Chapter 3

The room was spinning when Dean finally managed to crack his eyes open. He found this extremely disappointing, considering the amount of effort he'd put into it. He sighed and closed them again.

"Dean?"

He sensed motion beside him, but he didn't bother trying to open his eyes a second time. "Where are we?"

Sam huffed ironically. "Home sweet home. That barn we found, remember?"

Dean grunted in the affirmative. "Did Alastair follow us?"

Sam seemed to pause for a second. "No," he said shortly. "How are you feeling?"

Dean thought this was a stupid question at first, until his mind registered the throbbing pain in his side. "What the hell?" He moved his hand to touch it and found a bandage wrapped tightly around his middle.

"You were shot," Sam said. "Just a flesh wound. You'll be fine."

Despite the dizziness, Dean forced his eyes to open again so that he could look his brother in the face. He could hear the lie in his voice, so he knew something must be seriously wrong. "What happened?"

Sam shifted uncomfortably on the wooden floor where he was seated next to the pile of blankets serving as Dean's bed. "What do you remember?" he asked carefully.

Dean searched his memory and winced. "I remember jumping off the roof," he said, casually flexing his fingers and toes to make sure he hadn't broken his back in the fall. Sam looked way too worried for his only injury to be a simple flesh wound.

"Yeah, you pretty much blacked out as soon as we landed," Sam said, noticeably avoiding eye contact. "I had to throw you into a dumpster and carry you back here on my shoulders. I don't think the cops saw which direction we went."

Dean nodded as much as his dizziness would allow. "A dumpster, huh? That explains why I smell rotten potatoes."

Sam smiled in response, but Dean could read him like a book. Something was eating away at the kid.

"So, what aren't you telling me?"

Sam took a deep breath. Another bad sign.

"Sam."

"Well..." Sam squirmed again. "The whole... Alastair thing?"

"Yeah?"

"It... wasn't Alastair."

Dean was confused for a second, but then he sighed in frustration and carefully lifted an arm to rub the back of his neck. He wished Sam would just tell him what the hell he was talking about already. "So... what?" he said. "It was Lilith? I kinda doubt she was possessing a dude all of a sudden."

Sam shook his head. "Dean... there was no demon in that cop."

Dean stared at him for a long moment, trying to gauge how serious he was. "I saw his eyes go white, Sam," he said. "I heard him talking to us. It was him."

Sam just kept on shaking his head sadly.

"How the hell do you know?" Dean asked, wanting to sit up and slap the guy, but the pain in his side preventing him from doing either.

"Because I tried my..." Sam gingerly lifted his hand, as though somehow demonstrating the action of pulling a demon made it less controversial than saying the words. "There was no demon in him. Why do you think he shot you?"

Now that Dean started thinking about it, he had to admit the gun hadn't really made sense. But he could have sworn...

He suddenly realized where Sam was going with this.

"It just... must have been a trick of the light," he said. "It can happen."

Sam's look of sorrow and sympathy didn't change.

Dean raised a warning finger. "Don't even think it."

"Dean..."

"I am not sick, Sam."

"You thought you were in Hell."

The words were spoken gently, but they hit Dean like a punch in the gut. If he could have sat up, he would have passed the feeling along to Sam. "What are you talking about?" he said, his low tone a warning for Sam to choose his words carefully.

Sam clenched his jaw and looked down at his hands, shaking his head sadly. "On our way back here... you kept trying to fight me, like you thought I was... trying to torture you."

Dean closed his eyes against the increasing dizziness that accompanied Sam's words. "I don't remember any of that," he said firmly.

"You were pretty out of it."

Rage welled up inside of him, mostly over the idea that Sam had witnessed him in his weakest state. Supernatural disease be damned, he never wanted his kid brother seeing him like that. "So you're saying I have this... whatever this damn thing is?" he said, massaging his temples against the dizziness and anger.

"I don't know how, but... yeah."

A thought suddenly occurred to Dean, and he lowered his hand to look Sam in the eye again. "Unless it's you," he said. "You could just as easily have hallucinated me hallucinating."

