Whirlwind

SIX

Mulder strolled into his office whistling. It was the kind of day that began with a gorgeous, unreal sunrise, Hollywood at its best, and carried that so well, he was half-afraid he was earning. The heat wave had broken three days before, bringing springlike temperatures to the capital, light showers at night to wash the streets, and a steady breeze that had thus far kept pollution from hazing the blue sky.

Leaves weren't dusty, the flowers were bright… it was so utterly perfect, it was damn close to sickening.

But he'd take it. He wasn't that much of a fool.

It took a second for him to notice Scully in his chair.

"Morning," he said brightly.

Since the meeting with Skinner, he had resolved two more knots in two more cases that had been bugging him for weeks. For a change, the agents involved were openly and immediately grateful; egos weren't bruised, and two more of the bad guys were on their way to capture.

He also wasn't surprised that Beth Neuhouse, unlike Bournell, hadn't come around to apologize for her behavior In fact, he hadn't seen her for a week, another sign that life was good and maybe he'd been mistaken about the reprimand setup.

All he needed now was a generous supply of sunflower seeds, and things would be perfect.

"So what's up?" he asked, dropping his briefcase beside an overloaded desk, Scully reached down beside her, and tossed him a plastic bag.

He caught it against his chest one-handed and held it up. It was a half-pound of sunflower seeds. He smiled. A sign; it had to be a sign. The smile turned to suspicion. "You hate it when I eat these things. It gets messy. You hate messy." He hefted the bag. "What's the catch?"

She shrugged innocently and reached down again, into her own briefcase. She wore a green suit and loose matching blouse fastened at the collar.

"What's the catch, Scully?" he repeated, tossing the bag onto his desk.

She held up a folder, waggled it, and placed it in her lap almost primly.

He stared at the folder, at her, and at the sunflower seeds. They were definitely a sign, and he had no intention of reading it.

Scully smiled faintly at his expression. "Don't worry. You'll probably like this one."

He waited.

She settled back in the chair. "So, what do you know about cattle mutilations?"

"Oh, please, Scully, not that again, please." He crossed to a wheeled office chair and dropped into it, swiveling around to face her as he crossed his legs at the knee. He wasn't going to answer what was obviously a rhetorical question, until he realized he had to. She was preparing him, preparing his mind for something "ordinary" didn't describe.

"All right." He clasped his hands loosely, elbows on the chair's arms. "Depending on who you talk to, you either have half-baked cults that demand bizarre sacrifices — cows being the animal of choice — secret government experiments in immunology based on actual and potential chem-. ical warfare, chemical warfare tests alone, or.. " He looked at the ceiling. "Or experiments with alleged alien-based technology." He shook his head slowly. "To name a few."

Without responding, she flipped open the folder "The cattle are either bled, they have sections of hide and/or muscle and/or organs removed—"

" — or they're just sliced all to hell and left in the middle of a field for some poor farmer to fall over. So what? You know this isn't the sort of thing I—" He stopped, and they looked at each other.

He had almost said, "need to know."

He broke contact first, staring at the tip of his shoe. "Where?"

"New Mexico."

He barked a laugh. "Cattle mutilations? Right. Near Roswell, I suppose. Come on, Scully, give me a break. I'm not about to get into that—"

She held up a pair of photographs without comment.

After a moment he took them; after another moment, he placed both feet on the floor and leaned over, elbows now resting on his thighs. It took a while for him to understand what he was looking at, and when he did, he inhaled quickly.

At first they seemed to be little more than solid masses of stained white and gray lying on what appeared to be bare earth. Sandy, grainy, maybe desert ground. A blink to change the perspective, and their forms resolved into the carcasses of animals that had been skinned, stripped in some areas right to the bone. There was virtually nothing left of their heads but exposed skull.

"The one on the left," she told him, "hadn't been found for a couple of days."

Its eyes were gone, and a closer examination showed him swarming ants, and a few flies the photographer hadn't been able to shoo away. Its hind legs had been twisted from their sockets; its mouth was open, the tongue still there, but it was much smaller, thinner than it ought to be, and evidently raw. Although there were shadows, and although he tried, he couldn't spot any pools or traces of blood.

He glanced up, frowning. "Blood?"

Scully nodded. "I know, I've looked, too. If it's exsanguination, it's almost too well done. Otherwise…" A one-shoulder shrug. "Cauterization is about the only other thing I can think of. Based on the pictures, that is. To know exactly, we'll have to talk to those who were at the scene."

At her direction, he checked the photograph on the right.

"Now that one," she explained, "was found, they think, only a few hours after it happened. The eyes are gone there as well, but I can't tell if they've been surgically removed or…"

She didn't finish; she didn't have to.

"The blood thing again," he said, looking from one exhibit to the other.

"Right. And again, I don't have an answer for you. Not based on what we have now. Look dose at the hind quaters, though. Twisted, just like the other one. I doubt if they're still in their sockets. There was a lot of force exerted there, Mulder. A lot"

"Meaning?"

