Looking over his shoulder at Des, he steeled his jaw and gave him another once over. Still, not a damn scratch on him. It was like the man was the single best rodeo rider in the nation, or some kinda demon. It took him this long to realize he'd never bothered checking, and mentally he had to scold himself for it. But, with everything else that had been going on, Dean gave himself the leeway that he'd never really had the time for it. Still. Better late than never.
"Christo," he muttered it under his breath as if it were a swear at the sheer desolation of the town rather than with the intentions of getting a reaction out of Des. When the other hunter showed no signs of tensing, Dean gave a shrug. Well. At least he checked. Guess the guy just got lucky after all. He turned his attention back toward the town. "My guess is he probably bailed or got ganged with the rest of 'em. Never seen a place this empty. What do you think the chances are the whole damn thing's full of hauntings?" His expression soured as he realized he'd left all the salt bags in the trunk, too. God dammit. "'Course, if the arachnid Brady Bunch was livin' next door, I'd probably hop on the next train out, too."
Des did a doubletake and blinked. "And bless you too, kid," he said without so much as a flinch- more like an expression of 'why you be muttering the name of God at me, crazy?'
He rolled his shoulders. "Probably, but I think ghosts are the last thing we oughta be worried about- those spider bitches probably ain't even the worse things out there. Did you see what some of these idiots came in looking like?" He jerked his head behind him, even though most of the streets were clear at this point. Frowning, he stepped up onto the porch of what looked like an abandoned general store.
"So who puts a town in the middle of a creepy forest? That just implies there were actually people dumb enough to live here once upon a time," he muttered.
Which means, if he wasn't already sure of it, this couldn't be the Between. Well, fuck, that just made things even more complicated.
"Somebody who's got no reason to be afraid of what's in it," Dean responded, tone despondent and resigned. Which meant whatever had built this town was probably bigger and badder than what they'd run into outside of it. Hopefully, they wouldn't come home to find Goldilocks and her seven cousins in their beds and throw a damn fit.
The other possibility was more frightening than that even, though, so he resisted the urge to voice it. The other distinct possibility was that no one had lived there at all, even once upon a time, and it had been built to keep them in. There was no denying the fact that they could very easily have been herded into this fort by those spiders. Hell, if little baby spiders with screaming babies on their legs started scrambling around out of the buildings, Dean would only be half surprised. But, he'd rather act under the assumption that it was just abandoned and hope they got the chance to find some leftover supplies. Food.
"Come on," he beckoned to Des, heading inside the front door of the store. The door took some rattling, but it came open, and the way the dust-laden inside reminded him of Pontiac made him linger a little in the entrance. "There's gotta be something around that's worth a damn to somebody."
"And look where it got 'em," Des pointed out in a vague attempt to be comforting. He was thinking the same damn things though, because in this business, you couldn't afford not to be paranoid. Still, he wasn't going to look a gift horse down the gullet until something actually happened- best he could do was acknowledge that this place could be a trap and be unsurprised when shit got real.
He leaned on one of the posts while Dean worked the handle, still casting suspicious glances over his shoulder. "I'll be glad when this joint stops bein' so damned quiet." On one hand, you can hear shit coming- on the other, a lot of things don't make a hell of a lot of noise, to begin with.
He followed Dean into the store and scowled at the empty shelves. "At least whatever packed up and left did it intentionally." Not that that was particularly comforting- it implied something might be wrong with this place. "Unless something beat us to the punch."
He ran a finger across one of the shelves and came up with almost an inch of dust. "No one's touched this place in awhile."
"Wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that one, if I were you. Town this empty, there's gotta be a reason they all up and left." It looked intentional enough, anyway. The fact that everything had been packed away and removed, the fact that most of the stores and buildings didn't appear broken into or damaged in any act of violence, and the fact that there were absolutely no vehicles, horse carcasses or other modes of transport left behind. If they'd ever existed, the townsfolk had used them to get out while they had the chance.
