The Winchester Boys and the Tremors of Doom - Chapter 1
Sam slid into the passenger seat of the Impala, closing the door behind him with a final-sounding thud.
“We headin’ out?” Dean asked.
Sam nodded, and then turned his head to wave goodbye to Sarah who was still standing on the doorstep of the auction house with her arms folded.
Dean picked out an Iron Maiden cassette from his box of tapes and shoved it into the slot. He put the car into gear and peeled away from the curb to the opening bars of Piece of Mind.
Sam sighed and slumped against the window, the side of his head resting against the glass.
Dean glanced sideways, trying to gauge his brother’s mood. Sam had always forged deep connections with people; had always found it hard to just walk away, and Dean wondered for a moment if it had been a mistake to shove the kid at Sarah. He cleared his throat.
“So. Sarah. Classy chick, huh?”
Sam smiled sadly. “Yeah. She is.”
Dean turned his head and eyed Sam thoughtfully before returning his attention to the road. “You really liked her, didn't you?”
Sam shrugged. “Yeah. I did. For all the good it did either of us. I put her at risk, Dean. Because of me, she could’ve died and…”
Sam rubbed a hand over his creased forehead. “And then I had to leave her. I put her at risk and then I left her. And the way we live, it’s always gonna be like that. So really…what’s the point?”
Dean restrained an eye roll. This was vintage Sam, always overthinking everything. “So what?” he said, “You're gonna be a monk from now on?”
Sam straightened in his seat and glared at Dean. “You know what, Dean? No. We are not having this conversation.” He reached forward and turned the music up.
Dean turned it back down. “Driver picks the-”
“You picked the damn music! I just turned it up!”
He reached for the volume control again and Dean slapped his hand away. “Yeah, well, driver picks the volume too, so shut your cakehole.”
Sam produced an epic bitch-face and then folded his arms across his chest.
They sat in silence until the tension was so thick in the air that Dean couldn’t stand it anymore.
“You know what we need?” he said, “Shore leave.”
“Shore leave?”
“Yeah, you know. A little quality R & R. Play a little poker, a few games of darts; earn ourselves some bank. Eat some pie. Drink the odd six-pack or two. Hook up with a few women with loose morals…the type who want you to leave them…you know what I'm sayin', Sammy?” Dean waggled his eyebrows. “I think it's time we hit Vegas again, little brother.”
“Or,” Sam said, in the ‘I’m talking to a toddler’ voice that pissed Dean off so, so much, “we could go to Atlantic City which is a helluva lot closer.”
“Yeah,” Dean retorted, mimicking his brother’s tone, “but they've got legal brothels in Vegas.”
“They’re not in Las Vegas, Dean. They’re about an hour north of Vegas.”
Dean chuckled. “But you do know about them. Sammy, you sly dog.”
Sam scowled impressively. “Everybody knows about them. But I’ve never been to one. I don't pay for sex, Dean.”
Well of course he didn’t. Winchesters didn’t need to pay for sex. They could if they wanted to, of course, if it was just easier in the circumstances, but they didn’t need to because Winchesters were hot enough to walk into any bar and walk out again with the sexiest woman in there, like that time in-
“So, we’re agreed? That’s a ‘no’ to Vegas?” Sam interrupted his thoughts.
Dean pouted, just a little. “Oh c'mon Sammy…it’s Vegas. Remember Vegas?”
Sam’s resolve softened just a little, and he turned away to hide the slight smile that touched his lips at the memory.
~~~
It had been April 25th 2001 and their father had left them holed up in a little motel just off of Interstate 15, near Moapa. He, meanwhile; had gone on the hunt for a skinwalker that was wreaking havoc on the small band of Paiute who lived on the Moapa River Indian Reservation. The job should have been cut and dried, but as it turned out, 112 square miles of Reservation was a lot of land to cover.
The remainder of April had come and gone; the days had flashed by like the hot sun that scorched the Mojave. And with each passing day, Sam and Dean had become more and more bored, until finally come May 1st, Sam was fit to be tied.
“He’s gonna miss my birthday,” he had whined, crossing his arms. “Again.”
“What’s the big deal?” Dean had asked. He had then ducked his head when Sam had glowered back at him. “I mean besides the fact that it’s your 18th…jeesh, grumpy. He missed mine too, you know.”
“This year, Dean, but not last year. No, last year he took you on a three-day bender for your 21st birthday.”
“Oh yeah.” Dean had nodded his head, smiling, “Good times.”
