X-Files: Trust No One

by Tim Lebbon

  Mulder shone his flashlight around the pipe. The alligator-man had come through this way, meaning there should be some trace of him in here, showing Mulder which way to go.

  Diligence was rewarded—there was a small reddish smear just above the waterline going to the right. Mulder went that way, keeping his flashlight on the waterline. He was rewarded again by spotting another reddish smear. One of the girls had lived long enough to try to leave a trail using her own blood. He went on.

  *****

  VISTA BUENA SEWER SYSTEM

  Jason ran. He had no idea where he was going, but out of Gator’s horrible nest was a good start.

  He felt funny, though. As if he couldn’t run as fast as before and yet, at the same time, like he could run faster if he could just get his legs to work right. Everything looked weird, too. Colors were different, and his point of view seemed wrong.

  His sense of smell was off, too. Instead of this place smelling horrible, now it smelled safe, comforting, and normal.

  The sewer system was a maze—every kid was taught that in school, so they wouldn’t be stupid enough to come down here for kicks or to do drugs. But Jason didn’t feel lost. He could smell something, something that smelled right. He headed for that smell.

  * * * *

  Mulder almost missed the smaller tunnel offshoot. If he hadn’t been following the blood trail he would have missed it.

  He followed this smaller tunnel, gun out and ready. But he reached the end of it without running into anyone else.

  There was what looked like a foul nest made here, and the blood-soaked rags indicated this was probably where the girls had been mutilated. But what was on the small box that served as a table was what interested Mulder the most.

  There was a small pyre with some odd herbs smoldering in a small set of teeth that looked like they could be from a baby alligator. In front of this were small figurines that looked homemade or at least badly crafted—larger and smaller alligator-ish things, three sort-of females, and one horrible looking human-alligator face.

  Mulder pulled out his handkerchief and put all of the figurines into his outer coat pocket, kicking himself for not having an evidence bag on hand. He emptied his cigarettes into his pants pocket and poured the smoldering herbs into the empty carton, then pocketed this and the teeth as well. The bloody rags he left for forensics to recover.

  He went back through this smaller tunnel then considered his options. There had been plenty of pipes to go down as he’d traveled here. But he hadn’t spotted anything. He turned away from the blood trail and went down the so-far unexplored section of this pipe.

  As he came to a T-intersection, Mulder heard something off to the left—water sloshing and the sound of grunting. He moved that way quickly.

  *****

  Dales couldn’t hear the police anymore, which meant that he and Johnston were likely farther from them. Hopefully this meant they were on the right trail. They were in a very wide section of the sewer. It reminded Dales of the sewer in Bailey’s Crossroads now—walkways on either side, sewer water running down the middle.

  No sooner wished for than granted—they rounded a corner to see an alligator running towards them in the water. It wasn’t as large as Dales remembered. In fact, it looked young.

  Johnston aimed and fired, but Dales knocked his hand away and the bullet ricocheted harmlessly. “No! I think it’s the boy!”

  The alligator skidded to a stop and looked around, clearly panicked. Of course, a young alligator was still more of a challenge than not. Dales wondered if he’d done the right thing.

  A roar from behind him said possibly he had. He spun as a much larger alligator that also looked something like a man slammed into both Dales and Johnston.

  As Dales flew across to the other side and his hip slammed into the tunnel wall in an extremely painful way, he watched as the larger alligator picked up the smaller one.

  “Kill the big one!” he shouted to Johnston, who’d gotten to his feet, rifle in hand.

  The Malligator roared, but before anything else happened, Mulder’s voice came from behind the gators. “Stop! I have your totems and I’ll destroy them if you don’t give yourself up.”

  The Malligator spun around, growling. Johnston took his shot.

  *****

  Mulder held up the alligator teeth. He shone his flashlight into the larger alligator’s face—the eyes were wrong, like a combination of human and reptile, the wrong parts of both. The younger alligator was thrashing in the larger one’s hold.

  Both of them looked like they were alligator-people, and Mulder was willing to bet that the smaller one was the missing boy. But before he could say or do anything else, a shot rang out.

