Fic: In Country, Chapter V of V, Part Three

[oselle]

V. This Pendent World, Part Three

When the sun had lowered Cass rose and went to the garden and picked up the shovel and began to dig. The blisters on his hands broke open at once and began to bleed and he kept digging. In a little while Dean came over and stopped him.

"I'll do that."

"No, it's okay. You stay with Sam."

"Sam's gone. I'll do that."

Cass looked at Dean for a moment and then handed him the shovel.

"Let me know when you need to rest."

"Yeah," Dean said and started shoveling. Cass stood back and watched him. His clothes were torn and bloody and he was so thin. In no time he was soaked with sweat.

"Dean, please, let me..."

"No." Dean pushed him away. "I'll do it."

Cass left him and went to see if he could find water. He went up into the lobby of The Cairo. It was cool and dark inside with a lingering smell of decay. He looked at the stairs and didn't want to go up but he did. The place was completely silent and he heard only his own footfalls on the gritty tiles. From outside, faintly, the sound of digging. He tried every sink he found but none was working. In one room he found a white sheet crumpled in the corner and he shook it out and carried it downstairs over his arm and then back outside. Dean was standing over the open grave beneath the tree. He looked near fainting.

"I think it's deep enough."

"It's deep enough," Cass said. He held out the sheet. "I found this."

Dean looked at it. "Good. Thanks."

They spread the sheet out on the ground and then picked Sam up and laid him on it and folded it over him. Then Dean stood up and stared at the sheet with his hand on his forehead.

"Dean, this can wait till morning. You should rest."

"No. No. It's gonna be dark and there's dogs here and...I can't...I can't let him..."

"We could take him inside with us."

Dean looked up at the gaping doors of The Cairo.

"In there? No. No. Not in there."

"All right," Cass said. "Then let's finish it."

They lifted Sam and carried him to the grave and laid him inside. When that was done Dean took up the shovel again.

"Let me help you."

"No, Cass. I have to do this."

Cass nodded and stood back. He stayed close in case Dean collapsed but he didn't. When Dean was finished he tamped the dirt down over the grave and stood there and then suddenly he reached around to his back pocket and pulled out a small book and Cass saw it was a Gideon's Bible of the sort one finds in motel rooms.

"Where did you get that?"

"Lucifer. Lucifer gave it to me. I think he thought it was a joke. I don't know." He flipped through it shakily and then gave up and put it back in his pocket. "I thought I'd find something to say but I don't..." He shook his head. He got down on his knees and put his hands flat on the fresh-turned earth and knelt there, trembling. He didn't say anything.

It was dusk now and night would be coming on soon. Cass crouched and put an arm around Dean.

"Dean. We have to get inside before it's dark."

"In there?"

"No, we can find someplace else but we should go..."

"In there's fine," Dean said. "It's fine."

They stood up and stepped over the low railing around the garden. Halfway up The Cairo's steps Dean's legs gave way and Cass held him up and got him inside and set him down on the floor and then sat down behind him and took him in his arms.

He whispered, "Dean." And then again, "Dean."

* * *

He woke in the middle of the night and Dean was not with him. The air in The Cairo's lobby had turned stifling and Cass stood up in the dark and called out for Dean. No one answered. He had closed the doors with the coming of night to keep them safe and now one of them stood open and he went out and there was enough light in the sky to see Dean sitting in the garden with his forehead on his knees. He went down the steps and to the garden.

"Dean, please, it's not safe out here."

Dean looked up. His eyes were dry.

"There's nothing out here, Cass. There's nothing left."

Cass listened and indeed the city was silent around them and seemed utterly lifeless. He could believe they were the only living things in it.

"Did you sleep at all?" he asked and Dean shook his head and bent it back down to his knees and Cass sat down on the ground beside Dean and kept vigil with him for the rest of the night.

The morning came, still and sultry. Cass thought it must be midsummer or later. August maybe. He didn't know what year it might be. He had no idea how much time had passed.

"We need to find water," he told Dean and Dean blinked at him and nodded and stood up. He was in a wretched state. Cass wanted to find someplace where Dean could at least wash out his wounds but he doubted there was any running water in the city.

"I think we should go to the river. It's not that far from here."

"All right."

Together they left The Cairo. Cass looked back once but Dean didn't. The city around them seemed much reduced even from its previous state of dereliction. There were entire blocks on which not a single structure was left standing and all of the sidewalks were cracked with sunscorched weeds high as corn stalks growing up from them and in places the asphalt was so cratered it had begun to sink into the ground beneath it. They turned down a street that had a few houses left on it and Cass told Dean they had to find him at least a new shirt and something to wear on his feet and only then did Dean notice that he was barefoot and half-dressed in bloody rags and even so he hardly seemed to care. In every house they entered the few remaining pieces of clothing were decayed beyond use. At last Cass was able to collect a t-shirt and socks and a pair of sneakers and a sheet he could use for bandaging. He found a plastic soda bottle and took that too for water.

At the river they climbed under a fence and then down the bank and Dean stood there and undressed. Cass could count his backbones and every one of his ribs. His hipblades stuck out like handlebars. He was bruised and bloodied from the Pit and there was a gruesome wound on his shoulder half-covered by a sodden bandage. He turned and walked into the river and then bent down and collected water in his hands and drank.

Still dressed, Cass also went into the water. He drank and hoped the water wouldn't make them sick but it tasted clean and there had been no industry here to pollute it for a long time. He soaked his bleeding hands and closed his eyes in relief and stayed there for a while. The sun was risen and it was very warm on his back, his face. This would be a hot day.

