by: Margaret

He expected trouble. There was no avoiding it. There was no running away from it.
And as of this second, he had two choices. He could either wrap everything up, do away
with Patricia, and abandon the project all together while begging for mercy from the
Secret Society… or, he could stand firm, take the onslaught on the chin, and redouble his
efforts at making his goals come true regardless of the Society’s general dislike. It was
not a difficult decision for him to make. He was not one who begged.
The Smoking Man pulled out a carton of cigarettes and methodically made his way
through the five packs inside the box. It was the only physical sign of his well hidden
anxiety. Other than that, the emotionless features on his face and his silence portrayed the
image of a stoic man unaffected by his recent failure. He sat down in his plastic chair
behind his makeshift desk and waited for her with almost Zen-like calm. He did not have
to wait long.
The clanging heels of Madame Muriko’s Bali shoes against the warehouse’s hard, tiled
floor signaled her unmistakable arrival. He heard her flustered voice chew out several
soldiers in the hallway, and soon after that, she was at his door. She was still in her
impeccable silk suit, with her hair put up in a bun. Her dark-toned face flushed red with
dissatisfaction. She stared at the calm man in front of her with his cigarette between his
fingers and his poker-style stare.
“There are two rules in our profession, assassin,” she finally said in a low, calm voice.
“When it comes to a kill, never get personal and never get creative. Last night, you broke
both rules! Why didn’t you just have the two video men shoot Bo and Fox and throw their
bodies in the lake?”
The tone of her voice was accusatory, like a mother at an angry child. The Smoking
Man remained silent for a spell, nonchalantly sucking away at his Marlboro stick. “I had
my reasons,” he finally said with an almost robotic response. “Fox Mulder has been a
thorn in this organization’s side for over six years. I thought his death should be…
memorable.”

Muriko shook her head and loudly scoffed into the ceiling. “Oh, don’t give me that,
old
man. Do you see me as a child? A child that can be easily manipulated and lied to?” She
crossed her arms and paced in front of the desk. “Don’t you sit there and tell me that you
wanted Mulder to suffer because of his six years of head-butting with you. And don’t tell
me that you wanted Bo Duke to suffer in that same way because of what he did to Alex
Krycek. I believed that yesterday. I don’t believe that anymore.”
The Smoking Man smiled and leaned back in his chair. His eyes locked on Muriko’s
long legs pacing back and forth, and though he was in the middle of being chewed out,
his mind wandered off to other things. He smiled and decided to tease. “And, what other
reason could there be, darling?”
Muriko saw the way the old man looked at her and immediately stopped pacing. She’d
been mad before, but now she was furious. “I think that in your twisted mind, this whole
project goes deeper than just doing away with Bo Duke and Fox Mulder. Yes, you want
them to suffer long, painful deaths, but that’s not your ultimate goal! I think this is all
about Patricia!” The teasing air of the assassin’s demeanor suddenly disappeared at the
statement, and Muriko smiled, knowing that she had struck gold. “It’s all about power
with you. Isn’t it?” she demanded. “You’re not looking for wealth. You have enough of
that. You’re not even interested in politics. You can’t stand all the schmoozing you have
to do to get things done your way. No. With you it’s about raw power! The power over
life and death, and the power to make people do what you want them to do!”
The Smoking Man chuckled, but there was no joy in the fake sound. “Interesting
theory,” he said emotionlessly.
“Oh there’s more,” Muriko jeered. “You see, I think Patricia upsets you because she
won’t kill. And you want her to. No matter how badly you threaten her. No matter how
hard you punish her, she just won’t do it. Maybe child-like innocence keeps her hands
blood free, or maybe the nuns in the orphanage have a say in why she resists you. I don’t
know. But I do know that she rebels against your orders, and you can’t stand that! You
want to break her because if you could do that then you will become…”
“A god?” he finished. Muriko remained quiet, and her silence signaled her agreement.
The Smoking Man pushed his chair back and stood on his feet. He leaned forward over
the desk, making sure the woman on the other side of it would not miss a word of what
he said next. “Little girl, I have been in this business for over forty years. I have been
killing men and women even before you were born. I do not appreciate being lectured to
by a novice like yourself.”
The Japanese maiden took a deep, long breath. “I am the voice of the Society! My
authority surpasses yours! As we speak, special agent Skinner is heading for Hazzard, and
with him comes the might of the FBI! Even though tomorrow’s newspapers may show
Fox Mulder in his undies, his reputation will still be unshaken because not only does he
have a witness named Bo Duke, but he also has two prisoners! Your cameramen! Killing
Mulder will cause a Holy War! I am pulling the plug on this whole affair, and I want you
out of here by tomorrow!”
“No!”
The Smoking Man returned back to his seat and nonchalantly picked his cigarette off
his ashtray. Muriko’s almond eyes grew wide with appall.
“The Society gave you the authority to either start or walk away from this project,” the
Smoking Man explained in a calm voice. “They did not give you the authority to pull the
plug on this affair prematurely! YOU decided that I could start this, and I decide when
this project is over! The only way that I will walk away from Georgia is if the Society’s
General Consensus votes that I leave!”
“That could take days!” Muriko angrily muttered through clenched teeth.
The Smoking Man smiled and leaned back in his chair. He brought his cigarette to his
lips and allowed its burning end to paint gray-streaked rings around his head. “Then you’d
better hurry!” he gibed.
Muriko stared at the man for a few minutes. There was nothing she could do, and she
knew it. She turned and headed for the door, feeling the old man’s eyes watching her
voyeuristically.
“Muriko!”
Her hand fell on the doorknob and then stopped. She didn’t turn to face him as he
spoke.
“I still hold you bound to the promise you made me yesterday! And I am still going to
see you in private tomorrow night!”
She didn’t respond to the statement, though her skin crawled in revulsion. Instead, she
threw the door open and quickly walked into the hallway, anxious to get out of the old
man’s gaze.

