Lazarus Came Forth, Chapter Four
Aug. 18th, 2008 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oselleTitle: Lazarus Came Forth, 4/8
Pairings: None (gen)
Rating: R (for language)
Warnings: Serious angst, some gore, heavily Dean-centric
Spoilers: Through end of Season Three
Word Count: 7,780 for Chapter Four (28,000 Chapters One through Four)
Disclaimer: The Winchesters and all canon characters belong to people who get paid to play with them. All original characters are mine but I'm not making money off any of them either.
Summary: Dean returns from hell and finds himself alive and alone in the stark landscape of an America that gone terribly wrong. Pursued by hell's bounty hunters and with little memory of how he escaped from hell, Dean sets out on a desperate hunt to find Sam. Apocafic.
Recap: If you're just tuning in, a badly injured Dean has managed to make it from Mississippi to Nebraska, dodging demons and hired state militias along the way. After spending a few painful, nightmare-plagued hours at a Super 8 in Nebraska City, Dean sets off for South Dakota and the closest thing to home he's ever known -- Bobby's house. Links to previous chapters:
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One
Lazarus Came Forth
4. That Old Time Religion
The feeling of something being bad wrong was growing on Dean as he headed west through Nebraska in the early hours of that morning. By the time dawn began to pale the sky it was so strong that he was riding the Grand Marquis at over ninety with no one in sight to stop him. The day broke with a dim brown light that revealed a barren landscape where no cars but his own were on the road and he had to turn on the wipers to keep the windshield clear of dust that sanded against it like dry rain.
He turned on the radio to a garble of sound and shifting static from one end of the dial to the other. He crossed the state line into South Dakota and a sudden sharp memory came to him of crossing this border as a kid and Dad making Sam and him set their watches back because they'd gained an hour just by crossing the state line. Dean had no watch and the clock in the dashboard was broken but he thought it must have been about nine o'clock in the morning. He blurred north past a string of small towns, all of their names coming back to him as if he'd been here yesterday, Olsonville and Antelope and White River and Murdo that sounded like murder, and then a bleak stretch of Interstate 90 and then Creighton. Then that shitty, rutted dirt road somewhere between Creighton and Elm Springs near the Cheyenne River that was the only way to get to Singer Salvage, the sort of place no one could find if they didn't know it was there.
The iron gate at the entrance of Bobby's property was still standing, the pitted lettering above it looking worse than ever. Dean gunned the car up the hill in a smoky haze of dust and he saw but didn't see that everything on the place was covered in brown dirt, that the cars and parts of cars and trucks and farm equipment that had forever surrounded Bobby's house were all but buried in dust. Dean came to a hard stop in the yard and he sat there and looked at the house. After a moment he reached down and switched off the ignition and the only sound was the wind and the dry dirt sifting over the car.
There was no dog in the yard, no sign of a dog, no car that looked as if anyone had driven it in recent memory. The back porch was covered in dust up to its top step without a single footprint in it. The door was closed and a drift of dirt sloped up against it like brown snow. It was already cool here and there was no sun and Bobby would have had a fire going in the house but there was no scent of smoke on the air and nothing coming out of the chimney.
Dean opened the door and got out of the car and the blowing dirt stung his face. The only sounds were the wind and his pulse in his ears. He took a step towards the house and then turned around and ducked back into the car and got the shotgun out of the bag. He chambered a round and turned back to the house.
He climbed the back porch steps and his boots made the only imprint in the dust. The door was not locked and he went inside. It was dark in the house and quiet but for the wind. Dust lay over everything. The kitchen was thick with it. Through the double doors into the front room. Bobby's things, Bobby's books, most of them gone, some of them still there. Covered in dust. On the ceiling the Devil's Trap still tattooed into the plaster. The fireplace empty except for a drift of brown dirt.
His boots gritted in the dust on the floor. He could hear a window rattling in its frame upstairs and he knew what room that was. He'd slept in that room many times, Sam and him. As far back as childhood. He'd slept in that room, or had tried to sleep, just two days before he had died. Lying there staring out the rattling window, listening to Sam and Bobby downstairs the way he'd once listened to Bobby and Dad talking while Sam slept. Sam coming upstairs on that last night and asking if he was asleep. He'd pretended to be because Sam would have heard it in his voice, how terrified he was. If he'd known what was coming he wouldn't have been terrified. He would have been out of his fucking mind.
He went up the stairs, not knowing why. Knowing he'd find no one. The banister was rough with dirt. Upstairs, empty rooms full of dust. Flat brown light at the windows. The last room he'd slept in before he died unchanged, the same cover on the bed. No electricity when he hit the switch. No water when he turned the taps. An abandoned house. He went back down the hall and came to the top of the stairs.
Something at the foot of the stairs was grinning up at him.
"Knew you'd come."
He had no holy water, he'd left it in the car. Stupid, so stupid. Should have known.
"Been waiting for you," it said and then it was running up the stairs and Dean barely had time to raise the shotgun and blast it, once with salt and it shrieked and then again at close range with buckshot, not enough to kill it but enough to knock it over the railing down to the first floor. He ran down the stairs chambering another round in the shotgun and by then it was up on its feet and it slammed him into the wall. It was right on top of him and he flipped over onto his back and got the shotgun under its chin and blew its head off. Black smoke shot up out of the gaping head and the body collapsed and Dean realized there were more of them and they were almost on him before he made it into the front room. The Devil's Trap stopped them at the threshold. Through the double doors he could see others in the kitchen between him and the back door. Five altogether.
He stood beneath the Devil's Trap and caught his breath. It had grown much darker as if the sickly day were giving up altogether and in the gloom he could see their teeth and the flat obsidian shine of their eyes.
"You can't stay in there forever."
"You'll starve to death."
"You'll die of thirst."
Why don't they shoot me? he thought wildly. Why don't they just fucking shoot me?
They didn't. They stood there, two of them in the hall and three of them in the kitchen and watched him like wolves. It grew even darker and the wind was louder now and the dirt striking the windows and the side of the house rattled like fine hail. The house shuddered.
"Come on, Dean. Time to get your ass back where it belongs."
"There's nowhere left to go."
"They’re all dead."
Dean turned and looked at the one who had spoken. It was in the kitchen with its hands wrapped around the doorjamb, claws dug into the wood.
"We killed all of them. The one who lived here. That woman in Nebraska. Your brother. Everyone. They're all gone. You're on your own, Dean."
"That's a fucking lie."
It cocked its head and smiled. "No one alive even remembers you existed."
"Someone got me out," Dean said.
"And paid the price for it."
"What?"
"You think getting someone out of hell is like picking them up at the airport? There's a price to be paid. In blood."
"Bullshit."
"Really, Dean. How many people have to die so that you can live?"
"They aren't dead."
"Then where are they? Where is Sam?"
He had no answer for that. It was so dark now that he could barely see anything. He could just make out the big bay window as a faint brown transparency like light struggling through mud. The wind shrieked and there was a sound of glass shattering upstairs, something tearing off the house.
"Where is your brother, Dean?"
"Not dead."
"Where is he?"
“He’s not dead!” Dean shouted into the howling darkness. “He’s not dead you son of a bitch!” He pumped the shotgun and aimed and shot towards the demon’s voice and heard it squeal like a beast and then he turned and shot out the bay window and threw himself through it head first and hit the ground rolling. Outside it had gone wholly black and the air was so filled with dirt it felt solid. He fell down choking and blind and he got up and staggered along the side of the house. He couldn't see a thing and he had no bearings and the demons would be out here too.
He hit up against the hood of the Grand Marquis and almost went sprawling and then one of them was on him. It bore him to the ground and clawed at him, at his back where he'd been shot and he gasped and got a mouthful of dust. He kicked out blindly and lunged for the door handle and pulled himself up and into the car and slammed the door. The demon punched through the side window and grabbed his arm and he reared back and shot it point blank in the face. Another was on the hood kicking in the windshield and he keyed the ignition and slammed the car into reverse. The sedan shot backwards and the demon on the hood went flying and he heard another one thump hard beneath the rear wheels and he sawed the car around and tore down the hill from memory not sight.
The wind was so strong he could hardly keep the car in a straight line and he didn't know if he was on the road. He couldn't see. He couldn't breathe. He drove near-blind and coughing for he didn't know how long until suddenly something big and solid loomed in front of him and he slammed the brakes but couldn't stop the car in time. He plowed straight through whatever it was with a jolting crash of glass and metal and wood and finally brought the car to a shuddering stop.
The car was in the middle of someone's living room and he opened the door and fell out and lay gasping on the dust-gritted carpet, his eyes streaming. It seemed almost quiet inside the house but he could still hear the wind and now another sound like the sucking howl of a jet engine. He'd been in tornadoes before and he could hear it coming, shattering glass and twisting metal and tearing up everything in its path. He could almost have laughed. Demons and dust storms and twisters, oh-fucking-my.
He hauled himself up on the stock of the shotgun and grabbed the bag out of the car. The windows of the house were blowing out, one by one. He felt his way into the kitchen and found the cellar door and stumbled down the stairs in the blackness. He crawled beneath the stairs and set his back to the wall. It was cool down there and smelled sweet and sawdusty. He felt the wall tremble and he put his head on his knees and his arms over his head and the storm roared over the house like hell on earth.
