Lazarus Came Forth: Chapter 7 (at last!)
Dec. 31st, 2008 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oselleSorry for the delay, folks. Too much going on, none of it any good. Happy New Year!
Title: Lazarus Came Forth, 7/8 (due to length, this chapter will be posted in two parts)
Pairings: None (gen)
Rating: R (for language and some violence)
Warnings: Serious angst, some gore, heavily Dean-centric.
Spoilers: Through end of Season Three
Word Count: ~11,000 for Chapter Seven (~55,000 Chapters One through Seven)
Disclaimer: The Winchesters and all canon characters are the intellectual property of their creators. All original characters are mine. No money was made in the writing of this story.
Summary: Dean returns from hell and finds himself alive and alone in the stark landscape of an America that gone terribly wrong. Adrift in hostile territory and pursued by hell's bounty hunters, he sets out on a desperate hunt to find Sam. Apocafic.
Recap: Having rescued a sick and injured Dean from pursuit by demonic bounty hunters, private military contractors and assorted natural disasters, Bobby hid him in West Virginia where Dean recuperated and finally got the whole story about what happened in the aftermath of his death and during his four years in hell. Learning from Bobby that Sam is presumably alive and was last heard from in California, Dean and Bobby hit the road to find him. Link to Chapter 6 (and all previous chapters):
Chapter 6
Lazarus Came Forth
7. Body and Soul: Part One
Dean woke up with a hard start and braced an arm on the door handle.
"All right?" Bobby asked.
"Yeah," Dean said.
"You feel like driving?"
Dean scrubbed a hand over his eyes. "Yeah, if I could get some caffeine first. Where are we?"
"North Dakota. Crossed the border about half an hour ago."
"Guess that explains the sleet."
"We'll pull off in the next town, get some coffee, something to eat."
"Okay."
They drove without speaking against the sound of the sedan's wheels on the asphalt and the ice hitting the window and the muted stutter of the police scanner. It was the middle of the afternoon but dusky dark and they passed one car traveling in the opposite direction and then had the road to themselves.
Bobby glanced at Dean and looked back at the road. "It's coming back, isn't it?"
"What is?"
"Hell. That's all coming back."
Dean shook his head. "Not all of it. But yeah, I have these...dreams, nightmares whatever you wanna call them, only I know they're not dreams. They're different."
"You ever wanna talk about it, you know..." He glanced at Dean again. "You know."
Dean grinned. "Well thanks, Dr. Phil."
"I mean it y'jackass."
"I know," Dean said. He watched sleet bounce off the windshield and pit through the headlights and could feel Bobby sitting there waiting for him to say something. After a while he said, "They told me he was dead."
"Aw, you know demons..."
"Lie. They lie."
"Right."
"Only they don't," Dean said. "You said if I wanted to talk about hell...I don't. But I'll tell you it's not the lies they get you with, it's the truth. They know every goddamn thing you ever did and every mistake you ever made and they know that nothing'll tear you apart like the truth."
"Well, Sam was alive and kicking in June, that's all I know, so if they were telling you he was dead before that..."
"Before what? Four months ago up here wasn't four months ago down there. You couldn't say this happened yesterday or last week or last year because it was always the same time but it was also no time." He stared out the window, biting his lip. "I know that sounds crazy."
"It sounds like hell," Bobby said and Dean coughed out a laugh and rubbed the back of his neck. Bobby said, "Dean," and Dean looked over at him. "Don't you think if Sam was dead you'd know it?"
"What, like I'd...I'd know it in my heart? Come on, Bobby."
"Yeah. Yeah, Dean, I do think you'd know it." Bobby glanced at him. "Do you think he's dead? Do you really believe that?" Dean didn't say anything and Bobby asked him again and Dean closed his eyes and said, "No. But I don't...something's wrong, Bobby."
"Well, kid," he said and he was quiet for such a long time that Dean thought that was all he had to say. Then he said, "When's it ever been right?" He reached out and clapped Dean on the knee but didn't look at him and neither of them said anything else.
* * *
It was close to three in the morning when they pulled into a truckstop near Hardin, Montana. Bobby went in for coffee and Dean climbed into the passenger seat. It was windy outside and the steel pulleys on the gas station flags smacked against the poles with a hollow rhythm and the car rocked in the wind. Dean was dozing until a sharp rap on the window jolted him awake. He looked out and saw a hatchet-faced girl shivering there in a short skirt and a red fur jacket and her hair was snapping around in the wind. Lot lizard.
"Can you put down the window?"
He shook his head and waved her off.
"I just want to talk, that's all."
Dean took out his wallet and pulled out a ten-dollar bill and rolled down the window and handed it to her. "Go and warm up. Get yourself a cup of coffee."
"I just wanna talk. Where's your dad?"
"My dad?"
"The guy you come in here with."
"Why're you asking?"
"Is he all right?"
"All right?"
"Is he all right, you ain't a couple a weirdos or nothin are you?"
Dean looked her up and down. Pathetic-looking thing. About nineteen going on fifty, standing there hugging herself and bouncing from one foot to the other to stay warm. "What's the matter?"