**

You cross the boundary from conviction to obsession when you lose sight of reason.
It was dawn when the Smoking Man returned to the plant. He’d tried to get a few
hours
of sleep, but couldn’t. There were too many things that were happening at once, and he
worried about them. He meandered around a bit, checking the work of his temporary
employees, going over paperwork, and hitting the phone. He spent hours calling in
favors. The threat that Muriko had made, he found out, was indeed a severe one. With the
break of dawn came also the race for political leverage. Eventually, when all the office
work was done, he went once again to the auditorium and the bed where Patricia lay.
He stared at her unconscious form stretched out on the hospital bed. After the incident
at the lake, when the statues had thrown the box into the water, little Patricia had passed
out. She had lost not only consciousness in the real world, but her astral self as well. Like
a lightbulb void of energy, all her psychic powers had turned off, and all the computers in
the room which monitored the young girl’s brain activity had gone dead. The mud
soldiers had also dissipated into dust. At first, the Smoking Man had thought the young
girl had faked her fainting spell. She had done so in the past on numerous occasions, and
so, logically, he’d thought she was pretending now. He’d been surprised when the
physicians had said that she wasn’t faking at all. She had never really passed out before.
She complained of being tired and even got woozy at times when her talents were
stretched to the limit. But this… this was a first. To make matters worse, she still did not
wake up. It was clear to see that the child had slipped into a coma.
She was still in the auditorium under the bright spotlight in the center of the stage.
Biochemists and doctors dressed up in their white suits surrounded her. With their EKG’s,
their stethoscopes, their x-rays, and their needles, the scientists worked furiously to
resuscitate what they considered to be the greatest scientific discovery of the century.
Patricia had provided them with information of the human brain that they had never seen
before. They’d seen things happen on their computers that they’d never dreamed a human
being could ever do! They still did not have the answer as to why this child could do what
she did, and they did not want to lose her until she had revealed her secrets.
The Smoking Man cared little for the science of the matter. He was more interested in
the politics of this whole debacle. He was being pressured from two sides. On the one
hand, Director Skinner was heading for Hazzard, and with him would come the FBI. The
man wasn’t a huge threat. In the realm of Society politics, the FBI was easy to
manipulate. A call to President Simpleton would keep the snide, balding leader on a
leash. There were enough spies and moles in the federal bureau to keep things in check.
However, they could not keep the situation at bay indefinitely. Time was of the essence.
On a more serious note, Madame Muriko was on an all-out assault against him. The
Japanese maiden had turned out to be a tiger. She was quickly gathering Society
members and pushing hard for a vote to drop the Patricia experiment all together.
The smart and rational thing to do was to walk away. There was no way that the
Smoking Man could somehow walk from this situation without getting a bloody nose.
But no matter how hard he tried, he could not leave. He stared at Patricia’s stretched-out
form on the bed. The little girl looked like death. Her lips and face were as pale as the
sheets that covered her. Her arms and legs were bruised at the restraints that held her
bound. From her head to her toes, various needles and IV’s pricked her clammy skin as
silent machines quietly crunched the information fed to them from deep within muscles.
Her sad eyes had closed and had not opened again, not once! He had crushed her like
grain through a mill. He had sapped her spirit so hard that her body had given out. The
doctors were afraid that they were losing her. The Smoking Man was furious.
He had spent three years on this child. For three years, he had tried to form her into an
image worthy of the Society’s respect. The new world order was to spring from her mind.
The defeat of the humanly inferior was to happen under her will. The salvation of the
physical and mental elite would come through her intercession, and this new Garden of
Eden would begin with the death of Bo Duke, Fox Mulder, and his God-forsaken X-files.
She had resisted him. From the very beginning, with her whining and pleading and
crying and begging, she had never achieved what he wanted her to become. And now,
when the stakes were at their highest and the pressure at its greatest, she had found a way
out. She had slipped into a coma, and in her unconsciousness achieved complete and
total defiance to the Smoking Man’s agenda.
Yes, the smart thing was to walk away. The Smoking Man couldn’t.
He took a puff of his Marlboro cigarette and called to the white-coated scientists,
“Ladies and Gentlemen!”
The roving scientists came to a standstill. The assassin took another puff of his smoke
as he walked out of the shadows into the spotlight.
“I think it is time that we stepped up the intensity of our experimentation. I think it’s
time to use drug 2385.”
The statement was a scandalous one. With frenzied whispers, the scientists discussed
amongst themselves the impact of using such a drug. Some worriedly shook their heads,
while others set their tools down in disbelief. One of the nurses took the forefront. “Sir!”
she protested. “Drug 2385 is highly unstable! It hasn’t been fully tested! We don’t know
how Patricia will act to it!”
“It will wake her up,” the Smoking Man replied. “The drug is meant to stimulate the
brain and the adrenal glands. If anything can wake her up out of this coma, 2385 can. It
also has powerful hallucinogens that can be used for brainwashing purposes. We can use
the medicine to erase her memory and break her will. And once her will is broken, she
can then destroy our enemies.”
“What if the drug kills Patricia?” the nurse protested.
The Smoking Man brushed his long, gray bangs to the side, took a puff of his
cigarette,
and shrugged. “Then so be it,” he said.
He would break Patricia. He knew he wasn’t being reasonable. He knew he was
obsessed. And he didn’t care. He would break Patricia in both body and spirit, and she
WOULD kill Fox Mulder and Bo Duke. And if after all of this she still resisted, he would
punish her one last time, and kill her himself. And he would make sure that she was
awake to suffer through the whole ordeal.