* * *
It was so quiet in the tornado's wake that Dean felt as if he'd gone deaf. He stood up and climbed the stairs. There was red light coming from underneath the door. He opened the door. The kitchen was still standing and the broken windows were lit by flat, coppery daylight.
The front of the house was gone. The Grand Marquis was gone with it. He stood in a bare space that had once been the living room and he could see the funnel moving off to the east. The air was full of dust and the sun was an alien red disk in a lightning-seared sky.
* * *
He had torn up the kitchen curtains from the house and tied a piece of them over his nose and mouth and that helped him breathe but his eyes were shot. They felt as if they were bleeding. Every time he wiped them he'd look at his fingers and expect to see red but he saw only tears and dirt.
He began to think he was going in circles. The sun didn't seem to have moved in hours and he cast no shadow in its dim red light. His feet on the road raised a waist-high cloud of dust around him. He was thirsty, God was he thirsty. All the water had been in the car and the car was probably somewhere in Minnesota by now. He didn't think he'd been this thirsty in hell.
I don't remember that.
"I don't remember anything about that," he rasped out loud. "Okay?" He had no idea who he was talking to.
He stumbled and fell. His wound lit up with pain and he lay in the dirt clenching his teeth.
Get up, asshole. Get up.
He made a halfhearted attempt but then just lay there.
What for? You know they're telling the truth.
"The fuck I do," he said.
Four years, long time. They're gone, all of them.
"Sam got me out. I know that."
Come on, stay with me, Dean.
I'm with you, Sam, please don't leave me...
"I remember that."
He got you out and now he's dead. He died for you, he's dead because of you, he's dead, he's dead...
"Shut the fuck up," he croaked and got up.
* * *
It was getting dark. Maybe it was sunset but he didn't think so. He hadn't been walking long enough. There was a road sign lying flat on the ground and he got on his knees and wiped the dust off and saw the red and blue marker of Interstate 90. He looked around and could just make out the strip of blacktop beneath a swirling veil of dirt. He got up and started walking parallel to the road. He thought he was going east. He looked over his shoulder. It was darker in the west. It might have been his eyes but there was something there like a brown wall that went from the horizon to the sky. As if the earth ended right there. It was eating up the light as it came.
Shit, he thought. Son of a...
He tripped over something and fell again. He raised himself up on his hands and coughed until he retched up a gritty drool and he tore the rag off his face and spat.
Tell you a story...guy dies, right? Goes to hell, he's in hell for four years. His brother gets him out, nobody knows how. So then what happens? Dumb sonofabitch dies in a fucking dust storm couple of weeks later. You believe that shit? Oh, and here's the good part...the brother? He's dead too. And the guy who went to hell? Did it to save the brother's life. You gotta love it, man. You can't make this shit up.
* * *
He knew if he kept walking east he'd come to a truck stop or gas station or someplace to hole up until the storm passed but he wasn't going to get there in time. It was even darker and the dust was thicker in the air and the dirt on the ground was jumping as if it had been electrified. The wind howled in his ears and drove dirt into them. It was impossible to walk. He crouched down and crossed his arms over his knees and pressed his swollen eyes into the crook of his arm.
Fuck, Sammy, fuck, I'm so sorry.
"Hey!"
He looked up and saw someone through a blur of tears.
"What the fuck are you doing, man?"
The figure before him was swathed up like a Bedouin. He was wearing goggles and a two-filter respirator that made his voice muffled and hollow.
"What are you doing out here?"
"Show me your face!" Dean hollered over the wind.
"What?"
He raised the shotgun. "Let me see your face!"
The man put his hands in the air. "Okay, dude, okay. No sudden movements, all right?" He pushed the goggles up on top of his head and pulled the respirator down to his neck. "Okay?"
Dean nodded and lowered the shotgun.
"You gonna shoot me?"
Dean shook his head.
"Dude, I don't wanna leave you out here. You put the sawed-off in the trunk you can come with me, otherwise..."
"Here," he said. "Take it."
"All right. Okay." The man took the shotgun and held out a hand to Dean. "We gotta hurry. Shit's almost right on top of us."
He had a small car whose backseat was packed with stuff from floor to roof and the man had to push things off the passenger seat so that Dean could sit. He rounded the car and got behind the wheel and floored the gas pedal.
"Wow," he said. "Wow. What the hell were you doing out there?"
Dean flapped a hand at him and shook his head. He couldn't talk.
"Here," the man said and nudged Dean's arm. Dean cracked open his eyes and saw that the man was handing him a bottle of Mountain Dew and Dean took it and drank three long swallows, sugar and caffeine and dirt sliding down his throat. He lapsed into a coughing fit that bent him double.
"Don't puke on the cat, man." There was a plastic pet carrier on the floor at Dean's feet. "Mr. Bojangles don’t dig puke in his fur, believe me."
Dean shook his head and sat up. "I'm good. Thanks, man." He took another drink and this one went down easier.
The driver glanced at him. "Damn, how long were you out there? You look like the fucking sandman."
"Too long."
"No shit. You see that twister?"
"Yeah."
"That was a big bitch. Just missed me."
"Me too."
"Where you headed?"
Dean put his head back on the seat and closed his eyes. "I don't know," he said. His eyes burned beneath his lids. "I don't know."
* * *
The driver's name was Gary and he was from Rapid City. He told Dean he was headed for Mexico.
"Everyone else's trying to get to Canada. Me, I don't like the cold. Gonna stake out a little beach, hook up with a senorita, tan my pale ass and wait it out. Fucking tornadoes, fucking dust storms, fucking crazy-ass fascist bullshit. Maybe I won't come back at all. What the fuck for? My shitass job? You know what I did? I worked in a fucking gift shop in Sturgis. Had to dress up all Wild West every day like some fucking cowpoke jackass. Shit." He shook his head in disgust and the respirator swayed beneath his chin. "Me and Mr. Bojangles, man. Gonna be Mexicans." He shouted down at the pet carrier. "How you like that, el gato?" He shook his head again. "Frigging cat. Hey, what the hell were you doing out there anyway?"
"Just got stuck," Dean said. "Caught out."
"Rock and a hard place, huh? I feel your pain. It's all fucked up now. Everything's all fucked up. You got someplace to go? Want me to drop you somewhere?"
Dean shook his head. They had crossed the Nebraska state line and were headed south down Route 83. "I used to know someone around here but I don't think she's here anymore."
"You got that right. Nobody's here anymore. Gone anywhere but here. Hey, maybe we can get something on the radio."
Gary started fiddling with the dial. A scratchy jumble of news and music and weather spilled out. Dean leaned against the passenger door and kept his eyes on the rearview mirror. There had been no one behind them for the entire stretch from South Dakota and now another vehicle was in the mirror, coming up fast. The shotgun was in the trunk but Dean still had his gun and the Walther. He had salt and teargas in the bag. Hell of an arsenal.
Gary was still messing with the radio. Dean stared at the mirror. I'm gonna get this kid killed. Jesus Christ.
"Gary?"
"Yeah?"
"How fast does this car go?"
"Loaded up like this? Not too damn fast."
"Okay, Gary? If I tell you to pull over and let me out, just do it, okay? Just do it and keep driving."
"What, here? There's nothing out here, man."
The other vehicle was right behind them now, a dust-covered Ram Charger. Dean couldn't see the driver's face.
"Gary..."
The truck swung out from behind and roared passed them in a brown cloud and Dean bent over so that he wouldn't be seen and the truck kept going.
"What're you doing, man?"
Dean looked over the dashboard and saw the truck receding into the distance."Checking on el gato," he said. The truck was swallowed by the dust and only its taillights could be seen burning like fire and then those were gone too.
Dean sat up stiffly and shifted in the seat and tried to find some position that didn't hurt. Gary tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and watched him out of the corner of his eye.
"You all right, dude?"
"Yeah," Dean said but he wasn't.
Where is your brother, Dean?
Yellow lines fell one after the other beneath the car's wheels. There was a heavy haze in the air and the light was weak and brown. Dean leaned against the passenger door and fell into a cloudy stupor of pain and exhaustion and when Gary asked him if he was asleep he was so close to it that he said "I don't know," but it wasn't Gary's question he was answering.
Where is your brother, Dean?
* * *
Dean said he didn't know. He was in hell, how could he know where Sam was? Dean knew or thought he'd known that this wasn't his father but he began to think that it was and he began to hope that it was because someone had to know he was here and if anyone could walk into hell it would be Dad. Who else but Dad?
His father hunkered down on the balls of his feet to where Dean was lying on the floor chained up and so bloody that if he moved even a little there was a sloppy wet sound like someone walking through mud. Dean rolled his eyes up to him and said, Dad, please. Help me. His father touched Dean's face and Dean turned his face into his father's hand and begged him again, Help me. His father took his hand away and wiped it on his leg and shook his head. This is a real mess, Dean, he said. Sam's dead.
No, Dean said. It's okay, Dad, he’s safe. Dad sighed and looked up as if he were asking for infinite patience and looked down and said, You let him die because you weren't looking out for him. Then you had to make a deal you couldn't figure your way out of and you weren't there when he needed you.
Dean raised his head and stared at his father and said, No, that can't be true and Dad said, How would you know? How the fuck would you know, Dean? You weren't there. When they tore my boy's head off you weren't there and where the fuck were you, Dean? Why the FUCK weren't you looking out for him?
