Fic: The Shattered One (24/?)
See the masterpost for disclaimer, summary, and previous parts.
“Damnit,” Dean snarled as he looked down at his cell phone showing that he had no service when he tried to call Castiel.
“I told you,” Ellen said as she settled on the arm of the couch. Everyone was in the living room, gathered together so Dean and Sam could tell them everything they knew about what they were really facing. Even Hannah had been hauled out of her upstairs exile and was currently tucked in a corner of the couch, her older sister sitting with an arm around the younger woman’s shoulders. Hannah wasn’t crying, but she didn’t look far from it.
It didn’t help that Daniel was crying. Sam was walking the floor in front of the coffee table with the baby in his arms, trying to quiet Daniel with no success. Finally, Sam had to turn to his brother and admit defeat. “He’s not going for it, man… he’s hungry.”
Dean pressed his lips in a thin line and closed his phone, shoving it back in his pocket (for all the good it would do). He turned toward Sam and looked down at Daniel. Much as he wanted to put Daniel first right now, a hungry baby was really not their top problem.
“I’ve got… I have formula,” Hannah offered weakly from the couch.
Dean turned to her. She was uncurling tensely from her fetal position on the sofa, starting and stopping to move toward the kitchen several times.
Before Dean could say anything, Cait did. “Thanks… that would really help them out, sis.”
Hannah nodded stiffly and went into the kitchen.
When she was gone, Cait looked toward Dean and said lowly enough that her sister wouldn’t overhear, “Let her make herself useful… she could use the distraction.”
Dean didn’t argue.
“And in the meantime,” Gerald said, “why don’t you tell us what that word on the wall means.”
Dean sighed. “Sam and I have run into this before, a few years back. This isn’t demon possession… it’s a virus.”
“A demonic virus, more specifically,” Sam joined in. “The behavior mimics possession at first, but the level of uncontrolled violence is much higher. And the typical methods of combating demons won’t work on them. Because they’re not demons, they’re people, but sick, mad people.”
“A virus?” Nathan asked skeptically, standing next to the couch with his arms crossed over his uniform-clad chest.
“That’s right… last time we encountered this ‘Croatoan virus’, we were holed up in a medical clinic. Tests the doctor did showed that the blood from the victims have traces of sulfur.”
Ellen exchanged a look with Strafe.
At that moment, Hannah came back into the room with a bottle of formula in her hand. She approached Sam and awkwardly started to offer him the bottle, then stopped. She was staring down at Daniel, expression harrowed and sharp with longing.
“Uh… do you want to feed him?” Sam offered gently.
Dean turned a sharp look over at Sam, who met his gaze with the puppy eyes of doom.
Hannah sort of flinched at first, then she bit her lip and nodded. “Yeah, I… yeah, okay.”
Sam checked with Dean before doing anything. Dean looked between Hannah, Daniel, and Sam a moment, then gave a small nod. Sam gave Hannah one of his ‘I’m the most not-dangerous person in the whole wide world’ looks and very carefully laid the baby in her arms. Hannah sort of whimpered at first while Dean watched her closely. He had to admit, emotionally wrecked or not, she handled the baby like she knew what she was doing.
Hannah went meekly back to the couch, sat down beside her sister, arranged Daniel on her lap, then offered him the bottle. The crying finally stopped while Daniel went to town on dinner, and everyone seemed to relax a little in the blessed silence.
“How’s the virus transmitted?” Jo asked, still sentry at the window but listening in, getting them back on topic.
“Blood to blood contact,” Dean answered. “If you have a cut or a scrape, anything that breaks the skin, and their blood comes in contact with yours, you’re infected.”
“Explains my brother-in-law and the knife,” Cait grumbled under her breath.
“What sort of incubation time are we looking at?” Gerald asked.
“Three or four hours,” Dean replied. Meaning that if any of them had been infected by Rob, the husband-gone-wild-and-not-in-the-fun-spring-break-kind-of-way, they would have already found out about it by now. Small mercies and all that, he supposed.
“I’m sorry, hold up,” Nathan put up a hand, “demonic virus? Are we really having this conversation?”
“Hey, you got a better explanation for people you know turning into monsters?” Dean snapped. Only after it came out of his mouth did he consider the audience and spare a glance at Hannah. She looked like she hadn’t even heard, like she’d shut down and focused her world entirely on just sitting there watching Daniel guzzle from the bottle.
Dean flicked a thoughtful glance at Sam, wondering if that had been his brother’s intention in offering Daniel to Hannah in the first place. He wouldn’t put it past his too-empathetic-to-have-testicles little brother.
