Chapter 5

Sea Gate
Coney Island, Brooklyn
10:30 p.m.

Wow...it'd been ages.  He'd forgotten how great these babies were, smothered with relish, dripping spicy brown mustard and wrapped in a marshmallow white, ersatz toasted roll.  Beyond esculent; totally slurb-worthy.  Their irresistible odor alone could turn him into a head case in one intense session.

He watched Scully, seated alongside him, in the passenger seat, pop another French fry in her mouth and smile over to him ingenuously.  With the napkin in his hand, he stretched for her, and dabbed her mouth until every trace of gloppy ketchup was gone, before the goo soiled her pastel black cardigan.  She 'slayed' in the color, he appraised, yet another time in so many hours; sharing the league with mortal combat.

"Good, huh?" Langly said, stuffing the remainder of the hot dog into his munching mouth.

Scully nodded in rapt approval.  "I-I want m-more fra-franks!"

"Here, take this."  He reached into the Nathan's feedbag, bringing up a frankfurter that would have been his fourth, magnanimously handing it off to her.  He drained the green-embossed lettered beer mug which bore the same name as the takeout bag, and let out a loud, draggy sigh of contentment.  "Ahhhhh!  Classic burp food," he gloated, then feeling the pressing need to, he belched.  Compunction was an afterthought.  "Like, 'scuse," he sheepishly apologized, and guzzled more beer.  Reluctantly parting with the mug's lip, he said, "This grub rocks.  Too bad the Nathan's in malls don't come close to the 75-year old original of nineteen sixteen glory.  Must be all this salt air."  That, or the fact that he hadn't had even a single beer for such a long time."

Mulder polished off his hot dog and silently agreed.  Although, mall Nathan’s were all right with him, in a pinch.  He slid forward on the scrubbed velour fabric of the Caravan SE's couch seat to pat Langly's leather ensconced shoulder.  "You had a tasty idea, Scarecrow," he awarded, suppressing his own beer-fueled burp.  "Didn't realize how hungry I was."  He leaned over then and smoothed down Scully's somewhat frizzed hair.  To which, she in turn, bestowed a kittenish smile heretofore given only to the golden apple of her eye in her present state of Langly bliss.

Mulder pinched her cheek with middle and index fingers.  It was cozy seeing her smiling at him this way.  It was easy admitting how much he missed the twinkle intertwined, with that breath-halting gleam, once reserved solely for him on those *you're almost there, Mulder* occasions.  He remembered the ribald manner in which he'd joked about her, and felt ashamed then.

Pay the piper...born losers find new an' improved ways to lose.  Mulder blinked a brace of times before nipping his whine of a reverie in the bud.

"For a change," Frohike tartly yielded between bites of his second frank.  Renewing the badinage, "Don't let it go to that moptop you call a head."

"I'm so full of dogs, onion rings, fries, suds and clams, I'll let that go, 'So-pic'...uh. Uh, Melvin.  It's cool."  Now was not the time to launch oppugns, no matter how tempting.  There was a time to be rebarbative and a time to 'fly the white flag.'  This was ScullyTime, aside from his sneaking a little 'Miller Time' in, as well.  Time to be sharp.  He tucked the empty mug away under his seat to keep the prize for a souvenir.  "None of you, 'cept Scully, since she won't remember, can say I never did anything for you guys," he reminded since the field meal had been his treat.  What had come over him?

Frohike was about to say that wasn't all Langly was full of, but thought better of it, regarding Silvio, and his internal promise made about calling a 'dis' truce.  Well, a mild one until all this 'short shrift' was over.

"And I too am liking this Nathan's speedy food.  'Muy bueno,'" Silvio chimed in as he downed another fry.  "There is certainly nothing that compares to this in the rainforest."

"May I quote you?  And, yo, it's not speedy," Langly appended.  "It's Fast.  And in some cases, beyond hyperdrive."

"Byers, are you okay?" Frohike asked, mindfully eyeing the very, of late, taciturn man.

"Fine."

"You're not acting like it."

Byers gazed out the semi-tinted window, and, not satisfied, unlocked the sliding door, opening it.  He got out and scanned the dimly lit, forest-like Bayview Avenue park.  Good thing they had someone who knew the way around, in the form of Langly with them.  Though he didn't know the actual mileage, the ride from the airport to this Brooklyn locale had seemed long.

Mental distension gripped his mind.  His brow crinkled.  What was a worrier to do?  This was the park, wasn't it?  What she'd written?  Where she'd said she'd be...His face contorted into a rictus of relief mingled with anxious care.

