"Hey," called Mulder. They said nothing, only stared and shielded their eyes from the sun as the two grown-ups approached.
"Do you live around here?" asked Scully.
The boys exchanged looks. Finally one of them shrugged and said, "Yeah."
Mulder stopped and regarded them. Pretty standard-issue middle America boys in buzzcuts and T-shirts. Two of them straddled brand-new BMX bikes. "You see anybody digging around here?"
The boys remained silent, until one of them replied sullenly, "Not supposed to talk about it."
"You're not supposed to talk about it?" Scully prodded him gently. "Who told you that?"
The third boy piped up. "Nobody."
"Nobody, huh? The same Nobody who put this park in? All that nice new equipment…"
Mulder gestured at the swing sets, then looked sternly down into the boys' guilty faces. "They buy you those bikes, too?"
The boys shifted uncomfortably. "I think you better tell us," said Scully.
"We don't even know you," the first boy sniffed.
"Well, we're FBI agents."
The boy looked at Scully disdainfully. "You're not FBI agents."
Mulder suppressed a smile. "How do you know?"
"You look like door-to-door salesmen."
Mulder and Scully pulled out their badges. The boys' mouths dropped.
"They all left twenty minutes ago," one of the boys said quickly. "Going that way—"
They all pointed in the same direction.
"Thanks, guys," Mulder called. He pulled Scully after him and hurried toward the car.
The boys stood, silent, and watched as their rental car spun out onto the highway, red dust billowing behind it like smoke.
• • •
Mulder hunched at the wheel, foot to the floor. The car raced on, passing few other vehicles. Beside him Scully pored over the map, now and then looking out the window in concern.
"Unmarked tanker trucks…" Mulder said as to himself. "What are archaeologists hauling out in tanker trucks?"
"I don't know, Mulder."
"And where are they going with it?"
"That's the first question to answer, if we're going to find them."
They drove on, the sun moving slowly across the endless sky until it hung, a crimson disc, just above the horizon before them. It had been an hour since they'd seen another car. Mulder eased his foot from the accelerator, and let the car roll to stop. In front of them was an intersection. Each road seemed to go absolutely nowhere: Nowhere North or Nowhere South.
For several minutes the car sat idling. Finally Mulder spoke, rubbing his eyes.
"What are my choices?"
Scully blinked in the westerly light, then grimaced. "About a hundred miles of nothing in each direction."
"Where would they be going?"
Scully looked out her window, to where the asphalt road angled off and disappeared into the twilight.
"We've got two choices. One of them wrong."
Mulder stared out his window. "You think they went left?"