World Gone Wild | SPNJ2BB 2015 | Part I
Warnings: Canon-typical blood & gore, non-major character death, slightly hand-wavey science
Summary: Season 2 AU. When a virus is released from a facility in Oregon that turns roughly 1/3 of the population of the world into mindless beasts, known only as Wilds, and affects the other 2/3 in ... other ways, Sam and Dean are caught right in the middle. Suspecting demonic influence on the catastrophe, they pause their hunt for Yellow-Eyes to track down the culprit and kill as many Wilds as they can. As the world dissolves into chaos around them, they must watch each other's backs as their bodies change against their will, under the thrall of the virus.
It all started so innocuously.
“This is Christine Johnson, reporting today. The weather is cool and crisp, with highs in the … oh, excuse me. An urgent bulletin was just handed to me. It appears that there has been an accident at a Gemini Biotechnics facility in the Pacific Northwest. An explosion destroyed a testing building, releasing an unknown contaminant. The network is currently contacting Gemini for comments. In order to be safe, please, stay indoors. Boil all water before using it, even if only washing dishes. Stay safe, Portland.
"Now, back to the weather …”
“Hey, Sam!” Dean mused, “Sounds like our kind of thing?”
Sam glanced over from his laptop. “It’s all over the news, Dean. Looks like a natural gas line was ruptured. Nothing unnatural about it. Survivors are even saying they could smell the gas. So unless you want me to start looking up monsters that smell like a sewer and blow up, I’d say leave it.”
“Huh,” Dean grunted. “Okay then.”
“Why’re you even watching the news, Dean?”
“I was flipping channels and the reporter caught my eye. Those lips, Sammy…”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Okay, Dean, no need to wax eloquent about the news reporter. I get it. You’re not watching for the words she’s saying.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever, Sammy!"
A sudden pause in the background noise of the TV caught their attention.
“Yes, hello, this is Christine Johnson. I’m here with another urgent bulletin, and a special guest. Introducing Doctor Leonard Hutch, lead geneticist and researcher. Dr. Hutch, you heard about the recent explosion at Gemini Biotechnics, and you immediately called us, demanding a spot. Why?”
“Well, Ms. Johnson, I’ll admit that I could have been more polite.” Both laughed stiltedly. He sounded nervous. “But this is extremely urgent. I’ve been trying to shut down the research Gemini has been doing for years.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because they’re messing with what they don’t understand. You see, I worked for that project five years ago. And even then they were meddling in viral chemistry, in biowarfare using potent viral agents.”
“English for us regular people, please, Dr. Hutch.”
“Ah, of course. As I was saying, Gemini was altering the genome, the … coding, if you will, of everyday viruses in order to create a, well, a supervirus. They toyed with normal viruses at first, ones that just make people sick and pass through. But then they decided to recode a retrovirus.”
“And the difference is?”
“A normal virus destroys cells and moves on. Retroviruses, such as HIV, can embed themselves in the host’s genome and lie in wait for years. Gemini also wanted to create something airborne, so that it could be released over enemy territory and cause total havoc.
“From what I can tell in recent air particle analyses, Gemini succeeded; there is particulate matter spreading at an unprecedented rate outward from the Gemini factory. At the rate I observed, the virus would already have reached up into Seattle and deep into California, not to mention west into Idaho and beyond. The worst property of this specific virus Gemini created is its ability to be carried both by air and by water, so even if it drops out of an air current, as long as it lands in water, it can be carried by water or pulled back into the air by evaporation.”
“Oh my. This sounds serious. Is there anything the people of the affected states can do?”
“No one knows the effect of this virus yet. We’ll have to wait until symptoms of infection are shown. And honestly, the way this virus is moving, there will be no unaffected state soon. There may not even be an unaffected country, not if the virus gets picked up by the currents.”
“So has this been classified as an epidemic, or a pandemic?”
“Honestly, Ms. Johnson, we won’t know what to call it until effects are shown. It may be that the virus is nonviable, or nonvirulent.”
“How possible is that?”
“Honestly? Not very. I’d just like to say, ma’am, that I think this may be the turning point. Nothing will be the same from here on out.”
