Resident Evil adaptation of Supernatural
Title: Resident Evil: Supernatural
Author: coomasieblue
Movie Adapted: Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Pairing/Characters: Gen. Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Jake.
Word Count: Just shy of 4000
Summary: An AU version of 'All Hell Breaks Loose' part 1, Resident Evil style.
Disclaimer(s): Neither Supernatural nor Resident Evil and the characters therein are mine.
This was so not the time to realize he shouldn't have given a flying fuck about the cop's probable reaction to the contents of the Impala's trunk and just brought everything with him into the church. Thanks to that, he was down to one or two, at most three, bullets in his gun and, after patting his jacket pockets, yep, no spare clips.
“I'm out,” the cop mouthed at him, herding the newscaster between them.
Great, Dean rolled his eyes ceiling-ward in exasperation, keeping track of the two creatures skulking down from their respective corners.
“Dude, you are beyond fugly,” he told the one in front of them, making a face at the freakishly long tongue flicking around in the air like a giant mutant lizard's. Was that really its brain he could see on the outside of its head?
“What do we do now?” the newscaster whispered at the cop and him.
Dean smiled at her, thankful at least that she didn't seem the type to suddenly break out screaming.
“Don't worry. I'm working on a plan.”
“Yeah?” the cop muttered fiercely at him. “Now would be a good time to let us in on it.”
“I'm working on it,” Dean snapped in return, glaring at the creature in front when it hissed at him, uncertain whether that was wasted on it since he couldn't see any eyes on its face. His plan would sure develop a lot faster if he knew what these things were at least. They sure didn't look like any of the supernatural creatures Dad had mentioned in his journal. If there was a time he really needed his walking encyclopedia of weirdness, this would be it.
Holy water. Other than silver bullets and consecrated wrought iron rounds, holy water probably had the highest possibility of doing something, especially if those creatures were demonic in nature. Which, come on, they were certainly ugly enough to be.
The little covered well of holy water was to the right of the creature in front. Naturally. Since when were things ever easy for a Winchester?
“Okay, just follow my lead. Slow steps. We need to get back to the holy water.”
“Why?” the newscaster asked, looking confused.
“Why?” the cop demanded. “This is more of your crazy Christian shit isn't it? Look man, I went along with you and washed the bite on my arm with holy water 'cause you said it'd help but you're insane if you think that's going to stop these things.”
And this, Dean growled in his head, was why cops should stick to their jobs and not bug him when he was trying to doing his.
“I've got no time to explain everything so that it makes sense in your safe little world, okay? How 'bout we just leave that to later and focus on getting out alive--”
A rumbling sound made him look up at the stained glass panels that took up most of the wall behind the ceremonial altar. It grew louder by the heartbeat, paired with a brightening spot of light dead center of the glass. Dean barely finished putting the two together when the mural of angels shattered.
“Shit, move!” he shouted, yanking the newscaster with him to the side of the pews and pulling his jacket off to cover her head.
Glass shards rained down on him but Dean was too busy at first squinting past the glare of bike lights at the rider when the bike thumped down in the center aisle of the hall to brush them off, then his hands were occupied with the shotgun tossed to him.
He didn't know what exactly the idiot daredevil was doing behind him while he pumped one of the creatures that'd left its ceiling corner perch full of lead, only that it involved exploding his bike from the sound and sudden burst of heat. He really needed to talk to the kid about this thing he had for wreaking his rides.
Turning back around, Dean noted that the two civilians still seemed in one piece by the side of the pews, one of the fugly creatures was pinned under the heavy wooden cross last seen suspended behind the altar with half its head - brains - missing while the last creature was in a heap under the smoking wreckage of the bike. Which left only one person to account for.
“What the fuck were you thinking, crashing down here like fucking Van Damme?” he shouted, grabbing a fistful of camouflage t-shirt to haul the idiot close.
“Saved your sorry ass, didn't I?” Sam squeaked the last bit out, but Dean ignored the wussy sound, squeezing him even tighter.
“Ow, D-dean.”
Dean loosened his grip, holding Sam an arm's length away to give him a quick once over. He looked good, better than he had back in San Francisco at least, if he disregarded the ridiculously long hair. Only, Sam winced and scrunched up his face like a little kid when he thumped him once more on the back for good measure.
“What's wrong?”
“Skin's a little...sensitive.”
The cop interrupted before Dean, revising his earlier assessment of Sam's health, could press for more details.
“You two know each other?”
Sam blinked at Dean.
“Of course. This is the cousin I was telling you about.”
“Janus Prospero? The one you've been searching for for the past few months?”
Dean flashed a tight smile at the cop. “Yeah. Guess he had better luck in finding me. Excuse us for a minute.”