When he opened his eyes he saw Dean sitting in the shallow water with his arms around his knees. Cass waded up onto the shore and took Dean's castoff shirt and went back into the water and knelt down and soaked the shirt and wrung it out and began to wash the blood from Dean's back.

"You don't have to do that," Dean said but he sounded half stunned so Cass went on. He carefully slid the wet bandage from Dean's shoulder and laved water up onto the wound and Dean shuddered.

"I'm sorry. I have to clean it, though."

"It's all right."

When the blood was washed away Cass could make out the teethmarks in the wound even through the swelling and he knew who had done this. He wanted to put his arms around Dean and hold him but he thought if he did he wouldn't be able to finish what he was doing. All the while Dean said nothing and after a while Cass stopped and looked at him and followed his gaze over the glassy river and the mangled bridge and the empty shore on the other side. It seemed an eternity since they had first seen this place. Maybe it was.

"Are we saints now?" Dean asked suddenly.

Cass shook himself out of his thoughts and made a compress of the shirt and laid it over the bite.

"I don't know."

"This would look like shit in stained glass," Dean said and he turned to look at Cass and almost smiled.

Cass thought of the saints he had known in his long, long life.

"This is how saints look. The stained glass comes later."

Dean nodded and then he took the shirt from Cass and said that he would finish. When he came back on the shore Cass helped him bandage his shoulder and he got dressed and the two of them climbed up from the river and made for the city limits.

* * *

It was already so hot that Cass's clothes were dry by the time they reached Route 85. The roadbed had crumbed and their way was blocked by a mountain of broken concrete and bricks as if an entire building had been demolished on the spot.

"Someone put this here on purpose," Cass said.

They tried to leave the city by the other southward roads only to encounter similar obstructions. Cass remembered the pileups and concrete barriers that had been in place when they had first come to Detroit but these were much bigger. Crushed autos stacked into towers. Heaps of rubble. A wall of shipping containers spanned Interstate 75 in both directions. By now it was afternoon and they had nothing to eat and only the one bottle of water and the sun was scorching and there was not a breath of wind.

"We have to go back through the city," Dean said. "Find a way out west or north."

Their route took them past the train station and as they approached it they saw that not even half of the tower was still standing and the roof of the station itself had caved in so that the front facade with its three arched and ironbound windows was almost all that was left of the place. There was a corpse hanging from the front of the building and Cass stopped and stared at it and Dean was already several paces ahead of him when he turned around and asked Cass what he was doing.

"It's Asher," Cass said.

"What?"

"Asmodeus," he said and then climbed through a hole in the chainlink fence and crossed the broken concrete to the train station and looked up and it was indeed the remains of Asher swinging from a rope over the grand entrance of Michigan Central. He was naked and he'd been both gutted and mutilated between his legs and his white shirt was tied around his neck like a bib. The word RAPIST was written on it in his blood and his face still held a look nasty surprise. The city was so empty of life that there weren't even any flies to trouble the corpse but it stank in the heat. On the marble stones beneath Asher's body the rest of his clothes sat in a heap along with the bone-handled knife which first Dean and then Cass had carried for so many years and it was clean and shining and beside it Mary had written Thank you.

Cass picked up the knife and looked at it and then looked back up at Asher's body.

"That woman did it, didn't she?" Dean asked and Cass nodded.

"Who was she?"

"Lucifer's daughter."

"Jesus Christ," Dean said. "She helped you?"

"Yes," Cass said. "But so did he."

They stood there for a moment and then Dean said, "Well. The sign is right anyway," and he turned and walked away and after another moment Cass put the knife in his boot and followed him.

By afternoon they had given up on the westbound roads and turned north. They had no map and only Dean's memory to follow but it had been years since he had been in the old Detroit and so much had happened since then that they seemed to be going in circles and finally they sat down in the shade to rest and drink.

Cass said, "It'll be night soon."

"I want to get out of here."

"We could find someplace to sleep."

"No. We're getting out of here. I don't care if we have to dig our way out. We're getting out."

Cass nodded. "All right."

Near sunset they struck the northern portion of Interstate 75 with its green reflector signs still pointing towards Hamtramck and Highland Park and Pontiac and although there was an impasse on the highway they found a local street that was open. At dusk they finally crossed the city limits and put Detroit behind them at last.

* * *

They walked all the next day in some northward direction. They tried to follow the interstate but it was too hot and they took to the local roads where they could at least find shade. They walked through deserted neighborhoods and tried to find a car that would run but they couldn't. They began to hear birds again, and insects in the high summer brush but they didn't see another person or any sign that these places were inhabited. That evening they broke into a house and found some canned food in a closet but no can opener and Cass used the knife to puncture the top of a can of peaches until he was able to pry it off and they sat on the floor of the kitchen and ate ancient peach slices and drank the juice and Cass watched Dean in the failing summer light.

"Dean, we need to turn south."

Dean looked up at Cass as if he'd forgotten he was there.

"Why?"

"Shouldn't we try to get to Kentucky? To Amy?"

"You think she's still there."

"I don't know, but..."

"I don't think she's there. I don't think anyone's there. We'll walk all the way to Kentucky and find nothing but a cellar hole where that house was."

"She had a better chance of surviving than most."

Dean shook his head.

"I want to go north. Get out of this heat. Up by the lake."

"The lake."

"Yeah."

"That's too far."

"No it isn't."