The doctor’s face flickered off screen, even as he opened his mouth to continue. “And that’s all for today, viewers! Please stay tuned for ways in which you can keep you home and family safe from this potential virus outbreak. Again, as Dr. Hutch said, this may be a false alarm. This is Christine Johnson, signing off.”
The TV flicked off, and Dean started. “Wha’?” he asked.
“The news isn’t going to tell you shit, Dean. They’re too focused on keeping the civilians from rioting. If you want real info about this mess, you need to get online,” Sam muttered, eyes already re-glued to his laptop.
Dean rolled his eyes. “Right. And I guess you’ve already found something.”
Sam shook his head. “Not yet. But you need to pack. We’re going east. I’m getting as far away from this explosion and Oregon in general as we can without crossing an ocean, because from what I’m seeing, this is going to get bad.”
Sam turned the screen of his laptop toward Dean. “This was just uploaded from Portland. Ground zero. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The video played. It was some chick taping her boyfriend, jabbering about something. Dean was about to motion for Sam to get to the point when the horizon line exploded on the video. He jolted back. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed, only to be cut off by Sam.
“This is where it gets trippy.”
As smoke rose in the background, the girl holding the camera screamed. The camera lens went unfocused, then focused slowly, and the girl kept screaming. When the view stabilized again, her boyfriend lay on the ground, limbs convulsing and mouth open in a wordless scream. The seizure seemed to go on forever; when it ended, the girl’s quiet sobs as she approached her boyfriend echoed through the speakers. The camera zoomed in on something on the boy’s face, and Dean echoed the girl on-screen. “Oh my God." Blood and grayish fluid leaked from every orifice on the boy’s face - his ears, his tear ducts, his nostrils. His eyes gaped open, bloodshot and empty of recognition, even as his nose twitched.
The girl with the camera began to back away slowly; growls began to filter through the fuzz of the audio. She ran, just as the camera caught the boyfriend jump to his feet, eyes crazed and blood and gray matter trickling down his cheekbones. The video ended there.
Dean stared dumbly at the screen.
Sam nudged him. “Yeah, I know. Fucked up, right? Like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”
Dean shook his head. “What … what happened to the girl? She okay?”
“Yeah, or so the description says. Also says that she’s started to gain some scary muscle mass. Like, body-builder muscle mass. She’s freaked out, man. She says it feels like it’s not even her body anymore; she’s gained more muscle mass hiding in her house than she did going to the gym every other day for years.”
“Sam?” Dean asked, eyes still glued to the screen, where a blurry image of the crazed boyfriend still flickered.
“Yeah?”
“This is so fucked up. We are so fucked.” Sam nodded. “What the hell do we do?”
Sam shrugged. “What we always do. Save people, hunt things. You know, the family business?”
Dean grimaced, but a grin peeked through. “Yeah, whatever, bitch.”
“Jerk.”
-*-*-*-
They packed the car and drove east, didn’t stop until Dean was crashed out in the passenger seat from a fourteen-hour stint in the driver’s seat and Sam, who’d replaced him around the western Nebraskan border, was about to follow him. He found the next highway sign; they were in Illinois, almost to Indiana. He sighed. That had to be far enough. He pulled off at the next exit, parking the Impala in the lot of the first motel he saw.
He walked into the lobby of the motel only to find the person manning the desk glued to the TV screen behind him.
A different newscaster, face worried, gestured to a map behind him. “So far, the Gemini virus has been detected throughout Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. It’s moving further through Montana and down into California as I speak, carried by prevailing winds. Leading meteorologists and biologists are worried that the virus will not cease its outward movement before it reaches the Rockies; if the airborne virus crosses the Continental Divide, it will be carried by water to the east coast, and onward. Engineers are working furiously to devise a filter which catches the viral particle; here’s Mitch O’Connell, leading engineer of Penn State. Mitch, how’s work going?”
“Well, Mr. Meny, work’s not going as well as I’d like. See, the problem of this virus is that it’s small. It’s so small that we’re having to practically reinvent filter systems constructed with nanofiber, just to catch it. But let me tell you; when we get these filters ready for popular distribution, the air inside our houses will be cleaner than ever!”
The news anchor chuckled. His face was still drawn. “Good one, Mr. O’Connell. Keep us posted, if you could.”
“Of course, Mr. Meny.” The news coverage flicked to weather reports for Chicago.
