The Lambs: Part 1 (6/10) by Lamia (AKA so kiss me goodbye) Rating: PG-13 (violence, strong language) Category: S Spoilers: Seasons 1-9, Fight the Future Keywords: William; Colonization Summary: Liam van de Kamp's life changes the day two FBI agents kidnap him and his parents. Author's Note: The Lambs is a three-part story (with prologue). Chapter 6 August 10, 2011 Fremont County Wyoming The gunshot was instantaneous; Liam's scream went on forever. Harry van de Kamp spasmed and dropped to the ground. Before Liam could turn his frightened face on Dr. Scully, she holstered her gun and bundled him into the vehicle, slamming the door. "Reverse. Now!" She slapped the Ford as if the force of her command was enough to power the vehicle. Then she was gone, tearing over the rocky field. The man who had driven so suddenly to their rescue minutes ago didn't need to be told twice. The Ford's engine roared into life and lurched off-track in a hail of dirt. They pulled up along Dr. Scully, already bent over the prone body. "Quick, scoot over here." The man nodded Liam to the front seat as he jerked the handbrake. "Stay in the car. We're going to need room." Liam was too confused to disobey. After clambering over the seats, he pressed his face against the window to see what was happening. Dr. Scully was at his dad's side. Liam couldn't make out what she was doing, but her hands were flying. "Harry?" Liam's mother dropped to her knees. She pushed Dr. Scully when the doctor leant forward. "Get away from him." Her struggles didn't subside until the man restrained her. Dr. Scully said something which made the man glance up. The color in his face drained away. "There's no time - we have to go now!" he said. Liam stared across the field; he squinted and rubbed his eyes. "Mom -" He tried hard to keep the horror from his voice. The four runners hadn't slowed. Two in front, two behind, they were moving together as if they were one lone, four-headed wolf from some terrible legend. And they were naked. Except for lace-up boots and scraps of uniform, which flapped about their shoulders and shins, all four were unclothed. They were too far away for Liam to make out facial features but their stride and formation was enough to chill him. Their loping gait was leisurely but their legs were devouring the distance with terrifying speed. With each step they doubled in height, looming larger and larger. *Soldiers.* Fear was like a giant hand squeezing his heart; he screamed, banging on the window. Dr. Scully jumped to her feet. *She won't let anything bad happen ... wait! What am I thinking? She just shot Dad!* He couldn't trust her - that's what he should be thinking. She was dangerous. A lunatic. A lunatic trying to save them. *It doesn't make any sense.* The man reached under Mr. van de Kamp's arms and hoisted him while Dr. Scully, with red-smeared hands, lifted his legs. It was the first time Liam had noticed blood. He strained to see where it was coming from. It should have scared him but instinct told him there was a greater danger at hand. Dr. Scully and the man staggered several steps to the Ford, ignoring Liam's mother's protests. "Why are you moving him? It's not safe -" She stood at the vehicle door, her hands extended - to do what? Help them? Stop them? "No, it's not safe," Dr. Scully said as they maneuvered Liam's dad so he was stretched out, taking up all the seat. His face was slack. "But -" Dr. Scully dismissed her with a wave. "Sit in the front with Liam." Liam's mom made no effort to climb in the car. The doctor's eyes never left Mr. van de Kamp's face as she arranged his legs on the seat. The man had raced to the other side and was easing Liam's dad further into the vehicle. He looked over his shoulder. "Dr. Scully ..." Liam tasted bile in his mouth when he forced himself to look at the running men. The leaders were covered from head to foot in mottled skin, blackened and purple and deathly. One had distinct, rusty welts centered over his chest and on his temple; his partner kept up the formation but there was something peculiar about his lopsided run. "Get in! Now!" Dr. Scully yelled. The runners were winning this race. There was nothing human about their fluid pack stride but there was nothing animal about it, either - nothing predatory. Every movement was precise and economical: left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. But then there was that one soldier: something off, something strange about the way his shoulders rolled back and forth - an exaggerated pitching or listing on one side. Liam gagged. "His arm's torn