"I can't read it."

"What?" asked Mulder, dividing his attention between his partner and the road.

"The back label. It's too smudged, it must have been sitting in water for a while... Mulder, it's late, let's find a hotel."

"Yeah."

"Tomorrow we still have to talk to the local police, and we might want to check back at the houses where no one was home. And we should definitely try to trace this Napalm."

"Where do you get jellied gasoline, anyway?"

Scully shrugged.

They drove on, stopping briefly to drop off a small package at the recycling center.


Dana Scully sat on the generic floral bedspread of the hotel bed, for lack of a desk in the tiny room. She scanned the calendars and papers she and Mulder had been working on together, searching for something she hoped she had missed. The calendar dates when the burnings were committed were totally random, and every interviewee had re-affirmed that there was no event that tied the days together. Even the styles of burnings differed, from broad sweeps to very select targets. There was no pattern whatsoever.

It was all insane.

Dana got ready to sleep, all of her hope resting on one bottle of Napalm.


Mulder, too, was sitting on his bed, trying to make sense of everything, anything. Scully was convinced that the whole thing was insanity. Well, he could not make sense of it either, not yet, but he was sure there had to be some meaning to it. There must be a pattern in there, somewhere, perhaps so complex that it was not recognizable.

Mulder realized that this all sounded eerily like high-school geometry. Without even his willing it, his mind dredged up the words, explicit and recursive formulas. For the first time in his life, he thought, these might help him. But they didn't. Though he suffered through the long and elaborate problems, the pattern didn't work.

He had to get somewhere with this! It had been months since he had even found anything relating to UFO's and EBE's, spaceships and aliens. Every lead he found lead off in a completely different direction. He had solved any number of cases that was strange, paranormal, unlike anything ever known, but none of it was of another planet. His whole life rested on the search for proof of extra-terrestrial life, the entire concept of the X-Files was devoted to it. Yet he was getting nowhere!

His sister, Samantha, popped into his head again. No, not now, please, he was trying to work, but there she was. In his mind she had not changed since that night... the night she disappeared. Had she been abducted by aliens? Was she still alive? Mulder drove these questions, those that were the basis of the X-files, out of his brain.

But he knew he had to get somewhere! This could not be a case of some weird nut testing his flamethrower, and yet that was what it was turning out to be. Why fire? He was terrified of fire! But he couldn't bail out now, he had to put on a brave face. He would solve this mystery, even if it was just some weirdo with a flamethrower, and get out of this cowtown, follow some other lead. He would solve it now.

Mulder knew that he had to be missing something, something vital to solving this mystery. There was no pattern, no purpose, everything was random and chaotic, at least as he saw it. He had to look at it from a different angle... Hmm, angle. Perhaps, if it were looked at from above... What if the burnings were meant to signal to something, say, a spacecraft, from above? He had to get a map, some kind of aerial view of the neighborhood! There was a map in his briefcase. He retrieved it, and though it was not exactly what he wanted, it would do. There, on a local map, he had marked in the addresses where burnings had taken place. He could draw in the burns from the photographs sent to him. He found a pen and drew the marks carefully, some broad sweeps, some select points. When he finished it, he carefully studied his work. It made no sense. It was certainly in no human language. The marks did not even form themselves into a readable pattern, but appeared to be just random marks, as useful as making sense of the layout of someone's freckles. Scully was right, it was all insane! Mulder pushed the pen and papers away and lay back on the bed. The only thing that tied the events together was fire and flame...


The flame of a campfire crackled in a spasmodic, dying way, at the edge of the sound only a few miles away, where the woods grew right up to the salt water. It was a cool and quiet evening. Bats were circling everywhere, feasting on the mosquitoes that rose in clouds above the marshes of North Carolina. A stick poked at the embers of the fire, turning over each bit of what had once been driftwood. A few sparks lifted to the stars.

"Sugar is good," said Lauren as she put another marshmallow onto her stick.

"Just what I was thinking," replied her brother, David, who sat on the sand next to her. "But it's even better when in a form that gets soft and sticky when roasted over an open fire. I wonder how I got marshmallow in my hair?"

"I saw the weirdest people today."

"Hmm?"