The meteorologist nattered on about high winds and the possibility of heavy rain in three days. “Hopefully the filters will be complete by then!” the man twittered, trying to smile.
The motel clerk sighed and turned, only to jump when he caught sight of Sam. Sam held up his hands, and the other man relaxed. “Hey, kid,” the clerk greeted, “You startled me.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Sam said, smiling disarmingly. “My big brother always tells me he needs to fit me with a bell.”
They shared a laugh, but the clerk’s trailed off. “You hear about this mess?” he asked, pointing at the TV, where more anchors talked among themselves.
Sam nodded. “Yeah. Me and my brother, we just drove for as long as we could to get out of there. We saw the news the day of, saw some YouTube footage of the effects, and got out of there.”
He got a suspicious look. “You sure you didn’t get exposed?”
“Yeah, of course,” Sam replied, holding his hands out. “From what I’m reading online and seeing on YouTube, this thing takes hold fast. Either you go nuts immediately upon exposure or you don’t. Me and my brother, we’re clean, I swear.”
The suspicious look didn’t fade, but a key landed in Sam’s hand. The clerk waved at him. “Go on then. As long as you don’t maul me in my sleep, yeah?”
Sam nodded. “Ah, what room?”
“Thirteen.” Sam grimaced. “Yeah, yeah, don’t give me that. You’re not the only late-night runaway from the west. That was the only one left.”
Sam turned and went back to the Impala, shaking Dean awake. “C’mon, Dean, we got a room. Bed, man. Your neck is going to kill you tomorrow.”
Dean groaned and flapped a hand. “Wha’ever, S’mmy. Go ‘way.”
Sam sighed and looked around. The clerk was glued to the TV screen again, and room thirteen was only fifty feet away. “Okay, then, dude, you asked for it,” he grunted. He grabbed Dean and lifted him, huffing in surprise. “Dude, you lose weight?”
Dean snorted. “No, dumbass, you’re just a superfreak.”
“Fuck you, too, princess,” Sam returned, eyebrow crumpled in thought. Dean hadn’t been this easy to carry … ever. It was like he’d lost twenty pounds, or like Sam had suddenly gotten a hell of a lot stronger.
He decided to disregard it. They’d think about it in the morning. It was too late for this shit.
-*-*-*-
The next morning, the buzz of the TV filled the room, as did the whirring of Sam’s laptop. “Portland has gone dark, I repeat, Portland and the surrounding area is no longer sending in any sort of data. No one is getting communication from Portland. Most of Washington is also becoming difficult to contact, as is northern California. With Idaho, it’s difficult to tell, but Boise’s weather station hasn’t sent in any weather data in hours. Utah is slowly going dark - the radio silence is spreading from Portland. Could this be the virus? Or is it the beasts caught on blurry YouTube footage?
"I’m sure that by now you have all seen this iconic footage of a young man becoming something … else. Even our science team is puzzled as to what causes this mental decay. With us today we have leading biologist Dr. Yolanda Louden, who specializes in …”
The other woman on the screen began to speak. “Neuroscience and genetics. Honestly, if I didn’t know any better, Ms. Henley, I’d say that some of the brain matter of that poor boy on that footage had been dissolved, broken down. I would attribute it to apoptosis, the programmed death of cells activated by codes in the DNA, but that makes no sense. No organism would hobble itself so much by destroying brain matter.”
“Could it be the virus?”
“It may. That may be one of the effects. The only question, becomes, then: why isn’t it affecting everyone the same? Is there some kind of genetic marker?”
The anchor chuckled, raising a hand. “Don’t ask me, Dr. Louden. I majored in news media, not biology; I’m so lost it isn’t even funny.”
The scientist tilted her head. “That’s what I’m worried about, Ms. Henley. So many of your colleagues around the nation are treating this like some kind of passing fad. It’s not. This is a retrovirus. It will encode itself into our very DNA, the very thing that makes us unique, and from what I’ve seen of quick sample testing, it will also target germ cells, from where eggs and sperm rise. No future generation is safe. This virus will not go away; it will not simply cease to exist because of fancy filters or antivirals. It’s a part of us now.” Her screen flickered out, turning black. The anchor chuckled nervously.