She tossed her head in some direction over her shoulder. "I got three guys over there won't leave me alone. Say they wanna make a movie but I don't wanna make no movie with em and I need a ride outta here with someone who ain't gonna turn outta be crazy too. I seen you two come in and you look all right. Just gimme a ride outta here an I'll do whatever you want for free an if you don't want nothin I'll pay you just get me outta here."
"Listen..."
"Stacey, my name's Stacey, come on mister."
Dean saw Bobby coming across the parking lot with two cups of coffee. Bobby was giving him a look and Dean held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. He turned back to Stacey and she wasn't looking at him anymore. She was facing Bobby and her hand was under her jacket and Dean lunged for the doorhandle and shoved the sedan's heavy door into her side but she'd already fired. The sound of the shot was a thin, flat crack in the wind.
"Bobby!"
Bobby had fallen between the parked cars and one of the coffee cups was rolling away on the asphalt spewing its contents and Stacey grabbed Dean's leg and her eyes were just two rounds of charcoal in her head. He kicked her and her head rapped off the pavement and she laughed and held onto him. He pulled out a hipflask of holy water and upended it on her and she stopped laughing and started screaming. She dropped the gun and Dean grabbed it and set off at a dead run across the parking lot.
"Bobby...Bobby..." Bobby was lying on his side and he was conscious. Dean turned him over and the front of his shirt was orange under the parking lot's yellow arclights and the pavement beneath him was slicked with blood. Oh God, Dean thought. Oh my God.
"Dean..."
"Come on," Dean said and he got an arm under Bobby and pulled him up and Bobby groaned.
"Fuck, that hurts."
"I know, I know. Come on."
They made it to the car and Stacey was there keening on her hands and knees and Dean kicked her away and got Bobby in the passenger seat. "Two more," Bobby wheezed and Dean looked up and saw two men running across the parking lot. Bobby handed the shotgun up to him and Dean sighted it and fired off two shells of rock salt and that bought him enough time to round the sedan's hood. He was behind the wheel and the men were back on their feet and Stacey lunged in snarling through the open passenger window.
"Bobby, move!" Dean said and he pumped the shotgun and blasted her in the face. She fell off the side of the car like the husk of an insect and Dean pulled out and sawed the car around and made for the onramp and in the rearview mirror people or demons were running across the parking lot.
"Bobby, say something."
"I thought you could see them."
Dean shook his head. "She just looked like a girl to me. I don't know what happened."
"You've been out too long." He doubled over and caught his breath and said, "Where're you going?"
"Billings."
"No hospital."
"What?"
"First place they'll look," Bobby said, then said, "Get off the interstate," and passed out.
* * *
He took Route 87 north and as he drove he heard about the shooting on the radio and the police scanner and they had a description of the car and of Bobby and himself. He left the road at Roundup and pulled into the shadows of a loading dock in an abandoned industrial park. Beside him Bobby was white and sweating and Dean gave him a shot of Dilaudid and sat with the heels of his hands pressed to the wadded up gauze over Bobby's stomach.
"It's gonna be okay," Dean said. "It'll be okay."
"Yeah," Bobby said.
"We have to go to the hospital."
Bobby rolled his head towards Dean. "That's a one way ticket. For both of us."
"No...no. I'll figure something out."
Bobby closed his eyes and smiled. "It ain't like the old days, kid. You can't...there's militia stationed in every hospital. There'll be demons looking for you to bring me in too." He opened his eyes. "And you can't tell em apart."
"I'm not letting you die out here."
"No...listen." He paused and caught his breath and Dean leaned towards him because Bobby's voice was faint and tired. "Duluth...there's a place in Duluth."
"Duluth?"
"Yeah. Hospital. Underground. No one knows about it...no one who shouldn't know. There were hunters there too, last time. Safe."
"Bobby, that's almost a thousand miles from here."
"I'll keep breathing, you just drive. Okay?"
"Okay," Dean said. He wrapped gauze tight around Bobby's stomach and got back behind the wheel and headed east for Minnesota.
* * *
He drove straight through the dusted-out country they had gone north to avoid and the road was so obscured by dirt there seemed to be no road at all. The sky grew lighter but the sun was veiled by a brown haze and could not be seen. The houses and gas stations and convenience stores had been abandoned to the storms and some were buried in dust up to the tops of their doors and there were no people at all. Bobby fell so quiet that Dean thought he had died. He put his right hand over Bobby's wrist and felt a pulse still beating there and he could only think don't die over and over. He kept going east and with every mile California and Sam became farther away.
* * *
He came into Duluth in the late afternoon, taking a crisscrossing route of local streets to avoid the militia checkpoints on the highways. The city was dark with a heavy lake fog and there were gulls crying overhead but the streets were quiet. Dean drove through an old part of town that sloped up steeply from the waterfront until he came to a redbrick warehouse from the century before last, caged with sagging fire escapes. The wired panes of its arching windows were opaque with age and dirt and the iron door was rusted and there was no sign of life about the place. Dean sat there staring at it and was sure that Bobby had made some mistake until Bobby whispered, "Around to the back."
Behind the warehouse there were derelict railroad tracks paralleling a loading platform and Dean stopped the car in a thick patch of weeds. Beneath the loading platform were more weeds and trash and a crumbling detritus of unknown origin and a tin sign that pointed the way to a fallout shelter, its three yellow radiation triangles pitted and pocked with rust. Dean got out of the car and looked around. He had the feeling of being watched.
