Skin : the X-files (23 page)

Scully tried to make sense of what she was looking at.

“The stretchers look as though they could be MASH unit standard issue, circa Vietnam.” She paused, noticing that Mulder was frozen in place, staring at two of the photos. One was of a burn victim, the other of one of the unmarred men. He had 230

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placed the two photos next to one another on the table.

“Mulder?”

“Scully, look.”

Scully leaned close, and realized that the burn victim’s face was partially recognizable. When she shifted her gaze to the unmarred man—she realized they were photos of the same man. She reread the dates in the corners, then shook her head. “These dates must be incorrect.

Burns like that don’t heal. Even if he did somehow recover—he would have been covered in transplant scars.”

Mulder didn’t seem to be listening. He was carefully arranging the two sets of photos, burn victims next to their unmarred counterparts. An eye here, an ear there—he was using whatever clues he could find to pair them up. Some of the pairs seemed incontro-vertible, others more like guesswork. But in every case, the effect was the same. A horribly burned body dated between 1970 and 1973, and a healthy body dated 1975.

When Mulder was finished, he looked at Scully. She shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking. But it’s impossible. Synthetic skin for limited transplantation, maybe. But nothing like this. Medicine isn’t magic. This isn’t medicine—this is raising the dead. These dates are wrong, Mulder.”

Mulder tapped his fingers against the table. He didn’t believe her—but he didn’t have any proof to the con-trary. Instead of responding, he turned back to the folder 231

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and removed the rest of its contents: two printed pages of paper.

The first page contained some sort of list. A row of names, numbers, and medical conditions, all divided into columns. Scully quickly recognized that the list was a hospital admission register. The figures were army serial numbers. And the conditions were all strikingly similar. Burns of various degrees, either from napalm or other chemical-based weapons. None of the patients had burns over less than fifty percent of his body. Most were charred beyond the seventy percent range—again, all were terminal.

“A hundred and thirty,” Mulder said after a few moments, “all horribly burned, like the men in those pictures—”

Mulder stopped, his brow furrowed. He pointed at one of the names. Scully read it aloud. “Andrew Paladin.

Napalm burns, full torso, sixty-eight percent of his face and legs.”

“Another mistake?” Mulder asked. “Like the dates on those pictures?”

“It must be,” Scully commented, nonplussed. “Or someone’s created a long trail of lies. Andrew Paladin could not have survived his brother with burns like that.

And if, somehow, he had survived—he’d be confined to a burn clinic, in permanent ICU. Not living as a recluse up in the mountains.”

“Unless those pictures are real,” Mulder said, as he turned to the second sheet of paper from the folder.

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“Unless Paladin’s search for his perfect synthetic skin was successful.”

“Mulder—”

“Take a look at this,” Mulder interrupted, not letting Scully stop him mid-fantasy. “It’s a map. It looks similar to the map of the MASH unit we got from Van Epps. But this one’s got a basement level.” Scully took the sheet of paper from him. Indeed, it was a map of the Alkut MASH unit. A second level was super-imposed beneath the roughly drawn complex, showing a series of tunnels and underground chambers. The chambers were marked by numbers and letters—but there was no key, no explanation of what they meant. Still, it was significant. The official map of the MASH unit did not indicate the existence of an underground floor.

“It might still be there,” Mulder said, his eyes bright.

“The tunnels might still be down there, beneath the clinic.

Maybe there’s more evidence of Paladin’s research.” Scully watched as Mulder gathered up the photos and list of wounded soldiers and shoved them back into the envelope. He folded the map in half and slid it into his pocket. It was obvious what he intended to do. He was going to head back to the clinic and see for himself.

“It’s been twenty years,” Scully said. “Even if the tunnels still exist, there won’t be anything down there.”

“It’s worth a look.” Mulder paused, gesturing toward the two mutilated bodies on the floor. “They died for a reason, Scully. They were hiding something—and I think we found it.”

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Scully envied his conviction, despite how baseless it seemed. “What did we find, Mulder?”

