The X-Files: Goblins

TWELVE

He couldn’t breathe. “Mulder!”

Eyes watering, he tried to push himself to his hands, but he couldn’t breathe. “Mulder!”

Forget it, he told his arms, and rolled over instead, blinking furiously to clear his vision, spitting when a shard of leaf caught on his lips. But he still couldn’t breathe. Voices, normal voices anxious and searching, until his name was called again, and he saw, or thought he saw, Scully kneeling beside him on his left, someone else on his right.

“I don’t see any blood,” Webber said. “Mulder?”

He tried to smile reassurance, but it was too much trouble, and he let himself black out, to rest in the dark for a while.

By the time he regained full consciousness, there were sirens and shouts, the distant crackle of a radio. The wind had died, but the afternoon was still night. Scully was gone; Webber hovered nearby, and Mulder groaned to signal him and bring him over.

“Up,” he said, stretching out an arm when the younger man leaned down.

“I don’t know. Scully said—”

“Up,” he insisted, and Webber brought him to his feet.

It was a mistake.

His head swelled to accommodate the fire inside, and he swayed and didn’t argue when Webber eased him to a stump at the clearing’s north end and made him sit. Bile burned the back of his throat; his stomach surged without delivering. He spat, and spat again, bracing an arm on his leg and resting his forehead on his palm.

“Jesus,” he whispered.

Webber hunkered down beside him, concern adding too many years to his face. Mulder glanced over and smiled briefly.

“I’ll live.”

Webber didn’t look as if he believed it. But he told him that an MP patrol, alerted by the gunfire, had arrived only moments after the shooting had stopped. Within minutes, other patrols had arrived, and Scully was advising them and their captain on a search of the woods. When Mulder looked up, he saw silver beams slashing and darting among the trees. Voices called softly. Through the trees he could see half a dozen MP Jeeps and cruisers parked on the road, and a single civilian patrol car, its roof lights still whirling.

“Chief Hawks,” Webber confirmed.

Mulder nodded, and wished he hadn’t — the fire rose, and fell, and his finger gingerly traced what would be a hell of a lump by nightfall. There was no blood. Then he pushed aside his jacket, opened his shirt, and tried to have a look at his ribs.

“Damn,” Webber said. “What’d he use, a brick?”

“It sure felt like it.” He winced as he probed the area. He knew nothing was broken, however. How a broken rib felt was something you never forgot.

“Button up, Mulder, you’ll catch pneumonia.”

He smiled at Scully hurrying toward him. She seemed more annoyed at the wind slapping hair into her eyes than at him.

“You gonna examine me or what?”

“Please,” she said. “I’ve had a bad enough day.”

“What happened?” He nodded toward the search party.

“The shooter’s gone. No surprise. They found a crushed area back around the bend where he probably stashed his car. No tire tracks, nothing but this.” She dug into her pocket and pulled out a casing. “M-16.”

“Army?”

“Maybe not,” Webber said. “They’re not all that hard to get outside the service anymore. Cops, bad guys, collectors.” He shrugged. “Even guys leaving the service have smuggled them home.”

Mulder muttered about having it easy once in a while. “Well, maybe we should check. How many can there—”

Webber groaned in anticipation. “Mulder, no kidding, it’s the weekend. That means there’s about eight, nine thousand reservists running all over this place. And you want to find one rifle that’s been fired recently?”

“Hank, you amaze me. How did you know that?”

Webber shrugged again. “The interviews, remember? I’ll bet the people in town know as much about what’s going on on post as anyone who works there.”

“Not quite,” he muttered. He straightened slowly, hissing at the too-slow lessening pain.

“What I don’t get,” Scully said, “is how the shooter got to you before we did.” Her expression turned sheepish. “I saw your coat on the ground, I thought it was you.”

“It wasn’t.”

“So I see. I don’t know what he hit you with, but he knew what he was doing. He could’ve cracked your skull wide open.” She frowned. “What I don’t get is how he managed to change positions so quickly. You were a good—”

“No. I mean, it wasn’t the shooter.”

She was startled. “What?”

“It wasn’t the shooter, Scully. I saw him, the shooter, just before I got hit.” He winced as he touched his head again. “From the side, Scully. I was hit from the side, right over there. The shooter was still in front of me.”

Doubt was evident in her expression as she put the casing back into her pocket. “The goblin, right?”

“You got it. I just got a glimpse, but believe me, it was enough.”

Webber almost laughed, but caught himself when she shook her head in exasperation. “Mulder, you’d just been clobbered, remember? Anything you saw, or thought you saw, would be suspect, you know that.”

With Webber’s reluctant help, he stood, looking at but not seeing the MPs’ shifting lights. “It was a hand, and part of the forearm. The skin looked like bark.”

