Supernatural: Carved in Flesh (27 page)

“Dean...”

“It’s all right, Sammy.” He knew damn well that it wasn’t, that after this nothing would ever be all right again, but he said it because he was the big brother, and it was the kind of thing you were supposed to say when things were bad. And he couldn’t imagine things getting much worse than this.

Trish began crawling toward them across the bed, her father’s blood dribbling from her mouth, pattering on the comforter like thick drops of crimson rain.

Dean wished to God he had a gun, but he didn’t, he had a knife and a Phillips screwdriver. And he had what his dad had always told him was the most important weapon of all. Himself. He switched the screwdriver to his right hand and took the knife in his left. Then, before he could reconsider, he ran toward Trish, took aim, and rammed the point of the screwdriver into her left eye, shoving the metal deep into her brain, all the way up to the handle.

He heard Sam gasp and saw Walter’s eyes widen with shock.

Trish didn’t react at all. Instead of blood, clear liquid trickled around the screwdriver protruding from her socket. She remained like that for several moments, crouching on all fours atop her father’s bed, expressionless, wounded eye leaking liquid, her mouth still dripping with Walter’s blood. Then suddenly, as if she was a machine whose power supply had been cut off, she slumped over, rolled off the bed, and thumped to the floor.

Dean could only stand and stare at Trish’s unmoving body, right hand slick with the clear goo that had spurted from her eye when he’d jammed the screwdriver in. A moment later, he felt Sam move to his side and put his arm around Dean’s shoulders. That simple gesture did more for Dean than any words his brother might have spoken.

Walter showed no reaction at first, and Dean feared that he’d lost so much blood that he wasn’t fully aware of what had happened. Then he let out a howl of anguish, jumped out of bed, and knelt next to his daughter’s body. He tried to pick her up and cradle her, but he was too weak and only managed to lift her partway before she slipped from his hands and fell back to the floor. A second later, tears streaming down his too-pale face, Walter collapsed beside her.

* * *

The brothers tried to revive Walter, but he’d lost too much blood. So they dug two graves in the back yard, beneath a large old oak that Trish had loved, and buried father and daughter, saying what words they could think of over their graves. They did their best to clean up the mess in Walter’s room, then searched the cabin and found the statuette of Anubis down in the basement in one of the drawers of Walter’s desk. After a brief discussion, they left it alone, along with a number of other artifacts Walter had stored in his workshop. When they were finished, they went upstairs, locked the basement door, and waited for their father to come get them.

It would be the better part of two weeks until John Winchester returned.

* * *

“You guys were out at the motel during the fire, right?”

Sam looked at Dean, unsure how to answer the sheriff’s question.

She smiled. “Nothing personal, but you smell like you’ve been to a week-long bonfire.”

Dean grimaced. “I’m really getting tired of stinking up the joint wherever we go.”

The sheriff raised an eyebrow in curiosity. Amanda Kopp—who no doubt had long ago grown tired of hearing jokes about her surname—was in her mid-forties, with short brown hair, minimal makeup, and a thin white-gold wedding band on her ring finger. She was friendly, but projected an air of complete professionalism, the latter undercut somewhat by the Hello Kitty cover on the smartphone sitting on her desk in easy reach of her hand.

Sam wondered if she was one of those people who was so addicted to her phone that she felt anxious if she was too far away from it.

“It’s been a long few days,” Sam said, hoping she’d let it go at that.

“Tell me about it.” She let out a sigh. “I’ve got four people dead from some kind of mysterious wasting disease, in addition to the two from last week, and now to top it off, a whole motel burns down so fast it was like it was hit with goddamned napalm. That’s why I’m sitting on my ass in my office. I’m waiting on a call back from the CDC.”

Sam and Dean exchanged glances. It was just as they’d figured.

“We understand how busy you are, Sheriff,” Sam said, “and we really appreciate your taking the time to speak with us again.”

