The Passenger: Chapter one
Dean
2005
"Jeeezuz-fuck!" Dean swept the wheel to the right, and the old truck gasped and coughed but swung into the other lane, steering around the giant ass pothole that hadn't been there the last time he'd hit this road. "Shit-fuck, Lucille, don’t kill me..." he muttered, the slewing having for some reason set his cassette deck to gargling the tape instead of playing it. "Okay…" He glanced in the back and noted the mole package bag had slid to the floor, but it seemed like it was still sealed, so that was good. The regular mail bag was still on the narrow bench-good for that.
He chugged steadily along as the road climbed higher and higher, his eyes going back to his rear-view mirror and the thick column of smoke reflected in it, climbing into the sky. Even though these days it was more than likely just garbage fires, or old buildings catching lightening strikes and burning to the ground, the sight of those thick, roiling clouds still had the power to make his gut roll.
He'd been no bigger than a minute back in those days when those fires were all people, but it had sunk into his baby brain like an instinct and he still got the shakes when he saw them.
Besides, it hadn't been that long since he'd burned his dad either-just him and Bobby out in the back of what had once upon a time been Bobby's junk yard, Singer's Salvage. They'd made a pyre, and set a torch to it, Uncle Bobby cussing under his breath the whole time. Passing a bottle back and forth between him and Bobby, some stuff Bobby called Real Brand Name booze, that he'd put aside a long, long, long time ago. Hadn't been bad, really. Smooth. Dad would have liked it a lot.
Course, the damn idiot could have had some too, if he hadn't gone swinging in like fuckin' Tarzan on a clique of chewers-the hunt had gone sideways because instead of the usual small family unit-a boar, sow and one or two shoats-it ended up being a JeezDamn pack of 'em. Fucking Harvelle and his shoot first and research later mentality.
Dean held the steering wheel in a strangler's grip, his heart beating fast with fury..."Fuck," he huffed, then deflated with a sigh.
Yeah, hadn't really been Bill's fault, not entirely. He might have pushed to jump the hunt, but chewers-ghouls-weren't known for packing up together, even in starvation times. Just another weird shift in monster behavior, so Bobby said.
Ghouls.
Ghouls had made sure he'd lost his dad; Ellen and Jo Harvelle had lost a husband and a father. JeezDamn. Dean shook his head, reached under the dashboard and pulled out a small, silver flask with J W engraved on it, took a quick gulp, hissing as not-so-smooth hootch burned a screaming path from throat to gut, and woofed. He flicked a long splash of the stuff out of the open window-here was to John and Bill, the both of them, may they rest.
'Round about one o'clock, his stomach reminded him that it needed filling, so he cranked Lucille over onto a wide spot at the side of the road, barren sand and rocks that Dad always called a scenic outlook, while snorting bitterly and flashing the bird at whatever was in front of them. His old man had had his issues.
While setting up a quick fire for coffee and reheating some preciously won Ever-Fresh soup, Dean checked his cargo over, debated setting up the radio as well, but eventually decided against it. If the Moles seriously needed to contact him, they'd have a psychic send a poke into his brain. The radio was basically for gossip, or for them to ride his damn ass because they didn't have enough to keep them busy, or so it seemed sometimes. Fucking Moles all thought hunters were shaved apes or something.
A good cup of coffee, some damn fine soup, couple of biscuits and a smoke later, he checked his watch, did some quick calculations and figured he'd be on the road another couple of hours before he hit the first settlement. This one was a good one; an actual village-houses, farms, with them doing well enough to have surplus goods to trade, even a little store or two, the last time he'd been through. They were doing well enough to start generating mail. He had a few letters to give them, some folks who'd decided to give in to the siren call of city life-all of a thousand folks living cheek to jowl in what remained of an old military base and a small Mole bunker.
Dean inhaled harsh smoke, and smiled in satisfaction, letting the smoke leak out of the corner of his mouth. He loved runs like this. He loved stopping to spend some time in places where people were beginning to settle, starting to build up some kind of life. Dad hadn't. He'd hated them. Claimed that they were trouble magnets. Well, far as Dean could see, Dad had been a paranoid old grump. Supers weren't any more inclined to hit the new settlements than feral humans, less probably. Especially with the laws out of Colorado and New Kansas giving some kind of rights to human-ish supernatural critters.
'Dad. JeezusKris, there was one helluva character.' Dean barked out a laugh-part humor, part still-felt frustration. He remembered what stopping was like in the old days. They'd go weeks, sometimes fucking months at a time before finally coming to roost somewhere like crack-winged birds. Then if they were lucky-if he was lucky, Dean thought-they'd camp in old houses, motels, gas stations, someplace where they were actually surrounded by four walls-mostly.
He remembered one place-he must have been about, what, five, maybe six? Seven at the oldest...anyway, they'd spent some time squatting in a motel, him and Dad and a couple of other families. People were trickling in by dribs and drabs, adding to the small group already living there. It was a loose sort of settlement just about knitting together to become a town or something, all centered around the motel and the people squatting in about a dozen or more log cabins. Dad called them CCC cabins, a name that'd stuck in Dean's head. He'd been shocked to find out, years later, it meant those cabins had been sitting there since the 19-fucking-30s. They sure knew how to built shit to last in those days. It hadn't been a bad place to live, even though Dad used to spend a lot of his nights gone somewhere.
As he grew out of boy-hood, Dean came to realize that good old Dad had been out getting that itch scratched somewhere. More power to him if he had, it sure must have been one of the last times before he became a dour, old, hunting-obsessed monk.
Dean grunted, flicking the roach into the fire. Yeah well, his old man might have been a monk, but as for Dean, his right hand wasn't nearly entertaining enough, not after he learned what girls and boys could do together. And especially when he came of age, and many a homestead started in inviting him into share the hearth, on the basis of his good looks and the ability to string together more than a few words and make a coherent sentence-probably considered a good enough sign of decent genes.