The tract was punctuated with a good many brand new looking, as well as weather-worn picnic tables.  If it had been a good eight or nine hours earlier, it would have been bustling with high-spirited, picnickers and barbecuers from the area's rent-controlled housing complexes, on such a prematurely mild Saturday afternoon, so early in spring.  Beyond the petite peninsula's picnic area lay a well-tended ball field, which could barely be made out by meager dint of the park’s sparse lights, and beyond that, the Verrazzano Bridge loomed far off in the nocturnal distance.

Scully dove a hand into her French fry bag, turned cattycorner and offered him a handful of her ruby-stained crispies, through her open window.

"No thank you, Scully.  Maybe later," Byers replied vacantly, not really even registering the gesture.  The only appetite he wanted satisfied was having the woman of his hearth and kettle dream here with him.  Random movement caught his eye then, beneath one of the tables and his breath caught...no.  He released a sigh of overreaction.  No, he soured.  It was a homeless person trying to get comfortable for the night.

"How long are we gonna wait?" Frohike demanded to know.  An immediate answer to his question went begging.  He framed his next one with more understanding his aim.  "Wanna use the goggles, John?  I brought 'em along just in case.  They beg to be used under these sort of circumstances.  You'll be able to pick up clear to that Mark Twain High School over there, for the Gifted and Talented."  No response.  Straining to sound even more reasonable, "She's got the number, buddy.  Maybe she couldn't get away for the...the time being, so--"

"Let's give it a little longer," Mulder deftly cut in.  He leaned back to Frohike who was seated directly behind him in the extreme back, on the driver's side. Motioning for him to come forward, and press his ear in tight, Mulder whispered, "Where do we have to be in such a hurry? Rendezvousing with Susanne is the itinerary.  Right?  Cut him some slack.  He's on automatic pilot at the mo."

Frohike nodded, dutifully accepting his chastening.  He started unzipping his shoulder bag, and once he'd extracted the night vision opticals, handed them up to Mulder to pass them on to Byers.

"Hey, Byers," Mulder sang out, "Frohike thinks you'll have a better shot spotting her with these."

A startled looking Byers wheeled around as though the F.B.I. Agent were intruding construct.  "Maybe you're right."  Once he'd fitted himself with the elaborate specs, he surveyed what had been previously viewed, unaided.  The difference made, was the world, despite the fact that Langly said he looked like Atom Ant gene spliced with The Fly.  "Thanks, Melvin," Byers acknowledged at length.  As he scanned, he discovered that a substantial number of tables were being employed as makeshift domiciles.  "I take back all those times I slighted the use of your standby."

"Never took offense, buddy.  My hard-won enhancements take the efficiency variable to a higher power."  Frohike winked at Mulder, and the knowing government employee clapped his forearm.

"You're aces, Frohike."

"Hey, I do what I can for the cause, man.  As long as we've got a viable stake in it.  The fair Agent Scully is as viable as I can think of getting...if you span my drift."

"I wanna ride on that roller coaster, Cutie!"  Scully started jouncing up and down on the springy seat with too much give for a passenger's own good.

"Sorry, sport."  Langly put out his hand to make her stop doing a frenzied imitation of a jack-in-the-box.  "The Cyclone's not open for business yet.  Too early.  If we're still here by Memorial Day, maybe we'll give it a blast.  Bizarro--that's one banged-up witchy cheap thrill."  Unleashing a prodigious sniff, he continued, "Not everybody's got the balls for it.  Uh--present totally worthy female company excepted, I sprint to add."  Winking at her, he cradled his opinion in an aside meant mostly for her ears only.  "You've got more balls than most of us sittin' here in this metal box-mobile, Punkin.  No doubt.  You're right in step with the babalicious lovelies themselves...Xena and Gabriel."

"I've never given her any flack over that," Mulder substantiated, hunkering in closer.  "Worship from afar, eh, Langly?"  The reddening tech-head shrugged, looking quite found out.  "Fact is," Mulder went on, his voice heavy with admiration, "I've had to borrow some of hers, more times than I feel comfortable remembering.  Hey, don't look so surprised."

Hero worship works both ways, Langly thought.  I’ll be as smarmy as I wanna be, where Scully's concerned...Langly was all set to lay a snide remark on Mulder, by way of a telling reference to Scully's pluck in the face of a coast-eating hurricane and a fresh water eschewing sea monster, as a specific case in point, when, from out the corner of his peripheral vision, he noticed a smallish young man, standing in the outer vestibule of the nearest complex building, number three-one-nine-four, waving frantically.

