Fic: Feast Of All Saints, Chapter Two, Complete

[oselle]

Title: Feast Of All Saints, Chapter 2 of 2 (this chapter is posted in two parts due to length)
Genre: SPN slash, AU based upon Episode 5:04, "The End"
Pairings: Dean/Castiel, Dean/OFC, Castiel/OFC
Principals: Future!Dean, Future!Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Sex, language, gore, angst, no Sam
Spoilers: For SPN Episode 5:04, mild spoilers for Episode 4:16 ("Head of a Pin")
Word Count: 19,000 for Chapter 2, 30,000 for complete story
Disclaimer: The Winchesters and all canon characters are the intellectual property of their creators. All original characters are mine. No money was made or sought in the writing of this story.
Summary: It's 2015 and the world's gone to hell in the Croatoan apocalypse. Separated from their group of virus survivors, Dean and his erstwhile guardian angel find themselves stranded in Appalachia.

Go back to Chapter One

Author's Note:
This story is a sequel to The Shame Of It All and Once, and could be considered the third part of a trilogy with those stories, but this one can probably stand alone. Chapter Two also refers back to an older story, Jonah of Dalhart, but can still stand on its own if you haven't read that one.



Feast Of All Saints, Chapter Two, Part 1

In the summer of 2010 a man in a seaside town in Maryland kidnapped six little boys and six little girls and locked them in a church and set fire to the church. The children were rescued and the man was put away. In the hospital he told Castiel and Dean the same thing he had told everyone else, that a devil had made him do it. Not the Devil, but a devil. Told him to do it so that when the real Devil did come he and his family would be spared. The horror of what he'd done had driven him crazy and there was no trace in that town of Lucifer himself or any demons so they left the man there in his room with his wife sitting blank-faced out in the hall. They spoke to some of the children too and they had no stories of black eyes or sulfur smells, just the one sad, crazy man. For one boy it had already become a tale that he told with animated relish while showing them his own picture in the newspaper. At the door the boy's mother asked them if they'd like to give her a quote so that she could include it in a book she was writing about the ordeal and Dean smiled and said that it took a very special breed of douchebag to whore out a tragedy and the woman had already written down half of what he'd said before she realized what she was writing and told him to go to hell and slammed the door in his face.

Castiel was ready to leave the town but Dean had been there before and he said they had to go to the beach and they went to the boardwalk and sat on a bench and ate french fries with ketchup out of paper cups. Nothing so delicious in any of Castiel's memories. On the sand children were running and shouting and laughing. The sky was bright blue. The sun white, hot, clean. It had stormed the day before and the ocean was not blue but a vivid jade green and Dean's eyes were nearly the same color. His eyes had been just the same in hell although they shouldn't have been. He had found Dean sitting in a charnel pit, unrecognizable and splattered with gore and with the tools of his vile trade spread out around him but he had looked up at Castiel and his eyes had been the same as they would be under the summer sun, even in that place and even after all he had seen and done and had done to him. Did Castiel already begin to love him then? Not yet. But maybe.

* * *

In the kitchen Bethany was putting on her boots and her jacket so that she could go out and relieve herself. Cass heard the backdoor slam and the squelch of her galoshes on the melting ice as she crossed the yard. He sat there where she had left him. His dick was still wet inside his jeans and he thought if he stood up his legs would shake. In the stove the last embers of the fire glinted like the eyes of cunning little imps who'd seen everything and knew everything and now winked at him shrewdly in the delight of their knowing.

He leaned over and unlaced his boots and pulled them off and stood up and then turned to the stairs and climbed them quietly on his stocking feet. Upstairs the hall was dark with all the doors closed save the one at the end and he went down the hall and stood at the threshold of that room with his palms against the doorframe. The bed was piled with quilts and blankets and Dean was a shapeless hump beneath them and Cass could hear him breathing low and evenly in a deep sleep.

I can get you in bed with him, would you like that, Cass?

He would. He would like that very much.

People will do things in bed they wouldn't ever see themselves doing out of it.

They do. All the time.

Maybe he will let you fuck him.

Cass stood there and thought about that. Dean might let him do it. No. He should let him do it. He had gone down to hell itself and plucked Dean's soul from perdition and knitted his rotting corpse back together and conspired with him to betray his own brethren and spared him from becoming Michael's vessel and lost his grace for him and loved him and lusted over him with no reciprocation and of late hardly even a kind word and for more than a year since the night Dean was shot he had lived like a dry monk in a cold cell and now here they were together alone with no supplies to be gotten or camps to be scouted and suddenly this girl. This remarkable girl. Waiting in this house as if just for them like something in a fairy tale, as lovely and wanton and bold as a young goddess with her plump tits and her willing cunt and her extraordinary ideas and oh, wasn't it time, time at last for Castiel to collect his due? He stood in the doorway and stared at the bed and he could see it so clearly, no car and no Memphis and no Knoxville just the three of them all naked and fucking and fucking and fucking in this bed in this room. Thrusting and sucking and licking and clutching and coming and then no Bethany at all just him and Dean who was beautiful and was beholden to him and so by all rights belonged to him and to him alone.

His heart was laboring and his breath was quick and shallow and he stepped into the room and glanced out the little window. Between the tree trunks he could see the bright purple of Bethany's jacket as she squatted there. Dean's clothes and empty holster were on the floor and he toed at them and then quietly pushed them under the bed. He looked at Dean and Dean was sleeping almost on his stomach with the covers pulled up over his shoulder and his face as still as a child's.

