Ashes

07. Bugs

EXT. OASIS PLAINS, OKLAHOMA

Construction workers were building a luxury home complex.

"Man, these are some phat houses, huh?" Travis said. "I'd like to live here."

"Yeah, too bad you can't afford it," Dustin shot back.

"Yeah, you're right. This neighborhood'll be damn expensive when it's done. No, this place is perfect." He smacked a bug on the side of his neck. "Except for the mosquitoes." He heard Dustin screaming for help. He turned and saw that Dustin had fallen into a hole in the ground. "Dustin?" He rushed over to the hole.

"Help me, I'm trapped! I broke my ankle!"

"All right, I'll get a rope!"

He left. Inside the hole, Dustin was clutching his bloody ankle, breathing heavily. He looked around nervously and saw that there were thousands of beetles inside the walls of the hole. Several of them had landed on his hand, and he frantically brushed them off.

"Oh, God," Dustin muttered.

Outside the hole, Travis ran to a nearby truck and opened it. Back inside the hole, tons of beetles were beginning to cover Dustin's body. They gathered in groups on his clothing and skin.

"Travis, help!" Dustin yelled.

"Hang on!" Travis told him, getting a rope from the truck. Inside the hole, Dustin was almost entirely covered in beetles.

"Travis, help!" He continued to scream as beetles crawled inside his ears and nose.

"It's okay, Dustin! It's okay!" He ran back to the hole with supplies. "Dustin? Dustin, I'm here!" He looked into the hole with a flashlight, horrified. "Oh, God."

Inside the hole, Dustin was dead. He was bleeding heavily from the ears, nose, and eyes.

EXT. OKLAHOMA BAR - NIGHT

Sam was reading a newspaper article about Dustin. A minute later, Dean came outside, laughing and waving a wad of cash in the air.

"You know, we could get day jobs once in a while," Sam said.

"Hunting's our day job," Dean reminded her. "And the pay is crap."

"Yeah, but hustling pool? Credit card scams? It's not the most honest thing in the world, Dean."

"Well, let's see honest." He held out one hand. "Fun and easy." He held out the other, and gestured that "fun and easy" outweighed "honest". "It's no contest. Besides, we're good at it. It's what we were raised to do."

"Yeah, well, how we were raised was jacked."

"Yeah, says you. We got a new gig or what?"

"Maybe. Oasis Plains, Oklahoma - not far from here. A gas company employee, Dustin Burwash, supposedly died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob."

"Huh?"

"Human mad cow disease."

"Mad cow. Wasn't that on Oprah?"

"You watch Oprah?"

Dean, embarrassed, couldn't think of anything to say and changed the subject. "So this guy eats a bad burger. Why is it our kind of thing?"

"Mad cow disease causes massive brain degeneration. It takes months, even years, for the damage to appear. But this guy, Dustin? Sounds like his brain disintegrated in about an hour. Maybe less."

"Okay, that's weird."

"Yeah. Now, it could be a disease. Or it could be somethin' much nastier."

"All right. Oklahoma." They got in the car. "Man. Work, work, work. No time to spend my money."