"What do you want?"
There was a man sitting on a milkcrate in the weeds beneath the fallout shelter sign. Wrapped up in an old coat and blanket and his hands were stuck in his armpits for warmth and he blended into the trashy surroundings so well that Dean had not even seen him until he spoke.
"Is this the hospital?"
"Hospital?"
Dean studied the man. "My friend's been shot and I can't take him to a hospital. He told me to come here." The man had no reaction and Dean said, "His name's Singer. Bobby Singer."
The man got up off the milkcrate as if someone had shot a charge through it and came straight to the car with such urgency that Dean let himself be pushed aside so that the man could lean into the car. He said, "Shit," and stood up and looked at Dean. "Drive down a few yards that way and there's a garage bay. We'll open it up for you."
Dean nodded and he did what the man told him and pulled up before a truck-sized garage door that looked as if it hadn't been opened in decades. It was opened now and he drove in.
* * *
Dean didn't even have time to turn off the ignition before they were pulling Bobby out of the car, a man and a woman and the man who'd been outside and then Dean himself was pulled out of the car by two armed men who whirled him around and frisked him.
"What the fuck?" Dean said. He was splayed out across the hood of the car and Bobby was being wheeled away. "Get off me!"
"No weapons," one of the men said from behind and he pulled the pistol out of Dean's belt and the knife from his boot and then the man from outside was running over in his tramp's clothing waving his hands.
"He's all right, he's with someone I know. He's good."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. Let him go."
Dean straightened up and one of the men handed his weapons back to him and said, "Sorry," and Dean took them without a word and set off after Bobby. He didn't know where they had taken him. He was in a gray, high-ceilinged industrial space with a concrete floor and a collection of vehicles parked at haphazard angles. In the direction they'd taken Bobby Dean could make out the wire cage of a freight elevator and then the man from outside was running along beside him and tugging on his elbow.
"This way," he said. "It'll take the elevator forever to come back down."
They took the stairs and the man said his name was Gus and on the third floor Gus led him through a noisy maze of beds and wheelchairs and sick and injured people to a curtained area and here he put his hand on Dean's chest and held him back.
"Let them work," he said. Bobby was on the table. There was not enough light. There were drifts of Bobby's clothes and bloody gauze on the floor. "Why don't you come with me and get cleaned up?"
Dean shook his head. "No," he said. They pulled a bullet out of Bobby and cleaned out the wound and cleaned him off. Then they put him in a hospital gown and took him off the table and put him into a bed and Dean stayed with him.
* * *
It was very much later and the little light coming in through the windows had vanished. Dean stood beside Bobby's bed until he finally had to sit down on the floor. He put his back against the wall and drew his knees up and folded his hands over them. There was blood caked under his nails and in the creases of his knuckles. The floor was cold and he could feel the chill of the brick wall through his clothes. There was no heat and very little light. Gus brought him a cup of coffee and hunkered down on the floor in front of Dean.
"He's gonna be all right."
"That's what they said. He'll be here a while though."
"Well, he's a tough old bastard but he's no kid, either. How the hell did he get shot, anyway?"
Dean shrugged. "Some...truckstop hooker in Montana. I don't know. Lot of crazies out there."
"Crazy or possessed?"
Dean raised an eyebrow over the cup's styrofoam rim. "Possessed?"
"Listen," Gus said and leaned towards Dean. "I know what Bobby Singer does for a living. Or a calling or whatever you want to call it. I used to be in that line of work myself."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. And if you're Bobby's friend, you know the score. So what was it?"
"At the truckstop?"
"Yeah."
Dean put the coffee cup down and sighed and ran a hand over his face. "Demon. I mean it was a girl, but she was possessed. There were others but we got outta there before they could join the party."
"So they're looking for you?" Gus said and Dean nodded. "Fuckin Bobby. I told him last time I saw him he was gonna get himself killed. Asked him to stay here. There's other ways to help people besides hunting demons and God, Satan and everyone in between knows how fuckin outnumbered we are now. The jig, as they say, is up."
"I don't even know why she shot him. Why didn't she shoot me?"
"I'm sure she would've gotten around to it."
"No, I mean..." Dean began and then couldn't go on. "I don't know. I was an easier target."
"Well, if you want some advice, take this as your wake-up call. This whole thing, this is all over with."
"What is?"
"Hunting. Used to be things were even. You could've even have said we had the upper hand. But now? What are we gonna do? Run around with holy water when they're coming at us with goddamn militias?"
"So we let the world go to hell?"
Gus shrugged. "I'm thinking that's where it's been headed all along. Maybe we stemmed the tide a little but..." He shook his head. "There's no stopping it now. We can just try to hold on, take care of each other. You know?"
Dean laughed and leaned his head against the wall. "I don't know a goddamn thing," he said. "I don't think I ever did."