“Evidence of Paladin’s success. And, perhaps, of his continued success. If the men on that list came into Alkut with seventy and eighty percent napalm burns—and came out like the healthy men in those pictures, then Paladin really did achieve a miracle. But that miracle might have had a price. Perry Stanton might have paid that price—

along with everyone who got in his way. Indirectly, Allan and Rina Trowbridge might have also paid that price.” There were so many holes in Mulder’s theory, it was barely a theory at all.
At least he hadn’t mentioned anything
about a mythical, skin-eating beast.
“Why would anyone keep something like this a secret? Why kill innocent people to cover up a miracle?”

“I don’t know. But we won’t find out standing around here.”

Scully paused, thinking. Mulder had a point. They had leads to follow—even if the leads seemed insane.

She made up her mind and took the envelope with the photos and hospital admission list out of his hands. “All right. As long as we’re here, we’ll follow this wherever it leads. You search for those tunnels. I’m going to find out what I can about the names on this list. If these men were casualties of the Vietnam War, I should be able to find files on them. If they died in Alkut, then there’s a good chance Andrew Paladin died alongside them—and we just wasted a whole lot of federal money tracking down two dead brothers.”

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Mulder was already heading toward the door. Scully waited a few seconds before following him, her eyes drift-ing to the two mutilated bodies. Wordlessly, she crossed herself, then squeezed her hand tight around the tiny gold cross she wore around her neck.

The truth was, they
were
chasing a monster. The violent actions of Perry Stanton—the case that had brought them to Thailand in the first place—seemed to pale in comparison to the tragedy on the floor in front of her.

Like Mulder, Scully wanted to catch the monster. But she did not share Mulder’s bravado. Staring at the two skinned bodies, she was gripped by a single, sobering thought.

If they got too close to the truth—the monster would be chasing
them.

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X Mulder’s shoulders ached as he strained against the heavy steel equipment shelf, rocking it carefully back into place against the cinder-block wall. The tiny storage room was cramped and claustro-phobic, a cluttered swamp of Red Cross surplus, out-dated radiology machines, linens, and folded military cots. The walls were lined with off-white plaster, the ceiling covered in similarly colored tiles. A small fluorescent tube lodged in one corner of the ceiling gave the room a sickly yellow, hepatic glow.

The storage room was the fifth and last interior space Mulder had found within the clinic, and he had no idea where to go next. He had kicked every wall, stamped on every inch of floor—and he had not found anything resembling an entrance to an underground level.

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He stepped back from the steel shelf, breathing hard.

He was becoming more frustrated by the second. The investigation was at a critical point; the double murder had significantly raised the stakes. The Thai police had arrived from Rayong shortly after Mulder and Scully had shifted the Buddha back into place, and had confis-cated both bodies for their own investigative efforts.

Mulder had a sinking feeling that he and Scully did not have much time before the Thai authorities co-opted their case. As Scully had inferred, an FBI investigation of a vicious double murder did not make good copy for Thai tourism brochures.

Mulder hastily reached into his pocket and retrieved the folded map. He studied it for the hundredth time, trying to find some sort of physical logic. Since there were no notations of scale or direction, it was impossible to match the tunnels to the geography of the clinic. The MASH unit had consisted of more than a dozen freestanding structures. The triage room and the recovery ward were by far the largest of the buildings, followed by the command office and the barracks. The tunnels seemed to originate beneath the command office, with a second entrance just beyond the edge of the camp.

Mulder leaned back against the door to the small storage room, his eyes shifting to the sheer cement floor. He knew that the tunnels were down there—but he also knew it would take excavation equipment to get through that floor. If an entrance still existed, it wasn’t inside the clinic.

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He shoved the map back into his pocket and headed out of the storage room. There were three monks clustered around Fielding at the far end of the main room, speaking in hushed tones. The monks looked up as he moved past, and Fielding offered a weak smile. The entire town was shocked by the murder—and rumors about the reawakening of the Skin Eater were rapidly spreading from household to household. Mulder could feel the tension in the air, the sense that something ancient and terrifying had returned.