Not that he took advantage of that kind of invite much, and sure as hell not without a lambskin, no matter how much the chicks complained. He didn't like the idea of traveling through towns and finding his face on some kid he didn't know so much so that he'd doubled up on protection. Besides rubbers, which could be hard to get sometimes, he'd bit a bullet and cried tears as a Men of fucking Letters-certified tattoo witch put a non-repro tat on the base of his dick. Hurt like fuck-all his damn tats did. This shit was supposed to be fool-proof, unless he struck through the mark-just thinking of that made him wince. His hand crept into his lap as his hind-brain took over and shielded his dick. So far, he hadn't seen any little Dean or Deanettas around and nobody stopped him on the road, to hold up a baby for him to see, so there was that.
Shaking his head, he leaned forward and spat into the flames. Why the fuck would anybody even want to bring a kid into this shit?
Dean stood, stretched, and took a quick few laps around the area, trying to get himself ready for another stretch of long driving, then cleaned up the area before tossing his shit back in the truck.
He cranked Lucille over and rummaged around in his box of cassettes-some that he's scrounged up, some he'd inherited from his dad. He was feeling copacetic, but he'd need some entertainment because this stretch coming up was barren, like no fucking joke barren. The miles before had been dull and mostly bare, but the miles coming up were fucking legitimately blighted. Dead beyond dead, like something had exploded in the air above it and burned life right out of the ground, sucked out whatever was vital in it right down to the bedrock.
Some kind of magical nuke, probably, a result of sorcerers mistakenly thinking they were being rooted out and destroyed by the government or by other clans when the plague started killing supers as well as humans. Anyway, nothing grew or lived on or around the road for miles and miles. The area being sterilized like that did have the weird effect of keeping the road in pristine condition, and if you could tolerate the feeling of the earth trying to scream, it wasn't a bad route at all. Enough people had taken it that now it was the backbone of the towns that were way further down the line, much further down.
He drove quickly, but with an eye out just in case. He was coming to the section where sand and fused glass was giving way to a nightmare's landscape, the edges of the nuked land. Everything around him was dead-skeletal trees, blackened ground, hardly anything taking root again. Further up the side of the mountain, though, life was giving a finger to the disaster. Trees steadily worked their way up the sides, branches fuzzed out with new growth, the land a pale green dotted with gray and yellow as the hardiest of plants tried to bloom, depsite being well past SpringDay now, heading into WinterDay.
He squinted through the dust building up on the windshield, peering at the desperate green clawing its way up the hillside, and thought, 'Ain't life grand?'
He hit a bump, and Creedence garbled for a second before smoothing out again, drawing his attention back to the player. He snorted and nodded along to the rhythm; holding the wheel with his knees while turning up the radio with one hand and fishing around in the tin next to him 'til he found a smoke amongst the doobs. Tobacco wasn't something he indulged in a lot-the shit was expensive as hell on this side of the mountain. But when he was relaxed like this, full of food and decent caffeine, coasting a little, and suddenly hit with the need to remind himself he was alive, there was nothing like a good smoke, made with import tobacco, by people who knew what they were doing.The squat little roll of beige paper and crisp tobacco caught quickly, blue streamers of smoke escaping out the truck window, along with the percussive beat of Looking Out My Back Door.
Speaking of smoke, the town at the end of this line was doing pretty well growing what they called Sage, some kind of super-pot. Anyway, Bobby would probably be glad to get some. Dean owed him anyway for putting up with his ass between jobs. He kind of missed smoking with Dad and Bobby...sitting around the campfire and listening to them old dudes spitting bullshit stories about their time in 'Nam, or the big cities there used to be-women, booze, death-defying adventures-them old boys could lie the blue out of the skies. He made a mental note to make sure to get some Sage for Bobby, make some time to just hang with him.
After a few more hours, the sun started to sink, and Dean pulled over, looking for some easily-defensible spot to rest in. Ended up against a short rock wall-it made a good windbreak, plus no one could sneak up on his back-not that he was really worried about that, basically just a force of habit. Slinging out his bedroll and duffle first, he then unrolled the hose containing salt, and jammed a few yew stakes engraved with protective symbols in the dirt before fixing the all-important fire-protection against the supernatural, and more importantly, against freezing to death. Mid-spring was not the best time to be about, but being a Menaletters mule meant sometime the hardships overbalanced the perks. Besides, those MoL Legacies were dicks and didn’t really give a shit what season it was-they were all cozy in their bases and their bunkers and their little chapter houses.
'There we go,' he thought, smiling in satisfaction as the flames rose high, throwing shadows that danced and wavered on the rock wall behind him. He pulled his down coat tighter, wrapped his hands in the thick blanket he had over his shoulders as well, and peered out into the steadily encroaching dark. This high in the mountain, travelers usually weren't troubled by anything more than ghosts, and due to the mass burning of the eighties, and fire-funerals becoming the norm after that, there weren't that many of them about. Besides, these were the Deadlands, nothing wanted to be here. Just mad weres, and Men'o'Letters-out on the midnight moon.
Snorting out a laugh, Dean kicked back, let the fire do its work while he took a pull on his trusty flask before tucking it back inside his coat.
"Shii-iiit-" He gasped aloud, wincing as it burned its way down his throat and hit his defenseless stomach. "Man. Shoulda got real booze instead of spelled soup, wow."
JeezusThank the shit he was drinking now was the last of the hootch he'd bought from Ash. The man might be a genius, but not at brewing.
Fire warming his outside, rotgut warming his inside and the distant, rhythmic, hooting of a night bird had his muscles finally relaxing, his legs sprawling. His head bobbed to a rhythm only he heard, a song there was a good possibility that only he remembered, him and a few old coots.
"Have you heard about the lonesome loser... he flipped the bracelet on his wrist round and round. Gotten it from a good-looking barmaid a few years ago. "Beaten by the queen of hearts all the time...
She'd taught him the right way to draw a beer, then taught him how to go down on a girl. She'd liked it well enough to give him the bracelet when Dad pulled up stakes. Yeah. And his first kiss came almost a year later, villages away. He shook his head. She must have been almost ten years older than him….
