X Files - Whirlwind Part 6

The road from Santa Fe was, aside from occa-sional rises not quite hills, fairly straight all the way to Bernalillo, and into Albuquerque beyond. Just aim the d.a.m.n thing and hold onto the wheel. He'd done it hundreds of times.

He hiccuped, belched, and grimaced at the sour taste that rose in his throat, shaking his head sharply as if to fling the taste away.

The radio muttered a little Willie Nelson.

He wiped his eyes with one hand and checked the rearview mirror. Nothing back there but black.

Nothing ahead but more black.

The speedometer topped seventy.

If he were lucky, if he were really lucky, he'd be home by two and asleep by two-ten, a.s.sum-ing he made it as far as the bedroom. Two-five if he couldn't get past the couch.

He laughed, more like a giggle, and rolled down the window when he felt a yawn coming. Drunk or not, he knew enough to understand that cold air blasting the side of his face was infinitely preferable to dozing off and ending up nose-down in a ditch, his head through the winds.h.i.+eld.

The air smelled good.

The engine's grumble was steady.

"And so am I," he declared to the road. "Steady as a rock and twice as hard."

Another laugh, another belch.

It had been a good night. No, it had been a great night. Those pinheads in Santa Fe, thinking they knew ahead of the rest of the world what the next artsy trend would be, had decided he was it. Living collages, they called it; the desert genius, they called him.

"My G.o.d!" he yelled, half in joy, half in derision.

After a dozen years trying to sell paintings even he couldn't abide, he'd sliced a small cactus in half, glued it to a canvas, added a few tiny bird bones and a couple of beads, called it something or other, and as a lark, brought it north.

They loved it.

They f.u.c.king loved it.

He had meant it as a thumbed nose at their pre-tensions, and they had fallen over themselves try-ing to buy it.

The wind twisted through the car, tangling his long blond hair, tugging at it, threatening a headache.

Five years later, twenty-five carefully a.s.sem-bled when he was roaring drunk canvases later, his bank account was fat, his home was new, his car was turned in every year, and the women were lined up six to the dozen, just waiting for his living desert fingers to work their magic on them.

It almost made him sick.

It didn't make him stupid.

Trends were little more than fads, and he knew full well that the next season might be his last. Which was why he needed to hole up for a while, work through an even dozen more projects, and get himself out before he ended up like the oth-ers-flat broke and saying, "I used to be someone, you know, really, I was," while they cadged another beer from a stranger in a strange bar.

The speedometer topped eighty.

The headache began.

Acid bubbled in his stomach.

The back of his hand scrubbed across his face, and when his vision cleared, he saw something to the right, just beyond the edge of the light.

He frowned as he stared at it, then yelped as the car followed his stare and angled for the shoulder. The correction was too sharp, and he swung off toward the wide empty median, swung back again, hit the accelerator instead of the brakes, and yelledsoundlessly when the right-side tires bit into the earth off the blacktop.

The car shuddered.

He froze-turn into the skid? turn out of the skid?-and watched in horror as the low shrubs and deep ditch charged him and veered away at the last minute, putting him back on the road.

Sweat masked his face.

His bladder demanded immediate relief.

His left hand shook so much he thrust it between his knees and squeezed until it calmed.

"My G.o.d," he whispered. "Jesus, man, Jesus."

Twenty-five, he swore to himself; he didn't care if it took until dawn, he wouldn't go faster than twenty-five all the way home.

He wasn't sober, but he sure as h.e.l.l wasn't as drunk as he had been.

The speedometer reached fifty.

He saw the needle, saw it climb again slowly, and decided it would be all right. Sixty, no more; he'd be home quicker, and that was okay because he was a menace to himself out here.

A hard swallow, a deep breath, his right hand flicking the radio off because what he didn't need now was interference with his concentration. Just watch the road, pay no attention to anything that- He saw it again.

Just a suggestion of movement running with him on the other side of the ditch. Which was impossible.

He was doing sixty-five, for G.o.d's sake, there wasn't anything except another car that could go that fast.

He squinted a stare, broke it off when the car began to drift, and licked his lips.

There wasn't anything over there.

Good G.o.d, there couldn't be anything over there. It was the headlights, that's all, running along a row of juniper maybe, or some pinon, rock, something like that. His eyes caught the strobelike reflection, and the scotch turned it into something that paced him.

That's all it was.

He wished the moon were a little brighter.

Forget the new canvases, he decided a half-mile later; the h.e.l.l with it, he was done. He had enough money, the house was paid for, what the h.e.l.l more could he want?

The car jumped sideways when something slammed into the pa.s.senger door.

He yelled, and watched his hands blur around the wheel, watched the road blur black to gray and black again, screamed when the car was struck a second time, and looked over to see what drunken idiot was trying to run him off the road.

There was nothing there.

When he looked back, it was too late.

The highway was gone.

All he could do was cross his arms in front of his face, close his eyes, and scream.

There was no fire, no explosion.

Mike Ostrand hung upside down in his seat-belt, listening to the engine tick, listening to the wind blow through the open window.

Listening to the hiss he thought was the tires spinning to a halt.