off." Jagged bone - what else could it be? - protruded from the stump. "Mom ... Mom! His arm's gone ... Mom! Get in." The soldiers were expressionless as they honed in on the vehicle but their eyes bore down on its occupants with dreadful purpose. In a flash, Liam and Dr. Scully were out of the Ford. She pushed while he grabbed his mother about her waist, tugging and yelling at her. "Mom, please!" "I'm *not* leaving you here!" Dr. Scully said. His mother's trance broke. She shook her head. She didn't need Dr. Scully to yell again. She and Liam tumbled together on to the front seat as Dr. Scully fired her gun twice and dived for the vehicle herself. It was already rolling. Not fast enough. Liam's mother cried out as One Arm shot his only grasping, ruined hand straight through the closing gap of their door. Liam stretched across his mother and snatched at the handle, his arms jarred by resistance. The door wouldn't shut. Blackened fingers waggled, mashed between the car and the door frame. He had to bite down hard on his cheeks to control his revulsion. The fingers were still connected to a hand, and the hand was still connected to a body, and the body was still running, keeping pace with the Ford, which was accelerating across the bumpy terrain. Only his mother's grip kept him from bouncing off her knees. They were both holding on for life. Quick thumps overhead made them look up. "What's that?" Liam's mom asked. "Another one on the roof." Dr. Scully scrambled out of her jacket. "I think I slowed the other two down. Can you shake them off?" "Do I have a choice?" Their driver gripped the stick. "Hold on!" Liam went flying against the dashboard as the man slammed on the brakes. He grunted but managed to keep his hold on the door. The abrupt stop didn't dislodge One Arm; the fingers above Liam writhed like large, fat maggots. *How are you holding on?* His mother's face was a scant inch away from the fingers. Another bang on the roof made them look up. A shadow fell across the driver's window. A grinning head appeared, upside down. Its fist pounded on the window, then again, and again. A crack ran up the glass. One Arm was still moving with the Ford, but with only one hand to grip the door frame, *how* was he holding on? Maybe the same way Liam was. Nothing would make him let go of the handle. Their driver held his nerve, planted his foot again and swung them in a wide arc. They drove right at a stone pillar next to an open gate. At the last second, they turned sharply, grazing the pillar. The vehicle shuddered when the soldier half on the roof smashed into the post - and was gone (along with the side-view mirror) - with a crunch. "Hold that door!" the man yelled. Liam gritted his teeth. His knuckles were white; he was strangling the handle with both hands. His mother was clutching him fast; she had pulled the seatbelt around him to secure them both. Only her clasp kept him steady while the vehicle bounced into another field. Liam didn't want to look straight up - he didn't want to risk seeing either One Arm or its fingers - but his head was flung back when the vehicle struck a large rock. His eyes locked on the soldier's. Liam was grateful he was frozen with fear. His paralysis saved him. The vehicle rode over another rock, and the soldier's head disappeared. Liam watched the swollen fingers slide down the door frame. He swallowed his relief as the fingers, one by one, lost purchase and slipped - until only an index finger wrapped itself against the lip of the frame. Liam gave a final heave. The door shut with a satisfying click. The vehicle seemed lighter. He was too numb to feel relief. "Three out indefinitely," Dr. Scully said from the back. "One's reassembled but he won't catch us." Liam's mother let out a sigh before she and the man burst into questions. "Who were they? *What* were they? What do they want?" "Where to, Dr. Scully? Avoid the township?" Liam knew his own voice would be lost in the fray. He didn't even try to say anything. He had pretended to be brave - holding on to the door and all - but One Arm had frightened him. What if Dr. Scully was wrong? Liam didn't want to look out the window. *What if it's still holding on?