The only reason he'd kept the bracelet was the little skulls on it. Back then, his stupid ass had thought it was badass. Now he kept it on to remind himself that he could be stupid sometimes. And too sentimental.
He pulled the coat's hood up over his head and dumped a pack of powdered meat/beans mix into the pot he'd used earlier. He couldn't afford Ever-Fresh food for every meal, and night-time meals weren't important enough to rate it. But water, and some dried meat-and-beans powder wasn't bad, and he still had those biscuits from his mid-day meal; they should stay edible for the next few days.
=@=
When Dean rolled into Bedford, around five, the sky was beginning to darken. Shorter days, Dad had said, than what there used to be. Colder by far, he'd said, too. Dean didn't remember; as far as he knew, it had always been like this, gray skies and winds that snapped at your skin.
Lucille grumbled at slowing, made a noise like a dying cow before shuddering to a stop. "Dramatic princess," Dean muttered. He yanked the keys out of the ignition, grabbed his ivory-handled little beauty from the glove box before hopping out, and tucking her in his waistband. Always safe meant never sorry....
"Hey, Mole! We got mail?" some kid yelled out, dirt in the creases of a bold grin, and a hand-carved staff over his shoulder. He was surrounded by a milling group of goats, all of them seemingly determined to go their own way. Gotta love the settlements.
"Not a Manaletters," Dean shouted back. "Hunter. Running errands for the moles." Grinned at the kid and dumped the small bag of regular mail on the ground. "And bringing you your mail."
"Whooo!" The kid shouted, and ran off, so Dean kicked a leg up against Lucille's side, leaned back to wait. It wasn't long before the goatherd was back, leading a grinning village head and a mob of villagers, dragging tables and baskets with them.
Almost quicker than a blink, the small, bald square he'd stopped his truck in became the site of an impromptu celebration. Between mugs of a pretty good beer, and some really good little cakes, Dean passed the mail out, read news from Colorado, Kansas, and South Dakota. Told the mayor the MoLs were debating running a power source through the Deadlands in a few years, so taxes would probably go up, well before then.
Personally, Dean thought these people deserved more than the mail and faint promises, and the couple of registered hunters who rode through, doing up wards and stuff a couple of times a year, considering the prime cargo the towns sending back to them. Cargo like finely scraped and prepared lambskins, a whole dozen. Bats' wings, dried chicken feet, preserved bones, some dyed red. There even a couple of raw gems. Bedford always came through. The MoLs relied on the taxes they received from places like Bedford. Without the villagers, the whole lot of them would starve in their libraries.
But what the hey, life sucks and then you die. And since he was still hoofing it, Dean passed out mail with a smile, collected taxes with same, and flirted, flirted, flirted, as he worked his way through tasty celebration food. Life could be good sometimes.
=@=
"Come on, lay em out," Dean crowed, laughing around a smoke clenched in his teeth, one of a pack he'd already won this evening. There was a steady fire roaring behind him in a huge, old hearth, warming the air nicely. A few gas lamps kept the shadows at bay, lighting the main floor, and the table he was playing on, in a warm golden glow..
The woman across from him grinned, the tip of her tongue caught in her teeth as she laid her cards out. "That's one jerrican you owe me."
"Ah, sweetcheeks, can't I pay my debt some other way?" He grinned wider, eyebrows wiggling, loud, exaggerated. He threw his cards down and splayed his hands over his chest. "I mean, one little can of gasoline when you can have all this instead? I promise you I can warm you up better."
The goatherd kid next to her sighed, and dropped his cards, Ran his hands through toffee-colored hair. "Well, guess I'll go...do stuff." He dragged his eyes over Dean, stopping at his mouth, his chest. "Hope you, um. Nice meeting you."
Dean tilted his weight, balancing on the back legs of his chair and stared at the kid. Frowned a little at the kid's shift in temperament, his little goofy grin gone, his brilliant blue eyes not as brilliant as when they'd started. It was late, though, and a goatherd probably had to start the day early. "You okay, um, um…"
"Xander, and yeah. I'm fine."
He sighed again, sounding like he'd just lost his dog and his boots and his truck, but shook off whatever harshed him after a moment; he flipped Dean a little salute before taking off. The redhead swayed off towards the bar, and that left Dean and a lone player at the table, a big, dark-skinned man with a long, gray beard. He sighed, and gathered the cards.
"That boy. Always got his heart on his sleeve. Poor shit. Coulda been a little nicer to him, y'know. He's a good kid, if a little stupid."
Dean's eyes went wide in surprise. "What-me? He was interested in me? Why?"
"I might have to rethink who's the stupid one, here." The other man's eyes went narrow. "Man of Letters or not, we don't hang with any kinda Before bullshit 'round here."
"Bullshit-oh, Jeez-you think it bothered me? No, not me, dude. I just prefer...a way curvier bedmate," Dean said and twinkled at the redhead who'd just plopped back down next to him, letting him refocus his attention on her and slide out from under the judgmental glare of the big guy across from him.
"Whatya say, sweetness. You up for this? It's cool if you're not. The gas is there. Hell, I'll throw in a jerrican of fatfuel, too, made by the best renderers."
Red lit up like a search spell at Dean's offer of extra fuel on top of a promise of a better night than she usually had. She rose from her chair like a queen, ran her hands through a really gorgeous waterfall of red, making the hair spread over her shoulders in a way that had his fingers itching to dig in, get close and personal with it. He imagined her long, taut back, her ass like a peach in front of him and a handful of that thick, dark, silky stuff wrapped around his mitt like a rein, dick driving in like…
whoa-
He'd best save the fantasies for later, especially since his fantasy was swaying her hot and sinful way to the stairs that led to the rooms over the common room.
"I'm the second room on the right, cowboy, the one with the green door." She winked then headed up, leaving him to admire the swing of her hips and the way the wide legged pants she wore caressed her legs.
"JeezDamn ." he muttered.