For a moment Cass just stood there and then he hunkered down beside the bed. He clasped his hands between his knees and stared at Dean. The sun was up now and shining through a gap in the hills and through the bare and dripping trees and into the room and it was white and warm and clean. Falling on his shoulder as he crouched there and on Dean's face and his closed eyes and it reminded him of a day on the boardwalk in a seaside town during the last year when the world had still held the tenuous semblance of being God's well-ordered creation. Had he loved Dean already then? Of course. Long before the angels left and when he had still been Castiel, an angel himself.

His gut twisted and his throat closed up and he reached out because he wanted to touch Dean, just touch him and then Dean bolted up on one elbow with his .45 out and aimed at Cass's forehead. Cass froze. They stared at each other.

Dean lowered the gun and exhaled. "What the fuck are you sneaking up on people?"

"I'm sorry..."

Dean sat up and tossed the gun on the bed and ran his hands down his face and through his hair and then dropped them in his lap and sat there and looked at Cass.

"I thought you'd gotten over staring at me while I sleep." He looked around the room. "Where's Bethany?"

"She's outside taking a shit."

"Oh," Dean said. He looked at the window. "She must be freezing her ass off."

"It's warmer out. It's thawing."

"Good, maybe we can finally get the fuck outta here."

Cass stood up. He looked out the window and saw Bethany crossing the lawn back to the house.

"She said she's coming with us."

Dean looked up at him. "She told me she could get us a car and gas. What am I supposed to do, say thanks and leave her here?"

"She thinks we're going to Memphis."

Dean made a face. "Yeah, she said some shit about that last night and I told her to forget about it."

"I don't think she got the message."

"Why, what did she say to you?"

We'll fuck our way clear to Memphis, all three of us.

"She said she talked about it with you."

"Well," Dean said. He closed his eyes and rubbed them. "She talked about it and I said it wasn't gonna happen. We'll take her to Knoxville, hook up with the others."

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"What?"

"I don't think she should go with us."

"Why not?"

"I think there's something wrong with her. I think she's...what is she doing here all by herself? You really think she hid from Quarantine Control in the cellar? Like they wouldn't have looked?" He shook his head. "She could be sick."

A dirty grin lit up Dean's face. "Whatever that girl is, she's not sick. In fact she's the healthiest specimen I've met in a long time."

"Something's off about her. Something's not right."

"Shit, everybody's a little off their rocker these days. So maybe she's kind of..." He flapped his hand in the air, "Eccentric. But that's it. We'd know if she was sick."

"The virus changes. The symptoms can mutate from person to person, you know that. Sometimes it's aggression, sometimes it's withdrawal, sometimes it's..."

"What?

"Being..." He tasted her fingers in his mouth. Tasted Dean in his mouth. How easily she'd guessed and how plainly she'd stated it and how swiftly she'd used it. "Being manipulative," he said. "Making up crazy shit that she thinks is true. Like you saying we were going to Memphis."

Dean laughed. "If I had a buck for every chick who overestimated how persuasive she was with her panties off, I'd be...I'd be able to buy myself a goddamn roll of toilet paper."

Now he could hear her stomping her boots on the kitchen floor and a clatter of pans. He stood there and stared at Dean and didn't say anything and Dean looked up at him. Neither of them moved.

Then Dean said, "Oh no no no. Don't you do that. Don't you try and read me, I know you can still do it sometimes."

"You care about her."

"She's a great lay."

"No, it's more than that. You feel sorry for her. You want to help her. You want to save her."

"She's getting us a car and we're giving her a ride. That's it. Quid pro quo, Clarice."

"That's not it."

"Shit," Dean said. He threw back the covers and swung his legs off the bed and stood up. He was wearing just his t-shirt and was naked below the waist and Cass reflexively looked away from him to some point on the wall behind. "Where the fuck are my clothes?"

Cass swallowed. He felt his face flushing. "I think they're under the bed."

Dean got down on his hands and knees and pulled out the pile of clothes and stood up and started getting dressed. "Listen to me," he said. "Since you're gonna read my mind anyway or whatever the fuck, here it is. That girl," He pointed downstairs. "That girl is twenty years old and if we leave her here, she's gonna starve to death or get killed or worse. She's got a gun that she can't even shoot straight, how long would she hold out against half a dozen crotes or road rats or horny QC motherfuckers. Hmm?"

"If she can get a car why didn't she leave already?"

"Maybe she's scared, Cass, did you think about that? Scared of being out on the road alone?"

Cass snorted. "I think she knows how to take care of herself."

"Well, her luck's gonna run out sooner or later. And I've got enough shit on my conscience, thanks." He bent over and began strapping his holster onto his leg. "She's going with us and she's staying with Frank and that's it."

"She's staying with Frank."

"Yeah, that's what I said." He paused and glanced up at Cass and then looked back down and unfastened one of the straps and refastened it.

"Where will you be?" Cass said and Dean didn't answer. He asked him again.

"This fucking thing is shot," Dean muttered.

Cass stood there and watched him and after a moment he nodded. "Detroit," he said quietly. "You're going to Detroit. That's why you wanted me to stay in the truck. You're going to Detroit. Alone."

Dean pulled on his boots and went down on one knee and began lacing them.

"Dean?"

"Yes," he said. He looked up at Cass. "All right? Yes."

Cass turned his head. He stared at the wall, the window. He put his hand on his forehead.

"You can't," he said. He looked down at Dean and shook his head. "You can't...why would you...why would you even think of doing that?"

Dean stood up. "Because I have to and you know it. You said it yourself."

Cass gaped at him. When he spoke it was almost a whisper. "When did I ever say that?"

"When you were still an angel, when you still knew things. You said I had to be the one to stop it."