* There had been nowhere to run, nowhere to escape, so he had frozen. He *never* wanted to freeze like that again. He forced himself to peek over the edge. They had hit a road. He was surprised to see the abandoned barn just disappearing from view. Shouldn't they be miles away already? Their escape had taken a lifetime, hadn't it? Like the slow-motion fall of his father when Dr. Scully shot him; *that* was a moment lasting forever ... "Dad!" A weak voice called out. "Still alive." The hand clenching Liam's heart relaxed. Until now he hadn't realized how much pain he felt in his chest. "Stay still, Mr. van de Kamp. The bullet's gone straight through muscle. There's no arterial wound, but you *are* bleeding badly." He groaned. "You're either a really good shot - or a really bad one." "Either way, you're one lucky SOB, sir," their driver said. "She took out two of those things with her handgun - direct hits to their foreheads, each of them. I'd say she only misses when she aims to miss." Liam's dad snorted. "That's supposed to make me feel better?" Dr. Scully's mouth twisted. She told Mr. van de Kamp not to waste his energy and asked the man if he had a first aid kit. "In the glove compartment." Still on his mother's knees - there was no room for him anywhere else - Liam tried to reached forward but found himself stuck. As much as he wanted them to, his hands wouldn't release the handle. Gently, his mother pried his fingers free. "You can let go, Liam." She enveloped his hands in her own. Dr. Scully leaned over. "Have you got ..." The hint of exasperation faded when her glance fell on them. Liam reddened and slid his hands out from his mother's. He opened the compartment and rooted through its contents. "Ugh." His mother was staring down the side of the seat. Liam handed the first aid kit to Dr. Scully then leaned over his mother's side to see her discovery. "Eww ... cool." Here was a chance to reclaim some of his pride. For all the terror, all that hammering of his heart on his ribcage, he refused to act scared. He commanded himself to look at the thing, to scrutinize it with the same detachment he might when studying an animal carcass. "What is it?" Dr. Scully asked. Liam's mother wrinkled her nose. "A finger." The doctor hissed. "Get it out - now!" "With pleasure. Liam, sweetie, could you just move ..." She twisted him in her lap to give herself room to reach down beside the seat. "You don't have to do it, Mom. I'll -" "No, wait, Liam," said Dr. Scully. "Perhaps it's best if no one touches it. Garrett, do you have something we could use to wrap it?" Liam pushed aside a flashlight, pamphlets and an assortment of other items until he pulled a large rag from the glove compartment. "Like this, Dr. Scully?" He didn't wait for her reply, leaning over again to fish out the finger. "No. Don't -" "Don't wor -" Liam wasn't squeamish and severed limbs didn't (usually) frighten him, but his hand paused mid-stoop. He sat up, very aware his heart was beating a rapid tattoo. "It's moving." "Excuse me?" his mother said. He leaned over again and let out a sigh. The finger, from torn flesh at one end to dirt encrusted nail at the other, lay on a ledge just under the door frame. A trick of the eye. "Nope." Embarrassed, he turned a weak grin on his mother. When she rolled her eyes, he noticed her lashes were shining. "Liam ..." She took the rag from him. She heeded Dr. Scully's advice to take it carefully. "Don't let it touch your skin, Marie." When the thing was secured in the rag, Mrs. van de Kamp passed it to the doctor, who took it with equal care and sealed it in the emptied first aid container. "You're keeping it?" Liam asked. "So we can study it." She didn't elaborate but put the container on the floor. Using scissors she'd found in the kit, she proceeded to cut away one leg from Mr. van de Kamp's jeans. It couldn't have been the easiest thing in the world to do. There was nowhere for her to sit and she was crouched between the front and back seats to brace herself. She looked uncomfortable but her hands were sure as she sliced through thick fabric. "We've got to find some place safe to stop," she said. "As soon as possible." The man looked over his shoulder. "I was told you'd know where you were going ...?" "That was before." Liam wondered if there was more she wanted to add. "What about Agent Mulder?" She hesitated before answering. "I don't know. Not yet." Their driver's fingers drummed on the steering wheel. "If you can stand the jostling, I'll take us off-road a bit. That ought to buy us some time. There's a place I know about twenty miles from here that should give us some shelter and give you time to patch that wound." Dr. Scully didn't waste time thinking about the suggestion. "Thank you." The man gave Liam a sideways glance. "We didn't get time to properly introduce ourselves. My name is Garrett de Rosier. Please, call me Garrett. I've known *of* Dr. Scully for some time, but no one's yet introduced me to ..." Liam's