Cass said, "Dean..." and leaned forward to touch him and Dean flinched back and Cass sat there with his hand in midair and suddenly he was afraid. "Dean, are you sick?"

"No."

"Let me see your shoulder."

"It's fine."

"Let me see it."

"It's fine. I'm not sick. I'm just tired. And hot. It's too fucking hot."

"Try to get some sleep tonight."

"I will."

The mattresses on the beds upstairs were sagging and rotted so they lay down in the living room. There seemed no need for either of them to be on watch. Cass put his arm around Dean and Dean stayed there for a moment and then got up and lay down a few feet away.

"Dean?"

"It's so goddamn hot," Dean said and then he didn't say anything else. In a while Cass heard his breathing even out into sleep and then fatigue overcame Cass and he also fell asleep. In the middle of the night he heard Dean get up and walk through the house but he was too exhausted to rouse himself. He thought he might be dreaming and that it wasn't Dean he heard but some ghost haunting this house. He fell back into a heavy black sleep and when he woke Dean was up and waiting for him on the porch and the rising sun was already hot and yellow and baleful.

* * *

They walked for three more days and left the cities and suburbs behind them. The land thinned out into small towns and then rolling fields and woods and the sky grew large above them, colorless with heat. Dean barely said a word unless Cass spoke to him and he'd begun to limp but he wouldn't rest for more than a few minutes until it was too dark to keep going. Then Dean would fall asleep at once but in the middle of the night he would get up and Cass would awaken and watch him and when he left the room Cass would rise also and follow him.

By the middle of the fourth day heavy thunderheads were rolling in and a hot wind had begun to blow. They were in open country and to the north Cass could see long curtains of rain and a black sky stitched with lightning.

"We need to get inside," he said, but Dean kept walking.

"Dean," he said. He put his hand on Dean's shoulder and Dean stopped and turned around and looked at him as if he were in a trance. His shirt rippled in the wind over his bony ribs. His damp hair blew back from his forehead. "There's a storm coming. We have to get inside."

Dean nodded and didn't say anything. They came to a sagging farmhouse with a heat-shriveled willow tree in the front yard and fields of dry corn behind it. The door was not locked. It was stifling inside.

"We should go down to the cellar."

"No. No cellar."

"They have tornadoes up here, don't they?"

"I don't care."

"Dean..."

"I'm not going to the goddamn cellar," he said. "I'm staying up here."

"All right," Cass said. "We'll stay up here."

Dean sat down in a corner of the living room and Cass sat in the opposite corner. The light turned thick and green and the walls moaned in the wind but there seemed to be no air in the house at all. After a while Dean lay down on the floor. In the growing dark Cass went over to him and started to take off his sneakers.

"What're you doing?" Dean muttered.

"It's so hot in here."

Dean said, "Just leave it," but Cass already had one sneaker off and when he saw that Dean was too tired to sit up he got the other one off and his socks too. His feet were bleeding.

"We need to find you something else to wear," Cass said. Dean didn't answer.

The first drops of rain began to hit the house. In a few minutes it became a torrent. The wind howled and thunder shook the house hard enough to rattle the windows and now Cass heard hailstones striking the roof and the cornstalks. It was dark as night except for the blue stutter of lightning. Cass closed his eyes and thought that if a cyclone hit this house they stood little chance of surviving and was surprised to realize that he hardly cared.

The storm tapered off in slow stages until there was nothing left but the sound of water dripping from the eaves. The light returned. Cass could see Dean lying asleep and he approached him quietly and felt his forehead and his cheek with the back of his hand. He was hot but not feverish. He didn't stir.

Cass stood up and looked around the room. He opened the front door and then a window to let in a breeze but the storm had left no coolness in its wake, only more heat, heavy and wet.

He walked through the kitchen and let himself out onto the back porch. He sat down on the steps and looked out over the fields. The setting sun had broken through the clouds and was lying slanted and sulfurous across the hazy earth. He looked up and saw patches of blue sky through the gray clouds. Two birds circled each other high above, black as silhouettes. Hawks, maybe.

"Were you able to do that?"

Cass turned and saw Dean standing behind him also looking up at the birds.

"Do what?"

"Fly. Like that. Before."

He looked at the birds again and as he watched them a memory came to him suddenly of a night when they had still been at Amy's place in Kentucky. In their curtained alcove at the top of the house. He was lying facedown in bed and Dean had caressed him between the shoulder blades and asked him if this was where his wings had been. When Cass had said yes Dean had kissed him there. The memory was so vivid that a shiver ran up Cass's spine.

"Not exactly like that. But close."

"Mm-hm," Dean said. He came and sat down on the steps, not touching Cass. He put his elbows on his knees and stared at the steaming landscape.

Finally Cass said, "Dean, please...tell me what to do. Tell me how to help you."

Dean looked at him.

"Where is everyone? Where are they?"

"We'll come across someone. We always did."

Dean shook his head.

"Maybe they're all gone. Maybe no one was saved after all."

"I don't believe that."

Dean smiled thinly.

"Well I've got another theory. Wanna hear it?" Cass nodded and Dean looked down at the ground and said, "Lucifer told me that if I didn't say yes to him he'd kill me. Or let me die, same thing. And then I'd stay down there for good. No get out of hell free this time." He looked at Cass. "So maybe that happened. Hm?"

"No it didn't. Lucifer's gone, you saw it yourself."

"I don't know what I saw. All I know is this sure feels like hell to me. I watched my brother die. I had to bury him in that....place. Everything's falling apart and we've been walking for days and haven't seen one person, not one."

