The X-Files: Antibodies (5 page)

“When was this man brought in?” she asked.

“Sunday night,” Quinton answered.

She could smell the frosty coldness from the refrigerator, felt it with her hand. “What’s his body temperature? He’s still warm,” she said.

The medical examiner reached forward curiously, and laid his own gloved hand on the cadaver’s bruised shoulder. The ME turned and looked sternly at the morgue attendant. “Edmund, are these refrigerators acting up again?”

The morgue attendant scrambled backward like a panicked squirrel, devastated that his mentor had spoken sternly to him. “Everything is working fine, sir. I had Maintenance check it just yesterday.” He dashed over to study the gauges. “It says that the drawers are all at constant temperature.”

“Feel his temperature for yourself,” the ME snapped.

Edmund stuttered, “No, sir, I’ll take your word for it. I’ll get Maintenance down here right away.”

“Do that,” Quinton said. He peeled off his gloves and went over to a sink to scrub his hands thoroughly.

Scully did the same.

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“I hope those refrigerators don’t fall apart on us again,” Quinton muttered. “The last thing I need is for that guy to start to smell.”

Scully looked again at the cadaver and tried to picture what Dymar’s mysterious research might have produced. If something had gotten loose, they might have to deal with a lot more bodies just like this one.

What had Darin Kennessy known, or suspected, that had led him to run and hide from the research entirely?

“Let’s go, Mulder. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.” Scully dried her hands and brushed her red hair away from her face. “We need to find out what Kennessy was working on.”

SIX

Kennessy Residence

Tigard, Oregon

Tuesday, 12:17 P.M.

The house looked like most of the others on X the street—suburban normal, built in the seventies with aluminum siding, shake shingles, average lawn, average hedges, nothing to make it stand out among the other middle-class homes in a residential town on the outskirts of Portland.

“Somehow, I expected the home of a hotshot young cancer researcher to be more . . . impressive,”

Mulder said. “Maybe a white lab coat draped on the mailbox, test tubes lining the front walkway . . .”

“Researchers aren’t that glamorous, Mulder. They don’t spend their time playing golf and living in man-sions. Besides,” she added, “the Kennessy family had some rather extraordinary medical expenses beyond what insurance would cover.”

According to records they had obtained, Jody Kennessy’s leukemia and his ever-worsening spiral of last-ditch treatments had gobbled their savings and forced them into taking a second mortgage.

Together, Mulder and Scully walked up the drive-34

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way toward the front door. Wrought-iron railings lined the two steps up to the porch. A forlorn, waterlogged cactus looked out of place beside the down-spout of the garage.

Mulder removed his notepad, and Scully brushed her hands down her jacket. The air was cool and damp, but her shiver came as much from her thoughts.

After seeing the guard’s body and the gruesome results of the disease that had so rapidly struck him down, Scully knew they had to determine exactly what David Kennessy had been developing at the DyMar Laboratory. The available records had been destroyed in the fire, and Mulder had so far been unable to track down anyone in charge; he couldn’t even pinpoint who had overseen DyMar’s funding from the federal government.

The dead ends and false leads intrigued him, kept him hunting, while the medical questions engaged Scully’s interest.

She wouldn’t necessarily expect the wife of a researcher to know much about his work, but in this case there were extenuating circumstances. She and Mulder had decided their next step would be to talk to Kennessy’s widow Patrice—an intelligent woman in her own right. In her heart, Scully also wanted to see Jody.

Mulder looked up at the house as he approached the front door. The garage door was closed, the drapes on the house windows drawn, everything quiet and dark. The fat Sunday
Portland Oregonian
lay in a protective plastic wrapper on the driveway, untouched. And it was Tuesday.

As Mulder reached for the doorbell, Scully instantly noticed the shattered latch. “Mulder . . .”

She bent to inspect the lock. It had been broken in, the wood splintered. She could see dents around the antibodies

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knob and the dead bolt, the torn-up jamb. Someone had crudely pressed the fragments back in place, a cosmetic cover-up that would fool casual passersby from the street.