"What's up with that?" the hacker extraordinaire mused aloud, and pointed.

"Not sure," Mulder nattily responded, "but looks as though he wants our attention in the worst way."

"Byers, swing around the van," Frohike ordered, "and--"

"Yo--group, I don't need night vision for a positive I-D."  Langly started the vehicle and demanded that Byers haul himself back in.  "That's--"

"Mata Hari," Frohike rounded off for him, annoyed with the wisenheimer for having cut him off.

He was about to tell him so, when Langly gunned the engine in perfect synchronization with the precipitous hail of whizzing bullets which suddenly peppered their immediate environs.

The makeshift domiciles were alive with repeating, death-dealing commotion; sound and fury incarnate.

"We're all right!" Mulder yelled, thankful that he'd grabbed Byers in at the precise moment, his reflexes, hair-trigger, to subsequently, then, lunge for Scully to pull her down, clear of harm's deadly way.  "Byers, slam that door!  When we're even with Susanne, net her, and we're gone!  Get the lead out, Scarecrow--and hope by some twenty-mega ton magic, they miss the gas tank.  With sitting ducks if you don't pour on the speed!!"

In crouch-drive mode, Langly nodded, gulped heavily and quipped, "More like shi--"

"For posterity," Frohike announced, escalating in pitch and volume over Mulder and Langly.  He'd already ripped the digital minicam from his bag, and, ignoring the danger, or selectively choosing to be oblivious to it, was recording the wild proceeding.

Mulder barked over the screech of the tires, peeking up at his zealous friend in stark disbelief, "FROhike, if you get yourself killed, don't expect me to attend the funeral."

"I've never assumed you would.  What makes you think I'll be the one to go fir--YOWZEE--that was close!"  A bullet tore through the right side window panel, shattering it into a kazillion pieces, raining sharp, shimmering shards all about, to lodge itself somewhere in the spiffy interior.

"SEE?  Now downsize yourself before you spring a leak," Mulder commanded, wishing he were driving, and not powder-puff foot.

Not needing to be told, Silvio was kissing the floor upholstery with all the tenacity of an inflamed lover.  Fleetingly, he re-evaluated his decision for tagging along with the crazy 'Americanos.'  What, 'Querido Dios,' had he thrown himself into now?

Langly made a careening U-turn, over the street's center, upraised divider and beelined it for the anxious woman, who, upon seeing what was going down, had sought flimsy cover behind some motley-looking shrubbery.

Even before the van was even with the curb, the boyish version of the DOD's darling, flung herself into the beleaguered vehicle, atop the lap of her astonished beau.

"Is everyone all right?" Susanne questioned in a belligerent voice, over the melee still raging on the opposite side.

"What about you?" Byers spoke up, with a voice he didn't recognize, finding his fuzzy-coated tongue; the lingual sensation, a by-product of fear, and having had nothing to eat since very early that morning.

"I'm fine.  But if any one of you suffer harm in any way on my account, and, believe me, I'll deem it my account, it will be unforgivable.  Now, as they say in very bad B movies, 'Get us out of here!'"

"Who're the shooters?" Mulder burned to know, as he slid over and made space for her.  Susanne poured herself into the roomy intervention, wondering where to begin.

Sighing belaboredly before supplying the cogent details, she pressed her tapered fingers into her flushed cheeks.  "Contagion, who've had a vested interest all along.  Sadly, I was too blind sided to see this.  Blinded by my devotion to...Gra..."  She made herself stop.  Haltingly, she began again, "I never dreamed they'd locate me this quickly, although his insidious spies are everywhere.  Nor..."  The slouch-jeaned, black turtleneck and pants jacket wearing woman came forward to the edge of the seat; easily, she wouldn't've had a pinch of trouble passing for a Backstreet Boy.  She settled a hand on Scully's quivering shoulder.  "They want her too...now."

"Scully?" Mulder intoned, sounding incredulous and nonplussed in the same breath.  "Why?"  Clearly, well past agitated, "So why shoot to kill then?"

"For further experimentation.  To carry out their ultimate agenda.  Trust me, although, I realize most of you here have a huge problem with that, they weren't aiming for her, nor for me.  Tough luck for the rest of you for getting in the way.  It's obvious the line I spoke to John on, when describing Scully's plight, was none too secure, as I'd hoped.  They have more intricate resources and specialized, eclectic boltholes of tracking and surveillance than even this government.  And the entity's still in its infancy.  Now how scary is that?"