*****************************************************************

The Lone Gunmen’s mobile home provided very little room for pacing. Mulder leaned
back in his chair and watched Bo walk anxiously up and down the hallway littered with
computer parts. He didn’t know which exhausted him more: staying up until dawn after
the night he’d had or watching his friend pace aimlessly for hours. He scratched at the
day-old beard on his cheeks and muffled a yawn. Then, he stared once again at the phone
on the table. Though he took great pains to hide it, the wait was killing him. It was hard
on the young farmer too, who was stubbornly refusing to leave the room until it rang.
Then it finally happened. The green light on the phone’s antenna blinked on, and the
shrill sound of an electronic ring cut into the silence of the room. Mulder reacted
immediately. His snatched the receiver off the table. Bo bounded to his side, leaping over
a heap of computer cards. His arm reached out for the phone, but Mulder shot his free
hand up and stopped him in his tracks.
“Two minutes!” Fox demanded more than asked.
Bo gritted his teeth in frustration and resumed his pacing, this time with fervor and
with
his gaze locked on the phone.
“Scully?” Fox worriedly yelled into the mouthpiece. “Scully, is that you?!”
“Mulder? Where’s Bo?”
The sound of Luke Duke’s voice brought with it an avalanche of aggravation. Fox
wanted to shout an explicative, but bit his tongue. “It’s for you,” he said softly to Bo,
handing the receiver over.
Bo grabbed at the telephone as if it was a lifeline, somehow knowing who it was
without being told. His whole body was tense with worry and excitement, his dark blue
eyes glowing with joy and relief. “LUKE!”
The three Gunmen came jogging out of their rooms in the far end of the camper.
Frohike and Langely fumbled with their glasses, while Byrnes labored to put his overcoat
on. They stumbled over a row of token ring computer cards, and the young farmer had to
struggle to hear his cousin’s voice over the clashing metal.
“BO! Are you okay?”
Bo broke out into unashamed tears at his older cousin’s voice. “I’m alright,” he said,
voice trembling. “Oh Lord, Luke! I thought I lost all of you last night! Are you okay? Are
Uncle Jesse and Daisy alright?”
“We’re all okay,” Luke’s voice came back, not completely calm but having a soothing
effect on the nerve-wracked young blond anyway. “We’re just a little disoriented, and
we’re worried sick about you!”
Bo pulled one of the foldout chairs from the small table and collapsed into it. His
shoulders sagged with his utter relief, and the weariness that came with the night finally
swept over him. “What about Dana?” he asked, eyeing the antsy federal agent in the
corner.
“She’s fine, Bo. She’s a little peeved at the situation right
now, but she’s okay.”
The young farmer turned to Mulder and mouthed the words “She’s okay.” Fox let out a
sigh of relief. As he watched the tears roll down Bo’s cheeks, he almost cried himself. He
slowly sat down, buried his head in his hands, and fought to keep his eyes dry.
“Listen to me. Listen carefully,” Luke’s instructive, almost paternal voice continued to
calm Bo down. The young farmer brushed the tears on his cheeks away and listened
attentively to every word spoken. “The plane leaves in a couple of hours,” Luke went on
softly. “It’s a fourteen-hour trip back to the United States. The second we land, we’re
heading straight back to Hazzard, and to you. Everything’s gonna be okay, Bo. We’ll get
together as a family, and we’ll figure this out!”
Bo nodded, “Okay,” he said, feeling a little better. He just wished that Luke was here
right now. “Okay.”
“By the way, Dana’s tellin’ me that you know what’s happening,” his older cousin
commented. “You mind letting me in on what’s going on?”
Bo sighed and shook his head. “It’s complicated, Luke. I don’t think I can tell ya over
the phone. Just rest easy with this ~ I’m okay, Fox is okay, and special agent Skinner is on
a plane here, which means help is on the way.” It was a statement of a confidence that
was rapidly dwindling. He wanted to allay his family’s fears, but he was also shaken. This
whole ordeal had him scared to the bone. Bo brushed a few straggling tears away and
quickly added. “Get here, Luke! Please just get here!”
“Fourteen hours, Bo. Fourteen hours, and I’m at the airport. Give me a day, and I’ll be
at your door!”
Bo wanted to remark that there was no longer a farmhouse, much less a door to come
home to. But he didn’t say anything. No use adding more strain on the situation.
“Fourteen
hours,” he whispered in reply.
“We’re all praying for ya, little cousin,” Luke said softly.
Bo smiled and nodded. “I know.”
“Give me to Fox,” the veteran instructed.
Bo handed the receiver to Mulder. The agent took it, and cleared his throat, trying to
find his voice.
“This is Mulder,” he said as calmly as he could.
“Are you okay?” Luke asked.
“I’m fine,” Fox replied. “What about yourself?”
“We’re holding our ground. Fox, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for snapping at ya
like I did. I was wrong, and I was way out of line. You were right all along, and I should
have listened to you.”
Mulder shook his head. “We were both wrong, Luke. This is way more complicated than
just a haunted house scenario.”
“Great,” Luke mumbled sarcastically. “So what now?”
“Get home,” Mulder replied.
“You don’t have to tell me that!” Luke retorted. “You want to talk to Dana?”
Mulder sprung upright in his chair. “Please!”
“Here she is. Oh, and Fox?” There was an uncharacteristic nervousness in Luke’s
voice.
“Please take care of my little cousin!” he pleaded.
Fox nodded in silence. When he finally replied, he had to grope for the words. “If you
take care of my Scully,” he managed to say.
“Deal,” Luke said softly, and Mulder could hear the older Duke’s smile over the
phone. A few seconds of silence followed, and then a voice that melted his knees came
over the line.
“Mulder! Are you alright?!”
Scully’s take-charge bravado and her cut-to-the-chase quip was as welcoming as a
warm
blanket on a cold night. A dozen thoughts accompanied by an exhausted sense of relief
overwhelmed his ability to respond. She was okay. Scully was okay.
“Mulder?” she pressed.
“I’m fine,” Mulder managed to say while he held his tears back. He was afraid to let
the
other men in the room see his feelings for his partner. “And you?”
“I’ve been better.” He heard her sigh over the phone, and he could just see her slipping
into her professional face. “Do you want a blow by blow report or just the highlights?”
she asked with her investigative tone.
Mulder calmed down. They were falling back into the ritualistic business banter that
marked their long career together, and the professional interaction was therapeutic. Fox
shook his emotional shakiness off, and at the prodding of his partner, became a
cool-headed investigator again. “Stick to the highlights,” he said. “You can give me the
details when you get here.”
He heard Scully sigh over the phone. She was tired, and she was pushing it. “Okay,
here it goes. Eight p.m., you and I and the Duke family enjoy some really good crawdad
bisque from Jesse Duke’s kitchen. Nine p.m., dinner is over. We clean up, chitchat a
little, and then get ready for bed. Ten thirty p.m., I’m snoozing away in Daisy’s room
without a care in the world! Two O’Clock in the AFTERNOON! I wake up in
INDONESIA! INDONESIA, MULDER! FREAKING ASIA! Daisy is on my right! Luke
is on my left! And we’re all lying flat on our backs in the middle of the jungle wearing
nothing but our PAJAMAS! Four p.m., the four of us walk BAREFOOT down hot, rocky,
unpaved roads to the nearest American Embassy, where we hope and pray the soldiers
don’t throw us into an insane asylum! Four-thirty p.m., I convince these yahoo soldiers
with attitude problems that I really am an FBI agent! I commandeer the phone. I call the
Gunmen, who happen to be cruising down the Georgia highways in their RV. I tell them
my unbelievable story and then instruct them to get their collective rear ends to Hazzard.”
Mulder cut into his partner’s ranting to finish the story. “The Gunmen arrive at the
