by Tim Waggoner
Sam stepped forward, assumed a shooting stance, leveled his Beretta, and fired three bullets into Frankenmutt’s side in quick succession. Dean felt the creature jerk with the impact of each round, and blood issued from the wounds. Not red, though. This stuff was black, thick, and slow-moving, more like syrup. The black goo made him think of the gunk that poured out of Leviathan when they were wounded, but this ichor was darker and it stank like rotten meat. Despite its injuries, Frankenmutt didn’t appear to be in any pain. If anything, it seemed more enraged. It tore free of Dean’s grip, jumped off him, and lurched toward Sam, growling and snapping.
Sam held his ground and fired twice more as the monstrous canine bore down on him. The bullets took out hunks of flesh and made more ichor flow, but the creature barely slowed as it lunged toward him. It fastened its teeth on Sam’s right leg just above the ankle, and Sam let out a cry of pain and fired point blank at Frankenmutt’s head. Part of the dog’s skull was sheared away, taking an ear with it. The beast let go of Sam, staggered backward, and then shook its head back and forth rapidly, as if its head was wet and it was trying to dry itself. Blood and bits of brain matter flew through the air, and then the creature turned and ran off into the woods, swerving as it went, almost as if it were drunk.
Sam sat on the ground and took in a hissing breath. He placed his Beretta next to him, and gingerly began to inspect his wound. Dean got up, retrieved his .45, and walked over to Sam, scanning the area for any sign that Frankenmutt was planning to double back and renew its attack.
“How bad is it?”
“I’ll live.” Sam’s sock was wet with blood, and when he peeled it away from the skin, a ragged wound was revealed. “It’s not too deep. I think most of the damage was caused when I shot him in the head. The impact caused him to jerk away from my ankle, and his teeth tore the skin.”
“All right. Let’s tape you up and get you back to the car.” Dean knelt next to his brother, reached into one of his jacket’s outer pockets, and pulled out a roll of silvery duct tape. Their first aid kit was in the crapmobile, but duct tape would make an effective field dressing until they reached the car.
“I’m fine,” Sam insisted. “We have to go after the dog.”
He tried to stand, but when he put his weight on his wounded ankle, it buckled, and he sat back down, grimacing with pain.
“Frankenmutt can wait until after we’ve plugged your leak,” Dean said. “Now shut up and sit still.” He ripped off a length of tape and went to work.
* * *
Dean’s field dressing was good enough to allow Sam to make it back to the motel. Once there, he went into the bathroom, carefully cut the tape away with a pair of surgical scissors, and threw the blood-smeared mess into the trash. He then cleaned the wound—first with holy water, then with soap and regular water, and finally with alcohol. Afterward, he lathered on some antibiotic cream, then bandaged and wrapped it. Satisfied, he dry swallowed a couple ibuprofen before limping out of the bathroom. The injury was going to slow him down, but not as much as he’d feared.
Dean had tossed his jacket on his bed, and he sat at the table in his hoodie, leaning back in the chair, feet up, staring at the laptop screen.
Sam smiled. “I hope you’re not checking out one of those sites where you have to click ‘I verify that I’m eighteen years or older’ for access.”
He regretted it as soon as he said it. Considering how obsessed Dean had been with Dick Roman in the past few weeks, Sam would have far preferred his brother to visit a few sleazy websites than try to dig up still more information on their least favorite Leviathan.
“I’ve been surfing the web looking for the skinny on butt-ugly patchwork dogs.” When Sam didn’t reply right away, Dean added, “What? Like you’re the only one who knows his way around a mouse pad?”
“Skinny?” Sam said.
“Yeah, well... guess I picked up some new vocabulary in 1944.” He took his feet off the table, sat up, and faced Sam. “Speaking of picking things up, we should probably get you to a doctor before you come down with Franken-rabies.”
“You’re joking, right? Supernatural creatures don’t carry natural diseases.”
“Still, better safe than hydrophobic, right? All it’ll take is a series of incredibly painful abdominal injections.” Dean grinned.
“That’s not how they treat rabies. You get a shot of vaccine in the shoulder, then gamma globulin in the wound and in the hips or the butt. They’re no more painful than normal shots. But it doesn’t matter because I don’t need them.”
Dean sighed. “What’s the point of being the older brother if you can’t torture the younger one every once in a while? Besides, who says Frankenmutt is supernatural? You saw those scar lines, right? He looked like something a mad scientist slapped together from spare parts.”
“Frankenstein was just a novel by Mary Shelley,” Sam said. “You ever read it?”
“I’ve seen all the movies,” Dean said.
Sam ignored him and went on. “Shelley wrote her novel in the early 1800s, long before the modern era of science. The procedure she wrote about is pure fiction. It could never work in the real world. You can’t make a single body out of a bunch of separate parts. Forget about trying to hook up the central nervous system, the problems with tissue rejection alone...” Sam trailed off when he realized Dean was staring at him. “What?”
“I thought you went to law school, not medical school.”
“My point is that whatever Frankenmutt is, it’s not a product of science.”
“All right, I’ll take your word for it, Dr. Dorkwad.”