Cass said, "Dean..." and reached out and took him by the shoulders and Dean shrank back against the stair rails and Cass held onto him. "Dean, this isn't hell. Do you think we'd be together in hell?"

"Yeah. We are together. We're so together that you're the only person I've seen. Isn't that funny?" Cass stared at him and Dean said, "Are you him? Or another one of them? Or maybe something he cooked up just for me?"

"Dean, stop it." He was shaking and he touched Dean's face and then dropped his hands to Dean's shoulders again and came in close and put his arms around Dean and Dean let him and then they were kissing. Cass said, "We're not in hell. We're not in hell and Lucifer's gone and we're not in hell..." He held Dean tightly and kissed his face and his neck and his shoulder and held onto him and then Dean was climbing on top of him. He unfastened Cass's jeans and then his own and shoved them down and took Cass between the legs and stroked him roughly until he was hard. Then he rose up and pushed himself down on his cock and started to ride him. Cass gazed up at Dean breathless.

"Dean," he gasped. "Dean..." He tried to pull Dean down to kiss him and Dean lurched up and seized Cass by the arms and threw him over and thrust up into him and fucked him. Cass lay sprawled across the stairs with his eyes clenched shut and let him go on. It was harsh and painful but quick and when Dean came he pulled out right away and climbed off him. After a few seconds Cass turned over. Dean had already fastened himself up and he glanced down at Cass and then looked away and almost fell down the three steps and staggered out over the dirt lane that led into the corn. At the edge of the fields there was a shallow barrel planter full of rainwater and Dean got down on his knees and bent over and scooped water over his head and face and neck and then knelt there. Cass caught his breath and pulled up his jeans and closed them with unsteady hands.

The sky had turned purple and the crickets and night creatures were whirring in the grass when Dean stood up and came back to the house. He climbed the stairs without looking at Cass and was heading back inside when Cass said, "You should sleep out here. It's too hot in there."

He heard Dean go into the house and then come back outside and the creak of the porchboards as he lay down. Cass waited until he thought Dean was asleep and then he stood up and walked out into the fields. A late summer moon was rising huge and crimson on the horizon and the clouds in the sky were scalloped and gleaming like waves upon the sea.

"Why aren't you helping us?" he said. He clenched his fists and unclenched them and shook with anger. "We did everything we were supposed to do. Why aren't you helping us?"

He received no answer. By and by he returned to the house. He climbed up on the porch and lay down behind Dean. After a while he placed one hand on Dean's shoulder, softly. In the moonlight he saw Dean's eyes open and the shadow of his lashes on his cheek and Dean blinked once, twice, and then closed his eyes.

* * *

The sky was just turning gray when Cass woke. The air was hot and still. He heard a sound in the house and he got up and went inside. Dean was sitting on the couch bandaging his feet with strips of torn curtain.

"I think we should spend the day here. Maybe the heat will break."

Dean shook his head without looking at him.

"We have to keep going till we find someone. We're too close to Detroit. There'll people near the lake."

"They'll still be there tomorrow."

"I'm going. You can stay here if you want."

"No. I'm going with you."

"Suit yourself," Dean said. He put on his socks and sneakers and stood up and walked out.

It was the hottest day they'd yet encountered and they were in farm country that was broad and treeless. The road shimmered in the heat and the fields on both sides of it were brown and dusty in spite of yesterday's rain and Cass walked behind Dean to keep an eye on him and Dean didn't once turn around to see if he was still there. At maybe half past noon Cass saw a small stand of trees to the east and he came up beside Dean and told him they had to rest until it was cooler.

I'll knock him out if I have to, Cass thought, but after a moment Dean nodded and followed Cass to the trees. They were at the top of a small rise in the country and now Cass could see more trees in the distance and water glinting between their trunks but an expanse of parched earth lay baking in the sun between them and the river and he decided they should wait until early evening to head down to the water. Dean was already sitting against one of the trees nearly panting. Cass sat down beside him and gave him some water and Dean drank and handed the bottle back to him and put his head back and closed his eyes. Cass took out the last roll of makeshift bandages from Detroit and soaked it in water and wiped Dean's dry face and Dean opened his eyes and looked at him.

"I've been here before," he said.

Cass paused with the compress against Dean's cheek.

"No, you haven't."

Dean smiled and closed his eyes.

"I know what happens here," he said and then he fell silent.

Cass sat there and watched Dean. Insects droned in the dry grass and a haze of dust lay over the land and the air was heavy and soporific. By and by Cass fell asleep. He dreamed of rain, night rain and the sound of windshield wipers and the shimmer of headlights on wet highway and the radio turned down low. He asked Dean what the song was and Dean laughed and said Cass should know this stuff by now and then Cass said it was the crossroads song. Melissa, Dean said. That's the name and Cass said, I think it's about you, and Dean just shrugged and said he'd never known anyone named Melissa. The night was dark and soft and so cool and the rain coming down and the road wide open and no one on it but them.

He woke up to the heat and the whirring grass and reached out for Dean but he wasn't there. Cass opened his eyes and sat up sharply and saw Dean standing out under the sun a ways off. He seemed nailed to the spot. Cass called his name but Dean didn't turn around and then Cass looked in the distance and saw someone standing there watching Dean. From here it looked like a child, a little girl in a white dress and Cass got to his knees and even as he rose the little girl turned and ran away into the trees.

"Hey!" Dean shouted. "Wait!" He broke into a run and Cass clambered to his feet and went after him.

"Dean, stop! Dean!"

