through on his journey to Louisville from
DC, and apparently it had been even worse for Dana and her partner.
Linda thought she could like Dana, given time to get to know her. It
was comforting to have another woman around who was also a scientist.

Dana's partner though -- Mulder hadn't struck her as either friendly
or helpful. Yet Melvin talked about him with fondness and even though
she had known Mel less than six weeks, she'd found him to be a shrewd
judge of character. Certainly she knew Frohike was a good guy.

A smile tugged at her lips. She'd known that from the first time she
met him.

Linda blamed it all on the feral cats. She just couldn't resist a man
who was soft on animals -- even the filthy, ragged, vicious ones that
lived in the basement of the building.

By two weeks after the Pulse, life had settled into an oddly smooth
rhythm. They hadn't yet locked the gates -- the rumors of the epidemic
were only just beginning to reach them, and the refugees in the
compound were more concerned about drawing attention to themselves
than keeping people out.

Linda had brought her research materials to the compound in the old
Volvo wagon after Don had tipped her off about this place, but it
seemed absurd to work on invertebrate genetics when the world had
fallen apart.

One afternoon, she had ducked out for a run in the grounds and when
she got back there was a hobbit sawing a hole in the hallway wall.
Linda blinked as her eyes adjusted to the dimmer light inside the
building. Not a hobbit, but a very short, stocky man with greasy grey
hair -- and he was still sawing a hole in the wall.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to let the cat out." This absurd sentence was accompanied
by some creative swearing and banging on the fret saw, which had
apparently gotten stuck in the plaster.

Linda crouched behind the little man and peered at the wall. "I don't
see any cats there."

The saw sprang loose, and he continued cutting. With a squeak and a
groan, a square of plaster came loose, and he pulled it back through
the hole, letting it flop down. There was a scrabbling sound, and
suddenly Linda realized what was going on.

"The cats in the boiler room?" Someone had told her the feral cat in
the basement had littered. One of the kittens must have wandered off
and gotten stuck inside the wall.

"Yeah," he grunted, and reached through the hole, bending his arm, and
scooted a little closer to the wall to get more reach. "There," he
breathed, and then jerked suddenly. "Shit!" But he stayed where he
was, and after a moment started pulling his hand back out.

Cradled in his gloved hand was a small quaking ball of fur. There was
a trickle of blood running down his thumb and disappearing into his
fingerless gloves, and Linda realized the tiny striped kitten had its
teeth locked on his thumb. He didn't say anything, though, and
carefully levered the kitten from its death grip before he solemnly
presented it to her.

Its blood-thirst apparently quenched, or finding Linda's warm hands
more to its liking than the man's gloves, the tiny kitten curled up in
her palms immediately. Linda could feel a faint throbbing in her hands
as the kitten purred but did not move.

She looked at the odd little man and allowed her delight to show. "You
know, in some cultures, the gift of a tribble is enough to constitute
a promise of marriage."

He cackled, and Linda saw a glint of evil humor in his eyes. He pulled
himself to his full height, and bowed formally to her. "Melvin
Frohike, at your service."

"Linda Carlyle at yours," she responded, and allowed him to put a hand
under her elbow and help her to her feet. Her own hands were busy with
the kitten.

"So what shall we call him, Mel?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Gollum, definitely," he announced. "After all, he did nearly -- "

"-- take your finger off," she finished. "Perfect. So did he swallow
the Ring of Doom?"

Melvin slid the small saw he had been using into a khaki tool pouch on
the floor next to him and carefully fitted the square of plaster back
into the hole. "I sure as hell hope not -- there's no way I'm
dissecting kitten poop for the next three weeks."

She couldn't help but laugh -- and she wasn't sure of the last time
she had done that. As she realized that, she stopped, and looked down
again at the kitten curled in her hands. She hoped it was weaned -- if
not, little Gollum was going to have to adjust to evaporated milk, or
make the leap to canned tuna. Was it right, though, to waste their
limited resources on such an indulgence?

Her expression must have said as much, because Melvin stood and put a
hand on her arm. "No -- it'll be all right. And you -- we -- need a
cat."

The kitten had stayed and so had Mel. She appeared to have adopted
them both.

Mel was a prize, Linda knew it already. She could tell by the way he
dealt with Ari. Ari had always been the sharpest and the prettiest.
There was too much to her, and it scared the boys, always had. Things
weren't any different here, where the younger men boggled at her and
the older men leered. Only Mel talked to her like an adult with a
mind. It was odd, but it worked -- Ari bonded with him as she hadn't
with any man since her father had left.

OK, so Linda liked Mel a lot. But that didn't mean she knew all the
places he liked to lurk. Once she'd tried his room she was done.
Damned if she was going to be ordered around. 

In the end she found him by following the angry voices to the computer
room he and Byers had set up. Byers wasn't there -- he'd probably been
collared by Jack earlier -- but Frohike and the two FBI agents were,
and all of them sounded pissed. 

Linda hovered by the door, not wanting to walk in on an argument but
unable to stop herself from eavesdropping. 

Through the small pane of glass in the door she saw Mulder sitting in
a chair by one of the desks, running a dirt-smudged hand though his
newly clean hair.

"I can't believe you went alone," Dana was saying. She had both hands
braced against the edge of the desk, leaning forward, radiating cold
fury. 

Standing awkwardly at the side, looking from one side to the other
like the umpire at a tennis match, was Mel. He looked miserable.
"Hey," he exclaimed. "What am I, chopped liver?" 

"He was *going* to go alone. Tell me, what the hell were you
thinking?"

"I was thinking I would go and get the truck," Mulder said sharply,
"like we agreed."

Dana's left hand smacked down onto the desk, loud like a crack of
thunder. "Bullshit, you would've gone running off on your own, as
usual, so someone had to trail after you and make sure you were
okay."

"Scully, it wasn't like that..." Mel began.

Mulder rose to his full height, which was a pretty big advantage given
his companions. His voice was low, cold. "I didn't *think* you'd
appreciate another eight-mile walk, given how you've been making it
perfectly clear you can't wait to be away from me." 

"Mulder, I'd have gone if you'd thought for one second to ask me. This
is a different world now. You can't just be irresponsible and run off
without a word."

When he next spoke, his tone was cutting. "We're not partners, we're
not joined at the hip and you're not *obliged* to 'trail after me' any
more."

