Humble Pie [14/20]
Castiel hears it a second before Dean does, stopping his searching and standing completely still. If Castiel were an animal, Dean would be willing to bet his ears would be pricked, but as it is the other man cocks his head slightly to one side, listening intently. Dean’s just about to ask what’s up when he hears it too.
The crunching of gravel that can mean only one thing - company.
“Fuck,” he growls, because even though he doesn’t know who it is that’s just decided to join their little posse for some quality time, it’s highly unlikely to be anyone good. Not with his track record, anyway. Bad luck follows the Winchesters around like a dark cloud, a grease stain on their already pretty tarnished lives that won’t wash away no matter how hard they try. He’s just learnt to go with it by now. Although it’s still pretty damn annoying.
“You stay here,” he says, motioning to Jo to keep looking. If anyone’s going to find this thing, it’s her. Dean’s not sexist, but there is something about women that means they find things twice as easily as men do. A sixth sense, or some shit like that. “I’ll see what I can do to buy you some time. But do me a favor? Be speedy.”
Jo nods seriously, all playfulness wiped from her expression by a combination of several hours exhaustingly futile work and the new added stress of company. At least she’s got a good head on her shoulders; Dean can trust her to do her job and get the hell out of dodge with no beating about the bush. She may not be as good as him or Sam - yet - but she’s still a good person to have on your team.
“Try not to get shot, okay?” she asks and Dean smirks.
“Do my best.”
The slamming of car doors greets him as he walks into the main bar, peering through the windows as surreptitiously as he can, because he really would rather not end up with a hole in his body caused by a red hot piece of metal if he can at all help it.
The glass is thick and slightly misshapen, causing the outside world to look uneven and distorted, but Dean can still see through it well enough to make out the three police cars sitting almost triumphantly in the parking lot. It’s like they’re laughing at him. Ha. Can’t even find a fucking memory stick without getting into a situation with the fucking cops.
Castiel appears by his side, his face unreadable as ever. “It’s the police,” he says quietly, and gee, thanks, ’cause we really hadn’t noticed that before Mr Observant over here pointed it out.
Dean shakes his head. “Well, screw them.”
Someone gets out of the back of the third police car, the sharp corners of his black tailored suit and crisp white collar contrasting with the arc of his balding head.
Zachariah Adler. Of course.
Dean feels Castiel tense slightly beside him, the first time the man has ever shown any emotion approximating fear, and knows that he should probably say something witty or reassuring or something, anything just to take Castiel’s mind off the slimy git who is technically still his master.
“Screw him, too,” he mutters.
Actually, if anyone is screwed, it’s them. Three against five cops and a businessman are not fun odds, especially when one of the three is a sort of semi-slave who Dean’s willing to bet has similar combat skills to a pineapple. The only way they’re getting out of this is if it doesn’t come to a fight.
Which means they need to leave, like, yesterday.
Dean turns and strides back to Ash’s office.
“It’s the cops, and we need to make ourselves scarce,” he announces authoritatively. One of the many skills he learnt from his dad. All of them are useful; none of them are the type of things he actually wants to know.
“What? We can’t. We have to find the password.”
“Personally, I’d rather take my chances without the password than get killed or arrested or some shit like that. We can cope without whatever Ash found on Divinity.”
“Not if you want to see your thirtieth birthday,” Jo snaps. “And, more important, not if you want Sam to see his thirtieth birthday.”
Ouch. A low blow, but also, unfortunately, a realistic one.
“Now stop being chicken and get me some more time.”
Dean doesn’t even try to hide his frustration, but he knows she’s right. Without Ash’s intel, they’d be dead within the year. “You’ve got five minutes, tops, before everything goes to hell.”
“Then that’ll just have to do.”
Five minutes was a grand overstatement: the amount of time Jo will get is closer to 1 minute, 58 seconds, because that’s how long it’s going to take for Dean to get shot.
He doesn’t know this, of course, so he just barrels straight on.
The plan (devised in his mind as he’s running out the back door of the Roadhouse towards his car) is to create a distraction by driving away as fast as he can. It’s not nearly planned enough to count as being an actual plan, maybe more of an intention, but still, if the fates weren’t so damn demanding he might actually have a chance of its succeeding. Dean Winchester runs mostly on luck and charm, and most of the time it’s enough to get him through, but neither of these things will stop a bullet.
As his shoulder will testify, in about 20 seconds.
He’s almost made it to the car, feet pounding into the dirt beneath him. There’s shouting off to one side - the cops must’ve seen him, which is frustrating because he was counting on them being less observant and more focused on the front of the building. Seconds later, bullets patter into the ground, sending up puffs of dust and he puts on a burst of speed because getting shot is not on his ‘to do’ list right now.
Well that’s too bad. ’Cause that’s what happens.
The adrenaline delays the pain for a heartbeat before bringing it crashing down, and Dean’s been shot before and it’s not even that bad but Jesus Christ it still fucking hurts and he trips over his feet and manages to teeter on the edge of nothing before face-planting into the dirt, his hands naturally flying up to protect his shoulder from the impact.
It’s been just under two minutes, and Dean promised her five.