Cass thought he'd faint and still Dean was running and far ahead of him. He couldn't see the girl anymore at all. A cloud of dust kicked up waist high around them.

"Dean!"

Dean had made it nearly to the trees when Cass saw him fall to his knees. He reached him and caught him in his arms and turned him over and Dean stared up at the sky and he was flushed and breathless and the heat of his body was baking through his clothes.

"Dean...Dean?"

Dean said, "She was...there was..." and then his eyes closed and he started to shudder.

Cass tried to pick him up and couldn't and he looked up in wild desperation and the girl was there again at the edge of the trees.

"Help!" he shouted.

There were other people coming up behind her from the riverbank. He cradled Dean in his arms and tried to hold him still.

"Help me! Please!"

They were in white like the girl, men and women and children. They were carrying branches in their hands and now they began to run and some of them cast the branches away but others held onto to them and they were running with these boughs held aloft like heralds and all in white. As if greeting angels. As if welcoming saints.

* * *

They put him in the shade and soaked his clothes with river water and sat him up and made him drink. He couldn't talk. His eyes were wandering. They picked him up and laid him in the river at a place where a canopy of branches hung down cool and green to the water and Cass sat in the water and held him up and said his name and Dean opened his eyes and looked all around and then he just stared at Cass.

"It's all right," he said to Dean. "Everything's all right." If Dean understood he gave no sign.

They put Dean in the flatbed of a dusty brown pickup and Cass rode with him. Dean opened his eyes once more and then closed them. The little girl they'd first seen rode up in the cab and watched them through the back window. There were people riding in the truckbed with them and Cass asked where they were going and they said to Pastor Henry's house and Cass just nodded and didn't ask who Henry or any of these people were. When they reached the house Cass got Dean out of his dripping clothes and they put him to bed in a room downstairs. Someone opened the window and the curtains lifted on a rising breeze.

* * *

After dark the little girl brought a candle into the room and said yesterday's storm had knocked out the power but it should be on again in a few days. Cass thought she must be teasing. She looked about seven years old and she stood at the foot of the bed and watched them.

"Is he better?" she asked.

Cass smiled at her.

"I think so. We're lucky you were there."

"Daddy said he's sick because of the heat."

"He's right."

"He shouldn't've been running outside like that."

"No, he shouldn't have."

Her father came into the room. He put his hand on his daughter's head and told her to go to her room and she said goodnight to Cass.

"Goodnight, Grace," he said.

"He'll be okay in the morning."

"I'm sure he will."

After she'd gone, Henry stood there looking at Dean and then he asked how he was doing.

"His temperature's still up, but it's better than it was."

"Were you able to get him to drink again?"

"A little while ago. I want to let him sleep."

"You should wake him up a few more times tonight. Make sure he keeps drinking."

"I will."

"How are your hands?"

Cass looked down at them. When Henry had seen the shape they were in he'd made Cass put on some salve and then helped to wrap them up. Cass smiled and said they felt much better.

Henry was quiet for a while and then he said, "Will you come in the kitchen for a minute? I'd like to talk to you and I don't want to wake him up."

"I don't want to leave him alone."

"Just for a few minutes. We're right in the next room, he'll be fine."

Cass looked at Dean and felt his forehead and then nodded and got up and followed Henry into the kitchen. There was an oil lamp burning on the table and Henry apologized for the lack of electricity in the manner of someone making small talk before getting down to business and then he turned to Cass and said, "I have to ask you something and I need you to tell me the truth."

"All right."

"Is he sick?"

"No...it was just the heat."

"He's not infected?"

"Infected...you mean Croatoan?"

"I saw that thing on his shoulder. Who did that to him?"

"His brother," Cass said. He was too weary to lie.

"How did that happen?"

He was almost too weary to lie.

"He was drunk. Out of his mind drunk. They had an argument and it just got out of hand. He took off and we haven't seen him since."

"And you're sure he wasn't sick? This brother?"

"I'm sure. He just...he wasn't himself."

"Okay. Okay, because if the virus is back, you understand I'd have to take care of it."

"Back?"

"Well, you know it's been about a good five years since we heard of an outbreak."

"I'm sorry," Cass said. "I'm sorry, can you just...can you remind me what year it is?"

Henry stared at him in the lamplight and then said, "It's 2022. August twenty-first." He looked at the clock over the stove. "Almost the twenty-second."

"Oh," Cass said. "Right," and suddenly he didn't think he could stand up. He put his hand on the table and then he pulled out a chair and sat down before he could fall down and he set his elbows on the table and covered his mouth and stared at the flame flickering inside the lamp's glass shade.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know, I just...I'm just tired I guess." The lampflame blurred and swirled in his vision like headlights on a wet highway.

He felt Henry's hand on his shoulder.

"You should get some rest, too" he said quietly. "Do you want to stay with Dean tonight?" Cass nodded and Henry told him there were pillows and blankets in the closet if needed them.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. I'll see you in the morning."

"Goodnight."

"'Night," Henry said. In the doorway he turned back to Cass. "I'll want to hear the rest of your story in the morning. You said you came up from Detroit but you know that's not possible."

"But it's true."

Henry shook his head. "It can't be," he said and then turned and left Cass alone in the kitchen. Cass listened to him go up the stairs and then he stood up and went back into the bedroom where Dean lay asleep. He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at Dean and touched his cheek. There was a facecloth in a bowl of water beside the bed and he picked it up and wrung it out and wiped Dean's face, gently so that he wouldn't wake him. Dean raised his hand and Cass thought he would push him away but he took Cass's arm and opened his eyes.