"No...no no no Dean, I didn't know...I only knew what they were telling me..."

"You said it had to be me and you were right. And you said if Sam fell...if I let Sam fall he would take the world with him and you were right about that too. I have to end it."

"Dean, please..."

"No. Don't say anything else.

They stood there and stared at each other and Cass couldn't breathe. He couldn't seem to close his mouth. He had said those things. Had said them when he'd still been Castiel and after Dean had tried to run from his brother and from God and himself and Castiel had gone to bring him back and had found him in some waitress's house in Dalhart Texas and he had told him those things believing he knew what they meant. Believing that the will of angels was also the will of God and so was good and holy and would lead Dean to mercy and to grace and Castiel had already loved him and had wanted all these things for him and more besides.

"I made coffee," Bethany said and her voice startled Cass so that his shoulders jumped. He looked around and saw her in the doorway with two steaming mugs and wearing her purple puffer jacket with the hood thrown back and the white fur collar across her shoulders. Her legs were pale and bare above the tops of her galoshes. She was pink-cheeked from the cold and in the sunlight she looked fresh and wholesome as a morning in spring.

"Did I interrupt something?"

Dean said, "Did you tell him we're going to Memphis?"

She blinked. "I just said... "

"Because we're not. If that's in your head get it out. There's nothing there."

"But maybe we should..."

"Maybe nothing. Okay? I'm not driving four hundred miles in the wrong direction."

"The wrong direction from what?"

From Detroit, Cass thought. From Detroit, oh you stupid fucking bastard.

"From Knoxville," Dean said and his eyes shifted to Cass for a second and then back to her. "Where's this car?"

"At the Tarbox place."

"Where's that?"

She said nothing for a moment and then, "I'll take you there. It's hard to find."

"All right. We'll get it and come back here and pack up. Anything in cans we'll take with us. These blankets should go too."

"We're leaving today?"

"Yes."

She set the mugs down on the dresser beside the door and pocketed her hands in her jacket and looked at Cass and then at Dean.

"We should wait until tomorrow."

"No."

"The storms in these mountains can take you by surprise. I've lived here all my life and you can believe me about that. Just cause the sun's up this mornin don't mean a thing. We should give it another day, see if the weather'll hold."

"We've been stuck here long enough. We need to go while we can."

"Just one more day, Dean, just to be safe. Just one more night," she said and smiled.

"She's right," Cass said suddenly.

"What?"

"She's right, we don't want to get caught out with no shelter."

Dean narrowed his eyes and stared at him and then shook his head so slightly it was barely a movement at all. "No. We're leaving today." He stepped between them and walked out the door and to the end of the hall and down the stairs.

"Why did you tell him that about Memphis?" Bethany hissed. "What's the matter with you? I had this whole thing under control."

"Bethany..."

"Did you tell him what we did? Did you tell him that too?"

Cass held a hand up to her and put his head down. He closed his eyes for a moment and then turned and left her there.

Dean was in the kitchen putting on his coat and he glanced at Cass when he came in and then turned and walked out the backdoor onto the porch and down the steps and Cass followed him.

"Dean..."

"I'm going to take a piss, Cass. You wanna watch me do that too?"

He began to cross the yard and Cass followed him with ice water soaking through his socks and he grabbed Dean's arm and Dean turned and shook him off and pointed at him.

"I know what you're doing. Oh, she's right, we should stay another day. Right. One more day. Then two? Three? You think that'll delay us enough? Keep us from finding the others? Believe me, I will leave your ass here. You and her. If you don't want that to happen you shut the fuck up and do what I say."

"You cannot go to Detroit."

"I have to!" he shouted. "He's my brother! It's my job!"

"That is not your brother."

"It's enough of him for me. I have to end this. For the world and for him."

"He won't kill you. He won't. He'll take you and have you possessed by one demon after another and you'll still be in there. He'll do things to you and make you do things and you won't even be able to die. It'll go on forever, Dean. It'll be worse than death. Worse than hell."

Dean stared at him and then turned and started walking away and Cass went after him and tried to take his arm again and Dean wheeled around and shoved him so hard that Cass stumbled backwards and overbalanced and went down to his hands and knees in the icy slush.

"You should have made me find him! Why the fuck didn't you do that, Cass? Why the fuck didn't you?"

The bright sun and its glare off the white ice and water were in his face and he raised a dripping hand to shade his eyes and looked up at Dean and couldn't say anything.

"I wouldn't talk to him and I wouldn't see him and I left him alone. I gave him up to Lucifer. I did. Why didn't you tell me, Cass? Why the fuck didn't you tell me?"

Cass put his head down and clenched his eyes shut. His heart ached with the things he knew. He could have told Dean that Sam had gone to Lucifer as willingly as he'd once gone to Ruby, told him that like that sly and smirking demon Lucifer had made Sam promises, only these far greater than anything Ruby had ever had to offer, promises cunningly bent to Sam's pride and desire and that fed the things he believed and wished to believe about himself. He could have told him that Sam lost all thought for anything or anyone but himself and no word or action from Dean no matter how sincere or desperate would have meant a thing to him and he could have spoken the truth that Sam did all of these things of his own free will and under no coercion or duress but he didn't.

"He was farther gone than you knew," Cass said softly. "You couldn't have saved him."

Dean looked away and blinked and pressed his arm against his eyes. He lowered his arm and looked at Cass.

"I should have tried," he said and then turned away.

* * *

She was standing on the top porch step when Cass came back to the house and she was fully dressed with her white hat back on her head and her galoshes still on her feet. She watched him cross the yard and when he climbed the steps she said, "What in the hell were you all talkin about?"

