oselle | Lazarus Came Forth, Chapter 5

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alena2b.

Lazarus Came Forth

5: Texas (Part Two)

He came to on the floor of some moving vehicle. When he opened his eyes his vision doubled briefly and then came back together and he tried to raise his head and was checked by a bolt of pain like whiplash in his neck.

"Don't," someone said and he felt a hand on his forehead. "You took a helluva hit back there."

He rolled his eyes up and saw a man sitting beside him. His head was on the man's knee and the man was manacled as he was. Dean felt blood on his face and he tried to reach up and wipe it off and realized he was wearing a full set of transport restraints, manacles and waist chain and leg irons. He closed his eyes and said, "Ah, shit."

"Yeah, that about sums up the situation," the man said.

* * *

They offloaded the prisoners in Amarillo. There had been about two dozen men in the van with Dean but there must have been more than a hundred prisoners in the white and shadowless prison yard, men and women and kids who looked barely old enough to drive. The man who'd sat with Dean in the van was named Ed and he said he'd been arrested for possessing illegal reading materials. Dean didn't even know what that meant. He squinted up at the prison walls and saw sharpshooters walking their perimeter and counted six manned guntowers with the silver stars and sixguns flying like a Jolly Roger from each one.

"Just pray they don't send you to Galveston," Ed said from behind him.

"What's in Galveston?"

"They had that big chemical spill there after the last hurricane and they've been sending busloads of chain gangs down there to clean it up. They can't even send enough men because they all get so sick. I heard they're just burning bodies by now."

"Jesus Christ," Dean said.

"Jesus's got nothing to do with it."

* * *

The guards wore ranger uniforms and they segregated the prisoners and took the women away and herded the men into a cavernous hall with sharpshooters stationed in galleries around the walls. Dean was separated from Ed and never saw him again. The guards lined up the prisoners and took their restraints off and told them to get undressed, clothes, underwear, shoes, socks, everything. A man came by with a rolling bin and told them to put their clothes into it.

"Jewelry, too."

"No," Dean said. "I'm keeping this."

"Is it religious?"

"It's St. Michael."

"All right," the man said. "Someone's probably gonna steal it off you but all right."

He trundled away with the bin and then someone that Dean couldn't see started shouting that he hadn't done anything. Good luck with that, buddy, Dean thought and then suddenly the shouter was running across the hall half naked to the door. One of the sharpshooters gunned him down with such swift precision that he dropped like a birdshot duck and lay there dead.

"What in the hell happened to you, boy?"

A guard began to drag the dead man out by his legs. The body was leaving a wide bloodstreak on the floor and another guard came over and hollered at him to pick that fucking thing up for the love of Jesus or he was going to make him mop the floor himself.

"Hey." Fingers snapping. "Over here."

"What?" Dean said.

"All them stitches. You wrestle gators in your spare time?"

The guard across from him was wearing a black ballcap instead of the stetson and a short-sleeved uniform shirt and he had latex gloves on his hands.

"Yeah, something like that."

"Well shit. Looks like them stitches oughta be comin out. You'll wanna tell em about that when you get wherever you're goin."

"Where am I going?"

"Beats the hell outta me." He touched Dean's chin and Dean winced. "Your jaw ain't broke, you wouldn't be talkin if it was. Get any teeth knocked out?"

"No."

"Lucky fella. That hurts like a sumbitch." He listened to Dean's chest with a stethoscope. "You got a rattle in your lungs, you know that?"

"No."

"Been seein a lotta that, you must of come down from dust country. You'll wanna keep an eye on that." He circled around Dean. "What's this bandage back here, looks kinda messy." He picked the edge of the bandage off and pulled it away. "Woo, that there is a bullet hole if I ever saw one. Ain't you the desperado."

He told Dean he was going to have to clean out the wound and he made Dean put his hands flat on the metal table before him and he wrapped his gloved index finger in gauze and soaked it in antiseptic and said, "This'll sting a little," and he shoved his finger in the wound and scooped it. Dean's left leg buckled from the pain and he hissed wordlessly through his teeth.