The big guy was now stacking used mugs on a tray, head bent over the table. He frowned at Dean through a curtain of braids; the shine in his eyes speaking volumes of the degree of esteem he held Dean in...which apparently was not much. "She's a good girl. We don't like it when anyone hurts ours-any of ours." He scowled pointedly at Dean, who had had enough.
"Look, I don't know what the fuck about me makes you think I'm that kind of guy because I'm not that kind of guy. Who the hell came through here before to paint hunters with a shit brush?"
"I know guys like you. Pretty boys who think the world owes them something; give them a rank and they try and take it all. You're probably spelled up the ass so nothing can touch you."
"Okay, douchebag, hear this-I'm a JeezDamn hunter first and foremost. I'm the son of a Marine, and that might not mean anything to most folks these days, but it does to me. Hunt and protect, that's me. I don't give a shit what asshole hunter you come across, you're dealing with me now, Dean Winchester. John Winchester's son and Mary Winchester's baby boy. I never hurt an innocent in my life, and not gonna start now."
He stood, kicking the chair so it skittered back into the wall. "And if you want, you can ask Red in the morning whether it was worth it. Guarantee you she'll tell you to mind your own business-and she'll be smiling when she says it."
=@=
She was waiting at the door when he loped up the stairs, so pissed he practically flew. But damn, she looked good, thick in all the right places, healthy, her hair shining in the lamplight and the tidal wave of anger he'd been surfing on faded just like that.
"Well, come on in," she smirked. "I didn't invite you up here to bake a cake."
"I like a woman who knows what she wants," he said and strolled through her door into a room that was definitely a woman's room. It made his chest go warm, and he felt...like he wanted to sleep there, even more than he wanted to fuck her. He shook his head. He was getting weird in his old age.
It might have been odd to noticed since he came up here to fuck her, but the room was really was nice, with its sun-yellow walls, and light-blue drapes at the windows. It smelled of fresh air and the flowers she had in a vase on a dresser. Her bed was big enough for two, and covered with neat, clean, sky-blue linens. It'd been a while since he'd laid out on a bed so nice. His fingers itched to stroke the sheets, couldn't wait to lay back in that bed with the hottest chick he'd been with in way too long.
He glanced over as she was taking her clothes off, more like she was getting ready for an exam instead of stripping for a lover-not the kind of atmosphere he was hoping for. She caught his uncertain look and grinned. "Not seeing skin, cowboy. Keep up."
"I'm right with you, sweetheart." He shucked off his boots, dropping to the floor to pull his socks off because there was just no sexy way to get socks off, he thought. He yanked off his pants where he was sitting, then staggered way less than gracefully to his feet. Pulled off his shirts, both overshirt and undershirt at once.
"Eager now, are ya?" he heard behind him.
"Hell yeah," he said, dropping his shirts somewhere on the floor, followed by his thumbs going for the waistband of his underwear. She was there first, though, shoving them down, fisting his very interested dick without pausing.
"Nice."
He turned around, pushing her arms apart and spreading his hands wide over her hips. "Oh, hell yeah, definitely," he said, squeezing soft, smooth skin soft and giving her a grin that had her cheeks pinking up. He smirked, winked, before bending down to kiss her, but she cut him off.
"Let's get on the bed. I'm not trying to break my neck fulfilling some fantasy of yours," she said. Dean blinked at her. She was ruthlessly practical, this one. He kinda liked it.
Once on the bed, she pushed him down until he settled in the vee of her legs, mouthing softly at her curls, shoving his hands under her peach of an ass, gripping it to spread her wider. She seemed to like it-she hadn't punched him in the head yet, so he worked his tongue slowly up the center of her, licking a meandering stripe up her pussy until he latched onto her clit. She shivered and moaned, thrusting up into his mouth, cursing as he went to work. He sucked and licked her like she was candy, working his fingers in and out, slow, than fast, until they were dripping wet, and she was kicking her heels into his back. He licked, and rubbed his chin into her, inhaling between breaths for air because she smelled good-hot, wet and sexy. His dick throbbed and twitched with each moan he wrung out of her and it was agonizing, and also, the hottest thing ever. He pulled back, and shoved all his fingers into her, using his thumb to rub against the slippery bud of her clit.
"Come on, baby," he murmured. "You gonna come? You need a little push?" he thrust his fingers in as far as he could and latched onto her clit again, tongued her, sucked, and grazed her with his teeth, and she grabbed handfuls of his hair and screamed, cursing him, the world, herself, and how damn good it was.
When her ass hit the bed again, Dean scrabbled all over her bedstand. Hadn't he tossed a lambskin on it? After a few frustrating seconds of not finding it, he said, "Hey, ah...do you mind? I've got," he gestured to his dick, "spell that--"
She parted thick curls with her fingers and showed him the feminine version of his own tattoo, at the top of her mound. "We're double safe," was all she said. She didn't owe him a damn explanation for anything. He grinned and blew her a kiss since she didn't want a real one, and lifted her hips up, pushed inside her in one long thrust. He ground his dick into her-she'd been so fucking hot that he wasn't going to last much at all. Muttering apologies, he drove in, over and over, going for his own satisfaction because he was pretty sure she'd hit her max,,,he opened his eyes and saw her straining right along with him. Well, good, because this was it-he flexed, and howled, and came like an electric current was blowing through him right into her.
He hit his peak, and kept on fucking her on the downward crest, and she smiled through his whole orgasm. "Cowboy," she murmured appreciatively when he dropped down beside her.
Come morning, he wasn't surprised to see she was gone. She'd been nice enough to let him sleep in her bed, but everyone had work to do, and no one had time to lounge around. He sighed, heaved himself out of bed and searched for his clothes, followed directions to the bathroom and was out of her hair in under an hour. Didn't take much more than that to have the village in his rearview, Lucille grumbling contentedly as they headed out to the road again.
"Our natural element, milady. We weren't made to lounge about in someone's bed all day, we were meant to be out here, hunting things, helping people." He flipped a cassette out of the box, and slid it home, punched a button, relaxed into Let It Roll as he drove them down the road.