She took a small involuntary step back, then immediately stood
straighter and folded her arms in front of her. "So... what? You
thought that now you'd offloaded me somewhere safe you'd be free to
chase shadows?" she snapped. "Now that you've fulfilled your
*obligation* you don't have to give a shit about anyone else any
more?"

"Hey! Enough already." Mel held up his palms, in a stop gesture, his
face pale beneath the customary stubble. 

Linda couldn't stand to eavesdrop when people were tearing chunks out
of each other like this. It had to stop. She plastered a smile on her
face and pushed the door open. Frohike nodded to her but his usual
grin was missing. "Mel, Dana, Mulder," she said with forced
brightness. "Jack needs us for a meeting, in the upstairs conference
room now."

Dana turned her back on Mulder and nodded, looking weary, rumpled and
angry. 

Mulder was staring at the papers on the desk so intently that Linda
expected them to spontaneously combust. He stayed absolutely still for
a moment, then stalked past Dana and out of the door. His muttered
instructions as to what Jack could go do with himself were specific,
if anatomically unlikely.

+-+-+-+

FIMBULWINTER (4/12)

Mulder finally entered the conference room 15 minutes later and,
ignoring the spare seat next to Dana, squeezed into a chair next to
Linda. Jack had already run through how few cans of coffee they had
and how they were going to have to reorganize the rationing --
dispiriting, everyday business that they usually dealt with after
dinner when everyone was full and warm and pliant. 

It felt as if he had been waiting for Mulder to show up, just filling
in time until the main event. Not everyone was here either; there were
just fourteen people around the table, like an ad hoc inner council. 

Jack continued speaking, taking suggestions for new initiatives in
guarding the compound and how to make more of the smaller offices
inhabitable so fewer people would have to share cramped sleeping
accommodation. Mulder tapped his fingers on the table, shifted
restlessly. Dana glared at him once or twice but he didn't meet her
eyes. His face was cold and immobile. 

Linda suddenly realized that Jack was looking in her direction, and
jerked upright, as if a teacher had caught her daydreaming in class.
Then she understood that it wasn't her he was watching. 

"And finally before we get onto the main business," Jack said,
addressing the room but looking at Mulder and Mel, "I need a volunteer
to organize a work party to siphon the gas out of all unused vehicles
and put it in the main storage tank. We're going to have to use it for
essential trips only. If anyone needs to go somewhere, come to my
office and we'll talk about it." 

As rebukes went, it was subtle. There had been other foraging trips in
the first week, before Mel had arrived, mainly for food, cigarettes
and batteries for assorted personal stereos and Gameboys. They stopped
when the first reports of the illness began to drift in.

Jack had decreed then that it wasn't worth risking the safety of the
compound for mere creature comforts. Of course, no one was actually
forbidden from venturing out -- you didn't tell a bunch of angry,
scared libertarians that they didn't have freedom of movement -- but
anyone who didn't like the ruling was free to quit the place for
good.

She wondered if Mulder was considering it. His jaw worked from side to
side a couple of times but he didn't betray any other emotion. Mel
just looked more frustrated. 

Jack sat back, apparently satisfied that he had put his message
across. "And now we need to work out exactly what we're dealing with
here," he said, "so we can make some plans." He nodded at Mulder. "Mr.
Mulder, Frohike tells us you have a lot of experience with the entity
you suspect may be involved in the Pulse. And that you and Dr. Scully
both have some theories. Can you share them with us?"

There was a long silence. Mulder shrugged and leaned back in his seat.
Dana leaned forward and stared coolly at him from the other end of the
table. Linda suppressed the urge to kick him in the ankle.

"Mr. Mulder?" Jack repeated a little louder.

Heads turned to look at Mulder. He was looking down at his hands, flat
on the table. Finally he looked up and spoke. "What do you want me to
say?"

"Excuse me?" This was not Jack, but Dana. She was frowning, her pale
eyes trained on her partner.

Mulder looked only at Dana. "We've fought this battle for years,
Scully, and we've never really gotten anywhere and we still know
nothing. And what we do know, no one believes. What do we have,
anyway? Your hand-scribbled notes, some scraps of blanket --
nothing!"

His face darkening, Jack leaned forward, drawing all eyes, even
Mulder's, to him. Without saying a word he was the focal point of the
room.

"Mr. Mulder, are you saying that you don't want to help us?"

"I'm saying, I'm not sure we can do anything about this. What do you
think we're dealing with here?"

Jack pursed his lips. "The point of this meeting is to find that out.
Whether this is an attack on our country or a military coup or
something more sinister..."

"And he wins our star prize," Mulder exclaimed, "because it's all of
those things and more."

"And it is our duty to fight back," Jack replied quickly. There were
murmurs of assent from a couple of the men around the table. 

Mulder licked his bottom lip, ran long fingers over his bearded chin.
He hadn't moved from his sprawled position, his big feet splayed under
the table. "And how do we do that if we don't know what we're
fighting? Do we even have the equipment -- because a few shotguns
really isn't going to cut it here."

He sat up now and looked at all of them in turn. "Do we know what
their plan is or how it works? And what if the military decide that
this is a nice little place after all and they want to take it back to
use as a staging post? Do we hide? 

"Suppose we do decide to take them on. What possible difference do you
think a few people can make?"

"There aren't just 50 of us, Mr. Mulder, you know that. There are
cells all over the country of people like us, people who found out in
time and would be willing to fight."

"Cells we can't contact."

As Jack carefully put on his wire-rim spectacles and moved in his
seat, Linda realized it was the first time she had ever seen him
fidget or off-balance. "Well, yes, for now, but making contact will be
a priority soon. If we can pool all our knowledge to help us pinpoint
possible allies --" 

Mulder interrupted: "We can't communicate with them because if we try
they'll track us down and kill us. Or them. Because that's happened to
some cells already, hasn't it? You should know all about that."

There were low mumblings around the table. "Why should I know any more
than you do?" Jack said sharply. 

"Well, you're a soldier, aren't you, Jack? And isn't the military
behind what's going on?"

"Mulder." Dana's voice was tight, angry, "this is not the time --"

"Yes it is," Jack's voice was calmer than Linda would have expected.
"Why don't you tell us why you think so?"

"You know," said Mulder, and he stood up slowly, favoring Jack with a
dark stare, "I don't think that I will." He didn't ask anyone to
excuse him as he left, just squeezed between the chairs and stalked
out of the room.

+-+-+-+

Scully felt as if every pair of eyes in the room was on her, the
silence growing heavier and heavier with every passing second. They
had always disagreed 12 hours out of any 24 you cared to pick, but she
hated it when they fought like that. 