farm, and by some miraculous enlightenment learn how to track me and Bo in the
woods.”
Langley laughed out loud at the statement. “Track? Mulder, the path your captors
made
was so plain and so big a blind man could have found you!”
Bo laughed at the statement, but Mulder ignored it. He was intent on finishing the
story.
“The Gunmen track me and Bo down, and after our little swim in Bottomless Bay, rescue
us from two survivalists with a Steven Spielburg complex. Then, they tell me that you’re
in Asia! The unbelievable story you told them is told to us with the message that you will
be calling us here in this car at this time from Indonesia.”
“Ten p.m., Balinese time,” Scully picked up again. “I call Director Skinner. I tell him
that there is an X-file going down in Hazzard. I tell him that this is not one of your
half-cocked schemes. I also tell him that you didn’t sniff for this case; it came to you.
Director Skinner informs me that he’s on his way to Hazzard. Fifteen minutes later, I call
you.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “What are we up against, Mulder?”
Mulder licked his lips and replied, “THEM.”
Scully didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. Though Mulder couldn’t see her face, he
could
imagine how she looked like ~ pale white with fear and rage.
“Scully,” he finally said. “Come home. Please come home as fast you can.”
He didn’t say “I need you”, but the thought was evident in the tone of his voice. Scully
cleared her throat over the phone, a sign that she was trying to stay emotionally detached
and professional in the face of the people around her. “Will you be waiting for me?” she
asked, hinting that she was worried out of her mind for his safety.
“Yes,” Fox replied.
“Promise?”
Mulder nodded. “Cross my heart.”
“Watch your back,” she whispered, and with that, the phone went dead.
Mulder put the phone down and pressed the power button off. A small beep sounded,
signaling the shutdown.
“She couldn’t do it, you know,” Bo suddenly said.
Everyone in the room turned to him, both surprised and confused at the statement. Bo
leaned back in his chair, a look of utter weariness washing over him.
“Patricia,” he said, clarifying his words. “The little girl I’ve been seeing everywhere.
The
child with sad green eyes.”
Mulder pulled his chair forward, giving the young blond his full attention. Bo rubbed
his forehead and continued.
“THEY wanted her to kill us, Fox. THEY wanted her to use her special gifts to destroy
not only us but our families. THEY beat her. THEY intimidated her. THEY yelled and
broke furniture and threatened to break her bones. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do
us in, and she saved us the only way she knew how. And I bet you that right now at this
very second THEY are punishing her for it!” Bo became unnaturally quiet and shifted in
his seat, obviously having a hard time staying still. “There is one man in particular who
does these things with a passion. Who actually enjoys the act of scaring and hurting a
child!” The young farmer’s dark blue eyes turned even darker with anger ~ the anger a
guardian feels when the innocent under his protection is harmed. The eyes swept up
suddenly to meet Mulder’s. “He’s an older man who smokes cigarettes constantly. Do you
know who he is, Fox?”
Mulder felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He gritted his teeth and
angrily wrapped his knuckles around the arm of the chair. “The Smoking Man!”
Langley quickly grabbed a nearby chair and sat down. Frohike and Byrnes crowded
around the table. “I take it we’re not talking about a ghost any more?” Langley
questioned.
Fox stood up from his chair and paced. The pieces of the puzzle were falling into
place,
and his mind, always attuned to grasp that which existed beyond the rational, quietly
raced to put a coherent picture together. “No we’re not talking about a ghost,” he said as
he methodically stroked his chin. “I think that what we’re dealing with here is a psychic.”
Frohike frowned. “A psychic? You’re telling me that some bratty eight-year-old
psychic is responsible for everything that happened tonight?”
Mulder crossed his arms and nodded. “She’s a pretty special psychic. Isn’t she? She’s a
freaking powerhouse! A mutation of nature!”
“I don’t understand,” Byrnes said, cutting into the conversation. “What do you mean by
mutation? Are you saying that she was a test tube baby that the Secret Society created?”
Mulder nodded. “Possibly. You see, most psychics can really only do one thing well.
Some have premonitions of the future. Others can move things with their minds. Some
can start fires with a thought. But this little girl! This Patricia does not have ONE power.
She has ALL the psychic powers! Teleportation, mind reading, astral projection, the
ability to move and shape things with your mind, this girl has everything EXCEPT…
control! And to be truthful gentlemen, after what I have been through tonight, the idea of
Patricia being out of control is one of the scariest things I have ever seen in my life!”
“She doesn’t want to hurt us, Fox!” Bo said, sticking up for the child. “THEY’RE
making her do it! She doesn’t want to use her powers at all!”
Langley pushed his glasses up off the tip of his nose. “How do you know that?”
“Because there’s some sort of bond between them,” Fox said, answering the question.
“Somehow, Patricia unintentionally and unconsciously opened up a psychic bond with
Bo. I don’t know how she’s doing it, and I’ll bet ya twenty bucks she doesn’t even KNOW
she’s doing it.”
“Why, though?” Frohike asked. “Why Bo?”
“Because she’s calling for help,” Mulder replied bluntly. “And Bo is the most
accessible life line in her reach. His mind and heart are open, unlike most adults.” He
wondered if Bo would argue that, but the youngest Duke just sighed.
“So somehow, the Smoking Man made himself immune to her powers,” Langely
reasoned. “And is using the child to achieve your destruction AND world domination!
Dude, that’s just cold!”
“Diabolical!” Byrnes shouted.
Bo jumped to his feet, visibly fighting to hold in a mix of fury, fear, and excitement
that
was strong enough to send him straight at the enemy without thinking twice. “So when
are we raiding the factory, y’all? When are we getting Patricia out of that madhouse? I say
we go right now and bust some heads!”
Fox walked over to Bo and gently put his hand on the young farmer’s shoulders. “Slow
down, cowboy. There’s an army at the plant, remember? It’ll be fifty versus five. I don’t
think the odds are in our favor.”
Bo frowned, but nodded, suddenly remembering the multiple men at the plant. He had
forgotten about them.
“The plant isn’t even in Hazzard. It’s in Osage!” Fox continued. “And from what you
told me, Bo, the man who runs that county, Colonel Claibourne, is as corrupt as they
come! If that’s the case, we have to be thorough. There’s paperwork involved here. Lots of
it. We need to dot every I and cross every T, and that means we need to wait for my boss.
We need to wait for Skinner!”
“But how long till he gets here?” Bo asked. It was clear that he wasn’t sitting easy with
this wait. “Patricia doesn’t have much time!”
Mulder didn’t know how to answer the question. “Skinner will be here soon,” he
reassured Bo.
The young farmer sat back down in his chair and slid low in it, not at all happy with
the
response.
“Everyone!” Langley interrupted. “Let’s do this. Mulder and Bo, you both look totally
wiped out. Why don’t you two get some sleep while me and the other Gunmen search the
Net. While we all wait for Skinner to get here, the Gunmen and I can find out all we can
about Patricia on the computer.”
“Do you really think you can ID the child off the net?” Mulder asked with a tone of
doubt.
Langley smiled at the statement and slowly removed his glasses. “Oh ye of little faith,”
he chided. “If Patricia is a living child and not a ghost, then somewhere in this great
country of ours there is paperwork on her. If there is paperwork on her, then that
paperwork is probably kept, stored, and filed in a computer. And if that computer is
attached in any way to the Net, you had better believe, I’LL FIND IT!”

