Drive the Other Way by Tasha Abrams Syrinx42@yahoo.com Disclaimer: Chris Carter owns Mulder and Scully, not me. Spoilers: US6 Drive Rating: R for language and violence Summary: Such good potential, all wasted. My version of the episode. With apologies to Vince Gilligan. First written: March 1999 Feedback: is warmly accepted at Syrinx42@yahoo.com Notes: This is my first story, and I'd like to dedicate it to the readers and writers of Shirley's MTA site. I've lurked here for some time and I've really enjoyed the stories I've read here. When I saw that Fox was re-airing "Drive", I was bored by this news, and complained to a cyberpal that the episode could have been so much better. She suggested I write my own version, so I did. Notes pt. II: This follows the episode Drive, to an extent. All events remain the same up until Patrick Crump takes Mulder hostage, except that Crump himself isn't affected. After that, they divide sharply into the "real" episode, and my story here. **** "And that means you, Mulder. You're to have no contact with him whatsoever," Scully said. "Well, that's going to be a little tough, Scully," Mulder replied, before the gun was pressed into the back of his neck and the cell phone was jerked from his hand. "Mulder?" He could still hear her, speaking uselessly into the phone as Crump held it up. "Mulder, are you there?" Crump turned the phone and spoke into like it was a walkie-talkie. "Bye-bye," he minced, then hit the Power button and tossed it onto the back seat. He jammed the gun into Mulder's skull. "Drive," he ordered. **** "Mulder? Mulder!" With visible frustration, Scully disconnected her phone. She turned to the coroner. "Someone else was in the car with him," she said. The woman shook her head. "Who?" "I don't know," Scully said, but even as she spoke, she was turning to the window and calling the police captain. **** Ten minutes into their cross-country flight, Mulder saw his chance. A four-way intersection was approaching, and there was just enough traffic to force him to slow and stop. If the road had been deserted undoubtedly Crump would have ordered him not to slow down, but now the gunman would have no choice. The car in front of him began braking, and Mulder did the same. He let his right hand drift off the steering wheel and down to his lap. Instantly the gun was pressed against his head again. "What are you doing?" Crump demanded. "I'm keeping my insurance rates down," Mulder said dryly, "by not rear-ending this guy in front of me." "Keep going!" Crump said. "No slowing down, no stopping." "I have to stop," Mulder protested, wincing as the muzzle of the gun dug into the tender flesh just below his jaw. "No you don't, man," Crump said, agitated. "We're not stopping for nothing. Now get this car moving." The vehicle ahead, a blue Toyota, came to a complete stop, and Mulder let the car coast to a halt. His thumb quickly depressed the seat belt button before he put his hand back on the wheel. "I said drive!" Crump hollered. "All right!" Mulder shouted, and flung open his door. He intended to dive for the pavement, ducking and rolling as he went. And it would have worked, too, but for the seat belt. Instead of smoothly retracting, the webbed strap got halfway there and then got hung up. The buckle caught him in the stomach, holding him in the car, one hand still on the door handle, unable to comprehend why his perfect plan wasn't working. In the back seat, Crump was shouting something about Commies and FBI agents, a mostly unintelligible gibberish. To his left an oncoming pick-up truck slammed on its brakes to keep from hitting the barely moving car, and the driver laid on the horn. Then the gun went off and suddenly Mulder's perfect plan seemed very stupid indeed. **** The officer who spoke to his captain was young, with a barely-there goatee and wind-reddened cheeks that clashed sharply with his pallor. Scully stopped talking long enough for the young man to finish speaking, then she barked, "What is it?" Captain Van Gelder sighed, an expression she both heard over the phone and saw through the glass. Getting the audio and the visual separately like that was an interesting experience. "We just got a call," the captain said heavily. "From Patrick Crump. He was using your partner's cell phone." Scully allowed her eyes to close for longer than a blink. Dammit, she ought to have known. She forced herself to open her eyes and stand straighter. "What did he say?" Van Gelder's lips thinned into a narrow line. "He said that if we tried to pursue him, he would kill your partner. That we were not to try to stop him." "Where