Author: Restive Nature
Genre: Crossover
Type: WiP
Shows: Dark Angel and Supernatural
Disclaimer: Neither show represented in this fiction belongs to me. Dark Angel is the product of Cameron/Eglee and Fox, whereas Supernatural is the product of Kripke and The CW. No profits are made from this fiction and it is intended for private enjoyment only.
Story Rating: PG-13 up to NC-17 for language, violence and sexual situations. (All higher rated material will be contained in its own chapter and clearly marked at the beginning of the chapter. PG versions of these chapters will also be available.)
Chapter Rating: PG-13 for language.
Timeline/ Spoilers: This story takes place predominantly in the Supernatural timeline. This means that the Dark Angel structure of post-pulse America does not fit in. The massive changes will be that Manticore is decades ahead of itself and the characters from DA are born much earlier than portrayed on the show. There is no Pulse occurring. Any other changes to the structures or episodes of the shows will be (hopefully) explained within the story itself.
Pairing: None at this time. (The pairing will become evident as the story progresses, but much further down the road.)
Summary: Change can be a choice and you never know where the road you choose to take will lead you.
When It Changes
Chapter Seven
Breaking New Ground
“Anything?” Dean asked of his father tiredly. It was after midnight and he and John were up, re-reading all the information they had gathered. After getting the Impala running again, John had done a few more surveys of the surrounding countryside, but had found nothing conclusive in his search. He did however find out that there had been some actual kills in the next county over. So he and the boys and Max had headed in that direction.
After presenting themselves as a family of history buffs, on a family vacation, which was one of their weaker stories, they’d been able to suss out a little more information. John would have preferred coming up with a better cover story to explain why they were in town, but with Max standing right there, he’d had no choice. The look she’d given him was strange enough, but then she’d dismissed whatever was bothering her. And she had kept her peace. John knew that pretty soon he’d have to come up with something to keep the curious child from asking too many questions. Of course it helped that he didn’t press her too hard either. It seemed to be a case of ‘you keep your secrets and I’ll keep mine’.
“Nothing,” he replied, just as tired as his son. They were ensconced in another motel and Sammy and Max were supposed to be asleep. John was quickly learning that this wasn’t always the case with Max. Unlike Sam and Dean had been at that age, she didn’t seem to require as much sleep. He’d tried to recall if Mary had ever slept less than he and to his chagrin, he realized that indeed she had gotten less sleep than he had. But he didn’t know if that was natural genetics coming into play, or the fact that she’d been taking care of the boys and was forced to get up when they did.
“I can’t figure out a pattern, a motive, or even what this thing is,” Dean sighed in frustration as he dropped the newspaper clippings he was holding.
“Maybe you should try what it’s not,” John suggested, even though that’s what he’d been doing himself and it didn’t seem at all helpful.
Dean used both forefingers to rub at his eyes. “The killings are taking place every five years or so,” he began. His voice was resigned and John knew that he was simply verbalizing everything he’d already gone through in his mind. “The dates aren’t the same but fall within the general time frame. The killings all took place within a thirty mile radius. The known victims have been all over the board. Men, women, even a kid. There were no specifics as to the nationality, so this thing doesn’t prefer Chinese over Italian.” John frowned at Dean’s lame attempt at humor.
“And all that’s been found at the scenes of the deaths have been the remains of the victims,” John concluded for him. He stared down at a photograph that he’d managed to copy from the newspaper archives that the local library kept. It was a grainy black and white photo, but gruesome nonetheless. He could only imagine what the rest of the scene had looked like, because he knew newspapers weren’t inclined to feature photographs that made the general populace want to vomit up their toenails. The picture he held came close. “Go through the victims again,” he ordered Dean quietly. In his gut he knew there was something about those people. There just had to be.
“Okay,” Dean sighed as e rustled through some papers to get the list they’d compiled.
“We’ve got the most recent, Davis, Jodi A.,” he read off the sheet before him. “Animal control officer, late twenties. Before her was Walstad, Barry, a twelve year old boy. Before him was Newhall, Douglas, the local hardware store owner. Kim Pipinich and Donny Carter, local teens out for a moonlit stroll. And the first victim we were able to find record of, Alan May, a local farmer.”
“Where was May’s farm at?” John asked. Dean shuffled around some more papers and withdrew the map they’d procured, heavily inked in red marker where the deaths had taken place. He pointed at the May’s farm and showed his father. “And May’s died where?” Again Dean pointed at another spot.
