**

Loading the bus Saturday took a lot longer than it should have. Frohike, in Fifties Dad On Vacation mode, supervised. "For God's sake!" he bellowed for the eighth or ninth time, "You should have been on the road hours ago!"

Byers abandoned all hope of leaving before noon, and tried to take solace in the notion that they were providing cheap entertainment to the neighbors. Not to mention providing an ironclad reason to leave the warehouse alone while they were away—they were obviously taking everything with them, and there'd clearly be not so much as a paperclip left behind.

Frohike pawed through Langly's duffel again. "Look, I already told you, Hairboy, it's July! You're not gonna need mittens. Go try again."

Langly headed back in, grumbling things under his breath Byers was happy he didn't catch. Mittens didn't seem likely to compel the neighbors through seven locks and an electronic alarm system. Particularly not in July.

"Jimmy!"

"Uh, yeah?" Bond looked like a kid with his hand in the candy jar.

"What the hell are you bringing this football for?"

Byers shook his head as the argument went on for more than a minute. Jimmy lost, as everyone knew he would, but the football wasn't likely to tempt anyone, either.

"Byers! Where's the surveillance equipment?"

"Third cabinet from the back, under the bench. Where it always is, Fro. And before you ask, yes, I got the night lenses for the DVRs, and yes, the extra cards, and yes, I packed the full range of listening devices and board cameras."

Frohike looked slightly put out at having nothing to complain about. "What about the first aid kit?"

"It's fine. I checked it."

Frohike glowered. "Did you double check?"

Byers succumbed to a brief urge to sarcasm. "No. I actually just made sure there was an out-of-code bottle of aspirin and a selection of Hello Kitty Band-Aids."

"C'mon, Byers, I'm trying to get you guys organized and out of here!"

"Mel, relax. I'm sure we'll get to World's Biggest Ball of Twine before it closes tonight."

Jimmy giggled, and J. Wayne watched all this with bemusement.

Frohike glared at Byers, hands on his hips. "The kid is a terrible influence on you, you know that?"

Byers smiled. "Somebody has to be. Which of the laptops are we taking?"

Frohike sighed. "The newest one, and Langly's, plus yours. I'll take mine on the plane. Are you guys gonna need paper files on anything?"

"I've got the ones it seems most likely we'll need. If I think of anything else, you can bring it."

"What about after we leave?"

"I imagine we can call Mulder. He may be able to offer some new information, while he's at it."

"Okay. Did you sign a check for the printers?"

"Yes. I left it where I always do."

"Ah-ah!" Frohike caught Langly trying to slip past him. "Bring that here. Let's see how you did this time."

Langly sighed and handed over the duffel again. Frohike went through it one more time. "Langly, do you really need all these damned CDs?"

"I wouldn't, if you'd have let me get that iPod."

"We're not having that discussion again. What the hell is—Tea bags? Oh." Frohike stuffed something back in a pocket, looking slightly embarrassed. Langly turned bright pink. Byers pulled himself off the wall he was leaning against and walked casually back into HQ, trying very hard not to giggle. He heard Jimmy behind him, snickering like a gang of squirrels on a chalkboard, and elected to ignore it.

"You got the tap jammers?" Frohike demanded, following him in.

"Yes. Second cabinet over the workbench. Like always."

"GPS?"

"Yes. And the vehicle trackers. And the RF detectors. And the scanners. And the battery packs, and the adaptors."

"The weatherproof ones?"

"Yes, of course."

"Stun guns?"

"The cell phone and the flashlight. The pepper spray pens and the regular canisters. Plus the injector gun in the first aid kit. Metal detector, Geiger counter, UV powders and lights. I don't think you need to worry so much."

"You've got the regular flashlights, right? Batteries fresh?"

"Yes, of course."

"It's not like he forgets this stuff, Fro," Langly said from behind them. "He's even more obsessive than you are."