"Who are THEY?"  Byers moved up alongside her.  He removed the baseball cap she was wearing bill backwards, raking her make-palmed her shorn head, noting that her tiny lobes were naked.  She wasn’t even wearing the zircon chip-studded earrings he'd bought for her in Vegas.  She was devoid of any conventional trappings of femininity.

"Timmy, and his evolving cell of underground, terrorist subversive-thugs."

"TIMMY!" the Gunmen blared in discordant harmony.

"The all you can eat shrimp, with boobage-shoot me in the carotid with your scuzz drug-program me-and play me for a robotical assassin Timmy?" Langly croaked, more than a little unnerved by the confounding revelation.  "Like, hold up.  We saw his arrest go down on the tube.  What?  The li'l prick escaped right out from under their big noses, or somethin'?"  He relaxed his stranglehold on the steering wheel as he made a deft left on Mermaid Avenue, through the heart of the urban-renewed, seaside Coney Island community, heading for the Stillwell Avenue D-F-N and B subway lines of the terminal.  Was he ever thankful he’d managed to have gotten them away unscathed.  He began breathing normally again as the adrenaline rush ebbed.

"The right little Nazi himself," Susanne confirmed.  "And he had the colossal nerve to call me DARPA's moll.  He's the Teflon man.  The charges didn't stick.  Once he'd been sprung, by the powers that want him to be, the stalking his group's perpetrating, began."

"Timmy?" Byers echoed again.

"And an every-day-people cast of many minions.  Think about it, John.  He killed Grant, and on his way to your suite, told me that after he blew you three away, I'd be the exclusive property of his radical fringe faction.  To continue producing the A-H until his, their, ultimate goal is reached."

"Let me guess," Mulder jumped in, "'resistance is futile.'  Governmental overthrow, courtesy mass mind control."

Susanne nodded, hanging her head in sluicing dejection.  "You cannot fathom how much I wish I'd never pursued this research."

Byers fitted his arm around her shoulder and squeezed.  "You had no choice in the matter."

She seemed to relax somewhat, but her voice was a whisper.  "That's what I keep telling myself.  A stunning mess.  We're agreed?"

"Messy, but waste management has become my, well Scully's and, our, stock and trade lately."  Mulder patted his onetime quarry's back.  "First order of business...  Can you inject Scully back into this universe?"

Susanne scrunched up her face, the look of the hunted etched into every new line she'd earned in the hardest way.  "That depends on how good someone here is at getting some coke."

Frohike, who'd chosen to keep silent up until this point, insinuated himself into the parlance.  "Well, that shouldn't be too hard.  Pop into any deli convenience and snag a liter."

"Not that Coke," Susanne adjusted.  "A little of the stuff they used to lace the soft drink with, way back when.  Cocaine's molecular structure can be reconstituted into another A-H counteractive, if such is indicated, after I examine Scully."

"The serious real thing," Langly muttered, picking up the thread.  A hairbreadth of one.  "If it's blow you need to score, I'm just the ex-junkie who fills the bill."  As he sped the van through a yellow light, he capped, "It's been nearly a decade, but this ex hasn't lost his touch... Like ridin' a bike," he picked up steam; his braggadocio building, "doesn't matter if you haven't done it in ages.  You never forget how to score dope..."  What he'd been struggling to piece together on the plane had just been confirmed, concerning his favorite drug.  Molecular simularity, and with Susanne's expertise, the solution.  Well, he gave himself an 'A' for effort, at least.

Frohike rolled his weary, teary eyes, tapped Byers' back so he could shoot him a probing look, which seemed to employ telepathy...'you can take the drugs outta the boy, but you can't take the boy outta the drugs, or whatever the addictive substance to abuse of choice happened to be.  Byers turned his head back around, not wanting to think past Susanne's verbal summation and indictment of a traitor's twisted ideas.

Silvio who was now lodging comfortably in his seat once more prodded Frohike from his morose reverie.  "Does this mean your government will soon be made to topple?"

Frohike shrugged and mumbled something which sounded like, "Don't bet on a new deck just yet.  This house of cards has still got plenty of stability in it at the moment, my friend..."

As the party rode on to the destination Susanne had instructed Langly to take them to, the eldest member of the group prayed silently to himself for their collective sanity, such as it was, to remain primordially intact.  A biting malaise gnawed at his gut, and he wished he'd remembered to pack the Mylanta, in the scramble to get here, as well as his sub-pocket-sized, dog-eared New Testament with the Psalms.

...Dear, Lord, he offered up off the cuff, 'the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak...lead him not into temptation...' Help him score for Scully's sake.  Please don't abandon us to ourselves...

~~~~~~~~~~
End

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