Scully opened her mouth to say something, changed her mind and waited.

“I heard it, too.”

She leaned away, an eyebrow cocked. “He left you a message?”

“It was like no voice I’ve ever heard.” He closed his eyes again, to try to sharpen the memory, felt Webber’s fingers lightly on his arm for balance. “I don’t know. It was hoarse, whispering, as if it had a hard time saying the words.” When he looked, she was scowling, arms folded across her chest. “Honest.”

“I don’t doubt you heard something. But I—”

“This is a joke, right?” Webber asked nervously. He looked from one to the other. “Some kind of private joke, right?”

Mulder shook his head. “Sorry, Hank, no.”

“Oh, man,” Webber said, almost in a moan. “Wait ’til Licia hears this one.”

Carl Barelli was furious as he sped back through the woods toward Marville.

First, that sanctimonious toad, Tonero, tried to pass off the glop in the Officer’s Mess as some kind of fancy food, instead of taking him to a decent restaurant; then tried to hand out some pious bullshit about family unity and Angie’s peace of mind being more important than interfering with official investigations; and then he had the nerve to march Carl out to his car and tell him, with a smile, to go on back home and write about baseball or something.

He had fumed behind the wheel, debating the chances of his landing in jail if he went back inside and popped the toad one on the point of his spongy jaw.

Then an MP ran up, intercepted Tonero, and the two were hustled into a car. The next thing Carl knew there were sirens and men with rifles boiling out of the Provost Marshal’s office, and, after a suitable interval, he followed them.

To the goddamn woods.

Where another goddamn MP suggested with drawn.45 that the reporter find something else to report on, this area was sealed off to civilians.

“Bastards,” he muttered, and muttered it often until suddenly he grinned.

He had seen a town cruiser at the scene, which meant the locals were involved, which meant…

He laughed aloud, and by the time he pulled up in front of the police station, his mood had lightened considerably. A quick check of his hair in the rearview mirror, an adjustment of his tie and jacket, and he was inside, smiling at the two men at desks near the back of the room, and the front desk sergeant, who couldn’t have looked more bored if he were dead.

“I’d like to see the chief,” Carl said, as politely as his excitement would allow.

Sergeant Nilssen told him gruffly the chief was out, and there was no sense hanging around. He had work to do, half his people had some kind of lousy flu, and those who were around had police business to attend to.

A dispatch radio muttered static to itself while a gawky young officer flipped through a logbook.

Carl’s smile didn’t waver. “Then perhaps you can help me, Sergeant. I work for the Jersey Chronicle. My name is Carl Barelli, and I’m—”

Nilssen’s boredom vanished. “Barelli? The sports guy in the paper?”

Amazing, Carl thought smugly; absolutely amazing.

“That’s right, Sergeant. But today I’m looking into the death of a friend of mine. Corporal Frank Ulman.”

“Man, yeah,” the sergeant said, grinning. “So you want to hear about the goblins, right?”

� The smile still didn’t waver. “That’s right. Can you help me?”

The policeman leaned back in his chair, hooked his thumbs into his belt. “Anything you want to know, Mr. Barelli. All you have to do is ask.”

Tonero remained in the back seat of his staff car, watching as the MPs began to make their way slowly and methodically back toward the road. His driver was gone, ordered to sniff around to see what unofficial word he could pick up. It was better than talking to the captain in charge. Tonero knew the man well, and knew that the MP wouldn’t give away a thing.

The car rocked a little when the wind slapped it.

He glanced warily out at what sky he could see, hoping he’d be able to get out of here before the storm broke.

This was not turning out to be one of his best days. Tymons was jumpy and Rosemary was getting pushy; and he knew without doubt that Barelli wasn’t going to leave until he had gotten some kind of crumb to fill his meager reporter’s plate.

He sighed for all the injustices dropped on him since waking, and sighed again when the front passenger door opened and Tymons slipped in at the same time that Rosemary slipped into the back, beside him.

“We heard,” Tymons said, agitation making his voice too high.

“What’s going on?” Rosemary asked more calmly.

“I’m not sure. Someone tried to take care of the FBI, as near as I could tell.”

Tymons groaned.

“It wasn’t us,” Rosemary snapped at him. “Jesus, Leonard, use your head.”

“We should abort,” was the answer. “We don’t have any more control. We have no choice, we have to abort.” He twisted around to look at the major. “Joseph, the FBI isn’t going away now, you know that. No more just having a look around and running back to D.C. They’re going to dig. And they’re going to find something.”

Tonero gripped Rosemary’s leg briefly to keep her silent. “Leonard, I want you to pay attention.”

“Joseph, we—”

“These people,” and he indicated the MPs, “are looking for a shooter, okay? Not us and ours. There is no connection, and no connections can be made. Use your head, Doctor, use your head.”