"I know, I know. But we don't know what we're going to find out there. We might as well be prepared for anything." He paused. "You all have your night gear? In case we end up doing a little funky poaching?"

Byers nodded. "Yes. Are we taking yours?"

"Yeah. And all the extra documentation."

Langly snickered. "You're not trying to get false IDs on the plane?"

Frohike sighed. "Your cell phones? All the batteries charged up?"

"Yes, Dad," Langly said.

"Just makin' sure. Who's got the good credit card?"

Byers raised a finger. "Me."

"Langly, you have the updated contact information?"

"Oh yeah." Langly headed upstairs.

"See? I do have to remind you. Look, Byers, you can get two rooms if you have to, as long as you stay at the cheaper places."

Byers smiled and patted the little man on the back. "We'll work it out. Stop worrying."

Frohike looked away. "I've got a feeling about this one."

Byers nodded. "Me too."

Frohike glanced at him. "What kind of feeling?"

"This could be big," Byers said carefully.

"It could also be dangerous," Frohike said.

Byers didn't respond for a moment, and Frohike was surprised by the pensive look on his face. "You're worried, too," he said.

Byers nodded again. "A little. I don't know why."

"The biggest stories are usually the most dangerous."

"And we have rather a poor track record in Washington State."

Frohike smiled. "It's July. No skiing accidents." He sobered abruptly. "Look, take the tackle box."

Byers was surprised. "I'm not that worried, Mel."

"I am, John. Take the box, drive carefully. Don't get stopped and searched. If we don't need it, good. If we do, we'll have it."

Byers sighed. "I really think you're worried about nothing, but if it'll make you feel better, we'll take it." He followed Frohike into the back, where the box was concealed in a cardboard box between several similar boxes.

"I checked it last month. Just be careful. Okay?"

Byers lifted the box and carried it out to the van. They were joined halfway by Langly, who stared at it. "What's the panic box for?"

Byers smiled calmly. "Just in case. Did anyone remember the insect repellent?"

Frohike nodded. "Sure did."

Jimmy came practically skipping into the warehouse. "Hey, are we ready yet?"

In direct contrast to Langly, Jimmy enjoyed road trips to a degree that bordered on the pathological. In fact, it was actually one of the things that made Langly so irritable about them. Byers could sympathize, honestly. Three hundred odd miles of Jimmy trying to remember which bottle had fallen off the wall now had pretty much permanently scarred all three of his traveling companions. They'd ended up drawing straws for the opportunity to sit politely next to Yves in her car and try to avoid being pumped for information while not frustrating her enough to rip someone's throat out.

Jimmy took a step back when he saw what Byers was carrying. "Whoa, hey. We're not gonna need that, are we?"

Byers shook his head. "No. But we'll take it just in case."

"That's cool. Like carrying an umbrella stops the rain."

Frohike snapped his fingers. "Umbrellas! You boys got your umbrellas and raincoats?"

"It's July," Langly said nastily.

Frohike glared at him. "It's also Seattle."

"I'm not sure we have room for rain gear," Byers said, "and it is July. Even Seattle doesn't get much rain in July."

"Seattle gets more rain in the middle of a damned drought than we're used to," Frohike snapped.

It turned out to be a moot point. The only umbrellas they could find had holes in them, or had had pieces cannibalized to jerry-rig equipment, or, in one case, had a family of small mice living in it. Jimmy wouldn't allow them to be chased out, and in fact dashed off to find them some cheese. He came back with a bag of Cheez-Puffs. He knelt by the umbrella, trying to tempt the mice out.

"C'mon, little fellas. C'mon…"

"Rat poison," Langly said darkly to Frohike.

Jimmy stared at them in horror. "You wouldn't!"

Frohike glared at Langly. He'd known better than to mention it in front of Jimmy. "Look, Jimmy, they're vermin…"

"But they're cute!" Jimmy all-but-wailed. "I'll be responsible for them, please?"