“From the article, it sounds like he was on his way home,” Dean sighed.
“Any other clues or hints?” John asked in frustration. Dean looked thoughtfully down at the papers on the table before him.
“There was one thing,” he grunted. He pulled out an article, obviously one that he’d taken from the library, judging by its curling edges and yellow tint. John leaned forward to hear what Dean had garnered. “This reporter mentioned something about an earthquake. Except from what I could gather, no one else felt it. No one else reported it. All this guy had to go on was that not far from the guy’s car, some fissures in the ground had opened up.” His look was expectant.
“Whose death?” John asked shortly.
“May’s,” Dean replied succinctly.
“Any other reports on this earthquake theory?”
“No sir,” Dean grunted.
“Maybe you should check and see if Jodi Davis was out on a call at the time of her death,” Max volunteered suddenly out of the quietness of her corner of the room. Both John and Dean jumped in surprise, spinning around to see the little girl staring at them ingenuously.
“Max!” John sputtered, exchanging worried glances with his eldest son. “You’re awake,” he stated unnecessarily. She nodded slowly. There was an awkward moment of silence.
“What was that you were saying?” Dean asked, trying to figure out when she’d come awake and how much of their conversation she’d heard. Max clambered out from beneath the covers and crawled to the end of the bed.
“Your earthquake theory,” she explained. “You said that Davis, Jodi A. was an animal control officer. If she was out on a call when she died, she might have been responding to some animals upset by an impending earthquake.” She glanced back and forth between the two men, her face almost in disbelief that they weren’t catching on. “You know, ‘cause animals can sense those things even when humans can’t.”
She smiled as John and Dean both looked dumbstruck. There was a sudden flurry from Dean as he singled out the article on Jodi Davis. He scanned through it quickly.
“Uh huh,” he breathed out, sitting up straight to share the article with his father. “There it is. She was on duty that night.”
“Did it say what she was doing?” John asked, anticipation running through him. Dean was already nodding.
“She’d been responding to noise complaints from area residents, and a call about a rattlesnake infestation,” Dean read off quickly. He glanced up at his dad. “Snakes?”
John shrugged but Max already had the answer. “Snakes are attracted to the lower treble of the noise scale,” she told him easily. “They respond to vibrations in the ground. If there was an earthquake, you can be sure they knew about it.”
“But were they attracted or repelled by it?” John wondered.
“If it was an infestation, I’d say they were attracted,” Dean surmised. Max was nodding thoughtfully.
“But most animals tend to avoid natural disasters,” she mused. “Unless the snakes thought that the disaster was going to provide ample food source.”
“Huh?” Dean screwed up his face, trying to follow her line of thought.
“Mice, rats, bugs, fleeing the scene,” Max smiled. She turned to peer over Dean’s shoulder at the article he still held. “Did it say what time of day she died?”
Dean glanced down. “Late evening. Why?”
“That’s weird,” Max scrunched her eyebrows together. “Snakes don’t normally move around in the night. It’s too cold for them.” John was nodding his agreement. “Did they ever find evidence of the snakes?”
“It doesn’t say,” Dean shook his head. “It just mentions that those were the calls she went on. The article surmises that she was attacked by rabid dogs or similar wildlife.”
“Well that tells us a lot more than we knew before,” John sighed. He turned in his seat to stare at the little girl still hanging over Dean’s shoulder. “And why aren’t you asleep young lady?”
“I was,” Max cried out indignantly. “But you guys were talking and it woke me up.” She paused and took in the papers laying about everywhere. “Are you guys done now?”
Dean hid a smile while his father eyed the girl with a frown of disapproval at having been caught at their clandestine activities. “Yes, we’re done. Go back to sleep now.”
“Yes sir,” Max nodded sharply and bounced back to her previous position on the bed. She snuggled down under the covers and both men watched as she promptly shut her eyes and her breathing evened out. They turned to look at one another, amazed that her curiosity hadn’t run rampant all over them. John shuffled all the papers together and placed them in a manila folder.
“Get some sleep son,” he told Dean. “We’ll start fresh on this first thing in the morning.” Dean nodded and did exactly as his father bade hi.
When morning rolled around, again Max was the first one up. Seeing that she was alone in her wakefulness, or so it seemed, she crept over to the table, where the manila envelope was waiting. She stared at it for long seconds, debating over whether or not she should look it over. She knew she only had part of the information, and that only from hearing John and Dean’s conversation the evening before.