Mulder pounded on the door. “Hello!” he shouted. Scully stepped into a flowerbed to peer inside the window; through a gap in the drapes she saw overturned furniture in the main room, scattered debris on the floor.

“Mulder, we have sufficient cause to enter the premises.”

He pushed harder, and the door swung easily open. “Federal agents,” he called out—but the Kennessy home answered them only with a quiet, gasping echo of his call. Mulder and Scully stepped into the foyer, and both stopped simultaneously to stare at the disaster.

“Very subtle,” Mulder said.

The home had been ransacked, furniture tipped over, upholstery slashed, stuffing pulled out. The baseboards had been pried away from the walls, the carpeting ripped up as the violent searchers dug down to the floorboards. Cabinets and cupboards hung open, bookshelves lay tipped over, with books and knickknacks strewn about.

“I don’t think we’re going to find anybody here,”

Scully said, hands on her hips.

“What we need to find is a housekeeper,” Mulder answered.

They searched through the rooms anyway. Scully couldn’t help wondering why anyone would have ransacked the place. Had the violent protest group struck at Kennessy’s family as well, not satisfied with killing David Kennessy and Jeremy Dorman, not content with burning down the entire DyMar facility?

Had Patrice and Jody been here when the attack occurred?

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Scully dreaded finding their bodies in the back room, gagged, beaten, or just shot to death where they stood.

But the house was empty.

“We’ll have to get evidence technicians to search for blood traces,” Scully said. “We’ll need to seal off the site and get a team in here right away.”

They entered Jody’s room. The Sheetrock had been smashed open, presumably to let the searchers look between the studs in the walls. The boy’s bed had been overturned, the mattress flayed of its sheets and fabric covering.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Scully said. “Very violent . . . and very thorough.”

Mulder picked up a smashed model of an alien spaceship from
Independence Day
. Scully could imagine how carefully and lovingly the twelve-year-old boy must have assembled it.

“Just like the DyMar attack two weeks ago,”

Mulder said.

Mulder bent over to pick up a chunk of broken gypsum board, turning it in his fingers. Scully retrieved a fighter jet model that had been suspended by fish line from the ceiling but now lay with its plastic airfoils broken on the floor, its fuselage cracked so that someone could pry inside. Searching.

Scully stood, feeling cold. She thought of the young boy who had already received a death sentence as the cancer ravaged his body. Jody Kennessy had been through enough already, and now he had to endure whatever had happened here.

Scully turned around and walked into the kitchen, mindful of the drinking glasses shattered on the linoleum floor and on the Formica countertop. The searchers couldn’t possibly have been looking for anything inside the glass tumblers. They had simply enjoyed the destruction.

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Mulder bent down next to the refrigerator and looked at an orange plastic dog food bowl. He picked it up, turning it to show the name VADER written in magic marker across the front. The bowl was empty, the food crumbs hard and dry.

“Look at this, Scully,” he said. “If something happened to Patrice and Jody Kennessy . . . then where is the dog?”

Scully frowned. “Maybe the same place they are.”

With a long, slow look at the devastation in the kitchen, Scully swallowed hard. “Looks like our search just got wider.”

SEVEN

Coast Range, Oregon

Tuesday, 2:05 P.M.

No one would ever find them in this cabin, X isolated out in the wilderness of the Oregon coastal mountains. No one would help them, no one would rescue them.

Patrice and Jody Kennessy were alone, desperately trying to hold onto some semblance of normal life by the barest edges of their fingernails.

As far as Patrice was concerned, though, it wasn’t working. Day after day of living in fear, jumping at shadows, hiding from mysterious noises . . . but they had no other choice for survival—and Patrice was determined that her son would survive this.

She went to the window of the small cabin and parted the dingy drapes to watch Jody bounce a tennis ball against the outside wall. He was in plain view, but within running distance of the thick forest that ringed the hollow. Each impact of the tennis ball sounded like gunshots aimed at her.