Tymons jumped as if slapped. “I don’t know. They’re going to ask questions.”

“Well, that’s no problem,” Rosemary answered. “We’ll just make sure there isn’t anyone around to answer.”

Tonero looked at her in astonishment.

She shrugged. “We may not have complete control, but we still have some.” Her smile was cold. “Simple suggestions ought to do it.”

“Jesus!” Tymons shoved his door open. “You’re crazy, Rosemary. And as Project Director, I forbid it.” He slammed the door and stalked away.

Tonero didn’t look, didn’t care where he was going. What he cared about was this new woman beside him. Something had changed since a few hours ago. Something drastic. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he liked it.

“You better leave,” he said quietly.

“And the problem?”

He gave her his best smile. “In for a penny, Rosie. In for a penny.” He patted her knee. “Use your best judgment. Just be sure, all right? Whatever you do, just be sure.” Then he grunted and took her arm to stop her. Ahead, he saw a man and woman helping a second, somewhat disheveled man out of the woods. Shit, he thought.

“Rosie, I think you’d better stick around a minute.”

“You are not dead, Mulder,” Scully complained. “Don’t lean so hard.”

She couldn’t help a smile, though, at his melodramatic sigh. He might be different, but he was still a man, not above playing sick and injured to the hilt.

Someone called to them, and they stopped on the road.

“Well,” Mulder whispered. “Well, well.”

A man in uniform fairly marched toward them, and, when he was close enough, quietly demanded a report on Mulder’s condition. When Scully balked, he ducked his head in apology. “Sorry. Major Joseph Tonero, Agent Scully. Air Force Special Projects.” His smile turned to Mulder. “This incident happened on my watch, so to speak, and I apologize for being slow getting here. A late lunch with an old friend. But I don’t have to tell you how concerned I am. Is everyone all right?” Before she could answer, he rubbed his hands together. “Good, good. I’d hate to think what would happen if we lost an FBI.”

His smile was intended to be warm, but Scully didn’t buy it. The man was less a career soldier than a politician, she decided as she briefed him; his medical knowledge doesn’t go much farther than using a bandage.

As soon as she was finished, two others came up behind him — a tall, balding civilian, and too nervous for her peace of mind, and a striking, hard-edged blonde whose bearing was military, but she too was civilian. Neither spoke much save for a perfunctory mumbling of sympathies.

The major introduced them as part of his team, offering their services should the need arise. Scully assured him matters were well in hand, but thanked the officer for his concern.

“As a matter of fact,” she added, “we were going to see you this afternoon, when we were done.”

Mulder opened his mouth, closed it when she stepped in front of him and put a heel down on his foot to keep him silent.

“Corporal Ulman worked for you, isn’t that right?”

The major grew solemn. “Yes, he did, Agent Scully. A tragic loss. He was a good man. And I’ve been working closely with the Provost—”

“He was going to marry your sister,” Mulder said over her shoulder.

Tonero didn’t miss a beat: “There was talk, yes. But just between you and me, I don’t think it was going to happen.” He sighed. “However, I certainly owe it to her to assist you in any way possible.”

Neither made any mention of the phone call to Senator Carmen.

“Who attacked you?” Dr. Elkhart asked suddenly, sharply.

“There were two,” Mulder answered before Scully could stop him.

“Really?” the major said, grabbing his hat against a gust. “I had no idea.”

Scully was relieved when Mulder didn’t elaborate; she watched instead as Dr. Tymons whispered something to Elkhart and hurried back down the road, one hand massaging the back of his neck.

“Major,” she said, “I’m not sure, it’s too soon, but if Agent Mulder here needs more assistance than I can—”

“Walson is mostly shut down,” the major interrupted stiffly. “We function primarily as an outpatient clinic now, with only a few long-term patients. Cutbacks.” He shrugged a you know how it is before the smile returned as he clapped his hands once. “However, the important thing is that you’re all right, Agent Mulder.” He turned to Scully. “He is all right, isn’t he?”

She nodded. “But he could use some rest now, Major, so if you and Dr. Elkhart don’t mind, I’d like to get him back to his room.”

The major nodded, shook hands all around, and ushered Elkhart away, pausing only to have a brief animated conversation with the MP captain in charge of the search.

“What do you think?” Mulder asked when they were alone.

“I think,” she said without turning around, “that there’s a shooting incident, and the major brings scientists along instead of doctors.”

She checked the car they’d ridden out in, the shattered glass and punctures, at the one shredded, flat tire.

“Hank,” she said quietly, “get us a ride to the motel.”

Then she looked at Mulder, and instantly knew what he was thinking:

You’re not protected, Mr. Mulder, you’re still not protected.