The more he observed of this, the more apprehensive Dean became of whatever Big Bad rolled into town and forced them out. Or, frightened them out. Either way, it wasn't looking good for them staying there long term. Or short term. Or however term they'd be there before they found a way back to some goddamn civilization, or the right timeline.
"Doesn't really bode well for a lot of people comin' back to fix the quiet." However eerie that silence was. "Well, whatever it was, if it hasn't come back by now, it's probably not gonna for the night just because we showed up. I say we find a place to get some shut eye, stay for the night, then work on getting an idea of where the hell we are tomorrow."
Des frowned and moved along the rows of shelves. "Not enough remains around to be a plague, even with the wildlife." That was something anyway. Not that he could get sick, but it was the principle of the thing. "Looks we've got our very own Croatoan," he adds, half-heartedly.
Yeah, he has no idea of how significant that is to Dean. Lesson one in how they are definitely not from the same universe.
He moved out from behind the shelves. "Best thing for everyone- especially for that girl who got hurt. And it'll give us time to figure out who the rest of these people are."
Because he's still not buying that they're all random. There has to be something in common.
Dean doesn't even bother to listen to the rest of the statement, because he's bumrushing Des and grabbing him by the front of his shirt, forcing him back against the cash register in the most threatening way he can manage. The dead look in his eyes turns to a kind of seething, latent rage and he tries to seek out some answers in Des' eyes as he demands them from him verbally.
"The hell do you know about Croatoan?" Not a demon, but maybe something else. He shouldn't have been so goddamn quick to trust another hunter, because at this rate, there was a 50 percent chance he was some kinda evil. There weren't a whole lot of regular hunters who knew about the virus and made it out alive, and Dean would be damned if he didn't believe he'd met every one of 'em.
HELLO. Des only looks surprised for half a minute before he just looks irritated. He knows that look pretty damn well- he's seen it in a mirror. It would make him wonder how the hell a kid could manage four thousand years worth of existential rage, but any mortal who could walk the roads he's walked should look like that or else he'd worry something was wrong with him.
"You mean besides it being one of the biggest unsolved mysteries ever? Jack shit. That's why it's an unsolved mystery. Shit, kid, if I knew Peter Graves got you hot and bothered, I would've kept my trap shut. If I tell you Elvis was abducted by aliens, you gonna slam my head into the wall?"
… It was some crappy, off-hand reference to an old colony. Not to the virus. Not to what had happened in River Grove. He didn't even have any idea of what had caused the problems in Roanoke originally, by the looks of it. Dean's grip eased up and he backed off, scrubbing the back of his hand over his mouth and trying to find some kind of excuse for the way he'd come off his hinges.
"I'm just … real big on history. You know how it is." Crappy excuse. Like any hunter had the free time to be that much of a history buff. Still, it was the best he was getting, and Dean took an awkward moment to straighten out his collar as he backed off, clearing his throat.
"Let's just, uh. I saw a pub across the road, it might have something stocked up that they didn't clear out."
"Uh... Okay?" Des blinked a few times and then brushed off his coat. Yeah. Big on history, his ass, but he could evade with the best of them. Whatever the deal with Roanoke was, it didn't pertain to this situation.
And if it did, well, Dean might just gain himself an interrogator.
In the meantime, he just backed away from the front counter and headed for the door. "God save the liquor and children first," he muttered. "We can hope."
"Christo," he muttered it under his breath as if it were a swear at the sheer desolation of the town rather than with the intentions of getting a reaction out of Des. When the other hunter showed no signs of tensing, Dean gave a shrug. Well. At least he checked. Guess the guy just got lucky after all. He turned his attention back toward the town. "My guess is he probably bailed or got ganged with the rest of 'em. Never seen a place this empty. What do you think the chances are the whole damn thing's full of hauntings?" His expression soured as he realized he'd left all the salt bags in the trunk, too. God dammit. "'Course, if the arachnid Brady Bunch was livin' next door, I'd probably hop on the next train out, too."
