Lazarus Came Forth, Chapter 5
Sep. 2nd, 2008 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oselleTitle: Lazarus Came Forth, 5/8
Pairings: None (gen)
Rating: R (for language and some violence)
Warnings: Serious angst, some gore, heavily Dean-centric. Special Warning: This chapter contains scenes of violence and animal cruelty that may not be suitable for all readers. Reader discretion is advised. The depiction of Texas and the Texas Rangers in this chapter is wholly fictional and is not meant to reflect upon the state or its law enforcement authorities.
Spoilers: Through end of Season Three
Word Count: 8,850 for Chapter Five (~37,000 Chapters One through Five)
Disclaimer: The Winchesters and all canon characters belong to people who get paid to use and abuse play with them. All original characters are mine but they're not turning a profit for me either, lazy bastards.
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, Dean has made it from Mississippi to South Dakota only to find Bobby's house abandoned and infested with demons lying in wait for him. A fortuitous dust storm and tornado save Dean from the demons but almost kill him in the process. In the nick of time he manages to hitch a ride with Gary, who's fleeing this modern-day dustbowl with his cat. An encounter with the widow of a hunter in Nebraska provides some much-needed word on Sam and with a slight boost in his hope of finding Sam, Dean gets back on the road with Gary. Links to previous chapters:
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One
Due to length, this chapter will be posted in two parts.
Lazarus Came Forth
5. Texas (Part One)
There were people running the border into Mexico, abandoning their cars on the American side all along Texas, New Mexico, Arizona. Gary said that as long as Dean could bring the gas he could just drive away in one of them and because Dean needed wheels of his own he decided to go with Gary as far as the border, a half-day's drive. Dean was riding his second or maybe third wind and just over the Kansas state line he took over the wheel and Gary climbed into the passenger seat and took the cat out of its carrier and went to sleep with it on his lap.
Through the late night and early morning hours Dean covered the southward stretch of Route 83 down Kansas while a waning quartermoon tracked across the sky. In the dark plains to either side of the road he sometimes saw the lights of houses or shopping centers or towns. He saw very few other vehicles until he came to the Interstate 70 junction and once he left that behind he was back in that nightbound country with not another soul on the road.
He had always enjoyed night driving best and he chased his headlights and rotated through Gary's very good collection of CDs and The Allman Brothers and Steely Dan and Steve Miller played out songs he hadn't heard in years, had never thought he would hear again. Songs his mother had listened to on the radio in their kitchen in Lawrence or in her Chevy Cavalier before Sam was even born. How he could remember that he had no idea. Near Lake Scott he brought the car to a stop at a railroad crossing and sat there listening to the warning bell and the train's high lonesome whistle as it approached the crossing, its singlebore headlamp amber-white in the darkness. When the big diesel locomotive rumbled through the crossing the engineer raised his hand at Dean and Dean mirrored the gesture as he always had, two travelers meeting in the night and moving on with nothing exchanged between them but the simple and somehow necessary acknowledgment of their shared passage.
* * *
At Liberal on the Oklahoma border Dean pulled over and got the atlas out of the glovebox and switched on the domelight. Gary woke up and rubbed his eyes and the cat stretched across his knees.
"What's the matter?"
"You wanted to take Route 54 but they've got a roadblock up." Dean gestured through the windshield at the orange-and-white barricade. At a distance the sky was lit up red and smoky from some accident and there were flares on the road.
"Shit," Gary said. "Shit."
"We can take 70 into Texas and then cut over."
Gary took the atlas from Dean. "Yeah, but that puts us in Texas a little longer than's cool with me."
"What's wrong with Texas?"
"Nothing if you're into brownshirts and prison camps." He studied the map and rubbed his forehead.
"Why didn't we go through Colorado?"
"Colorado's been on fire all summer," Gary muttered and Dean didn't bother questioning him. By now he would have been more amazed to hear that Colorado had not been on fire all summer. "Ah well," Gary said. "Guess we gotta grin and bear it. Better let me drive."
"I'm good," Dean said and Gary shook his head.
"Car's in my name, I should be behind the wheel. Texas, man." He lifted the cat and stared at it. "Back in the box, Mr. Bojangles," he said and the cat blinked and yawned and stretched its toes.
* * *
Two signs greeted them at the Texas border, one behind the other. The first said,
Welcome Visitors
TEXAS is a CHRISTIAN state.
Are you RIGHT with JESUS?
And the second read,
This State is Protected by The Texas Rangers
Diligence. Duty. Defense.