Although it had only been a couple days since they’d first spoken with Sheriff Kopp, she looked as if she’d aged ten years in that time. The lines on her face were more pronounced, and her eyes were red and sore-looking, much like Sam figured his own did. Unfortunately, Sam was far too used to seeing law officers suffering from stress and lack of sleep, not to mention the frustration of knowing something bad was happening in their town and having no idea what was causing it or how to stop it. Most of the time, he and Dean couldn’t tell the local authorities the truth, no matter how much they might want to. Almost always, in their experience, telling the authorities resulted in one of several increasingly negative scenarios. Best case, they’d think they were crazy and stop cooperating with them. Or they’d decide they needed to be held in custody for a psychiatric evaluation. In the worst case, the authorities would believe Sam and Dean, because then they would want to help, and that would put them face to face with dangers that they were in no way trained to deal with. It had worked out okay a time or two—like with Jody Mills in Sioux Falls—but those were the exceptions to the rule.

There was a reason why hunters tended to work alone or in pairs. The fewer people that had to risk their lives, and often more than just their lives, against the dark things that lived in the world’s shadows, the better. He thought of Trish Hansen. If he and Dean hadn’t let her talk them into taking her ghost hunting...

Dean frowned. “Wait a minute. Did you say there
were four
disease victims this week? I thought there were only three.”

“There were. Until Harrison Brauer turned up dead. He’s a local mortician, and he was due to meet with the wife of one of his... clients. Is that the right word? Anyway, when she got there the door was open, but she couldn’t find anyone, so she started calling Brauer’s name and wandering around his place, looking for him. Eventually, she wandered downstairs into his embalming room, and that’s where she found him, looking like all the others.”

Sam gave Dean a nod to say,
Nice catch.
As fuzzy-headed as he was, the detail had slipped right by him. Sam hadn’t considered that Dippel might have been using a mortician as his Igor, especially as it was unlikely the man would have the necessary medical background, but he supposed it was possible. If so, the mortician’s death could mean that Dippel was closing up shop in Brennan and preparing to move on. For all they knew, he might already have left town, in which case they’d have a hell of a time locating him. Sam doubted Dean would have the patience to even try. With Dippel gone, Dean would want to return to figuring out a way to take down Dick Roman.

Dean’s thoughts must have been running along similar lines, for he gave Sam a look that said,
Why are we wasting our time here?

“Sorry I didn’t call you guys,” the sheriff said. “Between trying to get hold of the CDC and dealing with the fire, I’ve had my hands full.”

“No problem,” Dean said. Sam thought he was going to tell the sheriff thanks, but they no longer needed her help. Instead he took a deep breath, and said, “But if you could answer just a few more questions for us...”

“Sure thing. It’s not like I’m doing anything at the moment besides sitting here waiting for my phone to ring.”

Sam wondered which she’d used. Her office phone or her smartphone. Maybe the latter, if for no other reason than to make sure no one else in the department could pick up their extension and listen in. If she believed she was dealing with some sort of contagion, the last thing she would want to do was cause a panic, especially among her own people.

“We’re exploring the possibility that someone with a medical background might be involved in these deaths,” Dean said.

Sheriff Kopp’s eyes widened. “You mean, someone did this on purpose? Like, some kind of
terrorist?
You think I should contact Homeland Security?”

“We’re just trying to cover all the bases,” Dean said. “At this juncture, we don’t have any evidence that would indicate terrorism. If we did, we’d be sure to tell you.”

The sheriff looked skeptical at the idea that federal agents would place a high priority on keeping a local like her in the loop, but she just said, “So what do you want to know?”

“Have there been any problems involving doctors or nurses in the area?” Sam asked. “Maybe even a nurse practitioner, a physician’s assistant, or a paramedic?”

“Problems?”

“Patient complaints,” Dean said. “Legal trouble. Strange behavior. Anything out of the ordinary.”

“You mean like a scandal?” she asked.