“This might sound crazy to you,” Cait said sharply to the cop, “but it’s the only explanation we have for what’s happened to this city. So until you’ve got something better, I’m going to believe them.”
Nathan frowned but said nothing in retaliation… though his eyes did drop to the bloodstain on the rug.
“So… how do you cure this?” Ellen asked.
Dean tensed.
“As far as we know,” Sam said grimly, “it has no cure.”
“Then how’d you boys get out alive last time?”
Dean didn’t answer. He was thinking about the post-apocalyptic world of the future, overrun with people infected with the Croatoan virus, that only he had seen. And he was thinking of the fact that, as far as they knew, his brother was the only person on the planet immune to the virus.
“We don’t really have a good answer for that,” Sam confessed. “We were surrounded by these things, we thought we were all going to die, and then they all just… vanished. Everyone in town disappeared without a trace.”
“Huh,” Strafe huffed. “Well, that explains the word ‘Croatoan’ a bit.”
“How’s that?” Nathan asked.
“Google colonial unsolved mysteries sometime,” Strafe tossed back off-handedly.
“Hey, guys,” Jo chimed in from her spot by the window. Everyone (except Hannah) turned their attention toward her. Jo stepped toward them, expression severe, and for a split-second she looked scarily like Ellen. “We’re going to have to bug out of here… those fires are getting close.”
At first, no one responded. There was nothing appealing about going out into that world of Croatoan-infected maniacs. And Dean didn’t want to leave the house - it was where Castiel would know to look for them, and they couldn’t call him to tell him otherwise.
But, yeah, burning alive had been top on the list of ways Dean didn’t want to die since he was four.
“All right,” Ellen said wearily as she stood up. “Let’s get together what we can.” The hunters, silent and resigned, set to work getting whatever supplies they might need that were essential… they couldn’t weigh themselves down, not when hordes of infected would most likely be chasing them at some point. Hoping they wouldn’t end up running for their lives was overly optimistic.
Dean and Sam’s things were still in their duffels… all they’d have to do was pick them up and hoof it.
Cait touched her sister’s shoulder softly. “Hannah?”
“Hmmm.” Hannah kept her eyes on Daniel, who was just about finished with the bottle.
“We have to go, sweetie.”
“Go where?”
Cait frowned. “Away from here… can you put on some tennis shoes?”
Hannah finally looked up at her sister, stared at her uncomprehending a moment, then she looked down at Daniel again. “What about the baby?”
“Oh, he’s coming,” Dean assured.
Hannah looked up at Dean, watery doe eyes big and not entirely all there, then she put the empty bottle on the end table and stood with the boy in her arms. She walked up to Dean and seemed kind of reluctant to give the baby back. She gave Daniel to Dean, then she disappeared back upstairs.
They were gathering together in the living room, bags slung over their shoulders, ready to head out. The sky outside was tinged orange and gray from the encroaching fires. Dean held Daniel close, hating how Castiel wasn’t there to take him and keep the boy safe.
Suddenly Hannah was at his side, quiet as a mouse and holding something out to him. Dean glanced down at the odd thing of green fabric and straps. “What’s that?”
She shook it out, and Dean might not be an expert on baby gear, but he could see what the thing was for… it was a chest pack with shoulder straps for carrying a baby. He took it, speechless, and Hannah swallowed, “I was… I was putting off getting rid of Elsi’s newborn stuff… I thought maybe, maybe Rob and I would have another one someday…”
Another crying jag was imminent, and they didn’t have the time. So Dean quickly said, “Thank you.” Then, remembering how Sam had used Daniel to divert Hannah’s traumatized grief, he added, “Mind showing me how to use it?”
His ineptitude almost tugged a smile out of her, and she took Daniel from him, handed the baby to Sam, then made quick work of the contraption. Her hands worked like muscle memory, the way Dean could field strip his favorite .45 hung-over and half-asleep, until Dean had the thing on like a backwards backpack. She reclaimed Daniel from Sam without asking, all maternal efficiency. She seemed to take a moment holding Daniel before she expertly slipped him into the cradle at Dean’s chest… and it was totally emasculating, but totally practical. Dean’s hands were free for weapons.
“If you all are done getting baby ready for his first outing,” Gerald snarled, “can we go before we’re all crispy critters?”
Dean shot Gerald a foul look, then resettled his duffel over his shoulder.
Ellen was at the front door, hand on the knob. “Ready?”
A chorus of guns cocking were her answer.
“Everyone try not to die,” Gerald tossed out as Ellen opened the door and the group began to file out of the house in the path of the blaze.