He stood next to her looking at the house while she looked at him. Then he said, "We're not going to Memphis." He looked down at her. "We're going to Knoxville."

"Oh, I see. So you get what you want and I don't get nothin."

This made him smile. "How exactly did I get what I want, Bethany?"

"You got to dip your wick and I'm still stuck with goin to goddamn Knoxville."

Cass coughed out a laugh. It surprised him as much as it surprised Bethany and she said, "I don't know what the hell's so goddamn funny but we'll see how funny you think it is when I don't show you where that car is."

"Bethany, I think you're smart enough to know this is your only chance to get out of these mountains in one piece. You won't fuck it up."

"Fuck it up? You fucked it up. I would of had us on the road to Memphis by tomorrow if you'd just gone along with it and they got lights there and runnin water and food..."

"They've got nothing there."

"They've got a vaccine! I heard it. They got a goddamn vaccine there!"

"There is no vaccine. Not in Memphis, not anywhere. Memphis is the same as anyplace else and probably worse."

She pressed her mouth into a grim little line. "You're a dumb lyin shit," she spat. "Why don't you go in the woods and fuck your boyfriend? Does he know that's what you want? What d'you think he'd say if I told him?"

Cass was tired all of a sudden as if this new morning had lasted for days and he felt lost and heartbroken and more hopeless than he had in some time.

"You go ahead and tell him whatever you want," he said and he opened the door and went into the house.

* * *

The Tarbox place lay some half a mile from Bethany's house and the three of them walked there through the woods with the trees shimmering and dripping all around them. They didn't talk and the only sounds were their own footsteps and the ice cracking and melting and falling to the ground.

They found the car under a tarp in a carport. It was an Oldsmobile Delta 88 and Dean pulled the tarp off and walked around it and kicked the tires.

"Someone just left this here?"

"Yeah," she said. "There's gas in the trunk."

He jimmied open the trunk and found a red plastic gas can and he held it up to his ear and sloshed it.

"Where are the people who lived here?" Cass said and Bethany shrugged.

"Where's anyone?"

Dean pried the cover of the gascap open and then twisted off the gascap and started filling the tank. Bethany sat on the rear bumper. Cass popped up the driver's door lock and leaned inside to take a look and then he heard the double chock of a shotgun behind him and he froze. From the corner of his eye he could see Dean standing completely still.

"Get the hell away from that car."

Dean didn't move and Cass began to straighten up and the same voice said in his direction, "You just take it real slow, fella. You, put the gas down."

Dean took a step back from the car and set the can down on the ground and put his hand inside his coat.

"You keep your hands where I can see em."

Dean raised his hands halfway and began to turn around. Cass backed out of the car and stood up and when he turned he saw an old man in a bathrobe and slippers with a double-barrel shotgun against his shoulder and he jerked it at Cass and then back at Dean.

Dean said, "We didn't know there was anyone here."

"Who told you to come here? That little girl?" He snorted.

"He's sick," Bethany said.

"Sick? I ain't sick. You're the sick one."

"It's all right," Dean said. "We're not taking the car. We're leaving."

"What, so you can come back in the middle of the night? Kill an old man in his sleep? Hell no."

"We're leaving. We're not coming back. Just let us go."

"The hell I will," he said and he fired once and Dean hit the ground. The blast was shockingly loud and it echoed in the woods and sent a flock of birds up from the wet trees in a thunder of wings and Cass grabbed his rifle and then heard one more shot, clear and sharp and the old man spun around in a quarter turn and landed on his face in the mud.

Cass turned and looked at Bethany. She lowered the pistol and put it back in her pocket. She crouched and picked up the spent shell and put that in her pocket too. Dean was down on his knees and he looked from her to Cass and then at the old man.

"Are you hit?" Cass said.

Dean shook his head. He stood up and they both went to the old man and stood over him for a minute and then Dean reached down and took the shotgun from his hand. He was limp and blood was bubbling out of a hole in his forehead.

"She can't even shoot straight," Cass said. They turned and looked at Bethany where she was still standing at the Oldsmobile's bumper.

"What?"

"You said there was no one here," Dean said.

"I knew he was sick, I thought he'd be dead by now."

"He was sick. Croatoan?"

"Yeah." They stared at her and she said, "I used to come here every other day to check on him and then a couple a weeks ago he just came out stark naked and ran me off the place with that shotgun and I knew he was sick. You saw him, he acted like he didn't even know who I was. I've known him all my life. Acted like I didn't know who he...like he didn't know who I was." She looked at them. "If I hadn't of shot him you'd be dead by now. Stop lookin at me like I did somethin you wouldn't of done yourself."

Dean stood there for a moment and then he hoisted the old man's shotgun. He breeched it open and looked at the one round left in the chamber and breeched it shut and walked back to the car. He leaned the shotgun against the car and picked up the gas can and started filling the tank again.

Cass said, "Dean?"

"There's nothing we can do for him. We still need the car."

Bethany went over to Dean and she rubbed his back and he didn't look at her. She laid her cheek against his shoulder and stared at Cass.

Cass sat down in the driver's seat and rested his forehead on the rifle's barrel and closed his eyes. He heard Dean screw the gascap on and close the cover and put the can back in the trunk and slam it shut. Then he heard the rustle of the plastic tarp and he looked up and saw Dean spreading it out next the old man's body and Cass put aside his rifle and stood up and went to help.

"Just get that corner there," Dean said and Cass crouched down and straightened out the tarp and together they lifted the old man's body onto it and wrapped him up.

"That's right decent of you," Bethany said.