"Did you see them?"

"The people at the river?"

"Yeah."

"Yes. There's a lot of them here." Cass smiled. "I think you'd have called them holy rollers."

Dean frowned and shook his head.

"No, not them. The other ones. Did you see them?"

"The other ones?"

"They were all over. All across the water." Cass didn't say anything and Dean went on. "There were so many of them. Everyone was saved, Cass. Everyone was saved." He closed his eyes and then opened them and said, "Sam. Sam was there."

Cass took the cloth from his hand and set it back in the bowl and linked his fingers with Dean's and Dean didn't pull away.

"Of course he was."

Dean closed his eyes and sighed. His hand softened in Cass's grasp.

"I saw you too," he murmured. "Clearest of all."

Cass sat quietly for a little while longer. Then he laid Dean's hand down on his chest and put his own hand over it.

"I've always seen you the clearest, Dean. Clearest of all."

He watched Dean sleep for a few minutes and then his own exhaustion overwhelmed him. He got up and found the pillows and blanket in the closet where Henry had said they would be and he made himself a pallet on the floor beside Dean's bed. Then he blew out the candle and lay down and went to sleep.

He woke in the middle of the night to a sound of rain. Steady but soft as a whisper. In the dark he could see the white curtains drifting at the window. He turned over and stood up and saw Dean curled on his side with just the sheet over him and he pulled the light blanket up from the foot of the bed and covered him. Then he went to the window and for a long time he watched the rain fall in the night. The breeze raised goosebumps on his skin. When he woke in the morning the heat had broken and the sky was blue and the air was crisp and tinged with autumn.

* * *

In the end it was Henry who told them his story, not the other way around. He sent his daughter to a neighbor's house and the three of them sat at the kitchen table in the morning sun, Henry, Cass and Dean, pale but clear-eyed. Henry asked them if it was true that they had come from Detroit and Cass and Dean looked at each other and Dean said yes. Henry got up from the table and poured himself a cup of coffee from the percolator on the stove and came back and sat down with it on the table between his hands.

He said he'd been a professor at the University of Michigan. He'd tried to get out of Ann Arbor with his family but they hadn't gotten far enough and his wife and many others were swept up in a raid and he never saw her again. He was able to escape with Grace, who'd been barely two years old at the time. They had tried to make it to the Upper Peninsula but winter had come and they were lucky to find a small refugee camp near Houghton Lake. This was around Christmas of 2016.

"We thought it was the end of the world," Henry said. "The winter solstice came and went but it kept getting darker. A little more every day. Finally the sun never rose at all. It snowed all the time, dry snow, like ashes." He looked down into his coffee. "I taught world religions and folklore at Ann Arbor. Stupid, right? The sort of thing parents tell their kids not to take because it's never going to get them a job. And they were probably right but that kind of thing didn't matter anymore. The people in Houghton...they had nothing. Most of them thought we were just going to die and some of them were so scared that they started doing crazy shit. Going out in the snow half-naked and praying and beating themselves. Talking about offering up sacrifices. I knew how that would end. You don't study religion for most of your life without knowing what happens when terrified people start believing they know what God wants. So I started telling them stories. Just throwing in everything I knew from mythology and the Bible, Native Americans...I think I had some Lord of the Rings in there, too, I don't even know. If anyone thought it was bullshit, they didn't say so. They listened.

"Then in March some new people turned up. They were in horrible shape just...horrible. They brought the virus with them. We lost seven of our own people. We had to burn the place. When we left we kept going until we came here. The first thing we did was set up a church and we waited for the end...but it didn't come. The sun came. That April, one morning, the sun came up. We all went outside and stared at it. Like cavemen. They asked me to lead them in a prayer of thanks and I did. I still do. We dress up. We go down to the river. We pray, and sing. It makes them happy. Hell, it makes me happy, though sometimes I still wonder how I wound up as Pastor Henry. But that's a pretty insignificant mystery these days."

He stopped and looked at both of them.

"Detroit's been closed off for years. No one knows who started it but it was after the sun came back. By then we could get some news and we heard that people were just walling off the city with whatever they could find. Like it was a place where no one should ever go again. I've heard no one will live anywhere around Detroit for miles. And yet you say you came out of there." Cass nodded and then Henry said, "Did anything come out of there with you?"

After a while Dean said, "No. It's over."

Henry nodded. "I'm going to believe that." He got up and went to the sink and looked out the window, into the bright summer morning. "After some of the things I've seen, and heard, I can believe just about anything. I used to think I just taught legends and that their only merit was what they showed us about ourselves and...our common humanity and history, but now I'm not so sure. I haven't been sure of anything like that for a long time. I don't think I ever will be again."

He put his coffee cup in the sink and ran water into it. He smiled.

"We have running water again, I'm sure of that. We have electricity too, when the county can keep it on. In September I'm supposed to go up to Bad Axe for a county meeting. I think there's going to be an argument about stop signs." He turned to them. "You're welcome to stay here as long as you want, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention Detroit to anyone else. Tell them your car broke down and you started walking. You got lost and caught out in the heat. They'll believe it. It's been a hell of a summer."