"Geez," Langly groaned. "They're not puppies, Jimmy."

Jimmy stood up and loomed over the two of them, looking as menacing as he knew how. "You're not killing the little guys, okay? They've got babies. What kind of a rotten person would kill little animals with babies?"

"My kind," Frohike muttered. Jimmy backed him against the wall, and he abruptly conceded the argument. "Fine, but if those little bastards eat our files, you're a dead man."

Byers sighed. "This is all very touching, and I'm sure PETA would be delighted, but we do have to get going. Mel, leave the cheese things there, and we'll worry about the mice when we get back. I don't think they're going to make it downstairs just to gnaw on a copy of the Starr Report."

Langly snickered. "Nobody's that hard up for entertainment."

"As for the umbrellas," Byers said, ignoring him, "if we need them, we'll buy them when we get there."

Frohike snorted. "Good luck. You ever try to buy a damned umbrella in that town?"

Byers sighed again. "I'm sure we can figure something out. I'm not going to worry about it now, though."

**

It still took another hour before they were actually on the road. As they left the city, Byers found himself mediating a dispute between Jimmy and Langly regarding radio stations. He set aside the folder he'd been trying—without success—to concentrate on and leaned forward. "Jimmy's driving, and he has the radio. When you drive, Langly, you can have it."

Langly sulked. "We're gonna be out of reach of any good stations by then. Stuck out in cow country with Bible Bangers predicting the end of the world on every channel."

Byers glared at him. "Maybe you'll get lucky and find a talk show about the potato harvest." He leaned back, less than anxious to hear what he was certain would be Langly's judicious and well-controlled verbal reaction.

Jimmy cheerfully found an easy listening station that was playing John Denver's "Calypso". Langly heaved a sigh like he'd just agreed to donate a lung, and Byers handed him a file.

"Here. Do something useful. Go through this and see where Crisman's mentioned."

"That's exciting."

"Oddly enough, Ringo, I'm not actually trying to provide you with excitement." He leaned across and dug through Langly's duffel. "Here." Byers threw a CD and his player at him.

"'Phones suck, John. You can never get them loud enough."

"I love road trips," Byers said aloud to no one in particular.

Jimmy started singing along with James Taylor. Without another word, Langly put on the headphones and turned the volume all the way up.

By the time they stopped for dinner, they'd actually been making good time. Jimmy might not be able to interpret an MRI, but he could read a map, a talent Byers particularly respected after a long and allegedly deliberate tour, with an increasingly sarcastic-but-determined Mulder behind the wheel, of every back road in Vermont.

With Langly cursing every time he saw a cow. And with Frohike trying to explain the thing about the lemurs and the mothership to Jimmy, who didn't get it at all, but did latch on, quite happily, to the tradition of yelling "Frink" at cows.

Eventually they'd found their way back into New Hampshire, which Byers had almost forgotten was the point, except that Frohike had kept up a running monologue on how far behind the schedule they were. Byers had been more than ready for a drink when they finally pulled in beside the despairing gangrenous flicker of the "A-N-C-Y" sign of what apparently was the local version of the Bates Motel.

After four hours of listening to Langly do battle with man-eating cows in his sleep, Byers had gone to the sleep of the righteously exhausted in the fortunately-unoccupied bathtub. And didn't wake up the next morning until the maid began shrieking and he was called upon to demonstrate that he wasn't, in fact, a corpse. Which Langly had slept through, a bovine expression of bliss on his own face.

Frohike had started stocking the first aid kit with Valium, after that.

Langly bolted inside as soon as they stopped, and Byers sighed and handed Jimmy a twenty dollar bill. "Do you think you and Langly can order without fighting?"

Jimmy laughed. "Yep. Hamburgers, fries, and Cokes, right?"

Byers nodded. McDonald's wasn't his idea of a good dinner, but it was fast and cheap, and Byers was hoping they could get in another few hours of driving tonight. "Order for me, too. We need to check in with HQ before it gets any later."

