by Tim Waggoner
The hill that led back up to the apartment complex wasn’t steep, but she was hardly in the best of shape. When she’d been younger, her idea of exercise had been a leisurely stroll in the park, and now most of her physical activity involved walking around antiques stores. Adrenaline could only do so much to compensate for a mostly sedentary lifestyle, and her heart pounded an uneven rhythm in her ears, and her lungs burned as if they were aflame. Her legs felt heavy and shaky, and they became more so with each step she took. Finally, something gave way in her right knee, her leg buckled, and she went down. She landed on her side and slid several feet down the hill before coming to a stop. She lay there, pulse thrumming, lungs heaving, knowing there was no way she could hope to escape the monster-dog now—if she’d ever had a chance in the first place. She closed her eyes and waited to feel the creature’s teeth sink into her throat.
But she felt nothing.
She opened her eyes and pushed herself to a sitting position. She turned to look back toward the pond, wondering what had happened. Had something scared the dog-thing off? Or had it simply been too full for another meal? For an instant she allowed herself to hope that she might survive this, but then she saw the creature. It sat next to Ted’s corpse, looking at her, head cocked to the side in a very doglike fashion. She understood at once what had happened, and the realization filled her with despair. The monster-dog hadn’t chased her because it hadn’t needed to. She was too slow, old, and overweight to get away. The creature had only needed to wait for her to bring herself down, and she had done so.
As she watched, the great misshapen beast came lurching toward her on its mismatched limbs, crooked mouth open, discolored tongue hanging out, eyes burning with horrible, inhuman hunger.
She screamed, but not for long.
TWO
“I hate this damn car,” Dean said.
“You hate every car that’s not the Impala,” Sam countered.
“Yeah, well, this one’s especially sucktastic. And it smells like feet.”
They’d picked up the brown “crapmobile”—just one of Dean’s nicknames for it—behind a bar in Canton, Ohio. Dean would have preferred “borrowing” something with a bit more class, or at least something that didn’t drive like a turd with tires, but ever since they’d gone off the grid in order to avoid registering on the Leviathan’s radar, they’d been forced to keep a low profile, which meant no Impala. It also meant starting a sideline as reluctant car thieves—all for the greater good, of course. If the brothers failed to kill Dick Roman and ended up as human happy meals for him and his fellow monsters, the rest of the planet would be next on the menu. They were careful to take cars that no one would miss much, junkers that would be easy for their owners to replace and which the cops wouldn’t work too hard to find. Dean had his hands full keeping the rust heaps they stole running, but there was only so much he could do. He constantly kept his fingers crossed that they wouldn’t find themselves in a high-speed pursuit. As rough as the crapmobile was running, if he tromped on the gas, the rods would probably shoot out of the engine like friggin’ missiles.
“Here we are,” Sam said, pointing to a wooden sign on the side of the road. “Brennan, Ohio, which, according to the sign, is home to the Battling Brennan Brahman.”
Dean frowned as they drove across the town line. “Brahman? Aren’t they a kind of water buffalo or something?”
“Sort of. They’re a type of cattle named after the sacred cow of Hinduism.”
“Lousy choice for a school mascot, if you ask me. Alliteration only goes so far, you know?”
After they’d dropped in to the local sheriff’s department as a “courtesy” to let them know that two FBI agents were in town and to glean any additional information they could about the deaths, they drove through Brennan to get a feel for the place. Not that they really needed to. They might have gone from Northeast Ohio to Southwest, but for all the miles they’d driven, they might as well have stayed in the same place. After all the years he’d spent on the road, most Midwestern towns looked alike to Dean, and Brennan was no exception. A downtown consisting of small local businesses housed in old buildings, suburbs dotted with mini malls and chain restaurants, and a decaying industrial section, which in Brennan’s case was a closed bicycle factory on the south edge of town.
“You need a whole factory to make bikes?” Dean said. Sam just shrugged.