"Now look at that," said the guard. He held his finger up before Dean's watering eyes and Dean saw a black crust of dried blood on it. "Ain't that a mess. Ain't you glad the Texas Rangers is here to take care a you, son? Better'n your own momma."

Dean put his head down and saw drops of his sweat pattering onto the metal table. He clenched his eyes shut and the guard flooded out the wound and bandaged it up and gave Dean a shot of penicillin in his back and peeled off the latex gloves. Dean straightened up and wiped his face. His hands were shaking.

"You'll wanna put your hands right back on that table, son," the guard said. He was taking a clean pair of gloves from a box of them on the table. "We're not quite done here." He put the gloves on and folded his hands and stood there and waited. Dean stared at him for a second and then looked away. He bent over. He put his hands on the table.

* * *

They gave him underwear and an orange jumpsuit stenciled with TEXAS DOC CLEMENTS UNIT on the back and socks and soft-soled slip-ons. Then a guard came over and told him to lift his chin and snapped something onto his neck. When Dean reached up to touch it he felt smoothly molded plastic and a cool metal plate on the inside of it against the back of his neck.

"That collar has an embedded GPS, so if you decide to take a stroll we can come around and pick you up. That little metal thing you feel there on your neck is your own portable taser. It's got three settings on it, real uncomfortable, down for the count and stone dead. Which of those three you get is up to you. Play your cards right and you won't get any. Understand?"

No, I don't understand, Dean thought. I don't understand one fucking thing that's going on here, you cocksucker.

They photographed him and finally they made him put his hands on a glass plate and scanned his fingerprints. He'd told them his name was Robert Johnson. He wondered how long it would take them to find out that it wasn't.

* * *

There was some sort of chili for lunch but he hadn't eaten anything solid in days so he left most of it on his plate. By now it was afternoon and they brought him and a few dozen other prisoners down to a glass-partitioned visiting room and told him to sit down in a booth. There was a woman on the other side of the glass with blonde hair piled messily up on top of her head and a blue suit gone shiny around the lapels and frayed at the cuffs. She had a stack of folders in front of her and she motioned to him to pick up the phone on the wall.

"Robert Johnson?" she asked. "You're Robert Johnson?"

"Are you my public defender?"

"My name is Stephanie Courson. I'm a prisoner relations representative for the state of Texas."

"A what?"

"I'm here to explain your conviction."

"Wait, wait, wait...my conviction? When did I get convicted of anything?"

She opened the folder on top of her stack and took out a sheet of paper. There was a metal drawer underneath the table and she put the paper and a felt-tip pen in it and slid it over to Dean's side of the glass and he took the paper out and looked at it. Traveling without proper identification. Resisting arrest. Assaulting a law enforcement official. Accessory to attempted murder of a law enforcement official.

"These charges carry a minimum sentence of ten years and a maximum sentence of..."

"No," he said. "No, listen... I just got here a few hours ago. I..." He looked at the paper again. "None of these things happened. I mean, just the ID thing but...resisting arrest? When did I do that? When I was unconscious? Accessory to attempted murder? Some kid with a pea shooter? He didn't even have it out of his jacket."

"Mr. Johnson..."

"I know I missed a lot in four years but for Christ's sake..."

"Mr. Johnson, please," she said and her eyes flicked to a point over Dean's shoulder and he turned and saw a guard watching him with his hand on his holster. He turned back to her and she was looking at him pityingly and pleadingly and she looked almost as exhausted as he was and he knew that every one of those folders was for some other poor bastard and it was her job to bring bad news to all of them. And whatever job she'd bought that blue suit for it sure as hell wasn't this.

"You have the right to plead innocent of these charges in thirty days time. If at that time you are able to produce four reliable witnesses who can testify to your innocence we'll review your case."

Dean shook his head. He couldn't think of anything to say.