The moment they were through the side door and Dean closed it behind him, he spun around to demand, “Dude, how did you know I was in this church?” the same time Sam asked, “Dude, how did you know I was in this city?”
Dean quirked his lips. “Ash and the promise of a lifetime supply of free PBR. I have to give it to him and his dancing monkeys on a keyboard. Dude managed to find you in a three thousand mile haystack with no leads to follow up on. What about you?”
“I, uh, had a vision,” Sam replied, ducking his head a little.
“So the yellow-eyed bastard's involved in this somehow? Should've known. So what? Are those zombies out there infected with Demonic Virus 2.0 or something? What'd he do to you these past two months?”
“This isn't Croatoan all over again, Dean. As far as I know, those people out there were infected with a human engineered virus. The T-virus.”
“T-virus,” Dean echoed. “Human engineered.”
“Yeah. Those aren't zombies. At least not the kind that we hunt. They're more like biological weapons gone wrong.”
Okay. Dean got it. This wasn't their usual kind of gig at all and good thing Sam showed up because he'd have just gone ahead and splashed holy water on those things back there.
“So why did the Umbrella Corporation kidnap you?”
Sam stuck his hands in his jeans pockets. “Umbrella knew I had these visions, I don't know how. Dean, they knew about the other psychic kids too. There was this girl, Lily, who could stop people's hearts with a touch and this guy, Jake, who had superhuman strength.”
So perhaps Umbrella was better at reading the papers and obits and putting two plus two together better than the cops. Dean didn't exactly feel like jumping for joy at the news that they had somebody new on their backs after the FBI.
“Why'd they want you guys for?”
“I think they were trying to figure out how our powers worked,” Sam said, shrugging. “They took blood samples and took brain readings and stuff like that on a regular basis. Kept us locked in solitary rooms for the most part.”
“What? So they think there's like a gene or something for your freaky weirdo visions, like there's a gene for being gay?”
That got him his first disapproving Sam face for the first time in two months but Dean would only admit that aloud under the influence of ten shots of tequila - maybe not even then - that he'd missed it.
“Dean, it's not proven that homosexuality is genetic,” Sam said huffily. “And I don't know what they found. Maybe I'd be happier if it turned out to be a genetic thing.”
Dean wasn't too sure about that 'cause he sure as hell didn't get weirdo visions. The next thought that popped up made him snort at the mental image.
“Dude, would that make Andy the Professor Xavier of you bunch of mutants?”
“Dean! Can't you be serious about this?”
“Okay, Sammy. You can stop channeling Cyclop's laser beam glare anytime now. So, how'd you get out then?”
Sam shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “Something happened at the underground lab. Next thing we knew, the doors to our rooms weren't locked anymore. A SWAT team tried to get us out but we ran into a few of those things along the way. Jake and I managed to get to the surface but we'd gotten scratched by those things and a team from Umbrella took us to a hospital in the city.”
Swallowing hard, Sam looked away to the side. “I saw Jake's arm before they took him away. Something was growing from the scratch, like tendrils. I'm...I'm pretty sure the virus is in me too.”
Dean grabbed Sam by the shoulders, gently this time, trying to catch his gaze. “Hey, Sam. You don't know this, right? I mean, you look totally like your usual geek self to me.”
“Dean,” Sam muttered, still looking to the side, doing the shifty eye thing that hadn't fooled Dean since the first time Sam tried it on him as a chubby toddler. He frowned when Sam swatted his hands away but said nothing.
“I overheard the scientists. I know what I heard, okay? They were talking about the virus mutating in me. Because of something in my DNA that's causing my visions and--”
“Look, Sam. Scientists come up with bullshit theories all the time, right? You sure as hell don't look like one of those freaks in the church, or one of those zombies running around outside. How long's it been? Couple of hours? Days? Don't you think if something was going to happen, it would've happened by now?”
Sam rubbed at his lower right arm absently. “I don't know how long I was out for. Next thing I knew, I was alone on a hospital gurney in a room hooked up to some monitoring equipment and the entire first floor was empty when I checked. Didn't see anybody on the streets around the hospital either. There was an army surplus store down the road so I grabbed some supplies and then I had the vision of you here. ...Dean, when I had that vision, it didn't give me a headache like always. Something must be...something's not quite right, don't you think?”
He had that mulish expression on his face that never failed to make Dean feel like he'd have an easier time banging his head against a brick wall than making sense with Sam.
“Only you would think that having a migraine that, from the way you act, feels like a kick in the jewels is better than no pain at all. We'll figure what's going on once we get out of here.”
“What're we waiting for then? Let's go.”
Dean had to press his palm flat against Sam's chest and push hard to keep him still. “Easy there, Van Damme. First off, the city gates have been sealed. We can't just drive out of here.”
