Special Agent Dana Scully shivers slightly in the basement office with no heat. Just around the corner, Agent Mulder is unseen, but plainly heard riffling through pages in the filing cabinet marked "X-Files". He curses now and again under his breath, barely audible, but plainly heard in the deathly silence of their subterranean office. Scully reaches out with a deft hand, tightly gripping the remote control to the slide projector, and clicking it off. It doesn't do much good. The image of the rotting corpse, a human arm clutched tightly within its jaws is burned deep within her retinas, as well as her subconscious. It sits in the pit of her stomach and tears at her brain, twisting, morphing, becoming more ghastly than it had been to begin with. The imagination is more disturbing than reality, for only we know what scares us most. She realizes it might have been better to stare at the image of reality than allow her subconscious to twist it into macabre, haunting illusions. A memory that may float up and attach itself to her mind's eye at the most inopportune time.

"Who the hell put this in Z? Did you move things, Scully?" Mulder's voice sounds detached in a way. As if he's not even in the same room as his body.

"I don't even know what you're looking at, or what you're looking for, Mulder. But no, I haven't touched the files."

"Doesn't matter. I found it."

He enters the room, carrying a thick file in his right hand. His tie has been untied, his eyes sag, suggesting lack of sleep. He steps around his desk, and lifts his legs in a large step over a box of papers beside his seat of plush, full leather. He allows himself to fall into the chair, causing it to roll back a foot. He slaps his file down onto his desk in front of Scully, and leans back, shoving his feet up onto the desk, one leg over the other, hands linked behind his head in typical Mulder fashion. He watches her open the file and flip through the pages, an expression of sarcastic wit plays on his features.

"You can't be serious," she says soberly. She glances up at him, biting at her lower lip. He grins.

"Please, tell me you believe in voodoo. We're going to 'Nawlins' just to see it in action. That picture you so kindly removed from the front of the room a moment ago was taken three nights ago in a bar on the Louisiana waterfront. There have been several reports of walking dead, but no hard evidence until that very picture. The owner of the aforementioned establishment, a miss Kathy Bradley, contacted me that night, and was kind enough to overnight that picture to me."

"Well, that explains this file being in Z."

"Pardon?"

"Zombie?"

Mulder gazes at the ceiling a moment. "That hadn't occurred to me."

"So you mean to tell me, and expect me to believe there are what? Zombies roaming the streets of Louisiana?"

"Voodoo seems to be pretty big in 'Nawlins'."

"Mulder, what the hell? Stop saying it like that."

"Hey, I'm just trying to get us in the Cajun mood. I could go for some good old fashioned Cajun cooking. Plenty of shrimp."

"I'm more inclined to believe in cannibalism before zombification."

"Well, believe. You know you want to." He smiles that smart-ass smile he always likes to throw in her face as he points to his flying saucer poster on the wall behind him, with the words 'I Want to Believe' in bold, black letters on the bottom half. He stands up and grabs his jacket on the way out the door.

"Nine-thirty tomorrow morning. I'll meet you at the airport. The plane leaves at one. Get some rest, Scully. You'll need it. It's the Sunday before Mardi Gras." Before she can even think of a rebuttal, he's out the door, and halfway up the stairs.