"Cool."

J. Wayne was still occupying a hotel room, to Byers' amusement. He wondered how much longer that would last. At the moment, J. Wayne was apparently dividing his time in the warehouse between file-digging and helping Frohike put together the new issue.

"He's damned good at this, too. A natural muckraker," Frohike said as proudly as if he'd invented the kid himself. "Powder Keg will be kicking themselves in the ass for years."

"Has he had a chance to catch up with Mulder yet?" Byers asked, doing his best not to laugh.

"Mulder doesn't know he's in town yet. I'm going over there tomorrow, and maybe I'll drag the kid with me." Frohike listened to the suspicious noises coming down the line. "Shut up, Byers."

Byers fought down the snickers. "I didn't say a word."

"You didn't have to. How are the kids behaving?"

Byers sighed. "Well, so far I haven't had to actually call any time-outs. Or threaten to turn the van around."

Frohike laughed. "See any cows?"

"Not yet. I'm prepared to blindfold Ringo and gag Jimmy when we do."

"Be a lot easier if you'd just take some of the Valium yourself."

"I'm never the one who needs it," Byers said darkly.

"If you can't get him to take it, you will be. So are you stopping there for the night?"

"Hopefully not, unless the two of them resort to hair-pulling and 'He's making faces at me!' I'd like to get another three or four hours in."

"You don't have to drive straight through, Byers."

"I know. How's the Diamante Security story look?"

Frohike made an irritable noise. "The CEO has disappeared. So we may be too late on it."

"Well, we were hearing those rumors…"

"I know. I think we should hang onto it until next month. If something breaks while we're in production, we'll look stupid."

Byers was frustrated. "If we could figure out what's going to break—"

"I know. But I don't see how we can. I was thinking we should just go with the China computer dumps."

Byers sighed. "Whatever you think is best, I suppose. I just wish there was some way to contact—"

"You don't find him, he finds you," Frohike intoned. "I don't think he's the kind of guy who's interested in publicity, anyhow."

Byers almost smiled at that. "Probably not. Okay, it's up to you. I suppose I'd better get in there before they start throwing ice cubes at each other or something else equally adult."

Frohike laughed. "Are they really doing that bad?"

"No. Once we got the radio stations sorted out, they pretty much ignored each other."

"Okay. Hey, Byers, remember the time zones are changing for you—"

"I know."

"—and don't drive too long. It's not what the clock says—"

"—It's how tired you are," Byers finished with him. "I remember. Stop worrying, Mel."

"Sorry. Something just doesn't feel right."

"It has the potential to be a huge story. No one's ever gotten to the bottom of the Maury mess."

"I know. I'm not suggesting we scrap it. But I think we need to be careful."

"We will. We are. Don't worry so much. If you need to get through to us, I'll keep my cell on tonight."

"Okay. Keep in touch, Byers."

"Of course. Talk to you tomorrow, Fro." He disconnected, hearing the older man sigh gustily as he did so. Frohike did seem unusually worried about this one. Byers decided it probably had more to do with the travel plans than anything else. Cross-country flights drove Frohike crazy, Byers knew. He wasn't the kind of guy who coped well with enforced inactivity. He preferred to be doing something.

Byers locked the bus and headed into the restaurant, only to discover Jimmy and Langly giggling at each other across the table. He sighed.

"Happy Meals?"

"They've got MIB2 toys," Langly explained, snickering. "You got the worm guys."

Byers shook his head. "Fantastic."

Jimmy giggled. "I got Jay, and Langly got Frank, but we traded."

Langly lobbed a fry at him and turned back to Byers. "How's the issue coming?"

"The Diamante CEO has disappeared."

Langly raised an eyebrow. "Disappeared?"

"Evidently."

"Chapel?"

"Possibly. So we're going to hold off on the story for a while and see if anything breaks."