“We still have our SWAT outfits, don't we? There are SWAT vehicles all over the roads out there.”
Dean shook his head. “No good. They're not letting anybody out, not civilians or cops or SWAT or whatever. Saw it myself. Anybody who went within fifty feet of the gates got mowed down.”
Sam took his hands out of his pockets, flinging them wide. “Then what? We're just going to wait here for them to come in and drag us all off to quarantine?”
“Nobody's taking you to quarantine, okay.”
Huffing air hard through his nose, Dean nearly missed the faint noise above, of blades chopping against the night air outside. He looked up at Sam, grin restored to his face.
“Good thing we still have those SWAT outfits in the car.”
***
It had been working out to be a good plan. Well, as good as any plan that involved leaving the Impala behind in a parking garage. Dean made sure to pat her trunk and tell her that he was coming back for her soon.
They made it all the way into the waiting helicopter in their SWAT gear, even with the cop and newscaster with them. That, however, was as far as they got before they were herded out of the helicopter by an asshole in a white suit from Umbrella.
Dean wasn't paying much attention to his yapping since it sounded like the kind of crap he read in Weekly World News - two headed dogs, the mutant offspring of a fish and cat or whatever. What he couldn't understand was why the asshole was running his mouth and keeping them on the building when there were frikkin' zombies out there on the streets zoning in on them. Then out lumbered the closest thing to Frankenstein's monster he'd ever seen that wasn't on a television screen.
“Fight him,” the asshole ordered.
Dean, doing a quick estimation of how long it'd take for the zombies to bash their way through the glass doors at the bottom of the building and march their way up to the roof, shouted at Sam, “Dude, just kick his ass already. We've got five minutes.”
Sam said no loud and clear, arms folded across his chest, glaring at the asshole. That pretty much was what Dean expected, which would've been fine if they had a plan B to turn to. The next second however, Sam rocked back on his heels, one hand coming up to squeeze the bridge of his nose.
“Fuck,” Dean muttered, convinced Sam was about to fall backwards and crack his skull open. He was already halfway to his feet before the gun pressed against his temple persuaded him to drop to his knees again.
Sam didn't fall though, didn't even stumble back another step. He simply looked as if he'd bitten into something sour, and his forehead was one big, deep wrinkle.
“Fine,” Sam said this time, shucking off the bulky SWAT gear as he stalked to where the Frankenstein's monster dude was flexing its huge hands and rolling its shoulders for warm up. “I'll do it. Take that gun away from his head first.”
Thanks Sam, Dean thought, watching the asshole return the gun to the guard next to him, Sam's hard-eyed stare observing the same action.
He knew that Sam's visions never showed something nice happening in the future, of course, but Dean was still surprised to see him go on the offensive right off the bat. His moves weren't too bad, Dean thought, watching Sam land a few critical hits that would've knocked any ordinary guy over. But, man, had Sam always moved that fast? The defense on his left side was still weak, an observation he'd tried to beat into Sam whenever they sparred. It wasn't until the monster dude smashed a crater into the ground that Dean remembered Sam telling him about some kid with superhuman strength.
And then it was Sam's turn to get his ass handed to him on a platter.
Dean stared straight ahead at Sam, not even blinking when Sam got his left arm dislocated or broken, he couldn't really tell just from the sound or the way Sam was now favoring the arm, but he did see the guard standing over him wince. Good. Still paying close attention to the guard from the corner of his eye, Dean inched his knee forward until his fingers could brush against his boot and, more importantly, the switchblade tucked in it. He loved incompetency he could take advantage of. Snagging the switchblade without too much fumbling, Dean started working at the cord binding his wrists together behind his back.
The cord gave way just as Sam kicked the mutant kid into a jagged length of metal poking out from the ruins of a decorative street lamp.
“Sorry Jake,” Dean heard Sam say before dropping the iron rod he had in his hands and turning his back on the dude. He was coming up with quite the list of things he was going to beat into Sam's head once and for all when they got out of this zombie infested city.
The asshole was talking again, something about the virus and evolution. Dean wasn't too fond of the other kids with psychic powers, not after Max, although Andy was cool and Ava sounded like she'd been all right too, but even he knew calling the mutant kid an evolutionary dead end was an asshat thing to say.
His cue to move came when the asshole ordered Sam to kill the poor kid. Dean lunged to the side, pressing the switchblade into the cop's hands and sprang to his feet, yanking the gun from the guard's hands.
Crap, Dean thought grimly, firing on the guards in front of him. He'd just given the FBI legitimate reason to go after them now.
“Hey,” he called out to the newscaster, laying down a line of suppressive fire to give her a running chance. “Get back behind this van!”
She made it without catching a bullet, but the cop wasn't so lucky. Dean saw him collapse with a bullet in his gut, courtesy of the Umbrella asshole.