"You'll be held here for thirty days until the board decides where you'll serve out your sentence. There's..." She shuffled through her folder. "Um...the work farm here at Clements, a road gang or Galveston Bay." She looked up at him. "I'll try to persuade them not to send you to Galveston. Okay? It's the best I can do."

"How long? How long has it been like this?"

"I don't follow you, Mr. Johnson," she said and then dropped her voice. "Did they do that to your face?"

"Yeah. While I was resisting arrest."

"I'll try to get the infirmary to give you some aspirin. Maybe an ice pack."

"Sure. Whatever."

"I'll need you to sign that paper please."

Dean picked it up. "This paper? This paper here?"

"Yes, please just sign on the..."

He tore it up into four quarters. He put them in the metal drawer and slid it back at her. "I saw your law enforcement officials pump fifty rounds into some kid today after they used his cat for target practice. I saw them shoot a guy just for getting a little bent outta shape. And they weren't even demons they were...people. Just people. I'm not signing anything. Put that in your...report or whatever you got there. Okay, Stephanie?"

She took the four pieces of paper and put them in the folder and sat there looking at him. She said, "I'm sorry," and she took the pen and gathered her things up and walked away. He almost felt bad about laying into her, his old self wouldn't have done it or would have tried to talk to her or might have even turned on some charm but that was all behind him now for all the good it would have done anyway.

* * *

By evening he was in a cell with five other men. There was a stainless steel sink in the cell with a stainless steel mirror above it and he got a look at himself and thought he'd seen skid row crackheads in better shape than he was. He looked like the walking dead. He was the walking dead.

He coughed heavily and spat something that looked like mud into the sink. He sat down on his bunk and rubbed his chest and the man in the bunk opposite asked him if he was sick. Dean shook his head. "I inhaled half of South Dakota yesterday."

"Dust storm? You'll want to..."

"I'll wanna keep an eye on that. Yeah, I know."

"You just come in today?"

Dean nodded and looked at the man who was small and sunburned and looked to be somewhere in middle age. "You?"

"No, I've been getting moved around. I was on a road gang for a month and they sent me up here to be reassigned."

Dean looked around the windowless cell. "I don't guess anyone's busted outta here, huh?"

"The last man who tried it was cooked by his dogcollar half an hour after they noticed he was missing. When they brought his body through the front gate his eyes were still smoking."

"Well that's comforting."

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing." There was a Bible and a rosary on the man's bunk and Dean stared at them for a few seconds and then asked where he'd gotten them.

"We have services every Sunday. The chaplain can get them for you if you want."

"What day is this?"

"Thursday, I think."

"I don't have until Sunday."

"Are you getting shipped out?"

"Yeah. Yeah I am."

"Do you know where?"

Yeah, I know where, Dean thought but shook his head.

The man held the things out to Dean. "Take them. I can get others."

"No, it's okay."

"Please, take them. Please. God would want me to give them to you."

"Well, I'm not gonna argue with God. Thanks." He took the Bible and the rosary and put them on the mattress beside him.

"You are religious," the man said and gestured at the medal around Dean's neck.

"Not really...I don't know. I don't know what that means."

"It means you have faith in God's plan for you."

Dean thought about this for a few seconds and gave the man a faint smile. "I don't think I'm religious."

"Well, I will pray for you. And for myself. And for all of us."

"Okay," Dean said. He lay down on the bunk and closed his eyes. "You do that." Lights out was called and behind his eyelids Dean saw Gary dancing his bullet-riddled jig. He saw Alice Denham telling him to stay in Nebraska. He saw Buddy and July. He saw demons. He saw Sam.

He fell asleep or passed out and he woke up coughing and breathless. The man in the bunk above his own told him to shut the fuck up. He lay there trying to get his breath back and heard someone coming down the cellblock. Heavy steps and chains clanking.

Time to go, he thought. The steps came to a stop outside his cell.

"Robert Johnson?"

Time to go.

He raised himself on his elbows and saw two guards outside the cell. "Yeah?"