It was obvious that they were tracking something down. The thought entered her mind that perhaps this was what they’d been talking about before when she’d surmised that it was possible that they were talking about her.
It was almost as obvious to her that whatever they were tracking, it wasn’t a simple killer. She wondered briefly if they were tracking down the man who had killed Sam and Dean’s mother. But they’d said it was a man. Not an animal. There was a minor conflagration going on in Max’s mind as she desired to learn more about what was going on. But that envelope was not her property. She knew that she shouldn’t touch it. In the end, her indecision was her savior. If she didn’t know what to do, it was better to take no action. After all, she knew that John would be upset if she’d gotten into something that didn’t belong to her. Just the other day, he’d given Sam a talking to for borrowing something of Dean’s without permission. So with those thoughts squarely in her mind, she turned away from the table and headed for the bathroom, and away from John’s watchful eyes.
He sighed and let his head rest on the chair where he’d slept. He shifted a little, annoyed at how his back ached and creaked from the simple movement. He’d cursed himself silently for leaving that manila folder there. But as soon as he’d thought that, he had realized that maybe subconsciously, he’d done it on purpose. He knew that Max was usually up first in the morning and maybe he just wanted to see how she’d react to it.
She’d been tempted. Lord knew that anyone would be. But she’d kept out of something that wasn’t really her business, no matter that she’d overheard him and Dean the night before. He was proud of her for that. Not many kids could keep a lid on their nosiness. Giving Max some time, he waited a while before rousing the boys.
The first order of the day after everyone was washed and dressed was breakfast. John and Dean were itching to get back at the case they’d built up. Without a precise timeframe of when the deaths occurred, they didn’t know when another might occur. Sam was full of chatter at their meal about some of the things they could do in town if they were going to stay on for a bit. And just as swiftly, talk turned about getting to Pastor Jim’s so that they could see friends that they made at camp the previous year. Through it all, Max sat silently, eating calmly. But John wondered what she was thinking about.
As it turned out, Max may have been able to deny her curiosity regarding the manila folder. But she still wondered if the earthquake theory Dean had reported would hold any water. Short of finding some tremor monitoring device, she wasn’t sure how to accomplish the task of finding out. When the revelation of what to do came to her, she almost smacked herself in the head as she’d seen the boys do on occasion.
Even though she wasn’t finished, she set her fork down and addressed John. “Excuse me sir, may I be excused from the table?” she asked as politely as she could manage. John nodded out of course. He figured that she needed to use the restroom. But to the family’s surprise, Max veered in the direction of the front counter. She held a brief conversation with some people at the counter and the waitress that had served them. There were audible sighs and a few glances towards the Winchester table. John did his best to ignore them and wondered what on earth Max was doing. One of the ladies present at the counter patted Max on the shoulder and then gave her a quick hug which Max accepted. After appearing to wipe a tear away from her eye, Max returned to the table.
John watched and waited until al eyes had returned to their rightful place and no one was watching them. “And what was that about Max?”
“I lost my dog,” she told him quietly. Sam and Dean had stopped eating as well. Sammy looked supremely confused.
“Huh?” he grunted. “When did you get a dog?”
“We’ve had Sookie for years,” Max told him calmly. “Remember? And we lost him a few days ago. We looked for him, but he had just disappeared. So we were staying in the area for a little while in case he was found. And those nice people over there told me that we can speak to the sheriff’s department animal control officer after nine o’clock.”
John and Dean were starting to catch on, but poor Sam was still in the dark. But at the look on his father’s face, he held his peace. “And what are we going to tell the Sheriff?” John asked calmly, arranging his cup of coffee, to give himself something to do.
“That Sookie is a full grown Husky, who got away from me when he took off after a rabbit at the park,” Max went on. “Of course Sookie is really good at hiding and if they get a call about any stray dogs, can they please call us so we can come and get him.”
“And what happens when they don’t get any call about any stray Huskies?” Dean asked mirthfully.
“I’ll be so distraught that I’ll hang around the office and mope over my poor lost puppy,” Max grinned at him. “And then if there happen to be any calls involving barking dogs or snake infestations, why I’m sure I’ll hear all about it.”