* * *
Gus left him alone and Dean sat there and stared up into the high black vault of the ceiling. There were chains hanging there, the remnants of some long-forgotten rustbelt industry and they were moving in a draft and Dean could hear them glancing off each other with a hard, cold sound that made him feel vaguely sick. He looked away and closed his eyes but he couldn't sleep. He got up and walked around Bobby's bed and looked at him. Bobby was still and pale but his heart rate was steady. Dean sat at the foot of the bed and rubbed warmth back into his arms and listened to Bobby's monitor and the other monitors around him and the sound of people in pain and the hushed voices of those who tried to comfort them.
Dean looked out over the dim hospital ward and understood at last that the world he'd known before he died was gone and he thought about his last year and all the things Ruby had said about Sam's power against Lilith and also the things Dean had told Sam before he died. It seemed to him now that he had been wrong about everything, all wrong. The world had rotted away while he had rotted in hell and though Sam might have been able to stop it he hadn't and he hadn't because his brother had asked him not to. Then left him. And for another year Sam had been with Lilith thinking she was his brother all that time and what had she asked him to do? What advice had she had for someone who had been recruited from his cradle to destroy her?
Dean stood up as if something had pulled him to his feet and he looked at Bobby and felt his pulse and then turned and walked across the ward and took the stairs down to the garage. He found the car they had come in and took some things out of the trunk and went to find a place where no one would see him or what he had to do.
* * *
Dean went back upstairs. It was very late and the ward was quiet. Bobby's bed was at the far end of the ward and by the time Dean got there he felt as if he had walked miles. The bed had no hospital rails and Dean sat on the edge. After a while he slid down to the floor and put his arms on the bed and his head on his arms and closed his eyes.
He felt Bobby's hand on his head and he opened his eyes but didn't look up. For a few minutes he just lay there and Bobby didn't take his hand away and neither of them said anything. Then Dean raised his head and Bobby's hand fell to the side of Dean's face.
"How do you feel?"
"Better'n you look. What's wrong?"
Dean took Bobby's hand and put it down on the bed and looked away. "I found him."
Bobby shook his head. "How?"
A brittle smile broke Dean's face. "That thing with the pendulum."
"Torquetum's for finding demons, Dean."
Dean looked at Bobby. He said, "I know," and they just stared at each other. Bobby put his hand on Dean's arm and Dean stood up and walked away.
* * *
He stayed in Duluth for two days and they barely spoke about it. On the afternoon of the second day Bobby was sitting up in bed eating applesauce and he grimaced and put the spoon down.
"Blech," he said. "Baby food."
"Want me to run out and get you a steak?"
"Yeah, wouldja?" He looked at Dean in the chair beside the bed and Dean smiled but Bobby didn't and Dean sat up straight.
"What's the matter?"
"Gus will get you a car," Bobby said. "I already talked to him about it. You should be fine with the ID I gave you in West Virginia, no one's made that yet."
"Bobby..."
"Stay off the interstates, avoid the cities as much as you can. You probably can't stay in a motel now so make sure you have some blankets in the backseat. But get some sleep for chrissake, don't try to do it in one shot or you're gonna drive yourself off an overpass."
"Bobby, I'm not leaving."
"I don't know how in hell you're gonna get over the border but there's ways to do it. Talk to Gus, he thinks he can hook you up in Arizona..."
"Okay, stop talking, all right? I'm not going anywhere."
"Yeah, y'are," he said. "You don't have half the poker face you think you do. I appreciate you sticking around to babysit me but there's plenty of folks here to do that."
Dean looked down and looked up with half a smile. "I thought you were gonna break both my legs if I tried to go it alone."
"Well, that was then. Situation's changed. Gotta roll with the punches."
"That's all we ever do."
"That's all anyone does," Bobby said. "Go talk to Gus. Come and see me before you go."
* * *
Dean talked to Gus. He spent one last night in the hospital and before dawn he went to say goodbye to Bobby. Bobby was awake and sitting up and he shook his head when he saw Dean. "I knew the day John Winchester dumped two rugrats on my couch it was gonna be nothing but trouble."
"Should've had better aim with the buckshot."
"No shit. Gus outfitted you? Salt, holy water..."
"Yeah."
"Ammo?"
"Everything short of a suitcase bomb, yeah."
"He's a good guy, Gus."
"I can see that."
"Knows his shit."
"Yeah."
"Okay, well..." Bobby said. "You be careful."
"Bobby..." Dean said.
"He's your brother, Dean," Bobby said. "I know what that means for you."
"Do you want me to stay?"
"Do you want to stay?"
"Yes," he said. Almost laughing. "But I can't."
"I know it," Bobby said. He closed his eyes. "Get the hell outta here, kid. I've been through enough lately, don't need to start bawling on top of it."
Dean bent over and put his head on Bobby's shoulder and Bobby put an arm around him. "Tell me I'm gonna see you again," Bobby said.
"You'll see me. Sam too."
"Good enough," Bobby said. He held onto Dean for a moment longer and then let him go. Downstairs Gus was waiting with the car keys. Dawn was breaking when Dean pulled out of the garage and the day was fresh and autumn cool and gulls were wheeling out over the city.
Continued in Part Two.
Title: Lazarus Came Forth, 7/8 (due to length, this chapter will be posted in two parts)
Pairings: None (gen)
Rating: R (for language and some violence)
Warnings: Serious angst, some gore, heavily Dean-centric.