"Good call. What are we running instead? The Atlantic salmon farms story?"

"Illegal computer dumping in China."

Langly squinted at his burger as he tried to remember the details. "The junk heaps?"

"Yeah. The GMOs will still be there, but meanwhile that acid is leaking into the groundwater."

"What's a GMO again?" Jimmy asked.

"Genetically modified organisms," Byers reminded him.

"Like those tomatoes with the fish genes," Langly explained.

"Right, okay. And those fish that might get loose."

Byers nodded. "Exactly."

"Why's that bad again?"

"Introduced species kill off the natives," Langly said.

Byers nodded again. "And often lead to a weakening of the gene pool of a species, leaving it susceptible to disease."

"Plus pollution, and they spread disease and parasites to the natives."

"Oh, right. But I kinda feel bad for the fish, they don't get to live in the ocean."

Langly sighed. "They're fish farms, Jimmy, it's not Free Willy or anything."

"Even if they don't escape," Byers added, "they still cause pollution and disease, because they're raised in net pens. And the overuse of antibiotics in the industry is a serious danger."

"Right. Like that soap you guys told me not to buy anymore."

"Yeah, like that," Langly said.

"Okay." He looked at Langly. "I know they're just fish, Langly. But I don't think anything should be caged up. I mean, somewhere they don't want to be. Like Peanuts, I mean Simon."

"I never want to hear that name again," Langly muttered.

Byers shook his head. "Okay, finish up, and let's see if we can get a little farther before it gets dark."

Jimmy was still thinking about things. "Would that Chapel guy kill someone, do you think?"

Byers shrugged. "I don't know. No one really knows anything about him."

"We should try harder to find out," Langly said.

Jimmy dismissed it with his usual attention span. "Okay, so these Men In Black guys. They're not like the movie."

"No."

"And they didn't make them up for the movie."

"No. There've been stories about the Men In Black since Maury Island. They've possibly been around for much longer than that. But Maury Island was the first one. After Dahl reported his sighting to Crisman, a man dressed in black took him to breakfast the next morning—"

"That doesn't seem very scary."

"—and explained that people who go around telling improbable stories sometimes come to harm."

"Wait, just one guy?"

"In that first case, yes. Since then, the classic pattern is three MIB in a vintage black car."

"In mint condition," Langly added.

"Yes. Usually a Cadillac, though not always."

"What kind of Cadillac?"

"I don't know right off-hand, Jimmy. I don't think it matters that much. In any event, Dahl said the man told him about his own sighting, rather than asking him about it. Dahl said the man was proving that he knew more about the sighting than Dahl did."

Jimmy's brow furrowed. "The guy threatened him, right?"

"Yes. And his family."

"Then how come we know what the guy said to him?"

"Because he didn't listen to the warnings, and continued to tell people."

"Oh. Did they get him?"

"No. There's never actually been a report of the Men In Black following through on their threats."

"A lot of weird deaths, though," Langly said.

"Possibly, or possibly not. It's often reported that Dahl disappeared after that, but in fact he died in 1982, in Tacoma. By that time he was unemployed, or self-employed, or retired, depending on the report, and had kept something of a low profile, again depending on what you believe."

"There were rumors he was in Witness Protection."

"Well, there were also reports that he and Crisman had confessed the whole thing was a hoax."

"Crisman was supposed to have disappeared, too," Langly observed cynically.

"Crisman died in the VA hospital in Seattle in 1975."

"How come people think they disappeared?" Jimmy asked.

Byers shook his head. "Dahl apparently abandoned his house and didn't bother to tell anyone where he was going, shortly after the incident. He turned up later. Crisman did much the same. It was years before anyone heard from them again."

"Except we now know Crisman was popping up all over the place between then and his death," Langly said thoughtfully.

"Fred Crisman," Byers mused. "Conspiracy Theory Whack-A-Mole."

Langly laughed. "You're so twisted, John."

"Okay, but what about these weird guys?"