**

The mobile house was small for three men. With the addition of Bo, Fox, and two
prisoners, the camper suddenly became crowded and hard to move around in, especially
since it was littered all over the place with computer parts and tech magazines. Langley
explained with much apologetics that there was only one bathroom in his humble home.
Hot water was limited, and he told his guests that though he wanted them to wash up first
because both Bo and Mulder needed a couple of hours of sleep, it would be much
appreciated if they kept their showers short.
He handed both men fresh towels, T-shirts, and jogging sweats, telling them both that
his house was their house and that everything he had was at their disposal. Mulder gave
his friend a heart-felt thanks, and then gave Bo the okay to take a shower first. The young
farmer quickly agreed and headed straight for the tiny bathroom.
The lukewarm water felt good. Though the showerhead didn’t carry much pressure, it
did rinse the hardened mud and grime off his skin, and Bo suddenly felt human again. He
kept his stay in the bathroom short, despite however much he would have liked to remain
under the water. He donned his new clothes that the Gunmen gave him, and tossed the
old ones in the trash since they were irreversibly torn and stained. Then, he scrounged
around the small bathroom looking for something to doctor his knuckles with. His
panicked punches at the pine crate had left scabs on his right hand, and though it didn’t
bleed anymore, he still wanted to bandage it up. He finally found a first aid kit in a small
medicine cabinet next to the sink, and went straight to work.
As he bound his hand with strips of gauze, his mind wandered back to what he’d seen
in Osage. The image of little Patricia hiding under her bed and cringing at his
advancements would not leave him. And the memory of soldiers beating her into
submission and trying to force her to use her powers against not only himself but his
family and friends pulled out a spirit of rage that he hadn’t know he had. How could
anyone do it? How could anyone beat and destroy from the inside out someone as
helpless as Patricia? She was just a child! A baby!
He taped the gauze into place, and exited into the bedroom. Byrnes and Frohike had
offered to share their living quarters since a bunk bed was there. Bo stepped into their
crowded room and saw Fox in the corner on the floor. The lawman was already fast
asleep, sitting on the rug next to the bed with his back to the wall and his head bowed to
the side on a pillow. Bo smiled, soon realizing that he was looking at a fitting picture.
The Gunmen did not hide their fetish for computers in this vehicle. The enshrined
images of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs accompanied with the pictures of UFOs and various
Anarchy mottoes and quotes dotted the area. Fox looked strangely at home here. Bo
walked quietly over to his friend and debated whether or not to wake him up so he could
use the bathroom. He decided against it. Though positioned awkwardly, the older man
looked comfortable, and needed the rest. He was about to crawl into bed himself and pass
out when he spotted something clutched loosely in Fox’s grip. Duke curiosity got the
better of him and he strained to see the image of a little girl smiling on an old
photograph. The colors were already starting to fade to a general pink.
He reached down and gently pried the picture free from Fox’s fingers, and the second
the slick paper left the lawman’s hands, he jerked awake. “What is it? What’s going on?”
Fox mumbled.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Fox. I didn’t mean to wake ya.” Bo fumbled with the picture, a little
embarrassed now that he’d taken it without asking. He offered it back to his friend. “It
also ain’t my place to pry.”
“It’s okay,” Fox shrugged, smiling as he took the picture back. “This is my sister,” he
added, suddenly feeling the need to explain himself.
Bo crawled into the bottom bunk and slid down beneath the covers. “She was a pretty
little thing,” he commented.
Fox nodded. “This picture was taken just a month before the kidnapping. She was
Patricia’s age, I guess.” A few seconds of silence followed the statement as his mind went
back to better times. Mulder shook his head and wearily got to his feet. “I’m glad I
laminated this picture,” he said as he laid the photograph down on a nearby nightstand.
“The swamp water would have destroyed it for sure if I hadn’t.”
“I’m sorry, Fox,” Bo replied, his voice thick with sympathy.
Mulder looked at his friend and chuckled. “For what? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
He stared at the floor and spoke softly. “It’s me who should be sorry for bringing the bad
guys to your house. I should’ve never come back to Hazzard.”
“Don’t you dare say that, Fox Mulder!” Sitting up abruptly, Bo nearly hit his head on
the underside of the upper bunk with his fervency. “You are not to blame for anything
that’s happened.”
Mulder shook his head. “Bo, I brought this mess to your farm. It’s me THEY are after.
If I hadn’t come here, you and your family wouldn’t be in the dire straits that you guys are
in now!”
“That is not true!” Bo refused to back down from his prior statement.
Mulder sighed. “Bo, you don’t have a HOUSE anymore because of me!”
“What’s happened ain’t your fault! Don’t go down that road, Fox, cause it ain’t true!
That Smoking Man is the jerk. Not you!”
Fox finally grinned, wryly, and nodded. It was a nod which signaled that though he
appreciated the comment, he didn’t believe a word of it. “If you say so,” he said softly. He
shuffled over to the chair and grabbed his towel and clean clothes, then trudged to the
bathroom and gently shut the door.
Bo lay back down on his pillow and listened as the hum of falling water from the
showerhead drummed from behind the wall. He glanced at the nightstand, and the picture
of Fox Mulder’s sister caught his eye. He propped himself up on his elbow and stared at
the face of the brown-haired child with her twinkling eyes and happy grin. She kinda
reminded him of Daisy at that age.
How many times had the Society kidnapped children like her? He was sure that the
little
girl in the faded picture was not the first child to fall into the Society’s hands. He was also
sure that Patricia would not be the last. How many families had THEY battered with their
callous acts of violence? How many souls had THEY torn apart as badly as THEY did
Fox Mulder’s? As his mind pondered these questions, he thought once again about the old
man and his cigarettes, the leader of this monstrous Society and the person Fox had
named the Smoking Man.
For most of his life, Bo Duke had led a sheltered life. Though he and his cousin had
crossed, and imprisoned, many a bad guy, he had never seen people as brutal as these.
For over twenty years, THEY had murdered, threatened, and stolen everything from
money to children. For twenty years, with blatant in-your-face acts of violence, they’d
tried to destroy societies, whole societies of people without even a hint of regret for their
actions! Six months ago, they’d tried to wipe out Hazzard with the Plague. Now, six
months later, they were actually trying again! They were as destructive and tenacious as
pit bull terriers. They pushed their agendas with the relentlessness of a well-oiled
machine, and in this way, wore their enemies down.
And what did THEY hope to gain from all this insanity? The answer was the same
now as it was six months ago with the Plague. THEY created all this chaos and all this
destruction for Power. Power to take the world and reshape it into a place where life was
cheap. The power to turn the world into a one-government society where the strong
tyrannized the weak and where convenience overruled morality. THEY wanted to make a
new world, void of humanity and dignity. A world that ran solely on science and power.
Bo Duke and seen many a bad guy in his life. He had no love for them, got angry with
them, and even got furious from time to time. But he could truthfully say that he had
never truly hated before. He’d never hated anyone, no matter how mean or crooked…
until now. The Smoking Man had taught him how.
And what was now boiling inside him honestly scared him every bit as much as the
danger he and his friends were in.

*****************************************************************

WARNING: DRUG 2385

STATUS: experimental

Recommended dosage: 30ml twice a day via inoculation.

Side affects: disorientation, loss of memory, high blood pressure, irregular heartbeats,
and
possible loss of life.