Dean picked up the body and Cass went before him into the house. It was cold and it stank and they just stood there in the dark of the old man's living room as if neither of them knew what to do.

"The bedroom's probably in the back," Dean said.

"I think we can put him on the couch."

"Yeah. Okay."

The couch was littered with threadbare blankets and pillows mended with duct tape and old newspapers and Cass cleared these off onto the floor and Dean laid the man down and straightened up and stepped back and looked at the body.

He said, "Do you think he really was sick?"

Cass glanced around the small, filthy room. "I don't know. Maybe. He did try to shoot you."

"We were stealing his car." Dean sighed and then he said, "We can't leave her here, Cass."

"I know. What happens if we don't find Frank?"

"There are other groups, they're hidden all over the place. We'll find one of them."

"And leave her there."

"Yes."

"And leave me there." Dean didn't say anything and Cass went on, "I told you I wouldn't leave you. You remember everything else I said, do you remember that? I said I'd follow you to hell."

Dean shook his head. "You were still an angel then. Everything was different."

Cass was quiet for a moment. "Am I that useless now?"

Dean finally looked at him. "You're that mortal now."

"I already died once for you. Do you think I wouldn't do it again?"

"I don't want anyone dying for me."

"Dean, please. Please don't do this. Why do you even think you'll be able to?"

"I have the knife. I have the Colt. It has to be me so something has to work."

"I won't let you go."

"What are you gonna do, Cass? Annie Wilkes me with a sledgehammer?"

"I don't know what that means."

Dean smiled. "Doesn't matter."

"I'm serious, Dean. I won't let you go."

"I didn't ask for permission."

"Then you're not going alone."

Dean put his head down and stood there and then he said, "We should go. It's getting late."

There was a box of shotgun shells on the floor and Dean stooped and picked it up and put it in his pocket. They left the old man's body on the couch and closed the door behind them. Bethany was standing beside the car hugging herself and she looked at them from under the knitted edge of her hat.

"You all were in there a while. Everything okay?"

"Everything's fine," Dean said. "Let's go."

The three of them got in the car. Dean keyed the ignition and the engine coughed and sputtered and turned over and he put the car in gear.

From the backseat Bethany said, "He was sick."

Dean said, "I know, Bethany."

They went back to the girl's house and packed up what they needed and an hour later they were on the road, headed north.

* * *

The roads were empty and they drove without talking to each other. Dean turned on the radio. Hissing silence on the FM dial. On the AM band a scattered handful of broadcasts. Country music. Religious readings. One recorded public service announcement from the Tennessee National Guard telling people to stay in their homes, to avoid public gatherings and travel of any kind. The announcement would end and begin all over again. Who knew how long it had been running. Between these few traces of humanity nothing but the hornet's buzz of AM static.

After half an hour Bethany told Dean to pull over because she was carsick and he told her to puke in a bag if she had to.

"Just pull over, pull over, please!"

He wrenched the wheel to the right and slowed the car onto the soft shoulder and Bethany kicked open the door and jumped out. She skidded down the low slope beside the road until they couldn't see her anymore. After a pause they heard her retching and then it was quiet.

"What the hell is she doing?" Dean said to himself and started to get out of the car.

"Let me go," Cass said suddenly. "You stay here with the car."

"All right," Dean said. He pulled his legs back in the car and shut the door. "Hurry up."

Cass climbed out of the Olds. He left the door open and picked his way down the slope. He could see Bethany a little way off in the trees. She was bent over her knees with her hands laced over the back of her head. A steaming puddle of vomit was on the ground in front of her. He came up to her carefully. She was a hell of a shot.

"Bethany?"

She didn't answer him. She sat there rocking back and forth on her knees.

"Bethany?"

"Leave me alone."

"We have to get back in the car. We can't sit here."

"I'm sick."

"What's wrong with you?"

She whipped her head up to glare at him. "I'm carsick, y'jackass. Are you deaf? I'm fuckin carsick!"

"You can be sick in the car."

"We couldn't of just gone to Memphis, could we?" She was crying now. "We couldn't of just done that?"

He looked at the girl and could see nothing here of that morning's naked and firelit temptress and yet that girl had also been Bethany. Not lusty and cunning or even sick as he had thought but only desperate and scared and pitiful as this girl was, as the whole world had become.

"I'm sorry, Bethany," he said quietly. "It'll be all right though. It will be. Now come on, we have to go." He tried taking her arm and she wouldn't let him and she scrambled up onto her feet and wiped her mouth on her sleeve and began climbing the slope. There was a frieze of wet leaves stuck onto her jeans below the knees.

"You don't touch me," she said without looking back at him. "You don't fuckin touch me."

* * *

They reached Knoxville around noon. The day had turned overcast and muggy with no wind. The lower half of the city had been abandoned and sat purged and immolated on the southern bluff of the river. People squatted here in derelict houses and shopping centers and hid from Quarantine Control and Knoxville's Acting Regional Command although even those seldom swept the area anymore. Their rendezvous site was the airport which had also been burned but where some of the old terminals and hangars were still standing and gave good cover and many places to hide.

They drove into the airport on a crumbling access road. The car lurched and gritted over broken asphalt and other debris and over the engine they could hear the silence of the place. They parked beside the arranged place of meeting, a squat administration building next to one of the hangars. There were points like this everywhere and everyone in the group had known them but they also knew that there were limits to how long any part of the group could wait for another. Especially for only two. They left Bethany with the car and the shotgun and went in together. Inside darkness and the sound of dripping water somewhere and nothing else. In the cafeteria they found a dead refrigerator with the door torn off and a looted snack machine. Three verses from the Psalms were graffitied on the wall next to the employee bulletin board and Dean shone his flashlight on them.