Dad, please, Dean said, it isn't true, Dad, please. His father stood up and looked down at him and said, Well, you have the rest of eternity to think about it. He turned around and walked away and Dean lay on the floor with his broken arms wrenched and shackled behind his back, screaming for his father to come back, please come back, Dad please but he never did.
* * *
When he woke up the cat was wailing and the car was stopped.
"What the fuck, man? What's the matter with you?"
"What?" Dean gasped. "What?" He turned to Gary and saw him sitting under the waxy glow of the domelight with the cat carrier on his lap.
"I thought you were having a fucking seizure or something."
"I need some air." He pushed open the door and got out of the car on shaking legs. He left the door open and walked a few yards into the low grass and bent over and braced his hands on his knees and closed his eyes.
"Bad dream," he said. "That's all."
Dream my ass.
"Hey, you all right?" Gary called.
"Yeah," Dean said.
"You sick or something?"
He waved an arm at Gary without turning around.
"You want me to drive away like you said?"
"No, don't drive away. Okay, Gary?"
He heard Gary muttering okay and it was so quiet he could hear the car squeak and shift when Gary got back behind the wheel. Dean stood there with his hands on his knees and his eyes closed and made himself breathe deep and slowly.
He opened his eyes and looked out over the plain. The land was flat enough to see the curve of the earth. It was past dusk and the air was clear and early stars were starting to show. A light wind stirred the grass and it felt good against his face, he was sweating and his eyes were wet. Two deer stood like phantoms in the distance, one cropping the grass the other with its head erect watching him, its eyes reflecting back the last of the daylight. Dean straightened up and the other deer raised its head and looked at him. He gestured at them.
"Go," he said, and they seemed to think about it for a second and then turned and bounded off across the plain. Dean envied them. After a while he wiped his face and went back to the car.
* * *
They were coming up on Stapleton when Dean made Gary stop the car.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Dean said. "You see that sign, right?"
"What, that? Yeah I see it. It's another holy roller, they're all over the place."
"No." Dean shook his head. "I know him." He stared at the sign, block letters faded and flaking beneath the sallow light of two smutty bulbs. "I knew him." He took money out of his pocket and folded back some bills and turned to Gary. "I'm getting out here. This is for the gas. Thanks for saving my ass back there."
Gary took the money without counting it. "You gonna get another ride here?"
"I don't know. I just need to see this guy."
"Well, hell, I can take a break. They usually got some pretty good grub cooking up at these things." He glanced at the sign. "It's almost eight o'clock, you're just in time for a meeting. I'll stick around."
"Okay," Dean said, not listening.
Gary drove past the sign over the packed dirt road. He parked next to a battered minivan that was loaded with household goods and had two mattresses strapped to its roof. Dean was out of the car before Gary even turned off the engine.
"I'll wait for you," Gary called after him.
"Okay," Dean said.
He joined the last stragglers making their way into tent. He thought it was the same tent, the exact same, just worse for wear like everything else. Like himself. The tent was almost full and there were no seats left in the front. Sam had made him sit in the front, had steered him to the front with an arm around him that he had kept shaking off. He could use that arm now. He'd give anything for it.
He made his way up to the stage where a man was checking the lectern and microphone.
"I need to see Reverend LeGrange."
The man didn't look down. "He don't sit with folks before a meeting. He'll take personal prayers afterwards if you can get to him."
"Look, I know him. He knows me. He...he healed me. Would've been a couple...six years ago."
"He healed a lot of people back then."
"I think he'll remember me. Tell him it's Dean, it's Dean Winchester."
The man stopped what he was doing and came around from behind the lectern and crouched down at the edge of the stage. "You can try and get some time with him after the meeting, but I don't want you to get your hopes up none. He don't remember too much about them days."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean after his wife died. He don't talk about them days. Lost his gift, lost his faith along with it for a long time."
Dean stared at the man and couldn't find anything to say.
"Why don't you go find a seat before they're all gone?"
Dean took a step back from the stage.
"Go on and sit down," the man said standing up. "Go on now."
Dean fell back through the crowd and at the back of the tent he sat down on the edge of a shaky folding chair. There was a shift and buzz of chatter around him and after a while a woman with a badly disfigured face came out and took a seat at the piano and lifted the lid off the keys and began to play. The crowd quieted down. Reverend LeGrange came out and stood behind the lectern and welcomed them and led them in a hymn that everyone but Dean knew. LeGrange looked much older than he had six years ago, he was a withered old man.
The reverend preached to outbursts of amens and hallelujahs and the woman next to Dean swayed in her seat with a Bible clutched to her chest. It grew hot and airless in the tent and Dean saw a double-exposed reel of the present and the rainy afternoon six years before when the man on the stage had chosen him to be healed. He saw Sam nudging him, telling him to get up there. A brief glimpse of the dying girl’s mother, stricken with dismay and anger because her daughter should have been going, not him. Reverend LeGrange motioning to him. Dean climbing the stairs, so fucking tired but nothing like now. The reverend's wife patting his back, encouraging. The reverend's hand on his head praying over him, unknowingly giving him someone else’s life. What goes around comes around, Dean thought and maybe it had all started then, maybe if he had died the way he'd been meant to six years ago nothing that came afterward would have happened. There's always a reckoning.
Dean hardly noticed that the service had ended. The crowd surged forward and he stayed in his seat and saw the people at the stage as they reached out to the reverend with their arms in the air and their hands splayed out in supplication. He was alone at the back of the tent and then he got up suddenly and headed for the stage and the crowd pushed him back like something adrift on the tide. He made it to the front at last and he called out to the reverend and knew he couldn't be heard over all the other people but he kept calling the reverend's name and finally the reverend turned his blind eyes to Dean and Dean grabbed his hand.
"Reverend LeGrange? Do you remember me? Dean, Dean Winchester."
The reverend paused and put a hand on Dean's face and Dean closed his eyes and kept his own hand over the old man's bony fingers.
"Six years ago," he said. "Six years ago, remember?"
Reverend LeGrange traced his hands over Dean's face.
"Please, Reverend."
The reverend shook his head. "No," he said. "No, no I don't remember you." He took his hands from Dean's face and drew away from him. "I don't know you."
The other people called out to the reverend and shouted their prayer intentions and the reverend stood up and stumbled and the piano player came and helped him off the stage. Dean let himself be pushed this way and that by the crowd until he found himself at the back of the tent again with no one around him and then he was outside. He took a few steps from the tent but he suddenly felt too tired to walk and he sat down on a trailer hitch and stared out at the landscape of parked vehicles and lunchwagons and strung lightbulbs, like a fairground where all the rides and the booths had somehow gotten lost on the way.
* * *
He sat there for some time and after a while he heard someone coming toward him and his hand went towards the gun at his back and then he saw it was only the disfigured piano player. She held the sort of heavy white mug that diners used and she came beside Dean and handed it down to him. One side of her mouth didn't move right and when she spoke her words were soft and slurry.
"I saw you in the crowd. You look like you need to eat something."
"I'm okay, thanks."
"Take it," she said. "It's just soup. Everything else here is fried to within an inch of its life. You don't want to be putting that on an empty stomach."
The night had grown cool and windy and when Dean took the mug its warmth was welcome against his hands. It smelled like tomato soup and he realized for the first time that he had barely eaten anything since that last evening at Buddy's house which already seemed like some distant long-ago. He drank some of the soup and it was very hot and felt so good against his dust-raked throat.
"Thanks," he said. The woman was across from Dean, sitting on a truck bumper. She kept the bad side of her face turned away from him so that it was lost in shadow.
"Don't mention it," she said.
They sat in silence until she said, "I'm sorry the reverend didn't remember you. You have to pardon him."
"It's all right."
"You seemed upset."
"It doesn't matter."
"Dean?" she said and he looked at her. "That's your name if I heard it right?" After a moment he nodded.
"Dean, I think maybe you should come with me."
"Where?"
"Not far. Just come."
She got up and turned her back and started walking away from the tent. He stood up but hung back and she turned around and smiled at him with the good side of her mouth.
"Don't worry," she said. "I know I look like hell but I'm pretty harmless."
"No, no," Dean stammered. "It's just...I have to get going. Someone's waiting for me."
"Just a few minutes," she said and added, "Please, Dean," and something in the way she said his name made him follow her across the cheerless midway out past the dirty lightbulbs on their bare wires until they came to what had once been a self-storage facility, a long low building of corrugated metal that had turned into a warren of people who sat inside or in front of the units on a shabby collection of lawn chairs and mattresses and blankets with dirty children and dogs running among them.
"Why are all these people here?"
"They're Dusters," she said. "Displaced people." She went to a unit that had a piece of sheeting strung up over the opening and she held the sheet back to let him in and he looked down and saw a thick white line laid across the threshold that couldn't have been there by accident. He looked at the woman and she smiled.
"Yes, it's salt."
She turned on the light and said that they were lucky to have electricity here and then she was on her knees pulling a plastic storage box from under a rollaway bed against the unit's corrugate wall. Dean had stepped over the saltline as carefully as he had ever stepped over any of them and he let the sheet fall behind him and he stood there and watched her, too full of questions to speak.
"Sit," she said. There was nowhere to sit but the rollaway bed and a few mattresses on the floor so he sat at the foot of the bed while she went through the box. There was a cross hanging from a nail over the bed with a Catholic scapular wound around it and there were crates of books and suitcases as though other people lived there with her but other than these things the space was bare as a monk's cell.