"They were checking out the burnings, and they wanted to know what I found in the stormdrain!"

"Why?"

Lauren shrugged. "I dunno."

"Well, what did you find?"

"Just junk, and one of Mrs. Bolsh's cats. Musta drown'd."
"You know, you're weird."

"Oh, you just noticed? You've known me since I was born and just now you say I'm not quite normal?"

"I mean, who else but you would go sticking her head down stormdrains?"

"Who else but you would spend two week's allowance on marshmallows?"

"Marshmallows are worthy of being bought with my allowance. Besides, if I asked Mom to buy them she'd know we're planning to sneak out."

"Like we did tonight."

The moments passed. Lauren began humming.

" Doo doo dee doo dee doo. Dee doo. Dee doo..."

"Where have you heard that?"

Lauren shrugged. "I dunno. Some show, probably."

"I just had that song running through my head, too."

"I told you we're psychic."

"It's just coincidence."

"It happens too often to be coincidence."

"What's that?"

It was a flame of pure fire rising into the air, twinkling through the trees. Lauren and David held their breaths, and when the fire went out a moment later, they began running toward the place it came from.

When they got to the place, a stretch of sidewalk not far from where Lauren had been painting stormdrains, no one was there. They did not see the shadow walking along the street, nearer the deserted end of the neighborhood.

"Let's go home!" they both said at the same time, then ran toward their house. They were too intent on getting back in their own window to hear the screen door bang shut at the very end of the street.

The bats were the only witnesses.


Dana Scully walked down the street, the Napalm bottle in her hand, to where a girl had her head in a stormdrain. A shadowy figure ran at her, shooting fire, and changing, morphing into a monster, a thin and worm-like dragon, and all around her was flame and fire, and her world sank into chaos. Suddenly, her mind decided it was bored with this rather unpleasant topic, and it slipped into a different dream, a rather more pleasant one where an infinite number of monkeys were attempting to write Shakespeare's Hamlet, but kept coming up with the word "slipper" in various shades of salmon and minty green.


Mulder, however, was not asleep. He could not let go of the mystery with his conscious mind. There was no pattern, no meaning. Bits of information floated in and out of his mind. What of the two dead cats? One had been burned, but the other had never been found. Oh, yes it had, by that girl with her head in the stormdrain. She had been such a help, but they had never even found out her name. And what motive could the killer have had? Mischief, hate, communication. Scully's words screamed into his brain. "Mulder, it's all insane. Get some rest and we'll work it out tomorrow." "Nothing short of a flamethrower, as far as I can tell." "Mulder, what do you know about flamethrowers?" "It's all insane..." Scully's image was superimposed on Samantha's. Samantha had Scully's voice, and she echoed her words. Fire, flame, it was everywhere around him, them. Mulder recoiled, trying to get away, but there was nowhere to run. Fire and chaos filled the world around Mulder, and it was all insane. And he, too, had been lost in the world of dreams.


And everything was forgotten when the wake-up call came from the hotel lobby at 6:45 the next morning.

Determined to move at least a little further in their investigation, Mulder had convinced her to talk to the local police before they had some dinner. They gave little information to help them with the burnings, backing up what the interviews had said. And then came news that there had been another one only last night, and that officers were investigating at that very moment.

And then, on the way to the site of the burnings, had come the flat tire, and the three-mile hike to the gas station, where they found the police car of the exact officers they were going to meet. However, instead of saving them the trip, it only increased the urgency to check out the site, because of the exact site that it was and the pictures taken from it.

At least they had been saved the trouble of interviewing the block all over again. No one admitted to having been out last night or having seen anything.

So the agents went back to the same neighborhood, the only thing they had acquired that day being a single photograph: where had once been the freshly-painted words "DON'T DUMP Yugunis Sound Drainage", where once there had been hidden a certain bottle of Napalm, had been burned black.


The agents stepped out of their car and stared at the stormdrain. Only the letters had been burnt, the grass surrounding it not so much as singed.

"That girl won't be too happy about this." Dana Scully remarked.

"My guess is that whoever did this may have been annoyed that they were warned not to use their favorite dumping site," Mulder suggested.