"Which ones," Langly was still snickering.

"Are they CIA or something?"

Byers shrugged. "No one seems to know. No one admits to running them, which isn't surprising. Whatever their mission is, part of it seems to be to deny their own existence. All of the stories include some of the most bizarre details, and many of them sound frankly incredible."

Langly nodded. "Which might be the plan. If you tell people you saw a UFO, they might believe you. If you tell people you were threatened by three guys in a dark car who knew all about you, and who didn't seem to know what a fork was for, then you just sound paranoid."

"People tend to dismiss paranoia," Byers commented. "It's more comfortable for them to believe that they know what's going on, and that no one is, well, out to get them."

Jimmy had been chewing this over. "Wait. You said they don't know what forks are? Maybe they're Chinese or something. Do they have accents?"

Byers shook his head. "Sometimes. Sometimes they apparently sound like movie gangsters. Sometimes they speak to each other in an unidentifiable language. But they're not Chinese. When he said they don't seem to know what forks are, that's not what he meant."

"It just comes up in practically every story. These guys seem baffled by refrigerators, or they ask a lot of questions about a TV or a phone, or they dissect a ball point pen, or they act like they've never seen a fork before."

Byers nodded. "And maybe they don't, or maybe it's just an act."

Jimmy grinned slyly. "Hey, I've got a really weird idea…"

"Here it comes," Langly said, slumping.

"I know this sounds crazy, but what if—"

"—they're really aliens," Langly finished with him.

Byers glanced at Langly's expression, and couldn't keep a straight face. Langly glared at him.

"Listen, Jimmy. Everybody says that about them, okay? It might be why they act like that, okay? To get people to think that. There's no evidence they're aliens. They're probably some government's agents."

"Oh." Jimmy's face fell. Then he brightened up. "Like in the movie?"

"No, Jimmy," Langly said heavily, standing up. "I'm gonna get another Coke to go. You guys want anything?"

"That sounds good," Jimmy said, slurping the last dregs from the bottom of the cup with his straw. He handed Langly the change from the twenty.

"I'm driving, okay?" Langly said, and headed back for the counter.

Jimmy giggled. "I don't think he likes my music."

Byers laughed as they went out the door. "He likes it loud."

Byers took shotgun, and Langly climbed into the driver's seat, and put the key in the ignition. The first thing he did was change the radio station from Tears for Fears' "Sea Song", flipping around increasingly dispiritedly until he finally found a station playing Pink Floyd.

"Why don't you get some sleep, John."

"With that playing? I'll wait till we get to the hotel."

"No, 'cause I want you to drive later while I'm sleeping."

"We don't have to drive straight through, Ringo."

"Oh, I know. But, like, I'm kinda hoping we can get through, you know, some of the cow states, while it's still dark."

Byers sighed. "We'll see how it goes. I don't think we could make it much farther than Illinois by tomorrow morning, though."

Langly made a noise that implied he was less-than-sanguine about the prospect, and Byers patted his arm. "We've got the Valium."

"Great. We'll give it to Jimmy."

Byers sighed again. "I love road trips."

"Me too," Jimmy said happily from the back seat.

Langly turned the radio down almost enough to qualify as a token effort, and brushed his hand across Byers'. "Get some sleep."

"I wonder how many mice there are," Jimmy said suddenly.

Byers turned around and blinked at him. "What?"

"In the umbrella. The mice. I'm wondering how many names I need to come up with for them. Maybe I should ask J. Wayne to count them for me. He's vegetarian, so he probably won't want to kill them."

Byers sighed. "However many there are now, I'm sure there'll be more by the time we get home."

Jimmy seemed pretty happy with that. "Good. I'll think up a lot of names for them. Do you have anything I can write on?"

Byers slid a hand across his face. "There's a stack of notepads and some pens in the first drawer on the left under the workbench."

"Thanks, Byers."