She finally pulled out some sheets of paper and handed them to him. They were printouts from newspaper websites in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Monument, Colorado and on both of them his name and his brother's name had been circled in red ink.
"That's you, right? You're that Dean Winchester?"
Dean read the pages and chewed his lip and looked at her. "Do I know you?"
"No, you don't. My name is Alice Denham. My husband’s name was Joshua. He was a hunter. We knew your father."
"Dad? You knew Dad?"
She nodded. "Your brother too, sort of, he called my husband once. He said you were sick and Joshua told him to take you to Reverend LeGrange. That would have been six years ago like you said."
"He talked to Sam," Dean said quietly. "I remember. I remember Sam saying he'd heard of LeGrange from someone named Joshua but..." He gestured with the pages. "What’s all this?"
"He knew that something had happened between you and the reverend, with Sue-Ann dying the way she did and the reverend giving up his ministry all of a sudden. Joshua did a little digging around, that's what he was good at. Never much with a gun but he could find things out." She motioned at the crates of books. "These were all his."
"What did he find out?"
She was sitting on her heels on the floor with her hands folded in her lap and she smiled at him. "You know."
"He knew how LeGrange was healing people?"
"Yes."
"So he knew how I was healed."
"Yes. I don't know if he felt guilty for sending you to the reverend or what but he sort of kept tabs on you after that. You and Sam. You had a way of popping up on the radar, you know. Among hunters and out there in the real world."
Dean looked at the printouts and remembered both incidents vividly, the insanity at the bank in Milwaukee and that disaster in Monument. "Not so much with the low profile, huh?"
"When Joshua heard that you and Sam had died in Monument, he didn't believe it, he said it wasn't like you and Sam to just get blown up by accident at some police station."
"It wasn't much of an accident," Dean said.
"But you made it out."
"Yeah. Yeah we did. A lot of other people didn't, though."
"It was demons, wasn't it? In Monument?"
Dean nodded.
"Around then was when Joshua started thinking something was coming. Something big, but no one had a handle on what it was. He thought that you and Sam would and he talked about trying to get in touch with you and then we heard again that you were dead." She paused. "We heard a lot of versions of the story but everyone agreed on one thing. That you'd made a deal. And gone to hell."
Dean stared at Alice for a moment and then put his head down and looked at his hands. It was shocking to hear someone say it.
"Were you really in hell?"
Dean took a deep breath and held it and let it go. He couldn't answer her in words so he only nodded.
"Oh my God," she whispered. "How long?"
"Four years."
"All this time? All this time?"
"Yeah," he said and then, "Wait...wait wait...if you know about that then do you know what happened after? Do you know what happened to my brother, to Sam?" Alice didn't say anything. "Do you?"
"He was hell on demons, I know that. And anything else that got in his way. They said he was doing it for you. And then..."
"What? Then what?"
"He...things had been going bad for a long time. You see what it's like out there. It didn't happen overnight. But a year or so ago, last winter, things got worse, a lot worse, and not just the bad things that were happening everywhere to everyone. They started going after hunters."
"They? Demons?"
"There were so many of them. And they were so strong, I thought they'd gotten everyone. You're the first hunter I've seen since they killed Joshua. Since they did this to my face."
Dean had gone cold while she was talking. "My brother. Did they kill him?"
"Around the time when things started getting bad was when...when we stopped hearing anything about Sam. I don't know if he's dead, Dean. I don't know what happened to him."
The wind moved the sheet with a soft sighing sound and he could almost hear the grains of salt at the threshold stirring and shifting along with it and outside someone was calling, some kid calling to another that it was bedtime.
"No," Dean said. "No, no...he got me out. He came for me."
"Dean...are you sure? "
"No...it's all...I can't...don't want to remember it. Any of it. I dream about it and that's bad enough, but I can hear him..."
Stay with me, Dean.
"I can almost see him. But I can't think about that without bringing up everything else and I can't...I just can't..."
He squeezed his eyes shut and he heard Alice move and felt her hand on his knee and he turned away from her with his hand over his eyes and she said, "Dean."
He looked down at her ruined face, her one eye bright and fixed on him.
"It's got to mean something that you're back, nobody comes back from hell. When I saw you tonight I knew."
"Knew what?"
"That it wasn't over."
Dean shook his head and coughed out a desperate laugh. "I've got demons on my ass trying to drag me back to hell. I already got one person killed, maybe two more and I don't know where Sam is, I don't know where anyone is. I don't even know how to use a fucking computer anymore so I'm the last guy you wanna pin your hopes on."
She sat there looking at him. "Why don't you stay here? Stay here and rest and maybe you'll remember..."
He stood up and walked away from her. She got up and followed him.
"Everything they take from us makes them so much stronger. They want us not to be able to face what they do so they can keep doing it, keep using us. They want you to forget so that you can't find Sam. So that you'll just be running from it and that's how they'll get you. That's what they do. They feed on fear."
"I can't, okay? Not now, not yet."
"Okay," Alice said. "Okay, but please, stay here a while. Please don't go back out there."
It sounded good, better than good, to stay there with someone who had known Dad and Sam, who knew why doors needed to be salted, to stay there and maybe be safe for a little while, maybe figure out how to move around this new world as he had once done, recover from what he'd been so eager to forget some memory that would bring him to Sam, or Sam to him, or something, anything that would set this some way to right. A line from the exorcism ritual came to him, one he'd said in Latin many times but now he heard it in English, I am needy and poor, oh God help me. Help me remember if that was really Sam, help me remember what happened, help me, help me.
He turned to Alice. "There are kids here, families. Innocent people. I can't stay here. They're looking for me. You know what they can do."
Alice was quiet. She looked away and her only good eye stared into the distance, far beyond the metal walls of the unit. After a moment she looked back at him.
"What will you do?"
"I don't know. Keep moving, keep looking for Sam. Try to stay topside."
"How can you do that on your own?"
"I don't know," he said. He gave her a faint smile. "I'm making it up as I go along."
"If you need help, anything, please come back. I'll do whatever I can."
Dean nodded. "All right. Thank you. I thought everyone was gone. At least there are some of us left."
"One more, now."
"Yeah," Dean said. He turned to go and at the threshold he turned at looked over his shoulder. "Hell on demons, huh?"
"Oh yeah. You wouldn't believe it."
"Sure I would," Dean said and he was smiling. "He's my brother." He left Alice safe behind her saltline in the metal box and though there was no reason for it he felt something closer to hope than anything in his recent memory.
* * *
He found Gary sleeping in the car and he rapped on the window and Gary sat up and rubbed his eyes and unlocked the passenger door.
"So, you been saved or what?" Gary asked.
Dean sat down and closed the door. "Something like that."
Gary yawned and stretched and drummed his fingers on the wheel. "You ready to hit the road?"
"Yeah," Dean said. "Let's go."
Gary put the car in gear and pulled out and drove down the dirt track and turned onto the highway. In the rearview mirror Dean watched the revival ground grow smaller and dimmer until it was only a pale white glow amidst all that dark plain and then it was gone.
Go ahead to Chapter Five.
Pairings: None (gen)
Rating: R (for language)
Warnings: Serious angst, some gore, heavily Dean-centric
Spoilers: Through end of Season Three
Word Count: 7,780 for Chapter Four (28,000 Chapters One through Four)
Disclaimer: The Winchesters and all canon characters belong to people who get paid to play with them. All original characters are mine but I'm not making money off any of them either.
Summary: Dean returns from hell and finds himself alive and alone in the stark landscape of an America that gone terribly wrong. Pursued by hell's bounty hunters and with little memory of how he escaped from hell, Dean sets out on a desperate hunt to find Sam. Apocafic.
Recap: If you're just tuning in, a badly injured Dean has managed to make it from Mississippi to Nebraska, dodging demons and hired state militias along the way. After spending a few painful, nightmare-plagued hours at a Super 8 in Nebraska City, Dean sets off for South Dakota and the closest thing to home he's ever known -- Bobby's house. Links to previous chapters:
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One
Lazarus Came Forth
4. That Old Time Religion
The feeling of something being bad wrong was growing on Dean as he headed west through Nebraska in the early hours of that morning. By the time dawn began to pale the sky it was so strong that he was riding the Grand Marquis at over ninety with no one in sight to stop him. The day broke with a dim brown light that revealed a barren landscape where no cars but his own were on the road and he had to turn on the wipers to keep the windshield clear of dust that sanded against it like dry rain.
He turned on the radio to a garble of sound and shifting static from one end of the dial to the other. He crossed the state line into South Dakota and a sudden sharp memory came to him of crossing this border as a kid and Dad making Sam and him set their watches back because they'd gained an hour just by crossing the state line. Dean had no watch and the clock in the dashboard was broken but he thought it must have been about nine o'clock in the morning. He blurred north past a string of small towns, all of their names coming back to him as if he'd been here yesterday, Olsonville and Antelope and White River and Murdo that sounded like murder, and then a bleak stretch of Interstate 90 and then Creighton. Then that shitty, rutted dirt road somewhere between Creighton and Elm Springs near the Cheyenne River that was the only way to get to Singer Salvage, the sort of place no one could find if they didn't know it was there.