Scully nodded, but before she could reply, Mulder had knealt down and stuck his head and arm into the stormdrain. A moment later he reappeared, along with two very familiar plastic bottles.

"They also apparently didn't realize that their dumping site is now observed and cleaned out regularly." Mulder handed Scully one of the Napalm bottles, and they sat on the curb, looking at the bottles and thinking. Well, perhaps Mulder was thinking. Scully had a headache.

Mulder spoke, half to himself, half to his partner.

"Why do you think this particular stormdrain was being used, to dump the bottles, repeatedly?"

"I don't know, Mulder, probably just because it was the closest place to dump the bottles and not have them reappear again."

"But the Napalm bottles did reappear. Though they didn't know that, so they dumped there again. So, the likeliest suspects would be people for who this stormdrain would be the closest and most convenient."

"This is a residential neighborhood, and a sparsely populated one at that. This end of the street is practically deserted, except for that one house further down. But the people who live there must be away. No one has answered both times interviews have been done up this street."

"I don't think so... Scully, wasn't there another stormdrain just up the street, closer to the rest of the houses?"

Mulder stood up and walked a few paces closer. The words "DON'T DUMP Yugunis Sound Drainage" were there as well.

"If the people in that house down the street," said Mulder, gesturing to the lone house, "were here to dump the bottles last night, then they can't be away."

It was a short walk. The dilapidated and well-shaded porch was bare of anything giving a clue to the person who lived there, though the doorstep was occupied by a newspaper.

"See, Scully, the paper is today's. They must have been home recently to pick up yesterday's paper." commented Mulder as he rang the doorbell.

"Most people going out of town have a neighbor pick up their mail and paper to keep the house from looking unoccupied, Mulder."

"I wonder if there's a car in the garage." Mulder walked over and peered into the dark, dusty windows of the adjacent garage.

"If animals weren't meant to be eaten, then why are they made of meat?" Mulder mumbled.

"What??"

Mulder stepped back from the garage. "Just reading the bumper sticker, Scully. The car's there."

"Mulder, some people have two cars. These people aren't coming to the door and they haven't for the past two days." Scully's headache wasn't getting better and she was becoming quite annoyed with her partner. Mulder ignored her bad mood, stepping up to the door and pounding on it.

"We're from the FBI, open the door! We know you're in there!"

Scully held her throbbing head, wishing for either an aspirin or a stiff drink. Perhaps the latter would have been preferable.

The door suddenly flew open. The agents were greeted by a well-built woman, youngish, with tousled, blondish hair. Her expression was sweet, with a bright smile, though something in her expression betrayed less-apparent emotions. Was it sadness? Guilt? Anger? And she spoke.

"Hello, how may I help you?"

"We are agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully of the FBI," began Mulder, as he and Scully whipped out their badges as proof. "We..."

"From the FBI?"

"Yes, we..."

"Mulder and Scully?"

The ice-cream man went by, and conversation paused as all three suppressed the urge to go running after the cheery bells. Mulder resumed his speech.

"Yes, we are agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully of..."

"Wait a moment please."

Mulder gazed after the woman until she walked into another room, out of his sight. "Should we come in?" He called into the dim interior.

"Stay where you are, I'll be with you in a moment!"

Scully had a building sense of deja vu, and in a blinding realization realized that this strange woman was reminiscent of the telephone operator.

Mulder slipped off the porch and around the corner of the house, whispering to Scully as he passed.

"I'll get the back." Scully nodded, focusing on where the woman had left. The moments crept by almost unnoticed, until the woman's voice came from the house again.

"I'm coming!"

Mulder slipped back onto the porch. The woman could just be seen, and just as the agents were about to tell her to hurry up, she came forward. She not merely came, but she ran directly at them with terrifying speed. She not merely ran directly at them with terrifying speed, but she was holding, carrying something, and from her throat came a sound that was not of the conscious mind, but animal, insane. In the moment it took for the agent's brains to register this they stepped back, and Mulder began to draw his gun. But then a stream of pure flame shot at them with a roar, and all they could do was leap out of the way and run.

The woman paused for the briefest moment at the doorstep and then ran after them. They were plunged into the darkness of the woods.


Proceed onto Part III.
Retreat to Part I.
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