Spoilers: Through end of Season Three
Word Count: ~11,000 for Chapter Seven (~55,000 Chapters One through Seven)
Disclaimer: The Winchesters and all canon characters are the intellectual property of their creators. All original characters are mine. No money was made in the writing of this story.
Summary: Dean returns from hell and finds himself alive and alone in the stark landscape of an America that gone terribly wrong. Adrift in hostile territory and pursued by hell's bounty hunters, he sets out on a desperate hunt to find Sam. Apocafic.
Recap: Having rescued a sick and injured Dean from pursuit by demonic bounty hunters, private military contractors and assorted natural disasters, Bobby hid him in West Virginia where Dean recuperated and finally got the whole story about what happened in the aftermath of his death and during his four years in hell. Learning from Bobby that Sam is presumably alive and was last heard from in California, Dean and Bobby hit the road to find him. Link to Chapter 6 (and all previous chapters):
Chapter 6
Lazarus Came Forth
7. Body and Soul: Part One
Dean woke up with a hard start and braced an arm on the door handle.
"All right?" Bobby asked.
"Yeah," Dean said.
"You feel like driving?"
Dean scrubbed a hand over his eyes. "Yeah, if I could get some caffeine first. Where are we?"
"North Dakota. Crossed the border about half an hour ago."
"Guess that explains the sleet."
"We'll pull off in the next town, get some coffee, something to eat."
"Okay."
They drove without speaking against the sound of the sedan's wheels on the asphalt and the ice hitting the window and the muted stutter of the police scanner. It was the middle of the afternoon but dusky dark and they passed one car traveling in the opposite direction and then had the road to themselves.
Bobby glanced at Dean and looked back at the road. "It's coming back, isn't it?"
"What is?"
"Hell. That's all coming back."
Dean shook his head. "Not all of it. But yeah, I have these...dreams, nightmares whatever you wanna call them, only I know they're not dreams. They're different."
"You ever wanna talk about it, you know..." He glanced at Dean again. "You know."
Dean grinned. "Well thanks, Dr. Phil."
"I mean it y'jackass."
"I know," Dean said. He watched sleet bounce off the windshield and pit through the headlights and could feel Bobby sitting there waiting for him to say something. After a while he said, "They told me he was dead."
"Aw, you know demons..."
"Lie. They lie."
"Right."
"Only they don't," Dean said. "You said if I wanted to talk about hell...I don't. But I'll tell you it's not the lies they get you with, it's the truth. They know every goddamn thing you ever did and every mistake you ever made and they know that nothing'll tear you apart like the truth."
"Well, Sam was alive and kicking in June, that's all I know, so if they were telling you he was dead before that..."
"Before what? Four months ago up here wasn't four months ago down there. You couldn't say this happened yesterday or last week or last year because it was always the same time but it was also no time." He stared out the window, biting his lip. "I know that sounds crazy."
"It sounds like hell," Bobby said and Dean coughed out a laugh and rubbed the back of his neck. Bobby said, "Dean," and Dean looked over at him. "Don't you think if Sam was dead you'd know it?"
"What, like I'd...I'd know it in my heart? Come on, Bobby."
"Yeah. Yeah, Dean, I do think you'd know it." Bobby glanced at him. "Do you think he's dead? Do you really believe that?" Dean didn't say anything and Bobby asked him again and Dean closed his eyes and said, "No. But I don't...something's wrong, Bobby."
"Well, kid," he said and he was quiet for such a long time that Dean thought that was all he had to say. Then he said, "When's it ever been right?" He reached out and clapped Dean on the knee but didn't look at him and neither of them said anything else.
* * *
It was close to three in the morning when they pulled into a truckstop near Hardin, Montana. Bobby went in for coffee and Dean climbed into the passenger seat. It was windy outside and the steel pulleys on the gas station flags smacked against the poles with a hollow rhythm and the car rocked in the wind. Dean was dozing until a sharp rap on the window jolted him awake. He looked out and saw a hatchet-faced girl shivering there in a short skirt and a red fur jacket and her hair was snapping around in the wind. Lot lizard.
"Can you put down the window?"
He shook his head and waved her off.
"I just want to talk, that's all."
Dean took out his wallet and pulled out a ten-dollar bill and rolled down the window and handed it to her. "Go and warm up. Get yourself a cup of coffee."
"I just wanna talk. Where's your dad?"
"My dad?"
"The guy you come in here with."
"Why're you asking?"
"Is he all right?"
"All right?"
"Is he all right, you ain't a couple a weirdos or nothin are you?"
Dean looked her up and down. Pathetic-looking thing. About nineteen going on fifty, standing there hugging herself and bouncing from one foot to the other to stay warm. "What's the matter?"
She tossed her head in some direction over her shoulder. "I got three guys over there won't leave me alone. Say they wanna make a movie but I don't wanna make no movie with em and I need a ride outta here with someone who ain't gonna turn outta be crazy too. I seen you two come in and you look all right. Just gimme a ride outta here an I'll do whatever you want for free an if you don't want nothin I'll pay you just get me outta here."
"Listen..."
"Stacey, my name's Stacey, come on mister."