"Let's go. Warden wants to see you."

He didn't say anything. He took the Bible and the rosary and got up and one of the guards unlocked the cell and cuffed his wrists and ankles and looped the chain around his waist and locked it all together.

"I will pray for you," his cellmate said through the bars. He was sitting up on his bunk.

"Thanks," Dean said and then the guards told him to get moving and he shuffled down the hall in the restraints with one guard ahead of him and the other behind.

* * *

He expected a demon or demons and instead he got Hollis Lux whose office in an older part of the prison was as small and shabby as a sheriff's station in some western backwater. Lux sat behind a putty-colored metal desk with a Frederic Remington print above it and on the desk's simulated oak surface was a lacquered hunk of wood with the name Hollis Lux burned onto it like something a kid would make in summer camp. A desk fan oscillated from the top of a file cabinet and the clock on the wall said it was almost six a.m. Dean sat in a vinyl chair with his chains pooling on the floor while Lux tapped on his computer keyboard.

"Be right with you," Lux said and he hit a few more keystrokes and then turned to Dean and folded his hands on the desk and smiled. "Mr. Johnson."

Dean knew that Lux knew that wasn't his name but he said, "Yeah."

"You like my office, Mr. Johnson?"

"It's kind of crappy, actually."

Lux laughed loudly. "It is, isn't it? I asked for it though. I've been in law enforcement forty years, Mr. Johnson, started out as a rookie in Hidalgo County, sheriff's office not much bigger'n this one. They wanted to give me some big shiny office I said no. Keeps me grounded being in a place like this, reminds me of my duty to serve and protect the people of the state of Texas. This facility was built for three thousand men and I've got five thousand in it right now and I can't do with gettin all fancy about myself."

Dean cleared his throat and put his head down and coughed against his shoulder.

"Can I get you a glass of water, Mr. Johnson?"

"No. Thanks."

"You a religious man, Mr. Johnson?"

"Devout."

"Is that so, Mr. Johnson?"

"Oh, I am right with Jesus."

"How long're you gonna keep answerin to Mr. Johnson, Mr. Johnson?"

"I guess as long as you keep calling me that."

Lux leaned forward and turned the computer screen to Dean and Dean saw his old mugshot from Green River with his real name and beneath that the new picture, bruised and hollow-eyed, and another window showed his inked fingerprints from that arrest in 2006 and his newly scanned ones and a single word in red over all of it, MATCH.

"You got anything to say?"

"Yeah. I was a handsome bastard."

"Dead bastard too. File says you're supposed to have died in Colorado four years ago. Seems kinda funny, don't it?"

"I guess somebody made a mistake."

"That somebody was you when you crossed paths with the Texas Rangers. What've you been doin with yourself for four years?"

"Staying out of trouble."

"Well now, I don't know about that. From what I hear, you just got yourself in a big mess of trouble with some old boys over in Mississippi. Ain't that right, Mr.Winchester?"

"I couldn't say anything about that."

Lux creaked back in his seat and laced his hands over his belly and stared at Dean. "I'm a disappointed man today, you wanna ask me why?"

"Not really."

"Well, I'll tell you anyway. I'm a disappointed man because it's not often I get a fella like you up in here. I mean, hell boy, you're the genuine article. A bona fide outlaw. But nothin's like it used to be. Time was, you arrest a man, he's yours. You're the law. Now I got some guy in a suit tellin me what to do. Defense contractors. What in the hell does that mean, anyway? Find out this mornin, I gotta ship you back to Mississippi. Company policy. Goddamn. What's the world comin to?" He sucked on his teeth and ruminated on the injustice of these times. "They're sendin over a transfer agent. Should be here in a couple hours."

He stood up and came around the desk and stood beside Dean's chair and Dean looked up and they stared at each other. Lux shook his head.