And trust Mulder to lay his paranoiac credentials on the table at the
least helpful moment. 

They had been close at the start of this journey but somehow that had
been stripped away, like everything else. It had been like this since
the day they had found the bodies. He had tried to kiss her and she
had felt nothing but cold sickness that even Mulder, who had bounced
back from the worst kind of personal tragedy, was so low on resources
and hope that he had to turn to that.  And she was so low that she had
nothing to give any more. 

Part of it was grief, but not all. She knew she'd let her temper run
away with her earlier and said too much, been unfair. She'd have to
speak to him later, try to talk him round. 

Jack reminded her of venerable navy men like her father, and it was
hard to shake off that instinctive trust, particularly after last
night's glimpse of vulnerability. But he wanted this information too
badly. 

She drew in a deep breath. "We left Washington on October 23rd,
heading west. We sat out the Pulse in a bunker in West Virginia. Then
we kept heading west, but we ran into... into a roadblock."

Jack's interest was sparked immediately. "What kind of roadblock?"

Scully gave him a steady stare. "Soldiers. They'd shot a man. So we
cut back south and east, and came up through Tennessee."

"How did it take you so long to get here? More roadblocks?"" 

"No," she replied. "We stopped for a while in a town that had been hit
hard by the epidemic."

"Where?" Byers asked. 

"Heniston. We heard that there had been riots and killings in the
cities but in Heniston order was maintained and the infrastructure was
more or less holding up until the disease reached there."

"What was it like?" Jon asked quietly. 

Scully studied the grain of the wooden table, wondering how to even
answer the question. "Not good," she said, hoping they wouldn't press
her on the point. She still remembered the way the people in Heniston
had reacted when she and Mulder had told them the truth. They hadn't
killed the bearers of bad tidings but they'd shunned them quickly
enough.

"How effective was the disease?" Jack asked. Scully's eyes widened at
his choice of words; they tripped all her alarms. She stared at him
hard. He didn't change his expression but he amended: "The casualty
rate, I mean." 

"Very," she replied curtly. She had their attention now but it was
hard to push back the memories that were crowding in on her. "While we
were there, we managed ... we managed to get a lot of data, and some
samples, of the disease. It was enough to draw some conclusions."

"Such as?" Jack's hands were oddly still on the surface of the table.

Scully looked up, glanced once around the table, and said clearly,
"Such as that this disease is a variation of tuberculosis with an
unnaturally-high mortality rate and speed of infection, that it was
engineered to kill people, and that it is being intentionally
distributed with the care packages from the National Guard."

A shiver went around the room. This little anarchists' collective had
never believed that the people holding power now had their welfare at
heart, but the confirmation of the fact still unsettled them. Linda's
mouth was open; she looked stunned. A few of the men were ashen.
Frohike's face was sourly angry. Byers was staring at the table, lost
in thought.

"Thank you, Dr. Scully," replied Jack. His face was grim but the news
certainly hadn't shocked him. "I assume you have some basis for your
conclusions?"

Damned right she did. "Yes, I took samples of the blankets distributed
by the National Guard -- they were coated in the infectious media."
There was a small stir, and she hastened to add: "The samples are all
triple-bagged and locked in a freezer in the basement. So long as no
one disturbs them we should be fine. I had hoped I could analyze the
contagion and look for a vaccine or an antidote."

"So... we need a lab," said Linda, haltingly. "We have to do something
and labwork, well, that I *can* do." 

Jack sighed. "More equipment we don't have."

"So what do we have?" one of the men asked.

Byers' head snapped up; he looked brighter. "Computers," he said. "We
have computers and the programs we need. If not, we can cook something
up." 

"We do have lab space and power," Linda said, a note of hope creeping
in. 

"Got a geneticist and a biochemist, too," said Byers looking at Linda
and Jon. Jon nodded, with a quick smile. "One of the guys is a
chemistry major with a year's pre-med."

"And one more thing," said Frohike. Byers put a warning hand on his
arm and the look on his face was odd now, like shame or contrition.
Frohike shook his hand off and leaned forward. 

"We still have your files, Scully. The ones you gave to us," Frohike
began, his tone apologetic, like the time after they had tricked her
into flying to Las Vegas when they could have just asked. "And -- and
Susanne Modeski was doing some work on them. Some of that data might
be useful -- " 

"My --" For a moment she wondered what he meant. She already had all
the files, didn't she? All the data from Heniston had been in her
pack. Then it dawned on her what he meant. 

All the information that she and Mulder had had on the conspiracy had
been copied and stored with the Gunmen, just in case. Computer files,
tissue samples, her own medical records... Years' worth of work that
had never formed a full picture but might just make sense now. 

"Oh my God," she murmured. "And the samples? Frohike, did you bring
the samples?" Frohike nodded.

Her head was spinning. She couldn't believe that Byers had trusted the
information to that woman, who was hand in glove with the kind of
people who had done this, and yet at the same time, his actions meant
that they had the files with them. Maybe somewhere in the masses of
data might be the answers that would help them fight back. 

She could feel her sluggish, weary brain begin to speed up at the
prospect of having an investigation to pursue.

She rubbed her eyes so she could feel awake, tried to still her hands,
which were shaking a little. "Okay," she said, feeling better than she
had for days. "Okay. It's a start."

+-+-+-+

FIMBULWINTER (5/12)


Once, back when he was a student, Mulder had been trapped in his poky
room in college by one of England's all-day deluges. It was the week
before the start of Michaelmas term and there was no one around to
drag out to the pub so, in a spirit of psychological inquiry, he'd
read "How to Win Friends and Influence People" from cover to cover.

He couldn't remember a chapter titled "Alienating Your Allies At
Important Meetings" but he couldn't figure out why Scully and the
guys, some of the most stubborn, suspicious people he knew, were being
so trusting. Scully with her "yes sir, no sir" attitude to Jack, and
Frohike with his insistence that they should trust some overbearing
asshole who had been working for the other side for the best part of
his life. 

There was nowhere to storm off to in a community this small. Nowhere
warm, anyway. He walked across to the gym but there were three people
in there already. He didn't want to see anyone, so he wandered back to
the cafeteria.

Now that it was daylight, it looked shabby again, but it was better
than freezing outside or stewing in the room he had been given.

He felt a few pangs of hunger -- they'd missed breakfast -- but all
the cupboards in the kitchen were locked and there was a padlock on
what looked like a walk-in freezer. Apparently you ate with everyone
else or not at all.