Dean saw Bobby coming across the parking lot with two cups of coffee. Bobby was giving him a look and Dean held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. He turned back to Stacey and she wasn't looking at him anymore. She was facing Bobby and her hand was under her jacket and Dean lunged for the doorhandle and shoved the sedan's heavy door into her side but she'd already fired. The sound of the shot was a thin, flat crack in the wind.
"Bobby!"
Bobby had fallen between the parked cars and one of the coffee cups was rolling away on the asphalt spewing its contents and Stacey grabbed Dean's leg and her eyes were just two rounds of charcoal in her head. He kicked her and her head rapped off the pavement and she laughed and held onto him. He pulled out a hipflask of holy water and upended it on her and she stopped laughing and started screaming. She dropped the gun and Dean grabbed it and set off at a dead run across the parking lot.
"Bobby...Bobby..." Bobby was lying on his side and he was conscious. Dean turned him over and the front of his shirt was orange under the parking lot's yellow arclights and the pavement beneath him was slicked with blood. Oh God, Dean thought. Oh my God.
"Dean..."
"Come on," Dean said and he got an arm under Bobby and pulled him up and Bobby groaned.
"Fuck, that hurts."
"I know, I know. Come on."
They made it to the car and Stacey was there keening on her hands and knees and Dean kicked her away and got Bobby in the passenger seat. "Two more," Bobby wheezed and Dean looked up and saw two men running across the parking lot. Bobby handed the shotgun up to him and Dean sighted it and fired off two shells of rock salt and that bought him enough time to round the sedan's hood. He was behind the wheel and the men were back on their feet and Stacey lunged in snarling through the open passenger window.
"Bobby, move!" Dean said and he pumped the shotgun and blasted her in the face. She fell off the side of the car like the husk of an insect and Dean pulled out and sawed the car around and made for the onramp and in the rearview mirror people or demons were running across the parking lot.
"Bobby, say something."
"I thought you could see them."
Dean shook his head. "She just looked like a girl to me. I don't know what happened."
"You've been out too long." He doubled over and caught his breath and said, "Where're you going?"
"Billings."
"No hospital."
"What?"
"First place they'll look," Bobby said, then said, "Get off the interstate," and passed out.
* * *
He took Route 87 north and as he drove he heard about the shooting on the radio and the police scanner and they had a description of the car and of Bobby and himself. He left the road at Roundup and pulled into the shadows of a loading dock in an abandoned industrial park. Beside him Bobby was white and sweating and Dean gave him a shot of Dilaudid and sat with the heels of his hands pressed to the wadded up gauze over Bobby's stomach.
"It's gonna be okay," Dean said. "It'll be okay."
"Yeah," Bobby said.
"We have to go to the hospital."
Bobby rolled his head towards Dean. "That's a one way ticket. For both of us."
"No...no. I'll figure something out."
Bobby closed his eyes and smiled. "It ain't like the old days, kid. You can't...there's militia stationed in every hospital. There'll be demons looking for you to bring me in too." He opened his eyes. "And you can't tell em apart."
"I'm not letting you die out here."
"No...listen." He paused and caught his breath and Dean leaned towards him because Bobby's voice was faint and tired. "Duluth...there's a place in Duluth."
"Duluth?"
"Yeah. Hospital. Underground. No one knows about it...no one who shouldn't know. There were hunters there too, last time. Safe."
"Bobby, that's almost a thousand miles from here."
"I'll keep breathing, you just drive. Okay?"
"Okay," Dean said. He wrapped gauze tight around Bobby's stomach and got back behind the wheel and headed east for Minnesota.
* * *
He drove straight through the dusted-out country they had gone north to avoid and the road was so obscured by dirt there seemed to be no road at all. The sky grew lighter but the sun was veiled by a brown haze and could not be seen. The houses and gas stations and convenience stores had been abandoned to the storms and some were buried in dust up to the tops of their doors and there were no people at all. Bobby fell so quiet that Dean thought he had died. He put his right hand over Bobby's wrist and felt a pulse still beating there and he could only think don't die over and over. He kept going east and with every mile California and Sam became farther away.
* * *
He came into Duluth in the late afternoon, taking a crisscrossing route of local streets to avoid the militia checkpoints on the highways. The city was dark with a heavy lake fog and there were gulls crying overhead but the streets were quiet. Dean drove through an old part of town that sloped up steeply from the waterfront until he came to a redbrick warehouse from the century before last, caged with sagging fire escapes. The wired panes of its arching windows were opaque with age and dirt and the iron door was rusted and there was no sign of life about the place. Dean sat there staring at it and was sure that Bobby had made some mistake until Bobby whispered, "Around to the back."
Behind the warehouse there were derelict railroad tracks paralleling a loading platform and Dean stopped the car in a thick patch of weeds. Beneath the loading platform were more weeds and trash and a crumbling detritus of unknown origin and a tin sign that pointed the way to a fallout shelter, its three yellow radiation triangles pitted and pocked with rust. Dean got out of the car and looked around. He had the feeling of being watched.
"What do you want?"
There was a man sitting on a milkcrate in the weeds beneath the fallout shelter sign. Wrapped up in an old coat and blanket and his hands were stuck in his armpits for warmth and he blended into the trashy surroundings so well that Dean had not even seen him until he spoke.
"Is this the hospital?"
"Hospital?"