"Yeah, we're not homebodies, not us, girl." He patted her dash and never once looked back.
phoenix1966
Chapter two
2005
"Jeeezuz-fuck!" Dean swept the wheel to the right, and the old truck gasped and coughed but swung into the other lane, steering around the giant ass pothole that hadn't been there the last time he'd hit this road. "Shit-fuck, Lucille, don’t kill me..." he muttered, the slewing having for some reason set his cassette deck to gargling the tape instead of playing it. "Okay…" He glanced in the back and noted the mole package bag had slid to the floor, but it seemed like it was still sealed, so that was good. The regular mail bag was still on the narrow bench-good for that.
He chugged steadily along as the road climbed higher and higher, his eyes going back to his rear-view mirror and the thick column of smoke reflected in it, climbing into the sky. Even though these days it was more than likely just garbage fires, or old buildings catching lightening strikes and burning to the ground, the sight of those thick, roiling clouds still had the power to make his gut roll.
He'd been no bigger than a minute back in those days when those fires were all people, but it had sunk into his baby brain like an instinct and he still got the shakes when he saw them.
Besides, it hadn't been that long since he'd burned his dad either-just him and Bobby out in the back of what had once upon a time been Bobby's junk yard, Singer's Salvage. They'd made a pyre, and set a torch to it, Uncle Bobby cussing under his breath the whole time. Passing a bottle back and forth between him and Bobby, some stuff Bobby called Real Brand Name booze, that he'd put aside a long, long, long time ago. Hadn't been bad, really. Smooth. Dad would have liked it a lot.
Course, the damn idiot could have had some too, if he hadn't gone swinging in like fuckin' Tarzan on a clique of chewers-the hunt had gone sideways because instead of the usual small family unit-a boar, sow and one or two shoats-it ended up being a JeezDamn pack of 'em. Fucking Harvelle and his shoot first and research later mentality.
Dean held the steering wheel in a strangler's grip, his heart beating fast with fury..."Fuck," he huffed, then deflated with a sigh.
Yeah, hadn't really been Bill's fault, not entirely. He might have pushed to jump the hunt, but chewers-ghouls-weren't known for packing up together, even in starvation times. Just another weird shift in monster behavior, so Bobby said.
Ghouls.
Ghouls had made sure he'd lost his dad; Ellen and Jo Harvelle had lost a husband and a father. JeezDamn. Dean shook his head, reached under the dashboard and pulled out a small, silver flask with J W engraved on it, took a quick gulp, hissing as not-so-smooth hootch burned a screaming path from throat to gut, and woofed. He flicked a long splash of the stuff out of the open window-here was to John and Bill, the both of them, may they rest.
'Round about one o'clock, his stomach reminded him that it needed filling, so he cranked Lucille over onto a wide spot at the side of the road, barren sand and rocks that Dad always called a scenic outlook, while snorting bitterly and flashing the bird at whatever was in front of them. His old man had had his issues.
While setting up a quick fire for coffee and reheating some preciously won Ever-Fresh soup, Dean checked his cargo over, debated setting up the radio as well, but eventually decided against it. If the Moles seriously needed to contact him, they'd have a psychic send a poke into his brain. The radio was basically for gossip, or for them to ride his damn ass because they didn't have enough to keep them busy, or so it seemed sometimes. Fucking Moles all thought hunters were shaved apes or something.
A good cup of coffee, some damn fine soup, couple of biscuits and a smoke later, he checked his watch, did some quick calculations and figured he'd be on the road another couple of hours before he hit the first settlement. This one was a good one; an actual village-houses, farms, with them doing well enough to have surplus goods to trade, even a little store or two, the last time he'd been through. They were doing well enough to start generating mail. He had a few letters to give them, some folks who'd decided to give in to the siren call of city life-all of a thousand folks living cheek to jowl in what remained of an old military base and a small Mole bunker.
Dean inhaled harsh smoke, and smiled in satisfaction, letting the smoke leak out of the corner of his mouth. He loved runs like this. He loved stopping to spend some time in places where people were beginning to settle, starting to build up some kind of life. Dad hadn't. He'd hated them. Claimed that they were trouble magnets. Well, far as Dean could see, Dad had been a paranoid old grump. Supers weren't any more inclined to hit the new settlements than feral humans, less probably. Especially with the laws out of Colorado and New Kansas giving some kind of rights to human-ish supernatural critters.
'Dad. JeezusKris, there was one helluva character.' Dean barked out a laugh-part humor, part still-felt frustration. He remembered what stopping was like in the old days. They'd go weeks, sometimes fucking months at a time before finally coming to roost somewhere like crack-winged birds. Then if they were lucky-if he was lucky, Dean thought-they'd camp in old houses, motels, gas stations, someplace where they were actually surrounded by four walls-mostly.
He remembered one place-he must have been about, what, five, maybe six? Seven at the oldest...anyway, they'd spent some time squatting in a motel, him and Dad and a couple of other families. People were trickling in by dribs and drabs, adding to the small group already living there. It was a loose sort of settlement just about knitting together to become a town or something, all centered around the motel and the people squatting in about a dozen or more log cabins. Dad called them CCC cabins, a name that'd stuck in Dean's head. He'd been shocked to find out, years later, it meant those cabins had been sitting there since the 19-fucking-30s. They sure knew how to built shit to last in those days. It hadn't been a bad place to live, even though Dad used to spend a lot of his nights gone somewhere.
As he grew out of boy-hood, Dean came to realize that good old Dad had been out getting that itch scratched somewhere. More power to him if he had, it sure must have been one of the last times before he became a dour, old, hunting-obsessed monk.
Dean grunted, flicking the roach into the fire. Yeah well, his old man might have been a monk, but as for Dean, his right hand wasn't nearly entertaining enough, not after he learned what girls and boys could do together. And especially when he came of age, and many a homestead started in inviting him into share the hearth, on the basis of his good looks and the ability to string together more than a few words and make a coherent sentence-probably considered a good enough sign of decent genes.
