Jason had been riding his mate for the better part of three hours when he decided they could both use a break and stopped at a pond far back in the woods to let his horse take a drink. Feeling for his water bottle among his possessions, he realized it wasn't there and that it must have fallen off some time during the ride. With a terrible thirst and nothing to quench it, he rationalized that the pond would be safe enough to drink from, since it was pretty big and there wasn't anything around for miles. Little did he know that a mere 10 miles away from this pond, a research facility had just had a break in one of its containment vessels. This containment vessel had inside of it a virus of unknown properties that was being tested on. With the break in the containment vessel, rainstorms from the past few days had caused some a liquid holding the virus to leak into a nearby river that just so happened to feed the pond.
Jason, having made up bid mind to drink, moved next to his horse and put his face to the water to get a drink.