Sam's expression didn't waver as he leaned over and grabbed Dean's arm. Dean tried to pull it away, but Sam quickly pushed back the sleeve over his forearm and raised it for Dean to see.

Dean's arm was covered in ugly red welts.

"Ah, crap."

"Yeah." Sam gently set Dean's arm back down and sighed. "They started springing up a few minutes ago."

Dean clenched his jaw and forced himself to accept the situation and start thinking of solutions. Still, the question had to be asked... "How?"

Sam shook his head. "I don't know, man. The stuff in that basement, something we came in contact with at the school... it could have been anything."

"But you're okay?"

Sam shrugged. "So far so good."

Dean tried not to question the fairness or logic in that and just focused on the relief. Sam was okay, which meant they weren't completely screwed just yet. "It's probably fair to say whatever this is is airborne," he said, making a valiant attempt to ignore the feelings of fear and panic that were welling up in his mind. "I packed a couple masks in my bag. Take 'em with you when you go back out there."

Sam didn't reply. When Dean looked back over at him, he was just sitting there staring down at his hands. Something else was bugging him.

"What?"

Sam sighed and shook his head. "Dean, the whole town is looking for us. I don't know how I can step out that door again without being found and arrested, let alone wander around town looking for clues."

"So, what... you're just gonna sit here and watch me die?"

"Of course not. I just said I don't know how... yet."

Dean's gaze slowly drifted over Sam's shoulder as he spoke. "Better think of something fast," he said quietly, "'cause I'm guessing that demon smoke isn't really pouring through the cracks in the door."

Sam spun around to look, but soon turned back to Dean with a look of pity on his face. "I don't see anything," he said, his tone suggesting he was delivering a death sentence rather than a reassurance.

"Great." Dean clapped a hand over his eyes so he couldn't see the gathering cloud of darkness, but he could still hear the hissing and feel it swirling around him. He managed to bite back his panic, but it took all of his strength of will just to hold himself still. "Sam?"

"Yeah."

He reached a hand out blindly and groped around until he found Sam's arm. He gripped it like a life preserver and yanked Sam closer. "As much as I don't want to be left alone right now," he gasped out through the fear that was slowly choking him, "get the hell out there and make this stop."

"Okay. It's okay. Just hang in there, Dean."

Those were the last words Dean heard Sam say before the chains wrapped around his wrists and ankles and Sam's voice was swallowed up in the all too familiar, bone-chilling sounds of Hell.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Sam crashed through the woods like a wild animal, knowing that stealth meant slowing down and that he didn't have a second to lose. The image of a terrified Dean thrashing against his restraints as Sam had futilely tried to calm him down was still burned onto his retina so clearly that he thought he would never be able to close his eyes again. He had never seen his brother so out of his mind with fear or so desperate to escape. The ghost sickness had nothing on whatever was happening to the people in this town.

If only he knew what that something was.

He thought of calling Bobby, but there wasn't much he could do without more information, and there was no way Sam wanted to bring other hunters into this town just to end up like Dean. He had to figure out what was going on all by himself this time. But first there was something he had to do.

Sticking to the woods that bordered the town made it less likely that he would be discovered and arrested, but it also made his trip twice as long as it would otherwise have been. Thankfully, it was getting dark by the time he reached the building he was looking for - a small, converted farmhouse they had passed on their way into town earlier in the day.

Every light in the place was on, but it didn't matter. Sam knew exactly what he'd come for, and he'd be damned if he was going to leave without it.

He scaled the fence at the back of the house and drew his gun as he crept closer to peer in through the back window. A middle-aged man and woman were sitting in parallel easy chairs in what appeared to be their living room, talking to each other so intently that they hadn't noticed Sam at all. He hesitated for a moment as he looked at them. They seemed to be nice, honest folk who didn't deserve what was about to happen to them, but Sam had too much at stake for him to consider the feelings of total strangers, and he was running out of time. The memory of Dean's condition moments before Sam had left the barn flashed through his mind one more time, the sound of him screaming in terror for Sam to save him still ringing in his ears.

Sam tiptoed up the back steps, took a deep breath, and kicked open the door.

"Stay right where you are!" he yelled as the couple jumped to their feet, the woman giving a startled cry. "Do exactly as I say and no one gets hurt, understand?"