“For you, maybe. Not for me. I ended up being the designated driver who had to come drag your asses out of the bar, and I don’t know if you know this, but Dad’s a brick when he’s passed out. An-and you? You puked on me…twice!”
“Aww, I’m sorry, Sammy. I didn’t mean it. Lemme make it up to you.”
Sam had eyed his brother suspiciously, and asked, “How?”
~~~
“Ahhhh, Vegas. I remember that being a very good time.”
“You actually remember it?” Sam scoffed.
“I remember!” Dean fired back. “I remember you being pissed that Dad was gonna miss your birthday, and me-awesome big brother that I am-took you to Vegas for your birthday.”
“My eighteenth birthday, man. I wasn’t even old enough to get into half those places, except maybe the theme park at Circus Circus.”
“So what? I got you in, didn’t I? What was that show we went and saw at the Harrah? The topless one with the on-stage lap dances?”
“Skintight.”
Dean snapped his fingers. “That’s the one. See, you do remember. That was a great time; the last really fun thing we did as brothers before you…Well anyway, if you don't want go back to Vegas, I guess that's cool.”
Dean didn’t have the puppy dog eyes, but he was a professional pouter and he put that skill to good use now. Sam sighed. “It's a three day drive, at least.”
Dean’s face lit up in a hopeful grin. He might have to work at it, but Sam was going to let himself be talked into going to Vegas, despite his better judgement of course.
“Dude,” he said, “My baby can make the Vegas Run in less than twelve parsecs…
Sam sniggered and nodded at a police cruiser that was coming up on the driver's side of the car. “Let's just try to avoid any imperial entanglements,” he said.
Dean grinned. “So that's a ‘yes’ to Vegas?”
Sam pursed his lips. “I don’t know, Dean. It just seems like we could be doing something more productive, like-”
“Look, I’ll make you a deal. You agree to Vegas, and we can stop anywhere you want on the way there.”
Sam cocked his head to one side and raised an eyebrow. “Anywhere?”
“Anywhere. It’ll be just like when we were kids and Dad used to take us to all those stupid roadside attractions. Hell, we could even hit Cawker City, Kansas if you want. I know how much you love that big-ass ball of twine.”
“Shut up. I do not.”
“Who are you kidding? You were always a sucker for that crap.”
Sam shook his head. “No, if I’m gonna agree to this, then I don’t want corny crap like a baseball diamond in the middle of a cornfield. I want real sites.”
“Like what?”
“Historical stuff, like Gettysburg.”
Dean raised an incredulous eyebrow. “With all those spirits? That’s too much like work, Sammy. New rule: No place with any ties to the Civil War. That pretty much cuts out most everything east of the Mississippi.”
Sam pouted. “Fine. The Rockies.”
“No way. I am not goin’ on some granola munchin’ hike with you, just so we can get eaten by a bear. Has to be some place civilized.”
Sam frowned, pursing and twisting his lips as he considered his options. “I’m gonna have to think about this,” he said after a moment. Dean raised his hand to the road, silently arguing the fact that they were already on the road and Sam had better hurry his ass if he wanted to pick his ‘real sites’.
“Just get us through Pennsylvania. I’ll have it all figured out by then.”
By mid-morning, they were driving through the tunnels on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Sam was sitting sideways on the long bench seat with a ragged-looking road atlas spread out before him on the seat. He had one leg pulled up and a small Mag Lite stuck between his teeth while he took notes, scratching out directions into a spiral notebook he’d found in his pack.
Beside him, Dean was leaned back in his seat, enjoying the ebb and flow of his car over the asphalt, and bobbing his head along to the steady beat of All Right Now playing on his cassette player. He spared his brother a glance and smirked, bemused by Sam’s deep concentration.
“What’re you studying so hard on there, Professor?”
“Not studying,” Sam answered around the end of the flashlight. “Thinking.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. Thinking about what?”
Sam spat out the flashlight and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “I’m just thinking that instead of cutting across Kansas, we could head south, follow the 44 into Tulsa and over, and then hit the Hoover Dam on the way into Nevada.”
Dean frowned, rolling his head sideways to give his brother a dull, slack-jawed look of disgust. “The Hoover Dam? Yawn. What happened to us going through Cawker? I thought you liked that big ball of string.”
“Twine,” Sam corrected, without looking up from his map, “and I never said I liked it. It was just something ‘different’ to do when we were kids. You’re the one that liked goin’ there cuz of that girl. What was her name again? Bobbie Lynn Dexter?”