“Crap,” he repeated out loud, risking a quick glance around the side of the van to locate Sam.
“Minus two minutes,” he yelled over the roar of gunfire when he didn't immediately catch sight of Sam. “Get your ass over here now!”
Taking a deep breath, Dean ducked out from the cover of the van, picking off guards with the same steady aim he used when blasting ghosts full of rock salt.
There weren't that many guards left between Sam and him, he noted with relief, pointing his gun at his next target. He didn't have a chance to make the shot though.
“Drop your weapons! Stay where you are!”
Dean's gun fell from his fingers, but, thank God, so did the guns of everybody else around him. Waving his arms at Sam wasn't a problem but he couldn't even shuffle his feet on the spot. Well, not that he was happy about it but for a moment there, he'd been afraid Sam's stupid bellow had surprised him into dropping his gun.
“What the hell, Sam? Did you just Obi-wan us all?” Not waiting for Sam's response, Dean continued to demand, “When did you start being able to do this? Why the hell didn't you just do this right from the beginning?”
Sam shoved the guard he'd just knocked unconscious off him and got slowly to his feet. “Because, Dean, I can only do it right now. You were about to get shot in the back by three different guys. Uh, you can move, Dean,” Sam said, sounding like he wasn't too sure whether it would work.
Dean took an experimental step successfully and grinned. If this meant Sam's mind whammy wasn't a one-time punch thing, they'd be able to take care of their FBI problem for good. Probably wouldn't even need to run credit card scams or hustle pool and cards, they'd be set for life. He looked at the asshole from Umbrella, but the smart ass remark on his tongue died when he saw where the asshole was looking, one hand pressed to his ear-piece, and turned to look as well.
“Sam! No!”
Sam wend down on his knees, giving Dean a clear shot at the mutant kid. He emptied his clip in the kid's face as he ran before tossing the gun away to catch hold of Sam with both hands.
“Hey, Sam, Sammy, look at me.”
Sam's gaze slid away from him without even meeting his eyes. Heart pounding in his throat, Dean reached one arm around to feel his back, fingers coming into contact with wetness. Hell, no. This wasn't happening.
“Hey, it's not even that bad, Sam. It's not even that bad. You're going to be okay. We'll get you patched up...Sam, SAM!”
Dean held Sam closer to him, putting his head down on Sam's shoulder to stop Sam's head from rolling to the side, he told himself. This did not, he told himself through a wheezing breath of air, feel at all like the times they took turns playing possum when Sam was just a little kid. When he'd been taking care of his pain in the ass little brother while their Dad was away.
“SAM!”
“Ow, Dean. I...heard you...the first...time. Stop yelling...in my ear.”
“What?”
Dean raised his head to find Sam smiling weakly at him, eyes slitted but open nonetheless. As he continued staring, Sam's hand came up to pat him clumsily on the upper arm, thumping down as if it weighed a ton.
“You didn't think I was dead, did you? Dude, are you crying?”
“No. Shut up, Sam. How....”
“The T-virus. It must have regenerated your spinal cord and sealed the wound. But at such a rapid rate. Unbelievable. I've never seen this level of genetic interaction between the T-virus and host DNA in any sample. It must be the foreign DNA in you.”
Dean really wanted to shut that asshole's pie-hole but he kept his attention instead on the faint sounds he could hear coming from the building. He'd ask a doctor he could trust for a second opinion. “We've got to go. Come on, Sam. Up you go.”
Dragging Sam up with one hand under his right arm, he did his best to keep Sam from knocking both of them over and flattening him. “You can do it. Don't think you're getting a free ride to the helicopter from me, Sasquatch.”
He still had to drag Sam to the helicopter, skirting wide around the guards trying to move from their spots. The newscaster was still crouched behind the van where Dean had left her, unable to move until Sam huffed out a voice command.
“We're not going to hurt you. We'll explain later, just get into the helicopter now, okay?” Dean sighed when she shied away from them, eyes wide and scared. They managed to get all the way into the helicopter just as the glass doors shattered and the first of the zombies appeared on the roof, swaying jerkily towards the immobilized guards laid out like a free for all buffet.
“Go, go!” Dean shouted at the pilot, lowering Sam down to a seat and strapping him in with the newscaster's help while he kept an eye on the ground as the helicopter lifted off.
Just before the helicopter's ramp came up completely, he saw the cop lurch upright and reach out for the nearest living person next to him. He made a face, but all disgusted thoughts on the cop chomping on the Umbrella asshole's arm flew out of his head at the sudden explosion behind them.
“What was that?” the newscaster asked as they pressed against the windows to look at the city they'd left behind.
“Whatever it was,” Dean growled, “my car had better still be perfect condition when I get back to her.”