Dean studied the man. "My friend's been shot and I can't take him to a hospital. He told me to come here." The man had no reaction and Dean said, "His name's Singer. Bobby Singer."
The man got up off the milkcrate as if someone had shot a charge through it and came straight to the car with such urgency that Dean let himself be pushed aside so that the man could lean into the car. He said, "Shit," and stood up and looked at Dean. "Drive down a few yards that way and there's a garage bay. We'll open it up for you."
Dean nodded and he did what the man told him and pulled up before a truck-sized garage door that looked as if it hadn't been opened in decades. It was opened now and he drove in.
* * *
Dean didn't even have time to turn off the ignition before they were pulling Bobby out of the car, a man and a woman and the man who'd been outside and then Dean himself was pulled out of the car by two armed men who whirled him around and frisked him.
"What the fuck?" Dean said. He was splayed out across the hood of the car and Bobby was being wheeled away. "Get off me!"
"No weapons," one of the men said from behind and he pulled the pistol out of Dean's belt and the knife from his boot and then the man from outside was running over in his tramp's clothing waving his hands.
"He's all right, he's with someone I know. He's good."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. Let him go."
Dean straightened up and one of the men handed his weapons back to him and said, "Sorry," and Dean took them without a word and set off after Bobby. He didn't know where they had taken him. He was in a gray, high-ceilinged industrial space with a concrete floor and a collection of vehicles parked at haphazard angles. In the direction they'd taken Bobby Dean could make out the wire cage of a freight elevator and then the man from outside was running along beside him and tugging on his elbow.
"This way," he said. "It'll take the elevator forever to come back down."
They took the stairs and the man said his name was Gus and on the third floor Gus led him through a noisy maze of beds and wheelchairs and sick and injured people to a curtained area and here he put his hand on Dean's chest and held him back.
"Let them work," he said. Bobby was on the table. There was not enough light. There were drifts of Bobby's clothes and bloody gauze on the floor. "Why don't you come with me and get cleaned up?"
Dean shook his head. "No," he said. They pulled a bullet out of Bobby and cleaned out the wound and cleaned him off. Then they put him in a hospital gown and took him off the table and put him into a bed and Dean stayed with him.
* * *
It was very much later and the little light coming in through the windows had vanished. Dean stood beside Bobby's bed until he finally had to sit down on the floor. He put his back against the wall and drew his knees up and folded his hands over them. There was blood caked under his nails and in the creases of his knuckles. The floor was cold and he could feel the chill of the brick wall through his clothes. There was no heat and very little light. Gus brought him a cup of coffee and hunkered down on the floor in front of Dean.
"He's gonna be all right."
"That's what they said. He'll be here a while though."
"Well, he's a tough old bastard but he's no kid, either. How the hell did he get shot, anyway?"
Dean shrugged. "Some...truckstop hooker in Montana. I don't know. Lot of crazies out there."
"Crazy or possessed?"
Dean raised an eyebrow over the cup's styrofoam rim. "Possessed?"
"Listen," Gus said and leaned towards Dean. "I know what Bobby Singer does for a living. Or a calling or whatever you want to call it. I used to be in that line of work myself."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. And if you're Bobby's friend, you know the score. So what was it?"
"At the truckstop?"
"Yeah."
Dean put the coffee cup down and sighed and ran a hand over his face. "Demon. I mean it was a girl, but she was possessed. There were others but we got outta there before they could join the party."
"So they're looking for you?" Gus said and Dean nodded. "Fuckin Bobby. I told him last time I saw him he was gonna get himself killed. Asked him to stay here. There's other ways to help people besides hunting demons and God, Satan and everyone in between knows how fuckin outnumbered we are now. The jig, as they say, is up."
"I don't even know why she shot him. Why didn't she shoot me?"
"I'm sure she would've gotten around to it."
"No, I mean..." Dean began and then couldn't go on. "I don't know. I was an easier target."
"Well, if you want some advice, take this as your wake-up call. This whole thing, this is all over with."
"What is?"
"Hunting. Used to be things were even. You could've even have said we had the upper hand. But now? What are we gonna do? Run around with holy water when they're coming at us with goddamn militias?"
"So we let the world go to hell?"
Gus shrugged. "I'm thinking that's where it's been headed all along. Maybe we stemmed the tide a little but..." He shook his head. "There's no stopping it now. We can just try to hold on, take care of each other. You know?"
Dean laughed and leaned his head against the wall. "I don't know a goddamn thing," he said. "I don't think I ever did."
* * *
Gus left him alone and Dean sat there and stared up into the high black vault of the ceiling. There were chains hanging there, the remnants of some long-forgotten rustbelt industry and they were moving in a draft and Dean could hear them glancing off each other with a hard, cold sound that made him feel vaguely sick. He looked away and closed his eyes but he couldn't sleep. He got up and walked around Bobby's bed and looked at him. Bobby was still and pale but his heart rate was steady. Dean sat at the foot of the bed and rubbed warmth back into his arms and listened to Bobby's monitor and the other monitors around him and the sound of people in pain and the hushed voices of those who tried to comfort them.
