Disclaimer: I still don't any of these hotties... Please, I'm stopping myself from losing myself on another rant about the extent of their hotness...
Chapter Two: Out Of The Box
The mile marker told Sam and Dean that they were about 100 yards from the summit, but they had no need for it, because Dean had spotted the wreckage of the small biplane off to their left.
"Over there," He said, pointing.
The two of them, far ahead of the group and out of sight, climbed across the stone wall that marked the trail and walked carefully through the trees to the large clearing where the plane had come down. Dean circled it, staring intently at the scorch marks flanking both sides of the 'hull'. The right wing had been almost completely torn off when the plane made contact with the trees above the clearing, but Dean could tell the little plane had been built to be tough. Although an explosion had destroyed the interior of the cockpit, the metal exterior was only blackened—not broken.
"It doesn't look like it fell a thousand feet from the sky and crashed into a mountain," Sam commented quietly, also examining the debris. "Looks like it fell—I don't know, maybe a hundred feet."
"Yeah, but I guess it doesn't really matter. These old machines were made to last. What we need to be looking for are any signs of..." He hesitated, an amused expression sliding onto his chiseled face. "We don't even know what we're looking for, you know that?"
"That's not really what I consider funny. That's more of a doomful fact to me."
"Doomful?" Dean laughed. "If you ever use that word again in my presence, I'll have you assassinated. Come on, let's get started."
Dean squatted beside the ruined cockpit and reached inside, rustling around in some scraps of metal and charred fabric. He picked up a clipboard which had one entire side burnt off of it, and tossed it away form the plane, starting a messy pile of what he hoped would become a pile of evidence in time.
Sam followed his lead. He walked around to the other side of the plane and bent down. "See that? Can you reach that med kit back there?"
Dean reached an arm under some of the fragments of siding and clasped onto the handle of an old fashioned First Aid kit, dragging it out into the open air and looking it over. It didn't look burned at all. "Pity this doesn't have some magical cure for evil, mysterious sicknesses, eh?"
"Would you stop it?"
"What?"
"Joking about this? It's serious."
"Yeah, take a life lesson, Sammy boy. If you can't be light in a dark situation, you don't make it."
"Well, that's clever. Did you make it up yourself?"
"S'matter of fact, I did, right on the spot, just now. Pretty good, right? I'm a right old fashioned prophet."
Sam grinned, despite his sour mood, and turned his attention to the metal box between them in the cockpit. It didn't look to be anything special—just a battered-looking kit with 'FIRST AID' written in huge letters across the top. None the less, Sam couldn't help but notice the involuntary shudder that trickled up his spine as he studied it. It wasn't an entirely new feeling… Sam knew he sometimes got feelings of forewarning before he and his brother set out for a job.
Dean looked back down at the box, slightly bewildered at Sam's apparent fixation. "What? There's nothing on it."
"What about in it?" Sam asked after a moment.
Dean flipped it over, preparing to undo the snaps that held it shut.
"No, wait," Sam said unexpectedly, causing Dean to stop again.
"Sam, what's wrong with you?"
"I'm getting this sort of…" He trailed off, meeting Dean's eyes.
"Premonition?" Dean offered.
Sam nodded slowly. "But not really... I don't know, I'm just feeling something about the kit... I can't even tell if it's a good feeling or a bad one. I guess you should just go ahead and open it."
Dean paused, and then clicked open the snaps, lifting the lid.
It didn't have the dramatic effect that Sam had been expecting from his sinister expectation, but he realized his fingers were clutching the side of the plane so tightly that his knuckles were white. When he comprehended that nothing red or misty was inside the kit, he let his hands relax. "What's in there?"
Dean sifted through the various medical objects with careful precision, extracting a thin slip of paper from inside. He frowned, his eyes running down the length of it, reading something that had apparently been hand written.
Sam waited patiently, but his brother seemed to feel the need to read and reread the message several times, so he gave a little push. "So?" He hinted.
Dean handed it over. "It's a message. I think one of the hikers wrote it and slipped it in here."
"That wouldn't make any sense. Why would they hide it all the way back there in the med kit?"
"Read it."
Sam obeyed, bringing the slip of paper more into the light so he could see the scrawled words more clearly.