"That's Frank's writing," he said. "Those are coordinates." He read the numbers out loud, memorizing them. "Looks like it's east of here."

They went back to the car and closed the doors. In the backseat Bethany sat with her knees drawn up and her hands in her lap and her forehead against the window. The shotgun lay on the seat next to her. She looked at them when they came in.

"There ain't no one here, is there?" she said softly.

Dean got the road atlas from the duffel and flipped through it.

"They're in West Virginia. About a day's drive if the roads aren't closed." He closed the atlas and put it back in the duffel and zipped it shut and then sat up and turned the ignition.

Then Bethany said, "West Virginia? West Virginia!" They turned around and looked at her and she was sitting upright now with her feet on the floor and her hands planted on the seat. "You said we were goin to Knoxville. Well there it is."

Dean put the car in gear and looked at the girl in the rearview mirror.

"We aren't going into the city, Bethany."

"Why not?"

He sat back against his seat. Then he leaned forward and downshifted to park and switched off the engine and turned around.

"You wanna try and walk over there, this is what'll happen. You'll get rounded up and put in a truck and taken to a quarantine camp. Depending on how crowded things are they might just fence you in with a bunch of other folks and burn you up for the hell of it. If not they'll leave you in the camp and forget about you. Even if you make it into the city, so what? You think it's like it used to be in there? TV and Starbucks and shopping malls? It's not. People are starving in there. They're dying from good old-fashioned shit like TB and smallpox. It's all over, Bethany. Everything's you knew? It's gone."

She stared at him wide-eyed. "Why would you say that?"

"Because it's true."

"He's right," Cass said and she turned on him.

"You're just takin his side cause you wanna fuck im."

Cass put his head down. He swallowed and pressed his lips together.

Dean said, "Jesus Christ, Bethany. We didn't even have to take you with us."

"Well you shouldn't of," she said. "You shouldn't of you shouldn't of you shouldn't of!" she shrieked and then she threw open her door and was on her feet and running, running in her bright purple coat with her red hair streaming behind her and she disappeared around the side of the building.

"Oh Christ!" Dean said and he was out of the car before Cass could stop him and Cass jumped out and ran after him.

"Don't! Dean, don't follow her!"

Dean came halfway to a halt and turned around and said, "Ten minutes. We don't find her in ten minutes we're outta here." He paused and listened. It was very quiet and they could hear the rubbery clomp of her galoshes in the distance.

"We should leave her."

"Ten minutes. Stay with the car. We can't leave it out here."

"No..."

"Stay with the car," Dean said and he was running again and he called, "Ten minutes," over his shoulder and then he was gone.

* * *

He came back around the corner and saw someone sitting in the car. In the shotgun seat going through the glovebox. They must have been under surveillance this whole time. He stood there frozen and the person in the car looked up at him. Insectile in a white biohazard suit and full-face respirator. For a moment the two of them were locked in place and staring at each other and then Cass snapped the rifle around from his shoulder to sight it and something hit him on the side of the head. He went down dazed and put his arm up and saw two more white suits and bug masks looking down at him and then he was hit again and he was out.

* * *

He came around to a sensation of movement. He wasn't lying down but slumped against a wall and he opened his eyes and pushed himself upright. A row of dim LED lights shone down from the ceiling and lit up the inside of the truck. The truck was full of people and some of them glanced at him when he sat up but most of them didn't and then someone touched his shoulder. He turned and saw Bethany beside him in a fetal crouch. She was ghostly white. A red X was inked onto her cheek.

"Cass...?"

"Where's Dean?" he said. He grabbed her arm. "Where's Dean?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. He's not here."

"He's not..." Cass glanced wildly around the truck. "He's not here? How is he not here?"

"I don't know. I ran into that terminal and they got me right inside the door. I thought I heard Dean behind me but he never came."

"Were there gunshots? Did they shoot him? Bethany, did they shoot him?"

"I didn't hear anything. I don't know what happened. It was so fast. And then they threw you in here and I thought Dean would be with you but he wasn't. He's not here. He's not anywhere."

Cass put his hands to his forehead. He covered his mouth and sat there staring.

"Do you think he's gonna come for us? Cass?"

He couldn't answer her. After a while she asked him again and he shook his head and said, "No, I don't." And then he said, "He's going on. He's going to Detroit."

He looked at Bethany. There were bright tears in her eyes.

"I'm so sorry, Cass."

He sat there and stared at her. After a moment he said, "What is that on your face?"

Her hand fluttered up and she touched her cheek and looked at him, stricken. "They said I'm sick. They had some thing like a laser and they shined it in my eye and they said I have it." She started to cry. "Daddy had it and he killed Momma and I killed him before he could do it to me but I was real careful, I didn't get no blood on me or nothin, not even when I was buryin em. I washed my hands real good too. I can't have it. I ain't been actin like that. I didn't hurt nobody. Did I?"

"No," he said. "No you didn't."

"Are they gonna burn us?" she said and from behind her a man sat up, grizzled and ragged.

"They gonna burn you, sister!" he proclaimed and Bethany shuddered and scuttled up against Cass and pressed herself into him. "You carryin the pestilence is what you are! The LORD has set his mark upon you!"

She put her hands over her ears. "It's not true. It's not true."

"Oh it's true all right. They gonna burn you like they used a do for them witches."

"Preacher," Cass said quietly. Bethany had buried her face against his shoulder and moved by a sudden and awful pity he put an arm around her. "Hold your tongue."