“What an illuminating talk! I’d like to thank Dr. Louden for speaking with us today; I’m sure we all learned something. Now, on to the breaking news - a new filter has been developed that stops all but the tiniest particles through. Is it enough to protect your home? Stay tuned; it’s coming up next.”
Sam snorted, listening to canned music as a Herpexia commercial began. “Still watching the news, man? What have I told you, look online. Better info out there, less of a keep-people-calm mindset.”
Silence.
“Dean? You okay?”
Sam glanced over to find Dean clutching his cell phone. “What’s wrong, Dean?” he asked, wary now.
Dean clutched the cell phone even tighter. “Sam, I can’t get ahold of Bobby.”
Sam sucked in a breath, recalled the screaming and the blood and the gray matter. Not Bobby. He ventured, “You tried all of his phones?”
Dean turned, eyes narrow. “Yes, Sam, I tried all of his phones. It’s not like I’m a fucking idiot, dammit.”
Sam raised his hands. “Hey, just had to check. You want to go back and check it out?” He didn’t mention that it meant heading back toward the virus. They both knew it; they also both didn’t give two shits about some virus when it was Bobby.
“What else can we do?” Dean stared at him. Sam could see his own thoughts reflected.
What if they found Bobby as crazed as the other kid? What could they do? Better question: How could they do it? It was Bobby, for Christ’s sake.
Sam pushed himself to his feet, chucked over the Impala keys. “You drive, man. I’m beat from driving all last night.” He pretended not to notice Dean’s shoulders relaxing, relieved at the possibility of losing himself in a roaring engine and hot tarmac, in mullet rock (which Sam would tolerate, just this once) and the smell of leather and gun oil and open road.
Dean took the offered hand and pulled himself up. “C’mon, Sammy,” he hummed, “Let’s go check on the old man.” He walked toward the lobby to turn in their key, and Sam packed their duffels into the trunk. They were on the road five minutes later, windows cracked, “Shook Me All Night Long” blasting out of the speakers. Sam smiled weakly to himself and relaxed back into the seat.
Everything had to be okay. It was Bobby after all. No wacko virus could beat that old codger.
-*-*-*-
They’d been driving for hours. Sam had kept asking Dean if he wanted to switch out once the sun started setting, but Dean kept refusing. That was before he refused to talk at all, and left the radio to fill the silence.
That goddamn radio.
"Beware of Wilds in the area. I repeat, Wilds are beginning to overrun Pierre, South Dakota, and neighboring cities. Stay out of cities. Watch for staggering movements interspersed with bursts of speed; Wilds’ brain chemistry leads to erratic movement patterns, but when … when food is scented, they become extremely dangerous. Do not attempt to take on Wilds."
Sam snapped, “Dean. Turn the damn radio off. I’m tired of listening to the same message over and over again.”
Dean didn’t respond, staring out at the quiet landscape. Every so often, another car passed, going in the other direction. Every time, the other driver stared as the Impala passed.
No one else was traveling west.
"Beware of Wilds in the -"
Snap. Sam flicked the dial off, silencing the radio announcer. Dean glanced over. The silence grew suffocating.
Dean reached out to turn on the radio.
Sam snarled, “Fuck this.” He slapped Dean’s hand away and turned to his brother. “Look, Dean, stop trying to do what you always do. I’m not going to listen to some fucking newscaster babble about Wilds - who the fuck named the damn things anyway? - just because you want something to fill the silence. I will put up with your damn music, I will even listen to you sing along. But I am not listening to that shit. So we’re fucking talking, because you’re obviously avoiding something. And I’m fucking done with it.”
Dean stared out at the road. Sam huffed, still tense. Silence fell as the Impala rumbled under their feet.
Dean accelerated, and the rumble of the car’s revving engine almost buried his words. “What if we’re too late, Sammy?” he whispered, voice cracking.
Sam deflated. ”C’mon, Dean,” he replied, careful to speak quietly. He didn’t want to push his brother back into his quiet, stoic shell. “You know Bobby’s the toughest, crotchetiest old geezer in the States. Whatever this thing is, whatever these Wilds are, he can handle it.”
Dean nodded, face still pensive. “I just keep seeing that video, Sam. Hearing that one newscaster. What if whatever that virus is got Bobby like it got that kid? What if…” He didn’t say it, but they both knew it. What if they had to put Bobby down, because he’d turned? It was the horrible truth of the drive, the weight hanging in the air.
