Mulder allowed himself a small smile. “Who knows?”
39
Scully’s home, Annapolis, MD
Sunday, l:07 P.M.
With her little dog curled up asleep on the sofa, Scully flicked on the computer and sat down at her desk, taking a deep breath.
So different from wandering lost in the wet and bug-laden jungles of Central America, she thought. And quite an improvement.
Now that she had returned home, she had to get into the right frame of mind to work on her official report about Xitaclan, juggling the loose ends in her mind until she finally succeeded in tying them together. There were other cases, other investigations…other X-Files. She had to close this one and move on.
In a few hours of peace and solitude in her own apartment, Scully could finish up the backlog of paperwork that had piled up during their trip to Mexico. It felt good to be back in civilization.
She crossed her legs in her chair and rested a lined legal notepad on her knee to jot down notes, sketching out her thoughts before committing her report to the computer. She scribbled several headings, writing her ideas under broadly defined categories.
Their specific assignment—to search for the missing archaeology team members—had been completed. Scully felt grateful to be able to mark an official case CLOSED, technically at least. Assistant Director Skinner would appreciate that.
On the legal pad, she listed the names of the four murdered team members, adding details of how she had discovered their bodies submerged in the cenote, how she and Mulder had recovered them from the water. She described the apparent cause of death—murder by gunshot wounds, broken vertebrae, and/or drowning. She concluded that Cait Barron, Christopher Porte, Kelly Rowan, and John Forbin had all been killed by members of the guerrilla organization Liberación Quintana Roo.
She didn’t know what to write under “Cassandra Rubicon.” She had been found alive and unharmed—though how, Scully did not understand. She still had no satisfactory explanation for the young woman’s disappearance, the lost two weeks in her life. Had she been out wandering in the jungle or hiding down in the ruins of Xitaclan while the rest of her team members lay dead in the sacrificial well? Scully could not include Mulder’s talk about buried spacecraft and suspended animation chambers.
As a side note, she scribbled a sentence about how, in the wake of the Xitaclan disaster and the debacle of the U.S. military covert operation, the Mexican government had finally come in with a sufficient force to crack down on the guerrilla activities. Soldiers had confiscated the remaining illegal arms and arrested the surviving revolutionaries who could be found hiding in jungle villages.
The violent Liberación Quintana Roo movement had been crushed. Their nominal leader, the turncoat police chief Carlos Barreio, remained at large. Mulder maintained his own explanation for what had happened to the man. Despite Scully’s coaxing, her partner had not been forthcoming with sufficient details that she felt comfortable about including Mulder’s speculations in her report. They didn’t have a specific bearing on the case.
As for the tactical nuclear weapon that had supposedly obliterated Xavier Salida’s fortress—their investigations had uncovered no evidence of additional black-market armaments, other diverted nuclear devices that had fallen into the hands of Central American criminals. A continued search, though, would have to be conducted by other federal agencies, such as the CIA or the State Department.
Under “Vladimir Rubicon,” Scully summarized the scenario of how the old man had been killed: struck on the head by Fernando Victorio Aguilar because the old archaeologist had threatened to broadcast his report and call in additional government-sanctioned help—all of which would have interfered with Aguilar’s artifact thievery.
Hesitating, she made a notation that their guide Aguilar, Rubicon’s murderer, had been killed by “a wild animal” in the jungle.
Then she swallowed and procrastinated, doodling with her pencil before getting up to make herself a cup of instant coffee, heating the water in her microwave.
The monstrous feathered serpents were the hardest part for Scully to explain. Their presence posed the greatest difficulties for her rational report. She did not know how to account for the creatures, but she had seen them with her own eyes. She could not ignore their existence.
Earlier, Mulder had described his glimpses of the unearthly serpent creatures in the moonlight, and she had thought he had just been imagining things. But she herself had watched the towering, coiling beast with its long iridescent scales and curved fangs.
Finally, steeling herself, Scully sat at her desk again and picked up the pencil. Without further thought, she wrote down her own explanation, the best she could come up with.
The feathered serpents must be members of a large, previously uncataloged species of reptile, perhaps nearly extinct, but with enough representatives surviving into historical times to account for the numerous legendary images on Maya structures and artifacts. In retrospect, she realized Mulder had been right—the feathered serpent image appeared on so many glyphs and stelae that it seemed likely the ancient Maya had seen some of the creatures in life. Mulder had even suggested that the carnivorous feathered serpents could be responsible for the numerous accounts of missing people in the area around Xitaclan.
She commented on the density of the Central American rain forests, how many thousands of new species were identified every year. She conjectured that it was not completely beyond the realm of possibility that a large reptilian carnivore—especially one with such apparent intelligence—could have remained heretofore undetected by scientific expeditions and zoological study teams.
Agent Mulder had reminded her of how many images of similar creatures existed in the world’s mythologies: dragons, cockatrices, wyverns, Chinese water dragons—and the more she thought about it, the more sense it made that such rare beasts might have indeed existed.