“Tammy. Lynn. Baxter.”
“Same difference. She only liked you for one reason, Dean.”
“Yeah, well, it was the same reason I liked her,” Dean grinned and waggled his eyebrows.
“Classy. Hell, for all you know, Tammy Lynn Baxter could be married three times over by now with 5 kids, one of which is yours.” Sam looked up from beneath his overly long bangs, raised an eyebrow and challenged, “Shall we go and find out?”
“No.”
Pulling an unhappy face, Dean turned his eyes back to the road and drove in silence, pointedly ignoring Sam’s mischievous grin. Sam’s smile didn’t last long; fading quickly when it became apparent that Dean didn’t want to ‘play’ anymore. Sam felt kind of bad, then. It probably hadn’t been the best decision to tease Dean about long, lost children when they themselves were long, lost children…of sorts.
“Hey, maybe we could head on over to Chicago and jump on the historical Route 66, ride it all the way there,” Sam offered in way of an apology. “Think of all the cool stops along the way.”
It was like dangling a piece of meat in front of a dog, and Dean pursed his lips and tapped his fingers along the steering wheel as he considered the bargain.
“My Baby on old Route 66? Hmmm. The whole way?” he asked, glancing at Sam.
“The whole way…until we turn off to head north on 93.”
Dean chewed it over carefully. Hoover Dam was a small - albeit geeky - price to pay for getting the opportunity to put his Baby on the ‘Mother Road’. Yeah, no contest.
“Okay, deal.”
The course was easy enough to plot. I80 to Chicago, crash at a motel. Be waiting at the door when Gino’s East opened the next day so they could get some Chicago Deep Dish before leaving - that had been Sam’s idea. Catch Route 66 there and drive until they hit St. Louis. Eat an early supper and crash there. Take off around midnight and drive straight through Oklahoma and the northern tip of Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It would be a helluva drive, but one they could split between them, taking it in turns. Plus they were used to long hours in the car. From Albuquerque, they’d cross Arizona, finally leaving the ‘Mother Road’ for US 93 and the last leg of the journey leading them to Boulder City and the Hoover Dam. From there, it was just a hop, skip and a jump to Vegas.
A four day trip from New York State to Nevada for a weekend of the glitz, glamour and girls of Las Vegas - it may not have been Dean’s best idea ever, but they’d driven further for less, and after everything they’d been through the past twelve months, they deserved it.
Including the St Louis layover in the route had been Dean’s idea. It probably would have been a lot easier on them to drive a bit further that second day, but back when they were kids they’d passed by a Route 66-themed motel just outside of the Gateway City a few times and Dean had been captivated. Their Dad, though, had adamantly refused to stay at it, despite the advertised chrome beds made to look like 50s style classic cars and Dean’s desperate pleading that his life wouldn’t be complete if he wasn’t allowed to sleep in one of them.
When they finally entered the motel room-sixteen years after Dean first set his heart on staying there- Sam was forced to choke back his laughter as Dean went through an age regression right before his eyes. His brother whooped like an excited ten year old and ran, diving head first into the nearest bed which just happened to look a lot like a ’55 Cadillac Series 62. Dean bounced on his knees and then flopped over on his back with a wide, satisfied smile.
“Dibbs,” he called.
Sam grinned; his body shaking with silent laughter and his smile lighting him up from the inside in a way that hadn’t happened since before leaving Palo Alto. Maybe this trip wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
At midnight, Sam and Dean were back on the road, heading further south. They’d determined that Sam would drive the first eight hour shift and Dean, the second eight hours. It was just before sun-up the next morning when Dean saw it, lit up like a Christmas tree against the silver-grey of the predawn sky. They were about half an hour outside of Oklahoma City, and Pops-a tourist-trap convenience store which sold sodas in hundreds of different flavors-wasn’t a place they’d planned to stop. Dean insisted, though, arguing that he absolutely could not pass it up. “C’mon, Sammy. Look at that! It’s got a soda bottle the size of a space shuttle out front.” And really, who could argue with that kind of logic? Three hours later-give or take-Dean pointed out a sign for Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, Texas. Sam agreed and they spent the next twenty minutes posing like tourists for cheesy photos with the vertically positioned and purposefully vandalized cars, even adding a bit of their own brand of graffiti. Sam wrote: For a good time, call…and included Dean’s phone number. Dean grinned when he saw it, and then dragged Sam around to the other side of the vehicle, where he had written: For a good time, call…and included, not Sam’s but his own phone number.
