The car shrieked as Mulder held his foot down on the peddle and it shook with the effort the engine was making to pull it out of the drift.

Scully had to wait until Mulder had stopped before she could tell him to quit it or she wouldn't have been heard. He pressed the gas again to show he would stop in his own good time and then gave up. Looking at the wall of snow on his side window he murmured, "Well Scully, looks like you're going to have to get out and push."

He looked round at her a smirk playing on his lips.

"Mulder this isn't funny. We're miles from anywhere and nobody knows we're here. That's thanks to you as well. People die like this."

Mulder stared ahead and Scully could tell that he wanted to make another wise-crack for the last word. Instead he had decided to sulk. Scully tutted and glared at the coating of snow on the windscreen.

"Put on the wipers before they freeze up will you," Scully said.

"I don't think that we're going to hit anything, do you?".

"Just do it so that I can see. It's getting claustrophobic in here." And has been since we set off, she thought. Mulder was playing up like a kid again and it wasn't endearing. He was being spiteful and mean and the rub of it seemed to be because Scully had a new friend. She wondered how a grown man could be so childish.

The windscreen wipers lurched an inch and then stuck. Scully's stomach turned. Then with a second effort the wipers moved again, cutting a few more inches out of the casing of snow on the windshield before forcing a full arc. Mulder and Scully stared ahead and then at each other.

"What the hell was that," Mulder yelled and flung open his door to scramble out of the car. The wipers were now moving sluggishly back and forth but were fighting a losing battle to keep the view clear. Snow flakes the size of medallions were making it impossible.

"Mulder, wait!" Scully screamed. Mulder was already gone and she unfastened her seat-belt to pull his door closed . Freezing air had filled the car and and snow was blowing in. She struggled with the door which felt as though someone was deliberately holding it before managing to pull it closed with a slam when the wind turned in her favour.

In those few moments her ears became sore with the cold and felt too fragile to touch and her fingers had become stiff. Her face felt as though it had been whipped. Struggling to get her coat from the back seat she tried to watch Mulder in the brief flashes that the wipers afforded her. The car was facing the other side of the road where Mulder now stood, and he looked like he was at the edge of either a hill or maybe even a drop. He was wearing a jumper although in those conditions it might as well have been a T-shirt.

Having found her jacket she coaxed it on in the confines of the car, numb fingers tugging at it and slipping from the buttons. She looked up. "Christ Mulder, where are you?" Snow filled the scene again.

Anxiously Scully waited for another pass of the wipers. Still nothing. And then another wait before the clearance and Scully gasped. She was sure she had seen it again. Whatever Mulder had gone running out after and what to her looked to be, in the flash of vision she was given, a small boy in a red coat. Scully banged her hand against the window in frustration as though she could dislodge the snow. The next time the boy was gone and there was still no Mulder.

"For Christ's sake Mulder," Scully shouted. "What am I supposed to do now? Kill myself looking for you?" The wipers stopped. "No don't give up me. Please," she said. She waggled the stick that controlled them and got no response.

She sat alone in the white-walled prison and thought, Mulder is dead and I'm going to die right here. She wanted to cry but more she wanted to do something. The same thoughts kept running through her head and got dismissed in the same way. Get out and look for Mulder - no you'll die. Phone someone - phone's not had any signal for the last 60km. Scream - what's the point? At the end of this list she felt the tears welling but before they could happen she started again. "Mulder, you bastard." She was muttering it like a mantra. Immature, impulsive, irresponsible Mulder had killed himself and left her to die. "Mulder you bastard, Mulder you bastard." She was rocking back and forth trying to get warm, trying not to think.

Then a new thought entered her mind. The boy in the red coat walking slowly towards the car. Wearing a wind-cheater that couldn't protect him from this weather and yet he seemed ok. One of Mulder's ghosts? Or one of Mulder's ghouls; a flesh-eater that would be slowly circling his prey, pulling open the door and smiling in her face with Mulder's blood on its teeth with a little boy's smile and dead, dead eyes.