“It doesn’t have to be anything that major,” Sam said. “It could be something small, something that no one would think too much about in ordinary circumstances.”

She considered for a moment. “I’m sorry, but nothing’s coming to mind. Up until the last couple weeks, Brennan’s been a pretty quiet town. Usually, all we ever have to deal with is petty crime, marital disputes, and traffic violations.” She paused, and from the expression on her face, Sam knew she’d thought of something. “This might not be anything, but a few months back we had a father and daughter killed by a drunk driver. The girl was only fifteen, and just starting to learn how to drive. It was a damned shame. Anyway, the mother wasn’t with them when it happened, but she’s a doctor here in town. After the accident, she became depressed. Who wouldn’t, right? She started seeing fewer and fewer patients, until she finally stopped altogether. As far as I know, she hasn’t officially closed down her practice, but she might as well have.”

A grieving widow and mother who was also a doctor? Dippel would find her an irresistible candidate for an Igor. Not only did she have the knowledge of twenty-first century medicine he needed, but she had a compelling reason to want to work with him. Two reasons, in fact. Her husband and daughter. Sam thought of Walter Hansen, and he knew that if a grief-stricken parent had the opportunity to restore a dead child to life, he or she would be unable to resist taking it, regardless of the consequences.

Dean must have been thinking the same thing, for he gave Sam a quick nod before turning his attention back to Sheriff Kopp.

“We need the doctor’s name and address.”

Catherine gave Marshall’s body a final check. The tongue looked good—the NuFlesh had done its work, bonding the organ into place almost as easily as gluing two pieces of paper together—as did the new teeth. A couple of them weren’t as straight as she’d like, but she told herself not to be overly critical. Besides, human beings weren’t meant to be perfectly symmetrical. It was the imperfections, slight as they might be, that gave a man or woman character.

While she continued her examination, checking the spots where Marshall’s limbs—both original and new—had been fused, Conrad busied himself setting up the resurrection equipment. The procedure was primarily a chemical one, and the cart that Conrad wheeled over to the table where Marshall lay contained what at first glance appeared to be a simple arrangement of IV bottles, plastic tubing, and needles hanging from a metal framework. Chemicals of various colors filled the bottles, with tiny glints of illumination that resembled glowing flecks of multicolored metal floating within. Catherine had once asked Conrad what those flecks were, but he’d only given her a thin-lipped smile and said, “It’s an ancient secret.” At first she’d thought he was making a joke, but after everything she’d seen since starting to work with him, she’d come to accept that he was telling her the truth. An ancient secret, and no doubt one as dark as pitch, but she didn’t care, not as long as it returned her husband to her. There were enough chemicals in the bottles to treat both Marshall and Bekah today—assuming all went well with Marshall’s resurrection, that was.

Catherine knew the formulae for Conrad’s chemical mixtures, save for that one ingredient. Perhaps if she had a stronger background in chemistry, she might recognize the flecks, but she doubted it. Whatever they were, she didn’t think they were the sort of thing you could simply order from a chemical supply company.

Conrad wheeled a second cart over to Marshall that contained an external automated defibrillator—
Much more convenient than waiting for lightning to strike,
he’d once told her—along with strips of cloth that had been chemically treated and coated with more of those mysterious flecks of metal. She knew from their previous experiments that Conrad would wrap the strips around Marshall’s chest, leaving a section bare so the defibrillator’s electrodes could make contact with his skin. His head would be wrapped in the cloth, too, down to the neck. The one new element in the procedure this time was Conrad’s stone, the so-called Lapis Occultus. She had no idea what it was and would have dismissed it as pure nonsense if she hadn’t held it in her hand and felt its power for herself. The stone, he had explained to her, would be placed on Marshall’s forehead before the procedure got underway. When she’d asked Conrad what the stone’s purpose was, he’d been even more vague than usual:
It’s to ensure that death is held at bay indefinitely.