Author: coomasieblue
Movie Adapted: Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Pairing/Characters: Gen. Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Jake.
Word Count: Just shy of 4000
Summary: An AU version of 'All Hell Breaks Loose' part 1, Resident Evil style.
Disclaimer(s): Neither Supernatural nor Resident Evil and the characters therein are mine.
This was so not the time to realize he shouldn't have given a flying fuck about the cop's probable reaction to the contents of the Impala's trunk and just brought everything with him into the church. Thanks to that, he was down to one or two, at most three, bullets in his gun and, after patting his jacket pockets, yep, no spare clips.
“I'm out,” the cop mouthed at him, herding the newscaster between them.
Great, Dean rolled his eyes ceiling-ward in exasperation, keeping track of the two creatures skulking down from their respective corners.
“Dude, you are beyond fugly,” he told the one in front of them, making a face at the freakishly long tongue flicking around in the air like a giant mutant lizard's. Was that really its brain he could see on the outside of its head?
“What do we do now?” the newscaster whispered at the cop and him.
Dean smiled at her, thankful at least that she didn't seem the type to suddenly break out screaming.
“Don't worry. I'm working on a plan.”
“Yeah?” the cop muttered fiercely at him. “Now would be a good time to let us in on it.”
“I'm working on it,” Dean snapped in return, glaring at the creature in front when it hissed at him, uncertain whether that was wasted on it since he couldn't see any eyes on its face. His plan would sure develop a lot faster if he knew what these things were at least. They sure didn't look like any of the supernatural creatures Dad had mentioned in his journal. If there was a time he really needed his walking encyclopedia of weirdness, this would be it.
Holy water. Other than silver bullets and consecrated wrought iron rounds, holy water probably had the highest possibility of doing something, especially if those creatures were demonic in nature. Which, come on, they were certainly ugly enough to be.
The little covered well of holy water was to the right of the creature in front. Naturally. Since when were things ever easy for a Winchester?
“Okay, just follow my lead. Slow steps. We need to get back to the holy water.”
“Why?” the newscaster asked, looking confused.
“Why?” the cop demanded. “This is more of your crazy Christian shit isn't it? Look man, I went along with you and washed the bite on my arm with holy water 'cause you said it'd help but you're insane if you think that's going to stop these things.”
And this, Dean growled in his head, was why cops should stick to their jobs and not bug him when he was trying to doing his.
“I've got no time to explain everything so that it makes sense in your safe little world, okay? How 'bout we just leave that to later and focus on getting out alive--”
A rumbling sound made him look up at the stained glass panels that took up most of the wall behind the ceremonial altar. It grew louder by the heartbeat, paired with a brightening spot of light dead center of the glass. Dean barely finished putting the two together when the mural of angels shattered.
“Shit, move!” he shouted, yanking the newscaster with him to the side of the pews and pulling his jacket off to cover her head.
Glass shards rained down on him but Dean was too busy at first squinting past the glare of bike lights at the rider when the bike thumped down in the center aisle of the hall to brush them off, then his hands were occupied with the shotgun tossed to him.
He didn't know what exactly the idiot daredevil was doing behind him while he pumped one of the creatures that'd left its ceiling corner perch full of lead, only that it involved exploding his bike from the sound and sudden burst of heat. He really needed to talk to the kid about this thing he had for wreaking his rides.
Turning back around, Dean noted that the two civilians still seemed in one piece by the side of the pews, one of the fugly creatures was pinned under the heavy wooden cross last seen suspended behind the altar with half its head - brains - missing while the last creature was in a heap under the smoking wreckage of the bike. Which left only one person to account for.
“What the fuck were you thinking, crashing down here like fucking Van Damme?” he shouted, grabbing a fistful of camouflage t-shirt to haul the idiot close.
“Saved your sorry ass, didn't I?” Sam squeaked the last bit out, but Dean ignored the wussy sound, squeezing him even tighter.
“Ow, D-dean.”
Dean loosened his grip, holding Sam an arm's length away to give him a quick once over. He looked good, better than he had back in San Francisco at least, if he disregarded the ridiculously long hair. Only, Sam winced and scrunched up his face like a little kid when he thumped him once more on the back for good measure.
“What's wrong?”
“Skin's a little...sensitive.”
The cop interrupted before Dean, revising his earlier assessment of Sam's health, could press for more details.
“You two know each other?”
Sam blinked at Dean.
“Of course. This is the cousin I was telling you about.”
“Janus Prospero? The one you've been searching for for the past few months?”
Dean flashed a tight smile at the cop. “Yeah. Guess he had better luck in finding me. Excuse us for a minute.”