"I sure hate to let a big fish like you go," he said. He waited another second and then jerked up his leg and kicked over the chair with a loud grunt. The chair and Dean crashed to the floor and the Bible and rosary skidded away under Lux's desk. Dean rolled over onto his back and Lux kicked the chair out of the way and straddled Dean with his knees and put his service revolver to Dean's forehead.

"They say you killed five people there in Mississippi, including two militia boys. Still it's my boys that brought you in, not those crackers. Don't seem fair, does it?" He cocked back the hammer. "It just don't seem fair."

The fan on the file cabinet turned and creaked in its arc and Dean could smell the machine oil in the gun and he lay there looking at Lux's narrowed eyes around the barrel of the revolver. He said nothing and after a few seconds Lux holstered his revolver and stood up and walked to the door. Dean levered himself up and leaned against the wall with his shackled hands between his knees and caught his breath.

"I'm lookin forward to bein front'n center at your execution," Lux said. He went out and said something to the guards and they came in and hauled Dean to his feet and took him away.

* * *

He sat alone and still in chains on the floor in an old barred cell that looked like a county drunk tank and he made a passing attempt to examine the locks on the chains but he had nothing to pick them open with and nowhere to go from there. He was collared and cornered. He thought about his cellmate praying for him and for a while he tried to pray but he couldn't. He'd never believed in God. It had been Sam that he'd pleaded to in hell but now he couldn't even seem to do that. One hour passed. Two. The only sound his own hoarse breathing and wet cough. After the second hour two guards came down and told him to get up and he pushed himself up the wall and went with them.

* * *

The transfer agent was signing papers with Lux at the prison's central admissions desk when they brought Dean up and when Dean saw him he staggered so badly that one of the guards had to hold him up.

"Looks like he's had a good Texas knock-around," the agent said and Lux chuckled and told the agent that he knew how it was.

The agent grinned and said "I sure do," and then, "Is he ready to go?"

"All yours," Lux said. The agent thanked Lux and shook his hand and turned and walked away and the two guards followed with Dean between them until they were in a parking garage. The agent had come in a dark sedan with smoked windows and he turned and shook hands with the guards and then opened the sedan's back door and laid his hand on Dean's head to put him inside the car. When Dean was sitting the agent slid his hand to the back of Dean's head and left it there for the briefest moment. Dean didn't look at him. The agent closed the door and went around to the front seat and got behind the wheel and turned the ignition and pulled away.

There was a wire grille between the front and back seats. Dean waited until the car had cleared the prison walls and then he leaned forward and grasped the mesh with both hands.

He said, "Bobby. Jesus, Bobby."

Bobby looked at him in the rearview mirror and put his right hand back against the grille and laced his fingers with Dean's.

"You okay, kid?"

Dean nodded. He put his forehead against the grille and closed his eyes and tightened his fingers around Bobby's until they ached.

* * *

"I don't think I've been more than a day behind you since Mississippi," Bobby said. "Probably would've caught up with you in South Dakota if it wasn't for the storm. If you hadn't got yourself arrested I don't know how the hell I would've found you."

"Bobby," Dean said and raised his head. "Is Sam with you? Are we meeting up with him?"

Bobby's eyes shifted to meet his in the rearview mirror. "He's not with me, Dean."

"Is he dead?" Bobby didn't say anything. "Bobby?"

"Dean, I don't know where he is."

Dean leaned back from the grille and let his fingers slip from Bobby's.

"Once we're someplace safe I'll give you the whole story, what I know of it. But right now we gotta get you outta here and get that thing off your neck before the real deal shows up to collect you."

Dean leaned back against the seat, his last reserve of adrenaline gone. "Okay, Bobby," he said. "Okay." He shut his eyes and let himself drift and Bobby drove them eastwards out of Texas.

* * *

Some time after they'd crossed the border into Oklahoma Bobby pulled the car beneath an overpass and Dean roused himself from shifting semiconsciousness and looked out the window.

"Why are we stopping?"

"That thing's gotta come off before we go any farther."

Bobby got out and came in the back beside Dean and Dean elbowed himself up off the seat and Bobby tipped Dean's head back and examined the collar.