Sam had been standing as they talked, and his ankle was starting to throb. He also felt suddenly tired. Maybe he’d lost more blood than he thought. He hobbled over to one of the beds and sat down. Dean watched him closely as he walked, and although he frowned, he said nothing about Sam’s injury, and Sam was grateful.
“Did you find anything on the Net?” he asked.
“Other than stuff about the movie Frankenweenie, no.” He closed the laptop and sat back in the chair. “Man, I can’t get over how fast that thing was. The way it looked, it should’ve had trouble just walking, but it moved faster than a cheetah on meth.”
“Not at the end,” Sam pointed out. “After I shot it in the head, it took off, but it didn’t move much faster than an ordinary dog. And it moved in a zigzaggy kind of way, like it was having trouble staying on its feet.”
“That’s because you wounded it. If you were missing half your head, you wouldn’t be moving very fast either.”
“It shouldn’t have been moving at all, but the injury only slowed it down, and I think I know why.”
“Let me guess. It was full of life energy after killing Joyce and Ted, which is why it could move so damn fast, but its needle dropped to E after you shot it, and it had just enough left in the tank to make a getaway.”
“That’s my take on it,” Sam said. A wave of weariness came over him, and he stifled a yawn. What was wrong with him? It wasn’t even five o’clock yet, and he felt ready to hit the sack.
“It’ll do till a better theory comes along. So whatever this thing is, it’s still just your basic supernatural freak show, only with more emphasis on the freak this time. How do you figure all those dog parts came together, though? Maybe we should check the town for a pet cemetery. Or it could be some kind of group ghost, a whole pack of doggie spirits, and I should’ve blasted it with rock salt after all.”
Sam fought another yawn. “It still could be a Frankenmutt, only one created by magic instead of science. I’ll see what I can dig up about spells that are supposed to... fuse body parts... together.” This time he couldn’t fight the yawn, and he fell back onto the bed without bothering to get under the covers. “After I take a nap.”
“Hey, Sam, are you o–”
That’s the last he heard before a warm, wonderful darkness gathered him up and swept him away.
* * *
In the parking lo
t outside the Winchesters’ room, a figure stood. There was no one around, but even if there had been, they wouldn’t have seen him. Not unless he wished it. A gentle breeze was blowing, but even though it caressed his skin, he didn’t feel it.
Even from here, he could sense the injury that had been done to Sam Winchester, both the physical component and the spiritual. Of the two, the latter was far more serious.
This isn’t good, he thought. Not good at all. But all he could do was stand here and continue to watch.
For the moment, at least.
* * *
Catherine Luss tossed the Broadsider onto the kitchen counter. It was yesterday’s edition, but she’d been so busy working that she’d had no chance to look at it before. The headline screamed off the front page in large black letters:
TWO MORE FOUND DEAD IN
MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES!
She’d only gotten partway through the lead story before she hadn’t been able to read any further. She hadn’t known either Ted Boykin or Joyce Nagrosky. Both had retired before Bekah started high school, and neither had been among her patients. She also hadn’t known the two previous victims—a gas station attendant named Randy Neff and a teenage girl named Angela Bales. She thought Bekah might’ve known Angela, or at least been aware of her, as they’d been close in age, but she didn’t know, and it wasn’t as if she could ask her daughter. Not anymore.
She’d poured herself a cup of coffee with half-and-half and artificial sweetener before sitting down at the counter for what she’d hoped would be a relaxing—and badly needed—break from work. The time readout on the microwave said it was 5:12, but until she’d looked out the window, she hadn’t known whether that was a.m. or p.m. She wondered how long she’d been down in the lab this time, and was surprised to discover she didn’t know. Twenty-four hours? Forty-eight? Did it even matter?
What did matter was that headline, or rather the four lost lives behind it. The story was short on facts and long on hysteria-fueled supposition, speculating that the deaths were caused by anything from a previously unknown super bug to toxic waste or radiation—despite the fact that Brennan had no industry that could have produced either of the latter. She was surprised the reporter hadn’t blamed the deaths on UFOs while he’d been at it. But she knew exactly who was ultimately responsible for those poor people’s deaths.
She was.
The temperature in the kitchen seemed to drop several degrees. Catherine was wearing a white lab coat over a gray pullover sweater with a thick collar, but she still shivered. She felt the cold as much inside as out.
“It’s not your fault.”
The voice was soft, little more than a whisper, really, with a slight accent that she thought might be German, although she wasn’t sure. A subtle odor drifted to her on the air, a musty smell like a just-opened cedar chest that had been closed for a very long time. She took a sip of her coffee and half turned on the stool to face Conrad.
