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Resistance
2.0
The
saga continues.
Peggy's
Story
Title:
Resistance 2.0
Author:
Peggy Mulder (as told to Vickie
Moseley)
Summary:
It's Christmas, 2012.
The Mulder family has come a long way,
from Mexico into the mountains of Canada.
But the invasion isn't far behind them.
Archive:
yes
Category:
MSM Kidfic Post-Col
Disclaimer:
I can't claim most of these people but
I can claim Peggy and her friends.
Everyone else belongs to 1013
Productions and 20th Century FOX.
No copyright infringement intended.
Dedication:
Cyberroses and chocolate Mulders to
Lisa, who once again brought this story to
life with her beautiful artwork.
Many thanks to Chuck, faithful keeper
of the S8 canon (which I quite frankly never
really committed to memory) and Supreme Beta
Reader. Special
thank yous to all who wrote me after
Resistance 1.0.
All the gentle (and pokey) nudges
finally paid off because the Muse came back.
If
you haven't read Resistance
1.0,
you probably should.
It's on my site
www.vickiemoseley.freeservers.com
Chapter
2.0 Bethlehem
Resistance
2.0
December
24, 2012
150
miles north of Edmonton, Alberta
It
was Christmas Eve.
The only reason I knew that was because
when we were driving through Edmonton in the
dark of night, the stores were closed and the
streets were deserted but all the churches had
cars in the parking lots.
I heard Daddy say something to Mom
about stopping but she shook her head and
wouldn't look at him.
She kept driving.
It
seemed like we'd been driving forever, even
though it was just a couple of weeks.
Everything was such a jumble since
Daddy got hurt at work.
When Uncle Pete picked me up at school
to take me to Mom at the hospital, I didn't
think anything good could ever happen again.
Mom was crying and the doctor told me that my
Daddy might not ever wake up.
I thought my world was ending. That was
before Will stepped off the elevator.
I
knew who he was the minute I saw him -- Will's
been in my dreams all my life.
Still, it was a little weird to know
that the guy in my dreams was my real flesh
and blood brother and that now he was with us.
I've always known I had a brother, but
like my friends who had siblings in college or
step-siblings who lived in other states, we
didn't all live together.
But unlike my friends, I could never
talk about Will or even talk to him.
Only in my dreams.
I remember wondering that night if I
was dreaming that he'd come home and that we
were going to Canada.
I thought I'd wake up in the house in
El Paso and find out it was all because I
tried to eat the green salsa on my nachos
instead of the mild red stuff Mom tells me to
use. She
told me once that Irish-New English stomachs
just can't handle the hot stuff, but Daddy
laughed and told me to eat my nachos any way I
liked.
It
had been hard at first.
Will was really upset that his other
mom and dad, the people who had adopted him,
had been killed.
I felt bad for him.
I would hate to lose Mom and Daddy.
Mom was really upset but she tried to
hide it.
She always thought Will was safe and
after finding out that his parents had been
killed, she realized he wasn't any safer
adopted than he would have been with us all
along. It
took her a long time to work that out in her
head. I
wanted to help her, but she doesn't know I
know what she thinks and I'd like to keep it
that way.
We
left El Paso just a day after Daddy woke up
from his coma, and he was awful weak then.
Mom was so worried and would look at
him all the time when he wasn't looking.
She even checked his pulse when he was
asleep. I
wanted to tell her he was fine, he wasn't
dying anymore, but I'm not sure I could have
convinced her of that.
She had to figure it out for herself.
But
that night, Christmas Eve, Will was asleep in
the seat next to me.
He seemed to be sleeping a lot back
then. Sometimes
he would dream about his other home, his other
family. I
could see his dreams, just as I was pretty
sure he could see mine, but I never asked him.
When he'd have those dreams he'd wake
up sort of startled, like he'd gone from one
nightmare into another.
Then he'd look over at me and smile.
Sometimes I'd reach out my hand and
he'd grab it and we'd do our 'secret
handshake'. We'd grab our fingers like we were going to have a thumb war,
but we wouldn't do battle.
We'd just hold hands.
My fingers would tingle a little but it
felt good, like we were even more connected.
Daddy
slept all the time at first and Mom said that
was good, he needed the sleep to get better.
After we crossed the border into
Canada, he stayed awake more and kept watching
the road and the other cars around us, just
like Mom.
Once we left Edmonton, we didn't see
any other cars.
It looked lonely outside.
It was snowing and it was so pretty
out, but it felt like we were all by
ourselves, no one else left in the world.
That scared me -- the idea that we
would be all alone.
But Will took my hand and I felt
better. I
just sat there in the back seat and watched
the snow.