The woman tearfully agreed and raised her trembling arms in the air, but the man remained surprisingly calm. "What is it you want, son?" he asked in a gentle tone.

"You're the veterinarian?"

The man nodded.

"I need sedatives," Sam said, waving his gun toward the doorway leading through to the front of the house. "Morphine, Valium... whatever you've got."

The man didn't move.

"Now!"

At a frightened cry from his wife, the doctor finally turned and moved toward the doorway behind him. Sam motioned for the woman to follow her husband as well, and the three of them walked through to the clinic at the front of the house. The doctor stopped in front of a locked door, pulled a key from his pocket, and unlocked it, revealing a closet full of drugs and medical supplies. He pulled out a bottle of Valium and handed it to Sam.

"This is all you've got?" Sam asked, giving him a warning glare as he stuffed the bottle into one of his jacket pockets.

"This is a small, private clinic," the doctor said apologetically. "We don't keep many sedatives on hand."

Sam didn't buy it for a second. "Please," he said, trying to sound as reasonable as he could while still maintaining a threatening attitude, "I'm not a junkie or a dealer. I just really need the best sedatives you've got."

"J-just give him the morphine," his wife stammered nervously.

Sam tightened his grip on his gun to show the doctor he was serious. No way was he letting this guy hold out on him.

To his surprise, the doctor sighed and said, "You need this for someone with... the sickness?"

Sam blinked and nodded. "Yeah, how'd you know?"

"I spoke to the sheriff earlier," he said. "He told me about what happened at the library. Everyone in town is looking for you and your friend. Seemed like your buddy'd got this virus or whatever the hell it is, and if that's true, there's nothing that can be done for him outside of a hospital."

"You don't understand," Sam said, lowering his gun as he started to get the sense that this was a man he could talk to, "that guy is my brother, and we came here to try to help this town, but if I take him to the hospital or we turn ourselves in, we'll only end up in jail. Please, I just need to get him sedated while I try to figure out how to stop this."

"If the CDC can't find the answer, what makes you think you can find it all on your own?"

Sam's impatience was rising, but he forced himself to hold it back and try to gain the guy's trust. "Because we don't think this is a virus," he said matter-of-factly. "We think someone's doing this on purpose, probably using some kind of weird science mixed with spellwork."

The doctor's eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Spellwork."

"That's right."

"And... how do I know that you and your brother didn't cause all this to begin with, and everything you're telling me now isn't just a load of bull?"

Sam shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "You don't. But I think the fact that I didn't just kill you both and raid your supplies the second I burst through your back door should tell you something."

The doctor continued sizing Sam up for a long moment before nodding and reaching behind some of the bottles in his supply closet. He pulled one out that Sam could see was morphine. He handed it to Sam, along with a handful of syringes he pulled out of a box. "You know how much to administer?"

"Yes, sir."

The man pursed his lips and nodded. "Is there anything else?"

Sam took the bottle and syringes with a nod of thanks. "Actually..." he said as he tucked the items into his pockets, "there is one more thing... do you know who lives in that little cottage in the woods behind the school?"

The doctor nodded slowly. "That's Gavin Chamberlain's place," he said. "Why?"

"You don't happen to know what this Gavin Chamberlain is like, do you?"

The doctor glanced at his wife, both of them looking thoughtful. "Reclusive," he said. "Doesn't socialize much, or even come into town unless he can help it."

"He went to school with our son," the doctor's wife said, her nerves finally eased now that Sam's gun was out of sight. "He was always very smart, but troubled."

"Yes," the doctor agreed. "The other boys picked on him so much that nobody was surprised when he built that place for himself in the middle of nowhere. Such a shame. He was such a bright boy."

The more they spoke, the more things started to make sense in Sam's mind. Troubled, bullied genius builds himself an isolated cabin with a hidden basement where he can conduct his scientific experiments and black magic spells undisturbed. It even explained why he'd chosen the high school as his ground zero.

"Thank you," Sam said, and without wasting another moment he turned and ran out the way he'd come.

This outing had proven way more profitable than he'd hoped.