Not that he took advantage of that kind of invite much, and sure as hell not without a lambskin, no matter how much the chicks complained. He didn't like the idea of traveling through towns and finding his face on some kid he didn't know so much so that he'd doubled up on protection. Besides rubbers, which could be hard to get sometimes, he'd bit a bullet and cried tears as a Men of fucking Letters-certified tattoo witch put a non-repro tat on the base of his dick. Hurt like fuck-all his damn tats did. This shit was supposed to be fool-proof, unless he struck through the mark-just thinking of that made him wince. His hand crept into his lap as his hind-brain took over and shielded his dick. So far, he hadn't seen any little Dean or Deanettas around and nobody stopped him on the road, to hold up a baby for him to see, so there was that.
Shaking his head, he leaned forward and spat into the flames. Why the fuck would anybody even want to bring a kid into this shit?
Dean stood, stretched, and took a quick few laps around the area, trying to get himself ready for another stretch of long driving, then cleaned up the area before tossing his shit back in the truck.
He cranked Lucille over and rummaged around in his box of cassettes-some that he's scrounged up, some he'd inherited from his dad. He was feeling copacetic, but he'd need some entertainment because this stretch coming up was barren, like no fucking joke barren. The miles before had been dull and mostly bare, but the miles coming up were fucking legitimately blighted. Dead beyond dead, like something had exploded in the air above it and burned life right out of the ground, sucked out whatever was vital in it right down to the bedrock.
Some kind of magical nuke, probably, a result of sorcerers mistakenly thinking they were being rooted out and destroyed by the government or by other clans when the plague started killing supers as well as humans. Anyway, nothing grew or lived on or around the road for miles and miles. The area being sterilized like that did have the weird effect of keeping the road in pristine condition, and if you could tolerate the feeling of the earth trying to scream, it wasn't a bad route at all. Enough people had taken it that now it was the backbone of the towns that were way further down the line, much further down.
He drove quickly, but with an eye out just in case. He was coming to the section where sand and fused glass was giving way to a nightmare's landscape, the edges of the nuked land. Everything around him was dead-skeletal trees, blackened ground, hardly anything taking root again. Further up the side of the mountain, though, life was giving a finger to the disaster. Trees steadily worked their way up the sides, branches fuzzed out with new growth, the land a pale green dotted with gray and yellow as the hardiest of plants tried to bloom, depsite being well past SpringDay now, heading into WinterDay.
He squinted through the dust building up on the windshield, peering at the desperate green clawing its way up the hillside, and thought, 'Ain't life grand?'
He hit a bump, and Creedence garbled for a second before smoothing out again, drawing his attention back to the player. He snorted and nodded along to the rhythm; holding the wheel with his knees while turning up the radio with one hand and fishing around in the tin next to him 'til he found a smoke amongst the doobs. Tobacco wasn't something he indulged in a lot-the shit was expensive as hell on this side of the mountain. But when he was relaxed like this, full of food and decent caffeine, coasting a little, and suddenly hit with the need to remind himself he was alive, there was nothing like a good smoke, made with import tobacco, by people who knew what they were doing.The squat little roll of beige paper and crisp tobacco caught quickly, blue streamers of smoke escaping out the truck window, along with the percussive beat of Looking Out My Back Door.
Speaking of smoke, the town at the end of this line was doing pretty well growing what they called Sage, some kind of super-pot. Anyway, Bobby would probably be glad to get some. Dean owed him anyway for putting up with his ass between jobs. He kind of missed smoking with Dad and Bobby...sitting around the campfire and listening to them old dudes spitting bullshit stories about their time in 'Nam, or the big cities there used to be-women, booze, death-defying adventures-them old boys could lie the blue out of the skies. He made a mental note to make sure to get some Sage for Bobby, make some time to just hang with him.
After a few more hours, the sun started to sink, and Dean pulled over, looking for some easily-defensible spot to rest in. Ended up against a short rock wall-it made a good windbreak, plus no one could sneak up on his back-not that he was really worried about that, basically just a force of habit. Slinging out his bedroll and duffle first, he then unrolled the hose containing salt, and jammed a few yew stakes engraved with protective symbols in the dirt before fixing the all-important fire-protection against the supernatural, and more importantly, against freezing to death. Mid-spring was not the best time to be about, but being a Menaletters mule meant sometime the hardships overbalanced the perks. Besides, those MoL Legacies were dicks and didn’t really give a shit what season it was-they were all cozy in their bases and their bunkers and their little chapter houses.
'There we go,' he thought, smiling in satisfaction as the flames rose high, throwing shadows that danced and wavered on the rock wall behind him. He pulled his down coat tighter, wrapped his hands in the thick blanket he had over his shoulders as well, and peered out into the steadily encroaching dark. This high in the mountain, travelers usually weren't troubled by anything more than ghosts, and due to the mass burning of the eighties, and fire-funerals becoming the norm after that, there weren't that many of them about. Besides, these were the Deadlands, nothing wanted to be here. Just mad weres, and Men'o'Letters-out on the midnight moon.
Snorting out a laugh, Dean kicked back, let the fire do its work while he took a pull on his trusty flask before tucking it back inside his coat.
"Shii-iiit-" He gasped aloud, wincing as it burned its way down his throat and hit his defenseless stomach. "Man. Shoulda got real booze instead of spelled soup, wow."
JeezusThank the shit he was drinking now was the last of the hootch he'd bought from Ash. The man might be a genius, but not at brewing.
Fire warming his outside, rotgut warming his inside and the distant, rhythmic, hooting of a night bird had his muscles finally relaxing, his legs sprawling. His head bobbed to a rhythm only he heard, a song there was a good possibility that only he remembered, him and a few old coots.
"Have you heard about the lonesome loser... he flipped the bracelet on his wrist round and round. Gotten it from a good-looking barmaid a few years ago. "Beaten by the queen of hearts all the time...
She'd taught him the right way to draw a beer, then taught him how to go down on a girl. She'd liked it well enough to give him the bracelet when Dad pulled up stakes. Yeah. And his first kiss came almost a year later, villages away. He shook his head. She must have been almost ten years older than him….
