PART SIX
Looking from down below the helicopter, Mulder noticed gusts of hurricane proportions blowing from the downdraft of the helicopter. Grass and tree branches shook and stirred furiously in the down breeze and loose litter on the ground took wind. The large craft was setting down on a private airfield for crop-dusters, the closest civilian landing space to the Air Force Base. A few farmers and hotshot pilots looked out to see the huge military helicopter set ground this close to town. Among the witnesses and rare on-lookers was the fare attractive form of Dana Scully, all five feet and seven inches of her. Her dark green blazer jostled open to her black blouse as she put her hand to her head to shield her eyes to the minute debris being blown around. The vast pinnacle of mechanical and computer evolution had landed and was powering down just as a lock was undone, a latch switched in place and the side entrance of the copter was slid open by the director of the FBI. Walter Skinner looked to his errant female image to confirm her presence and then back to his embarrassed male agent in the seat behind him ready to start screaming, but no, that would not start right now. It was too soon.
"That's funny," Skinner remarked with frustrated sarcasm. "She doesn't look fifty feet tall."
"Director Skinner," Dana stepped forward from her rental car and toward her superior. "I don't understand. What's going on here? Is there a problem?"
"Agent," Skinner exhaled frustratedly. "Where have you been for the last eighteen hours?"
"Fairview," Dana answered matter-of-factly. "A Laundromat boiler exploded during an attempted robbery and a young girl was impaled by shrapnel. The best medical facility is in Fairview and I had to keep my heart on the girl's chest to keep her from bleeding to death."
"Laundromat…." Mulder mumbled under breath.
"And you couldn't check in with me?" Her superior asked the question.
"Sir," Dana looked away for the moment, clearing her throat and posturing a bit as she shifted her weight to her other leg. "This is a small town, they don't have cell phone towers. Would that I could, I would have been in contact, but it was a matter of a girl's life."
Skinner turned round with an annoyed gaze to one of his agents, and it wasn't Scully.
"Mulder," Scully pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. "Did you drag Skinner out here to confirm another crackpot theory?"
"Well, I, uh, needed the authority to get a helicopter."
"You needed a helicopter to find me?" Scully raised her eyebrows and lowered her head in utter disbelief.
"Did he get to the point where he thought you were fifty feet tall and naked?" Skinner stood behind Mulder with his arms crossed in frustrated annoyance. Dana blinked twice wondering if she had heard him correctly and slowly panned back to Mulder.
"I never once said the word naked." He tried to excuse his hasty rush to judgement.
"Mulder, have you ever considered talking to a psychiatrist?" She slipped last into the driver's seat of the rental car and started it up to head back to the airport, leaving the military helicopter behind to catch a passenger flight back to DC. Sheriff Charlie Spooner meanwhile waved to the agents passing by him. His eyes watched as their car turned the corner round Nick's Bar And Grill and then turned back to the garbage truck lifting and dumping the trash dumpster behind him. The metallic arms of the truck shook the dumpster once to empty it, and then started lowering it like a giant metal praying mantis holding its prey. As the dumpster lowered back into place, Charlie made sure that it landed just right to obscure the sight of the oversized footprints imbedded in the asphalt in the alley left behind by the late Nancy Archer.
END