The moment they were through the side door and Dean closed it behind him, he spun around to demand, “Dude, how did you know I was in this church?” the same time Sam asked, “Dude, how did you know I was in this city?”
Dean quirked his lips. “Ash and the promise of a lifetime supply of free PBR. I have to give it to him and his dancing monkeys on a keyboard. Dude managed to find you in a three thousand mile haystack with no leads to follow up on. What about you?”
“I, uh, had a vision,” Sam replied, ducking his head a little.
“So the yellow-eyed bastard's involved in this somehow? Should've known. So what? Are those zombies out there infected with Demonic Virus 2.0 or something? What'd he do to you these past two months?”
“This isn't Croatoan all over again, Dean. As far as I know, those people out there were infected with a human engineered virus. The T-virus.”
“T-virus,” Dean echoed. “Human engineered.”
“Yeah. Those aren't zombies. At least not the kind that we hunt. They're more like biological weapons gone wrong.”
Okay. Dean got it. This wasn't their usual kind of gig at all and good thing Sam showed up because he'd have just gone ahead and splashed holy water on those things back there.
“So why did the Umbrella Corporation kidnap you?”
Sam stuck his hands in his jeans pockets. “Umbrella knew I had these visions, I don't know how. Dean, they knew about the other psychic kids too. There was this girl, Lily, who could stop people's hearts with a touch and this guy, Jake, who had superhuman strength.”
So perhaps Umbrella was better at reading the papers and obits and putting two plus two together better than the cops. Dean didn't exactly feel like jumping for joy at the news that they had somebody new on their backs after the FBI.
“Why'd they want you guys for?”
“I think they were trying to figure out how our powers worked,” Sam said, shrugging. “They took blood samples and took brain readings and stuff like that on a regular basis. Kept us locked in solitary rooms for the most part.”
“What? So they think there's like a gene or something for your freaky weirdo visions, like there's a gene for being gay?”
That got him his first disapproving Sam face for the first time in two months but Dean would only admit that aloud under the influence of ten shots of tequila - maybe not even then - that he'd missed it.
“Dean, it's not proven that homosexuality is genetic,” Sam said huffily. “And I don't know what they found. Maybe I'd be happier if it turned out to be a genetic thing.”
Dean wasn't too sure about that 'cause he sure as hell didn't get weirdo visions. The next thought that popped up made him snort at the mental image.
“Dude, would that make Andy the Professor Xavier of you bunch of mutants?”
“Dean! Can't you be serious about this?”
“Okay, Sammy. You can stop channeling Cyclop's laser beam glare anytime now. So, how'd you get out then?”
Sam shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “Something happened at the underground lab. Next thing we knew, the doors to our rooms weren't locked anymore. A SWAT team tried to get us out but we ran into a few of those things along the way. Jake and I managed to get to the surface but we'd gotten scratched by those things and a team from Umbrella took us to a hospital in the city.”
Swallowing hard, Sam looked away to the side. “I saw Jake's arm before they took him away. Something was growing from the scratch, like tendrils. I'm...I'm pretty sure the virus is in me too.”
Dean grabbed Sam by the shoulders, gently this time, trying to catch his gaze. “Hey, Sam. You don't know this, right? I mean, you look totally like your usual geek self to me.”
“Dean,” Sam muttered, still looking to the side, doing the shifty eye thing that hadn't fooled Dean since the first time Sam tried it on him as a chubby toddler. He frowned when Sam swatted his hands away but said nothing.
“I overheard the scientists. I know what I heard, okay? They were talking about the virus mutating in me. Because of something in my DNA that's causing my visions and--”
“Look, Sam. Scientists come up with bullshit theories all the time, right? You sure as hell don't look like one of those freaks in the church, or one of those zombies running around outside. How long's it been? Couple of hours? Days? Don't you think if something was going to happen, it would've happened by now?”
Sam rubbed at his lower right arm absently. “I don't know how long I was out for. Next thing I knew, I was alone on a hospital gurney in a room hooked up to some monitoring equipment and the entire first floor was empty when I checked. Didn't see anybody on the streets around the hospital either. There was an army surplus store down the road so I grabbed some supplies and then I had the vision of you here. ...Dean, when I had that vision, it didn't give me a headache like always. Something must be...something's not quite right, don't you think?”
He had that mulish expression on his face that never failed to make Dean feel like he'd have an easier time banging his head against a brick wall than making sense with Sam.
“Only you would think that having a migraine that, from the way you act, feels like a kick in the jewels is better than no pain at all. We'll figure what's going on once we get out of here.”
“What're we waiting for then? Let's go.”
Dean had to press his palm flat against Sam's chest and push hard to keep him still. “Easy there, Van Damme. First off, the city gates have been sealed. We can't just drive out of here.”