A few seconds later, he blacked out when some-thing reached through the window and touched his arm.La Mosca Inn sat between the Rio Grande and a high adobe wall that fronted the road. Eight units extended left and right from a central two-story building that housed the office, a large flagstone waiting room cooled by a small sparking foun-tain, and a restaurant large enough to seat one hundred without elbows and voices clas.h.i.+ng. Spanish tile on the roof, shade provided by cottonwood and mountain ash, and a single huge Russian olive in the center of the court-yard.

Scully sat on a wood bench that ringed the mas-sive tree, facing the arched entrance whose elabo-rate iron gates were closed each night at, the proprietor told her, precisely midnight. She let her eyes close, and touched a finger to her fore-head, to trap a droplet of sweat that had broken from her hairline.

"Feeling better?" a voice rasped beside her.

"Not really."

The day had gone wrong from minute one: she'd overslept and had to race to the airport, only to learn that the flight had been delayed. For an hour. Then two. Once airborne, she had planned to set up her laptop computer, so she and Mulder could go over what details of the case they had.

It didn't happen.

Roller-coaster turbulence rode them all the way to Dallas, making reading the computer screen a nauseating experience; she spent most of the time trying, and failing, to doze. Then a series of thun-derstorms ringing the Texas city forced them to swerve wide into a holding pattern until the squall line had pa.s.sed. Another hour lost, and so was their connecting flight.

"Cursed," Mulder had said at one point. "This whole thing is cursed."

By the time they landed in Albuquerque, she was ready to believe in curses; by the time Red Garson had sped them in his Jeep out of the city, north to Bernalillo, she was ready to spend the rest of her life walking.

The man beside her s.h.i.+fted to get her attention.

She opened her eyes and smiled at him wanly.

Red was as Mulder had told her, a tall, lean, middle-aged man whose lined face and hands spoke of time spent in the mountains and the desert. She had no idea where he'd gotten his nickname, because his blond hair was pale, his blue eyes dark; part of his left ear was missing, bitten off, he told her, in a fight with a man who had a strong aversion to spending the rest of his life in federal prison.

Hardly a stereotypical FBI agent.

When he smiled, only his lips moved; he never showed his teeth.

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "You think he's fallen asleep?"

"I doubt it."

A pickup chugged past the Inn, backfired twice, and left a curl of black smoke behind.

"Dana?"

She nodded to show him she was listening.

"Why does he call you Scully all the time? I mean, you do have a first name."

"Because he can" she answered simply, with-out sarcasm, and didn't bother to explain. Just as it wouldbe hard to explain why Mulder was, without question, the best friend she had. It was more than just being partners, being able to rely on each other when one of them was in danger, or when one of them needed a boost when a case seemed to be going bad; and it was more than simply their contrasting styles, which, perversely to some, complemented each other perfectly.

What it was, she sometimes thought was an indefinable instinct, a silent signal that let her know that whatever else changed, whatever else happened, Mulder would always be there when he had to be. One way or another.

At that moment she heard a footfall and grinned. "Here he comes."

Garson looked startled, looked around and saw him walking along one of the stone paths that wound through the courtyard garden. She had to admit he looked strange without his suit. Over his shoulder he carried a denim jacket, not for appearance but to hide the holster he wore on his left hip.

He also looked as frazzled as she felt.

"It's hot," he said, dropping onto the bench beside her.

"It's July, Mulder," Garson reminded him. "It's New Mexico. What did you expect?"

"Heat I can get at home. An oven I already have in my apartment." He scratched through his hair and shook his head as though trying to force himself awake.

"It isn't for everybody" Garson admitted, adding without saying so that "everybody" must be crazy if they didn't instantly fall in love with this part of the country. "And remember, you're a mile farther up than you were in Was.h.i.+ngton.

Thinner air. Take it easy for a while, understand? You go shooting off in fourteen directions at once, you're going to drop."

Mulder grunted, then stood again. "Hey, look." He headed for the gate.

"Mulder," Scully called. "We haven't time-"

He turned, grinning, and pointed to a small dust devil spinning lazily in the road. "We used to get these things at home. Leaves, you know?" He moved closer; it was no higher than his s.h.i.+n.

"We'd try to get inside." His foot inched toward the dervish's base and appar-ently broke some unseen barrier. The dust devil fell apart, and Mulder toed the place where it had been.

Scully, who was already feeling the effects of the alt.i.tude, let the silence settle for a few seconds before she said, "Mulder, come over here, I think we'd better not waste any more time." She checked her watch; it was just after four. "I suppose it's too late to catch Dr. Rios. What about.. . Patty? Patty Deven. Is she well enough to talk to us?"

Garson stabbed a thumb at her as Mulder rejoined them. "She always like this?"

"We have three people murdered. Red. The alti-tude didn't kill them."

The man nodded, accepting the point and the rebuke without taking offense. "The Devens live about a mile down the road. They're fixing to head back to Chicago as soon as this is cleared up.

I'll take you over, but I'm telling you now that you won't be welcome."

He was right.

Scully caught the instant: hostility as soon as Kurt Deven opened the trailer door and saw who it was.

When Garson introduced his companions, the man scowled and told them to wait. Then he closed the door. Hard.

Mulder nodded toward the riverline of cotton-wood sixty or seventy yards away, "Down there?"

"Yep. The bank slopes sharp right about where you're looking. It happened a little ways to the right,"