"Shit," he said. "It's one of the new ones."

"That doesn't sound good."

"It's not." He traced his thumb over the swollen bruise on Dean's jaw. "What's this? Official Texas Rangers souvenir?"

"Yeah," Dean said.

"Sons of bitches." He sat there with Dean's face in his hands and after a moment he shook his head. "I didn't think I was ever gonna see you again."

Dean closed his eyes and when he opened them again they were wet and he said, "Me neither."

Bobby cleared his throat and let Dean go. He got out of the backseat and went into the trunk and came back with a bag.

"How're you gonna get this thing off without electrocuting me?"

"That ain't the first one I've gotten off someone, they're just changing em all the time, so what worked the last time..."

"Yeah? What worked the last time?"

"Won't always work this time. But we'll keep our fingers crossed. Here, put this in your mouth."

Dean looked at Bobby and took the rounded piece of rubber from him and studied it. There were teeth marks in it. "I'll need to bite down on something?"

"Just to be on the safe side."

"You're not filling me with confidence here, Bobby," Dean said and Bobby gave him a look and he raised an eyebrow at him and slipped the bite block between his teeth. Bobby tilted Dean's head forward and Dean felt him put something between the metal plate on the inside of the collar and his neck and then he heard a rattle of tools and he looked around to see what Bobby was doing. Bobby pushed his head away.

"Don't move."

He sat there with his head down and Bobby felt around the length of the collar, pausing in spots to slip his finger in between the collar and Dean's neck. He stopped in one place and raised the collar up off Dean's neck and slipped something cold and hard underneath it. He checked the padding at the back of the collar and put a hand on Dean's back.

"Ready?"

Dean made some sound of agreement around the block. He could hear Bobby's breathing, short and tense, and the drone of wheels passing above them on the interstate. He could feel his own pulse against the collar and he clenched his hands on his knees and squeezed his eyes shut and he heard Bobby say "Okay," and then his teeth drove down onto the block and there was one agonizing second of consciousness before his vision went white then black, all black.

* * *

"Look at me! Come on Dean, look at me!"

Where the fuck are you? He couldn't focus his eyes in one spot, they were juddering around in his head and his ears were shrieking and every muscle in his body had locked up on itself. Where are you?

He felt Bobby grab his face and turn his head and that was too much movement and he screamed through his clenched teeth.

"Look at me," Bobby said. "That's it. That's it. Okay."

It's not okay! Dean thought but then he saw Bobby's face above him and he made himself focus on that and try to steady his breathing, try to get his body under control.

"You'll be okay, you didn't get the full hit just enough to hurt like hell." Dean stared at Bobby and nodded and Bobby got his mouth open and pulled out the block. "Just breathe for me, okay, Dean? Nice and slow."

Dean sucked in a few rasping breaths and he started coughing and Christ it hurt, it hurt. He rolled over and curled in on himself and Bobby sat there with his hands on Dean's shoulder and head and after a while Dean quieted down. "All right?" Bobby said and Dean nodded. "We need to get moving. They know that collar's off now." Dean felt Bobby get up out of the backseat. He heard the backdoor close and then the front door open and close and the engine turn over and felt the motion of the car beneath him. Sunlight struck his face when they left the shadow of the overpass and Dean covered his eyes with his hands.

They'd been on the road for a few minutes when Dean said, "I'm all wet," and Bobby said something he couldn't hear. "I fucking pissed myself," Dean clarified.

"Well," Bobby said. "That happens."

"Fuck," Dean said through his teeth and he kicked at the back door in sheer helpless anger. "FUCK!"

* * *

Bobby stopped only once and he tried to get Dean to eat something but Dean couldn't eat, he could barely move. His head was bursting with pain and he was coughing hard and steadily now and Bobby turned him onto his back and listened to his chest.

"How long've you been breathing like that?"

"I don't know. A day, I don't know."

"You were caught in that storm?"

"Mm."