“We still have our SWAT outfits, don't we? There are SWAT vehicles all over the roads out there.”
Dean shook his head. “No good. They're not letting anybody out, not civilians or cops or SWAT or whatever. Saw it myself. Anybody who went within fifty feet of the gates got mowed down.”
Sam took his hands out of his pockets, flinging them wide. “Then what? We're just going to wait here for them to come in and drag us all off to quarantine?”
“Nobody's taking you to quarantine, okay.”
Huffing air hard through his nose, Dean nearly missed the faint noise above, of blades chopping against the night air outside. He looked up at Sam, grin restored to his face.
“Good thing we still have those SWAT outfits in the car.”
***
It had been working out to be a good plan. Well, as good as any plan that involved leaving the Impala behind in a parking garage. Dean made sure to pat her trunk and tell her that he was coming back for her soon.
They made it all the way into the waiting helicopter in their SWAT gear, even with the cop and newscaster with them. That, however, was as far as they got before they were herded out of the helicopter by an asshole in a white suit from Umbrella.
Dean wasn't paying much attention to his yapping since it sounded like the kind of crap he read in Weekly World News - two headed dogs, the mutant offspring of a fish and cat or whatever. What he couldn't understand was why the asshole was running his mouth and keeping them on the building when there were frikkin' zombies out there on the streets zoning in on them. Then out lumbered the closest thing to Frankenstein's monster he'd ever seen that wasn't on a television screen.
“Fight him,” the asshole ordered.
Dean, doing a quick estimation of how long it'd take for the zombies to bash their way through the glass doors at the bottom of the building and march their way up to the roof, shouted at Sam, “Dude, just kick his ass already. We've got five minutes.”
Sam said no loud and clear, arms folded across his chest, glaring at the asshole. That pretty much was what Dean expected, which would've been fine if they had a plan B to turn to. The next second however, Sam rocked back on his heels, one hand coming up to squeeze the bridge of his nose.
“Fuck,” Dean muttered, convinced Sam was about to fall backwards and crack his skull open. He was already halfway to his feet before the gun pressed against his temple persuaded him to drop to his knees again.
Sam didn't fall though, didn't even stumble back another step. He simply looked as if he'd bitten into something sour, and his forehead was one big, deep wrinkle.
“Fine,” Sam said this time, shucking off the bulky SWAT gear as he stalked to where the Frankenstein's monster dude was flexing its huge hands and rolling its shoulders for warm up. “I'll do it. Take that gun away from his head first.”
Thanks Sam, Dean thought, watching the asshole return the gun to the guard next to him, Sam's hard-eyed stare observing the same action.
He knew that Sam's visions never showed something nice happening in the future, of course, but Dean was still surprised to see him go on the offensive right off the bat. His moves weren't too bad, Dean thought, watching Sam land a few critical hits that would've knocked any ordinary guy over. But, man, had Sam always moved that fast? The defense on his left side was still weak, an observation he'd tried to beat into Sam whenever they sparred. It wasn't until the monster dude smashed a crater into the ground that Dean remembered Sam telling him about some kid with superhuman strength.
And then it was Sam's turn to get his ass handed to him on a platter.
Dean stared straight ahead at Sam, not even blinking when Sam got his left arm dislocated or broken, he couldn't really tell just from the sound or the way Sam was now favoring the arm, but he did see the guard standing over him wince. Good. Still paying close attention to the guard from the corner of his eye, Dean inched his knee forward until his fingers could brush against his boot and, more importantly, the switchblade tucked in it. He loved incompetency he could take advantage of. Snagging the switchblade without too much fumbling, Dean started working at the cord binding his wrists together behind his back.
The cord gave way just as Sam kicked the mutant kid into a jagged length of metal poking out from the ruins of a decorative street lamp.
“Sorry Jake,” Dean heard Sam say before dropping the iron rod he had in his hands and turning his back on the dude. He was coming up with quite the list of things he was going to beat into Sam's head once and for all when they got out of this zombie infested city.
The asshole was talking again, something about the virus and evolution. Dean wasn't too fond of the other kids with psychic powers, not after Max, although Andy was cool and Ava sounded like she'd been all right too, but even he knew calling the mutant kid an evolutionary dead end was an asshat thing to say.
His cue to move came when the asshole ordered Sam to kill the poor kid. Dean lunged to the side, pressing the switchblade into the cop's hands and sprang to his feet, yanking the gun from the guard's hands.
Crap, Dean thought grimly, firing on the guards in front of him. He'd just given the FBI legitimate reason to go after them now.
“Hey,” he called out to the newscaster, laying down a line of suppressive fire to give her a running chance. “Get back behind this van!”
She made it without catching a bullet, but the cop wasn't so lucky. Dean saw him collapse with a bullet in his gut, courtesy of the Umbrella asshole.