  It hit, but the big alligator had thick hide, and if the shot penetrated, it didn’t do any real damage.

  The same couldn’t be said for the alligator. He slammed his gigantic tail into Johnston, who went flying towards Mulder. Johnston hit the concrete with a sickening thud.

  Mulder ran to him. Johnston’s head was bleeding profusely and his lower body was at a bad angle to the rest of him. “Guess I... blew it, Spooky,” he gasped out.

  Mulder grabbed his hand and thought about what Samanda had said. “It’s okay, Clayface. We’ll get you help, just hang on.”

  Johnston’s expression changed—he looked incredibly happy. “Always... wanted my partner to be... my best friend.” He sighed and then his eyes went glassy.

  Mulder felt for a pulse, then, finding none, gently closed Johnston’s eyes. He turned to see the giant alligator’s back turned to him. That meant he was after Dales. Like hell was Mulder going to allow this monster to kill Dales, the man he respected, the same way he’d killed his partner.

  Guns weren’t going to work, though. That had been proved in 1963. “I’m destroying them all, now!” he thundered, as he slammed the alligator teeth onto the concrete by his feet.

  The Malligator spun around and roared. Mulder ground the teeth under his foot, as he dropped the three female figurines onto the ground and jumped up and down on them. “All gone, you bastard! I’m going to make sure your Voodoo never works again!”

  The smaller alligator wriggled out of the larger’s grasp and ran towards Mulder faster than he thought should have been possible. For a moment he considered shooting, but the smaller alligator was on him too quickly.

  But it didn’t attack. Instead, it ate the remains of the teeth and figurines. And started looking a little more human than reptilian.

  Dales was shooting at the Malligator, forcing it to pay attention to him, as Mulder pulled the rest of the bizarre Voodoo implements out of his pocket and smashed them to pieces, and the smaller alligator ate them up. As they did this, the Malligator also looked less like a reptile and more like a man.

  They finished and the small alligator now matched the description of the missing boy. And the larger alligator matched the description of the man who’d kidnapped the kids. And, as he bore down on Dales, Mulder heard the roar of a gun and saw a hole tear through Sewers, who fell backwards from the force of the shot.

  Mulder grabbed the kid, who started barfing into the sewer water, and ran to make sure Sewers was as dead as Johnston. Then he went to Dales.

  “You okay, sir?”

  Dales nodded. “Think I’m going to need a new hip, but otherwise, I’m better than poor Clay.”

  Mulder swallowed. “Yeah.” He looked at the boy. “Jason Winger?”

  The kid nodded then started to cry as he went to Dales and hugged him. “Thanks for not letting the other man kill me.”

  Dales patted the boy’s back as the sounds of their backup filtered down the tunnels. “It’s okay now, son. It’s all over.” He looked at Mulder. “You believe now?”

  Mulder managed a smile. “Yes, sir, I do.”

  *****

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  DECEMBER 1990

  “Good job on this one, Mulder,” ASAC Carter said. “I’m sorry we lost Johnston, though.
He was a good man. Giving him a hero’s memorial, not that there’s anyone to appreciate it.”

  “No?” Mulder asked.

  “No family left.”

  Mulder cleared his throat. “Ah, he was my, uh, friend, sir. If there’s something that I can do...”

  Carter shrugged. “You can keep his medal, if it means anything to you.”

  Mulder nodded. “Thank you, sir. It does.”

  “How’s your consultant holding up?”

  “Mister Dales will have to walk with a cane, but otherwise, he’s good, sir, thank you for asking.”

  Carter shot him a rare smile. “Once a Special Agent, Mulder, always a Special Agent. Remember that.”

  *****

  VISTA BUENA, CALIFORNIA

  DECEMBER 1991

  Jason went down to the sewers and waited. He’d done the right thing, of that he was sure. By ingesting then regurgitating the magic into the same water Gator had been floating in, the magic should still be able to work. And that meant that, tonight, his new father would come back. And then, they’d go away and hunt together. Forever.