* * *
What should have been easy was not, the roads Gary wanted to take were closed off and they wound up headed south on Route 70 as far as Pampa and then hooked up with U.S. Route 60 west towards Amarillo. By then the sun was up and as they approached Amarillo there were more cars on the road and Dean began to see black SUVs as he'd seen in Mississippi and Arkansas only these were marked on their doors with the silver stars and sixguns of the Texas Rangers. Gary was jittering and wiping his lip and mouthing expletives under his breath. He rifled through his CDs without taking his eyes off the road and slid Jimi Hendrix into the CD player and against the sound of those dark psychedelic chords Dean saw a landscape of vehicles on the road and others stopped beside the road, some with people milling around them looking lost and some that seemed vacant and abandoned. Outside of Panhandle a woman had been pulled over and she stood beside her car gesturing to a Texas Ranger while he stood there with his hands on his hips staring down at her and as they approached the ranger backhanded her across the face and knocked her down.
"Shit!" Dean said and he turned his head as they passed and saw her on her knees wiping her face.
"Don't look, man," Gary said but he did and when the ranger looked up from the woman Dean saw its face beneath the black stetson and the demon took off its aviator glasses and its head seemed to track in Dean's direction like an animal scenting him on the air.
Dean turned away from the window. "I think we should avoid Amarillo."
"Yeah, I think we're fucked there, my friend. They got it all blocked off. Fuck. Fuck."
"Can we go back?"
"Back where?"
"Nebraska. We'll go back north and then west through Wyoming."
"Most of western Nebraska is gone man, wiped off the map. You can't even drive through it. And I'm not heading back into tornado alley, man, no way."
"That old rock and a hard place again, huh?"
"You got that right," Gary said. "Look, it's just a couple hours. We just gotta sit tight, stay cool."
"Yeah," Dean said.
* * *
There was no skirting the militia checkpoints around Amarillo. In front of them the road had been closed off by a Hummer truck with a manned machine gun mounted in the truckbed and the rangers were letting some drivers through and pulling others over and Dean could see no way of getting away that would not call attention to himself and to Gary so he held his breath and waited.
A ranger came up to the car gesturing as he walked for Gary to roll down the window and Gary put the window down and the ranger leaned into the window and asked Gary for his ID.
"Yes, sir," Gary said and he fished some papers out of the glovebox and handed them up to the ranger and he stood there and went through them. He looked at the papers and he looked at Gary and walked the perimeter of the car and came back to the driver's window and handed the papers back to Gary. He jerked his chin at Dean.
"What about him?"
Gary looked at Dean. "Give him your papers."
Dean ducked his head so that he could see the ranger through the driver's-side window. "Officer, I barely got out of the house before a tornado blew the whole damn thing away. Didn't have time to grab my papers or anything."
"It's rough up there, sir," Gary added. "It's real bad."
"Is that what you're doing in Texas? Coupla Dusters? Think you're gonna find work here?"
"Oh no sir, we're just passing through. Headed for New Mexico, sir, we've got some family to stay with there."
He straightened up and hooked his rifle over his shoulder and hitched up his gunbelt and went over to talk to another ranger. He came back and leaned into the window.
"Pull the car up over there, please. Turn the engine off and step out, both of you."
"Sir?"
"Pull the car up over there. Turn off the engine. Step out. You got dirt in your ears?"
"No sir. No," Gary said and put the car in gear.
"I should have told you," Dean said.
"Nah," Gary said. He looked at Dean and smiled. "They fucking hate us down here. Dusters. Fuck. Like anyone would want to stay in their shitass state."
Gary stopped the car and turned off the engine and he and Dean got out. Gary tried to take the cat carrier with him and one of the rangers told him to leave everything in the car and step away.
"It's just my cat," Gary said.
"Leave everything in the car, please."
"Okay. Okay, sir." Gary said something to the cat through the carrier's little mesh screen and set it down on the passenger seat and went and stood beside Dean.
"What do they want?" Dean asked him.
"Search the car, steal whatever they can. Douchebags."
Two more rangers had come and they opened the back doors of the car and started pulling everything out.
"These Dusters are filthy," said one of the rangers. "Live like fucking animals."
They found Dean's shotgun in the trunk. On the floor of the passenger seat they found the duffel with the Walther and the shells and the teargas canister that he'd taken off Roy Harlan in Mississippi.
"One a you boys wanna explain this?"
"They're just firearms, sir," Gary said. "All legal in Texas."
"You're gonna tell me what's legal and what's not in Texas? This stuff's militia-issue. Where'd you get it?"
"My uncle," Dean said. "Works for Ehrlich Defense. Mississippi." He stared evenly at the ranger. "He's a real supporter of the Second Amendment. Sir."
