Note: I would like to thank those people who have reviewed Chapters 1 & 2 so positively; these reviews are greatly encouraging, and I thank everyone, such as Dawn N, geminigrl11, HT Marie, Eternal Dragon101, a-blackwinged-bird, kessele, kira and so forth. Normally I personally reply to every review that I can, but at this point I am not up to the task emotionally, so apologies (there is an Author's Note after this story). I look forward to your reviews and will try to post subsequent chapters every couple of days to the best of my ability.
Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: See Chapter 1.
THE SCENT OF YOU
Chapter 3
One week earlier; Guymon, Oklahoma:
Oh.
Sam scowled at the page of the Agatha Christie murder-mystery novel he was reading. He had been sure that she had done it…unfortunately she had just been found skewered to death with a knitting needle.
An inner radar that had nothing to do with any paranormal talent he might have 'pinged' and he looked up as Dean strolled with casual (but what Sam instantly realised was feigned) nonchalance out of the bar. His brother had that smirk which proclaimed he'd won. Ditching the novel, Sam whipped out the closest unabridged Greek classic he had to hand and had it open (albeit upside down) by the time Dean got to the car, where his elder brother made sure Sam got a good view of the wad of cash before he folded it away and slipped it inside the leather jacket he typically wore with the collar turned up.
"Come on," Dean chivvied with a certain urgent undertone, "time to blow this 'burg."
"What, they catch you cheating?" Sam demanded in concern as he got in the passenger side of the Impala hastily and Dean peeled away out of the bar's parking lot as Sam cast wary glances at the Hell's Angels' collection of bikes outside.
"Please, I'm a professional, and I'm good enough not to need to cheat."
"Huh-huh," Sam infused a world of scepticism into his response as he kept his eyes firmly on the rear-view mirror for any glimpse of a horde of mean machines bearing down on them from behind.
"I resent the implication of your grunt," Dean said loftily, "but yes the natives were getting restless. Unfortunately a couple of those bikers tonight were also in that bar in New Mexico last month…you remember?"
"Yeah…?"
"Well one of them was playing poker with the same bunch as me back there," Dean admitted, "and I could see he was starting to recollect how, just like last time…"
"The beer flowed like water but you hardly drank any and that even though you always seemed to lose more hands than you won, your pile of money just kept growing and they didn't realise how much money you'd left with until the next morning when we were two hundred miles away?" Sam recited.
"In a nutshell," Dean concurred. "Fortunately the Hell's Angel currently in charge was still in the bonhomie stage of being drunk so I made my excuses; I think we should put as much distance as we can between us and them before he moves into the 'if it moves, kill it' range of the inebriated spectrum."
"Works for me," Sam had no problem with not facing a bunch of angry, drunken Hell's Angels.
"Especially as I cleaned them out of the better part of three grand," Dean couldn't help cackling. "So, what direction am I aiming my black beauty in, Sammy?"
"It's Sam, and you've got a choice: a rash of mysterious disappearances in Liberal, or a rash of mysterious deaths around Amarillo."
Dean need consider only a moment. Taking the route from Guymon to Liberal put them on the border of…Kansas, a State of the Union Dean could never be anywhere near with equanimity. But the opposite direction led to Amarillo, Texas, which was a nice two States' distance from the terrible 'K'.
"Amarillo." he decided, turning the Impala onto the main highway and putting his foot down. This late at night State Troopers and Deputy Sheriffs were safely tucked up in beds instead of manning speed traps and if Dean shagged ass they could be in Amarillo by daybreak. "So what's the skinny?"
Having fired up the laptop on battery power, Sammy gave him a rundown. "Over the last nine months nearly a dozen people in the North Texas area around Amarillo have died. Each person got up perfectly normally one day but was found in a state of catatonia by a relative, friend, colleague or classmate later that day."
"Like coma only with their eyes open, right?"
"More or less," Sam scrolled down the page. "Not one person had any external or internal injuries, they tested negative for illegal and legal narcotics, and none of them had any tumours, bacterial or viral infections, but each person was completely unresponsive to the world around them; just kept staring straight ahead into space."
"Yeah, but that could still be medical," Dean frowned. "I mean like that movie with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, all those people that fell asleep…"
"Doctors tested for that – plus meningitis, encephalitis, you name it." Sam vetoed and then sighed, "And then they killed themselves."
"What?" Dean asked, startled, "I thought you said they were catatonic?"
"They were catatonic." Sam confirmed and précised the timeline. "Found catatonic, rushed into hospital within two hours of being discovered – all of them – given every medical test and exam known to man by the following morning, all of which came back negative, and within 6 to 48 hours of being discovered in their catatonic state, each person committed suicide. Two jumped off roofs, one more slipped into the hospital room of a critically ill patient and downed their treatment drugs. Three were taken back home by their families and killed themselves there…hanging, gunshot, gunshot, jumped off a freeway overpass, slit her wrists, overdose, overdose….and walked out onto the freeway in front of a bus."
"That's…eleven people?"
"Yep," Sam nodded, shutting down the laptop, "and what eyewitnesses to the suicides there were all said the same thing – that they were still doing the blank-eyed zombie thing even as they were offing themselves; said they were like robots."
"Could be voodoo compulsion, a hex or something," mused Dean. "Okay, what commonalities were there between the victims?"
"Only one: they were all connected to the University of North Texas, Amarillo campus."
"That's it?" Dean was surprised. In the same way that serial killers tended to be specific in their choice of victims – such as targeting blondes or brunettes but not killing blondes and brunettes or killing whites but not African-Americans – so too most supernatural evil that tried to kill humans tended to target a specific demographic, such as fertility rites that always needed a young female of childbearing age, even if she wasn't a virgin and even though a male counterpart was not always required either.
"That's it." From memory Sam recited the stats, "The eleven victims comprised six women and five men; two were Caucasian, two were Hispanic, one was Caribbean-American, one was African-American, one was Chinese-American, one was Native American, one was Latino, and two were Italian-American."
"So whatever made them kill themselves was Equal-Opps-Evil?"
"Seems like…the youngest was an 18-year-old Freshman male Forensic Anthropology student at UNT, oldest was a 43-year-old female lab tech in the Geology Department. They were all either students, employees, staff or business associates of UNT Amarillo."
"What's the official line?" Dean enquired.
Sam shrugged, "Some sort of mystery virus; that's as far as it's gone and the college isn't exactly pressing for the situation to be high priority given the bad publicity."
Continued in Chapter 4…
© 2006, Catherine D. Stewart