"I don't hear anything," Dean said, straining to discern waves out of all the sounds.
Max pointed at her ear. "You wouldn't."
Awesome. I'm useless, Dean thought, looking around.
"Maybe about twenty-five miles," she estimated.
Dean watched her face with surprise. "Seriously? You can hear twenty-five miles away?"
Max let his question linger for a moment, and then broke into a smile. "No, but I can read that freeway sign," she pointed.
He could appreciate the cleverness of it all. Plus, it'd be his first real taste of polite Max Sarcasm. "Well, let's get going."
Max pressed her fingertips to her stitches and checked her hand, then returned her fingertips to the wound.
"Is it bothering you?"
"No, just itchy," she said.
Already? Dean wondered. How fast does she heal?
"We don't really retain scars for very long," she added. Like my heart transplant, she thought.
These supersoldiers are ridiculously genetically equipped. "What other superpowers do you have?"
Like I'm a mutant, she thought. "Can't fly. Can't see through metal. No laser eyes or gadgety arms – though bio-tech was practiced on other series."
"So no lasso of truth?" Dean joked, guessing by her tone that she was near fed-up with his questions, and smirking at the imagery of the soldier before him in costume.
"What's a 'lasso of truth'?"
With the flames just starting and most of the transgenics sitting out by the bonfire, Sam was beginning to exercise his imagination in worry for Dean.
Maybe they've gotten lost. Or killed. But probably not killed. Maybe they have their own ideas about where they'll spend the night. Or maybe, Max isn't as good a tracker as Gwen said. Maybe they've been attacked by something supernatural. A ghost or a demon or a chupacabre.
"What's a chupacabre?" asked Mina from across the bonfire.
Sam's eyes widened as some of the heat and smoke blew toward him, causing him to squint from the sting. "Uh, nothing." He tried not to actively wish she didn't read his mind.
"I know. It's invasive," she said. "Just wanted to make sure nothing was following you here.
Sam felt immediately on the defensive. How could he lead anyone here, especially on his own?
"We'd be like sitting ducks," she said, continuing to dance with the firelight. Before Sam could protest, she continued. "You seem trustworthy. Just had to know for sure."
"I still don't know about you," he said. "How do I know I can trust you if I can't just go in your mind and see it myself?"
After a moment, Mina responded. "They'll be fine. Max knows what she's doing." Mina danced over to a couple of transgenics and butted out.
Walking away from the fire toward the rooms, he pulled his cell out to check for messages. None. He called Dean again, but before the first ring, he saw them.
Croats. Headed his way.
Dean's cell went straight to voicemail, and as Sam turned to run back to the beach, he screamed into the receiver. "Dean! Get back here! Croats are attacking!"
Of course, a very tall man running toward you is always alarming enough, but one that's also yelling bloody Croatoan murder kicked all the soldiers into high gear.
One of Metallica's softer jams played over the radio as Dean and Max made their way toward the caravan.
"Don't you have anything else?" Max asked. Though she appreciated the respite a ballad provided, she'd already recouped her energy and now seemed, well, bored.
Dean cocked half a grin, thinking 'Driver picks the music. Shotgun shuts their cakehole.' "Got a few tapes in the glove box."
"Tapes? Really?" Max pulled the lever on the glove box and tried to sort the small box.
Dean smiled. Max dropped the subject and stowed the cassettes back in the glove box. She pressed at her inflamed skin and looked to her wound in the visor mirror. "Looks pretty good. How'd you learn to do this?"
Dean remembered many times he'd had to stitch himself up. In all the years he'd hunted alone while Sam was off at college. There were only a few places on his own body which hadn't seen a needle, and some of them were left unattended because he couldn't reach them himself.
And of course when Sam came back, they'd spent some time stitching one another back up after a few particularly difficult jobs. He never had to stitch up his dad, though.
"I've had practice," he finally answered. "And maybe a natural ability."
Confident, thought Max. Just like Alec. "I might need you to take these out tomorrow, if we get a chance."
"Already?"
Max pressed her lips in a thin smile. "Transgenic," she reminded. "Can't help it."
Dean glanced at her wound and back to the road. He imagined, having seen two injuries on her so far, how her scars would fade and if she had any others standing out on her smooth skin. He licked his lips unconsciously.
Max had seen all of it but had said nothing. She didn't even shift uncomfortably or cross her arms. Surprisingly, she turned her body toward him. "So what's your story? You got someone you left behind?" she probed. "Or a trail of someones?"
Partly surprised, he smiled. "What makes you think that?"
Max watched the way his lip curved up. "Just a hunch," she said. Alec loved women, and they all seemed drawn to him – maybe against their better judgment. He'd tomcatted around quite a bit, and some familiar twinkle in Dean's eye drudged up that rush of blood in her. She blushed, but refused to look away.
Dean's smile faded. "Um, not really. Been fighting for our lives for a long time, and the past eight months have really taken a toll on the female populace. And the mood." He looked to her with too-long of a stare, and she smiled. She had to look away. "You?" he tagged on.
She thought back to Alec's smiling face, the same smile invading her memories at his crazy innuendoes. "No. Same thing – not many men around, and not really mood-inducing situations."
"Your… what do you call them? Platoon?"
"Unit."
"There are plenty of guys in you unit," he said. Lame, he added, chastising himself.
Max adjusted her braid over one shoulder. "They're more like brothers," she said, thinking of Zack, Krit and Drew first. Not once had she harbored romantic or sexual thoughts about any of them. "Besides that, the guys outnumber us two to one, and after what happened with Gabe and Leia a few months ago, no one wants to lose another soldier to a mate fight."
Dean raised a brow. "Is that what it sounds like?"
"Not a fight between mates – a fight for a mate."
Okay, now he was having trouble again. "Mates?"