Byers refused to look at Langly, but it didn't stop the snickering. "Jimmy?"

"Yeah?"

"There are some earplugs in the back of that drawer. Would you please pass me a set?"

Langly turned the radio up.

**

The next thing Byers was aware of, Langly had slammed on the brakes, and he was being thrown forward, hard, against the seatbelt. He opened his eyes and found himself wondering if he really was awake. He pulled out the earplugs, and heard Langly muttering. It sounded a lot like "Oh shit, oh fuck, oh shit…" Byers recognized it as Langly's panic mantra. Usually it made Byers want to shake him, but this time he found himself agreeing with the sentiment, if not the repetition.

"What is that?" Jimmy asked in total shock.

"That" was a—creature—which was staring up at them from the road in front of the van. It was a leathery grayish-olive in the heaadlights, and standing crouched and frozen, apparently equally surprised to see them. Byers estimated its height at about four feet. It had pale eyes with the slitted pupils of a reptile, and the head of a frog. It stood with arms upraised, as though trying to ward them off. As the four of them stared at each other, another, slightly smaller, creature loped onto the road behind the first. It seemed to be limping slightly, with something whitish wrapped around one—hand, forepaw, whatever. It almost ran into the first creature, not seeming to have realized it had stopped. It blinked slowly at the larger creature, and then turned its body to face the bus. It blinked slowly at them, too, giving the impression of a particularly dim bullfrog, and Jimmy giggled nervously.

Byers shook himself slightly. "Get the camera, Jimmy," he hissed, not taking his eyes off the animal.

They heard Jimmy trying to find the camera in the cabinets and cupboards. The first creature had turned its body to blink at the second one.

Byers sighed. "Bottom left, cupboard over the workbench closest to you, Jimmy. In a black case."

The second animal lurched up to the van, and put its hand up to the windshield. Byers realized that the thing was holding a piece of dirty cloth. It started to wipe off the dirty windshield with the rag. Byers became aware that his jaw had dropped. Langly was still chanting under his breath.

The first creature stepped up to the driver's side window and seemed to be waiting there for Langly to roll the window down. Byers figured that was only slightly more probable than what they seemed to be witnessing.

Jimmy eventually managed to find the camera, and handed it up.

By now, the first creature had given up and was hunching back off the road, followed by the second one. Byers swore as the camera's startup screens displayed. Six seconds later, he ended up with a poorly-lit lens-flared shot of the back of the smaller animal through the smeared windshield.

Byers watched as the creatures slipped back into the woods. "Another great moment in journalism history," he sighed. He glanced across and put his hand over Langly's where it rested on the steering wheel. "Ringo, please, try to relax."

Langly nodded, but didn't stop muttering.

Byers sighed again. "Jimmy, there's a couple of Snickers bars in my bag, in the front pocket. Would you get one for him, please?"

With the help of the chocolate carrot, they eventually managed to persuade Langly to drive the two miles to a parking lot, and to calm down enough to actually start breathing again. Byers rubbed his shoulder for a few minutes, murmuring things to him Jimmy tried to pretend he wasn't listening to.

Finally Langly shivered violently and slouched into the seat. "Johnny… What the fuck was that?"

Byers shrugged. "'The incredible Frog-Boy is on the loose again.'"

Langly stared at him. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Never mind. Do you know where we are?"

Langly shook his head. "Near someplace called Sundale, I guess. I was trying to find a gas station."

"Loveland, Ringo."

Langly blinked and chewed on his candy bar, thinking it over.

Jimmy giggled again, still a bit unsteadily. "That's a weird name."

That seemed to bring Langly back a little. He made an irritated noise. "You think everything's a weird name. You spent three days making 'Chuckanut' and 'Humptulips' jokes in Washington the last time we went out there."

Byers shook his head. "The Loveland Frog."

Langly let out a breath like he'd been punctured. "Oh, yeah."

"That was a frog?" Jimmy asked.