The ranger looked away from Dean and called one of his men over and told him to put the shotgun and the other things in his truck. The ranger stood there and studied them with his eyes shadowed by the wide brim of his hat. He looked from Dean to Gary and back at Dean. "Pack up your shit. I want you out of Texas by the end of the day, understand?"
"Yes, sir," Dean said and then from behind the ranger he heard Gary's cat yowl.
Gary said, "Hey, hey!" and stepped forward and Dean put his hand on Gary's arm. "Hey!"
One of the rangers had the cat out of the carrier and was holding it up by the scruff of its neck and it twisted and hissed with its fur on end and its claws splayed out. "Relax boy, we love pussy. Don't we, pussy?"
Dean said, "Gary..." and the ranger shook the cat said, "Here, pussy, pussy, pussy," and the cat whirled around and scratched the man's face. He cursed and another ranger laughed and said, "That's what pussy'll getcha," and then the ranger said, "Fuck pussy," and he threw the animal howling up in the air and yanked his pistol from its hip holster and shot the cat in midair like a clay pigeon.
Gary shook off Dean's arm and ran forward shouting and pulling a small handgun out from under his jacket and they opened fire on him with such force that the bullets kept him upright and jigging on his feet until they stopped shooting. When he finally fell down he was soaked in blood and Dean tried to get to him but a crackling volley of riflefire studded into the dirt before him and he froze. There were half a dozen guns trained on him and Gary and the cat were both dead at his feet.
"Get on your knees! Put your hands on your head!"
Dean put his hands up and heard the double-chock of a shotgun close by and a man shouted, "Get on your fucking knees!"
He got on his knees. "Hands on your head!" He laced his hands on top of his head and from behind someone gave him a rough patdown and jerked the pistol he'd had since Rena Lara out of where it had been lodged at the small of his back and then came around and stood in front of him, blocking his view of the salesclerk and the cat who would never make it to Mexico. The man's sleeves were rolled up and his right forearm was inked with a winding tattoo that read Diablos Tejanos and he had Dean's gun in his hand, butt-side out.
"What's this for?"
"Self defense," Dean said.
"Self defense. Against who?"
Dean looked up into his stetson-shadowed face. "Against you, motherfucker."
"How's that?"
"Motherfucker," Dean repeated and was out before he even hit the ground.
Continued in Part Two...
Pairings: None (gen)
Rating: R (for language and some violence)
Warnings: Serious angst, some gore, heavily Dean-centric. Special Warning: This chapter contains scenes of violence and animal cruelty that may not be suitable for all readers. Reader discretion is advised. The depiction of Texas and the Texas Rangers in this chapter is wholly fictional and is not meant to reflect upon the state or its law enforcement authorities.
Spoilers: Through end of Season Three
Word Count: 8,850 for Chapter Five (~37,000 Chapters One through Five)
Disclaimer: The Winchesters and all canon characters belong to people who get paid to
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, Dean has made it from Mississippi to South Dakota only to find Bobby's house abandoned and infested with demons lying in wait for him. A fortuitous dust storm and tornado save Dean from the demons but almost kill him in the process. In the nick of time he manages to hitch a ride with Gary, who's fleeing this modern-day dustbowl with his cat. An encounter with the widow of a hunter in Nebraska provides some much-needed word on Sam and with a slight boost in his hope of finding Sam, Dean gets back on the road with Gary. Links to previous chapters:
Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Chapter Two
Chapter One
Due to length, this chapter will be posted in two parts.
Lazarus Came Forth
5. Texas (Part One)
There were people running the border into Mexico, abandoning their cars on the American side all along Texas, New Mexico, Arizona. Gary said that as long as Dean could bring the gas he could just drive away in one of them and because Dean needed wheels of his own he decided to go with Gary as far as the border, a half-day's drive. Dean was riding his second or maybe third wind and just over the Kansas state line he took over the wheel and Gary climbed into the passenger seat and took the cat out of its carrier and went to sleep with it on his lap.
Through the late night and early morning hours Dean covered the southward stretch of Route 83 down Kansas while a waning quartermoon tracked across the sky. In the dark plains to either side of the road he sometimes saw the lights of houses or shopping centers or towns. He saw very few other vehicles until he came to the Interstate 70 junction and once he left that behind he was back in that nightbound country with not another soul on the road.
