Strange and unfathomable shapes skirled across his vision like static. The nanocritters in his body were messing around with his optic nerves again, fixing them, making improvements . . . or just toying with them. He hadn’t been able to see colors for days.
Dorman clenched his jaws together, feeling the ache in his bones. He almost enjoyed the ache—a real 136
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pain, not a phantom side effect of having his body invaded by self-programmed machines.
He picked up his pace, so focused on keeping himself moving forward that he didn’t even hear the loud hum of the approaching truck.
The vehicle grew louder, a large log truck half-loaded with pine logs whose bark had been splintered off and most of their large protruding branches ampu-tated. Dorman turned and looked at it, then stepped farther to the side of the road. The driver flashed his headlights.
Dorman heard the engine growl as the trucker shifted down through the gears. The air brakes sighed as the log truck came to a halt thirty feet in front of Dorman.
He just stood and stared, unable to believe what had happened, what a stroke of luck. This man was going to give him a ride. Dorman hurried forward, squelching water from his shoes. He huddled his arms around his chest.
The driver leaned over the seat and popped open the passenger door. The rain continued to slash down, pelting the wet logs, steaming off the truck’s warm grille.
Dorman grabbed the door handle and swung it open. His leg jittered as he lifted it to step on the running board. Finally he gained his balance and hauled himself up. He was dripping, exhausted, cold.
“Boy, you look miserable,” the truck driver said.
He was short and portly, with dirty-blond hair and blue eyes.
“I
am
miserable,” Dorman answered, surprised that his voice worked so well.
“Well, then, be miserable inside the truck cab here. You got a place to go—or just wandering?”
“I’ve got a place to go,” Dorman said. “I’m just trying to get there.”
antibodies
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“Well, you can ride with me until the Coast Highway turnoff. My name’s Wayne—Wayne Hykaway.”
Dorman looked at him, suspicious. He didn’t want his identity known. “I’m . . . David,” he said.
He slammed the truck’s door, shoving his hands into the waterlogged pockets of his tattered jacket, hunched over and huddling into himself. Hykaway had extended his hand but quickly drew it back when it became obvious Dorman had no intention of shaking it.
The interior of the cab was warm and humid.
Heat blasted from the vents. The windshield wipers slapped back and forth in an effort to keep the view clear. News radio played across the speakers of a far-too-expensive sound system, crackling with static from poor reception out here in the wilderness.
The trucker wrestled with the stick shift and rammed the vehicle into gear again. With a groan and a labor of its engines, the log truck began to move forward along the wet road uphill toward the trees.
As the truck picked up speed, Dorman could only think that he was growing closer to his destination every minute, every mile. This man had no idea of the deadly risk he had just taken, but Dorman had to think of his ultimate goal of finding Patrice and Jody—
and the dog. Whatever the cost.
Dorman sat back, pressed against the door of the truck, trying to ignore the guilt and fear. Water trickled down his face, and he blinked it away. He maintained his view through the windshield, watching the wipers tock back and forth. He tried to keep as far away from Wayne Hykaway as possible. He didn’t dare let the man touch him. He couldn’t risk the exposure another body would bring.
The cordial trucker switched off the talk radio and tried in vain to strike up a conversation, but when Dorman proved reticent, he just began to talk about 138
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himself instead. He chatted about the books he liked to read, his hobby of tai chi relaxation techniques, how he had once trained unemployed people.
Hykaway kept one hand on the steering wheel of the mammoth logging truck, and with the other he fiddled with the air vent controls, the heater. When he couldn’t think of anything to say, he flicked on the radio again, tuning to a different station, then switched it off in disgust.
Dorman concentrated on his body, turning his thoughts inward. He could feel his skin crawling and squirming, his muscle growths moving of their own accord. He pressed his elbows against his ribs, feeling the clammy fabric of his jacket as well as the slick ooze of the nanomachine carrier mucus that seeped out of his pores.
After fifteen minutes of Dorman’s trancelike silence, the trucker began to glance at him sidelong, as if wondering what kind of psychopath he had foolishly picked up.