That was smart, Mulder thought. It reinforced community bonding while
maintaining strict control of food supplies. And he'd like to bet that
the one who had the keys was Jack. 

He had organized the people here into work parties to cook, clean out
the rest of the complex, gather wood from the surrounding area, guard
the place. If you kept people busy, they wouldn't have time to dwell
on their predicament. Nor would they have much time to question orders
that were phrased as requests "for the good of the community".

Stupid, really, to have vented all his anger like that, but he'd
subsisted on hope and his own hot air for years and they were still
screwed. 

He wandered back out into dining area. Over by the books, a familiar
figure slouched in one of the armchairs, bending over a couple of
upturned crates. Mulder squinted to make sure this wasn't some other
spindly hacker with a mess of blonde hair, bad taste in T-shirts and a
love for complex comic books.

"Langly?" He stepped forward, mindful of what Frohike had told him
earlier and unsure of what to expect. He knew a little about dealing
with severe PTSD but that was in the normal world. He had no idea how
bad Langly was. 

The man stared up at him, his moon-pale face slack, eyes glassy. He
had a fistful of playing cards clutched so tightly that they were
beginning to crease. There were more scattered across a piece of
plywood on top of the crates, along with dice and a notebook.

Mulder moved closer and sat in a chair next to him. "Hey," he said
gently.

No response.

"Hey. It's Mulder."

The man blinked slowly, then it was as if someone was slowly turning
up the volume on a radio and the song playing was Langly. 

A smile tightened the skin across his cheekbones and the parentheses
around his mouth became deep grooves again. "Hey. Mulder. Good to see
you."

"You too, man." Mulder was surprised by the strong rush of affection
he felt.

Langly caught his gaze, held it. "Guys told you I wasn't doing so
good, huh?"

Delusional was the word Frohike had used. Mulder winced but decided to
be honest. "Yeah. They mentioned something."

"Hah!" Langly smacked the hand of cards down on the table. "Not today.
Today is a good day."

"Lucky you. The last time I had a good day, the Cubs won the World
Series."

"So you and Scully made it here, huh? How you likin' it?"

"It's okay." Mulder tried not to sound too underwhelmed but Langly
nodded sagely.

"Know what you mean. This hotel is terrible -- the rooms are dirty and
the food tastes like shit. I may complain to the manager."

Mulder bent his head so Langly wouldn't see his face and tried to
formulate a response to that which would remain unthreatening while
not reinforcing the delusion.

There was a soft pushing against his upper arm. He looked up, saw a
hand nudging his shoulder. One corner of Langly's mouth was twisted
upwards. "Joke, man."

Mulder couldn't stop an answering smile from spreading across his
face. "Son of a bitch."

Langly smirked. "Nope, that's the manager. Jesus, that Jack's a
tightass."

Mulder almost smiled. Just his luck that the one person who shared his
opinion needed psychiatric treatment. "Yeah, but I'm told he's such a
great guy."

"Frohike told you that, right?" Mulder nodded and Langly folded his
arms and lounged back in his chair. "Figures. They worked together
back when we were in diapers and Frohike was doing his surveillance
for Uncle Sam in eastern Europe."

"You did the background check?" Mulder asked.

"Does the Pope shit in the woods?" Langly let out a weird giggle.
"Actually, I guess he doesn't any more."

The silence stretched. Langly stilled as though concentrating on a
complex problem, his eyes glazing over again.

"The check?" Mulder prompted.

Langly started and smiled again. "Just like old times. You coming to
us for the lowdown on the bad guys." He leaned back in his chair and
there was a hard glint in his eye. "Guess I'm still useful for
something, even now. "

Mulder gave him an inquiring look but Langly ignored it to start his
recitation: "Jack was a high flier. One of the Army's medal men. Did a
tour in Vietnam, went to Europe, fairly swift promotions but there's
no really weird shit -- unless you count meeting Frohike.

"Jack is promoted again, sent to Germany until reunification. Nothing
weird about that time that we could find. He goes to the Gulf, then
it's back to Germany. Guess he prefers serving overseas. Never been
married, hasn't had any kind of significant other that we can find.
His sister died ten years ago; one nephew lives out in California."

"And after that?"

"Here's where it gets more interesting. He's at Fort Detrick in early
1994, a guard command, easy posting. Then suddenly in October '94, he
gets shipped out to Idaho and three months later he quits, just a year
before it's time to retire. '95 he makes contact with our guys -- and
here we are."

"What do you think?"

"Official story from the army is that he just quit. Had had enough of
the military life."

Mulder raised an eyebrow and Langly stared back. "Don't Scully me,
man," he said. "That's the story they were telling."

"Believing that takes a pretty big leap of faith."

Langly laughed. "Says the Carl Lewis of the FBI. Unofficial sources --
and they were real keen to spread this story -- said that he forgot
how 'don't ask, don't tell' works. They let him leave quietly with
existing benefits intact, so long as he made no fuss." Langly gave a
lopsided smile. "Out of the goodness of their hearts, of course."

"Of course. Do you believe that?"

Langly shook his head. "No. He may be gay, he may not, but he's
definitely smart and careful. I don't believe he would risk his whole
career for a roll in the hay. Got to be more to it." 

"So how did he get tight with the Louisville guys?"

"He knew Mike Tavener, who was the big noise in our circles in this
part of the Midwest. Tavener checked him out, stood up for him.

"Jack told him that he thought the military were planning a coup,
which confirmed stuff Tavener had already heard, not to mention
ratchetting Tav's own paranoia right off the scale."

Mulder looked at Langly, smiling. "Pot? Kettle? Black?"

Langly flashed a brief grin. "Hey, takes one to know one.  Anyway,
they planned this place together 'cause Jack knew the layout from his
days with the army," he added, waving his hand at the canteen. "When
Jack got word it was kick-off time, the guys broke into here, and
moved all the shit they had stockpiled across to here."

"If Tavener was the leader, why isn't he here?"

"Heart attack, man, six months ago." Langly caught Mulder's skeptical
look. "I know, I know, but there were no suspicious circumstances that
anyone could pin down. By that time, Jack was the only other person
who knew all the details of this place and the plan. So Jack takes
over. He's a taking-over kind of a guy. "

"And if the others didn't like it...?"

"They said bye-bye," Langly waved in the direction of the gates.

That meant three scenarios: one, that the story Jack had told Tavener
was true in every part. Mulder dismissed it. Too easy.