The Smoking Man pulled a needle and a small vial of medication from a refrigerator.
It
was time for action, not for pondering thought. A small voice warning for caution entered
his head and asked him to consider the consequences of what he was about to do. He
flicked the thought away without much effort. It was make it or break it time. And the
best way to perform under conditions like these was to act and think for the moment.
Behind him, filed in rank and row, were a team of doctors who stood at attention like
soldiers in the army. They huddled together in the cold room and scowled at the assassin,
whispering under their breaths a wish that the old man would hurry up and lead them all
out of this freezer.
The Smoking Man knew what they were saying. He could see it on their faces. Not
too
long ago, this room had been a freezer that stored unwanted animal parts to be processed
into dog food. Now, it was a medical lab. If you used your imagination, you could have
said that it looked a little like Wonderland, with the silver iceboxes full of liquids and
pills with strange sounding names and many bright colors.
He shook the thought away. He didn’t have time to let his imagination run away with
him. He had to stick to business. Time was still of the essence! He finally led the band of
doctors out of the freezer, down a flight of stairs, and into the auditorium where Patricia
lay. Attending nurses were there. The scientists were dragging their feet on this
procedure. They were sure that Patricia would be irreversibly harmed or killed by the
drug, and that their great scientific discovery would get tossed into the wind. They were
prepared for a meltdown. At their disposal were machines ready to start a stopped heart,
to stimulate adrenal glands, to unclog a blood clot, every precaution they could think of.
No one knew what to expect, and the tension in the air was palpable.
The Smoking Man ignored his peoples’ anxiety. He was working on more important
things, more personal things. He walked over to Patricia’s bed. She still had not woken
up. Her golden hair was spread out on her pillow, and her eyes remained closed as her
chest rhythmically rose and fell with her breathing. The assassin looked down at her, and
for a brief second, saw something that he had never seen before. The child was at peace!
No crying, no begging, no fear! Patricia slumbered away in blissful unconsciousness. She
had gone beyond the grasp of the Smoking Man and the Secret Society. The assassin
grew irritated. The child was trying to elude him! But that would not be the case for long!
He bent down and gently stroked her long golden hair. Then he planted a kiss on her
forehead. “Patricia,” he whispered gently into her ear. “If you can hear me, hear this. I’m
going to wake you up. You cannot hide from me. Crawl anywhere you want. Cower in
any corner you choose. Delve into the deepest recesses of your mind. It is all useless. I
will find you! I always have. I always will. And when you open your eyes and come back
to this world, know now that the first face you will see will be mine!”
And with that, he took the needle, filled it with medicine, and inserted it into her arm.

*****************************************************************

“Hey, Bo! Bo, wake up!”
Bo moaned a little at the loud voice and contemplated shoving his head under his
pillow. Instead, he raised it and blinked, to see the upside-down face of Fox Mulder
staring at him as the lawman hung halfway down from the top bunk bed. “What is it?” the
young farmer grumbled, still extremely groggy and in no mood for games at whatever
hour it was in the morning.
Mulder pulled himself back up on his mattress and went silent for a second. “I thought
I
heard something,” he finally replied. “It woke me up.”
Okay, that grabbed his attention! Bo shot straight up and glanced around the room,
looking for trouble. “What did you hear?”
“Thunder,” Mulder said, sounding out of breath. “I thought I heard thunder.”
Bo scowled up in his friend’s direction. “Good Lord, Fox!” he complained as he
crashed back into his pillow and rolled over, pulling his blankets up as far as they would
go. “Go back to sleep. It’s probably just raining outside!”
“But…”
BOOM! A force of wind that carried with it the strength of a small tornado gave a
sharp blow to the RV. The gale gave a deafening howl. The vehicle jerked to the left. The
computers fell off the desktop and crashed to the floor. The lights went out. Furniture
shifted. Bo and Fox grabbed on to their mattresses as the bunk bed skidded sideways to
the left.
The wind stopped as quickly as it came, and everything abruptly went still. Bo jumped
to his knees, his fingers digging deep into the mattress.
“WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT?”
Mulder swallowed hard, his arms wrapped around the wooden bars in the headboard.
“Hmm. I’m not quite sure, but off-hand I’d say YOUR PAL PATRICIA!”
The wind suddenly picked up again. With the roar of a train, it pounded into the RV,
and the vehicle buckled under its blast. The long car tipped and fell hard on its side. The
windows exploded. The floor flipped up while the walls fell to the ground. The furniture
turned topsy-turvy, and Bo and Mulder were thrown off their bed onto the wall. The desk
and chairs fell on the men and buried them. Bo yelled as wood slammed into his spine.
Mulder struggled to get to his feet, when the wind hit the RV again. This time the surge
of air flipped the car and turned it turtle. Bo, Fox, and the furniture rolled with the
tumbling vehicle as if they were trapped in a kaleidoscope. Computers parts, papers,
laundry, and compact discs smashed into the two men. Broken glass flipped around in the
air alongside flying magazines. The wind howled a deafening roar… and then suddenly
died.
Mulder kicked some dirty socks away and struggled to his feet. “BO!”
Bo pushed a chair off his back. “Over here!” he yelled, still wincing at the spasm of
pain that came from where the wooden piece of furniture had fallen on him.
Mulder rushed to his friend’s side. He kicked aside a lamp and a shattered computer
monitor. He grabbed Bo by the elbow and helped the unsteady young blond to his feet.