“Crap,” he repeated out loud, risking a quick glance around the side of the van to locate Sam.
“Minus two minutes,” he yelled over the roar of gunfire when he didn't immediately catch sight of Sam. “Get your ass over here now!”
Taking a deep breath, Dean ducked out from the cover of the van, picking off guards with the same steady aim he used when blasting ghosts full of rock salt.
There weren't that many guards left between Sam and him, he noted with relief, pointing his gun at his next target. He didn't have a chance to make the shot though.
“Drop your weapons! Stay where you are!”
Dean's gun fell from his fingers, but, thank God, so did the guns of everybody else around him. Waving his arms at Sam wasn't a problem but he couldn't even shuffle his feet on the spot. Well, not that he was happy about it but for a moment there, he'd been afraid Sam's stupid bellow had surprised him into dropping his gun.
“What the hell, Sam? Did you just Obi-wan us all?” Not waiting for Sam's response, Dean continued to demand, “When did you start being able to do this? Why the hell didn't you just do this right from the beginning?”
Sam shoved the guard he'd just knocked unconscious off him and got slowly to his feet. “Because, Dean, I can only do it right now. You were about to get shot in the back by three different guys. Uh, you can move, Dean,” Sam said, sounding like he wasn't too sure whether it would work.
Dean took an experimental step successfully and grinned. If this meant Sam's mind whammy wasn't a one-time punch thing, they'd be able to take care of their FBI problem for good. Probably wouldn't even need to run credit card scams or hustle pool and cards, they'd be set for life. He looked at the asshole from Umbrella, but the smart ass remark on his tongue died when he saw where the asshole was looking, one hand pressed to his ear-piece, and turned to look as well.
“Sam! No!”
Sam wend down on his knees, giving Dean a clear shot at the mutant kid. He emptied his clip in the kid's face as he ran before tossing the gun away to catch hold of Sam with both hands.
“Hey, Sam, Sammy, look at me.”
Sam's gaze slid away from him without even meeting his eyes. Heart pounding in his throat, Dean reached one arm around to feel his back, fingers coming into contact with wetness. Hell, no. This wasn't happening.
“Hey, it's not even that bad, Sam. It's not even that bad. You're going to be okay. We'll get you patched up...Sam, SAM!”
Dean held Sam closer to him, putting his head down on Sam's shoulder to stop Sam's head from rolling to the side, he told himself. This did not, he told himself through a wheezing breath of air, feel at all like the times they took turns playing possum when Sam was just a little kid. When he'd been taking care of his pain in the ass little brother while their Dad was away.
“SAM!”
“Ow, Dean. I...heard you...the first...time. Stop yelling...in my ear.”
“What?”
Dean raised his head to find Sam smiling weakly at him, eyes slitted but open nonetheless. As he continued staring, Sam's hand came up to pat him clumsily on the upper arm, thumping down as if it weighed a ton.
“You didn't think I was dead, did you? Dude, are you crying?”
“No. Shut up, Sam. How....”
“The T-virus. It must have regenerated your spinal cord and sealed the wound. But at such a rapid rate. Unbelievable. I've never seen this level of genetic interaction between the T-virus and host DNA in any sample. It must be the foreign DNA in you.”
Dean really wanted to shut that asshole's pie-hole but he kept his attention instead on the faint sounds he could hear coming from the building. He'd ask a doctor he could trust for a second opinion. “We've got to go. Come on, Sam. Up you go.”
Dragging Sam up with one hand under his right arm, he did his best to keep Sam from knocking both of them over and flattening him. “You can do it. Don't think you're getting a free ride to the helicopter from me, Sasquatch.”
He still had to drag Sam to the helicopter, skirting wide around the guards trying to move from their spots. The newscaster was still crouched behind the van where Dean had left her, unable to move until Sam huffed out a voice command.
“We're not going to hurt you. We'll explain later, just get into the helicopter now, okay?” Dean sighed when she shied away from them, eyes wide and scared. They managed to get all the way into the helicopter just as the glass doors shattered and the first of the zombies appeared on the roof, swaying jerkily towards the immobilized guards laid out like a free for all buffet.
“Go, go!” Dean shouted at the pilot, lowering Sam down to a seat and strapping him in with the newscaster's help while he kept an eye on the ground as the helicopter lifted off.
Just before the helicopter's ramp came up completely, he saw the cop lurch upright and reach out for the nearest living person next to him. He made a face, but all disgusted thoughts on the cop chomping on the Umbrella asshole's arm flew out of his head at the sudden explosion behind them.
“What was that?” the newscaster asked as they pressed against the windows to look at the city they'd left behind.
“Whatever it was,” Dean growled, “my car had better still be perfect condition when I get back to her.”