“And what good will that do us?” Dean asked tiredly. Even if their theory was correct and he really wasn’t sure it was…
“It would be a lead,” John agreed. “But we don’t know that it’s going to happen any time soon,” he explained to Max. She shrugged.
“I don’t know,” she admitted softly. “I just get the sense…”
“Get the sense of what?” Sam demanded. He was interested suddenly in what was going on. He knew well enough why they hadn’t spoken of hunting in front of Max, but he was now upset that suddenly she was being included where he hadn’t been. John’s look told Sam that his father knew exactly why he was upset and the small shake of his head seemed to indicate that he hadn’t told Max anything. Sam glanced at his older brother and knew too that Dean hadn’t deliberately involved her.
“Things just don’t feel right,” Max explained hastily. In truth, she had no words for what her senses were telling her. It was mild, it was elusive. But there was very definitely a sense of apprehension filling the air. Like the calm before the storm. Like a deep breath before a long drop. Her nerves were starting to tauten up and something in her mind was humming.
“What things?” John pressed. Again Max shrugged. John exchanged glances with the boys. Although they didn’t know it, John had dealt with people like this before. They weren’t clairvoyant or telepathic. They were just people more in tune with their senses and intuition. He respected it because he himself had been developing a similar sixth sense of his own. But he hadn’t seen it before in a child Max’s age. But didn’t Mary always used to say that children could always be trusted to know the good from the bad. They were still so close to innocence. But Max was no regular child as far as he could tell. He started thoughtfully at the three children. Dean and Sam were wary, though whether it was from Max’s plan or any oncoming danger, he wasn’t sure.
In the end he decided to humor Max. They could try it for a day or so and see if any information turned up. At that point it was the only lead they had. Once he told her so, the group paid for their meal and left. They arrived shortly at the sheriff’s office and Max conveyed her sad story to the deputy in charge. It didn’t escape John’s notice that she was wary of the officer. But nothing untoward happened to her. The officer directed her to the animal control officer on duty and Max repeated her story with a few embellishments thrown in by the boys. With a sympathetic nature, the ACO let Max hang around the office. John made a show of staying with her for a while before they decided that the boys and he would go out and search some more.
They returned for Max at lunch and there was nothing to report. Max decided to give it a little while before she returned, lest the officers get tired of her presence. But it was a small town, with not to much in the way of unlawfulness going on during the day. In the evening, they’d have their shares of rowdy behavior down at the bars. But true to Max’s senses, something happened shortly after eight o’clock, just as Max was preparing to leave for the night. Several calls began to filter in from the west end of town. Dogs were barking, setting up and some were even said to be hurling themselves at fences in various neighborhoods. The ACO told Max that he needed to head out to take these calls and he’d let her know if they found her dog among the throng. Max thanked him and rushed outside to find John and the boys waiting for her.
“Got a map?” she asked Dean as she climbed into the back seat of the Impala. Dean merely leaned forward and plucked a map from the floorboard. He waited and Max began reeling off the addresses of the complaint calls.
“The first was from 216 Delaware Street,” Max listed. “The next came from 111 Boulder Avenue. The third was an officer out on Sheep Flats Road. And the last one that came in just as I was leaving was 1400 Duvall Lane.”
“Wow,” Sam teased, “you didn’t even need to right those down.” Max grinned impishly at him, and then turned her attention to looking over Dean’s shoulder. He was dutifully circling off each address.
“They’re all out on the west side of town,” he informed them. “The officer’s call was from a road that leads out into the country.”
John nodded and digested the information. There was no doubt in his mind that he needed to go check this out. And he’d be an idiot if he didn’t take some back-up, not knowing what this thing was. So Dean was along for the ride. But what to do with Sam and Max? He was loathe to return them to the motel room and neither did he want to leave them at the diner by themselves. There was no choice it seemed but to bring them along. But what to tell Max?
“Are we going?” Max asked softly, as if reading John’s thoughts.
“We’re going,” he confirmed. “But you and Sam are going to stay put in the car while Dean and I check this out.” Sam arched an eyebrow in his father’s direction, but didn’t protest. There’d been many times that John had left Dean to look after him in the motel room, car or whatever they used. And now it was his turn to look after Max. It kind of made him feel good that his father had the confidence in him to do so.