The only reason he'd kept the bracelet was the little skulls on it. Back then, his stupid ass had thought it was badass. Now he kept it on to remind himself that he could be stupid sometimes. And too sentimental.
He pulled the coat's hood up over his head and dumped a pack of powdered meat/beans mix into the pot he'd used earlier. He couldn't afford Ever-Fresh food for every meal, and night-time meals weren't important enough to rate it. But water, and some dried meat-and-beans powder wasn't bad, and he still had those biscuits from his mid-day meal; they should stay edible for the next few days.
=@=
When Dean rolled into Bedford, around five, the sky was beginning to darken. Shorter days, Dad had said, than what there used to be. Colder by far, he'd said, too. Dean didn't remember; as far as he knew, it had always been like this, gray skies and winds that snapped at your skin.
Lucille grumbled at slowing, made a noise like a dying cow before shuddering to a stop. "Dramatic princess," Dean muttered. He yanked the keys out of the ignition, grabbed his ivory-handled little beauty from the glove box before hopping out, and tucking her in his waistband. Always safe meant never sorry....
"Hey, Mole! We got mail?" some kid yelled out, dirt in the creases of a bold grin, and a hand-carved staff over his shoulder. He was surrounded by a milling group of goats, all of them seemingly determined to go their own way. Gotta love the settlements.
"Not a Manaletters," Dean shouted back. "Hunter. Running errands for the moles." Grinned at the kid and dumped the small bag of regular mail on the ground. "And bringing you your mail."
"Whooo!" The kid shouted, and ran off, so Dean kicked a leg up against Lucille's side, leaned back to wait. It wasn't long before the goatherd was back, leading a grinning village head and a mob of villagers, dragging tables and baskets with them.
Almost quicker than a blink, the small, bald square he'd stopped his truck in became the site of an impromptu celebration. Between mugs of a pretty good beer, and some really good little cakes, Dean passed the mail out, read news from Colorado, Kansas, and South Dakota. Told the mayor the MoLs were debating running a power source through the Deadlands in a few years, so taxes would probably go up, well before then.
Personally, Dean thought these people deserved more than the mail and faint promises, and the couple of registered hunters who rode through, doing up wards and stuff a couple of times a year, considering the prime cargo the towns sending back to them. Cargo like finely scraped and prepared lambskins, a whole dozen. Bats' wings, dried chicken feet, preserved bones, some dyed red. There even a couple of raw gems. Bedford always came through. The MoLs relied on the taxes they received from places like Bedford. Without the villagers, the whole lot of them would starve in their libraries.
But what the hey, life sucks and then you die. And since he was still hoofing it, Dean passed out mail with a smile, collected taxes with same, and flirted, flirted, flirted, as he worked his way through tasty celebration food. Life could be good sometimes.
=@=
"Come on, lay em out," Dean crowed, laughing around a smoke clenched in his teeth, one of a pack he'd already won this evening. There was a steady fire roaring behind him in a huge, old hearth, warming the air nicely. A few gas lamps kept the shadows at bay, lighting the main floor, and the table he was playing on, in a warm golden glow..
The woman across from him grinned, the tip of her tongue caught in her teeth as she laid her cards out. "That's one jerrican you owe me."
"Ah, sweetcheeks, can't I pay my debt some other way?" He grinned wider, eyebrows wiggling, loud, exaggerated. He threw his cards down and splayed his hands over his chest. "I mean, one little can of gasoline when you can have all this instead? I promise you I can warm you up better."
The goatherd kid next to her sighed, and dropped his cards, Ran his hands through toffee-colored hair. "Well, guess I'll go...do stuff." He dragged his eyes over Dean, stopping at his mouth, his chest. "Hope you, um. Nice meeting you."
Dean tilted his weight, balancing on the back legs of his chair and stared at the kid. Frowned a little at the kid's shift in temperament, his little goofy grin gone, his brilliant blue eyes not as brilliant as when they'd started. It was late, though, and a goatherd probably had to start the day early. "You okay, um, um…"
"Xander, and yeah. I'm fine."
He sighed again, sounding like he'd just lost his dog and his boots and his truck, but shook off whatever harshed him after a moment; he flipped Dean a little salute before taking off. The redhead swayed off towards the bar, and that left Dean and a lone player at the table, a big, dark-skinned man with a long, gray beard. He sighed, and gathered the cards.
"That boy. Always got his heart on his sleeve. Poor shit. Coulda been a little nicer to him, y'know. He's a good kid, if a little stupid."
Dean's eyes went wide in surprise. "What-me? He was interested in me? Why?"
"I might have to rethink who's the stupid one, here." The other man's eyes went narrow. "Man of Letters or not, we don't hang with any kinda Before bullshit 'round here."
"Bullshit-oh, Jeez-you think it bothered me? No, not me, dude. I just prefer...a way curvier bedmate," Dean said and twinkled at the redhead who'd just plopped back down next to him, letting him refocus his attention on her and slide out from under the judgmental glare of the big guy across from him.
"Whatya say, sweetness. You up for this? It's cool if you're not. The gas is there. Hell, I'll throw in a jerrican of fatfuel, too, made by the best renderers."
Red lit up like a search spell at Dean's offer of extra fuel on top of a promise of a better night than she usually had. She rose from her chair like a queen, ran her hands through a really gorgeous waterfall of red, making the hair spread over her shoulders in a way that had his fingers itching to dig in, get close and personal with it. He imagined her long, taut back, her ass like a peach in front of him and a handful of that thick, dark, silky stuff wrapped around his mitt like a rein, dick driving in like…
whoa-
He'd best save the fantasies for later, especially since his fantasy was swaying her hot and sinful way to the stairs that led to the rooms over the common room.
"I'm the second room on the right, cowboy, the one with the green door." She winked then headed up, leaving him to admire the swing of her hips and the way the wide legged pants she wore caressed her legs.
"JeezDamn ." he muttered.
The big guy was now stacking used mugs on a tray, head bent over the table. He frowned at Dean through a curtain of braids; the shine in his eyes speaking volumes of the degree of esteem he held Dean in...which apparently was not much. "She's a good girl. We don't like it when anyone hurts ours-any of ours." He scowled pointedly at Dean, who had had enough.