mother answered for the family. "Marie van de Kamp. My husband, Harry, and our son, Liam." "That was a brave thing you did, Liam - holding on to that door," Mr. de Rosier said. Now that there were no superhuman soldiers chasing them, Liam had time to look at their rescuer. The way his shoulders hunched and filled the cab, his knees stuck out from under the steering wheel, and his head bent against the roof gave the impression he was driving his grandmother's car, not a large farm vehicle. He wasn't thickset but standing he'd have to be taller than Mr. Mulder and his shoulders were broad. The soldier that tried to come through his window would have encountered a second solid obstacle had he got any further. His mother brushed over Mr. de Rosier's compliment. "Were those men -" Mrs. van de Kamp stumbled over her next word as if it were a new one she was just testing out. "Supersoldiers?" "Supersoldiers?" The word slipped off Mr. de Rosier's tongue as easily as ice cream might. "I'd say so." "You don't know?" "Not many people meet a supersoldier and get the opportunity to talk about it later." "What did they want with us?" Mr. de Rosier took his eyes off the road to look at her. He flicked a quick glance in the rearview mirror. "You're traveling in such auspicious company and you don't *know* what's going on?" Marie van de Kamp saw an opening and took it. "Not for lack of asking!" she said. "It's very difficult to say no to a woman pointing a gun at your son's head." Mr. de Rosier whistled; Dr. Scully put up no defense. Encouraged, Mrs. van de Kamp continued. "They turned up at our farm late yesterday morning. They said they were FBI agents making routine checks. All of a sudden, Mr. Mulder receives a text, and that's when he and Dr. Scully decide to kidnap us. All of us. We were driven for several hours. Mr. Mulder told us some fantastic tale about aliens and invasions and supersoldiers, then he broke into a house in who-knows-where, and we slept there until he made us get into a stolen vehicle this morning. I managed to call for help on Dr. Scully's phone, and we were about to be rescued when things went pear-shaped ..." Her speech, begun high on the mountain of indignance, became lost in uncertainty. It wasn't a conciliatory ending - Liam could tell his mom hadn't quite made up her mind about what was happening to her family - but here they were, still in the car, with a stranger who turned up to save them just in time and the doctor who had kidnapped them at gunpoint, then shot one of them. And no one was asking to get out. Neither his mother nor his father had demanded an emergency call be made again - not even to assist with Mr. van de Kamp's injury. Somehow they were safer in the Ford, safer with Dr. Scully and Mr. de Rosier than they would be anywhere else. Mr. de Rosier nodded. "That explains some things." "Not to me, it doesn't." "I believe in supersoldiers, Marie, even though until today I had never seen one in action. But I have seen - experienced - other things that make it easy for me to believe. If you've never considered them before, supersoldiers must sound beyond incredible. I bet you thought agents Mulder and Scully were straight out of a mental institution." The sheepish expression on Mrs. van de Kamp's face made him smile. "I wondered how Mulder and Dr. Scully had become embroiled in an abduction attempt. It's unfortunate you misread the situation, but you can't be blamed for your lack of trust. I'm sure Agent Mulder approved." If the reference was an invitation for Dr. Scully to join in, she didn't take it. "So, it's true? They were trying to save us?" Liam already believed it. He just wanted someone neutral to confirm it. Not that this Mr. de Rosier could be considered neutral. "No one's told me what they were doing or why they were doing it, but I assume saving your lives must have been part of that plan." Liam's mother was not as willing to trust this man as Liam. Not without testing every angle of his story. "How do we know you're not just a part of it? We're in the middle of nowhere, and you suddenly turn up in time to rescue us?" "If I were you, I wouldn't bother ever buying a lottery ticket again, Mrs. van de Kamp. You hit a once-in-a-million life-times jackpot today. One day I hope you come to understand that." Liam's mom gave a frustrated shake of her head. "I'll never understand it unless someone just tells us straight. What is happening?" "Three separate - let's call them organizations - took a great deal of interest in your call, Marie." The vehicle turned hard left onto a narrow track. "For