Dorman avoided his gaze, staring out the side window—and then his gut spasmed. He hunched over and clenched his hands to his stomach. He hissed breath through his teeth. He felt something jerk beneath his skin, like a mole burrowing through his rib cage.
“Hey, are you all right?” the trucker said.
“Yes,” Dorman answered, ripping the answer out of his voice box. He squeezed hard enough until he could finally regain control over his rebellious biological systems. He sucked in deep pounding breaths.
Finally the convulsions settled down again.
Still, he felt his internal organs moving, exploring their freedom, twitching in places that should never have been able to move. It was like a roiling storm inside of him.
Wayne Hykaway glanced at him again, then turned antibodies
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back to concentrate on the wet road. He kept both hands gripped white on the steering wheel.
Dorman remained seated in silence, huddled against the hard comfort of the passenger-side door. A bit of slime began to pool on the seat around him.
He knew he could lose control again at any moment.
Every hour it got harder and harder. . . .
Max’s General Store and Art Gallery Colvain, Oregon
Friday, 12:01 P.M.
Scully was already tired of driving and glad X for the chance to stop and ask a few more people if they recognized Patrice and Jody Kennessy.
Mulder sat in the passenger seat, munch-ing cheese curls from a bag in his lap and dropping a few crumbs on his overcoat. He plastered his face to the unfolded official road map of the state of Oregon.
“I can’t find this town on the map,” Mulder said.
“Colvain, Oregon.”
Scully parked in front of a quaint old shake-shingle house with a hand-painted sign dangling on a chain on a post out front. MAX’S GENERAL STORE AND ART
GALLERY.
“Mulder, we’re
in
the town and I can’t find it.”
The heavy wooden door of the general store advertised Morley cigarettes; a bell on the top jingled as they entered the creaking hardwood floor of Max’s.
“Of course they’d have a bell,” Mulder said, looking up.
Old 1950s-style coolers and refrigerators—enam-antibodies
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eled white with chrome trim—held lunch meats, bottled soft drinks, and frozen dinners. Boxes around the cash register displayed giant-size Slim Jims and seemingly infinite varieties of beef jerky.
T-shirts hung on a rack beside shelves full of knickknacks, most made from sweet-smelling cedar and painted with witty folk sayings related to the soggy weather in Oregon. Shot glasses, placemats, playing cards, and key chains rounded out the assortment.
Scully saw a few simple watercolor paintings hanging aslant on the far wall above a beer cooler; price tags dangled from the gold-painted frames. “I wonder if there’s some kind of county ordinance that requires each town to have a certain number of art galleries,” she said.
Behind the cash register, an old woman sat barricaded by newspaper racks and wire trays that held gum, candy, and breath mints. Her hair was dyed an outrageous red, her glasses thick and smudged with fingerprints. She was reading a well-thumbed tabloid with headlines proclaiming
Bigfoot Found in New Jersey
,
Alien Embryos Frozen in Government Facility
, and even
Cannibal Cult in Arkansas.
Mulder looked at the headlines and raised his eyebrows at Scully. The red-headed woman looked up over her glasses. “May I help you folks? Do you need maps or sodas?”
Mulder flashed his badge and ID. “We’re federal agents, ma’am. We’re wondering if you could give us directions to a cabin near here, some property owned by a Mr. Darin Kennessy?”
Scully withdrew the much-handled Kennessy photos and spread them on the counter. The woman hurriedly folded her tabloid and shoved it beside the cash register. Through her smudged glasses, she peered down at the photos.
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“We’re looking for these two people,” Scully said, offering no further information.
Jody Kennessy smiled optimistically up from the photograph, but his face was gaunt and sunken, his hair mostly fallen out, his skin grayish and sickly from the rigorous chemo and radiation treatments.
The woman removed her glasses and wiped them off with a Kleenex, then put them on her face again.
“Yes, I think I’ve seen these two before. The woman at least. Been out here a week or two.”
Mulder perked up. “Yes, that’s about the time frame we’re talking about.”