They found a cheap no-tell motel not far from the factory called the Wickline Inn, although Dean had no idea who or what a wickline was. They parked in front of the main office, and Sam went inside alone to register them. They always asked for a room as far from the main office as they could get, preferably one with empty rooms on either side. They’d been attacked in hotels more than once over the years, and the last thing they wanted to do was endanger any innocent lives.
Once Sam came out of the office with their room key, they pulled around to the back of the motel, parked, removed their stuff from the car—a couple backpacks with clothes and toiletries, Sam’s computer, and a couple duffle bags containing weapons—and entered the room.
Once they were inside, Dean wrinkled his nose. “Man, this place smells like mothballs and ass.”
“No argument there,” Sam said.
They put their stuff on the beds and gave the room a quick once over, checking the bathroom, looking under the beds, and testing the window locks. Only when they were satisfied the room was clear did they lock the door. Every hunter worth his or her rock salt-filled shotgun knew better than to cut off a possible exit until they were sure they didn’t need it. The brothers didn’t bother unpacking in case they needed to grab their gear and get the hell out of there in a hurry. Not for the first time, Dean thought how much his life resembled that of a criminal on the run. He’d never told Sam, but for a while now, whenever they settled into a hotel room, he thought of his time with Lisa and Ben, and how damned nice it had been to go to sleep and wake up in the same place day after day.
The room had a small desk by the window, and Sam set his laptop on it, raised the lid, and booted up the machine. When the screen came to life, he said, “Once again the Winchesters are open for business.” He sat down in front of the computer and started typing.
Dean sat down on the end of one of the beds, removed Bobby’s flask from the pocket of his brown leather jacket, unscrewed the lid, and took a drink. He didn’t take much, just a sip for maintenance. When he finished he replaced the lid, but instead of putting the flask away, he held it in his hands and looked at it for several moments. He remembered finding the bullet hole in Bobby’s cap, remembered turning around in the van and seeing the corresponding hole in Bobby’s forehead, remembered the blood...
“This is bull crap, Sammy.”
“What is?” Sam didn’t turn away from the computer screen. Once he got absorbed in the virtual world, he was harder to distract than a soul-starved demon intent on making a deal.
“This,” Dean insisted, gesturing to take in the room. “Screwing around in Ohio when we should be nailing Dick Roman’s hide to the wall.”
Sam stopped typing and turned to look at his brother. “I know how you feel. I want to get Dick as much as you do.” He frowned. “Wait, that didn’t come out right.”
“Ha ha. That’s friggin’ hilarious. Quit fooling around, Sam. I’m serious.”
“So am I. Well, not about the dick joke. But I want to stop the Leviathan, too. Not only to keep them from turning the human race into quarter pounders, but because I want justice for Bobby. Just like you.”
Bobby Singer had been shot in the head by none other than Dick Roman himself during a scuffle with the Leviathan, and he’d died in a hospital not long after.
The Leviathan were among God’s first creations, predating humans and even angels, but the beasts proved too wild and uncontrollable, concerned only with sating their savage hunger, and God banished them to Purgatory. Good work on that one, God, Dean thought. Their friend and ally Cass—also known as the angel
Castiel—had inadvertently released the Leviathan when he absorbed all the souls in Purgatory in order to gain the power to defeat the archangel Raphael. Once free of their ancient prison, the Leviathan began planning to take over the world, intending to keep humanity alive solely as a food source. Among other things, the creatures possessed the ability to analyze a human’s DNA and transform into an exact physical duplicate of their target. So the leader of the Leviathan assumed the guise of billionaire businessman Dick Roman, and used the man’s considerable financial and political assets to build a secret empire around the world.