The drive was silent but for the directions Dean gave his father. John, while taking in the directions, was also mentally going through the armament in the trunk of the car, trying to decide what to take, what would be of use and what to leave behind. He knew that Sammy would have to be armed with something on the very slight chance that whatever this thing was got too close to the younger ones. But given Max’s dislike of guns, he didn’t know what to do with her, or how to impress the need for possible self-defense on her.
They arrived soon enough at where the first of the calls was listed. And even before they arrived, they could hear the dogs howling and the crashing of wooden fences. John continued to drive, cautiously and slowly. He glanced up once in the rearview mirror and saw that Max was sitting rigidly. “Max?” he called her to attention and she glanced up, surprised. “What’s the mater?”
“It’s getting worse,” she confided in a low whisper. He nodded and quickly turned his eyes back to the road.
“We’ll take care of it,” he promised. They reached the lane where the sheriff’s officer had called in from and John pulled the car off the road. Dean nodded once and dropped the map once again to the floorboard. He climbed out of the car and moved around to the trunk while John did likewise. Max moved to open her door but Sam stopped her.
“We stay here,” he told her imperiously. Max sighed and then nodded, her hand dropping from the door. Quickly, John and Dean had assembled their cache of cartable weapons. John called Sam outside and armed him with a small pistol. He had no fears in leaving the weapon behind, knowing how well both his boys handled the weapon. Sam put the gun in his coat pocket and climbed back into the car. He locked all the doors and gave a weak wave goodbye to his father and brother. Max continued to stare at the road ahead of them.
John and Dean walked forward down the road. They had no idea which direction to go, but something seemed to be pulling John forward. He figured that all he could do was listen to that instinct. Perhaps it would tell him when to turn or if something was coming. He could only pray that the limited amount of supposition they had about this supernatural event wouldn’t get them all killed.
Sam and Max waited in the car as the elder Winchesters disappeared from sight. Sam nervously kept one hand on the butt of the pistol in his pocket. He wanted to be prepared for anything, just as Dean had always seemed to be.
It was perhaps half an hour later that Sam suddenly noticed the silence. The dogs and other animals that had been howling cut off as if someone had suddenly muted the entire area. Sam was startled as Max’s head snapped up.
“Sam!” she whispered urgently, as her gaze darted around. The inky blackness of the night was pressing in on her and she couldn’t explain her sudden panic. “We have to get out of here!”
“No,” he argued reasonably. “Dad said to stay put.”
“We have to go! Now!” she yelled the last part as she grabbed for the door lock. Sam, in the front seat started to climb over the seat and stop her, but she was too quick. The door was unlocked and she was tumbling from the car. Sam jerked back and unlocked the driver’s side door and exited slowly.
“Max get back in the car,” he ordered her. But she was rushing around the front of the Impala.
“Sam run!” she yelled as she yanked on his jacket. The panic that had seized her began to creep into Sammy’s consciousness and finally he too could sense that something was not right in their surroundings. Instead of repeating his father’s instructions like a mantra, as he had been doing, he took to his heels and chased after the smaller girl.
Max tried to keep herself from running too fast. She knew she didn’t want to get separated from Sammy. Something she could easily do in seconds. For some reason the protection that she’d always felt towards her Manticore siblings was rising up in her to enfold Sam in its net. She couldn’t let him be hurt. John and Dean would be furious if she did. Always, she had been the follower within her unit. Now it was her time to lead.
So she led him straight down the road John had parked off of, until they came to a small copse of trees to their left. She veered towards them and glanced behind her to see Sam hot on her heels. Once she reached the trees, she paused to wait for him. She pushed him on when he would have stopped.
“When it stops,” she ordered him tersely, “climb one of the bigger trees.”
Sam was about to ask what was going to start when he felt it. The earth began to shudder under his feet. It was a teeth jarring sensation and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise. Like Max, he wrapped his arms around the trunk of a tree, terrified that it was going to come crashing down on him. But it didn’t. He didn’t know how long the quake lasted. It seemed as if the tremor was going on and on forever. And Sam hadn’t had the forethought of wearing a watch so he couldn’t check how much time had elapsed. The next thing he knew, Max was pushing at his leg. Numbly, he began to climb the tree he’d been clinging to, gratified to see that Max was doing likewise with her tree.
The evening’s excitement didn’t end there as both of them heard a low growling noise emanating through the copse. It seemed to come from the direction of where they’d left the car. Sam glanced at Max, but she didn’t return the look. She had her head cocked as if listening for the direction of the sounds origins. But her tracking was disrupted by angry shouts in the distance. The words were garbled, but the voices were familiar and welcome. But before Sam could shout out for them, to let them know that he and Max were safe, she shushed him.