Dean looked out over the dim hospital ward and understood at last that the world he'd known before he died was gone and he thought about his last year and all the things Ruby had said about Sam's power against Lilith and also the things Dean had told Sam before he died. It seemed to him now that he had been wrong about everything, all wrong. The world had rotted away while he had rotted in hell and though Sam might have been able to stop it he hadn't and he hadn't because his brother had asked him not to. Then left him. And for another year Sam had been with Lilith thinking she was his brother all that time and what had she asked him to do? What advice had she had for someone who had been recruited from his cradle to destroy her?
Dean stood up as if something had pulled him to his feet and he looked at Bobby and felt his pulse and then turned and walked across the ward and took the stairs down to the garage. He found the car they had come in and took some things out of the trunk and went to find a place where no one would see him or what he had to do.
* * *
Dean went back upstairs. It was very late and the ward was quiet. Bobby's bed was at the far end of the ward and by the time Dean got there he felt as if he had walked miles. The bed had no hospital rails and Dean sat on the edge. After a while he slid down to the floor and put his arms on the bed and his head on his arms and closed his eyes.
He felt Bobby's hand on his head and he opened his eyes but didn't look up. For a few minutes he just lay there and Bobby didn't take his hand away and neither of them said anything. Then Dean raised his head and Bobby's hand fell to the side of Dean's face.
"How do you feel?"
"Better'n you look. What's wrong?"
Dean took Bobby's hand and put it down on the bed and looked away. "I found him."
Bobby shook his head. "How?"
A brittle smile broke Dean's face. "That thing with the pendulum."
"Torquetum's for finding demons, Dean."
Dean looked at Bobby. He said, "I know," and they just stared at each other. Bobby put his hand on Dean's arm and Dean stood up and walked away.
* * *
He stayed in Duluth for two days and they barely spoke about it. On the afternoon of the second day Bobby was sitting up in bed eating applesauce and he grimaced and put the spoon down.
"Blech," he said. "Baby food."
"Want me to run out and get you a steak?"
"Yeah, wouldja?" He looked at Dean in the chair beside the bed and Dean smiled but Bobby didn't and Dean sat up straight.
"What's the matter?"
"Gus will get you a car," Bobby said. "I already talked to him about it. You should be fine with the ID I gave you in West Virginia, no one's made that yet."
"Bobby..."
"Stay off the interstates, avoid the cities as much as you can. You probably can't stay in a motel now so make sure you have some blankets in the backseat. But get some sleep for chrissake, don't try to do it in one shot or you're gonna drive yourself off an overpass."
"Bobby, I'm not leaving."
"I don't know how in hell you're gonna get over the border but there's ways to do it. Talk to Gus, he thinks he can hook you up in Arizona..."
"Okay, stop talking, all right? I'm not going anywhere."
"Yeah, y'are," he said. "You don't have half the poker face you think you do. I appreciate you sticking around to babysit me but there's plenty of folks here to do that."
Dean looked down and looked up with half a smile. "I thought you were gonna break both my legs if I tried to go it alone."
"Well, that was then. Situation's changed. Gotta roll with the punches."
"That's all we ever do."
"That's all anyone does," Bobby said. "Go talk to Gus. Come and see me before you go."
* * *
Dean talked to Gus. He spent one last night in the hospital and before dawn he went to say goodbye to Bobby. Bobby was awake and sitting up and he shook his head when he saw Dean. "I knew the day John Winchester dumped two rugrats on my couch it was gonna be nothing but trouble."
"Should've had better aim with the buckshot."
"No shit. Gus outfitted you? Salt, holy water..."
"Yeah."
"Ammo?"
"Everything short of a suitcase bomb, yeah."
"He's a good guy, Gus."
"I can see that."
"Knows his shit."
"Yeah."
"Okay, well..." Bobby said. "You be careful."
"Bobby..." Dean said.
"He's your brother, Dean," Bobby said. "I know what that means for you."
"Do you want me to stay?"
"Do you want to stay?"
"Yes," he said. Almost laughing. "But I can't."
"I know it," Bobby said. He closed his eyes. "Get the hell outta here, kid. I've been through enough lately, don't need to start bawling on top of it."
Dean bent over and put his head on Bobby's shoulder and Bobby put an arm around him. "Tell me I'm gonna see you again," Bobby said.
"You'll see me. Sam too."
"Good enough," Bobby said. He held onto Dean for a moment longer and then let him go. Downstairs Gus was waiting with the car keys. Dawn was breaking when Dean pulled out of the garage and the day was fresh and autumn cool and gulls were wheeling out over the city.
Continued in Part Two.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-01-01 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-03 04:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-23 02:35 pm (UTC)Just awesome and I so look forward [albeit with some trepidation!] to the reunion with Sam... assuming the boys find each other...
no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 05:54 pm (UTC)Like I said, this is fucking amazing and epic.
You're an incredible writer, a master storyteller, and a genius with the suspense. The pacing is out-of-this-world perfect.
Please, please update soon.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-26 07:57 am (UTC)Awesome!
More please
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Date: 2009-03-19 02:37 pm (UTC)This is so good, I'm going right to Part Two. Will comment on all parts when I'm done...
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Date: 2009-03-23 11:36 pm (UTC)Finding Sam with the demon radar?? Shouldn't have surprised me either, but somehow, it threw me. This is woven so deep and intense, it hurts...
Cat