“Why did you leave your own phone number?” Sam asked, his brow drawing tight in confusion.
“Free advertising!” Dean responded as though it should be perfectly obvious. “Duh.”
Sam rolled his eyes and laughed and the sound of his little brother’s bright bark of laughter made Dean grin from ear to ear.
They crossed into New Mexico in the late afternoon and approached Albuquerque and the Sandia Mountains as the sun was setting. In the passenger seat, Sam was reading the newspaper he had picked up in a gas station near the Texas/New Mexico border. Already he’d been told twice by Dean to ‘shut it’ when he’d happened upon something that sounded like their kind of thing.
“What part of ‘shore leave’ don’t you get?” Dean asked, giving his brother an exasperated look.
“The part where you’re turning down a reason to kill something,” Sam huffed in disbelief. “Really? You’re not the least bit curious?”
“No, dude, we’re on vacation. I know that’s a difficult concept for you to grasp, college boy, so let me spell it out for ya. Vacation means no work.” He raised a hand and began ticking off on his fingers. “We drink beer, play cards, and pick up chicks. We do not go out and purposefully look for the things that go bump in the night. Got it?”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Sam folded up his paper neatly and slid it onto the dashboard. “Over-dramatic much?” He looked out the window and watched the scenery fly by as they came closer and closer to Albuquerque.
“Hey, pull over, will ya?”
“Why?”
Sam nodded at their surroundings and answered, “Vacation.”
Dean pulled the car off onto the side of the road, slid her into park and killed the engine. He laid his arm over the back of the seat and leaned in Sam’s direction, removing the dark Ray-Bans that he’d been wearing to protect his eyes from the sun as it made its way further and further into his line of sight. Off in the distance, the Sandia Mountains were lit up in contrasting shades of lavender against the horizon, the cottonwood trees and brush ablaze with autumn gold, and the ground speckled here and there with azure asters. The sun was sinking in the west, casting reds and pinks across the darkening sky where the first stars of the evening winked clear and bright. It was breathtaking.
“Wow,” Dean said quietly and then whistled low. “How do we miss stuff like this when we’re on the road all the damned time?”
“When’s the last time we weren’t rushing off to the next case?”
“True.”
They sat there quietly, watching star after star spring to life while the colors of the valley floor deepened as the sun set.
“Ya know, we got a few of those glass bottle sodas left in the cooler.”
“Oh-kay?” Sam said, drawing the word out in question. He turned to look at Dean and had to lean back, his brother was so close, still staring in awe at the scenery out Sam’s side window.
Dean answered without taking his eyes off the sky, “Just, it’s so clear out here away from town, and this sky is gonna light up big in about half an hour. I was just thinking it might be cool if we find some little side road and watch the show, like we used to when we were kids.”
Sam grinned. He couldn’t help it. Mister ‘I don’t do chick flick moments’ was going all sensitive and nostalgic before his very eyes. “Awww. You’re really just a big sentimental teddy bear, aren’t you?”
“Don’t you tell no one,” Dean ordered with as much seriousness as he could muster.
They found a little dead-end dirt road, and Dean pulled off into a field drive and parked. They fished the cooler out of the back of the car and settled down on the hood of the Impala with a couple of odd flavored sodas they’d picked up at Pops.
“Try this,” Sam offered his bottle to his brother.
Dean eyed the label and then screwed up his face. “Gross. No. That’s not even a real flavor.”
Sam leaned back against the windshield, and a moment later his brother joined him, nudging Sam’s rib playfully with a pointy elbow. Sam nudged Dean back and smiled. They relaxed into perfect silence and watched as one by one the stars came out and the sun was claimed by the desert horizon. It was peaceful; probably the most peaceful moment he and Dean had witnessed since teaming back up in Palo Alto the year before, and Sam sent out a silent prayer into the darkening sky that this moment of calm could last forever or…at least for a little while longer.
~~~
For an October morning, it was warmer than usual when they rolled out of Albuquerque at 7am. Four hours later, it was near 80 degrees and still climbing. The boys had rolled down all the car windows and while Dean tapped a steady rhythm against the steering wheel, the wind pounded a staccato beat against Sam’s face and neck and soon he was lulled back to sleep by it. Dean reached across the seat and pressed his hand against his brother’s chest until Sam’s head rolled back to rest against the seat. He let out a slight snore, but settled back into sleep.