are they?" Scully asked. Behind her the coroner made a questioning sound, but Scully ignored her. "I don't know," Van Gelder said. "Somewhere west of here, that's all we know. That's where the ambulance was when Crump fled." He paused. "There's something else he told us." Scully met his eyes through the glass; she saw the apology there and knew what he was going to say, even before he spoke. "He said your partner's been shot." **** No matter how many times it happened, Mulder mused, being shot never got any easier. Behind him Crump slumped in the back seat, muttering to himself. Occasionally he waved the gun about, or Mulder's cell phone, but his angry murmurings never ceased. The car's air conditioner was dying, and the temperature inside was growing. Blood slowly dried on the dashboard and the inside of the windshield. "You just had to try it," Crump said suddenly in his ear, and Mulder jumped. "Well you found out. You wanna try it again?" The gun jabbed his ear. "Huh?" "No," Mulder breathed. His hands were clammy on the steering wheel, glued there by his own blood. "That's what I thought," Crump said. A harsh sound escaped him. "They killed my wife," he said loudly. "They're gonna find out, too, just like you did. Don't you think they won't. Now drive." He sat back in the seat and began muttering to himself again. Mulder drove. **** Scully paced the tiny confines of the lab and cursed under her breath. She was still swearing when her cell phone rang. Van Gelder stood outside the lab, holding his own phone, and she answered with a "Yeah?" "We got Crump on the phone again," the captain said. "He wouldn't talk to us." "Dammit," Scully sighed. "He threw the phone out the window, we think," Van Gelder said. "We lost the connection, and we can't get it again." Scully's shoulders slumped. Now they had lost their only communication with Crump and Mulder. **** "They killed my wife!" Crump shouted. "By God, someone's gonna pay for this!" The car's gas tank stood at the halfway mark now. Mulder eyed it resentfully, bitterly aware that he would probably bleed to death before the car ran out of gas. He had never even come close to leaving the car. He had pulled the door shut and was just sitting back up when Crump had fired. The slug had buried itself in the back of his right shoulder, just below the collarbone; on its way out it had made a very neat hole in the windshield. The exit hole in Mulder, unfortunately, was not so neat. "Vicky, Vicky," Crump sobbed. His hands clutched at his head, causing the gun to point at the roof of the car, describing wobbly circles as the man's fingers massages his temples. For a moment Mulder stared at the gunman through the rearview mirror, then returned his eyes to the road. It was just easier that way. **** The team she sent to the Crumps' house returned with the news that whatever had killed Vicky Crump did not seem to be communicable. Scully ripped off her decon suit and ran out of the lab, barely avoiding a collision with the young officer who had brought the bad news in the first place. "Where's Van Gelder?" she demanded. The officer swallowed. "He's gone to see about getting a chopper out to find Crump and your partner," he said hesitantly. "He's what?" she cried. "Where did he go?" The officer pointed out the front door. "To the--" "Take me," she ordered, already stalking towards the door. The officer had no choice but to follow her. **** The sun was beginning to go down, but the heat in the car showed no signs of abating. The smell of blood was overpowering. Mulder drove on. It was getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open. The pain from his wound was becoming impossible to ignore, and he had difficulty forming a coherent thought. Fresh pain suddenly exploded in his ear as Crump hit him with the barrel of the gun. Mulder bolted upright with a shrill cry, and managed to focus his eyes in time to see the headlights approaching quickly. Too quickly. He jerked the steering wheel hard to the right, and the car veered into the proper lane. The oncoming car blew by them with a loud blast of the horn. "Hey!" Crump exclaimed. "Watch what you're doing! You nearly got us killed." "We have to stop soon," Mulder said. "What the hell for?" Crump asked. Because I refuse to die in this smelly, hot car, Mulder thought wearily. "We're getting low on gas," he said. Abruptly, Crump turned around in the back seat, his face pressed to the rear window. Anger contorted his features. "Goddammit," he hissed. Low and insisent, the sound of a helicopter pulsed in the darkening sky. **** They hung back, just out