"No…" Byers tried to explain. "It's a cryptid. An animal people aren't sure if it's real or not."

"Like Bigfoot," Langly inserted.

"Bigfoot's a hoax," Byers said. "But, this, uh, I guess it's probably, real. I suppose. Maybe. Honestly, I'm not sure what we just saw, let alone if it was real."

"I saw it," Jimmy said. "So did you guys. So it must be real."

"Remember what I said about V, Jimmy?" Langly asked wearily.

"That the lizard guys aren't real?"

Langly sighed. "Yeah, whatever. But they looked kind of real, right. So seeing it doesn't always mean it's real."

"Oh." Jimmy tried to work that through. "Well, we just saw something. I mean, didn't we?"

Byers shrugged, shaking his head. "I suppose it could have been a fraud. But we're the only people on this road, as far as I can tell. Why would anyone bother to try to hoax a deserted road?"

"I dunno, John. But the Loveland Frog as some kind of rural Squeegee Man?"

Jimmy looked from one to the other. "So what is this frog thing? 'Cause it didn't look that much like a frog to me."

Langly closed his eyes tightly. "The head did, a little. You can see where the name came from, anyway."

"In 1955," Byers tried again, "there were a couple of reports of, well, pretty much what we just saw, standing by the side of the road, in one case the report said there were three of them, and that they had some kind of weapon."

"Like a gun?"

Byers shook his head. "It was described as a metal wand, with sparks coming from one end of it."

Jimmy tried to sort that out. "They're aliens?"

Byers shook his head again. "I don't know. I'm just telling you what the original reports said. Quite a long time went by with no further reported sightings. But then they started turning up again. A couple of policemen were said to have seen them on separate occasions, standing or lying in the road. There have been infrequent sightings since then."

Langly gazed out the windshield with a distracted air. "Johnny, are there any more Snickers?"

Jimmy handed him another one. "Did this frog thing ever hurt anyone?"

"Evidently not," Byers said. "it was always just reported as watching people, or moving across or alongside the road. No one seems to have seen it doing anything threatening."

"It just washes windows?"

Byers shook his head again. "Ah… No one has, in fact, ever suggested… anything like that."

Langly tore into the candy bar. "I think…" he paused. "I think somebody else better drive for a while."

Byers took a deep breath and opened his door. "Scoot across, I'll drive." Langly wasn't especially pleased to watch him get out and go around the front of the bus, but he pulled himself together and moved across the bench seat. He locked the door while Byers climbed in the other side, all without taking his eyes off of Byers. He sighed faintly in relief as Byers locked the door on his side and started the engine.

"We'll find a gas station, and get directions to a hotel," Byers decided. "It's late, and we all need some sleep."

"Johnny?"

"What?"

"I'm sleeping with the lights on."

Jimmy giggled again. "Me too."

Byers smiled a little wanly. "I guess we can all share a room, then." He handed Langly the camera. "Did the picture come out?"

Langly played with the displays for a moment. "Yeah. It looks a lot like that picture of Tessie. Or maybe one of those Bigfoot ones."

"Is that good?" Jimmy asked.

"Or, you know what it looks like?" Langly continued relentlessly. "Remember three weeks ago, when the printer malfunctioned and we ended up with blotches all over the galleys?"

Byers sighed. "Okay, okay. I get the picture."

"Actually, no, you didn't."

Byers sighed again. "Get out the map."

**

*Next Up: Caffeine, Conspiracies, and the Fortean Nature of Fishes IV: Earth Boys are Much Harder: In which, well, Entirely Gratuitous Sex happens, and a lot of adolescent snickering. It's Mulder and Frohike, so what do you expect? If it's of any use, people eat things, some driving gets done, and Byers and Jimmy sort of get an illustration of Instant Karma. Oh yes, and Jimmy is nice to small animals again.*

Harpy hdsidhe@gmail.com Handmaiden of the Goddess of Irony

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