"Look, I don't know what the fuck about me makes you think I'm that kind of guy because I'm not that kind of guy. Who the hell came through here before to paint hunters with a shit brush?"
"I know guys like you. Pretty boys who think the world owes them something; give them a rank and they try and take it all. You're probably spelled up the ass so nothing can touch you."
"Okay, douchebag, hear this-I'm a JeezDamn hunter first and foremost. I'm the son of a Marine, and that might not mean anything to most folks these days, but it does to me. Hunt and protect, that's me. I don't give a shit what asshole hunter you come across, you're dealing with me now, Dean Winchester. John Winchester's son and Mary Winchester's baby boy. I never hurt an innocent in my life, and not gonna start now."
He stood, kicking the chair so it skittered back into the wall. "And if you want, you can ask Red in the morning whether it was worth it. Guarantee you she'll tell you to mind your own business-and she'll be smiling when she says it."
=@=
She was waiting at the door when he loped up the stairs, so pissed he practically flew. But damn, she looked good, thick in all the right places, healthy, her hair shining in the lamplight and the tidal wave of anger he'd been surfing on faded just like that.
"Well, come on in," she smirked. "I didn't invite you up here to bake a cake."
"I like a woman who knows what she wants," he said and strolled through her door into a room that was definitely a woman's room. It made his chest go warm, and he felt...like he wanted to sleep there, even more than he wanted to fuck her. He shook his head. He was getting weird in his old age.
It might have been odd to noticed since he came up here to fuck her, but the room was really was nice, with its sun-yellow walls, and light-blue drapes at the windows. It smelled of fresh air and the flowers she had in a vase on a dresser. Her bed was big enough for two, and covered with neat, clean, sky-blue linens. It'd been a while since he'd laid out on a bed so nice. His fingers itched to stroke the sheets, couldn't wait to lay back in that bed with the hottest chick he'd been with in way too long.
He glanced over as she was taking her clothes off, more like she was getting ready for an exam instead of stripping for a lover-not the kind of atmosphere he was hoping for. She caught his uncertain look and grinned. "Not seeing skin, cowboy. Keep up."
"I'm right with you, sweetheart." He shucked off his boots, dropping to the floor to pull his socks off because there was just no sexy way to get socks off, he thought. He yanked off his pants where he was sitting, then staggered way less than gracefully to his feet. Pulled off his shirts, both overshirt and undershirt at once.
"Eager now, are ya?" he heard behind him.
"Hell yeah," he said, dropping his shirts somewhere on the floor, followed by his thumbs going for the waistband of his underwear. She was there first, though, shoving them down, fisting his very interested dick without pausing.
"Nice."
He turned around, pushing her arms apart and spreading his hands wide over her hips. "Oh, hell yeah, definitely," he said, squeezing soft, smooth skin soft and giving her a grin that had her cheeks pinking up. He smirked, winked, before bending down to kiss her, but she cut him off.
"Let's get on the bed. I'm not trying to break my neck fulfilling some fantasy of yours," she said. Dean blinked at her. She was ruthlessly practical, this one. He kinda liked it.
Once on the bed, she pushed him down until he settled in the vee of her legs, mouthing softly at her curls, shoving his hands under her peach of an ass, gripping it to spread her wider. She seemed to like it-she hadn't punched him in the head yet, so he worked his tongue slowly up the center of her, licking a meandering stripe up her pussy until he latched onto her clit. She shivered and moaned, thrusting up into his mouth, cursing as he went to work. He sucked and licked her like she was candy, working his fingers in and out, slow, than fast, until they were dripping wet, and she was kicking her heels into his back. He licked, and rubbed his chin into her, inhaling between breaths for air because she smelled good-hot, wet and sexy. His dick throbbed and twitched with each moan he wrung out of her and it was agonizing, and also, the hottest thing ever. He pulled back, and shoved all his fingers into her, using his thumb to rub against the slippery bud of her clit.
"Come on, baby," he murmured. "You gonna come? You need a little push?" he thrust his fingers in as far as he could and latched onto her clit again, tongued her, sucked, and grazed her with his teeth, and she grabbed handfuls of his hair and screamed, cursing him, the world, herself, and how damn good it was.
When her ass hit the bed again, Dean scrabbled all over her bedstand. Hadn't he tossed a lambskin on it? After a few frustrating seconds of not finding it, he said, "Hey, ah...do you mind? I've got," he gestured to his dick, "spell that--"
She parted thick curls with her fingers and showed him the feminine version of his own tattoo, at the top of her mound. "We're double safe," was all she said. She didn't owe him a damn explanation for anything. He grinned and blew her a kiss since she didn't want a real one, and lifted her hips up, pushed inside her in one long thrust. He ground his dick into her-she'd been so fucking hot that he wasn't going to last much at all. Muttering apologies, he drove in, over and over, going for his own satisfaction because he was pretty sure she'd hit her max,,,he opened his eyes and saw her straining right along with him. Well, good, because this was it-he flexed, and howled, and came like an electric current was blowing through him right into her.
He hit his peak, and kept on fucking her on the downward crest, and she smiled through his whole orgasm. "Cowboy," she murmured appreciatively when he dropped down beside her.
Come morning, he wasn't surprised to see she was gone. She'd been nice enough to let him sleep in her bed, but everyone had work to do, and no one had time to lounge around. He sighed, heaved himself out of bed and searched for his clothes, followed directions to the bathroom and was out of her hair in under an hour. Didn't take much more than that to have the village in his rearview, Lucille grumbling contentedly as they headed out to the road again.
"Our natural element, milady. We weren't made to lounge about in someone's bed all day, we were meant to be out here, hunting things, helping people." He flipped a cassette out of the box, and slid it home, punched a button, relaxed into Let It Roll as he drove them down the road.
"Yeah, we're not homebodies, not us, girl." He patted her dash and never once looked back.
phoenix1966
Chapter two