He had always enjoyed night driving best and he chased his headlights and rotated through Gary's very good collection of CDs and The Allman Brothers and Steely Dan and Steve Miller played out songs he hadn't heard in years, had never thought he would hear again. Songs his mother had listened to on the radio in their kitchen in Lawrence or in her Chevy Cavalier before Sam was even born. How he could remember that he had no idea. Near Lake Scott he brought the car to a stop at a railroad crossing and sat there listening to the warning bell and the train's high lonesome whistle as it approached the crossing, its singlebore headlamp amber-white in the darkness. When the big diesel locomotive rumbled through the crossing the engineer raised his hand at Dean and Dean mirrored the gesture as he always had, two travelers meeting in the night and moving on with nothing exchanged between them but the simple and somehow necessary acknowledgment of their shared passage.
* * *
At Liberal on the Oklahoma border Dean pulled over and got the atlas out of the glovebox and switched on the domelight. Gary woke up and rubbed his eyes and the cat stretched across his knees.
"What's the matter?"
"You wanted to take Route 54 but they've got a roadblock up." Dean gestured through the windshield at the orange-and-white barricade. At a distance the sky was lit up red and smoky from some accident and there were flares on the road.
"Shit," Gary said. "Shit."
"We can take 70 into Texas and then cut over."
Gary took the atlas from Dean. "Yeah, but that puts us in Texas a little longer than's cool with me."
"What's wrong with Texas?"
"Nothing if you're into brownshirts and prison camps." He studied the map and rubbed his forehead.
"Why didn't we go through Colorado?"
"Colorado's been on fire all summer," Gary muttered and Dean didn't bother questioning him. By now he would have been more amazed to hear that Colorado had not been on fire all summer. "Ah well," Gary said. "Guess we gotta grin and bear it. Better let me drive."
"I'm good," Dean said and Gary shook his head.
"Car's in my name, I should be behind the wheel. Texas, man." He lifted the cat and stared at it. "Back in the box, Mr. Bojangles," he said and the cat blinked and yawned and stretched its toes.
* * *
Two signs greeted them at the Texas border, one behind the other. The first said,
Welcome Visitors
TEXAS is a CHRISTIAN state.
Are you RIGHT with JESUS?
And the second read,
This State is Protected by The Texas Rangers
Diligence. Duty. Defense.
* * *
What should have been easy was not, the roads Gary wanted to take were closed off and they wound up headed south on Route 70 as far as Pampa and then hooked up with U.S. Route 60 west towards Amarillo. By then the sun was up and as they approached Amarillo there were more cars on the road and Dean began to see black SUVs as he'd seen in Mississippi and Arkansas only these were marked on their doors with the silver stars and sixguns of the Texas Rangers. Gary was jittering and wiping his lip and mouthing expletives under his breath. He rifled through his CDs without taking his eyes off the road and slid Jimi Hendrix into the CD player and against the sound of those dark psychedelic chords Dean saw a landscape of vehicles on the road and others stopped beside the road, some with people milling around them looking lost and some that seemed vacant and abandoned. Outside of Panhandle a woman had been pulled over and she stood beside her car gesturing to a Texas Ranger while he stood there with his hands on his hips staring down at her and as they approached the ranger backhanded her across the face and knocked her down.
"Shit!" Dean said and he turned his head as they passed and saw her on her knees wiping her face.
"Don't look, man," Gary said but he did and when the ranger looked up from the woman Dean saw its face beneath the black stetson and the demon took off its aviator glasses and its head seemed to track in Dean's direction like an animal scenting him on the air.
Dean turned away from the window. "I think we should avoid Amarillo."
"Yeah, I think we're fucked there, my friend. They got it all blocked off. Fuck. Fuck."
"Can we go back?"
"Back where?"
"Nebraska. We'll go back north and then west through Wyoming."
"Most of western Nebraska is gone man, wiped off the map. You can't even drive through it. And I'm not heading back into tornado alley, man, no way."
"That old rock and a hard place again, huh?"
"You got that right," Gary said. "Look, it's just a couple hours. We just gotta sit tight, stay cool."
"Yeah," Dean said.
* * *
There was no skirting the militia checkpoints around Amarillo. In front of them the road had been closed off by a Hummer truck with a manned machine gun mounted in the truckbed and the rangers were letting some drivers through and pulling others over and Dean could see no way of getting away that would not call attention to himself and to Gary so he held his breath and waited.
A ranger came up to the car gesturing as he walked for Gary to roll down the window and Gary put the window down and the ranger leaned into the window and asked Gary for his ID.
"Yes, sir," Gary said and he fished some papers out of the glovebox and handed them up to the ranger and he stood there and went through them. He looked at the papers and he looked at Gary and walked the perimeter of the car and came back to the driver's window and handed the papers back to Gary. He jerked his chin at Dean.