Dean smiled. “Always could knock out anywhere,” he said more to himself than to Sam, “and deep too, or at least…you used to sleep deep…before…”
Dean quickly turned his thoughts away from the reason Sammy no longer slept through the night; away from the reason he woke up with a scream dying on his lips. Instead, Dean tried to focus his thoughts on a simpler time. A time when Dean’s greatest concern was keeping children’s services off their back when Dad was away on a hunt; a time when weapons training came second only to looking after his kid brother; a time when their dad would take an hour out of his Saturday morning to watch cartoons with him and Sammy over a great big communal bowl of Fruit Loops. Life was almost easy then. It was only when their father was gone that Dean felt any sort of stress, and that was only because he was well and truly in charge and his dad was relying on him to take care of things. Back then, Sammy slept like a baby.
“God, I used to be s’damn jealous of how deep you could sleep. I couldn’t sleep for shit when Dad was gone; always had to have one ear on the door-keep us safe, but you… You were like that chick in that fairy tale. You know, the one with the apple and the midgets, ‘cept this Prince Charming,” he thumbed toward himself, “ain’t kissin’ you awake, so don’t go gettin’ any kinky ideas.”
He turned and grinned at his grown up little brother, but Sam didn’t move a muscle to acknowledge that he’d heard anything Dean had said. Dean sighed, blowing a long, tired breath through pursed lips and turned his eyes disinterestedly back towards the road. His eyes flicked back to the dashboard a moment later and he made note of the fact that he’d have to stop for gas soon. He reached forward and turned on the radio, spinning the dial until he found a station that wasn’t subliminally begging him to rip his ears off, and then he settled back into his seat for the drive.
It was easy to zone out on the long highways, even when the scenery was so spectacular that it kept drawing his attention away from the road. But Dean was a ‘professional highwayman’. He’d crossed every one of the continental United States-some of them dozens of times-and had long ago developed a driving system that he privately likened to Warp Speed: Pick a speed, pick a spot on the horizon, and pick a tape cassette that would get him from point A to point B without noticing. It probably wasn’t the safest method out there-he’d nearly run himself off the road more than once-but it did the trick more often than not and for Dean, that’s all that counted. Yet there were still things-people, places, events-that could pull him out of his zone, and one of them had just flashed by on the road: a large green sign announcing Flagstaff, 10 miles ahead. And just like that, Dean’s quiet, little, mental Zen garden was blown all to Hell.
Flagstaff.
Dean had realized on the second day of their trip that their little journey down the ‘Mother Road’ was going to land them in Flagstaff, Arizona at one point; going this direction, it couldn’t be avoided. Dean-a master in the art of denial-had done a decent job of putting the idea out of his head for the better part of two days. But the morning they left Albuquerque, the thought of Flagstaff had risen long before the sun, looming over Dean like the highway that stretched out forever into the Mohave.
Flagstaff. The name alone conjured goose bumps that ran the length of Dean’s arms and up his neck, into his hairline, and he was immediately transported seven years into the past.
In all of Dean’s life there had been three days that he could definitively mark as the worst of his life; November 2, 1983, when his mother died, August 28th, 2001, when Sam had taken off for Stanford, and February 7, 1999, two weeks after Dean’s 20th birthday when Sam had run away on Dean’s watch.
It had been a Friday night in February and John had left his boys with strict instructions to be available on a moment’s notice and to stick close to ‘home base’ i.e. the Sunny Beaches Motel-like that hadn’t been painfully ironic in the middle of the desert. Of course Dean’s definition of ‘close to home’ and John’s were very, very different.
Surprisingly, Sammy hadn’t seemed to mind at all when Dean had announced he was going out. In fact, fifteen-year-old Sam had appeared to be as happy as a clam, up to his waist in school work. So when Dean had returned four hours later, he’d been completely shocked to find their room empty. It had been as close to a heart attack as Dean had ever come.
Two weeks. Two weeks they had spent looking for Sam. Two weeks of Hell for both Dean and John. Working day and night to locate his missing son, John had been in a constant state of panic and more than a little on edge, a fact he hadn’t shied away from letting Dean know.
He had verbally railed on Dean for the first 24 hours of Sam’s disappearance. After which, John had fallen into silence, all but ignoring his oldest son sometimes for days at a time, and only talking to him when it was absolutely necessary. For Dean, this had been far worse than being hit. A punch, like those he and Sammy traded back and forth, meant ‘I’m pissed but I still love you’. Silence, however, Dean had interpreted as indifference, and that had been almost more than he could stomach.