With the destruction of the Xitaclan site and the significant amounts of new volcanic activity there, Mulder had been unable to offer any corroborating evidence. His alien artifacts remained unconfirmed, his derelict spacecraft destroyed. She felt that, while she would include his verbal eyewitness account, she could do nothing more than let it stand on its own.
She sipped her bitter coffee and scanned over her notes as she turned to her computer. She crossed out a few lines scribbled on the legal pad, tried to arrange her thoughts on paper, then rested her fingers on the keyboard.
She would have to smooth everything out in her final report. Scully could say only that the many anomalies at Xitaclan remained unexplained.
40
FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Sunday, 2:12 P.M.
Though FBI Headquarters never shut down entirely, the Sunday afternoon quiet surrounded Mulder with a warm peacefulness unlike the usual bustle of a normal business day.
Only one bank of fluorescents shone from the ceiling, the others were gray and dark. The atmosphere inside the FBI offices surrounded him like a tangible presence: the thousands of investigations, the case files, telephones that would normally be ringing, photocopy machines whirring and clanking into the night.
The phone beside his desk remained silent—down the hall, the other computers, the neighboring offices, the adjacent cubicles equally quiet.
It was not a rare occurrence for him to come in on the weekend; Scully had often joked about his lack of a social life.
Now he sat pensive, with the miniblinds drawn and a desk lamp switched on. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he pushed aside his stack of books on Maya myths and archaeology.
He studied a sheaf of satellite photos he had obtained through sensible use of two Washington Redskins tickets. He had invested in season passes, though his caseload rarely allowed him the time to go to the actual games. However, the tickets often proved to be a useful form of currency for getting unofficial favors done in the Bureau.
He sat down and looked at the finely detailed photos, a few of t
hem showing the devastated crater remaining where a Mexican drug lord’s private villa had once been. Curious, he turned to another photo, studying the close-in target of the hellish, blasted landscape around the ruins of Xitaclan.
The volcanic hotbed had already generated enormous excitement among geologists. That part of the Yucatán should have been geologically stable instead of giving birth to an erupting volcano, much like the mysterious appearance of Parícutin in 1948. The cone of the new volcano had already begun to take shape, and early geological reports suggested that the new eruption would continue for years.
Mulder wondered if there could be any connection between Parícutin and Xitaclan, but dismissed the thought.
He would have no chance to go back to the Yucatán. He had no reason to return, because the erupting lava and volcanic tremors would have annihilated all evidence, even down to the mundane archaeological ruins. Not a scrap of Xitaclan’s ancient glory remained.
Mulder picked up the precious jade artifact, the slick-smooth stone of whitish green carved into the design of a feathered serpent.
This time, the image struck him with an eerie chill, because he had seen the real thing. He ran his fingernail along the notches in the carving, tracing the feathers, the fangs in the open mouth. So many centuries of mystery lay locked in that place, and in this artifact.
But since Xitaclan had been destroyed, no one would believe his explanations. As usual.
Mulder set the jade carving on his desk with a sigh. At least he could use it for a decent paperweight.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book couldn’t have been written without the assistance, dedication, and flexibility of the X-Files people at Fox Television—Chris Carter, Mary Astadourian, Frank Spotnitz, Jennifer Sebree, Debbie Lutzky, and Cindy Irwin, as well as the editorial champions at HarperPrism—John Silbersack and Caitlin Deinard Blasdell.
Lil Mitchell transcribed my dictation in record time. Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith offered their home during the worst storm in decades so I could accomplish some tight-deadline writing (electricity or no electricity!). Paula Vitaris shared her valuable Spanish expertise, though I probably still managed to make mistakes. Debbie Gramlich and Chris Fusco provided much-needed background material. And finally, my wife, Rebecca Moesta, gave her love and support during writing deadlines of her own.
About the Author
One of today’s most popular SF writers, KEVIN J. ANDERSON is the author of the internationally bestselling and award-winning Dune prequels (co-authored with Brian Herbert) and numerous Star Wars novels, and has carved an indisputable niche for himself with science fiction epics featuring his own highly successful Saga of Seven Suns series. His critically acclaimed work has won or been nominated for numerous major awards. His most recent book is The Last Days of Krypton, and he lives in Colorado.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
PRAISE FOR
“The X-Files is a true masterpiece. There’s no more challenging series on television and, as a bonus, it’s also brainy fun.”
Howard Rosenberg, Los Angeles Times
“The most provocative series on TV.”
Dana Kennedy, Entertainment Weekly
“The X-Files is a rip-roaring hour of TV: suspenseful, scary, fun, imaginative, entertaining, and weird, wonderfully weird.”
Jeff Jarvis, TV Guide
“An original gem, mined with passion and polished with care.”
Andrew Denton, Rolling Stone
The X-Files
From HarperEntertainment
THE X-FILES: GOBLINS
THE X-FILES: WHIRLWIND
THE X-FILES: GROUND ZERO
THE X-FILES: ANTIBODIES
THE X-FILES: RUINS
THE X-FILES: SKIN
Coming Soon
From HarperEntertainment
THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE X-FILES: RUINS. Copyright © 1996, 2008 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition SEPTEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061981845
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