The snowflakes looked like stars in the
headlights.
A tunnel of stars that flew toward us.
One time Daddy asked Mom if she needed
a break, that he could drive a while.
She ignored him at first but then took
his hand and kissed it.
"No, you stay put.
I'm fine." Daddy grunted something when she said that, but I didn't hear
what he said.
Mom laughed a little but kept on
driving.
Because
Daddy couldn't ride for very long, it was a
long journey.
We stayed in crappy old motels on the
back roads.
I wished we could stay somewhere with
an indoor pool, but knew better than to ask.
Every place we stayed Mom would check
us in, telling the clerk it was just her
husband and daughter with her and ask for a
room away from the main road.
We'd sneak Will in when we were sure no
one could see him. The police and everybody were looking for him for the first
few days.
That meant we'd get carry out food all
the time, too and when we did go to a drive
through at a McDonalds, Will hid under the
blanket that Daddy had been using. I used to think it was a real treat to eat McDonalds but I
never wanted to see one of their salads or
breakfast burritos again.
Mom
had the car television turned to CNN all the
time we were driving.
The east coast of the United States had
a severe outbreak of the flu. They named it Avian Flu 5 and said it was related to the bird
flu that turned out to be not that big a deal
back when I was little.
But this flu was much worse and the
hospitals were already full.
They said quarantine procedures were in
place and all the international flights had
been cancelled and they were advising people
not to travel by air at all.
When we crossed the border, Mom didn't
take the road -- she went across a field at
night and we slept in the car until about
10:00 the next morning before we made our way
back to the road.
The Canadians closed the border a day
after we crossed it to stop the spread of the
flu but according to the TV reports there were
outbreaks in most of the major cities from
Newfoundland to Montreal and Quebec.
Both Will and I knew this wasn't the
flu. Mom
and Daddy knew it, too.
We also knew that it wouldn't matter if
we came across someone who had it -- we
wouldn't get sick.
We can't get sick from it.
That's why the aliens want to find us
so bad. What
Mom and Daddy didn't know then was that they
wouldn't get sick either.
There
were other things I knew as we were driving
but I wouldn't let myself think of them, just
in case _they_ might hear.
Like when Will figured out where we
were going and I told him not to think about
it. It
was all about keeping safe, getting to where
we were going without getting into any
trouble.
Oh,
and saving the Earth.
But I knew at the time that would come
later. When we were ready.
It
had been quiet for a long time, just the snow
and the road and off in the distance, I could
see mountains. "Sweetie, there aren't any other roads out here
according to the GPS system," Mom said to
me from the front seat.
"I
don't think it's on there, Mommy.
How far out of Edmonton are we?"
Before she had a chance to answer, Will
woke up and looked around.
"What
is that?" he asked me, frowning at first.
"What?"
Mom asked, trying to look at him in the
rearview mirror.
"That
-- hum," he said, looking out the window
at the mountains all around us.
I just smiled at him and said nothing.
He smacked my arm.
"Squirt, answer me," he
demanded.
Very soon I'd be big enough to smack
him back, but he really didn't hurt me when he
did it. I'd
figured out that was just how big brothers act
with their little sisters.
"Look
at those mountains, Will," I told him.
He stared out the window and shook his
head. "Will,
look IN the mountains," I corrected
myself. Then
when he looked, his eyes brighten.
"I
see it, now!" he said happily.
"Oh God, there's tons of it
there!"
"Magnetite?"
Daddy asked.
Since he couldn't turn around all the
way to see Will, I nodded at him.
"Good.
We'll need it."
Again,
I kept silent.
In
just a few minutes, I knew the road we were
looking for was right ahead.
I squinted through the snow, which was
falling harder, and pointed out the front
windshield.
"There, Mommy, right there.
See that little bush?
Just past that. Wait till the wind blows a little, you'll see it."
Sure
enough, a gust of wind blew the snow around
and the gravel of the crossroad was there for
all of us to see.
"You're sure about this, Peg
Leg?" Daddy asked.
"Absolutely,"
I told him.
We were there. We were almost to our new home.
Suddenly,
Will laughed.
"Mom, Dad, I hear Gibson!
He's telling us to go 3.7 miles down
this road and then stop.
There will be someone coming out to
meet us."
The
last stretch of gravel had to be the longest
road of the trip.
I had never met Gibson before then, but
I knew that he was as much a part of our
family as Will.
Our 'other family' as I thought of
them. The
ones my parents left behind when they went
into hiding years ago.
I also knew that Gibson was not alone.
There were people with him, people my
parents hadn't seen in a long time.