The brothers knew that the Leviathan’s ultimate plan was the subjugation of humanity, but exactly how they intended to accomplish this—and how the Winchesters could stop them—they didn’t know. That lack of knowledge gnawed at them like rabid rats, especially in Dean’s case. Bobby had been more than an encyclopedic source of information, an endless fount of useful contacts, and a perpetually grouchy pain in the ass. He’d even been more than a close family friend. Bobby had been like an uncle to Dean and Sam. Hell, he’d practically been a second father to them, especially since their own dad had been on the road hunting and killing monsters much of the time while they were growing up. Both brothers missed him like hell.
There wasn’t anything in this life that Dean wanted more than to take down Dick Roman, and every second he and Sam spent doing anything other than bringing the pain to that shark-toothed son of a bitch was a second wasted as far as he was concerned. But they were here, so they might as well get to work.
He remembered something he’d been told recently. Hunting’s the only clarity you’re gonna find in this life. And that makes you luckier than most.
Preach it, Brother Ness, Dean thought. He could use a double-shot of clarity right now. Make that a triple. Besides, their detour to Brennan might not be a complete waste of time. Who knows? There might even be a decent strip club in this town.
“All right.” He sighed and took another hit from Bobby’s flask. “Anything new since we left Canton?”
Sam looked at him a moment longer, and Dean thought his brother was going to say something about his drinking, but instead he turned back to face the laptop. He typed for a minute, stopped, then leaned forward and stared at the screen. Dean had seen him like this a thousand times before, and he knew what it meant.
“You got something.”
“Yeah. Looks like there’s been two more deaths, an older man and woman this time. According to the local paper—The Brennan Broadsider—they were found near a pond in back of the apartment complex where they lived. It happened two nights ago.”
Dean stood, slipped the flask back into his jacket pocket, and went to look at the screen over Sam’s shoulder.
“Does it say if they were getting their freak on when they died?”
Sam gave him a look.
“Hey, if you gotta go, you might as well go out smiling.”
Sam turned back to the screen. “They were mummified like the others. Literally nothing left but skin and bones.”
“We ganked Chronos, so we know he didn’t do it, but it sure sounds like his style.”
“Yeah, but the pattern’s different. Chronos killed in groups of three over a period of years. So far four people have died in Brennan, all in the last week.”
“And I assume they all ended up looking like they were on the diet plan from Hell.”
“Yep.” Sam continued reading. “The town officials are pretty spooked. They’re worried the deaths are the result of some kind of toxic chemical or exotic disease. They’ve even sent tissue samples from victims to the CDC.”
“Unless those guys have doctors who specialize in Weird with a capital W, I don’t think they’re going to find anything useful.”
Sam closed his laptop. “Looks like it’s up to us then.”
Dean gave his brother a wry smile. “Isn’t it always?”
* * *
“You sure we don’t need protective suits? You know, like the kind they wear in those movies about plagues and stuff?”
Sam regarded the kid from the rental office. He was in his early twenties, probably fresh out of college and working his first real job. He was medium height, thin, with neatly trimmed black hair and an angular goatee that made him look kind of douchey. He wore a semi-expensive tie and highly polished shoes—both looked brand new—along with a dark blue windbreaker. Back at Arbor Vale’s main office, he’d introduced himself as David Something—Stephenson maybe. Although Sam wasn’t sure. His brain wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders these days, and every once in a while it slipped a gear. Beats total insanity, he thought.
After he and Dean had defeated Lucifer and prevented Armageddon, Sam’s body and soul had been separated. His body remained on Earth, while his soul was trapped in the pit with Lucifer and the archangel Michael. Sam’s body retained his memories, but without a soul he was the equivalent of a sociopath, devoid of all human feeling. In many ways, being soulless had made him a more efficient hunter. He was more decisive, quicker to act, and completely ruthless. Unfortunately, he also didn’t care if he caused any collateral damage during his hunts. If innocent people died while he was killing some monster, so what? It was simply the cost of doing business.
