The past couple weeks had gone by like a whirlwind, Sam couldn't help but notice. The last day he remembered things being normal - well, as normal as was possible for him, anyway - was a week ago. He and Dean had been on a hunt in a small town in Massachusetts when he'd encountered the strange looking woman. He didn't see much of her. Just her face and he knew that something was wrong. And that was solidified when she attacked. Out of nowhere. Sam had approached to ask her what was wrong and she'd jumped up and lunged at him. Thank God Dean had been there, or else he would have been toast. A shotgun blast to the head and the woman was back on the ground. Bleeding maroon. Dark maroon. Almost...brown?

Sam's stomach lurched uncomfortably at the sight of all the blood, all the ibrown/i blood spreading along the floor, and he turned when Dean told him to and ran for the door. They got into the Impala, slammed the door and took off like a bat out of hell, without even a second thought.

"What the hell iwas/i that thing?" Dean asked him emphatically as they sped down Route 1.

Sam stared stupidly out the window, unable to answer so he just stayed silent.

They rapidly found out the answer.

Two days later, the news brief about the 'epidemic in Eastern Massachusetts' started playing on constant loop in the motel room. Sam sat, stunned, on the bed as he watched a group of six people who looked just like the woman from the other night attacking a small girl who was playing on the playground. There was that uncomfortable lurch again. Dean was out picking up dinner with Cas when the news broke and they'd been home for twenty five minutes, the three of them staring at the TV and hoping for some kind of punchline.

But no one was laughing. People were screaming, crying and running away, but no one was laughing.

Three days after that, the epidemic had grown. Spread across Massachusetts and into parts of all bordering states, and the three of them had all they could do to get out of town. The barricades began, and the patrolmen at each barricade became stricter and stricter about letting people cross. And that was how it happened. The separation. Dean, Cas and Sam were in line to get through a barricade and onto a bus to get out, to get to safety, and the attack came. It was hard enough to stick together with bodies pressed together like a rock concert in an elevator, but when you all had one common goal and you threw fear into the mix, it became even harder.

One second, Dean was there, and the next he was gone. And Sam was on the wrong side of the cutoff line to get out of town.

Four minutes later, his phone rings. It's Dean. Telling him to sit tight and he'll be back to get him. Cas asks exactly where he is, and Sam holds back. He doesn't want Dean coming back into this hellhole. Dean steals the phone and repeats the question, and Sam pretends to be in static, and 'loses his connection.'

Over the next two days, the group Sam had found had diminished. From ten to five, from five to two and from two to Sam alone, they'd all succumb to this 'infection' which had found its way from epidemic to pandemic status. He'd heard on the radio of infections as far away as New Jersey and as far west as Indiana. Sam couldn't help but wonder how he himself hadn't succumb to it, since he'd taken the brunt of the beating from the infected 'humans,' being the only one who could operate a gun with some kind of precision.

But he had bumps, bruises, bite-marks and scrapes...but no virus. By the tenth day, he begins to wonder how long he can hold out, scavenging grocery stores and gun shops by himself.

And that's when he encounters the first of the 'special infected.'

Creatures with claws as big as his head, normal human bodies and a blood lust that was somehow higher than the normal infected. Sam wondered how he had managed to make it out of that encounter in one piece, but he did. And now he finds himself barricaded inside a bank, with its Plexiglas windows and steel reinforced doors, so no one can get to him; no one can find him.

Hope is rapidly depleting.

He thinks of Dean, with Cas, hopefully somewhere far, far away from Massachusetts and New Jersey and Indiana. He thinks of Bobby. And Ellen and Jo and Chuck and crazy Becky, and how even though she was vaguely insane, he'd like to see her again, just so he were out of here.

He's thinking of biting the bullet - literally - when he hears it. Outside the door. Voices. One, no two, no four! Four voices...not groaning and stuttering infected voices, but real, true, living human voices.

He's not alone? He's not alone! He runs to the door, looks outside and smiles at the group of four as they rapidly approach him and the bank.

Sam never had been one to lose hope, anyway. Taught him to let that change.