of sight, letting the chopper be their eyes. Van Gelder was in constant radio contact with the pilot, and Scully sat stiffly beside him, concentrating on driving. She tried to maintain a consistent speed, one that kept her close behind Mulder's car, but not too close, where Crump would see them. The radio crackled, and the pilot said, "Okay, they-- Whoa!" "What is it?" Van Gelder barked. "Okay," the pilot's voice came back, sounding calmer now. "For a moment there the car crossed the double line. They almost hit that station wagon heading your way." In the distance, headlights approached. "But your man got control again and they missed it." Hang on, Mulder, Scully thought grimly. "Are they showing any signs of stopping?" the captain asked. "Negative," the pilot said. He paused. "In fact, they're speeding up." He sighed, and the radio emitted a squawk. "I think they spotted me." "Shit," Van Gelder breathed. Scully drove. **** "Dammit, I told them!" Crump cried. "I *told* them!" "Look," Mulder said weakly, "why don't you--" "Why don't you just shut your fucking mouth and drive!" Crump shouted. The gun barrel nudged the back of his head. "Unless you want your brains to land in your lap, you do it!" He couldn't. He had reached the end of his strength. Mulder took his foot off the accelerator and let the car's speed run down. "What the hell are you doing?" Crump yelled. In the scant light thrown off by the car's dashboard lights, his eyes gleamed madly. "Just let me out," Mulder said. "You take the car. You keep going." "What are you talking about?" Crump threw a glance out the back window. "They're coming, man! Just drive!" "No," Mulder said. **** "They're definitely slowing down," the pilot said over the radio. Scully pressed the gas pedal harder. "How far ahead are they?" Van Gelder asked. One hand strayed to the gun at his hip and unstrapped the top of the holster. "At the speed they're going now, about three minutes," the pilot said. "Wait. Wait." Silence descended, broken only by the car's engine as it labored to achieve the speed Scully demanded of it. "Yeah, they're stopped now," the pilot said. "I can see them inside." "What are they doing?" she asked. The police captain relayed the message to the pilot. The answer came back, "I don't know." **** "You've got to keep driving!" Crump shouted. "We can't let them get away with this!" We, Mulder thought with tired amazement. Since when was it "we"? Through the tiny circular hole in the windshield, cool night air streamed in. From the gaping, ragged hole in his chest, hot blood ran down his side. "Drive!" Crump yelled. "Dammit, drive!" The car rocked as Crump threw himself over the gear shift and into the passenger seat. One foot caught Mulder in the elbow and he cried out, falling to his left, toward the door. The cursed seat belt hung up on the ridge of his jaw, holding his head at an awkward angle, while the rest of him lay limp against the door. Crump managed to turn himself around in the seat so he faced front. "I'll steer," he panted, reaching over and taking the wheel. "You just use your feet." Behind them, headlights splashed through the back window, bathing them in brilliant white light. "No!" screamed Crump. He raised the gun and aimed it for the rear window, at the approaching police car. The light shining on them suddenly grew shockingly brighter as the helicopter's searchlight joined the cruiser's headlamps. Mulder shut his eyes and cringed from that unearthly glare. The helicopter swooped close, and the basso beat of its blades filled the night. It almost drowned out the sound of gunfire. **** Crump's body rolled bonelessly to the ground when she flung open the door. His eyes were open, a look of perpetual surprise stamped on his face beneath the still-smoking hole between his eyes. Scully stepped over his corpse and knelt on the passenger seat. "Mulder?" He was slumped against the door, his eyes closed, his head resting on the strap of the seat belt, facing her. In the relentless light from the chopper, the blood on him shone a hideous red. "Mulder." She crept forward and released the seat belt, guiding it back into the frame of the car, catching Mulder's head as it dropped forward, his chin sinking almost to his chest. His breath caught in a small moan, and she sank her teeth into her lip to keep from shouting. "It's going to be all right, Mulder," she said quietly. "We got him. We're going to get you to a hospital right away." His eyes struggled to open, and his lips moved soundlessly. Scully leant in, turning her ear to hear better. "What?" "Drive," Mulder whispered. **** FINIS