The iron gate at the entrance of Bobby's property was still standing, the pitted lettering above it looking worse than ever. Dean gunned the car up the hill in a smoky haze of dust and he saw but didn't see that everything on the place was covered in brown dirt, that the cars and parts of cars and trucks and farm equipment that had forever surrounded Bobby's house were all but buried in dust. Dean came to a hard stop in the yard and he sat there and looked at the house. After a moment he reached down and switched off the ignition and the only sound was the wind and the dry dirt sifting over the car.
There was no dog in the yard, no sign of a dog, no car that looked as if anyone had driven it in recent memory. The back porch was covered in dust up to its top step without a single footprint in it. The door was closed and a drift of dirt sloped up against it like brown snow. It was already cool here and there was no sun and Bobby would have had a fire going in the house but there was no scent of smoke on the air and nothing coming out of the chimney.
Dean opened the door and got out of the car and the blowing dirt stung his face. The only sounds were the wind and his pulse in his ears. He took a step towards the house and then turned around and ducked back into the car and got the shotgun out of the bag. He chambered a round and turned back to the house.
He climbed the back porch steps and his boots made the only imprint in the dust. The door was not locked and he went inside. It was dark in the house and quiet but for the wind. Dust lay over everything. The kitchen was thick with it. Through the double doors into the front room. Bobby's things, Bobby's books, most of them gone, some of them still there. Covered in dust. On the ceiling the Devil's Trap still tattooed into the plaster. The fireplace empty except for a drift of brown dirt.
His boots gritted in the dust on the floor. He could hear a window rattling in its frame upstairs and he knew what room that was. He'd slept in that room many times, Sam and him. As far back as childhood. He'd slept in that room, or had tried to sleep, just two days before he had died. Lying there staring out the rattling window, listening to Sam and Bobby downstairs the way he'd once listened to Bobby and Dad talking while Sam slept. Sam coming upstairs on that last night and asking if he was asleep. He'd pretended to be because Sam would have heard it in his voice, how terrified he was. If he'd known what was coming he wouldn't have been terrified. He would have been out of his fucking mind.
He went up the stairs, not knowing why. Knowing he'd find no one. The banister was rough with dirt. Upstairs, empty rooms full of dust. Flat brown light at the windows. The last room he'd slept in before he died unchanged, the same cover on the bed. No electricity when he hit the switch. No water when he turned the taps. An abandoned house. He went back down the hall and came to the top of the stairs.
Something at the foot of the stairs was grinning up at him.
"Knew you'd come."
He had no holy water, he'd left it in the car. Stupid, so stupid. Should have known.
"Been waiting for you," it said and then it was running up the stairs and Dean barely had time to raise the shotgun and blast it, once with salt and it shrieked and then again at close range with buckshot, not enough to kill it but enough to knock it over the railing down to the first floor. He ran down the stairs chambering another round in the shotgun and by then it was up on its feet and it slammed him into the wall. It was right on top of him and he flipped over onto his back and got the shotgun under its chin and blew its head off. Black smoke shot up out of the gaping head and the body collapsed and Dean realized there were more of them and they were almost on him before he made it into the front room. The Devil's Trap stopped them at the threshold. Through the double doors he could see others in the kitchen between him and the back door. Five altogether.
He stood beneath the Devil's Trap and caught his breath. It had grown much darker as if the sickly day were giving up altogether and in the gloom he could see their teeth and the flat obsidian shine of their eyes.
"You can't stay in there forever."
"You'll starve to death."
"You'll die of thirst."
Why don't they shoot me? he thought wildly. Why don't they just fucking shoot me?
They didn't. They stood there, two of them in the hall and three of them in the kitchen and watched him like wolves. It grew even darker and the wind was louder now and the dirt striking the windows and the side of the house rattled like fine hail. The house shuddered.
"Come on, Dean. Time to get your ass back where it belongs."
"There's nowhere left to go."
"They’re all dead."
Dean turned and looked at the one who had spoken. It was in the kitchen with its hands wrapped around the doorjamb, claws dug into the wood.
"We killed all of them. The one who lived here. That woman in Nebraska. Your brother. Everyone. They're all gone. You're on your own, Dean."
"That's a fucking lie."
It cocked its head and smiled. "No one alive even remembers you existed."
"Someone got me out," Dean said.
"And paid the price for it."
"What?"
"You think getting someone out of hell is like picking them up at the airport? There's a price to be paid. In blood."
"Bullshit."
"Really, Dean. How many people have to die so that you can live?"
"They aren't dead."
"Then where are they? Where is Sam?"
He had no answer for that. It was so dark now that he could barely see anything. He could just make out the big bay window as a faint brown transparency like light struggling through mud. The wind shrieked and there was a sound of glass shattering upstairs, something tearing off the house.
"Where is your brother, Dean?"
"Not dead."
"Where is he?"
“He’s not dead!” Dean shouted into the howling darkness. “He’s not dead you son of a bitch!” He pumped the shotgun and aimed and shot towards the demon’s voice and heard it squeal like a beast and then he turned and shot out the bay window and threw himself through it head first and hit the ground rolling. Outside it had gone wholly black and the air was so filled with dirt it felt solid. He fell down choking and blind and he got up and staggered along the side of the house. He couldn't see a thing and he had no bearings and the demons would be out here too.
He hit up against the hood of the Grand Marquis and almost went sprawling and then one of them was on him. It bore him to the ground and clawed at him, at his back where he'd been shot and he gasped and got a mouthful of dust. He kicked out blindly and lunged for the door handle and pulled himself up and into the car and slammed the door. The demon punched through the side window and grabbed his arm and he reared back and shot it point blank in the face. Another was on the hood kicking in the windshield and he keyed the ignition and slammed the car into reverse. The sedan shot backwards and the demon on the hood went flying and he heard another one thump hard beneath the rear wheels and he sawed the car around and tore down the hill from memory not sight.
The wind was so strong he could hardly keep the car in a straight line and he didn't know if he was on the road. He couldn't see. He couldn't breathe. He drove near-blind and coughing for he didn't know how long until suddenly something big and solid loomed in front of him and he slammed the brakes but couldn't stop the car in time. He plowed straight through whatever it was with a jolting crash of glass and metal and wood and finally brought the car to a shuddering stop.
The car was in the middle of someone's living room and he opened the door and fell out and lay gasping on the dust-gritted carpet, his eyes streaming. It seemed almost quiet inside the house but he could still hear the wind and now another sound like the sucking howl of a jet engine. He'd been in tornadoes before and he could hear it coming, shattering glass and twisting metal and tearing up everything in its path. He could almost have laughed. Demons and dust storms and twisters, oh-fucking-my.
He hauled himself up on the stock of the shotgun and grabbed the bag out of the car. The windows of the house were blowing out, one by one. He felt his way into the kitchen and found the cellar door and stumbled down the stairs in the blackness. He crawled beneath the stairs and set his back to the wall. It was cool down there and smelled sweet and sawdusty. He felt the wall tremble and he put his head on his knees and his arms over his head and the storm roared over the house like hell on earth.
* * *
It was so quiet in the tornado's wake that Dean felt as if he'd gone deaf. He stood up and climbed the stairs. There was red light coming from underneath the door. He opened the door. The kitchen was still standing and the broken windows were lit by flat, coppery daylight.
The front of the house was gone. The Grand Marquis was gone with it. He stood in a bare space that had once been the living room and he could see the funnel moving off to the east. The air was full of dust and the sun was an alien red disk in a lightning-seared sky.
* * *
He had torn up the kitchen curtains from the house and tied a piece of them over his nose and mouth and that helped him breathe but his eyes were shot. They felt as if they were bleeding. Every time he wiped them he'd look at his fingers and expect to see red but he saw only tears and dirt.
He began to think he was going in circles. The sun didn't seem to have moved in hours and he cast no shadow in its dim red light. His feet on the road raised a waist-high cloud of dust around him. He was thirsty, God was he thirsty. All the water had been in the car and the car was probably somewhere in Minnesota by now. He didn't think he'd been this thirsty in hell.
I don't remember that.
"I don't remember anything about that," he rasped out loud. "Okay?" He had no idea who he was talking to.
He stumbled and fell. His wound lit up with pain and he lay in the dirt clenching his teeth.
Get up, asshole. Get up.
He made a halfhearted attempt but then just lay there.
What for? You know they're telling the truth.
"The fuck I do," he said.
Four years, long time. They're gone, all of them.
"Sam got me out. I know that."
Come on, stay with me, Dean.
I'm with you, Sam, please don't leave me...
"I remember that."
He got you out and now he's dead. He died for you, he's dead because of you, he's dead, he's dead...
"Shut the fuck up," he croaked and got up.
* * *
It was getting dark. Maybe it was sunset but he didn't think so. He hadn't been walking long enough. There was a road sign lying flat on the ground and he got on his knees and wiped the dust off and saw the red and blue marker of Interstate 90. He looked around and could just make out the strip of blacktop beneath a swirling veil of dirt. He got up and started walking parallel to the road. He thought he was going east. He looked over his shoulder. It was darker in the west. It might have been his eyes but there was something there like a brown wall that went from the horizon to the sky. As if the earth ended right there. It was eating up the light as it came.
Shit, he thought. Son of a...
He tripped over something and fell again. He raised himself up on his hands and coughed until he retched up a gritty drool and he tore the rag off his face and spat.