The nights were by far the worst. Dean had wanted nothing more than to crawl out of his skin to escape the tension that permeated the dark. Neither of them had been able to sleep for fear of what had happened to Sammy. They had both lain awake for hours, staring into the dark until the sun streamed into the motel room and forced them out of bed. Dean would never admit that part of his sleep deprivation had been because he just couldn’t manage to fall asleep without the steady rhythm of his brother’s breathing, asleep in the next bed.
Sam took that moment to take a deep, rattling snore, startling Dean out of his thoughts and directing them back to the desert road. Sammy was okay. Not great, maybe but he was here and for that, Dean was thankful.
~~~
Dean shook his head and tried to clear the dark funk that had settled over him since they’d passed through Flagstaff. All that shit…it was ancient history and there was no point in dwelling on it, not when he had Sammy safe, sound and, okay, drooling in his sleep, right next to him in the passenger seat of the Impala. The Winchester brothers were on shore leave; they were going to hit Vegas and paint the town red. They…Dean’s eyes flittered over the gas gauge and widened in horror. Oh shit. He’d been so caught up in his black thoughts that he’d forgotten he needed to stop for gas. Fuck. If they ran out of gas on the 93 and he had to do the walk of shame with a gas can, Sammy would never let him hear the end of it. Dean’s eyes scanned the horizon anxiously. "Hmmm," he muttered in his best Bugs Bunny voice. "I knew I shoulda took that left turn at Albuquerque."
Several minutes later a green and white metal road sign reading ‘Chloride’ pointed off to the right, accompanied by a picture of a gas pump and a knife and fork. Dean hauled the wheel around and headed for the town. Gas and food. What more could a guy ask for? He also-and Dean would never admit this, not even under pain of torture-sort of liked little towns like Chloride; towns that were off-the-beaten-track and struggling to survive. A few miles down the road Dean passed a brightly-colored billboard, advertising Chloride as a historical mining town; a ghost town that refused to die, and which now staged mock gunfights in its main street at high noon every Saturday. Dean whistled through his teeth as he sped past the billboard. Now that would be something to see. A little further along another billboard told him that Chloride was also, apparently, famous for its yard art and the murals on its canyon walls. It was home to a small commune of hippies too. Dean grinned. He was starting to think that this could be one hell of an awesome detour. Maybe they could stay and take a break here. He could hook up with a hippie chick tonight and watch the mock gunfight tomorrow.
And then, the clincher: Dean drove past another billboard, this one advertising that there was a Classic Car Show being held in Chloride this Saturday, starting at 10.00am. Oh yeah, they were definitely staying! Beside him Sam snored and then choked on his saliva. Dean sniggered as Sam woke up, long limbs flailing.
“Wassit…huh?” Sam spluttered.
“Real smooth, Sammy.”
Sam rubbed a hand across his face and yawned. “Where are we?”
“Just turned off for Chloride.”
Sam tilted his head and regarded Dean with wide-eyed puzzlement.
“Need gas,” Dean said.
Sam grunted and turned to look out the window…not that there was much to see, just a truckload of flat, sandy scrub, the occasional tree and a bunch of hills in the background. Sam leaned against the window and yawned again. Dean was burning a hole in the side of his head, so Sam turned to him with raised eyebrows.
“Something you wanna say?”
Dean turned back to the road. “You sleep okay?”
Sam shrugged. “I’m fine, Dean.”
“No freaky dreams?”
“Like I said-”
“You’re fine. Right,” Dean cleared his throat. “So. I was thinking…”
“Really? Did you hurt yourself?”
Dean smacked his arm. “Bitch!”
“Ow!” Sam rubbed at his upper arm. “Jerk. Okay, I’ll bite. What were you thinking, Dean?”
Dean’s eyes slid sideways, lighting on Sam briefly before turning back to the road. “No big deal,” he said, “just thought it might be cool to lay over in Chloride. It’s a historical mining town. Plus it’s famous for its art and shit. You might find some of your Grandma Moses or whatever. And,” Dean’s eyes sparkled, “they’re having a Classic Car Show this Saturday. And then at high noon there’s gonna be a mock gunfight on Main Street.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. C’mon, Sammy. It’ll be fun.”
“What about Hoover Dam?”
“We’ll go Sunday. C’mon, Sam. What d’you say? We stop and stretch our legs for a bit; you get art and history, I get a car show and gunfighting. It’s kinda perfect.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Sure. Why not.”
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