  The End

  Clair de Lune

  By W.D. Gagliani and David Benton

  In memory of Charles L. Grant

  SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF OTTAWA, CANADA

  4th OCTOBER, 1994, 5:45 p.m.

  The rental Ford’s windshield wipers fought to sweep away the onslaught of wet heavy snowflakes, as Special Agent Fox Mulder wove his way cautiously south of Ottawa. They had just been diverted off the 416 due to snow accumulation, and now he realized that had been a mistake. Perth was off to their right, somewhere. His passengers watched the increasingly white landscape unfolding with obvious trepidation.

  It was the kind of blizzard that kills all school and business activities and grounds all flights, and indeed their direct flight to Washington, D.C., had been one of the first on the board to flip from On Time to Cancelled. It was the kind of once-a-season blizzard that causes the closure of even the main highways, so S.A. Mulder had elected to test the conditions on a more rural route.

  But it wasn’t going well, not at all.

  Visibility on the darkening road was limited to only what the car’s underpowered headlights illuminated, and even that had taken on the look of a fuzzy television screen tuned between stations, the image blotted out by the streaming white specks. And the lines on the road—for that matter everything else—were rapidly vanishing beneath a thick blanket of fresh white snow.

  Now Mulder was navigating by pure instinct.

  “We should have waited until tomorrow and taken a flight,” Special Agent Dana Scully said from the navigator’s seat while straining to see past the windshield. “It would have made more sense, Mulder.”

  “What, and miss all of this?” Mulder could have been talking about the storm, but he’d smirked and motioned toward the seat behind them, where the extradited prisoner they were escorting, one Carlo DesMarais, sat handcuffed and ranting. He hadn’t stopped since they’d slid him, hands manacled behind his back, into the seat.

  “Please, you have to let me go!” Carlo yelled now, after a short respite from his previous outburst.

  “You’re not running out of steam back there, are you?” Mulder asked. “I missed the sound of your mellifluous voice. It’s the only thing keeping me alert, and therefore keeping us alive.” He winked sideways at Scully, who frowned.

  “You don’t understand,” their prisoner pleaded, struggling against his handcuffs. “I keep telling you, this is the wrong time to move me. You have to wait until next week.”

  “Sorry, pal, the wheels of justice turn slowly enough as it is. No point making it worse. You decided to sing, and now the rehearsal is over. Time for you to shine on stage. Or in the witness box.” Mulder turned briefly to Scully. “Before he knows it our guest is going to be lounging in some Club Fed, proud to have helped bring down the likes of Jean-Paul the Scud and his gang of greasy gunsels.”

  Scully smiled mirthlessly. Mulder could wear on you, not much less than their talkative charge. But he was a good driver to have in whiteouts. You learn things like that about your partner.

  Carlo wailed, his words a jumble of Spanish, French, and some sort of patois neither agent recognized.

  “What are you raving about, Carlo?” Mulder said, his eyes finding the crazy man’s in the mirror and meeting them for a brief moment. “I mean, isn’t it late to complain? This is your show. You decided to take the government’s deal and talk.”

  The diminutive thug stuttered. “B-b-but... I told them I wanted some time, a few days, a w-w-week. To p-p-prepare. I-i-it’s a full moon!”

  Mulder chuckled. “Looks way overcast to me. I don’t think we’ll be seeing the moon tonight.”

  “You don’t n-n-need to see it! I’m t-t-telling you, you’re in t-t-terrible danger! You have t-t-to turn around now, or l-l-let me go!”

  “Calm down, DesMarais,” Scully said, her hand loosening her parka over where her Sig P228 sat snug in its holster. “The only thing we’re in danger of is getting stuck in this storm before we get you back to the States so you can testify. We’re trained and prepared for this kind of situation. And armed, too, keep in mind.” She half-turned to glare at the curled-up witness, who was trying to find a comfortable position despite his handcuff situation.

  “Your g-g-guns won’t help you!” the prisoner blurted, his high-pitched voice changing to a near-growl.

  “Well, they surely won’t help us shovel our way out of here if this snow keeps piling up,” Mulder agreed, sighing. “Scully, we may need to find a place to hole up for the night.”