Tell you a story...guy dies, right? Goes to hell, he's in hell for four years. His brother gets him out, nobody knows how. So then what happens? Dumb sonofabitch dies in a fucking dust storm couple of weeks later. You believe that shit? Oh, and here's the good part...the brother? He's dead too. And the guy who went to hell? Did it to save the brother's life. You gotta love it, man. You can't make this shit up.
* * *
He knew if he kept walking east he'd come to a truck stop or gas station or someplace to hole up until the storm passed but he wasn't going to get there in time. It was even darker and the dust was thicker in the air and the dirt on the ground was jumping as if it had been electrified. The wind howled in his ears and drove dirt into them. It was impossible to walk. He crouched down and crossed his arms over his knees and pressed his swollen eyes into the crook of his arm.
Fuck, Sammy, fuck, I'm so sorry.
"Hey!"
He looked up and saw someone through a blur of tears.
"What the fuck are you doing, man?"
The figure before him was swathed up like a Bedouin. He was wearing goggles and a two-filter respirator that made his voice muffled and hollow.
"What are you doing out here?"
"Show me your face!" Dean hollered over the wind.
"What?"
He raised the shotgun. "Let me see your face!"
The man put his hands in the air. "Okay, dude, okay. No sudden movements, all right?" He pushed the goggles up on top of his head and pulled the respirator down to his neck. "Okay?"
Dean nodded and lowered the shotgun.
"You gonna shoot me?"
Dean shook his head.
"Dude, I don't wanna leave you out here. You put the sawed-off in the trunk you can come with me, otherwise..."
"Here," he said. "Take it."
"All right. Okay." The man took the shotgun and held out a hand to Dean. "We gotta hurry. Shit's almost right on top of us."
He had a small car whose backseat was packed with stuff from floor to roof and the man had to push things off the passenger seat so that Dean could sit. He rounded the car and got behind the wheel and floored the gas pedal.
"Wow," he said. "Wow. What the hell were you doing out there?"
Dean flapped a hand at him and shook his head. He couldn't talk.
"Here," the man said and nudged Dean's arm. Dean cracked open his eyes and saw that the man was handing him a bottle of Mountain Dew and Dean took it and drank three long swallows, sugar and caffeine and dirt sliding down his throat. He lapsed into a coughing fit that bent him double.
"Don't puke on the cat, man." There was a plastic pet carrier on the floor at Dean's feet. "Mr. Bojangles don’t dig puke in his fur, believe me."
Dean shook his head and sat up. "I'm good. Thanks, man." He took another drink and this one went down easier.
The driver glanced at him. "Damn, how long were you out there? You look like the fucking sandman."
"Too long."
"No shit. You see that twister?"
"Yeah."
"That was a big bitch. Just missed me."
"Me too."
"Where you headed?"
Dean put his head back on the seat and closed his eyes. "I don't know," he said. His eyes burned beneath his lids. "I don't know."
* * *
The driver's name was Gary and he was from Rapid City. He told Dean he was headed for Mexico.
"Everyone else's trying to get to Canada. Me, I don't like the cold. Gonna stake out a little beach, hook up with a senorita, tan my pale ass and wait it out. Fucking tornadoes, fucking dust storms, fucking crazy-ass fascist bullshit. Maybe I won't come back at all. What the fuck for? My shitass job? You know what I did? I worked in a fucking gift shop in Sturgis. Had to dress up all Wild West every day like some fucking cowpoke jackass. Shit." He shook his head in disgust and the respirator swayed beneath his chin. "Me and Mr. Bojangles, man. Gonna be Mexicans." He shouted down at the pet carrier. "How you like that, el gato?" He shook his head again. "Frigging cat. Hey, what the hell were you doing out there anyway?"
"Just got stuck," Dean said. "Caught out."
"Rock and a hard place, huh? I feel your pain. It's all fucked up now. Everything's all fucked up. You got someplace to go? Want me to drop you somewhere?"
Dean shook his head. They had crossed the Nebraska state line and were headed south down Route 83. "I used to know someone around here but I don't think she's here anymore."
"You got that right. Nobody's here anymore. Gone anywhere but here. Hey, maybe we can get something on the radio."
Gary started fiddling with the dial. A scratchy jumble of news and music and weather spilled out. Dean leaned against the passenger door and kept his eyes on the rearview mirror. There had been no one behind them for the entire stretch from South Dakota and now another vehicle was in the mirror, coming up fast. The shotgun was in the trunk but Dean still had his gun and the Walther. He had salt and teargas in the bag. Hell of an arsenal.
Gary was still messing with the radio. Dean stared at the mirror. I'm gonna get this kid killed. Jesus Christ.
"Gary?"
"Yeah?"
"How fast does this car go?"
"Loaded up like this? Not too damn fast."
"Okay, Gary? If I tell you to pull over and let me out, just do it, okay? Just do it and keep driving."
"What, here? There's nothing out here, man."
The other vehicle was right behind them now, a dust-covered Ram Charger. Dean couldn't see the driver's face.
"Gary..."
The truck swung out from behind and roared passed them in a brown cloud and Dean bent over so that he wouldn't be seen and the truck kept going.
"What're you doing, man?"
Dean looked over the dashboard and saw the truck receding into the distance."Checking on el gato," he said. The truck was swallowed by the dust and only its taillights could be seen burning like fire and then those were gone too.
Dean sat up stiffly and shifted in the seat and tried to find some position that didn't hurt. Gary tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and watched him out of the corner of his eye.
"You all right, dude?"
"Yeah," Dean said but he wasn't.
Where is your brother, Dean?
Yellow lines fell one after the other beneath the car's wheels. There was a heavy haze in the air and the light was weak and brown. Dean leaned against the passenger door and fell into a cloudy stupor of pain and exhaustion and when Gary asked him if he was asleep he was so close to it that he said "I don't know," but it wasn't Gary's question he was answering.
Where is your brother, Dean?
* * *
Dean said he didn't know. He was in hell, how could he know where Sam was? Dean knew or thought he'd known that this wasn't his father but he began to think that it was and he began to hope that it was because someone had to know he was here and if anyone could walk into hell it would be Dad. Who else but Dad?
His father hunkered down on the balls of his feet to where Dean was lying on the floor chained up and so bloody that if he moved even a little there was a sloppy wet sound like someone walking through mud. Dean rolled his eyes up to him and said, Dad, please. Help me. His father touched Dean's face and Dean turned his face into his father's hand and begged him again, Help me. His father took his hand away and wiped it on his leg and shook his head. This is a real mess, Dean, he said. Sam's dead.
No, Dean said. It's okay, Dad, he’s safe. Dad sighed and looked up as if he were asking for infinite patience and looked down and said, You let him die because you weren't looking out for him. Then you had to make a deal you couldn't figure your way out of and you weren't there when he needed you.
Dean raised his head and stared at his father and said, No, that can't be true and Dad said, How would you know? How the fuck would you know, Dean? You weren't there. When they tore my boy's head off you weren't there and where the fuck were you, Dean? Why the FUCK weren't you looking out for him?
Dad, please, Dean said, it isn't true, Dad, please. His father stood up and looked down at him and said, Well, you have the rest of eternity to think about it. He turned around and walked away and Dean lay on the floor with his broken arms wrenched and shackled behind his back, screaming for his father to come back, please come back, Dad please but he never did.
* * *
When he woke up the cat was wailing and the car was stopped.
"What the fuck, man? What's the matter with you?"
"What?" Dean gasped. "What?" He turned to Gary and saw him sitting under the waxy glow of the domelight with the cat carrier on his lap.
"I thought you were having a fucking seizure or something."
"I need some air." He pushed open the door and got out of the car on shaking legs. He left the door open and walked a few yards into the low grass and bent over and braced his hands on his knees and closed his eyes.
"Bad dream," he said. "That's all."
Dream my ass.
"Hey, you all right?" Gary called.
"Yeah," Dean said.
"You sick or something?"
He waved an arm at Gary without turning around.
"You want me to drive away like you said?"
"No, don't drive away. Okay, Gary?"
He heard Gary muttering okay and it was so quiet he could hear the car squeak and shift when Gary got back behind the wheel. Dean stood there with his hands on his knees and his eyes closed and made himself breathe deep and slowly.
He opened his eyes and looked out over the plain. The land was flat enough to see the curve of the earth. It was past dusk and the air was clear and early stars were starting to show. A light wind stirred the grass and it felt good against his face, he was sweating and his eyes were wet. Two deer stood like phantoms in the distance, one cropping the grass the other with its head erect watching him, its eyes reflecting back the last of the daylight. Dean straightened up and the other deer raised its head and looked at him. He gestured at them.
"Go," he said, and they seemed to think about it for a second and then turned and bounded off across the plain. Dean envied them. After a while he wiped his face and went back to the car.
* * *
They were coming up on Stapleton when Dean made Gary stop the car.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Dean said. "You see that sign, right?"
"What, that? Yeah I see it. It's another holy roller, they're all over the place."
"No." Dean shook his head. "I know him." He stared at the sign, block letters faded and flaking beneath the sallow light of two smutty bulbs. "I knew him." He took money out of his pocket and folded back some bills and turned to Gary. "I'm getting out here. This is for the gas. Thanks for saving my ass back there."
Gary took the money without counting it. "You gonna get another ride here?"
"I don't know. I just need to see this guy."