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He rolled his shoulders. "Probably, but I think ghosts are the last thing we oughta be worried about- those spider bitches probably ain't even the worse things out there. Did you see what some of these idiots came in looking like?" He jerked his head behind him, even though most of the streets were clear at this point. Frowning, he stepped up onto the porch of what looked like an abandoned general store.
"So who puts a town in the middle of a creepy forest? That just implies there were actually people dumb enough to live here once upon a time," he muttered.
Which means, if he wasn't already sure of it, this couldn't be the Between. Well, fuck, that just made things even more complicated.
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The other possibility was more frightening than that even, though, so he resisted the urge to voice it. The other distinct possibility was that no one had lived there at all, even once upon a time, and it had been built to keep them in. There was no denying the fact that they could very easily have been herded into this fort by those spiders. Hell, if little baby spiders with screaming babies on their legs started scrambling around out of the buildings, Dean would only be half surprised. But, he'd rather act under the assumption that it was just abandoned and hope they got the chance to find some leftover supplies. Food.
"Come on," he beckoned to Des, heading inside the front door of the store. The door took some rattling, but it came open, and the way the dust-laden inside reminded him of Pontiac made him linger a little in the entrance. "There's gotta be something around that's worth a damn to somebody."
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He leaned on one of the posts while Dean worked the handle, still casting suspicious glances over his shoulder. "I'll be glad when this joint stops bein' so damned quiet." On one hand, you can hear shit coming- on the other, a lot of things don't make a hell of a lot of noise, to begin with.
He followed Dean into the store and scowled at the empty shelves. "At least whatever packed up and left did it intentionally." Not that that was particularly comforting- it implied something might be wrong with this place. "Unless something beat us to the punch."
He ran a finger across one of the shelves and came up with almost an inch of dust. "No one's touched this place in awhile."
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The more he observed of this, the more apprehensive Dean became of whatever Big Bad rolled into town and forced them out. Or, frightened them out. Either way, it wasn't looking good for them staying there long term. Or short term. Or however term they'd be there before they found a way back to some goddamn civilization, or the right timeline.
"Doesn't really bode well for a lot of people comin' back to fix the quiet." However eerie that silence was. "Well, whatever it was, if it hasn't come back by now, it's probably not gonna for the night just because we showed up. I say we find a place to get some shut eye, stay for the night, then work on getting an idea of where the hell we are tomorrow."
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Yeah, he has no idea of how significant that is to Dean. Lesson one in how they are definitely not from the same universe.
He moved out from behind the shelves. "Best thing for everyone- especially for that girl who got hurt. And it'll give us time to figure out who the rest of these people are."
Because he's still not buying that they're all random. There has to be something in common.
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"The hell do you know about Croatoan?" Not a demon, but maybe something else. He shouldn't have been so goddamn quick to trust another hunter, because at this rate, there was a 50 percent chance he was some kinda evil. There weren't a whole lot of regular hunters who knew about the virus and made it out alive, and Dean would be damned if he didn't believe he'd met every one of 'em.
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"You mean besides it being one of the biggest unsolved mysteries ever? Jack shit. That's why it's an unsolved mystery. Shit, kid, if I knew Peter Graves got you hot and bothered, I would've kept my trap shut. If I tell you Elvis was abducted by aliens, you gonna slam my head into the wall?"
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"I'm just … real big on history. You know how it is." Crappy excuse. Like any hunter had the free time to be that much of a history buff. Still, it was the best he was getting, and Dean took an awkward moment to straighten out his collar as he backed off, clearing his throat.
"Let's just, uh. I saw a pub across the road, it might have something stocked up that they didn't clear out."
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And if it did, well, Dean might just gain himself an interrogator.
In the meantime, he just backed away from the front counter and headed for the door. "God save the liquor and children first," he muttered. "We can hope."
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