Página PrincipalInternal Dating: Crump is arrested on Oct. 23, 1998
A spiked chain is laid across the road, puncturing the tires of the getaway car. It comes to a stop, and police storm the vehicle. They pull the driver from the car and throw him to the asphalt, attempting to cuff him. A young woman is removed the backseat of the car and placed in a police cruiser. Clearly in pain, she begins beating her head against the window. On the ground, the driver of the car screams to her.
Without warning, the woman's head explodes, and blood sprays the car window.
The credits roll: The Truth Is Out There
Buhl, Idaho. Mulder and Scully are on a domestic terrorism detail, going to farms that have placed large orders of manure, on the chance that one might be a bomb scare. Mulder is disgusted with the job, calling it "the FBI equivalent of being made to wear an orange jumpsuit and pick up trash by the side of the highway."
While in a farmer's house, Mulder watches footage of the high speed chase on TV. Intrigued, he points it out to Scully, saying he believes the downed man was actually trying to warn the police about what would happen to the woman. He calls the police in Elko and says they will be happy to help with the case Scully agrees their new assignment is humiliating, and a punishment, but says in order to get back where they want to be, they have to follow orders and not freelance. Nonetheless, Mulder manages to convince Scully to check it out, saying, "We can be in and out in a day. No one has to know."
Elko, Nevada. The driver of the car, Patrick Crump, awakens in his jail cell with a nosebleed. Terrified, he begins shouting for the guards.
Mulder and Scully arrive in Elko and speak to the captain there. He says that the woman was Vicky Crump, Patrick's wife. They had left their house in Montello early in the morning, driven five miles east to the Utah border and stolen a car there. They had turned around then, and begun fleeing west.
Scully says she wants to look at Vicky Crump's body. She and the coroner examine Vicky's remains. The right side of her head has been blown out, as if an explosion took place in her inner ear. Scully probes the area, and blood sprays out, splattering Scully's coat.
Outside the jail, Crump is being removed in an ambulance. Mulder tries to get in but is told there is no room. He follows in his own car.
Within the ambulance, as it accelerates on the open road, Crump begins to rest easier. He eyes the officer closest to him, and sees his gun.
Behind the ambulance, Mulder notices it begin to swerve and drive erratically. Abruptly it comes to a halt and Mulder is forced to slam on his brakes. The back door of the ambulance opens, and Patrick Crump comes out, with a gun trained on Mulder.
Back at the station, Scully has had the morgue quarantined. She calls Mulder on his cell phone and tells him that she does not know what killed Vicky Crump, but she has to assume it's communicable. Another body has been found with the same exit wound in the head; the man worked for the power company, reading meters. She warns Mulder to stay away from Crump.
Too late. In the car, seated in the back, Crump presses a gun into the back of Mulder's head and grabs the phone away.
Communicating with the police captain via cell phone, Scully tells him that the CDC is on their way. The captain says they will be setting up a roadblock. Scully says the officers making the arrest must be wearing Level 2 or higher biohazard suits.
While on the phone with Scully, an officer comes up to the captain and speak to him. Crump has told the police that if the police escort does not back off, he will kill Mulder.
In the speeding car, Crump reiterates his demand. Behind them, the police fall away. Crump disconnects the phone, and flips open Mulder's ID. "You people," he mutters. The phone rings, and Crump throws it out the window. "Stupid!" Mulder cries, "That was stupid!"
A red light approaches, and Mulder slows for it. Agitated, Crump shouts for Mulder to keep driving. In agony, he begins beating his head against the window. Ignoring traffic, Mulder yanks the car into the other lane and keeps on driving.
Mulder starts to put it together now. He realizes that if they slow down, the same thing that happened to Vicky Crump will happen to Patrick. "Your life is in my hands regardless of whether you have that gun," Mulder says. He urges Crump to tell him everything he knows, so that Mulder can help. They only have 2 or 3 miles left, anyway; having seen a helicopter in the window, Mulder warns Crump of an upcoming roadblock. Instead of driving into it, however, he steers away from it, onto a forestry service road. The police lose the car, and cannot continue pursuit.
While in the lab, Scully receives a call from AD Kersh. "How was Southern Idaho?" he asks. "Think carefully." Scully admits she and Mulder are not in Idaho any longer, that they are pursuing a case in Nevada. Kersh is displeased to hear this.
"Mulder, what the hell kind of name is that, anyway? Like, Jewish?" asks Crump. Angry, Mulder refuses to answer. Abruptly Crump begins to cry out and says that they are going in the wrong direction. Mulder turns quickly onto a westerly road, and Crump slumps back against the seat, his pain relieved for the moment.
Securely clothed in quarantine suits, Scully and a medical team arrive at the Crump's house. A German Shepherd is tied outside, and the dog runs the length of its chain, barking frantically. Scully wants a blood sample, and the team gingerly approaches the dog and pins it. After only a few seconds of lying still, the side of the dog's head explodes, splattering one of the men.