“Quiet!” she hissed.
“It’s Dad and Dean,” he whispered back.
“I know,” she whispered impatiently. “But there’s something else out there.” Before Sam could ask what, Max began to scale the tree even higher. She managed to make it almost to the top of the tree before it began to creak and sway in protest.
“Max?” Sam asked as quietly as he could. “Max, what do you see?” He waited, growing impatient with every passing second. He began to wonder if he could ascend as well, if the tree would hold him and see what was going on. But before he could put the thought to action, she was descending again.
“There’s something out there,” she repeated, but her voice was shaky this time. She stared at Sam, her eyes wide. As if she wasn’t sure she wanted to voice her thoughts on what it could be. Her voice dropped to where it was barely audible. “I don’t think it’s human.”
“Oh man,” Sam moaned. He knew he’d get the tongue lashing of a lifetime from his father and Dean for having let Max see whatever the heck that thing was. But it wasn’t his fault. Max had a mind of her own. “What did it look like?” he asked quickly.
Max shook her head. “It looked like a jumble of snakes,” she said with awe and disgust in her voice. “Up on two legs, with snake arms longer than the others. And a large head. Eyes were black, but that could be because it was nighttime.” They heard then John and Dean yelling. Max’s head cocked again and her eyes widened in horror. “There’s another nomily,” she hissed and began to shimmy down out of the tree. Sam began to follow, but Max was definitely too quick for him this time.
John and Dean had felt the earthquake begin. The force was enough to knock them off their feet. But the moment it had ended, both men were up and running back to the car. As one, they could almost hear the staccato beats of their steps on the gravel road matching their frenzied thoughts. ‘Sam! Max! Sam! Max!’ Neither could explain how they just felt in their guts that Sam and Max were in danger. If Max hadn’t been around, they would have laughed it of. Sammy was always getting himself into trouble. But now they had a little girl in the mix that was totally ignorant of their way of life.
When they reached the turn in the road where John had parked the car, they both skidded to a halt in disbelief.
Where the Impala had previously been sitting parked, there was now a large rent in the road. The car’s back end had succumbed to gravity and fallen in and even as they watched, it was sinking down even lower. John had screamed for his son then. The plea called out in harsh, gasping tones. But before he could run forward to save the children, Dean had grabbed his father’s arm.
“Dad! Look!” he screamed. And well was his caution, for directly behind the vehicle was very probably the thing that they’d been searching for. And like Max had described to Sam, it looked like a knot of snakes all rolled together. But it was upright and vaguely man shaped. With precision instinct, John brought his shotgun up and had locked in his target in seconds. But before he could shoot, a scream and a blackish blur had him swinging around.
To John and Dean’s utter horror, Max had coming flying towards them, tackling a second beast from where it had been poised to take them out. With mounting distress, they watched as beast and child went rolling across the road and into the slight crevice where the rent in the road ended. Max jumped out as quickly as she’d fallen in, free of the thing’s grasping tentacles. She aimed a sharp kick into the thing’s head, snapping it backwards and she darted back from the hole.
John pushed Dean towards the child as he advanced on the other demon-like being. He didn’t know where Sammy was, but he would be damned if the creature before him got to anyone he had decided to protect. He heard more grunts from behind and to the left of him, but he kept advancing, holding the shotgun before him, but taking care to be aware of his peripheral area. He didn’t need another sneak attack.
“There’s only two!” he heard Max call out. He nodded once. That was all he needed to know. The creature behind the car had circled around it now, larger and more rotund than its partner. But John didn’t care. The shotgun was primed and John took careful aim. The recoil into his shoulder was nothing compared to the creature’s shrieks of pain as the shotgun shell exploded in its belly. Its tentacles wrapped around its midsection, almost as if it were trying to push its guts back in. He heard a similar report from Dean’s shotgun.
But the creature was still standing before him. John cocked the gun again and aimed higher this time. The dying shriek was cut off when the creatures head exploded. “Shoot the head Dean!” he shouted out. Dean’s shotgun roared again and all was quiet. John advanced cautiously on the figure now lying on the ground. His caution was well warranted, since he’d seen creatures survive shotguns to the head before. But all that was going on seemed to be a snake-like tendency to perform a death squirm. The tentacles flopped and wiggled, but the main ones that John cold only surmise as the arms and legs were still.