Max sighed, dreading the explanation of exactly what was in each individual's DNA cocktail, let alone her own. "Remember how I said Manticore mixed your DNA with animal DNA?"
Dean nodded.
Max tried to choose her words carefully. "Well, some animals are extremely territorial. Some species fight for a mate, some breathe underwater, some are capable of regenerating body parts, and some can pick up faint scents like drug-sniffing dogs. You get the point."
"And this Manticore place wanted this to happen?"
"No. It was a side effect they hadn't considered when they spliced the genes."
"So Gabe and Leia?" he recalled.
"Among other animals, a lot of us have feline DNA mixed in our cocktails. Speed, agility, ocular enhancement, all came with a few side effects." Max frowned. In all of her heat dreams, she'd only dreamt of Logan, or Rafer, or whatever random Joe she'd seen during her waking hours. She'd never had a heat dream about Alec.
They'd stopped trying to figure it out a long time ago – why her heats had stopped. The only thing she had to go on was how the heats had suddenly stopped after the snake venom, and the virus had broken out a few weeks after and had started claiming lives.
And she missed Logan. It was a miracle he was still alive, but with two viruses threatening his life, the cyber-journalist had gone underground, and had enlisted a group of Manticore and government soldiers, as well as scientists and experts, to help curb the Croatoan virus and try to create some order to the state of, well, living.
He had begged her to stay, but how could she have? With her immunities, she felt a responsibility to try to protect those who didn't share those immunities. And with his lack of immunities, particularly, his lack of immunity to her, how could she have stayed?
Dean saw her eyes flit over the road and off into the distance. "So you've got cat DNA?" he asked, a small smile crooking up on one side of his face.
She could almost hear the innuendo. "One 'pussy' joke and I'm jumping out of this car and leaving you to fend for yourself!" She smiled.
"What?" Dean asked, watching the way her eyes moved. He was having a difficult time holding back his words. "I didn't say anything."
"Uh huh."
"I do have one question, though."
Please don't let it be about heat, she thought. "Seriously?"
He looked over to her. "So you're really fast?"
Something in his voice suggested innuendo and Max felt the urge to smack him upside the head. Maybe Alec did get some of this from Dean. It felt good – to feel that urge again. Almost made her feel like he was still here.
"Not like that, you perv," he said, laughing. "Like you run really fast? And you can change directions on a dime?"
Max allowed the question, answering him warily. "Yeah – Brain called it 'blurring.' We run so fast it looks like a blur to Ordinaries."
Only his partial glance toward her informed her of his slight offense at her metonymous use of 'ordinary.' "And the ocular thing?"
"We can see pretty good in the dark, which makes us pretty good hunters."
Dean found himself smugly thinking he was already a damn good hunter, even without Max's special abilities. He'd survived this long. He decided to brush it off, that smirky grin positioning itself back on his mouth. "Do you sometimes get the urge to curl up on a windowsill and take a nice long nap?"
Max's eyes widened and she broke into a smile. "Okay, I'll let you have one. Just one."
"I should have picked a better one," he said, keeping her eye contact a little longer.
"Are you both like this?" Max asked, wondering if the genetics question reached further than Dean.
"What? Witty and charming and hysterical?"
Max half-laughed, half-scoffed. "Yeah."
He checked the rear-view mirror and returned his eyes to the road. "Of course. Winchester traits. Even Sammy has his moments."
"Gwen! Zack! Get your asses in gear!" Sam shouted from across the fire.
He'd been holding two particularly strong Croats at bay with a large piece of driftwood, but he couldn't hold out forever without a real weapon. It took most of his concentration to keep one step ahead of them as it was.
Within moments, Gwen was at his side. "I got an idea."
"Now's the time!" Sam said, elbowing one of the two Croats in the face, sending him backward.
"Herd them," she said.
Sam played the scenario in his head as he swung the driftwood like a baseball bat and heard a mild crack, followed by splintering wood. Herd them where? he thought, looking down at his 'bat,' now splintered into various pieces. "Shit!"
Gwen spun forcefully, bringing her machete around and slicing clean through the other Croat's neck. "Toward the bonfire," she added as if reading his thoughts.
He liked this idea a lot. "You wanna barbecue 'em," he said.
"If the fire takes them, the virus'll burn out," she said, looking to Zack, the nearest transgenic to her, to see if he needed help. "Zack?! You in the mood for a candlelight dinner?"
Zack swiped at a short Croat, knocking her down, and turned back to Gwen. With some sarcasm, he said, "Yeah, but we gotta do something about the lighting in this restaurant. There's no zombiance!"
"Ah, very pun-ny," he heard Gwen respond.
Zack relayed the plan to the other transgenics, and slowly, the soldiers and Sam circled around the bonfire, and one by one fought the Croats into the flames. Heaped atop one another, some burning alive and turning to ash before their eyes, and some catching fire and trying to make it outside the circle, the Croats were slowly beat back.
When it was evident no more Croats would be stumbling out of the fire, Zack tasked Mona with field med.
"Where's Mina?" Gwen called.
"'Round here somewhere," Mona said, running through the sand back to the motel. She needed to grab her med kit.
Krit and a hobbling Drew dragged the beaten, bloodied, and lifeless body of Leo, an X5 from one of the east coast's Manticore facilities, toward the fire.
"No," Zack said. "Our own get burial at sea." He pointed to a small heap of transgenics near the surf, but his eyes were glued behind Sam.
Sam turned to see what held Zack so rapt, and took a deep breath as another large group of people stepped onto the beach. They looked a lot like the soldiers he was with, and just past the sand in the parking lot, he could see a few more of them unloading bodies from the back of a pickup. "Friends of yours?"
Zack pursed his lips. "Not exactly."