  “Now you say that?” said Scully, raising a finely sculpted and well-used eyebrow.

  “Yeah, well... I had to try. Syracuse is just south of the tip of Lake Ontario, on 81. If they’re not socked in, we could have been on a flight to D.C. in a few hours. Doesn’t look good now, though.”

  As the car crept forward through the rising snow cover, a sign materialized on the right side of the road. There were words, and an arrow pointed crookedly downward.

  “Serendipity, I think,” Mulder said with his usual sideways smirk. “Can you make it out?”

  “Not exactly, but I can read the flashing Vacancy part,” Scully answered. “Looks like a motel must be somewhere under all this snow.”

  “See, my unerring sense of direction leads us out of danger yet again,” he said.

  “Just drive, Mulder, before the wheels freeze up and we become tomorrow’s archeological find like the wooly mammoth.”

  “Scully, you’re starting to sound like me.”

  “God forbid,” Scully muttered, but she was smiling.

  Their passenger seemed to be snoring. Then Mulder realized he wasn’t asleep at all—Carlo was praying under his breath, presumably a stream of muttered supplications.

  “Make sure you get one of those in there for the heat to work in this dump,” Mulder said.

  Slowly nosing off the main road onto an even worse offshoot, Mulder guided them toward what seemed the entrance of the empty parking lot, the light Ford Tempo fishtailing as its tires struggled and slipped in the ever-deepening powder. The wipers barely moved any of it and he had to hunch and squint to see through the tiny aperture left on the windshield. Around them, the near-whiteout seemed to worsen, whipping the snow pellets into a frenzy.

  Finally Mulder pulled up in front of the building’s main door.

  “See, the Bates Motel’s been waiting for us.”

  The place was a typical Fifties design, an L-shaped one-story building with the office at one end of the short wing and individual room doors facing out onto the snow-clogged lot, larger windows set beside them. Most of the sign’s letters were burned out, which was why Scully couldn’t read it, but the green vacancy sign’s Morse-code blinking had served as a welcome beacon. It was a sad and desolate place but at the moment it might as well have been a resort, as it would provide the shelter they needed, if nothing more.


  Scully fought to open the door, snow and wind whipping inside as she got out. She turned back to Mulder. “You guys keep each other company,” she shouted before closing the door and restoring quiet. She headed for the motel’s entrance.

  Mulder kept the engine running, drumming his fingers on the wheel.

  Carlo muttered his unintelligible prayers.

  Maybe they were curses. Mulder couldn’t tell.

  *****

  Scully trudged through what by now had to be eight inches of wet, sludgy snow, tugged open the glass door, and stepped inside the retro light-paneled lobby.

  No, it wasn’t retro, she realized as she glanced around. It had never been updated from the day the building was erected. Weak strip lighting gave everything the pallor of terminal illness.

  She stomped the mess from her completely inappropriate shoes and brushed clinging flakes from her shoulders, then aimed for the front desk across the empty room. She checked her surroundings, her training taking over, and spotted all the doors and windows. It was second nature. Although the lights were on and the heat seemed to be working, there was no one behind the counter. The door in the rear was ajar, a dim light on somewhere behind it.

  She rang the bell, cursing Mulder for his usual disregard of just about everything that would have made the most sense.

  *****

  “P-p-please. You have to l-l-let me go,” Carlo DesMarais said from the rear seat, trying to calm his stutter.

  “Why, what’s going to happen if we don’t?” Mulder didn’t remember the guy stuttering so much before, but then they hadn’t heard him speak much. All they had to do was transport him, not make a new buddy. Still, the little guy did seem highly perturbed.

  And that kind of thing always piqued Mulder’s curiosity.

  “B-b-bad things. Bad things are g-g-going to happen if you don’t let me go. You d-d-don’t understand. Your lives are in d-danger. And the lives of everyone here are in d—”

  Mulder jumped in. “Well, Carlo, if we were to let you go, then my job would be in danger. And I take my job very seriously, some of the time.”

  “You g-got to believe me. I don’t want to b-b-be responsible for what’s gonna happen here tonight. You need to let me g-g-go.”