From: Deirdre Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 21:14:00 -0500 Subject: New: The Monsters out There Title: The Monsters out There Author: Deirdre Rating: PG Category: S Keywords: None Spoilers: Chimera Summary: The idea of community. Archive: Archive freely; this story is released into the public domain. Author's Note: Although this wasn't meant to, it became kind of a post-episode for Chimera. I actually wrote parts of it as far back as nine months ago, but the direction of the story has completely changed since I started working on it. I guess my no-romo heart won't let me give Mulder and Scully a night of wild sex. ;) ** For almost six years, she had traveled by the side of this man. Traveled to the furthest extents of believability and beyond - from the deserts of the Southwest to the cold bitter sunshine of the Antarctic. Their journeys had taken them further than she had ever dreamed of going with the FBI. But still she felt empty, like something inside of her had slowly rotted away despite her many discoveries and adventures. Through the rough roads of her journey, her friendships and family had fallen aside. Slowly, the number of messages on her answering machine decreased in number, until only the hang ups of telemarkers broke the silence of her apartment when she played the tape in the evenings. Ringing phones on the television brought her to attention, because she had almost forgotten what her home phone sounded like. A couple of months ago, she had returned to a small woman's club where many of her friends from college often met to drink and discuss life. After bolstering her self-confidence with a couple of drinks, she had swept into the back room they typically reserved. Cold faces confronted her, and old acquaintances had eyed her flushed cheeks and mussed hair. After sitting down with Marie and Lizzie, two friends from medical school, she realized how much her perceived aloofness and chosen separation from the community had splintered her friendships. She knew little about their current lives and situations. She understood little about how each had gotten to their current places in their lives. After an hour of listening them talk to one another, she excused herself and slipped out into the darkness. Bitterness would not help. She knew that she had chosen this path. *** The road before them was dark and seemingly endless. Only their headlights lit the country highway, barely cutting through the spring fog that hung heavily in the air. Scully gritted her teeth, ready to shred the travel brochure she held in her hands. "This indicates that we should have passed a hotel about five miles back." "You're reading the map. I'm not." Mulder stared at the inkiness ahead, not even turning to look at her. "We could have passed it in this fog without even noticing." Scully looked once again at the faded red marker on the map. Half an hour out of that little ghost town called Clarksville, about half way between Here and There. Here and There being two towns about 300 miles apart each with populations of about five thousand. She didn't appreciate the humor tonight. She remembered the empty streets of Clarksville with a shiver. She never had suspected that any real wilderness existed in the United States. But after looking at the way silent nature had taken over the cracked roads and boarded up buildings of the former town and seeing a lean wolf boldly standing on the sidewalk and watching them pass, her wild eyes tracking their car down the street, she knew how wrong she was. The world can forget quickly, or not at all. "How many miles has it been since we left Clarksville?" Mulder glanced at the speedometer. "About thirty-one miles." "We could try to reach There. It's probably just about one hundred and fifty miles further down the road." "Scully, I can't drive much further. You almost fell asleep at the wheel about fifty miles ago. We need to get some rest pretty soon." Mulder was right. She turned to stare out her window. She could see almost nothing in the darkness and didn't care enough to try. Suddenly, a darker form rose out of the fog. At their speed, they almost whipped past without noticing. No lights shone forth from the hulking form, but it looked like it might protect them from the miserable weather outside. "Mulder, stop" Scully commanded. "There's something there." He pulled the car around and parked it on the side of the road. Flashlights in hand and, they walked towards the form, slowly revealing a rundown barn. The wooden slat of the sides, gray and bowing from years of neglect barely looked able to keep out the fog. But when they pulled open the wooden doors, they found a decent barn, with a small unlit lantern hanging beside the door. A rapid glance over the barn revealed piles of older hay, some dusty horse blankets and random bits of farm equipment. "So what do you think?" Mulder asked, turning his flashlight on Scully. "There are some cleaner blankets in the car, and I've got sweats in my luggage. This should be fine to catch a couple of hours sleep. Hopefully the fog will burn off in the morning." He nodded and turned back to the car. Trusting him to bring both their small travel bags and the emergency blankets, she investigated further. The barn was definitely unused, lingering on the edge of complete neglect. Once upon a time, someone had taken good care of the structure, and its longevity revealed that fact. The walls stood firm despite whatever weather it had stood against. Only a light layer of dust sullied the floor, barely disturbed by a tracing of mouse tracks. The hay was musty with age, but not yet rotting, and would make good bedding for a couple of hours. The door slammed open again and Mulder collapsed through, bringing wisps of the fog with