Two, that Jack Hughes, after a lifetime of service, discovers some of
the truth about the invasion, begins to ask the wrong kind of
questions. The authorities get rid of him before he can find out too
much. He makes secret contact with the dissident network and somehow
stays alive long enough to be here. 

Or three, all of the above, only this time it's part of the cover
story for a spy sent in to infiltrate the network.

If three was true, they were screwed seven ways from Tuesday because
they'd walked into a trap.

He had no real evidence, just the instinctive feeling that something
was wrong. Perhaps he could investigate, watch the man closely, but he
Scully wouldn't listen to him unless he put concrete proof right in
front of her eyes. She looked at Jack and thought "Daddy" and
"safety".

He turned back to Langly. "What do you think of him?"

"Not my kind of guy," Langly replied. "Don't know how he and Frohike
got so tight. He still thinks everyone should jump to his orders."

"He's probably going to order us to celebrate Christmas." Mulder
pushed his voice down the register until it was more like Jack's. "You
*will* enjoy yourselves. Son, get your skinny white ass to that party
now!"

"We having a Christmas party, man?" Langly asked, no trace of his
usual cynicism in the tone.

"Hell, I don't know," Mulder exclaimed, "it was just an example. I'm
Jewish, what the hell do I care?"

Langly pulled his glasses off and polished them on his T-shirt. He
looked naked and vulnerable without them. "You celebrated it at our
place last year," he said.

"That was because Frohike made the turkey pizza specially. Plus, you
had the beer --" And I was alone, he thought.

Langly smiled. "Oh, right," he said, hooking the spectacle arms behind
his ears. "Pizza sucked ass though. Better not let Frohike cook this
year; dickhead puts jalapenos on everything. If we're having a party
we should just stick to chips and dips and shit like that."

Mulder decided not to touch that one. "Do you trust Jack, Langly? His
story doesn't strike you as too convenient?"

"Hell if I know. Fro and some of the Louisville guys say he's cool." 

"Big chance to take.  What if they're wrong, and this place is no
safer than outside?"  

Langly scowled and his shoulders hunched, as if he were becoming
someone else, someone smaller, younger and afraid. "Here's okay," he
murmured. "I don't want to go anywhere else."

Mulder could sympathize with that. They sat in silence for a while.
Finally Langly blinked, gestured at the cards. "We should play. You
want to play?"

Mulder didn't want to go back to his room, couldn't walk back into the
conference room even though his temper had cooled. "Not if it involves
Lord Manhammer."

Langly shook his head pityingly. "Don't you know anything? That's D
and D. I'm talking cards, man."

Mulder shrugged and smiled. There were worse things he could be doing.
"Sure. Play what?"

"Poker? Blackjack?" Mulder nodded. "Make it interesting?" Langly
asked.

"The usual? Dollar a bet?"

"Oh, a high roller! And a dollar is worth so much these days." Langly
snorted. "Come on, Mulder, get real."  He gathered the cards and
shuffled them with the flair of a casino dealer. "Ten thousand dollars
a bet or it's not even worth kicking your ass."

+-+-+-+

They started playing for landmarks because the money meant nothing.
Mulder was up twenty million dollars, and now owned the Taj Mahal, the
Empire State Building and the Hollywood sign -- or at least, the
little pieces of paper with those words written on them. He only had
two eights but he was hoping he could bluff Langly into folding and
handing him Wrigley Field -- not that he wanted it particularly, but
Langly seemed fond of it.

He realized she was behind him.

In the past she'd almost always announced herself with those tympanic
heels. Now she was in sneakers, and at the wrong height, and he
scarcely recognized either her or himself. She didn't say anything,
didn't touch him, but he felt her presence like an arc light burning
into the back of his neck. 

He didn't turn around. "Hey, Scully. Want me to deal you in? You too
could own the Astrodome."

She ignored that. "Hello, Langly, good to see you." Her tone was
warmer than he'd heard in a while. She sounded better. Langly nodded
at her, smiled in return, but his long fingers were rearranging his
cards nervously.

"May I speak with you, Mulder?" Her voice was soft but he could hear
the edge in it. "In private."

He didn't want to argue with her, not now. "I'm kind of tied up here,
beating Langly to a pulp with my superior poker skills." he said. "Can
it wait?"

She stalked around the table and peered over Langly's shoulder. 

"Langly, he's full of shit, he has a pair of eights," she said,
straightening up. 

"Consider your ass kicked, dude," Langly declared joyfully, snatching
up a piece of paper with 'Every Taco Bell in the WHOLE World' written
on it in his own loopy scrawl. 

Scully, arms folded, shot a grim look across the table. "Now,
Mulder."

He placed his cards on the table and stood up. She was already walking
to the far side of the cafeteria, certain he would follow. 

As they reached the far wall, she abruptly turned round. "What the
hell is all this about?" she asked.

"Just a little game of poker with the guys. *A* guy anyway." 

The little groove between her eyebrows deepened. "At the meeting."

"I just didn't see the point," he said. "What are you gonna do,
bureaucratize the apocalypse?"

Her head tilted back and she let out a noise of exasperation. "Can't
you see it?" She looked at him intently and enthusiasm threaded
through her voice for the first time in he couldn't remember how long.
" I think we can finally do something."

"Such as?"

"We can salvage some proper lab equipment from Louisville. Frohike
just told me that the guys brought all our files from DC -- and I mean
*everything*, Mulder -- and we finally have people who can help us
figure it out..."

"Weren't you *listening* to me?" He found he was yelling but he
couldn't seem to stop. He drew himself up to his full height. "All
I've done is drag you across country for nothing and get your mom
killed miles away from her home."

She flinched at that, and he was sorry, but she had to realize that
all the old rules were gone. "Mulder..." she began, but he cut her
off. 

"If we represent any kind of threat at all," he said, "they will wipe
us out in a second. Even if they don't, the disease could get in and
then we're finished anyway."

He heard her breath catch in her throat. "That doesn't mean we can
give up..." she began. Her hand curled round his bicep but he shrugged
it off, moving out of her reach.

"The best we can hope for is to help these people survive the winter.
Do you really want to deal with Heniston, part two?" 

She caught her breath sharply. "God, no. Of course not, but --"

"Me either. At least if we'd stayed in DC to die I would've had a
comfortable couch and decent stuff to read."

"Come on, Mulder. I can't believe you think that," she said with
absolute certainty. He felt his jaw muscles clench involuntarily as he
bit back a retort about what she did and didn't believe. He wanted to
reassure her but he wouldn't lie.