Next
“Damnit,” Dean snarled as he looked down at his cell phone showing that he had no service when he tried to call Castiel.
“I told you,” Ellen said as she settled on the arm of the couch. Everyone was in the living room, gathered together so Dean and Sam could tell them everything they knew about what they were really facing. Even Hannah had been hauled out of her upstairs exile and was currently tucked in a corner of the couch, her older sister sitting with an arm around the younger woman’s shoulders. Hannah wasn’t crying, but she didn’t look far from it.
It didn’t help that Daniel was crying. Sam was walking the floor in front of the coffee table with the baby in his arms, trying to quiet Daniel with no success. Finally, Sam had to turn to his brother and admit defeat. “He’s not going for it, man… he’s hungry.”
Dean pressed his lips in a thin line and closed his phone, shoving it back in his pocket (for all the good it would do). He turned toward Sam and looked down at Daniel. Much as he wanted to put Daniel first right now, a hungry baby was really not their top problem.
“I’ve got… I have formula,” Hannah offered weakly from the couch.
Dean turned to her. She was uncurling tensely from her fetal position on the sofa, starting and stopping to move toward the kitchen several times.
Before Dean could say anything, Cait did. “Thanks… that would really help them out, sis.”
Hannah nodded stiffly and went into the kitchen.
When she was gone, Cait looked toward Dean and said lowly enough that her sister wouldn’t overhear, “Let her make herself useful… she could use the distraction.”
Dean didn’t argue.
“And in the meantime,” Gerald said, “why don’t you tell us what that word on the wall means.”
Dean sighed. “Sam and I have run into this before, a few years back. This isn’t demon possession… it’s a virus.”
“A demonic virus, more specifically,” Sam joined in. “The behavior mimics possession at first, but the level of uncontrolled violence is much higher. And the typical methods of combating demons won’t work on them. Because they’re not demons, they’re people, but sick, mad people.”
“A virus?” Nathan asked skeptically, standing next to the couch with his arms crossed over his uniform-clad chest.
“That’s right… last time we encountered this ‘Croatoan virus’, we were holed up in a medical clinic. Tests the doctor did showed that the blood from the victims have traces of sulfur.”
Ellen exchanged a look with Strafe.
At that moment, Hannah came back into the room with a bottle of formula in her hand. She approached Sam and awkwardly started to offer him the bottle, then stopped. She was staring down at Daniel, expression harrowed and sharp with longing.
“Uh… do you want to feed him?” Sam offered gently.
Dean turned a sharp look over at Sam, who met his gaze with the puppy eyes of doom.
Hannah sort of flinched at first, then she bit her lip and nodded. “Yeah, I… yeah, okay.”
Sam checked with Dean before doing anything. Dean looked between Hannah, Daniel, and Sam a moment, then gave a small nod. Sam gave Hannah one of his ‘I’m the most not-dangerous person in the whole wide world’ looks and very carefully laid the baby in her arms. Hannah sort of whimpered at first while Dean watched her closely. He had to admit, emotionally wrecked or not, she handled the baby like she knew what she was doing.
Hannah went meekly back to the couch, sat down beside her sister, arranged Daniel on her lap, then offered him the bottle. The crying finally stopped while Daniel went to town on dinner, and everyone seemed to relax a little in the blessed silence.
“How’s the virus transmitted?” Jo asked, still sentry at the window but listening in, getting them back on topic.
“Blood to blood contact,” Dean answered. “If you have a cut or a scrape, anything that breaks the skin, and their blood comes in contact with yours, you’re infected.”
“Explains my brother-in-law and the knife,” Cait grumbled under her breath.
“What sort of incubation time are we looking at?” Gerald asked.
“Three or four hours,” Dean replied. Meaning that if any of them had been infected by Rob, the husband-gone-wild-and-not-in-the-fun-spring-break-kind-of-way, they would have already found out about it by now. Small mercies and all that, he supposed.
“I’m sorry, hold up,” Nathan put up a hand, “demonic virus? Are we really having this conversation?”
“Hey, you got a better explanation for people you know turning into monsters?” Dean snapped. Only after it came out of his mouth did he consider the audience and spare a glance at Hannah. She looked like she hadn’t even heard, like she’d shut down and focused her world entirely on just sitting there watching Daniel guzzle from the bottle.
Dean flicked a thoughtful glance at Sam, wondering if that had been his brother’s intention in offering Daniel to Hannah in the first place. He wouldn’t put it past his too-empathetic-to-have-testicles little brother.