Just anticipating how happy my Mom and
Dad were going to be made it seem that much
longer until we saw a beat up old pick up
truck at the side of the road.
"3.7
miles, on the nose," Mom said with a
smile on her face that I could see in the
rearview mirror. She pulled the van in behind the pick up truck.
The driver's side door on the truck
opened and someone came out dressed in a heavy
parka with the hood up.
I knew who it is immediately and felt
butterflies in my stomach as he battled the
wind to approach our car.
Daddy
unbuckled his seatbelt and opens his door.
He'd been walking a little better the
past few days, but Mom was still worried about
him. She
reached out a hand, she wanted him to stay
put, but he was already out of the car and she
opened her door to follow him.
The
headlights on the snow gave us a perfect
picture.
The wind was blowing snow fairies all
around the three people.
I saw the man in the parka push back
his hood, showing a black wool cap and his
face in the stark light.
Suddenly my Dad recognized his face and
grabbed the man in a fierce bear hug.
Mom looked shocked, but she recognized
the man, too and joined Daddy in the group hug
out in the snow and the wind.
They talked and if I wanted to I could
have 'listened in', but I decided to give them
their privacy.
I knew what they were talking about --
Daddy's accident and Will showing up and 'the
date', which had already passed three days
before. It
was all that had been on their minds the whole
trip.
"Who
is that guy?" Will asked beside me and I
wonder why he doesn't know.
I think it's because he had only seen
us in his dreams, he hadn't had a chance to
really 'read' our parents.
"He's
our friend.
You knew him when you were
little."
Will
concentrated for a minute and then looked at
me. "Is
he bald under that cap?"
I
smiled and nodded.
"Now do you remember?"
"A
big guy.
He used to hold me.
I - I remember him holding me."
Then his face lit up.
"Uncle Walter!"
I
bobbed my head.
"I've never met him.
He doesn't even know about me, unless
Gibson told him. Mom's probably telling him about you right now."
We watched as Walter Skinner tried to
look into the blinding headlights with a
surprised and happy look on his face.
He took four big steps and he was at my
door. Mom
reached around him and opened it.
He looked in at both of us and we
squinted in the sudden glare of the dome
light.
"Oh
my God," he whispered.
"Scully, she looks just like you!
Mulder, no one could ever mistake that
boy for anyone but your son," he said
with a grin.
"Peggy,
William, this is -- "
"Uncle
Walter," Will said with a matching smile.
"Good to see you again, sir,"
he added and I rolled my eyes -- where did the
'sir' come from?
"Hi,"
I said, smiling too.
I'd seen him before, in Mom's dreams of
her old home.
This man helped both Mom and Daddy.
Will was right; he is kind of like an
uncle to us.
But at that moment he was standing
there with the door open and the wind came in
making Will and I both shiver.
"Well
let's get you all someplace warm.
Scully, just follow me.
We're only going a little way down this
road, around that hill there.
Everyone is anxious to see you."
Mom
got in and Daddy hurried to get in his seat.
They didn't bother with seatbelts, I
could tell they were too anxious.
I was so happy for them.
Mom pulled the van in behind the pick
up. We
drove around the hill to find a canyon.
The road went down so that steep bluffs
rose above us on both sides.
After a while the canyon widened and I
saw houses.
There were probably 30 little houses
and a few larger buildings all nestled in
between the bluffs.
In the snow it looked so peaceful.
"Like
Bethlehem," Mom said aloud.
Daddy reached over and took her hand.
"More
like Egypt," he answered and I could see
her squeeze his hand.
Uncle
Walter pulled the truck up to one of the
larger buildings.
Even though it was the middle of the
night, there were lights on in all the
windows.
I saw people walking around.
In my head I heard their voices, really
their thoughts.
They were all worried, but they were
also excited that my parents had finally made
it. There
was an awful lot of hope in that building, the
hopes of all the people gathered there. I looked over at Will and I saw he sensed the same things I
felt. We
exchanged a look -- wondering if we were up to
meeting all those people and more. We knew our family was the hope they were all thinking about.
Mom
and Daddy got out of the car, Daddy opened
Will's door and Mom opened mine.
I took a deep breath and stepped out of
the car.
It
was freezing!
I can't remember ever being that cold,
even when we hadn't lived on the border of
Mexico. We
lived in Wyoming for a while and it was cold
there in winter, but that cold turned the air
in my lungs to blocks of ice.
I looked over and saw Daddy having some
trouble, clutching his chest. Will stepped forward and put his arm around Daddy, guiding
him toward the big double doors of the
building.
Mom watched them and I saw tears
forming little frozen diamonds on her lashes.
I took her hand and we followed right
behind them.
Home
Resistance
1.0
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