Her stare grew diamond hard and he wished he could look away. She
advanced on him, arms folded again. "So that's your big solution?" she
asked sarcastically. "Do nothing?"

He didn't know what to say; he was out of ideas. "Scully, do what you
want. Just ... don't harbor any illusions."

She didn't move for the longest time, just stared at him as if he were
a lab result that contradicted every one of her precious scientific
principles.

"I don't know you any more," she muttered and stalked off in the
direction of Frohike's labs.

Well, that made two of them.

+-+-+-+

//December 9//

Jack's face looked like a work of origami in the harsh morning light,
all folds and lines. He was almost the age her father would have been
but you tended to forget that when he was striding around the complex,
full of vitality. Scully thought he looked tired now, as if he didn't
need to keep up the act with just the seven of them huddled in the
corner of the hall. 

She scanned around the table. There was Jon, the unofficial
quartermaster while Cynthia recovered from bronchitis; a guy called
Dan who looked after the building and power supplies; Byers, Frohike
and Linda who were looking after the labs and computers, and Ari. 

Actually Scully wasn't sure why Ari was here, shuffling restlessly and
tapping her fingernails against the table.

Jack coughed, shuffling his papers. "I'd like to thank Jon for the
report from the food committee. I'm sure we can start tilling soon and
planting after the winter. As it is, I'd like to get a revised plan
for the work parties and get a schedule drawn up."

"I'll get onto that," said Byers. And of course he would: there was
nothing his tidy mind liked more than solving a logistical problem and
he had an odd gift for persuasion -- it felt rude to turn him down. 

*What are you gonna do, bureaucratize the apocalypse?*

Mulder was in her head even though she had only had a couple of
glimpses of him in three days. He'd been in a corner, with Langly and
a couple of the other guys when she walked into the hall last night,
but her attention had been distracted momentarily when Jack asked her
a question. When she turned back to try to catch his eye, both he and
Langly were gone. 

She hadn't looked for him after their argument; he hadn't sought her
out. Frohike said he was all right, whenever she asked. It was the
longest she'd gone without speaking to him in years but she didn't
want to see Mulder if he was despairing. It was selfish, but her own
sense of hope was too fragile.

"... Dr. Scully?" She realized she'd missed Jack's entire question.
She blinked a couple of times and tried to gather her scattered
thoughts. "The trip to Louisville," she said and saw by Linda's quick
nod that she'd guessed right. "I've drawn up a list of the medical
supplies we should try to get. When I get to the labs in Louisville I
can..."

Jack interrupted, shaking his head. "You're needed here."

"But I'm the one who knows what we're looking for," Scully said,
surprised by his firmness. "And none of the sick are seriously ill."

"Dr. Scully, you're too valuable to risk."

Scully kept her face expressionless; she was ashamed of her own
momentary relief at not having to face the chaos outside again. The
cold was biting now and food would be running out. 

"I'll be driving but I think that at least two other people should
make the trip. There's a lot to carry, a lot to guard. And we'll be
armed." Jack paused and looked up at them. There was a silence.

Frohike shrugged. "Aw, fuck it," he muttered. "I'm in. I may need to
scavenge parts anyhow."

A chair scraped the floor loudly as Ari leaned forward. "Let me go,"
she said, and her eagerness was palpable.

Linda's head snapped round. "Aracelis!"

"Mom, I'm perfect. I've been around the labs enough to have an idea of
what you need." Ari caught Jack's eyes and held his gaze. "I could do
this."

Frohike put a gloved hand on her arm. "No one thinks you couldn't.
That's not the issue."

She shook it off. "Then what is the issue?"

"The issue is you're not going," Linda declared. "You've got no
training for this kind of thing."

Ari snorted. "I have no training for carrying heavy boxes and reading
directions? After the number of times we've moved since dad left? Come
on, mom." Linda looked guilty and Ari used the respite to turn her
attention to Jack. "I know Louisville, I can use a gun and I can
handle myself. I won't let you down." 

Linda looked away, pinch-faced and unhappy, and Frohike took over.
"I've been out there, Ari, and it ain't pleasant. No sights worth
seeing."

"You think I don't know that? I want to see." Ari's voice softened. "I
need to see, if only so I can believe it."

Linda stared at her daughter hard. There was a long moment of silence
as Linda shook her head slowly. "You only came to the meeting for
this, didn't you?" Ari met her fierce gaze calmly. 

"I'm not happy about it," Linda said finally. 

Ari's face broke into a wide smile that made her look about thirteen
-- that phrase was obviously code for "I'm giving in." "You don't need
to worry. I'll follow orders," she said, failing to tamp down the
excitement in her voice.

Scully recognized the expression on Linda's face. She'd seen it often
enough on her own mother's face back when she decided to join the
Bureau. Byers coughed to break the awkward silence. "I'll... uh, I'll
volunteer to come if someone else is needed."

Jack shook his head and Byers didn't even bother to disguise his
relief. 

"I already have someone in mind," he said.

+-+-+-+


FIMBULWINTER (6/12)



//December 10//

Mulder had volunteered for guard duty two days running because he
preferred chilly solitude to rattling around inside the complex with
people who seemed to think he had all the answers. It was difficult to
adjust to the idea that he was a role model to some of these guys,
thanks to the Lone Gunmen, and he didn't want their questions.

The only person he saw with any regularity was Langly, who was
resisting all of Byers' and Frohike's best efforts to drag him into
the lab. Langly was uncomfortable in their company now. Sometimes no
one could reach him, at other times he seemed to welcome talking to
other people. To the seven children in the community, he was a source
of terrible jokes and great card tricks -- and almost as popular as
Gollum the kitten. 

Mulder had joined his poker school and sometimes watched the
adventures of the D and D group. Langly never seemed more his old self
than when he was being someone else. Some hero who got to slay the
dragons. Mulder envied the escape.

It was 4 pm and now that his eight hours of staring into the distance
was done, Mulder had had every intention of going back to his own
room, but he found himself on his way up to the little-used second
floor -- the route up to the infirmary, as if his feet had made the
decision all by themselves. 

The last time he'd asked Frohike how Scully was, the little man had
snapped, "Stop being an ass and ask her your freakin' self." 

He supposed he should go talk to her but whenever he saw her, she
seemed to be with Jack Hughes. Ever the good little soldier, he
thought sourly, then told himself he was being unfair. His office was
close to the infirmary, maybe that was why Jack often spoke to her.