Even though she’d been working with him for the past few months, she still had to struggle to keep an expression of distaste from showing every time she looked at him. It wasn’t that he was hideous. He was rather pleasant-looking, actually, if on the plain side. A thin man in his early sixties, he stood no more than five-foot-five and had a large nose contrasted by small, almost feminine lips and a narrow chin. His hairline had receded well past his forehead, but the hair that remained to him was brown and thick, without a hint of gray. His most striking feature, however, was his large penetrating eyes. They rested beneath thick black eyebrows, and their color was indeterminate, seeming to change depending on the light. Sometimes they were dark blue, sometimes charcoal gray, and other times almost black. As always, he wore a suit, this one brown with an ivory shirt and gold tie—stylish and retro at the same time. It wasn’t his appearance that Catherine found distasteful, nor was it the way he tended to remain statue-still until he decided to move. What bothered her was something more indefinable, his... presence, she supposed you could call it. He exuded an aura that she found repellent in the same way that magnets of opposite charge pushed against each other. Whenever he approached, she felt an urge to back away, to keep as much distance between them as possible. He did nothing overt to intimidate her, but she had to fight to hold her ground whenever they were in the same room together—which these days they often were.
She ran her hand through her short blonde hair, suddenly aware of how greasy it was. She was in dire need of a shower. She hated to think what she smelled like, and she probably had the world’s worst case of dragon breath from all the coffee she’d been drinking. Working alongside Conrad down in the lab, she never thought about such things. If she did stink, he never gave any sign that he noticed, let alone was bothered by, her body odor. But up here, in what she thought of as the Real World, she was painfully aware of her lack of hygiene.
“Tell that to the families of the four people who died,” she responded. “I took an oath, Conrad.”
“Primum non nocere: First, do no harm,” Conrad said. “I am familiar with the Hippocratic Oath.” He gave her a slight, almost amused smile, but otherwise stood completely still, his hands at his sides. From the neck down, he might as well have been a mannequin.
“It’s my fault it escaped,” she said.
“Our fault,” he corrected. “We both thought the cage you had me purchase would be of sufficient strength to contain the beast. I am only grateful that you were at your practice when it made its bid for freedom. Otherwise, it surely would have attempted to feed on you.”
What a mess the damned thing had made in its escape, too. The damage to the lab hadn’t been so bad, since the creature headed straight for the stairs after tearing free from its cage, but it knocked down the basement door and raced around the house as it searched for a way out—shredding her furniture with tooth and claw in frustrated rage—before finally crashing through the back door. Luckily, it had happened in the early evening and had been dark enough by then that none of her neighbors had seen the beast as it fled. It also helped that she lived on several acres of land outside town. If she’d lived in a suburb, somebody surely would have spotted the monstrous dog running from her house and called the police. In that case, she’d probably be in jail right now, her medical license suspended. If she’d lived in an earlier age, she’d likely have been burned at the stake. She still could be, she supposed. The people of Brennan weren’t exactly the most educated or progressive in the state.
Even though she found being in Conrad’s presence difficult, Catherine was thankful for his assistance. He’d taken care of everything, buying and installing two new doors, as well as removing the worst of the damaged furniture and hauling it away. He’d even offered to replace her lost furniture, but she’d declined. She spent most of her time down in the lab, and it wasn’t as if anyone else lived in the house. Not anymore.
She held her mug in both hands and looked down at the coffee within. “Maybe it would’ve been better if I had been here,” she said softly.
Conrad stepped forward. For a moment she feared he meant to reach out and touch her, perhaps give her upper arm a reassuring squeeze or lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. She tensed, hoping that if he did she would be able to keep from screaming. As if sensing her discomfort, Conrad took a step back and kept his hands at his sides.
“You shouldn’t speak like that,” he admonished mildly. “The beast’s escape and the lives subsequently lost are regrettable, yes, but I must remind you of the larger concern here. If you achieve your goal, not only shall you reap personal reward, you will change the world forever. Untold billions of lives will be saved, and the human lifespan itself will be extended. It is impossible to say just how long people will live in the new world your work will bring about, but virtual immortality is not out of the question. Isn’t the attainment of such a goal—”
“Worth four people’s lives?” she interrupted. She looked up at him, jaw tight with anger.
Conrad’s eyes narrowed, b
ut his voice remained even as he replied. “Something for which those people would willingly sacrifice themselves.”
“Considering we can’t ask them, we’re never going to know for sure, are we?”
They were both silent for a time after that. Catherine sipped her coffee and tried to ignore how Conrad just stood there, quiet and statue-still.
After a while, he said, “You will not abandon your work.” It was part question, part command.
She finished the last of her coffee and sighed. “No, I won’t.”
Conrad gave her a slow smile.
That’s the way a lizard would smile, she thought.
“Good. Now, is there any service I may perform for you?”
Sometimes she found his formal manner charming. Other times, like now, she found it cold and distant.
“We could use some...” She looked down, unable to meet his gaze. “Fresh supplies.”
His lizard smile returned. “It will be my pleasure.”
FOUR
After Conrad left, Catherine was able to relax a little. While she was grateful for both the tutelage and assistance he’d provided over the past few months, she was always on edge when he was around. There was something indefinably wrong about him that set off alarm bells in the back of her mind. Beyond his appearance and manner—and aside from what she suspected he did in order to procure more “supplies” for her work—he drew in the energy of his surroundings, as if he were some kind of living black hole. Light, heat, even her own vitality seemed to drain into him, and she felt weary after spending any length of time in his presence. His departure always came as a relief. She was never able to fully relax when Conrad was in the house, and now that he was gone, she knew she should try to lie down and get some sleep. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten any decent rest, let alone a full eight hours.