Sam shook his head. “Nah, Dean. Don’t think that way. When we get there, Bobby’ll be just fine, holed up in that old house of his. He’s got Rumsfeld to watch his back, remember? And animals aren’t affected by this virus, they’ve proved it already.”
Dean hummed a shaky agreement and kept driving. The silence descended again, just as oppressive as before. Sam switched on the radio to get some sort of background noise.
"Beware of Wilds in the area. I repeat, Wilds have overrun Pierre and are moving west at an unprecedented pace. We’re evacuating our station in Sioux Falls now. Scattered Wilds have already been spotted. Anyone still in the state must evacuate. I repeat, evacuate South Dakota now. Move east. If possible, board an international flight to England or France. This epidemic is not slowing down. Again, Pierre has been overrun. Sioux Falls is about to be. Get out of South Dakota. This is Trevor Lane, signing off for the last time in Sioux Falls."
The brothers stared at each other, and looked around. There were no cars in sight, and thinking back, there had been none for some time. Dean fixated on the road ahead and pressed the accelerator.
They had to get to Bobby’s. When they got there, everything would turn out all right.
It had to.
-*-*-*-
When the Impala rolled into Singer Salvage, everything was dead quiet, and the sun was almost set. Dean cut the engine before the car had even stopped, not wanting to advertise their presence more than they already had. They both stepped out of the car and smelled blood.
Dean stared at Sam silently, eyes hard, as he paced to the trunk. He propped the gun compartment open and started pulling out anything he thought could be useful. Machetes, pistols, shotguns - it all was either tucked onto his person or handed to Sam. Sam took everything handed to him, still trying to hear some sign of life.
Even a pained yell would have been welcome at that point.
But the silence hung over everything. The sound of the trunk lid closing startled a lone buzzard off of its perch on a stack of scrap cars. The brothers glanced at each other.
Not good. The carrion birds had already shown up.
Dean signaled that he’d take point. Sam nodded, positioning himself to cover his brother’s back. He kept his gun cocked, safety off. If anything jumped at him from the stacks, he’d need a quick reaction time.
Dean’s gasp upon entering Bobby’s house almost made Sam turn from his watch at the still-open door. He could smell the blood, hear the buzzing flies. Something had gone horribly wrong. The knowledge of that sat heavy in his gut.
“Sammy,” Dean whispered, “It’s not Bobby. But I don’t know who it is.”
Closing the door, Sam turned to find a bloody mess of flesh and gore and entrails spread over Bobby’s living room floor, spattering the books and staining the rug. He wrinkled his nose and replied, “Whoever they were, whatever did that was hungry, man. Look at the bite marks on his arm.” Bite marks didn’t cover it. Chunks of flesh and sinew had been ripped from the unrecognizable man’s (even that was a guess) arms and torso.
Dean made a face. “Gross,” he whispered, but knelt to look at the marks.
Sam kept an eye on the outside through a window, hoping that Bobby would appear from the stacks, Rumsfeld at his side, shotgun in hand. “Heart still there?”
Dean poked around with the tip of his machete. “Ugh,” he moaned quietly, “Think so. Can’t tell. It’s all a mess of torn flesh in here. There’s not a lot that hasn’t been chewed on. Poor bastard.”
“You thinking werewolf?” Sam asked, already almost knowing the answer. Dreading it.
“No way,” Dean replied, “Too messy. Wolves claw a bit, bite a bit, but they just want the heart. This is just hunger, pure and simple. Whatever it was didn’t discriminate in what it was eating, you know? Just went for it.”
“Any noticeable teeth marks?”
Dean poked around more. “Huh, yep,” he muttered. “Way to blunt to be any kind of nasty we know. Almost looks…” Dean glanced up. His face went green. “Almost looks human.”
Sam swallowed back bitter bile. Bobby would never have let a rougarou, even a baby one, onto his property, let alone into his house.
There was only one answer.
“Bobby,” Sam gasped, almost losing what little he ate on the road. “We gotta … we gotta find him, Dean. We gotta fix this.”
Dean straightened, face still pale and eyes dull. “Yeah,” he whispered.