All he really wanted to know for the moment was that she was doing
better; he didn't want to speak to her because nothing he said could
help. It was easier when you could confine what you said to trash talk
and poker.

His steps slowed. A sound from outside caught his attention and he
lifted the blackout curtain to peer out of the window. It was the low
roar of a powerful but small engine. A moment later, he saw a compact
figure in shabby leathers power a sleek black motorbike towards the
gates. "Son of a bitch," murmured Mulder, wondering if it was paranoid
to think that Jack had waited until his stint on guard duty was over
before heading off.

He watched Jack until he was a dot on the horizon. A plan was
formulating in the back of his brain. A tight smile spread across his
face as he headed back down towards his room. 

Ten minutes later he was outside Jack's office. Sure enough the door
was locked but it was a minute's work with his lockpicks to work it
open. No one came past. He edged inside and pushed the door shut
again. He pulled the thin maglite out of his pocket and sent a wide
beam of light sweeping around the room. 

There was a wide oak desk, kept with the kind of neatness that was
utterly foreign to Mulder, and a heavy chair by the door -- no doubt
where Jack made miscreants sit, like a principal who wanted you to
stew over your crimes for a while before handing out the punishment.
Mulder lifted it to the door and slid it under the door handle. No
point locking himself in, but that should keep anyone else out.

The office was large but it was divided in two by a couple of blankets
strung up like curtains. Jack was never off-duty. He slept and worked
in the same space and there wasn't a shred of personality in the place
even though he'd been there longer than anyone. 

Mulder lifted the corner of one blanket and found a narrow cot, neatly
made up. The flashlight beam was reflected in neatly polished black
shoes, which were lined up next to a pair of boots and some battered
sneakers. Next to the bed was a filing cabinet. He pulled open a
drawer and found khakis, T-shirts neatly folded, socks balled up and
piled next to them along one side. The next drawer held pants, the
bottom one a spare towel, razors, a washbag and a small photo album. 

Mulder flipped though it. There were faded black and white pictures of
a man and woman, poor but well turned out, and a small girl and a
stocky, grinning boy. Further back the same woman grown up and in
color, this time with Jack's arm slung around her shoulder in a very
casual, un-Jack-like manner. She had a boy of her own by her side.
Jack's sister.

He put the album back in the same place, closed the drawer and turned
away. A vast map pinned to the wall marked the army facilities in this
state and the surrounding ones. Some were outlined in red. There were
other markings in blue, routes between them planned in dotted lines.
One on the far corner of the map was the anarchists' lair where he and
Scully had waited out the pulse. There was a cross through it and
several of the others now, including the hideout in the Shenandoah
Valley. 

These must be all the cells of dissenters he had been talking about.
But there were other markings on the map too, in green, including one
in Louisville -- and Mulder had to wonder what they were. Command
outposts, perhaps? 

He moved behind the desk. The drawer was unlocked so he pulled it out
of the casing and set it on the bare desk. The top layer was a thick
sheaf of paper with scribbled notes on it that probably made sense to
their owner. There were typewritten pages, floorplans, diagrams. Each
section was neatly clipped together. As far as Mulder could work out,
it was inventory: calculations to the nearest can of supplies matched
to the number of people, projections of how five more and ten more
people would alter the length of time that rations and fuel could
last. He studied it.

Pages and pages of calculations; life in the complex in detail,
micromanaged to ten decimal places. 

Beneath, there was a large calculator, rulers, pens, and a brick of
blank paper. Mulder lifted it with one finger and then froze as a
stapler clattered in the bottom of the drawer. He held still for a
moment but there was still no answering noise. Carefully now, he
lifted out the paper to discover a buff-colored envelope wedged at the
bottom of the drawer. 

Mulder pushed a finger under the flap and shook the contents out. More
papers, this time, familiar ones: laserprinted versions of the flyers
he had seen in Heniston. He recognized one or two of the faces as
people he saw around the breakfast table in the morning. Some were
creased, as though they had been folded inside a pocket. Almost all
were annotated in Jack's scrawl with other names, dates. He read
through them with growing alarm.

These must be from his contact in Louisville. It confirmed that the
contact was Army and in the loop so far as the authorities were
concerned. But was he Jack's informer or was Jack his?

Mulder swallowed hard. Here was a sheet with mugshots of the Gunmen,
in the margins more notes. His own name was in there, but he could
only understand about half of the shorthand. He was pretty sure no one
in the compound had been told that they were on some kind of wanted
list. Why?

Mulder flicked through more of the papers. There was the photograph of
him and Scully he had seen in Heniston. Underneath it was another,
newer piece of paper, dated just a week ago, with a better
surveillance picture of his face and a crisp, clear headshot of Scully
that he had never seen. 

She looked three or four years younger than she was now, and he would
bet anything that it was a family photo because she was dressed in
jeans and a sweatshirt and smiling broadly. But it wasn't the pictures
that sent his heart thumping hard, as if it were trying to escape the
cage of his ribs, it was what was typed underneath. "Confirmed
sighting, Heniston, Tennessee -- November." There was also a
description of Scully's mother and a warning to look out for three
people traveling together. 

Someone in Heniston had told the authorities that they had been
there.

He sank into Jack's chair and read through the instructions for his
own capture while willing himself to stay calm. Jack hadn't handed
anyone over yet, so far as he knew, but this circular made it clear
that he and Scully were top priority. 

This meant that they had a way better idea of what parts of the
country he and Scully might be in. He checked his watch. Almost six
o'clock. Jack could be back any minute. Time to leave. He shoved the
papers back into the envelope and pushed it to the bottom of the
drawer again, put everything else back in order and tried to work out
his next move.

He could ask her to go on the run again, but where else could they go?
And the way things were between them, would she even come with him?


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//December 11//

Langly should've been here, Frohike thought. That punkass should've
been all over it; electronic engineering was his field. Frohike could
hack and splice and jury-rig well enough, but he had always thought of
himself as more the ideas man of the three. This wasn't his forte.

Unfortunately, Langly had an amazing facility for disappearing when he
was needed. And anyway, last time he and Byers had tried to persuade
Langly to come and work on the system they were setting up, he had
flipped out. 

Didn't like being stuck behind the machines, he guessed. So now it was
just Frohike and his soldering iron versus technology, trying to get
the last of the computers in the mood for talking to each other
again.

If he could do it, Linda could really set to work running the
simulations.

It was a labor of love.