He nudged the creature with his foot, ready to jump to action again, but there was nothing. Only then did he let his breath go. He whirled around to see Max kneeling beside the other creature’s body, staring at it. “Max!” he yelled, catching her attention immediately. “Where’s Sammy?”
“Up a tree,” she answered shortly and went back to staring at the body. John’s eyes widened, taking in how calmly Max seemed to be dealing with this. But he needed to find his youngest son. “Sammy!” he called, to the right, where Max had come from.
“I’m here Dad,” the call came back and filled John with relief.
“Its okay son,” he called back. “You can come out now.” It didn’t take long for Sam to reappear. Although slightly longer than it had taken Max. He jogged into the roadway, the pistol out and in his hand. John was glad to see the guardedness that Sam was exhibiting. But upon seeing the two dead creatures and the Impala, still sunk low into the crevasse, he slowed and finally halted, before letting out a low whistle. John and Dean took the last few steps and quickly checked over the youngest Winchester.
“She saved us Dad,” Sam whispered, staring at Max’s form, still bent over the creature. “If she hadn’t run away, we’d have been in the car.”
“I know Sammy,” John muttered gruffly, dragging his son closer to hug him tightly. “I know.”
“Uh Dad,” Dean grunted. He was all for making sure that Sam was okay, but getting touchy feely was a little much. “I think we need to do some damage control,” he suggested, jerking his head in Max’s direction.
Max had flown to John and Dean’s rescue without thought for her. When she’d realized that there were two creatures and not just one, she’d known that she had to warn John and Dean. As she’d come out of the copse of trees, she’d seen immediately how the creatures had drawn Dean and John into a trap. All she could do was shout a warning and take out the creature that was poised to attack the men. A short fight had ensued and the creature was stronger than it looked. But Max had not spent ten years of her life learning every martial art that could be drilled into her for nothing. Once she’d gotten the creature down, Dean had taken care of it with the shotgun as John did likewise on its partner. She stared at the felled creature, a reality on all the things she’d ever had nightmares about. The nomlies that Ben had hinted at now come to life. While John and Dean had been distracted by Sam’s arrival on the scene, she took the chance and rolled the creature over. To her surprise, the creature had no barcode. It puzzled her. But maybe it had only been the transgenics that were given barcodes.
She wondered about the other one. And while the three Winchester’s stood together and wondered what to say to her, she rose up from the ground. Careful not to fall into the wide hole in the road where the car rested, Max studied the other creature. There was something different about it that tugged at her. She checked and it too had no barcode. But unlike the other, there was something decidedly feminine about it. And it was then that Max realized that whatever these creatures were, they were mates. And judging from the distended belly, procreating mates. Many things clicked into Max’s mind.
Their appearance would account for someone mistakenly thinking they were snakes and making that call to the animal control officer. The reports of animals being torn apart and humans every five years or so made sense as well, if one considered the breeding angle. The pregnant female probably required a larger source of nourishment in preparation for its brood of young. Its mate probably procured that nourishment in the form of larger humans. Humans who just happened to be in the wrong place in the wrong time. They were probably underground dwellers who could somehow burrow rapidly. Max wasn’t to sure on that part, though the crater in the road was mute evidence to some powerful method of ascension. She shook her head and glanced behind her when she heard the footfalls. Now it was time to see if her other theories panned out.
“You hunt these things, don’t you?” she asked softy of John. He glanced at the boys and then slowly nodded. She rose to her feet. “Is this what killed… your wife?” she asked as gently as she could. He shook his head in the negative. “Was it something like this?” Again he nodded slowly, apprehensively. Max sucked in a big breath. Things fell into place and she understood at last the veil of secrecy that had existed on their part. She let her breath out slowly as she contemplated the three males. John was staring at her, while Dean and Sam were awkwardly shuffling their feet, not knowing what to say to her. She grinned suddenly. They were… kind of cool.
“So,” she began grandly. “Should we call for a tow truck, or drag these off and bury them first?”
The three Winchesters all stared in disbelief at the little girl. She beamed at them and Dean began to laugh. Sam nudged hi with his elbow and Dean sputtered out a cough. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “Not what I was expecting.”
“Nor me,” John sighed. It looked like there was another gung-ho child come into his life.
Chapter Eight
No comments:
Post a Comment