"What about him?"
Gary looked at Dean. "Give him your papers."
Dean ducked his head so that he could see the ranger through the driver's-side window. "Officer, I barely got out of the house before a tornado blew the whole damn thing away. Didn't have time to grab my papers or anything."
"It's rough up there, sir," Gary added. "It's real bad."
"Is that what you're doing in Texas? Coupla Dusters? Think you're gonna find work here?"
"Oh no sir, we're just passing through. Headed for New Mexico, sir, we've got some family to stay with there."
He straightened up and hooked his rifle over his shoulder and hitched up his gunbelt and went over to talk to another ranger. He came back and leaned into the window.
"Pull the car up over there, please. Turn the engine off and step out, both of you."
"Sir?"
"Pull the car up over there. Turn off the engine. Step out. You got dirt in your ears?"
"No sir. No," Gary said and put the car in gear.
"I should have told you," Dean said.
"Nah," Gary said. He looked at Dean and smiled. "They fucking hate us down here. Dusters. Fuck. Like anyone would want to stay in their shitass state."
Gary stopped the car and turned off the engine and he and Dean got out. Gary tried to take the cat carrier with him and one of the rangers told him to leave everything in the car and step away.
"It's just my cat," Gary said.
"Leave everything in the car, please."
"Okay. Okay, sir." Gary said something to the cat through the carrier's little mesh screen and set it down on the passenger seat and went and stood beside Dean.
"What do they want?" Dean asked him.
"Search the car, steal whatever they can. Douchebags."
Two more rangers had come and they opened the back doors of the car and started pulling everything out.
"These Dusters are filthy," said one of the rangers. "Live like fucking animals."
They found Dean's shotgun in the trunk. On the floor of the passenger seat they found the duffel with the Walther and the shells and the teargas canister that he'd taken off Roy Harlan in Mississippi.
"One a you boys wanna explain this?"
"They're just firearms, sir," Gary said. "All legal in Texas."
"You're gonna tell me what's legal and what's not in Texas? This stuff's militia-issue. Where'd you get it?"
"My uncle," Dean said. "Works for Ehrlich Defense. Mississippi." He stared evenly at the ranger. "He's a real supporter of the Second Amendment. Sir."
The ranger looked away from Dean and called one of his men over and told him to put the shotgun and the other things in his truck. The ranger stood there and studied them with his eyes shadowed by the wide brim of his hat. He looked from Dean to Gary and back at Dean. "Pack up your shit. I want you out of Texas by the end of the day, understand?"
"Yes, sir," Dean said and then from behind the ranger he heard Gary's cat yowl.
Gary said, "Hey, hey!" and stepped forward and Dean put his hand on Gary's arm. "Hey!"
One of the rangers had the cat out of the carrier and was holding it up by the scruff of its neck and it twisted and hissed with its fur on end and its claws splayed out. "Relax boy, we love pussy. Don't we, pussy?"
Dean said, "Gary..." and the ranger shook the cat said, "Here, pussy, pussy, pussy," and the cat whirled around and scratched the man's face. He cursed and another ranger laughed and said, "That's what pussy'll getcha," and then the ranger said, "Fuck pussy," and he threw the animal howling up in the air and yanked his pistol from its hip holster and shot the cat in midair like a clay pigeon.
Gary shook off Dean's arm and ran forward shouting and pulling a small handgun out from under his jacket and they opened fire on him with such force that the bullets kept him upright and jigging on his feet until they stopped shooting. When he finally fell down he was soaked in blood and Dean tried to get to him but a crackling volley of riflefire studded into the dirt before him and he froze. There were half a dozen guns trained on him and Gary and the cat were both dead at his feet.
"Get on your knees! Put your hands on your head!"
Dean put his hands up and heard the double-chock of a shotgun close by and a man shouted, "Get on your fucking knees!"
He got on his knees. "Hands on your head!" He laced his hands on top of his head and from behind someone gave him a rough patdown and jerked the pistol he'd had since Rena Lara out of where it had been lodged at the small of his back and then came around and stood in front of him, blocking his view of the salesclerk and the cat who would never make it to Mexico. The man's sleeves were rolled up and his right forearm was inked with a winding tattoo that read Diablos Tejanos and he had Dean's gun in his hand, butt-side out.
"What's this for?"
"Self defense," Dean said.
"Self defense. Against who?"
Dean looked up into his stetson-shadowed face. "Against you, motherfucker."
"How's that?"
"Motherfucker," Dean repeated and was out before he even hit the ground.
Continued in Part Two...