"Guess we'll worry about that later." He got Dean upright long enough to swallow some pills and then laid him down and covered him up with a blanket. Whatever Bobby gave him knocked him out and he didn't wake up until the car stopped.

It was very dark and Bobby was helping him sit up. "I'm okay," Dean said. His words were slurred. "I can walk."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He got out of the car on his own and Bobby held him up and he looked around and saw nothing but darkness and the bluish arc of Bobby's flashlight.

"Where are we?"

"West Virginia."

"Oh," Dean said as if that meant something to him.

Suddenly he had no strength left. His legs folded beneath him and he was pulled down by the weight of his jailhouse chains. Bobby had him under the arms but Dean put his head on Bobby's shoulder and Bobby got down on the ground with him. He couldn't move and he didn't want to be moved. Bobby put his arms around him and Dean crossed his shackled wrists against his chest and pressed his forehead against Bobby. He was shaking and then he was crying.

After a while Bobby got him back on his feet and when he collapsed again Bobby lifted him up and carried him.

* * *

By morning he was sick and by evening of the next day he was very sick. He felt as if he had wet concrete in his lungs and he coughed and retched up South Dakota mud until he was too weak to cough anymore and he burned with fever and shuddered with chills. He began to see demons in the room, first in the bedroom where Bobby had put him and then in the living room where Bobby moved him to be closer to the woodstove's warmth. They were waiting for him to die and he was too exhausted even to be afraid.

"Come 'n get it," he said.

"What?"

"Fuckin demons," he told Bobby. "They're all over the joint," he said and they were, slipping in and out of the ceiling, passing between the walls, circling the couch and looking down at him.

"Nobody here but us, kid," Bobby said. "Nobody's getting in here neither."

"They're waiting for me to kick it. Take me back."

Bobby was sitting beside him with a basin of water on his lap and he dipped a cloth in the basin and wrung it out and folded it and wiped Dean's face. Dean closed his eyes because it felt so good. "First of all," Bobby said, "It doesn't work that way. You paid your debt, get it? You're free and clear."

"You know that?"

"Well I...it's just common sense. You sell your soul once, they can't collect twice."

Dean smiled. "You're a lousy fuckin liar Bobby."

"I know it. That's why I'm telling the truth."

Dean opened his eyes and looked around the room. His eyeballs felt like hot marbles in his head. There was a demon sitting on its haunches by the woodstove, grinning at him. "I know you, fucker," he said and it licked its fingers obscenely. "Can't wait, can you?"

Bobby turned Dean's head back to look at him and passed the cloth over his forehead and up into his hair. "Second," Bobby said, "Nobody's kicking it around here. I just won't stand for it."

Dean stared at Bobby in the dim light. "Sam did, didn't he? He's dead. Tell me the truth."

Bobby looked away. He put the facecloth in the basin and picked it up and wrung it out and the water fell into the basin with a soft patter. He folded the cloth into a rectangle and turned back to Dean and laid it over his forehead. "I saw him three months ago. He said he'd found a way to get you out and see? Here you are. So Sam's somewhere too. We'll find him or he'll find us." He put a hand on Dean's face. "You believe me?"

"Yeah. I do."

"You're a lousy liar too," Bobby said and smiled. "Close your eyes. Get some rest."

* * *

He saw her once, only once in all that time. By then he'd stopped talking and no matter what they did to him he wouldn't talk to them or say anything but she was different from all of them, worse, terrible, terrifying. She stood before him and said tell me and he turned his face away and she took him and made him look at her and said it again, tell me.

She made him talk. She laid him open and made him tell her everything, tell it all until he couldn't bear the sound of his own voice or the sense of her gorging herself on everything he had tried to hold onto. She left him with nothing to himself and then she told him how she was going to use what she'd wrung from him and she left him screaming in the dark until they came and took him away and put him out on the road.

* * *

There was something on his face and he tried to get it off because he needed to talk, had to talk, and then Bobby was there holding his hands down.

"Leave it alone, Dean."