Scully leaned forward, unable to stop herself from telling too many details, so as to enlist the woman’s aid. “This young man is very seriously ill. He’s dying of leukemia. He needs immediate treatment. He may have gotten significantly worse since this photo was taken.”
The woman looked down at Jody’s photograph again. “Well, then, maybe I’m wrong,” she said. “As I recall, the boy with this woman seemed pretty healthy to me. They could be staying out at the Kennessys’
cabin. It’s been empty a long time.”
The woman rocked back on her chair, which let out a metal squeal. She pressed the thick glasses up against the bridge of her nose. “Nothing much moves around here without us knowing about it.”
“Could you give us directions, ma’am?” Scully repeated.
The redheaded woman withdrew a pen, but didn’t bother to write down directions. “About seven or eight miles back, you turn on a little road called Locust Springs Drive, go about a quarter of a mile, turn left on a logging road—it’s the third driveway on your right.” She toyed with her strand of fake pearls.
“This is the best lead we’ve got so far,” Scully said softly, looking eagerly at her partner. The thought of antibodies
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rescuing Jody Kennessy, helping him out in his weakened state, gave her new energy.
As an FBI agent, Scully was supposed to maintain her objectivity and not get emotionally involved in a case lest her judgment be influenced. In this instance she couldn’t help it. She and Jody Kennessy both shared the shadow of cancer, and the connection to this boy she’d never met was too strong. Her desire to help him was far more powerful than Scully had antic-ipated when she and Mulder had left Washington to investigate the DyMar fire.
The bell on the door jingled again, and a state policeman strode in, his boots heavy on the worn wooden floor of the general store. Scully looked over her shoulders as the trooper walked casually over to the soft drink cooler and grabbed a large bottle of orange soda.
“The usual, Jared?” the woman called from the cash register, already ringing him up.
“Would I ever change, Maxie?” he answered, and she tossed him a pack of artificially colored cheese crackers from the snack rack.
The policeman nodded politely to Mulder and Scully and noticed the photographs as well as Mulder’s badge wallet. “Can I help you folks?”
“We’re federal agents, sir,” Scully said. She picked up the photographs to show him and asked for his assistance. Perhaps he could escort them out to the isolated cabin where Patrice or Jody might be held captive—but suddenly the radio at Jared’s hip squelched.
A dispatcher’s voice came over, sounding alarmed but brisk and professional. “Jared, come in, please.
We’ve got an emergency situation here. A passing motorist found a dead body up the highway about three quarters of a mile past Doyle’s property.”
The trooper grabbed his radio. “Officer Penwick here,” he said. “What do you mean by a dead body?
What condition?”
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“A trucker,” the dispatcher answered. “His logging rig is half off the road. The guy’s sprawled by the steering wheel, and . . . well, it’s weird. Not like any accident injuries I’ve ever heard of.”
Mulder quickly looked at Scully, intrigued. They both understood that this sounded remarkably like their own case. “You go ahead, Scully. I can ride out to the location of the body with Officer, uh, Penwick here and take a look around. If it’s nothing, I’ll have him take me to the cabin and meet up with you.”
Uneasy about being separated from him, but realizing that they had to investigate both possibilities without delay, she nodded. “Make sure you take appropriate precautions.”
“I will, Scully.” Mulder hurried for the door.
The bell jangled as the trooper left, clutching his cheese crackers and orange soda on one hand as he sent off an acknowledgment on his walkie-talkie. He glanced over his shoulder. “Put it on my tab, Maxie—
I’ll catch you later.”
Scully hurried behind them, letting the jingling door swing shut. Mulder and the trooper raced for his police vehicle, parked aslant in front of the general store.
Mulder called back at her, “Just see if you can find them, Scully. Learn what you can. I’ll contact you on the cell phone.”
The two car doors slammed, and with a spray of wet gravel the highway patrolman spun around and raced up the road with his red lights flashing.
She returned to their rental car, grabbing her keys.
When she glanced down at the unit on the car seat, she finally noticed to her dismay that her cellular phone wasn’t working. They were out of range once more.
Kennessys’ Cabin
Coast Range, Oregon
Friday, 12:58 P.M.