The farmer leaned against the wall, trying his best to shake off the pain in his back, but
he was having a hard time. “Are you alright?” Mulder pressed.
“I’m okay,” Bo replied in a voice that didn’t sound too convincing even to himself.
The three Gunmen suddenly charged into the room. “Mulder!” Langely yelled.
“We’re okay!” Mulder responded, trying to alleviate his friends’ fears. It didn’t work ~
the three men were in a frenzy! Langely grabbed Fox’s shirt and dragged him across the
room. The two men almost lost their balance as they skated on the slick broken glass
scattered across the floor.
“Mulder! You gotta go outside, man! There’s something wrong outside!”
Bo quickly forgot about his pain as all the panic buttons in his head went off. “What is
it? What’s wrong?”
The Gunmen didn’t answer, and Bo just decided to follow. They ran through the
vehicle and trudged their way past fallen debris and computer parts to the outside door.
The second they stepped onto the grass, they almost had a collective heart attack! Bo
craned his neck back, and in a stupefied trance stared at the clouds above him.
“What happened to the sky?” he finally asked in a very soft voice.
Mulder and the Gunmen gazed at the phenomena in speechless dread. “This is not
good,” Mulder whispered.
It was the most unnatural color any of them had ever seen. The sky was purple. Not
blue, not even a nice orange or reddish sunset color. The sky was purple, with green
clouds! Above them, dark thunderheads gathered and rolled across the air like the smoke
from burned rolls across the ceiling of a house. Flashes of lightning dotted places in the
far horizon, while echoes of thunder signaled an oncoming storm. It was frighteningly
abnormal. Skies like this were not supposed to exist on planet Earth! “Fox! What’s
happening?!” Bo asked nervously, looking to the man that was supposed to know about
these sorts of things.
Fox didn’t answer. He simply stared in dumbstruck awe at the air above him. The
green
thunderheads rolled quickly to the west, eating up whatever normal blue sky stretched in
front of them. He turned to the direction of downtown Hazzard and saw that the clouds
were at their darkest there. “Bo,” he finally said. “There’s a CB in the driver’s seat of the
RV. Give Cooter Davenport a call and ask him if anything strange is happening
downtown!”
Bo quickly jogged to the driver’s area of the car. Through the window, he could see
the
chair and steering wheel hanging from the ceiling. He grabbed a rock from the ground
and
shattered the front window. Mulder and the Gunmen came running behind him, arriving
just in time to see the tenacious blond crawl into the vehicle. The young farmer turned on
his back amidst the broken glass and grabbed hold of the mic to the CB. He flipped the
dials around to land on Cooter’s number.
“Cooter! Cooter, this is Bo Duke! If you have your ears on, pick it up right now!
This…”
His thumb slipped off the button for a second, and when it did, Cooter’s panicked yell
resonated over the speaker. “Bo! Bo, this is… CLETUS, DUCK!”
Shots rang out over the microphone! The sound of Deputy Cletus Hogg yelling as he
scrambled for his gun and fired back followed! The unintelligible but angry yells of
stranger men blasted over the speakers, and then static wiped everything out! “Cooter!”
Bo yelled.
Nothing. Communications was totally cut off. Mulder and the Gunmen fell to their
knees and crawled in next to the young farmer. Bo twisted the dial on the CB to the
sheriff’s department. He was about to speak when Enos’ frantic voice shot into the car.
“MAYDAY! MAYDAY! THIS IS ENOS STRATE CALLING FOR ANYONE! WE
NEED HELP AT THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT! THIS IS AN EMERGENCY! MR.
HOGG, LOOK OUT!”
Then his radio too went dead. Bo’s jaw dropped open. In panic, he flipped through the
dials searching for ANYONE, but couldn’t find a stable station.
“It’s useless!” Mulder stated, backing out of the car. Bo and the Gunmen followed the
agent out as he paced up and down the grass. “It’s spreading, Bo!” Fox reasoned loudly.
Bo scrambled out into the open air and stood up, brushing broken glass gingerly off
himself. “Wha’d’ya mean?”
“I mean it’s no longer just OUR nightmares becoming real!” Mulder responded.
“Everyone in this town is getting battered by Patricia’s mind! All of Hazzard is getting
infected. Peoples’ deepest, darkest nightmares are becoming real!”
Byrnes walked in front of Mulder, halting his frenzied pacing. “What do we do to stop
it?” the bearded man asked.
Bo looked around the area, searching desperately for Patricia’s astral form. He couldn’t
see her. Always in the past, these violent psychic attacks had been accompanied by her
tearful astral form, but this time she wasn’t here at all! “Patricia ain’t here! THEY’VE
done something to her, Fox!” Bo said, restating to his friends the message his instincts
screamed in his head. “THEY hurt her again! But this time, THEY’VE done something
really, really bad! THEY hurt her like never before, and now,” he pointed at the
strange-looking sky above, “now, THIS is happening!”
“How do you know that?” Langely questioned.
“I just do! I can feel it in my gut!”
“She’s out of control. Isn’t she?” Fox walked steadily towards the young farmer and
looked him straight in the eye. “And I’m not talking about the Smoking Man making her
do
things! I mean that her powers are running amuck! Am I right?”
“I think so,” Bo said shakily, uncertain and a little shaken himself at having a bond
with a young psychic. “Fox, we have to do something! We can’t wait for Skinner! We
have to get to Osage now!”
“You’re not going anywhere, son!”
The five men turned around at the commanding voice behind them. Next to a tree
stood Special Agent Skinner, ten national guards, and a balding, middle-aged man in a
business suit. Skinner looked terrible. With his head bowed low and with his shoulders
sagging, he looked like a school kid sent to detention.
Mulder and Bo nearly jumped for joy at the sight of the director. “Sir!” Mulder yelled.
“Mulder,” Skinner interrupted. He cast a worried glance at the balding businessman,
and then with a look full of distress said, “Mulder, I’m afraid I bring bad news.”