* * *

Cass woke that night and sat up on the couch. He got up and went into Dean's room and checked on him. He was deeply asleep and Cass went back to the living room and sat down. He thought about what Henry had told them that day. He thought about running water and electricity. He thought about Dean, and Sam and of everything that had happened and all the time that had gone by. Of ancient Asmodeus, dead at last in the lost city of Detroit yet just one among others like him who lived on, and of Sin and her many sons, save one, still walking the earth. He thought of all the souls in hell packed into boxcars or toiling or whoring or loitering in despair for eternity and he knew that even with so much good there was evil in the world that would go on and on without Satan's help. He thought of these things even though he and Dean had lived and had come or been led to this safe place where decent people in their gratitude and hope and faith put on white clothes and went down to the river to pray and sing and he sat there and wept for all of them. The joyous and the suffering, the good and the evil, the living and the dead.

* * *

The brown pickup broke down and Dean said he'd try to fix it. He said he'd once been good with cars. The truck was parked in the barn behind the house and Cass went in there and found him with his head buried under the hood and tools spread out on the fenders and his hands all black and Cass stood there for a while and just watched him. His wounds had begun to heal and he'd cut his hair and gotten some color back in his face and he looked more like himself than Cass had seen him looking since before Detroit but he was still bony and his shoulderblades stuck up sharply through his white t-shirt. He cleared his throat so that Dean would know he was there and Dean looked over his shoulder and said, "Hey," and went back to work. Cass came into the barn and sat down on a bench against the wall and picked up some indecipherable piece of engine and turned it over in his hands.

Finally he said, "How are you feeling?"

"Pretty good," Dean said from under the hood. "Not bad."

"You're sleeping all right?"

"Yeah, considering. Up to a couple hours."

They didn't say anything else. Cass sat and listened to the birds. He gazed up at the barn's loft and rafters. After a time Dean straightened up and set a socketwrench down on the fender and braced his arms against the truck. He stood looking down and Cass looked at him.

Then Dean said, "Back when we were hunting, we'd always meet these people. These mediums or psychics or whatever. They'd always tell us the same thing about spirits. How sad they were. As if we gave a shit when we were there to do a job. But they'd always say that, that even when spirits were angry or dangerous or just mean sons of bitches, it was because they were really so sad. They had to watch life happening all around them and they could never be part of it. They just had to stand there and watch everyone else live." He looked at Cass. "That's what it's like. Isn't it?"

"Yes."

"It's not any different for you, since you were an angel?"

"No," Cass said. "Not really."

"I didn't think so."

Dean picked up the wrench and bent over the engine. After a while Cass stood up and went over to him and put his hand on Dean's shoulder. Dean went still and Cass caressed Dean's back once and then left.

* * *

There was a Sunday picnic at the river and they went because Grace said they had to. She adored both of them but especially Dean and Henry told them everyone eventually wound up doing what Grace wanted so they might as well give in.

There were a lot of people, more than Cass had seen so far, and he lost sight of Dean for a little while. In the middle of the afternoon when the grills were cooling and people were settling down on the grass to relax in the day's warmth he saw Dean out in the river, swimming. In all the years he'd known him he'd never once seen Dean swim, or even known that he could, and he stood there and watched him. It was a sight to see.

As Dean was making his way back to shore Grace ran out to the edge of the small dock wearing an inflated seahorse around her waist and jumped into the water and Dean got her and towed her fast out into the river and Cass could hear her laughing all the way out and then back in. When they got out they sat on the dock and Grace stood behind him like a beautician and toweldried his hair, chattering away about something the way children always do and Cass left them there and went back up to the house.

It was a walk of about half a mile and the day was sunny and very warm. Inside the house it was dim and quiet and cool. He went into the room where Dean slept and looked at the bed neatly made and sat down on it. On the nightstand beside the bed was the small Bible that Dean had brought up out of hell. It had gotten drenched when they'd put Dean in the river and had dried to an appearance of old parchment. He couldn't imagine why Dean had kept it.

He lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. In the kitchen the clock ticked softly. Time was so certain here. Weeks didn't pass in a single afternoon, or years in the blink of a devil's eye. It was measured by simple clocks. By the rising and setting of the sun. How good that was. How good it all was.

He thought of his days as an angel and as a man and he thought of Dean. It seemed to him that his part in Dean's life was coming to its end. The world that Dean had once known was returning and Cass saw no place in it for himself except as a reminder of everything Dean had suffered and lost. He knew that when Dean looked at him he saw those long years of flight and hiding and he saw Detroit and The Cairo and hell. He saw his brother dying.

Once, when he was an angel, he had stood in a waitress's house in Dalhart Texas and told Dean that he would have to end what had begun because he had believed 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. Cass, Castiel then, had loved him and had wanted those things for him and more besides. And Cass still loved him and he still wanted this for Dean. Even more than he wanted Dean for himself. With these thoughts in his mind, Cass fell asleep.

He woke up some time later. It was late afternoon and the light was burnished to gold and the house was quiet with everyone still down at the river. He lay there for a moment and then sat up and swung his legs off the bed. He glanced at the nightstand and looked again and saw that the Bible was gone. He heard a sound then like a leaf of parchment being turned over and he looked around and saw Dean sitting in the faded wing chair in the corner of the room.

"He shall give his angels charge over thee," Dean read. "To keep thee in all thy ways." He looked up at Cass with the little book open on his knee. "I kept trying to find it and I couldn't. I knew it had to be in here somewhere. Then I just opened the book and there it was." He looked down and then glanced up again and smiled with one eyebrow raised. "They shall bear thee up in thy hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. You left out that part. Good thinking." He closed the book and held it between his hands and for a while he just sat with his head down.