Shivering, Mulder cast a final look at the interior of the building, then stepped out through the front door.

The rain had finally slowed to a light drizzle, and he could see breaks in the clouds above the high wooden steeple of the dilapidated church across the street. Mulder paused as the clinic door swung shut behind him, his eyes resting on the miniature spirit house just a few feet away. Someone had placed fresh flowers along the base, and there were more than a dozen sticks of incense jutting from the little windows. Even the post had been decorated, twists of garlands mingling with colorful silk tas-sels and strings of beads.

Mulder felt his muscles sagging as he thought about Trowbridge and his wife. Fielding had informed him when the police had carted the bodies off, and he had considered going after them—offering his support to the Thai investigation. But he knew it was pointless. It would be near impossible to explain the connection to Perry Stanton. And any reference to the Skin Eater or Pal-238

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adin’s miraculous research would be considered an offense. The Skin Eater was a village myth, a matter of belief—not of forensic science. As for Paladin’s research—Mulder had nothing but a series of photographs as proof.

Still, he had to live with the guilt of the Trowbridges’

deaths. They had been murdered because of their connection to the FBI investigation. In a way, Mulder and Scully
had
awakened the Skin Eater.

Mulder started forward, intending to head back to the hotel, where Scully was using her laptop computer to research the list of burned soldiers. But as he stepped past the spirit house he paused, bothered by something across the street.

There was a young man standing in the doorway to the Church. He was tall and thin, with slicked-back hair and caramel skin, wearing a long dark smock with baggy sleeves. He was leaning nonchalantly against the half-open church door, a serene smile on his thin face. As Mulder watched, the young man turned and slipped inside the church. The door clicked shut behind him.

Mulder felt his stomach tighten. There was something about the young man that bothered him. He wasn’t sure—but he thought he recognized that caramel face.

He had seen a similar man on line at customs in the airport in Bangkok. He couldn’t be sure—but the young man might have been on the same flight from New York.

Mulder realized immediately what that might mean.

Then another thought hit him, and he quickly retrieved 239

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the folded map from his pocket. He ran his eyes over the map, focusing on the distance between the major structures. He looked at the church, the way it was perched close to the road that separated it from the clinic, the way it seemed to have been built on a slight angle to accom-modate the small plot of land beneath. He came to a sudden realization.

The area where the church was built could have also been part of the MASH unit.

He jammed the map back into his pocket and rushed into the street. His heart was racing, and his hand auto-matically went to his gun. He unbuttoned his holster and let his fingers rest on the grooved handle of his Smith & Wesson. If he was right about the young man’s arrival in Thailand coinciding with his own—then there was a good chance he was heading toward a trap. But he couldn’t risk losing a potential suspect in the Trowbridges’ double murder. And a possible link to Emile Paladin’s research.

He reached the door to the church, pressing his body against the nearby wall. There was a pile of transparent plastic a few feet away, and he remembered seeing the door covered when he and Scully had first arrived. He had assumed the church was closed down, out of use. It was a good cover for a research laboratory, especially in a place like Alkut. The Buddhist villagers had no use for a Catholic church, with their spirit houses and their Buddhist shrines.

Mulder took a deep breath, letting his heart rate slow.

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He wished there was some way he could contact Scully—but he knew his cell phone was useless, since Alkut was out of his cell’s satellite window.

He placed his free hand against the door and gave it a quick shove. The door swung inward, clanging against the inside wall. The sound reverberated through the air, indicating a wide, open space. Mulder drew his automatic, clicking back the safety.

He crouched low and maneuvered around the door-frame. The air was thick and musty, tinged with the distinct scent of rotting wood. Mulder was standing at the back of a long rectangular hall with a twenty-foot arched ceiling and wood-paneled walls. The walls were partially covered by a green-hued mural of the Last Supper, but many of the panels were missing, gaping holes in the place of holy guests.