Nightfall. Mulder diverts Crump by asking him to relate the events of the day. Slowly, the story comes out. The morning started out normally; his wife Vicky was making breakfast, he was reading the paper. Vicky's nose began to bleed, although she was not aware of it. Soon she began complaining of a headache that rapidly worsened. Patrick put her in the car and began driving; the faster he went, the better his wife felt.
"I'm sorry," Mulder says.
"Sure you are," Crump scoffs, "you and the rest of your Jew FBI...Vicky and me were just some kind of government guinea pigs."
"You think the government did this to you?" asks Mulder.
"Oh, hell yeah. Who else?" Crump says. He's seen them, he says, "sneaking around my woods at night. You think I don't know?"
"Well, on behalf of the International Jewish Conspiracy, I just need to inform you that we're almost out of gas," Mulder says softly.
Back at the Crump's house, there is no one inside but a light shines not too far off: a neighbor. Scully enters the house carefully, calling out, but there is no response. In one room, two pet birds lie dead in their cage; she rounds a corner and enters the living room, where a deaf woman watches TV with the help of closed captioning. She is startled by Scully's presence.
A gas station approaches, and Mulder tells Crump he will be as fast as he can: the race is on. He pulls up to the gas pump, only to be told that he must pay first, then pump. In the back seat, Crump is groaning in increasing pain. Mulder drags him from the car and pushes him into the back seat of a station wagon sitting at the pump. He gets in and drives off, leaving the owner of the car standing behind, shouting futilely after them.
The car with no gas sits at the pump, but on the front seat lies a note, addressed to Agent Dana Scully, FBI.
In Montello, the deaf woman is taken to the police station. The Elko police captain calls Scully, and informs her of the note Mulder left. It says: "Crump sick. Will die if stop, same as wife. Must head west to keep alive. No roadblocks!" He is not too happy about this latest turn of events, tells Scully to take it up with her superiors in DC. As she listens to him, Scully follows a trail of dead birds on the ground. The phone signal wavers in and out, cutting off much of the captain's words; Scully stops when she reaches a metal plate in the ground, reading "U.S. Government Property."
Driving on through the night, Crump says that being experimented on isn't right, taking away a person's dignity is worse than anything; that you should just kill him. Mulder urges Crump not to give up, the only way Crump can "stick it to the government" is to stay alive, that they will figure it out. "Right," Crump says. "Better figure quickly. We're running out of west." Outside, a sign flashes by, welcoming visitors to California.
Scully learns that the U.S. Navy has a research station out in Wendover, where they are testing Project Seafarer. It uses Extremely Low Frequency (or ELF) radio waves, the kind that submarines use. Under the guise of an FCC member, Scully questions a man at the project. He tells her that at 6:17 the previous morning, they experienced a massive power surge. He will not tell her anything else, avoiding Scully's query of how such a surge would theoretically affect human beings, all by saying the information is classified.
On the California highway, two patrolmen on motorcycles approach the station wagon, with a cell phone. With communication re-established, Scully calls a weary Mulder, saying she is boarding a Justice Department jet and will meet Mulder. She has an idea of how to help Patrick Crump. She believes the power surge somehow matched the natural frequencies in the inner ear, creating a rising pressure that eventually shatters it; only westward movement can ease this resonance, as it follows a line of magnetic or electrical force. When a person stops moving, the resonation becomes too much and the inner ear explodes.
"Well, whether they did this to you intentionally or not, you were right. They did it to you." Mulder tells Crump that Scully can help him by sticking a large needle into his inner ear, thus alleviating the pressure. The procedure must be done without anesthetic, and will leave him deaf, but at least he will be alive. Crump does not hesitate; he agrees to the procedure.
Loleta, California. At land's end, Mulder pulls up and stops the car. Blood splatters the back window behind him. He gets out of the car slowly and goes to stand by the shore, staring out over the water.
Washington, D.C. Assistant Director Kersh goes over the expenses of the case with Mulder and Scully, drawing it out excruciatingly. Mulder becomes angry and restles and says, "Why don't you bill me?" Kersh says, "I'll bill your partner instead. You two obviously relish the role of martyr."
"Are we done here?" Mulder demands. "Back to the bozo work? Back to the piles of manure?"
Kersh eyes him calmly. "You can always quit."
An angry Mulder leaves, and Scully says, "Sir, Agent Mulder has been through a lot."
Kersh says, "And you apologize for him a lot. I've noticed that about you." He goes on to say that he does not care that Mulder and Scully saved lives; what he cares is that they no longer investigate X-Files, and the sooner the two of them realize that and act accordingly, the better.
"Big piles of manure," Scully mutters, then leaves the office, and Kersh is alone.
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