April, 2009
It all starts with a pig.
Specifically, one pig in a market in Veracruz, Mexico: an ill pig, though not that ill, but the mutations that occur in this particular pig spark a trail of snowballing panic and destruction that will eventually end the world.
Though to be fair on the pig, it isn't at fault - no, it's hard not to develop a pandemic level disease when you have Pestilence singing nursery rhymes in your ear and lauding you for being the vessel of destruction and the reason why, even since ancient times, pork has been unclean to eat.
And so the swine flu pandemic sweeps the world, jumping borders like they're nothing, making front pages every day with the dozens and even hundreds of deaths that this particular virus has caused. Nobody stops to question why it's in the headlines since the death toll isn't that many, because War has always been adept at the propaganda and fear mongering needed to bend a hysterical public outcry to his will.
So when news breaks of a developed vaccine that will protect from this deadly outbreak, it's the one thing that half the population wants the very most. Famine has them lining up for hours outside schools, outside hospitals, outside any one of the distribution points that have sprung up to satisfy this crushing demand for safety. Within days millions are vaccinated, all across the world, in rich countries and in poor.
And Death? Death stands by the sidelines, waiting patiently for the job he will soon be busy at, as the time counts down to the instant sixty-six hours have passed from the first doses given.
Sam and Dean, preoccupied with figuring out Gabriel's last message and utterly disinterested in phony pandemic scare stories by tabloids that have nothing whatsoever to do with the supernatural line of work, don't notice anything amiss until it's too late.
By then, it's far too late.