The thought streaked out before he could stop it. He told himself he
was an old fool.

The trouble was that that skinny little asshole had done something to
the drives before they left home, one of those goddamned
"improvements" that only ever made sense to Langly, and now Frohike
was left with a sprawl of wires like a nest of vipers in the back. 
Frohike felt the customary brief longing to smack the shit out of
Langly -- not as if that had ever helped.

He heard the door open. "Having trouble, Melvin?" A sweet, low voice
floated across the room and he groaned inwardly. Just what he needed:
the lovely Linda watching this royal pigfuck.

He ducked from behind the desk and shot her what he hoped was a
devastatingly winning smile.

"A little local difficulty. Nothing I can't handle."

Ari shot him the eyebrow -- she'd already picked that up off of Scully
-- and walked over to squint into the back of the machine. She
whistled. "Holy shit, that's a mess."

"Aracelis!" Linda snapped, but without much venom. 

"You got a tech support's gift for stating the pointless and obvious,
Ari. You gonna ask me if I've read the manual now?" Frohike muttered
to her burgundy Doc Marten boots as he laid beside the back of the
drive. "Hand me the screwdriver, will you please."

Ari reached over the desk and her loose crop top rode up her stomach,
so he could see all the way up to her chest. She was dressed light for
an Indiana winter. Real light.

Frohike squeezed his eyes shut, and quashed the urge to march her back
to her room like he was her old man and demand that she put on a big
sweater. At the very least.

Concentrate on the circuitry, he told himself. A screwdriver dropped
into view and Ari crouched beside him. She was wearing a battered old
leather jacket and the offending T-shirt bore a cartoon chess piece
wearing a bandanna and pointing a gun, and below, the words "Hardcore
pawn."

He shook his head. She was as bad as Langly.

He made one last connection. "Okay," he breathed and flicked the
switch.

Not a beep, not a whirr.

"God*damned* fucked up piece of shi..." He remembered Linda was in the
room and cut the rant off in its prime. "Sorry," he murmured.

"You're not my daughter, Mel, you can say what the hell you like." She
grinned at him and carried on flipping through the computer disks.

When he looked back at the machinery, Ari's hand was halfway inside
it.

He batted at her wrist, afraid she'd snag some other wire. "Don't mess
around in there, Ari, it took three hours to get this far."

But Ari gave something a sharp twist and suddenly, there was a chime
and green lights. She gave him a cocky smile. "Saw a loose connection.
My eyesight's sharper."

Well, I'll be goddamned. he thought. Melvin Frohike, welcome to true
humiliation. "Thanks Ari, you just made a happy man very old."

Linda walked over to them. "I taught her many things," she said, "but
apparently tact was not one of them. Thank you, Mel." She gave him a
hand up and planted a kiss on his lips.

"Maybe we should discuss what you can do to make it up to me later,"
he mumbled, then squeezed his eyes shut at what a terrible line that
was.

"Maybe we should." Linda said. Ari rolled her eyes and her mom snorted
back a laugh.

Langly had always bet the world would end before Melvin Frohike ever
got laid again. Maybe the thought of collecting on it would bring him
out of himself.

His brain was beginning to improvise pleasantly on these themes when
he heard the door open and it was as if the room temperature dropped
another ten degrees. "Hello, Mulder," Linda said coolly.

Frohike rose from behind the desk to see Mulder give Ari and Linda a
nod. Mulder had made himself very scarce these past few days.
"Frohike, have you seen Scully?"

"Tried the infirmary, man? She's practically living in there." He knew
Scully had been there most nights since she arrived. She and Linda
were working all hours to put the research notes in some kind of
order, while Alan looked after the day to day running of the infirmary
-- she even got Jon to bring her dinner up there when he was visiting
his boy.

"First place I went," Mulder said. "She hasn't been there since dawn,
according to the guy who's there now."

"Then she's probably with Jack," Frohike said. "He wanted to find out
more about the epidemic."

Mulder looked like someone had just pissed in his last beer. "Oh
great. *Jack*," he muttered.

Frohike frowned. "Yeah, she's with Jack. Your point?" Linda and Ari
pretended to be very, very busy at the newly-mended computers. He was
so sick of this. He could feel his temper rising like mercury on a
July morning, but tried to concentrate on wiring up the last of the
hardware.

Mulder wasn't going to give up. He gripped the back of the chair,
knuckles bone white. "Do you have any idea of what his plans are?
You're *supposed* to be paranoid."

Then from behind them all: "Mr. Mulder." Jack was at the door, looking
like thunder.

Frohike had seen Mulder do this before: this odd closing off, where
his face would go blank and his eyes narrow, as if he'd been honing
his anger to a point and now he was ready to go hunting for a target.

"I think you and I need to settle our differences, Mr. Mulder," Jack
said in a low, cold voice.

"What do you propose, pistols at dawn? Fifteen rounds in the ring and
the loser cleans the latrines with a toothbrush?" Mulder asked.

"Mr. Mulder. I saw you in operation before all this started," Jack
said, stepping to within five, then three feet of Mulder. Mulder stood
a little straighter, folding his arms, emphasizing the four-inch
height difference. Jack didn't even acknowledge his glare.

"The general opinion then was that you're incapable of following
orders and if I'd been your boss I would have had your badge. Here,
I'm just a concerned member of this community --"

"What sanctimonious bullshit," Mulder interrupted.

"-- but I will not tolerate that kind of indiscipline endangering
lives here."

Frohike suddenly regretted every tall tale he'd told Jack about
Mulder's exploits.

He held up his hands and stepped towards the two men. "Hey, come on,
chill ou..."

Jack ignored him. "So I propose we settle this once and for all. You
will come on our trip to Louisville since you're so very curious about
it. We have a lot of equipment to move; at least you'll be useful
there."

Frohike could almost hear the words "shove it" passing through
Mulder's brain, so obvious was his expression. He had never reacted
well to being ordered to do something, but he couldn't usually pass up
the chance to investigate either.

Mulder nodded, once. Jack walked away looking thunderous. The door
slammed behind him. Mulder's jaw worked from side to side, as if he
were suppressing the urge to yell. Finally, he just shook his head.
"If you see Scully, Frohike, tell her it would be nice if she showed
her face occasionally," he muttered and followed Jack out of the
door.

"God, I think I'm breathing pure testosterone here," muttered Ari.

Frohike exchanged glances with Linda. He wasn't sure what had just
gone down, but he was pretty sure it was bad.

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