**

Mulder recognized the man. Even though he couldn’t quite pinpoint the name,
somewhere in one of his files he had written a footnote on the balding government
official that seemed to intimidate Skinner. The businessman straightened his suit and
necktie as he stared with absolutely no surprise at the toppled car and with no concern for
the rattled men.
Skinner, on the other hand, seemed worried. “Mulder? Are you okay?”
“Director Skinner!” the businessman barked. “This isn’t a social gathering! So if you’re
not going to talk about business, then don’t talk at all!”
Bo balked at the statement, eyes flashing in anger. “And just who the heck are you?”
The stranger ignored the young farmer and pretended as if Bo hadn’t said a word at all.
“Agent Mulder, I need to talk to you. Right away!”
“Excuse me, butthead,” Mulder snapped, “but like my friend said, who are you and
what sewer pipe did you crawl out from?”
The man took a deep breath. “My name is James Braddok. I’m a Congressman in the
House of Representatives. I am an ambassador on behalf of the Secret Society, and I have
come, Agent Mulder, to make a truce with you.”
The blunt statement caught Mulder off guard. His jaw dropped open. Bo stared in
dumbfounded shock at the stranger for a few seconds, then suddenly, without warning,
went ballistic. He rushed the guy and almost pounced on him, but Langely and Frohike
grabbed him by the shoulders and physically restrained him. The ten soldiers behind the
Congressman reached for their weapons and pulled them out. They all aimed straight into
the farmer’s face, but Bo was so mad, he flat-out didn’t care!
“TWO MINUTES!” Bo yelled at the two Lone Gunmen holding him back. “GIVE ME
TWO MINUTES WITH THE GUY!”
Mulder instinctively reached for his weapon, then remembered a second later that it
was
lying at the bottom of lake. “Sir!” he yelled at Skinner. “Permission to arrest this man?”
The soldiers turned their weapons on Fox. Skinner remained still, with his head
bowed
low and his shoulders sagging. He was angry at the situation. That was clear to see. With
his fists clenched and his face red, it looked like he was about to lose his cool and
explode. But he didn’t. With great frustration, he stood his ground. “Mulder…” he
muttered through his clenched teeth, “I wish I could.”
“Mr. Mulder, I am not here to play games. I am here under the authority of the
President of the United States,” Braddok stated. “Do you see these ten soldiers standing
in front of you with the muzzles of their guns aimed conveniently at your face? These
men are not only here for my protection; they’re also here to lie for me! Arrest me and
throw me into court, and these soldiers will lie point-blank to the judge’s face, and I will
be out on the street the next day! You will lose. I will walk. And we will waste a lot of
time. So why don’t we just do the smart thing and cut to the chase.”
Mulder crossed his arms and glared at the crooked Congressman. “What do you
want?”
“Your help,” Braddok replied.
Mulder almost laughed in the man’s face. “For what?” he scoffed.
Braddok loosened his stiff demeanor. He raised his hand into the air, signaling to the
soldiers behind him to lower their guns. They did, and as the tension in the air dissipated,
the businessman started the negotiations. “Have you looked at the sky lately?” he asked
the angry men who glared at him. “Notice the nice green shade the clouds are sporting?
Those clouds are a harbinger, gentlemen ~ a harbinger of bad things to come. My world
and your world are in danger!”
A slight sound of thunder resonated in the quickly darkening sky as if to lend
emphasis to the statement. Bo and the Gunmen fearfully stared upwards at the
phenomena, while Mulder kept his gaze locked with Braddok’s.
The Congressman calmed down and spoke almost quietly. “I’m going to start at the
beginning. But you better keep up because I’m going to make this fast and quick! Late
last night, it was reported that Patricia fell into a coma. We don’t know why. We don’t
know how. All we are sure about is that she did not wake up once throughout the
evening, and it seemed as if the child would never wake up again! In an act of brashness,
one of our men, the one you call the Smoking Man, gave the girl an experimental drug to
wake her up. It didn’t. She is still in a coma. What it did do was make her brain activity
go off the chart, even though she remained unconscious!”
Mulder felt his face grow hot. “You did… experimental drug programs… ON A
CHILD?!”
“It was not our doing, Mulder!” Braddok countered. “The Smoking Man was working
on his own! He did not get any kind of authorization from us! Was it stupid? Yes! Does
he deserve a swift kick in the rear for what’s happened? You bet! If I could, I’d kick the
man myself. But we have more important things to worry about. We have a potential
country-wide crisis on our hands! Hazzard is not the only place where people are having
their nightmares turn into reality. Early this morning the citizens of Osage County fled
their homes as various unbelievable horror stories swept through the county. Soon after
that, there were reports of mass hysteria in Sweetwater and Chickasaw. Hazzard is the
fourth county to be hit by Patricia’s mental storm, and there is no evidence that this
rampage is ending! In fact, just the opposite is happening; her mental onslaught is
growing exponentially! The statisticians are forecasting that we could have hysteria in the
streets of Atlanta by midnight tonight!”
“And you want to stop this?” Mulder questioned.
“We HAVE to stop this!” Braddok replied.
Mulder’s eyes narrowed. “How?”
The Congressman glanced quickly at Bo. The young farmer had calmed down a little,
but it still looked like he would welcome any excuse to bite his head off. Braddok shut
his eyes and breathed out loudly. “There have been jets scrambled from Alaska to handle
the situation. In less than an hour, two low-flying bandits carrying four missiles have
been ordered to fly over the dog food production factory… and level it.”
Langley’s glasses dropped off his face. Mulder’s jaw dropped open, and Bo took a deep
breath, trying to prevent himself from throwing up. The Congressman ignored the men’s
stunned reactions and continued.
“President Simpleton believes that a surprise attack resulting in the death of Patricia
would not only diffuse the crisis that we have brewing now but would also result in a
no-casualties case for the pilots flying the planes. The president believes that if we fail,
somehow through her psychic gifts Patricia will know about the attack, and take steps to
defend herself. And if she tries to defend herself,” he took a breath, “your guess is as
good as mine as to what her mind will create! So you see, given the extreme severity of
the situation, we have no choice but to eliminate her.”
“NO CHOICE!” Bo suddenly yelled. “You’re missing the big picture, pal! Patricia is
not
the major threat here! YOU are! You people are the ones who caused this mess in the
first place!”
“Finish the story!” Mulder barked quickly, losing his short patience with the man and
feeling like agreeing with his young friend, though he was usually more one to hold back
than attack. “Why are you telling this to us?”
Braddok sighed. “One of the former employees who used to work at the plant brought
it to our attention that the dog food factory not only has an upper level structure but a
basement structure as well. From what I understand, the basement structure is different
from what we can see above ground. However, the employee was not allowed
underground for security reasons. He doesn’t know the architecture of the basement
facility, and we can’t find anyone right now who does. All the soldiers and scientists at
the dog food plant went AWOL the second Patricia lost control of her mind. If Patricia is
in the basement, there is a good possibility that she could survive our initial attack!
Unless…”
“Unless Bo Duke tells you what the basement structure looks like so that instead of
carpet-bombing the building, the planes can hit strategic areas, thus insuring that the
building topples on the top and the bottom,” Mulder finished.
The Congressman smiled. “You were always the smart one, Fox Mulder. I’ll give ya
that.”
“And if you think Bo Duke is going to give you the information you’re looking for,
then
you’re actually dumber than you look!” Mulder turned towards Bo. “Am I right?”
“BINGO!” the young farmer defiantly replied.
“Mulder!” Braddok admonished. “People say that you are a smart man. Use your head!
Think this through! The world is tearing itself apart! The girl is in a coma! She has no
control over what she’s doing! The only way to stop chaos from breaking out onto the
streets is to kill the source of the problem!”
“This is not Patricia’s fault!” Bo angrily yelled. “You people are the ones responsible
for
this mess! You are the ones who pushed her! You beat her! You intimidated her! And
because of what you have done, we now have this!”
The young farmer pointed dramatically to the sky, just as a flash of lightning danced
across the earth’s ceiling as though he’d called it there himself. Fox felt a chill go down
his spine at the coincidence; if he didn’t know better, he would think his friend was a
psychic himself, with the wildfire dancing in his dark blue eyes right now.
“She’s just a child!” the young farmer continued in outrage. “You took her and you
turned her into a science project! You treated her like a THING, and now it’s all come
back to bite you in the rear. What’s happening is your fault! You ain’t got no right to take
that little girl’s life!”
“Yes, we do,” the congressman replied with a cold calm that offset the young Duke’s
passionate anger. “For God and country, we do!”
“Oh don’t you dare give me that crap!” Mulder sneered. “Don’t take the high moral
ground, Braddok! You don’t have any morals, and it shows! Do you really want to help?
Do you really want to diffuse the situation? Then help us save her! Help us save
Patricia!”
“It will do no good!” Braddok yelled in frustration. “The girl is in a coma! She won t
hear a word you say!”
“Then I’ll figure something out!” Fox countered.
Braddok grabbed Mulder by the sleeve. “Listen to me!” he yelled.
But Mulder ripped his arm free and shoved the Congressman away. The ten national
guards aimed their rifles at the agent, threatening to shoot if any further violence
followed.
Mulder ignored them. “Touch me again, Braddok, and I swear I’ll BREAK YOUR
ARM!”
Braddok went quiet at the statement. He straightened his ruffled suit and shook his
head in disbelief. There was no talking the federal agent out of his decision, that was
evident! And as he looked at Bo Duke’s fiery demeanor, he knew that he had less of a
chance with him than he did Fox Mulder. He cursed the men’s sense of honor and nobility
and knew that the only option he had left was to trust the pilots and to trust their bombs.
“Okay, Mulder,” Braddok said with a cynical sense of defeat. “You care for the kid that
much? Go die with her. When this nightmare is all over, I’ll personally spit and dance on
your grave!” He turned to his men. “We’re taking our chances with the bombs!” he yelled.
And without saying any other words, the men holstered their weapons, washing their
hands of the whole affair, and headed for their cars. Mulder, Bo, the Gunmen, and
Skinner watched the crowd wander off to their vehicles and drive away into the gathering
night.
Mulder turned to his friends. “Who’s going with me to Osage?” he yelled.