"Well, hell, I can take a break. They usually got some pretty good grub cooking up at these things." He glanced at the sign. "It's almost eight o'clock, you're just in time for a meeting. I'll stick around."
"Okay," Dean said, not listening.
Gary drove past the sign over the packed dirt road. He parked next to a battered minivan that was loaded with household goods and had two mattresses strapped to its roof. Dean was out of the car before Gary even turned off the engine.
"I'll wait for you," Gary called after him.
"Okay," Dean said.
He joined the last stragglers making their way into tent. He thought it was the same tent, the exact same, just worse for wear like everything else. Like himself. The tent was almost full and there were no seats left in the front. Sam had made him sit in the front, had steered him to the front with an arm around him that he had kept shaking off. He could use that arm now. He'd give anything for it.
He made his way up to the stage where a man was checking the lectern and microphone.
"I need to see Reverend LeGrange."
The man didn't look down. "He don't sit with folks before a meeting. He'll take personal prayers afterwards if you can get to him."
"Look, I know him. He knows me. He...he healed me. Would've been a couple...six years ago."
"He healed a lot of people back then."
"I think he'll remember me. Tell him it's Dean, it's Dean Winchester."
The man stopped what he was doing and came around from behind the lectern and crouched down at the edge of the stage. "You can try and get some time with him after the meeting, but I don't want you to get your hopes up none. He don't remember too much about them days."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean after his wife died. He don't talk about them days. Lost his gift, lost his faith along with it for a long time."
Dean stared at the man and couldn't find anything to say.
"Why don't you go find a seat before they're all gone?"
Dean took a step back from the stage.
"Go on and sit down," the man said standing up. "Go on now."
Dean fell back through the crowd and at the back of the tent he sat down on the edge of a shaky folding chair. There was a shift and buzz of chatter around him and after a while a woman with a badly disfigured face came out and took a seat at the piano and lifted the lid off the keys and began to play. The crowd quieted down. Reverend LeGrange came out and stood behind the lectern and welcomed them and led them in a hymn that everyone but Dean knew. LeGrange looked much older than he had six years ago, he was a withered old man.
The reverend preached to outbursts of amens and hallelujahs and the woman next to Dean swayed in her seat with a Bible clutched to her chest. It grew hot and airless in the tent and Dean saw a double-exposed reel of the present and the rainy afternoon six years before when the man on the stage had chosen him to be healed. He saw Sam nudging him, telling him to get up there. A brief glimpse of the dying girl’s mother, stricken with dismay and anger because her daughter should have been going, not him. Reverend LeGrange motioning to him. Dean climbing the stairs, so fucking tired but nothing like now. The reverend's wife patting his back, encouraging. The reverend's hand on his head praying over him, unknowingly giving him someone else’s life. What goes around comes around, Dean thought and maybe it had all started then, maybe if he had died the way he'd been meant to six years ago nothing that came afterward would have happened. There's always a reckoning.
Dean hardly noticed that the service had ended. The crowd surged forward and he stayed in his seat and saw the people at the stage as they reached out to the reverend with their arms in the air and their hands splayed out in supplication. He was alone at the back of the tent and then he got up suddenly and headed for the stage and the crowd pushed him back like something adrift on the tide. He made it to the front at last and he called out to the reverend and knew he couldn't be heard over all the other people but he kept calling the reverend's name and finally the reverend turned his blind eyes to Dean and Dean grabbed his hand.
"Reverend LeGrange? Do you remember me? Dean, Dean Winchester."
The reverend paused and put a hand on Dean's face and Dean closed his eyes and kept his own hand over the old man's bony fingers.
"Six years ago," he said. "Six years ago, remember?"
Reverend LeGrange traced his hands over Dean's face.
"Please, Reverend."
The reverend shook his head. "No," he said. "No, no I don't remember you." He took his hands from Dean's face and drew away from him. "I don't know you."
The other people called out to the reverend and shouted their prayer intentions and the reverend stood up and stumbled and the piano player came and helped him off the stage. Dean let himself be pushed this way and that by the crowd until he found himself at the back of the tent again with no one around him and then he was outside. He took a few steps from the tent but he suddenly felt too tired to walk and he sat down on a trailer hitch and stared out at the landscape of parked vehicles and lunchwagons and strung lightbulbs, like a fairground where all the rides and the booths had somehow gotten lost on the way.
* * *
He sat there for some time and after a while he heard someone coming toward him and his hand went towards the gun at his back and then he saw it was only the disfigured piano player. She held the sort of heavy white mug that diners used and she came beside Dean and handed it down to him. One side of her mouth didn't move right and when she spoke her words were soft and slurry.
"I saw you in the crowd. You look like you need to eat something."
"I'm okay, thanks."
"Take it," she said. "It's just soup. Everything else here is fried to within an inch of its life. You don't want to be putting that on an empty stomach."
The night had grown cool and windy and when Dean took the mug its warmth was welcome against his hands. It smelled like tomato soup and he realized for the first time that he had barely eaten anything since that last evening at Buddy's house which already seemed like some distant long-ago. He drank some of the soup and it was very hot and felt so good against his dust-raked throat.
"Thanks," he said. The woman was across from Dean, sitting on a truck bumper. She kept the bad side of her face turned away from him so that it was lost in shadow.
"Don't mention it," she said.
They sat in silence until she said, "I'm sorry the reverend didn't remember you. You have to pardon him."
"It's all right."
"You seemed upset."
"It doesn't matter."
"Dean?" she said and he looked at her. "That's your name if I heard it right?" After a moment he nodded.
"Dean, I think maybe you should come with me."
"Where?"
"Not far. Just come."
She got up and turned her back and started walking away from the tent. He stood up but hung back and she turned around and smiled at him with the good side of her mouth.
"Don't worry," she said. "I know I look like hell but I'm pretty harmless."
"No, no," Dean stammered. "It's just...I have to get going. Someone's waiting for me."
"Just a few minutes," she said and added, "Please, Dean," and something in the way she said his name made him follow her across the cheerless midway out past the dirty lightbulbs on their bare wires until they came to what had once been a self-storage facility, a long low building of corrugated metal that had turned into a warren of people who sat inside or in front of the units on a shabby collection of lawn chairs and mattresses and blankets with dirty children and dogs running among them.
"Why are all these people here?"
"They're Dusters," she said. "Displaced people." She went to a unit that had a piece of sheeting strung up over the opening and she held the sheet back to let him in and he looked down and saw a thick white line laid across the threshold that couldn't have been there by accident. He looked at the woman and she smiled.
"Yes, it's salt."
She turned on the light and said that they were lucky to have electricity here and then she was on her knees pulling a plastic storage box from under a rollaway bed against the unit's corrugate wall. Dean had stepped over the saltline as carefully as he had ever stepped over any of them and he let the sheet fall behind him and he stood there and watched her, too full of questions to speak.
"Sit," she said. There was nowhere to sit but the rollaway bed and a few mattresses on the floor so he sat at the foot of the bed while she went through the box. There was a cross hanging from a nail over the bed with a Catholic scapular wound around it and there were crates of books and suitcases as though other people lived there with her but other than these things the space was bare as a monk's cell.
She finally pulled out some sheets of paper and handed them to him. They were printouts from newspaper websites in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Monument, Colorado and on both of them his name and his brother's name had been circled in red ink.
"That's you, right? You're that Dean Winchester?"
Dean read the pages and chewed his lip and looked at her. "Do I know you?"
"No, you don't. My name is Alice Denham. My husband’s name was Joshua. He was a hunter. We knew your father."
"Dad? You knew Dad?"
She nodded. "Your brother too, sort of, he called my husband once. He said you were sick and Joshua told him to take you to Reverend LeGrange. That would have been six years ago like you said."
"He talked to Sam," Dean said quietly. "I remember. I remember Sam saying he'd heard of LeGrange from someone named Joshua but..." He gestured with the pages. "What’s all this?"
"He knew that something had happened between you and the reverend, with Sue-Ann dying the way she did and the reverend giving up his ministry all of a sudden. Joshua did a little digging around, that's what he was good at. Never much with a gun but he could find things out." She motioned at the crates of books. "These were all his."
"What did he find out?"
She was sitting on her heels on the floor with her hands folded in her lap and she smiled at him. "You know."
"He knew how LeGrange was healing people?"
"Yes."
"So he knew how I was healed."
"Yes. I don't know if he felt guilty for sending you to the reverend or what but he sort of kept tabs on you after that. You and Sam. You had a way of popping up on the radar, you know. Among hunters and out there in the real world."
Dean looked at the printouts and remembered both incidents vividly, the insanity at the bank in Milwaukee and that disaster in Monument. "Not so much with the low profile, huh?"
"When Joshua heard that you and Sam had died in Monument, he didn't believe it, he said it wasn't like you and Sam to just get blown up by accident at some police station."
"It wasn't much of an accident," Dean said.
"But you made it out."
"Yeah. Yeah we did. A lot of other people didn't, though."
"It was demons, wasn't it? In Monument?"
Dean nodded.
"Around then was when Joshua started thinking something was coming. Something big, but no one had a handle on what it was. He thought that you and Sam would and he talked about trying to get in touch with you and then we heard again that you were dead." She paused. "We heard a lot of versions of the story but everyone agreed on one thing. That you'd made a deal. And gone to hell."