some reason the whereabouts of you and your family has become a matter of considerable intrigue, most likely because of the company you've been keeping. Two organizations were acting in concert when they tried to run you off the road this morning. "One looked suspiciously like a covert military outfit. The second group were the very people you probably expected to help you: two *off-duty* police officers from Lander. "Note that: the hail for response to your call was not made over the emergency radio dispatch system. Neither the Fremont County Sheriff's Department nor the Lander Police Department was made aware of an emergency just south of Jeffrey City. There's a deputy in Jeffrey City. He should have been the first person on the scene, considering Jeffrey City is the closest town to us right now. But he's not here. "And where are the reporters? The photographers? The folks at the Lander Journal deserve to break a decent yarn, and frankly, there's no bigger yarn in the country today than the one you're mixed up in. With their secret ways of knowing things, this is something you'd expect journalists to be all over ... but they're not here. None of them. In other words - they don't know you're out here." *Mr. de Rosier sure does like to talk.* "Instead of that message being received by every unit in Fremont County, only two *off-duty* police officers were privy to it. You might be interested to know the officers in that patrol vehicle are newcomers to the area. And for newcomers, they aren't real friendly-like, keep to themselves, if you catch my drift." Mr. de Rosier was alluding to something important. Liam wasn't quite sure he understood exactly *what*, but the picture he built in his head of the two officers was not flattering. Was Mr. de Rosier saying the two officers were untrustworthy? "You could say you've had a rather unlucky day or two on account of the kidnapping, gun-pointing and fiery explosions and such, but I beg you to spare a thought for the family of the dispatch operator who took your call because it's unlikely they will ever see their loved one alive again. "You, on the other hand, got *really* lucky. I'll tell you why. Because not only are you traveling with one of our country's foremost experts on paranormal and extraterrestrial activity, but you're lucky because *three* groups took an interest in that call you placed about an hour or so ago, Marie. The third group - the one I belong to - was the first to understand the significance of that call and took immediate steps to minimize the effects of it. "As luck would have it, we were in exactly the right place at exactly the right time." "You!" Liam's mother was horrified. "You shot down that helicopter! You blew out the tires on the patrol car." "Not me personally. I can't take credit for either shot. But I know the guys who did the shooting." "But the helicopter pilot ..." She sounded sick. He gave her a sympathetic smile. "You can't kill a supersoldier, Marie." "We knew they'd be coming at you from both directions. There wasn't any time to arrange more effective fire power. We did the best we could with what we had. We were able to estimate where you'd be hijacked. We had several vehicles on the road looking for patrol cars and we set up a couple of sharpshooters along the hills, just in case." Mrs. van de Kamp slumped, all the fight gone out of her. For seconds she seemed lost. At last, raising her head, tears threatening to fall, she capitulated. "I give in. I don't know what to believe." Liam felt her arms tighten around him. "She shot my husband. She didn't give him any warning. She held a gun up to my son's head and forced us to come with her. I don't know what to do." It was an uncomfortable confession to hear. It was as though, going as far as she could, his mother had walked herself into a dark corner and could go no further. Liam had never imagined his mother this way. No one had any words to reassure her, but Dr. Scully had questions of her own. "How did you know?" Her raised voice - its sharpness - caught Liam's attention. "How did you know Mulder and I were in that SUV?" She wanted answers. Her face became more animated with every question. "How did you know where we'd be? Who contacted you? Who knew *how* to cont -" She was cut off by the sudden buzz of the cellphone in her pocket. She pulled it out, and it rattled in her bloodied hand. An anxious air had developed in the vehicle. They were all waiting to see what she would do. Her hesitation was brief. She flicked the cover and stared at the tiny screen, her face once again inscrutable.