"They gonna burn you too brother, consortin with this whore of Babylon..."

"Be quiet..."

"Arrayed in purple and scarlet just like in the Book! Mother of harlots! Abomination of the earth!"

"Shut the fuck up!" Cass shouted. "You don't even know what the fuck you're saying!"

The man sat back and smiled at him.

"These shall hate the whore," he quoted serenely. "And shall make her desolate and naked and shall eat her flesh and burn her with fire."

"They ain't gonna burn me," Bethany said. "They ain't gonna burn me!" and she sat up abruptly and pushed Cass away and turned and shot the preacher between the eyes and then shoved the barrel under her chin and shot herself dead.

There was screaming and the people in the truck began to run and fall over each other to get away from her and the blood. It had fountained up in a crimson spray on the corrugate metal wall and she was slumped beneath it like a ragdoll with her eyes wide open and Cass stared at her and two thin rivers of blood began to seep over her forehead and her eyes and then down her cheeks like tears. He was alone with her and the dead man in this corner of the truck and there seemed to be a graveyard silence around them and his heart was weighted with sorrow and weariness of the whole merciless world.

He eased Bethany down onto the floor and took off her jacket and covered her face. He covered the preacher's face too with the man's tattered shirt. Then he went back to Bethany and sat beside her with his hand on her arm and tried to pray, but he had lost all the prayers he'd known as an angel and all the songs of heaven and so he just stayed beside her and said nothing and hoped that God would not forget that he had made this child and would welcome her home after her terrible exile in this forsaken waste.

* * *

The truck shuddered to a stop some time later and he heard voices outside and then the unlocking of a latch and the back of the truck rattled up on its frame and gray daylight streamed in. Outside were soldiers in white suits with their faces all covered and they were armed and they began pulling the people out of the truck. The people screamed and shouted and pressed themselves in a horde to the front of the truck and Cass was shoved backwards and grabbed by the arm and pulled out onto the ground. He looked up and around and saw that they were in some sort of railyard. It was drizzling and the old iron tracks snaked off around them and in the distance he could see the gray span of the river that they had crossed. A soldier wrenched him up to his feet and shoved him with the barrel of his rifle and shouted something at him that was muffled by his respirator and Cass stumbled along in a daze toward the chain-link cage where they would put him and the others and burn them and Cass didn't care. He would never see Dean again and Dean would go to Detroit and be taken prisoner and he would rather be dead than have to live with knowing that. He had failed God and failed Dean and all his life as both angel and man had come to nothing.

He was in a crowd of people all jostling and terrified and some were pleading with the soldiers and others were crying and still others were praying or singing. He walked with his head down and barely noticed when a soldier grabbed his arm and began to pull him away.

The soldier said, "Don't look up."

It was Dean's voice beneath the respirator.

"Just keep walking."

He staggered on his feet and Dean held him up.

"Don't fall."

Cass shook his head. He put his hand on Dean's where it held his arm.

"Don't touch me," Dean said and Cass took his hand away. "Where's Bethany?"

"Dead."

"Dead?"

"She shot herself. She was sick. Croatoan."

"Son of a bitch."

They kept walking. Dean pulled something from the utility belt that was over the suit.

"When I throw this," he said, "We run, understand?"

Cass nodded.

"This place isn't fenced in so if we keep running we'll make it."

"Okay."

Dean pulled the ring on the canister and then in one quick motion he turned and lobbed it over his shoulder. It hit the ground and rolled right to the edge of the cage and it sat there for just a second and then exploded. A red gout of flame and black smoke shot up and out and the wall of the cage was rent from top to bottom in a shriek of tearing steel. And then a chaos of gunshots and people screaming and running as they saw their chance to escape. The thunder of their feet on the ground and the stink of explosive and cordite and seared metal and they were running with others running behind them and then a pickup tore around the corner with a guntower mounted in the flatbed and there was a volley of shots and beside him Dean fell.

He thought Dean had hit the ground for cover and he fell down next to him but when he looked at Dean's eyes through the mask he knew something was wrong. Even over the shots and the screams and the pounding feet he could hear Dean gasping through the respirator and he rolled onto his side and pushed the mask up from Dean's face and pulled it off with the white hood of the suit and Dean lay there staring at him, his face blanched with pain.

"You're hit?" he said and Dean nodded.

"Can you get up?"

He nodded again but then the pickup came back around for a second pass and Cass threw himself over Dean and said, "Lie still. Play dead."

They lay there for a long time, too long, and Dean began to shake beneath him.

"Lie still, lie still, oh God."

The truck sped past them and went back the way it had come and toward the explosion site and around them lay bodies, all still. He forced himself to lie motionless for another five seconds and then he said, "Okay. We have to run."

He got up and wrapped his arm around Dean's waist and pulled him to his feet and Dean groaned through clenched teeth. They ran in a low stoop away from the site and the smoke of the explosion and the confusion covered them. He could feel Dean's bad leg giving out underneath him but much worse than that was the hot wetness saturating Dean's clothes and spreading under Cass's hand and he knew Dean couldn't go much further. Ahead of them sat the old Southern Railway freight office, four stories of century-old red brick with a short flight of granite steps leading up to double doors and he pulled Dean up the stairs and into the building. It was dark inside with most of the windows on the first floor boarded up and seemed very quiet after the bedlam outside. He paused to let his eyes adjust and Dean leaned against him and he put his other arm around him to hold him up. To his left was an arched entryway with the word RECEIVING carved into its lintel and this too was boarded over. Ahead of him was a broad staircase and to the right a passageway blocked with debris.

"We have to go up the stairs," he said and Dean nodded.