I think it's an actual conscious being. I've studied the short term affects on the other climbers, but there's nothing I can ascertain for certain until I have it in a lab and can study it within a controlled experiment. If this gets out to the well known scientists of the day there will be mass pandemonium, which I cannot allow. I will follow this through until the end, no matter the risks.
"That explains the need for secretly stashing it," Sam said, and continued to read.
The physical appearance of this entity starts out as nonexistent. The only reason I knew something unusual was present was because during the first fifteen minutes of our being on the summit I felt an actual being pass my upper body, leaving a distinctly cold feeling in its wake. I suspected that it had been an unusually strong breeze initially, but less than a minute later I caught sight of a scarlet unit in the air directly in front of my face. It was a foot in length and less than three inches in width, and substantially transparent. It hovered for approximately 7 seconds, before descending to ground level and evaporating into invisibility. This phenomenon was followed by an icy feeling that began in my ankles, about the height at which the entity disappeared, and spread up through my body until it reached my head.
I may be infected with some kind of unknown possession, but there is no way I will know until I return to the lab and test myself, as well as this metal box, which appears to be the unit's initial quarters, because it didn't show itself until after the box was opened.
I know it's possible that in time this could become
Sam looked up in confusion. "It just stops," He said, a little frustrated. "There's nothing more, he stops dead in the middle of a sentence."
"I think that little 'unit' of his started getting a little feisty at that point," Dean said grimly. "He may have been taken by the symptoms and forced to stow the paper at short notice and leave... or maybe he was with the hikers that were evacuated by the EMT's."
"No, he sounds like he knows what he's talking about, at least a little bit. I don't think he left with the other hikers. Remember? It says here that he's already observed the short term affects, so he must have been here longer than the others."
"You have a point. There's only so much research one can do in five minutes."
"You think the one who wrote this is Andy Thompson?"
"I doubt it. What's the probability that the one guy we really need to find is the one guy who's still alive?"
"Yeah, but we should find him and ask, just to make sure."
Dean got to his feet, watching the large group of tourists as they appeared below the crash sight on the trail. "Here come the vultures..."
"Damn..." Sam muttered. "That gives us about five point two seconds to keep searching."
"Well, after reading that this thing originated from the med kit, I'd say it's high time we hike on outta here until we have the appropriate clothing to deal with an invasive entity."
Sam raised an eyebrow. "Do you really think we'll ever find an outfit that will keep something like this out?"
"Well, we can find something better than jeans, I hope."
Sam made to follow Dean out of the clearing and toward the group, but stopped mid-step. He felt something chilly brush past his ear. His eyes combed the area for any sign of movement, but he couldn't locate any, even though the hair on the back of his neck was standing on end and a shiver was running up and down his body from the surprising sensation. He reached up to touch the side of his face, where a strange feeling of lingering cold lingered ominously. He scratched at it.
"Something wrong?" Dean asked, looking back at Sam over his shoulder.
"No, but let's get out of here," Sam said loudly, stepping forward. Neither of them saw the small area of dark red fog that was hovering near the ground between Dean and Sam, or noticed as Sam stepped directly through it. Sam was all the way back onto the path before he felt the iciness in his toes. He looked down at his shoes and lower pant legs, but everything looked in order.
"Thompson will probably be at that house is Middlebury. We should find him. Make him talk, since now we have somewhat of an idea what we're dealing with," Dean said quietly as they joined the other hikers, who were all giving both of them distinctly disapproving glares for being the first ones to the crash sight. Dean faced them all squarely. "Who's the tour guide?"
A big man in the front stepped forward. "Tour guide's me. Roger Gavin. And you two shouldn't have hiked so far ahead of the group."
Dean assumed his most imposing stature. "Neither of us paid to be toured up a two mile high hill, Mr. Gavin. We're police officers. My name's Officer Harding, this is Officer Mason. This area is a secured crime scene until further notice, so please take this group back down to the base and don't come back here until tomorrow, best case scenario."
Gavin held up his hands. "Whoa, wait a moment, these people paid good money for this hike, you can't just"—
"Don't argue with us, please, it makes our jobs harder," Dean interrupted. "Just turn around and return to the Lodge. Officer Mason and I will follow you down and make sure you get there."