him. His hands were full with both sets of luggage and the blankets she had noticed folded up in the trunk of the rental car earlier. A wry grin briefly danced across her face. "You didn't have to bring it all in at once, you know." "This way, I don't have to try to find the car again. The fog's getting even thicker. Although I would have told you that wasn't possible fifteen minutes ago." They worked to set up makeshift beds - not too close yet not too far away from one another - out of the old hay and blankets. The limits of the flashlights made it hard to see into the shadows that lurked around the edges of the barn, and Scully suppressed the illogical shiver that ran up her backbone. Logically, she knew that no strange monsters would leap out of those thick shadows to munch upon her and Mulder, but the instincts that had protected her ancestors in the forests of the past still ran strong even in so-called modern humans. In terms of evolution and the life of the earth, they were barely a blink away from those ancestors. She pushed her pile of hay and blankets a little closer to Mulder's. He settled down and began playing his flashlight across the rafters, piercing through darkness then letting it return as the restless spot of light moved on. "You think we'll find our way out of this?" "Mulder, everything will be fine once the fog lifts. Who knows, we could have been passing farmhouses set back a ways from the road and never noticed them. This barn certainly testifies to the fact that there have been farmers in the area." "It's amazing how far away from humanity you can get, even in the U.S., isn't it?" "Under certain circumstances, yes." "People say they long for privacy, but so many of us stuff our way into crowded cities and suburbs, fearing what lies out here." She didn't know what had put him into such an introspective mood tonight. "People long for community as well. We just don't get along as well without it. Solitude is best enjoyed when people know there's a choice to return to their community." "That's not only it. Don't you feel the shivers running up and down your back?" "Instinct. Nothing more." "People fear what lies out here. Not just the predators we once needed to fear, but the boogymen of the night. There had to once be boogymen, for us to have developed a fear of them. Look at the numbers of stories ancient cultures told!" She could see where this conversation was taking them, and she repressed a sigh. Mulder could never let go of certain things - like that case of the woman who broke under the stress of her husband's infidelity and the monster he'd claimed she'd become. "Mulder, people made up stories of witches and monsters to help them understand a confusing world. Even nowadays, religion fills that role. It doesn't matter whether the explanation is right or wrong as long as it fits into the person's world-view. And they'll fight to keep it, fight for the right to pass it onto their children. Religion, superstition, racism - they all thrive under the same type of climate. The beliefs and the stories don't have to make sense. Just look at the bible for an example of that!" "The bible speaks of monsters in the sea, monsters in the air; did the Mediterranean contain creatures of such great size for the Israelites to tell stories about and fear?" "The myths of the bible grew out of myths of the Babylonians and other cultures - the sea was a symbol of uncertainty for most ancient cultures, including the Europeans up to the time of the Spanish Inquisition and the discovery of America. Here there be dragons, remember? Yet we've never found any dragons of the sea. In fact, despite their apparent hold on humanity, we've never found any fire-breathing reptiles at all. The creatures that closest resemble dragons were unknown to most people until the last century or so, and too remote for stories of them to have spread throughout the world. We make up things to fear, just as we make up things to believe about the things we fear." "You're telling me that I imagined what was attacking me?" "Humans can look pretty crazed at times." "And the claws that tore those other women apart?" She didn't answer, and Mulder didn't press her. "I think that humans flee to the cities, because no matter how advanced we become, we still fear what lurks out here" he said several minutes later. "And maybe, we have more basis for our fear than we know. But has what we fear actually followed us into our cities and suburbs? Is our fear a manifestation of what we know other humans can become, can do? "We stick to our cities, our communities, because we don't believe that horrors will arise within them. Or that we, will be able to control them or shun them. But can we ever know what another person will do? Maybe communities promote terrors and we never even realize it. They do promote many of the excesses humans are capable of. Maybe communities aren't always the safest - they just feel the safest." Scully lay on her bed of straw and blankets, staring off into the darkness of the high ceiling. She listened as Mulder's breathing slowed and he passed into sleep. She listened to the muffled quiet outside, even the normal sounds of the night hidden under the blanket of fog that had forced them to take refuge here. And hours later, she thought she heard something whuffing around the outside of the barn, scraping against its side. For an instant, her chest tightened, but she brought herself back under control. Dismissing it as a raccoon or 'possum or wild cat, she took several deep breaths and attempted to will herself asleep. She glanced over at Mulder, but couldn't see him in the darkness that remained after they'd turned off the flash- lights. For a moment, she wished that she had moved her bed a little closer. The End