At one time the isolation of this plot of land had been a valuable asset, back when she had designed the place for her brother-in-law as a place for him to get antibodies

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away from DyMar.
Darin was good at getting away,
she thought. Scattered empty patches on the steep hills in the distance showed where clear-cutting teams had removed acres and acres of hardwood a few years before, leaving stubbled rectangles like scabs on the mountainside.

This cabin was supposed to be a private vacation hideout for relaxation and solitude. Darin had deliber-ately refused to put in a phone, or a mailbox, and they had promised to keep the location secret. No one was supposed to know about this place. Now the isolation was like a fortress wall around them. No one knew where they were. No one would ever find them out here.

A small twin-engine plane buzzed overhead, aimless and barely seen in the sky; the drone faded as it passed out of sight.

Their plight kept Patrice on the verge of terror and paralysis each day. Jody, so brave that it choked her up every time she thought about it, had been through so much already—the pursuit, the attack on Dymar . . . and before that, the doctor’s assessment—terminal cancer, leukemia, not long to live. It was like a downward-plunging guillotine blade heading for his neck.

After the original leukemia diagnosis, what greater threat could shadowy conspirators possibly use? What could outweigh the demon inside Jody’s own twelve-year-old body? Any other ordeal must pale in comparison.

As the tennis ball bounced away from the cabin into the knee-high weeds, Jody chased after it in a vain attempt to amuse himself. Patrice moved to the edge of the window to keep him in view. Ever since the fire and the attack, Patrice took great care never to let him out of her sight.

The boy seemed so much healthier now. Patrice didn’t dare to hope for the remission to continue. He 40

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should be in the hospital now, but she couldn’t take him. She didn’t dare.

Jody halfheartedly bounced the tennis ball again, then once more ran after it. He had passed a remarkable milestone—their crisis situation had become
ordinary
after two weeks, and his boredom had overwhelmed his fear. He looked so young, so carefree, even after everything that had happened.

Twelve should have been a magic age for him, the verge of the teenage years, when concerns fostered by puberty achieved universal importance. But Jody was no longer a normal boy. The jury was still out as to whether he would survive this or not.

Patrice opened the screen door and, with a glance over her shoulder, stepped onto the porch, taking care to keep the worried expression off her face. Although by now, Jody would probably consider any look of concern normal for her.

The gray Oregon cloud cover had broken for its daily hour of sunshine. The meadow looked fresh from the previous night’s rain showers, when the patter of raindrops had sounded like creeping footsteps outside the window. Patrice had lain awake for hours, staring at the ceiling. Now the tall pines and aspens cast afternoon shadows across the muddy driveway that led down from the rise, away from the distant highway.

Jody smacked the tennis ball too hard, and it sailed off to the driveway, struck a stone, and bounced into the thick meadow. With a shout of anger that finally betrayed his tension, Jody hurled his tennis racket after it, then stood fuming.

Impulsive, Patrice thought. Jody became more like his father every day.

“Hey, Jody!” she called, quelling most of the scolding tone. He fetched the racket and plodded toward her, his eyes toward the ground. He had been restless and moody all day. “What’s wrong with you?”

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Jody averted his eyes, turned instead to squint where the sunshine lit the dense pines. Far away, she could hear the deep drone of a heavily laden log truck growling down the highway on the other side of the tree barricade.

“It’s Vader,” he finally answered, and looked up at his mother for understanding. “He didn’t come back yesterday, and I haven’t seen him all morning.”

Now Patrice understood, and she felt the relief wash over her. For a moment, she had been afraid he might have seen some stranger or heard something about them on the radio news.

“Just wait and see. Your dog’ll be all right—he always is.”

Vader and Jody were about the same age, and had been inseparable all their lives. Despite her worries, Patrice smiled at the thought of the smart and good-natured black Lab.

Eleven years before, she had thought the world was golden. Their one-year-old son sat in his diapers in the middle of the hardwood floor, scooting around. He had tossed aside his action figure companions and played with the dog instead. The boy knew “Ma” and “Da” and attempted to say “Vader,” though the dog’s name came out more like a strangled “drrrr!”