They swept the house. Found nothing but bloody footprints and handprints. Every so often, they’d come across some unidentifiable chunk of meat. Dean tried to joke, face pale: “Eating on the go. That’s our Bobby. Saving time, even when he’s half out of his wits.”
Sam glared, but subsided. He knew Dean’s coping mechanisms. (This was just one of the more offensive ones.)
Having swept the house and found nothing to say Bobby was hiding inside, they moved outside. They moved between the stacks, feet silent, guns at the ready. A wet ripping sound caught Sam’s attention, and he pulled on Dean’s shirttail. Dean half turned, and Sam cocked his head toward the sound, tapping his ear.
Dean froze, listening, and heard it too. He nodded and they moved in sync toward the noise. As they approached, the wet ripping sound stopped, replaced with a grisly wet smacking. Dean made a face. Sam glared back, but the heat wasn’t in it. He didn’t want to listen to this either.
They rounded the rear bumpers of a five-tall stack of crushed cars to find Bobby, coated in spatters of bright crimson blood, trucker hat gone. He crouched over some unmoving shape on the ground. It was liberally coated in blood as well, still shiny in its freshness. Brown and black patches of fur peeked through the mess.
Rumsfeld. Looked like the Rottweiler couldn’t fight his beloved owner in the end.
Sam’s horrified contemplation of the scene was halted when Dean’s gun barked, one-two-three. A bloody hole opened in Bobby’s back, centered over the heart. Another opened in the back of his head. The last severed his spine, at the base of the skull. One of the three did the trick. Bobby fell forward, still.
Both brothers stood there for a long time. Dean broke the trance, whispering, “Fuck.” His voice wavered and broke. Sam knew that if he looked, he’d see his brother crying.
He didn’t need to see. Tears dripped down his face, too. Looked like Bobby wasn’t as invincible as they’d thought.
He turned back to Bobby’s house, already trying to remember where Bobby kept his spare sheets. They’d need a shroud. And wood. Lots of wood. Dean, picking up on his thoughts, followed. His eyes were still hollow, puffy around the edges. His breath hitched, just a bit.
-*-*-*-
They burned Bobby as the sun went down, and stayed, guns in hand, to watch the pyre burn to the ground. They’d give Bobby that.
Neither one said much of anything. Sam wanted to say some kind of eulogy, some thank you. But Dean’s hiccupped “Rest in peace, you cantankerous son of a bitch” pretty much covered anything he would’ve said.
When the pyre was nothing more than ashes and charcoal, and the moon was rising, the brothers turned back to Bobby’s house and loaded up every book they could find that could possibly be useful. They locked the doors, locked the windows, and warded the house with every ward they knew.
Then they drove away, the darkened salvage yard fading into their rearview.
The silence hung even heavier driving back east.
-*-*-*-
Sam dozed as Dean drove, trusting his brother to get them to a motel where he could actually stretch out. Mostly.
Instead, Dean jerked the wheel to the right and swung the Impala onto a dirt track. Sam whacked his head against the window and cursed, “Ow! Dammit, Dean, what the hell?”
Dean didn’t answer, just pushed the Impala faster and faster along the rutted road. Sam could hear the undercarriage creaking and rocks and clods of mud hitting the skid plate they’d installed years ago.
“Dean?” he ventured, “What happened to the motel?”
Dean’s only answer was to hit the brakes so hard a cloud of grayish brown dust enveloped the car, throwing Sam forward into the dash. He almost cursed Dean out again, but Dean was already out of the car and opening the trunk.
Sam got out and looked around, getting a foreboding feeling. The road the Impala sat on crossed another dirt track, little more than a trail of mud with two ruts dug into it. The moon shone eerily on the trees around them, white bark shining. Dean came back from the trunk of the car, holding a box, and Sam grabbed his arm.
“Dean! What the fuck! We are not summoning a crossroads demon, okay? Bobby’s gone. It sucks. I know. But this won’t fix anything. Bobby’s been burned, Dean; there’s nothing for him to come back to. If you try to bring him back now, you’ll just force him to be a ghost. And you know what happens to ghosts, because we fucking fix it. So you’d better turn your ass around and get in the damn car.”