Meanwhile in Hell, Lucifer and Michael played with his soul like two bored cats sharing a single ball of string, and those cats had some damn wicked claws. They shredded his soul as if it were tissue paper, and when it was finally rejoined to Sam’s body—thanks to Death himself, no less—the damage done threatened to drive him insane. Death established a psychic wall to protect Sam from the madness that dwelt within him, but that wall had fallen, and it was now up to Sam to hold the insanity at bay on his own. Most days he did a good job hiding the crazy, but it took a lot out of him, and he wasn’t always certain he could trust his senses and memory.
So maybe the kid’s name was Stephenson, maybe not. At least he was sure the kid was real. Well... reasonably sure.
“Not in this situation,” Sam told Maybe-Stephenson. “We’re confident that the danger is minimal.”
“But there is danger,” the kid insisted. “Right?”
Sam and Dean were wearing their best “We’re government employees” monkey suits, and had introduced themselves as agents Smith and Jones. They’d flashed their faux FBI credentials at the kid and claimed they were there to assist the CDC in its investigation. He bought it, and now he was leading them, reluctantly, to the duck pond at the rear of the apartment complex.
Dean glanced sideways at him. “If there was any chance of contamination, don’t you think my partner and I would be wearing...” He trailed off and looked to Sam for help.
“Biohazard gear,” Sam supplied.
“Right,” Dean said. “That stuff.”
“Maybe,” the kid said, “but don’t you guys get special shots or something to inoculate you against deadly diseases, radiation, and other nasty crap? You know, A-level medicine, the kind of drugs the government pretends don’t exist.”
“Let me guess,” Dean said. “You spend a lot of time surfing conspiracy websites, don’t you?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Nothing. Just a hunch.” He gave Sam a look that said, We got us a real genius here, and Sam suppressed a smile.
Arbor Vale was an older complex, built sometime in the seventies, Sam guessed, but it was clean and the grounds were well maintained. It didn’t look like a place where supernatural evil lurked, but if his life as a hunter had taught him anything, it was that appearances meant jack. While monsters, demons, ghosts, and other nasties tended to be drawn to darkness and decay, they were just as likely to be found sniffing for prey in a well-to-do suburb as an abandoned graveyard. Evil—real Evil, the kind with a capital E—could be anywhere at any time.
The pond lay at the bottom of a gently sloping hill, and the Brennan PD had erected a crime-scene tape barrier at the top of the hill to warn anyone from getting too close. The tape was wound between a series of
metal stakes driven through orange traffic cones, but despite the officers’ best efforts, the tape drooped low enough for them to step over.
“Seriously?” Dean said as he eyed the tape barrier. “Do the Deputy Dawgs in this town really think that’s going to keep anyone out?”
“I guess they don’t get many major crime scenes here,” Sam said.
The Winchesters stepped over without hesitation, but the kid hung back.
“Do you really need me to go down there with you?” he asked.
Dean gestured toward the pond. “You see those ducks swimming down there? Do you think they’d stick around if there was any toxic goo in the area?”
“Ducks could have a natural immunity to whatever it was that killed those two old people.” The kid’s eyes narrowed. “Or maybe whatever got them was genetically engineered to only be fatal to humans.”
“Man, you really need to lay off the Internet,” Dean said.
“Besides, I don’t want to go anywhere near those woods.”
Sam and Dean exchanged a glance.
“Why not?” Sam asked.
“Feral dogs,” the kid explained. “Rumor is the woods around town are full of them. I haven’t seen any myself, but lots of people have. There’s one that’s supposed to be an especially scary bastard. Big and black.”
“A black dog.” Dean shot his brother another look. “You don’t say.”
“You can go back to the rental office,” Sam said. “If we need you for anything else, we’ll find you there.”
The kid reached into his shirt pocket, removed a business card, and handed it to Sam, who was gratified to see the last name on it was Stephens. Close enough.
“Tell you what, you need me, call me. Nothing personal, but I don’t want to catch anything from you guys. I don’t want to end up a human-sized prune, you know?”
Without waiting for a reply, Stephens turned and started back toward the rental office, almost but not quite running.