Dean shook his head frantically. "Bobby..." he said and heard his voice, little more than a whisper and barely audible through the oxygen mask. "Bobby, I remember..."

"Shh, don't talk."

"I remember what she did, Bobby. What she was going to do. She took it all..."

"Shh."

"All of it. She took it. From me. Out of me."

"Okay," Bobby said. "All right. Shhh."

* * *

They put him out on the road and the road was burning and they told him to walk, he was good at following orders, wasn't he? The road was black burning tar and he was burning and bleeding and he had to keep going, he couldn't stop, he couldn't rest, they were on him like flies if he tried. The horizon was on fire and the black road was paved with smoldering coals and he couldn't stop and then he fell and waited for them to come. But they didn't.

He heard his name and he looked up and saw his brother. This was how Sam found him. Sam tried to pick him up and he couldn't, his hands passed through Dean like water and neither could Dean touch Sam or hold onto him. Sam said, "You have to follow me, Dean," and Dean couldn't talk but he nodded. "Stay with me, Dean," he said and Dean followed crawling on the charred and blackened road and then staggering on his feet and he thought, I'm with you Sam, please don't leave me, please, please... His brother led him out of hell and everything fled before them.

* * *

"I saw him," he said to Bobby. It was very dark and he could hardly see Bobby but could feel his hands around his own. "He found me."

"I know he did."

"He got me."

"I know."

* * *

He dreamt that he was at the ocean with Sam and they were both children. Sam was very small, so small that every time a wave rolled in he'd put his arms around Dean's waist and hold on and Dean could look down and see the crown of his brother's head and his hair was still baby's hair, dark gold, the color of ripe wheat. "It's scary," he said and Dean said, "Don't worry, I've got you."

"I've got you too," Sam said and linked his hands together around Dean. "I've got you." And Dean passed his hand through Sam's hair and the waves broke out at sea, sparkling clean and blue in the sun.

* * *

Dean woke up and saw Bobby crouched before the woodstove, feeding it with the slow movements of someone trying not to make any noise. He wasn't wearing the oxygen mask anymore and his chest ached but he could breathe and he lay there feeling warm and weightless and watched Bobby. Bobby closed the woodstove's iron door with an exaggerated and almost dainty caution that would have made Dean laugh if he'd had the energy and then Bobby turned around and saw Dean looking at him. He dusted off his hands and came over to the couch and sat down beside him.

"Welcome back," he said and Dean raised an eyebrow at him and went back to sleep.

* * *

He'd been sick for more than a week and by the time he was able to get up it was the middle of September and the leaves outside the cabin had begun to change color. The cabin was little more than two rooms and seemed to have no neighbors. Bobby told him that it was in the middle of West Virginia's iron country and that demons couldn't come near it though he still salted the doors and windows and laid a sigil upon every entrance. At night it was so quiet Dean could hear ashes sifting in the woodstove. There was a gas powered generator that Bobby never fired up and well water had to be brought in from outside and Dean told Bobby that he'd finally embraced the Unabomber lifestyle once and for all.

He didn't ask Bobby any questions until one evening he said, "Okay, Bobby."

Bobby glanced up from the map on his knees and sat there looking at Dean and then he put the map on the floor and got up. He went into the kitchen and rattled around in there for a minute and came back with two mugs and a bottle of whiskey. He poured out for both of them and drank his down and wiped his mouth and sat down by the woodstove across from Dean.

"You sure you're ready for this?" he asked and Dean nodded. "All right," he said, and started to talk.

Go ahead to Chapter Six.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

cofax7

Oh, thank god Bobby's still alive. When he stumbled I thought it was because the agent was a demon.

YAY more story. And ARGH, poor Dean. Such whumpage. But I'm so glad you're giving us the backstory on how Sam got him out of hell. And now I get to wonder who "she" is: Bela, Lilith, or Meg?

This continues to be awesome. Great suspense and pacing.

From:

Lazarus Came Forth, Chapter 5

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