Dean whirled around, throwing off Sam’s hand in the process. “Dammit, Sam, I’m not going to bring Bobby back, okay? I know we burned him because I was there! There’s no need to fucking remind me that Bobby’s … that Bobby’s dead, okay? I get it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know why. What these demon bitches get from doing this. Why the world’s falling apart. I figure, a little holy water, a little salt, and whatever crossroads bitch pops up will spill, and then we know what to do to stop this clusterfuck.”
Sam sighed, seeing the logic. “Okay, then. Fine. Summon the damn demon. I’ll get the spraypaint and put down a devil’s trap.”
Dean grunted agreement, already digging a hole in the middle of the crossroads with a small hand trowel. Sam hurried to paint the trap, getting it done just as the stench of sulfur wafted on the breeze.
He stood by Dean, who held a flask of holy water. They waited.
They kept waiting.
Nothing appeared.
After fifteen minutes, Dean slumped, muttering, “Fuck. What the hell. Where is this bitch?”
Sam looked around and sniffed the air. The whiff of sulfur had faded as quickly as it had come, and now nothing seemed out of the ordinary. “Maybe the demon’s not coming?”
“Can they do that? I thought this was like a required deal!”
Sam scratched his head. “I don’t know. That’s what I thought, but I think it’s pretty obvious that the demon’s not coming.”
Dean sighed. “Well, something’s fishy. First some factory blows up and the world goes to shit. Then the crossroads demon’s a no-show?”
Sam nodded, thinking. “Maybe we should check this out. It may not be connected, but you never know.”
“Exactly, Sammy. Exactly.”
-*-*-*-
They spent the next twelve hours driving again, trying to get ahead of the Wilds they were starting to spot. Finally, they sat in another hotel room, this one in Ohio, just across the border from Indiana. Dean dropped off to sleep immediately, but Sam flipped open his laptop, taking advantage of his mobile broadband USB stick to get Internet access. He searched out the blog of one of the scientists researching the Gemini virus, and found a new entry.
We’ve made a few breakthroughs today, all of them connected. It’s been one crazy ride as we try to understand this virus that is still spreading towards our laboratory. So, as I’m sure you readers want to know what we found, here’s my official report:
“The Gemini virus, as it is popularly termed, is a retrovirus, transmitted through the air and through water sources. It’s actually quite fascinating; as a retrovirus, the viral genome inserts itself into the host’s genome at a set point. This point can vary. For some, the virus attaches at what has now been termed the A-site; this attachment switches on genes to increase muscle strength and density, as well as adding onto the height of the individual by switching on genes for growth. Infected-A, or ‘Neos,’ as they’ve been termed, also lose activity in genes which improve endurance.
“On the other hand, in Infected-B individuals, in which the virus attaches at a B-site, the effect is the opposite; these ‘Oncers,’ as they’re called, stop storing fat almost entirely, maintaining just enough to continue life, and also stop building muscle. However, the “lost” muscle isn’t lost; it is simply more toned, due to endurance genes being switched into overdrive in Infected-B individuals.
“Infected-C individuals receive no true benefits, or none that they retain the consciousness to take advantage of. The virus targets C-sites, which exist only in the frontal lobe and in muscle and skeletal tissue. In brain tissue, insertion of the viral genome triggers apoptosis, cell death, of frontal lobe neurons; the individual is left without any higher cognitive function, leaving them to roam as mindless predators. As if to increase the individual’s possibility of success, the Infected-C individual also gains muscle mass and density, as in the Neo. Infected-C individuals are known simply as Wilds.”
Now here’s a piece of advice from a scientist: Avoid Wilds at all costs. No one, Neo or Oncer, can best a pack of Wilds in a fight.
Stay safe, dear readers.
Sam stared at the screen. Well, that explained why picking up Dean at that Indiana motel felt like lifting a person half Dean’s weight. He’d gotten stronger and, more than likely, Dean had gotten slimmer. He’d seen his brother having trouble lugging as many heavy leather-bound books as he normally would back at … back at Bobby’s. He’d just dismissed it as stress, or lethargy from driving with so little sleep.
Maybe it was more than that. Because though Dean hadn’t been able to carry as much, Sam had picked up his slack with ease.
Maybe they hadn’t escaped Oregon as unscathed as they thought they had. Maybe they just avoided going insane.
-*-*-*-
Part II