“This might sound crazy to you,” Cait said sharply to the cop, “but it’s the only explanation we have for what’s happened to this city. So until you’ve got something better, I’m going to believe them.”
Nathan frowned but said nothing in retaliation… though his eyes did drop to the bloodstain on the rug.
“So… how do you cure this?” Ellen asked.
Dean tensed.
“As far as we know,” Sam said grimly, “it has no cure.”
“Then how’d you boys get out alive last time?”
Dean didn’t answer. He was thinking about the post-apocalyptic world of the future, overrun with people infected with the Croatoan virus, that only he had seen. And he was thinking of the fact that, as far as they knew, his brother was the only person on the planet immune to the virus.
“We don’t really have a good answer for that,” Sam confessed. “We were surrounded by these things, we thought we were all going to die, and then they all just… vanished. Everyone in town disappeared without a trace.”
“Huh,” Strafe huffed. “Well, that explains the word ‘Croatoan’ a bit.”
“How’s that?” Nathan asked.
“Google colonial unsolved mysteries sometime,” Strafe tossed back off-handedly.
“Hey, guys,” Jo chimed in from her spot by the window. Everyone (except Hannah) turned their attention toward her. Jo stepped toward them, expression severe, and for a split-second she looked scarily like Ellen. “We’re going to have to bug out of here… those fires are getting close.”
At first, no one responded. There was nothing appealing about going out into that world of Croatoan-infected maniacs. And Dean didn’t want to leave the house - it was where Castiel would know to look for them, and they couldn’t call him to tell him otherwise.
But, yeah, burning alive had been top on the list of ways Dean didn’t want to die since he was four.
“All right,” Ellen said wearily as she stood up. “Let’s get together what we can.” The hunters, silent and resigned, set to work getting whatever supplies they might need that were essential… they couldn’t weigh themselves down, not when hordes of infected would most likely be chasing them at some point. Hoping they wouldn’t end up running for their lives was overly optimistic.
Dean and Sam’s things were still in their duffels… all they’d have to do was pick them up and hoof it.
Cait touched her sister’s shoulder softly. “Hannah?”
“Hmmm.” Hannah kept her eyes on Daniel, who was just about finished with the bottle.
“We have to go, sweetie.”
“Go where?”
Cait frowned. “Away from here… can you put on some tennis shoes?”
Hannah finally looked up at her sister, stared at her uncomprehending a moment, then she looked down at Daniel again. “What about the baby?”
“Oh, he’s coming,” Dean assured.
Hannah looked up at Dean, watery doe eyes big and not entirely all there, then she put the empty bottle on the end table and stood with the boy in her arms. She walked up to Dean and seemed kind of reluctant to give the baby back. She gave Daniel to Dean, then she disappeared back upstairs.
They were gathering together in the living room, bags slung over their shoulders, ready to head out. The sky outside was tinged orange and gray from the encroaching fires. Dean held Daniel close, hating how Castiel wasn’t there to take him and keep the boy safe.
Suddenly Hannah was at his side, quiet as a mouse and holding something out to him. Dean glanced down at the odd thing of green fabric and straps. “What’s that?”
She shook it out, and Dean might not be an expert on baby gear, but he could see what the thing was for… it was a chest pack with shoulder straps for carrying a baby. He took it, speechless, and Hannah swallowed, “I was… I was putting off getting rid of Elsi’s newborn stuff… I thought maybe, maybe Rob and I would have another one someday…”
Another crying jag was imminent, and they didn’t have the time. So Dean quickly said, “Thank you.” Then, remembering how Sam had used Daniel to divert Hannah’s traumatized grief, he added, “Mind showing me how to use it?”
His ineptitude almost tugged a smile out of her, and she took Daniel from him, handed the baby to Sam, then made quick work of the contraption. Her hands worked like muscle memory, the way Dean could field strip his favorite .45 hung-over and half-asleep, until Dean had the thing on like a backwards backpack. She reclaimed Daniel from Sam without asking, all maternal efficiency. She seemed to take a moment holding Daniel before she expertly slipped him into the cradle at Dean’s chest… and it was totally emasculating, but totally practical. Dean’s hands were free for weapons.
“If you all are done getting baby ready for his first outing,” Gerald snarled, “can we go before we’re all crispy critters?”
Dean shot Gerald a foul look, then resettled his duffel over his shoulder.
Ellen was at the front door, hand on the knob. “Ready?”
A chorus of guns cocking were her answer.
“Everyone try not to die,” Gerald tossed out as Ellen opened the door and the group began to file out of the house in the path of the blaze.
Next