Scully hit the central lock button and felt even more imprisoned as the locks thunked into place. "Mulder, you bastard, Mulder, you bastard."

Again she was picturing the little boy walking towards the car. This time carrying Mulder's head, wandering about in minus god-knows-what as though it were a spring day. So real it could be a premonition. Stop it, she thought. Don't think it and it will go away. Approaching the car hungry for blood. Stop it, make it go away. Resting the head on top of the car and reaching for the door; Mulder dead and her fault for thinking it. Little fingers slipping under the handle...

And the door handle next to Scully began to rattle. She screamed.

But it was Mulder's face that showed through the the glass he cleared with his arm and she hit the unlock button and opened the door, hanging on to it tightly to stop it being pulled out of her grasp by the elements. Mulder clambered over her, his feet waving dangerously close to her face. She pushed him away and he rolled against the door of the driver's side while Scully fought to get the door closed.

"Jesus Christ Mulder! What do you think you were doing?"

Mulder was shivering uncontrollably. There were thick wads of snow in his hair and his clothes were caked in it like it was icing sugar. And beneath that was ice cold water.

Scully climbed over to the back to reach into the trunk and pulled her suitcase free and onto the backseat. She opened it and pulled out a towel which she tried to hand to Mulder, but he couldn't reach for it. His hand were tucked under his arm pits and he had gone fetal trying to get warm.

She got back in front and started to dry his hair. "Come on Mulder, you've got to help me." She could see the pain in his eyes as he tried to take the towel, so cold that he didn't even seem to know what was going on. "Dry your hair Mulder. I'll get you some more clothes."

From the back seat she dragged out Mulder's hold-all and got him new clothes. "Put these on," she shouted at him like he was a foreigner and dropped them on the front passenger seat. She couldn't really tell if he understood her, but he made a start with his jumper and then on his shirt before stopping and hugging the icy material towards him. "Mulder, you have to change or you'll get hypothermia." The heater was pumping away on full power and she desperately hoped it wasn't too late. She reached around his chair from behind and ripped open the shirt. He grasped at it. "Mulder come on."

At last he was pulling off the shirt and dabbing at himself with the towel, reaching for the sweater she had thrown on the front seat. Then he was peeling off the trousers. She grabbed the legs and helped yank them off as struggled on the seat. They were weighty with the amount of snowy water they had absorbed. She had thrown more tops onto the front seat and two pairs of pants, one pair tracksuit to go over the other pair. And last she pushed the cases back into the trunk. "Get on the rear seat and lie down," she said.

Mulder staggered over to the back and she moved forward to let him lie down.

"God, I'm so tired," Mulder mumbled. "Get me out a sleeping bag."

"Just stay as you are for now. Rest your feet up on the door ledge."

Scully turned the heating down and slipped off her coat. All the activity had warmed her up and now she had to hope that Mulder could start warming himself up from the inside out.

Mulder's voice was weak and cracked. "Scully, if I don't make it there's a town..."

"A town. What are you talking about?"

"Just over there. And it's not snowing."

"God, Mulder. You're fine. You're going to be fine. We'll go there when you're better."
Scully looked at him with concern and then crawled back into the well beside him. Mulder's eyes were closed and he was breathing slowly, his mouth slightly open. She waited until he was about to breathe in and then put her lips on his and gently blew.

Mulder's eyes opened to a slit. "Scully...?"

She stroked his hair and hushed him. His eyes closed again and she breathed with him again sending her hot breath deep inside him.

"Hey Scully, maybe I just died and went to heaven," Mulder said with his eyes still closed. There was a twitch of his lips and the sardonic grin was there for a moment and then gone again. Scully gave him a couple more of her breaths before hoisting herself back into the front.

The car was now dark from the mass of snow on the windows and she wondered whether she should wind down a window to knock some of the snow off so there would be some light. Instead she decided to sleep. God Mulder I hope you're going to ok, she thought. I really need to shout at you.