Dean stared at Alice for a moment and then put his head down and looked at his hands. It was shocking to hear someone say it.
"Were you really in hell?"
Dean took a deep breath and held it and let it go. He couldn't answer her in words so he only nodded.
"Oh my God," she whispered. "How long?"
"Four years."
"All this time? All this time?"
"Yeah," he said and then, "Wait...wait wait...if you know about that then do you know what happened after? Do you know what happened to my brother, to Sam?" Alice didn't say anything. "Do you?"
"He was hell on demons, I know that. And anything else that got in his way. They said he was doing it for you. And then..."
"What? Then what?"
"He...things had been going bad for a long time. You see what it's like out there. It didn't happen overnight. But a year or so ago, last winter, things got worse, a lot worse, and not just the bad things that were happening everywhere to everyone. They started going after hunters."
"They? Demons?"
"There were so many of them. And they were so strong, I thought they'd gotten everyone. You're the first hunter I've seen since they killed Joshua. Since they did this to my face."
Dean had gone cold while she was talking. "My brother. Did they kill him?"
"Around the time when things started getting bad was when...when we stopped hearing anything about Sam. I don't know if he's dead, Dean. I don't know what happened to him."
The wind moved the sheet with a soft sighing sound and he could almost hear the grains of salt at the threshold stirring and shifting along with it and outside someone was calling, some kid calling to another that it was bedtime.
"No," Dean said. "No, no...he got me out. He came for me."
"Dean...are you sure? "
"No...it's all...I can't...don't want to remember it. Any of it. I dream about it and that's bad enough, but I can hear him..."
Stay with me, Dean.
"I can almost see him. But I can't think about that without bringing up everything else and I can't...I just can't..."
He squeezed his eyes shut and he heard Alice move and felt her hand on his knee and he turned away from her with his hand over his eyes and she said, "Dean."
He looked down at her ruined face, her one eye bright and fixed on him.
"It's got to mean something that you're back, nobody comes back from hell. When I saw you tonight I knew."
"Knew what?"
"That it wasn't over."
Dean shook his head and coughed out a desperate laugh. "I've got demons on my ass trying to drag me back to hell. I already got one person killed, maybe two more and I don't know where Sam is, I don't know where anyone is. I don't even know how to use a fucking computer anymore so I'm the last guy you wanna pin your hopes on."
She sat there looking at him. "Why don't you stay here? Stay here and rest and maybe you'll remember..."
He stood up and walked away from her. She got up and followed him.
"Everything they take from us makes them so much stronger. They want us not to be able to face what they do so they can keep doing it, keep using us. They want you to forget so that you can't find Sam. So that you'll just be running from it and that's how they'll get you. That's what they do. They feed on fear."
"I can't, okay? Not now, not yet."
"Okay," Alice said. "Okay, but please, stay here a while. Please don't go back out there."
It sounded good, better than good, to stay there with someone who had known Dad and Sam, who knew why doors needed to be salted, to stay there and maybe be safe for a little while, maybe figure out how to move around this new world as he had once done, recover from what he'd been so eager to forget some memory that would bring him to Sam, or Sam to him, or something, anything that would set this some way to right. A line from the exorcism ritual came to him, one he'd said in Latin many times but now he heard it in English, I am needy and poor, oh God help me. Help me remember if that was really Sam, help me remember what happened, help me, help me.
He turned to Alice. "There are kids here, families. Innocent people. I can't stay here. They're looking for me. You know what they can do."
Alice was quiet. She looked away and her only good eye stared into the distance, far beyond the metal walls of the unit. After a moment she looked back at him.
"What will you do?"
"I don't know. Keep moving, keep looking for Sam. Try to stay topside."
"How can you do that on your own?"
"I don't know," he said. He gave her a faint smile. "I'm making it up as I go along."
"If you need help, anything, please come back. I'll do whatever I can."
Dean nodded. "All right. Thank you. I thought everyone was gone. At least there are some of us left."
"One more, now."
"Yeah," Dean said. He turned to go and at the threshold he turned at looked over his shoulder. "Hell on demons, huh?"
"Oh yeah. You wouldn't believe it."
"Sure I would," Dean said and he was smiling. "He's my brother." He left Alice safe behind her saltline in the metal box and though there was no reason for it he felt something closer to hope than anything in his recent memory.
* * *
He found Gary sleeping in the car and he rapped on the window and Gary sat up and rubbed his eyes and unlocked the passenger door.
"So, you been saved or what?" Gary asked.
Dean sat down and closed the door. "Something like that."
Gary yawned and stretched and drummed his fingers on the wheel. "You ready to hit the road?"
"Yeah," Dean said. "Let's go."
Gary put the car in gear and pulled out and drove down the dirt track and turned onto the highway. In the rearview mirror Dean watched the revival ground grow smaller and dimmer until it was only a pale white glow amidst all that dark plain and then it was gone.
Go ahead to Chapter Five.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: so it continues
Date: 2008-08-20 12:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 03:23 am (UTC)Thanks for this wonderful chapter.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 08:00 am (UTC)Yes, that sounds like Sam ... :)
Seeing Le Grange there is unexpected. Too bad that he doesn't remember Dean, not that it'd be of much help if he did, but still, one more person who knows Dean is good. And Joshua's wife. For a second I really thought, that's it, she's going to tell Dean that Sam's dead. I'm glad there's still hope for Dean, though it's diminishing by the minute.
Love this!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 12:49 pm (UTC)The setting and atmosphere of menace and dread you create in this is so real and so powerful too. I feel like I'm choking on that dust right along with him. Amazing chapter.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 12:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 05:01 pm (UTC)But Roy doesn't remember Dean!! (I'm suspicious...) And where oh where is Sam?! And Bobby? *chews fingernails* Dean better find 'em - and soon!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 12:27 am (UTC)Glad you're enjoying it!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 06:05 pm (UTC)Also another thing that I really like is how believably male the pov is. You hear a lot in fanfic, particularly slash but all fanfic, about male characters being turned into "girls" but you do a great job with Dean here the way he's not emotional but clearly underneath that there's tons of emotion--both in him and in the landscape. Great stuff!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 12:24 am (UTC)I actually picked up a copy of The Grapes of Wrath for more research and didn't get too far because, I hate to say it, but the Joads just annoyed the crap out of me. Some people criticized Steinbeck for turning the Joads into caricatures of "simple country folk" and sometimes it does seem that way. But I was just horrified by the descriptions of the apalling living conditions the Okies had to endure...much, much worse than anything here. The Depression has come to be painted in a sort of rosy glow of nostalgia where people pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and everyone looked out for their neighbor but wow, it was not like that at all.
But anyway, that was probably more than you wanted to know. Thank you so much for the Steinbeck comparison because I really did want to achieve that level of starkness (only sans Joads!) so wow...thanks. Also glad it feels male to you because that's another thing I was going for. I'm sure there are some chick flick emo moments to come but right now Dean's just got to grit his teeth and man up and that's all there is to it.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 01:30 am (UTC)Have to admit, too, that I have more than a passing familiarity with dust storms, living in West Texas. Pretty damn good depiction of how it feels there, although I missed out on the black dusters of the '30s. Leeeetle too young. Not sorry about missing them, either. ::shudder::
Can't wait for the next chapter!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 11:29 pm (UTC)Oh and ETA, I have to warn you that the next chapter's going to take place in Texas and it's not exactly going to be a Lone Star laff riot if you know what I mean.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 03:55 am (UTC)This story is awesome. It is very well written. I am anxious to read the next chapter. If it's ok wit hyou I'm adding you to my friends list so I don't miss any of the series.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 04:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 11:33 pm (UTC)So glad you're enjoying the story! More to come!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 04:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 10:28 am (UTC)Very much liked Buddy and July, in particular.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 11:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 12:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 11:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-21 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-21 01:50 am (UTC)Wow
Date: 2008-08-21 02:38 am (UTC)I really hope he finds Sam soon, though...him thinking he got his brother killed is breaking my heart.
Re: Wow
Date: 2008-08-23 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-21 02:21 pm (UTC)I followed a rec from ficwriter1966's journal and I must say the rec was well-deserved.
What a magnificent story - such evocative writing! And one thing in particular which thrills me: the OC's are all so believable and real that the reader is immediately drawn into their lives. I sat with my heart in my throat when Buddy and July were facing up to Harlan in the doorway before he invaded the house. Normally I shy away from apocafic but this is exceedingly well-done.
Thank you also for letting us catch a glimpse of perifiral canon characters such as Roy LeGrange and Joshua (Faith remains one of my favourite SPN episodes, so extra points for that ;).
I've already bookmarked this story and can't wait to read more!
Cam
no subject
Date: 2008-08-23 04:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-22 02:59 am (UTC)You've drawn such a detailed and rich story here. I really can see the action play out in my head. Your Dean voice is spot on. Great OC's. I really miss Buddy and July. I think they should have a spin-off.
That was Sam at the end of chappy 3, right. Right?
Awesome, awesome job. Can't wait for more.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-23 04:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-22 04:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-23 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-22 11:16 am (UTC)I'ma friend yo' ass so I don't miss the rest.
Thanks a bunch. Great read.
And oh, I nearly forgot. *shakes you roughly* That better have been Sam at the end of chappy three. *points at you, squints*
no subject
Date: 2008-08-23 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-22 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-23 04:24 am (UTC)