They'd made it halfway up when Dean bowed over Cass's arm and vomited. After that he stayed on his feet but he was going limp and Cass was mostly dragging him. He got him up to the second floor landing and looked down a hall lined with glass-fronted doors. Most of them stood open and the glass was punched out and the rooms were filled with trash and crumbling plaster and broken glass. At the end of the hall was one closed door with the number 210 painted in flaking gilt on its frosted glass window and Cass pushed it open onto an office still furnished with decaying desks and filing cabinets and cracked vinyl chairs and the carpet wore a soft film of green mold, the only color in that gray place. He closed the door and finally lay Dean down on the floor and Dean rolled onto his side and pulled up his knees. There was blood on his mouth. Cass gently turned him over onto his back and Dean stared up at him.

"It's bad," he said.

"I know I know. I have to see." The front of the white suit was dark red over Dean's stomach and all down his left leg and Cass unzipped it and spread it open and pushed Dean's shirt up. There were two holes in his abdomen below his ribcage. He slid his hand under Dean's back and Dean groaned and Cass pulled his hand away.

"Tell me."

"Two shots. No exit wounds."

Dean closed his eyes and turned his head away. "Ah, fuck, fuck," he said and pressed a fist to his mouth.

Cass pulled the belt off the suit. There was a holster on it with a military-issue service pistol and an aluminum canteen and four utility pockets. He dumped out the pockets and found a canister of mace and a taser and five hundred-dollar bills in a tight fold and in the last one he found a blister pack of four morphine ampoules. He broke one open and flattened his hand on Dean's neck and jabbed the ampoule in just above his collarbone. He waited about thirty seconds and then Dean opened his eyes and looked up at him and nodded in relief.

"I want to get away from this door. I'm going to pick you up."

"No, don't move me."

"I have to."

"You'll make it bleed more...don't...just get an arm under mine. I can get there."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

He helped Dean up onto his knees and then to his feet and together they staggered to the corner of the room. He lay Dean down on his back and Dean turned over and coughed a splatter of blood onto the furred carpet. He was gasping and Cass raised him up and settled him against the wall and he seemed to breathe a little easier and Cass took off his jacket and put it behind Dean's head.

"The place was crawling with them," Dean said. "I followed you. It's easy to blend in when everyone's dressed like a goddamn condom." He smiled and closed his eyes.

Cass pulled off the biohazard suit and started tearing it into strips. He folded one of them into a thick pad and pressed it against Dean's wounds and he took Dean's hand and put it over the pad and said, "Hold this. Just like this."

Dean left his hand where Cass had put it. Cass took one of the other strips and eased it under Dean's hand and then took the two ends and brought them around behind Dean's back. He laid his head against Dean's chest and crossed the strips tightly and brought them back around and slid them up under Dean's hand again and repeated the process. Dean's hand was going slack on the second pass.

"What are you doing?" Dean muttered.

He repositioned Dean's hand. "Just keep holding this, okay?"

"What."

"Just hold this."

"Cass..."

"Just hold it, hold it goddamnit! Hold it so I can bandage it! "

Dean shook his head. "There isn't any point."

"Yes there is," he said and went back to bandaging. Wrap around. Cross. Double cross in front. Around. Every time he laid his head against Dean's chest he could hear his heart hammering away and the labor of his breathing and it terrified him.

"I'm never leaving this room, Cass."

"Don't say that. I'm going for help."

"Help? What help? Where?"

"We're in the city. There are places, people here who treat these things. We know how to find them."

"Cass," he said. "Cass, stop. Look at me."

He stopped and looked at Dean and Dean reached up and touched his face and then dropped his hand to Cass's shoulder.

"Just stay with me, okay? It won't be that long. Just stay with me."

"If I stay here, you'll die."

"I'm going to die anyway."

"No," Cass said. "No. We've been through worse than this. This is nothing."

Dean closed his eyes and was quiet and Cass thought he had fainted. Or died. He laid his fingertips against Dean's neck. His hands were shaking so hard he couldn't feel a pulse. Dean opened his eyes again.

"Promise me you won't go to Detroit."

"I won't. We will."

Dean shook his head. "You know what I mean. I don't want you...thinking you have to finish the job. I know you, Cass. You'd do that."

"I am going to get help and then we will go to Detroit. Or wherever you want to go. I said I'd follow you anywhere."

"All right, Cass. All right." He smiled. "You're a pain in my ass. Always have been."

Cass looked down. He tightened the bandage and blinked tears out of his eyes. Dean wrapped his hand around Cass's neck. He bowed his head until their foreheads were touching.

"Please stay."

Cass pulled back and took Dean's hand from around his neck and pressed it against the bandage. He didn't look at him. Couldn't look at him.

"There are three ampoules of morphine left. Don't use them all at once. There's water in the canteen here. I should take the service pistol. I'll leave the rifle." He pulled Dean's gun out of its leg holster and put it in Dean's hand and wrapped his fingers around it. "Hold onto this. Hold it." He glanced up at Dean and Dean nodded.

"I'll leave the taser with you too. I'll be back before dark. I promise. And I'll bring help."

He stood up and wedged the service pistol into the back of his belt and put the mace in his pocket and took the money too. He turned and crossed the room and when he was at the door Dean said, "Goodbye, Castiel."

He paused and laid his head on the doorjamb for a moment and then he turned around and went back to Dean and fell to his knees and kissed him. Held his face in his hands and kissed him. Then he stood up without another word and with the taste of Dean's blood on his mouth he walked away and closed the door behind him and went down the hall and down the stairs and out.

* * *

Go on to Part 2...