"Too soon, Mulder, you know that. Most of the hide is gone, although—" She leaned over and pointed. " — it looks as if there are still some strips around the belly. Maybe between the legs, too. With all that muscle tissue gone or shredded, it’s hard to tell."

He looked up. "This isn't just skinning. What do you figure? Flayed?"

She nodded cautiously, unwilling as always to commit until she had seen the evidence firsthand. "I think so. I won't know until I've had a good look for myself."

Then she handed him another pair.

Puzzled, he took them, looked down, and rocked back in the chair, swallowing heavily. "Jesus."

People; they were people.

He closed his eyes briefly and set the pictures aside. He had seen any number of horrors over the past several years, from dismemberment to outright butchery, but there had been nothing as vicious as this. He didn't need to look at them more than once to know this was something different. To put it mildly.

Rayed.

These people had been flayed, and he didn't need to ask if they had been alive when it happened.

"Skinner, right?" The Assistant Director would have flagged this for him as soon as it had arrived,

Scully nodded as she pushed absently at her hair, trying to tuck it behind one ear. "The local authorities, the county sheriff's office, called. " She checked a page of the file. "They called Red Garson in the Albuquerque office. Apparently it didn't take him very long to think of you."

Mulder knew Garson slightly, a weathered, rangy westerner who had breezed through the Bureau academy at Quantico, less with considerable skill — although he had it in abundance — than with an almost frantic enthusiasm born of a man determined to get out of the East as fast as he could. Which he had done as soon as he could. He was no slouch when it came to on-site investigations, so this must have thrown him completely. It wasn't like him to ask for anyone's help,

"Mulder, whoever did this is truly sick."

Sick, deranged, or so devoid of emotion that he might as well not be human.

He grabbed a picture at random — it was a couple, and he was thankful that what was left of their faces was turned away from the camera.

"Tied? Drugged?"

Scully cleared her throat. "It’s hard to tell but initial indications are. " She paused, and he heard the nervousness, and the anger, in her voice. "Indications are they weren't. And Garson doesn't think they were killed somewhere else and dumped at the site."

He rubbed a hand over his mouth, bit down on his lower lip thoughtfully.

"Autopsies by the medical examiner, a woman named Helen Rios, are inconclusive on whether they were actually conscious or not at the time of death. The lack of substantial quantities of epinephrine seems to indicate it happened too fast for the chemical to form, which it usually does in abundance in cases of extreme violence."

"A victim's adrenaline rush," he said quietly.

Scully looked up from the report. "Right. Something else, too."

He didn't know what question to ask.

"They appear to have been dressed at the time of the assault."

He shifted uneasily "Wait."

"Shards of clothing were found around each of the scenes. Not even that — no more than bits. Strips of leather from boots or shoes. Metal buttons."

"Scully, hold it."

Her hand trembling slightly, she dropped the folder back into her briefcase. "The pathologist says they either died of shock or bled to death." She inhaled slowly. "Garson, in a sidebar, seems to think they were frightened to death, that they were dead before they hit the ground."

Mulder waved her silent. "Scully, these people— forget about the animals for a minute — these people were attacked by someone, or a group of someones, flayed until their clothes were shredded and their skin was taken off." He gestured vaguely. Shook his head. "You're saying—"

"They're saying," she corrected.

"Okay. Okay, they're saying it happened so fast, epinephrine hadn't had time to. " He smiled without humor and looked blindly around the room. "Scully, you know as well as I do that's damn near impossible."

"Probably," she admitted. "I haven't had a lot of time to think about it."

He stood abruptly. "You don't have to think about it, Scully. There's nothing to think about. It's practically flat-out impossible."

"Which is why we have to be at Dulles first thing in the morning. Stopover at Dallas, we'll be in New Mexico by one their time." She raised a finger to forestall a response. "And remember: practically is the right word here, Mulder. That does not mean definitely"

He stared at her briefcase, spread his arms at all the work yet undone he could see in the office, and said, "What?" at the twitch of a smile on her lips.

She didn't have to answer.

He usually reacted this way when a clear X-File landed in his lap. A switching of gears, of mindset, excitement of one kind changing to excitement of another. Impossible, to him, meant someone else had decided there were no explanations for whatever had happened.

But there were always explanations.

Always.

His superiors, and Scully, didn't always like them, but they were there.

Sometimes all it took was a little imagination to find them. A less hidebound way of looking at the world. A willingness to understand that the truth sometimes wore a mask.

"There's something else," she added as he reached for the sunflower seeds and his briefcase.

"What?"

She stood and brushed at her skirt. "There was a witness to one of the killings."

He felt his mouth open. "You're kidding. He saw who did it?"

"She," Scully corrected. "And she claims it wasn't a person."

He waited.

"She said it was a shadow."

Brother, he thought.

"Either that, or a ghost."