"When I was in hell, near the end," he said. "For some reason I started thinking about the way it would rain sometimes at night. Out in places where the road is wide open and there's no one on it. Like in Texas. I used to love to drive at night in places like that, especially when it was raining. You know what I mean?"

"Yes," Cass said. "I do."

"These are really good people here. There must be a lot of good people left. But I don't want to be around them anymore. Maybe someday, but not now. I want to go someplace and just drive. Someplace like Texas. Just head out at night and drive. Maybe it'll rain."

"Maybe."

He looked up at Cass.

"I don't want to leave without saying goodbye, but I think they'll understand. Especially Henry."

For a moment Cass couldn't say anything. Then he said, "I'll tell them something for you."

Dean's forehead creased. He got up and went to the window and looked out. He stood there and then he nodded and ran his hand through his hair and looked back at Cass.

"Okay," he said. "If you want to stay that's okay but I thought...I guess I thought you'd come with me."

"Do you want me to?"

"Only if that's what you want. I don't want you to come because of..." he waved the Bible. "Anything that God charged you with or because you think..." he stopped because Cass was on his feet.

"I hardly ever knew what God charged me with and I don't care. God can deal with me how he chooses. If you want me with you, Dean, I'll go where you go. I'll stay where you stay. For the rest of my life or your life, and whatever comes after."

"I want you with me, Cass," Dean said and smiled. "Please."

Cass didn't know he'd crossed the room and yet there he was and he embraced Dean so fiercely that he heard the Bible drop to the floor and Dean was holding him too and his hands were twisted in Cass's shirt. When they kissed it was salted and wet with tears and they kissed and then clung to each other and outside the shadows grew longer and the summer day slipped to its close.

* * *

They decided they would wait until morning to depart and say goodbye after all. Cass was awakened that night by someone shaking him and when he opened his eyes he saw Dean hunkered down beside the couch.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Dean said. "I couldn't sleep. Take a walk with me."

"Are we leaving?"

"Not yet. Just take a walk with me." He stood up. "Come on."

Cass threw back the blanket and got up. He followed Dean through the kitchen and out the back door. Dean was waiting for him on the porch and the September night was cool and silvered with moonlight.

"Where are we going?"

"Not far," Dean said and turned and went down the porch steps and out towards the barn. The moon lay on the grass and crickets chirped in the still night air.

They reached the barn and went inside. It was very dark and he could just make out Dean skirting his way around the pickup truck. The only light came from the loft and he saw Dean climbing the ladder.

"Dean?"

"This way," Dean said. By then he was already pulling himself up into the loft.

It was bright up there with the loft door wide open to the moonlit countryside and the land was all spread out before them. Fields and little houses and stands of trees. The silver track of the river winding away in the distance. Cass turned to look at Dean beside him and told him it was beautiful.

Dean smiled.

"I didn't come up here for the view." He slipped his arms around Cass's waist.

"I know," Cass said and Dean kissed him. Cass put his arms around Dean and they kissed and without another word they began to undress each other.

"I didn't want to do this in the house," Dean said. He pulled Cass's t-shirt over his head and kissed him. "Little kid sleeping upstairs." He slid Cass's shorts off his hips. "Messing up the bed."

"Of course not," Cass said and then Dean stepped back with his hands on Cass's chest and looked at him. With his fingers Dean traced the burns that the chain had left all across him. They had healed as soon as Cass had taken off the chain but left behind a twisted map of scars.

"That was one hard fucking miracle, wasn't it?" Dean said softly.

"Yes it was." He took Dean's hand and kissed his fingers. "It was."

When they were naked they lay down on the straw and caressed each other and kissed and then Dean rolled onto his side with his back to Cass and Cass took him in his arms and kissed his neck and whispered, "Like this? You're sure?"

"Yes. Like this."

Cass wet himself with his own saliva and clear slick and slid up inside and Dean caught his breath.

"Dean?"

"Go ahead. It's all right."

He moved inside Dean slow and deep and held him close. He reached down and took Dean in his hand and circled and stroked him. They hardly made a sound. The straw shifted and rustled beneath them.

He came with his cheek pressed against Dean's shoulder and Dean gripped Cass's wrist and came into his hand. He sighed and lay there breathing deeply. When Cass withdrew Dean turned over and lay against him. After a little while Dean stood up and began to get dressed and Cass did the same. At the foot of the ladder they embraced and kissed in the dark and then together they made their way back to the quiet house. The moon was setting and the stars were above them, very bright.

* * *

They were hitchhiking by night along a southern road and the night was warm and drowsy as it only ever is in that part of the country but there was a misty coolness in it and the promise of season's change. Soon a truck pulled up along the shoulder with its running lights all glowing and Cass felt the rumble of its engine in the blacktop under his feet and heard the chuffing wheeze of the brakes and the driver pushed the passenger door open and told them to get on in. Dean swung himself up into the cab as if he belonged there at that moment and nowhere else, with that ease of his that he'd always had. He turned and his face was lit up in the dashboard lights just as it had once been on so many nights in the Impala and he held his hand down to Cass and Cass took his hand and pulled himself up. As he shut the door the driver said that it was starting to rain and Dean looked at Cass and smiled.

"I'm going over the Texas border, that far enough for you?"

"That's fine," Dean said. "That's just where we want to go."

The driver put the truck in gear and it lurched off the shoulder and out into the dark, headed west with the night. For a while the glow of taillights could be seen through the mist and then the truck swung onto the highway and they were gone and the night was quiet, but for the falling rain.

The End

May 23, 2010 - March 25, 2011

Thank you for reading.