Roger Gavin had obviously experienced next to nothing with the law, even on television, because he didn't even demand to see badges. He reluctantly turned his group around and began herding them back down the trail. Sam and Dean heard several irritated remarks aimed at them, but ignored them.
"That was way too easy," Dean whispered sideways at Sam. "I've never gotten away with a police officer impression with so little effort before."
Sam didn't reply. He could feel icy numbness spreading with slow steadiness up his legs and through his thigh muscles, making them tremble slightly. The cold wasn't like anything he'd ever felt—not like standing outside in winter without a coat, or even being waste deep in a frozen pond—it was chilling to the bone, as though every cell affected was vibrating with bitter frost, shedding shards of ice onto the other cells and making them freeze like water. Sam shivered, his jaw clenched.
Dean frowned. "What's up with you?"
Sam reached down and slapped his knees, trying to regain feeling, but it was no use. The numb coldness had reached his waste, and Sam was now experiencing an odd aching that seemed to emanate from his very bones. "Yeah, something's wrong, I think," He said, his voice shaky.
Dean hurried back up the trail, filling the space between him and Sam with surprising speed. He reached his brother and bent his knees, trying to look Sam in the face, which was hard, because Sam was leaning over and rubbing his thighs somewhat frantically. "Sam, what is it?"
"My legs are freezing cold—but they're numb, I can't explain it, it's like the paper said. Damn! Jesus, it's cold!"
The information didn't really weight out correctly in Dean's brain, because the sickness couldn't have gotten Sam. Not that quickly. But whatever it was, something definitely had gotten him, and Dean felt a flare of fear ignite in his chest on his younger brother's behalf. "Can you walk?"
"I don't know, it feels like I can't take a step, but I probably can... Jesus Christ, I've never felt anything like this before!" The coldness was seeping sickeningly up through Sam's chest. He suddenly found it harder to draw air into his lungs, so he straightened up hastily and tried to take a big breath.
"Sam! Come on, let's go!" Dean gripped Sam tightly by the shoulder and tried to steer him down the mountain, but Sam was now experiencing something else.
He gasped, coughing. He couldn't get enough air. The oxygen seemed to be squeezed out of his lungs as the coldness leached up into his shoulders and neck.
Dean braced him, a rising feeling of panic gripping his heart. He could feel the skin on Sammy's neck, and it was clammy, and cold. Cold as the skin of a corpse. Shit! Dean thought. "Sam, I need you to step when I step, ok? Just come with me, I'm completely holding you, ok? Just move your legs, so they don't get in the way."
Sam leaned more on Dean, his gasping for air lessoning slightly. "Dean—I can't—the air isn't thin enough"— He staggered down a few feet of the trail.
"Don't talk, Sam," Dean said quickly. "Don't talk, I'm going to get you down, I'm going to get you safe, ok?"
"It's too thick—don't be too near me—don't let it get you, too..." Sam thought the rest of it in his mind, because he couldn't spare any more oxygen on speaking. Just let me stay here, or else it will get you, too! He felt a velvet darkness descending over his senses.
Dean almost fell sideways as Sam collapsed entirely in his arms, crumpling towards the ground, but Dean caught his balance in time to break both of their falls. The two of them were still for a moment, Dean staring down at the still face of his younger brother about two inches away from his own, and Sam lying still underneath Dean, breathing shallowly and trembling faintly. The next instant, Dean was on his knees, scooping Sam into a sitting position. The young man had doubted that he had the strength to carry someone as big as Sam, but that doubt had evaporated in the instant when he'd realized Sam's body was below him, lifeless, and sick. He reached an arm under Sam's knees and lifted him in one fluid motion, so that he was standing, holding Sam against his chest.
Sweat rolled down Dean's forehead as he started unsteadily down the trail, his brother in his arms.
REVIEW AGAIN, CHUMS! MAN, I LUV JENSEN AND JARED! PLEASE, STOP ME FROM SAYING THAT, BECAUSE THEY'RE PROBABLY GAY TOGETHER! THAT'S MY LUCK, HUH? THE TWO HOTTEST GUYS IN THE WORLD ARE DATING EACH OTHER... MAYBE THERE'S A GOD, MAYBE THEY'RE NOT GAY...
OK, I'M REALLY MOVING ON... MUAH!