Free The X-Files: Antibodies by Kevin J. Anderson Page B

bent down to retrieve Gurik’s scattered mail. They ushered him outside.
    It took thirty seconds, almost like clockwork, until Gurik began to babble, trying to make excuses. “Okay, I sent the letter! I admit it, I sent the letter—but I didn’t burn anything. I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t blow up that building.”
    Mulder thought he was probably telling the truth.
    Gurik’s previous minor pranks had made him a nui-sance, but could not be construed as a dry run for the destruction of an entire research facility.
    “It’s a little convenient to change your story now, isn’t it?” Scully said. “Two people are dead, and you’ll be up for murder charges. This isn’t a few out-of-hand protest activities like the ones you’ve been arrested for in the past.”
    “I was just a protester. We picketed DyMar a few times in the past . . . but suddenly the whole place just exploded! Everybody was running and screaming, but I didn’t do anything wrong!”
    “So why did you write the letter?” Mulder asked.
    “Somebody had to take responsibility,” Gurik said. “I kept waiting, but nobody sent any letters, 70
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    nobody took credit. It was a terrible tragedy, yeah! But the whole scene would have been pointless if nobody announced what we were protesting against. I thought we were trying to free all those lab animals, that’s why I sent the letter . . .
    “Some of us got together on this, a few different independent groups. There was this one guy who really railed against the stuff at DyMar—he even drafted the letter to the paper and made sure we all had a copy before the protest. He showed us videotapes, smuggled reports. You wouldn’t believe what they were doing to the lab animals. You should have seen what they did to that poor dog.”
    Scully crossed her arms over her chest. “So what happened to this man?”
    “We couldn’t even find him again—he must have turned chicken after all. So I sent the letter myself.
    Somebody had to. The world has to know.”
    Outside the post office, Gurik looked desperately toward an old woody station wagon with peeling paint, touched up with spots of primer coat.
    Boxes of leaflets, maps, newspaper clippings, and other literature crammed the worn seats of the station wagon. Bumper stickers and decals cluttered the car body and rear. One of the car’s windshield wipers had broken off, Mulder saw, but at least it was on the passenger side.
    “I didn’t burn anything, though,” Gurik insisted fervently. “I didn’t even throw rocks. We just shouted and held our signs. I don’t know who threw the firebombs. It wasn’t me.”
    “Why don’t you explain to us about Liberation Now?” Mulder asked, falling into the routine. “How do they fit into this?”
    “It’s just an organization I made up. Really! It’s not an official group—there aren’t even any members but me. I can make any group I want. I’ve done it before.

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    Lots of activists were there that night, other groups, people I’d never seen before.”
    “So who set up the protest at DyMar?” Scully said.
    “I don’t know.” Still pressed against the side of his car, Gurik twisted his head over his other shoulder to look at her. “We have connections, you know. All of us activist groups. We talk. We don’t always agree, but when we can join forces it’s stronger.
    “I think the DyMar protest was pulled together by leaders of a few smaller groups that included animal rights activists, genetic engineering protesters, industrial labor organizations, and even some fundamentalist religious groups. Of course, with all my work in the past they wouldn’t dare leave me out.”
    “No, of course not,” Mulder said. He had hoped Gurik would be able to lead them toward other members of Liberation Now, but it appeared that he was the sole member of his own little splinter group.
    The violent protesters had materialized promptly, with no known leaders and no prior history,