Good thing Jo’s already found the memory stick, eh?
Henricksen breathes a sigh of relief when they’ve finally got Dean Winchester locked up, handcuffed in the back of Deputy Hudak’s car. It’s been a bit of a chase, but it could have dragged on a hell of a lot longer, and now he’s got one of the Winchesters at least, he’s that much closer to getting back to his real goal: finding out what happened to Nancy and getting his revenge on the people that took her from him.
“You stay here and keep an eye on him,” he says to Hudak and Reidy, before turning to Sheriff Dodd and Reed and motioning for them to follow him into the Roadhouse. If there’s one thing he knows about the Winchesters, it’s that they work together, so if Dean’s here, then Sam can’t be far away.
Zachariah Adler seems content to stay behind, which is a relief because Henricksen didn’t fancy having to explain why he couldn’t come into the Roadhouse with them. The guy’s lucky enough to have been allowed to accompany them at all (he still doesn’t get why Groves allowed that, but he’s so close to the finishing line he’s not going to complain and risk screwing it all up now).
The moment Dean sees the cops enter the Roadhouse, he palms his safety pin and gets to work on the locks of his cuffs. It’s tricky, complicated, and extra-difficult because of the limited amount of movement he has, because if he moves too much the two cops left behind to guard him might get suspicious. His fingers are sweaty, he nearly drops the safety pin three times, and by the time Henricksen appears again, his heart is in his mouth and his wrists are still cuffed.
He immediately notices two things. First, the good FBI detective is only accompanied by one person, who is not Jo. Which could either mean that she’s hiding inside, or she’s gotten out. He hopes the latter. He also hopes she’s got the memory stick, or all of this was a fucking waste of time.
The second thing he notices is that Henricksen has Castiel.
Which, for the slow kids, is bad.
And it gets worse when Dean sees the expression on Castiel’s face. Or rather, lack of. There is no expression, it’s completely blank, completely emotionless, but Dean can still see the terror and disappointment and frustration and complete despair in Castiel’s eyes. And it breaks his heart.
He watches as Adler walks up to Castiel, who bows his head. Dean can see their mouths moving, can tell they’re speaking, but the window blocks out anything beyond muffled murmuring. He wants to yell, to scream, to tell Castiel to fight, tell him to run, tell him not to give in because, dammit, Dean will find him again.
Adler starts walking towards the third car, and Castiel looks up momentarily, eyes locking with Dean’s, and there’s some flash of emotion, sadness, or betrayal, or ... an apology. Dean can’t tell, because in a second it’s gone again.
And so is Castiel.
Locked in the back of a police car, with his wrists cuffed behind him and a bullet hole in his shoulder, Dean is fast running out of swear words. Castiel is gone, Dean’s been arrested, Jo is AWOL, and seriously? Dean cannot think of anything that could make this situation any worse.
Well done, Dean. You just made the situation worse.
Optimistic sentences like ‘at least it can’t be any worse’ or ‘it’s all going according to plan’ or even ‘well that was easy’ have a way of tempting fate, and, well, I guess fate has just been tempted, because things are about to get epically worse.
Now, this story has quite a large cast of characters, from the leads like Sam, Dean and Castiel, to the supporting roles like Bobby and Jo, to tiny side characters mentioned only in passing, like Chuck or Azazel. So I guess you can be forgiven if you forget about some of them.
However, if you’ve forgotten about Gordon Walker, then you probably need your head seeing to, and then you need to look him up on Wikipedia and promise on the Good Book never to forget him again, because Mr Walker Esq., widely regarded as the most irritating character ever invented, and also winner of the Character Most Likely To Recur (and Continue Recurring Until the End of Time) award three years running, is how Dean’s currently less-than-ideal situation is about to get a whole lot worse. He’s the proverbial shit that hits the proverbial fan. So to speak.
If Dean hadn’t happened to glance out the window, if his eyes hadn’t happened to alight on the cop in the other car, and if the angle of the man’s neck had been just a tiny bit more natural, then he probably wouldn’t have realized anything was even wrong until Gordon started shooting, by which time, of course, it would have been too late. Even as it is, he’s cutting it pretty fine.
Henricksen is the only cop in this car. The guy in the other car, Sheriff Dobbs, or something, is now dead. The third cop, the lady, (Deputy Kathleen Hudak, to those of us in the know) is still in the Roadhouse, presumably looking for clues, or preferably Dean’s signed confession. He wishes her luck finding anything in that place. Or rather, he doesn’t, ’cause if she does find anything then he’s ready to bet his bottom dollar it’s not going to be good news for him.
Dean weighs up his chances of getting shot again if he tries to warn Henricksen, ’cause even though he doesn’t have this handy commentary, he’s pretty sure he knows who’s gunning for him right now. (And he’s got it right, by the way, because, contrary to popular belief, Dean is actually a clever man. He knows what he’s doing. Otherwise he’d have died 100 times over already - and that’s just on Tuesdays.)
He decides the benefit outweighs the risk, and goes for it. “Hey, buddy. Henricksen. We’ve got company.”
Henricksen, who’s been sitting partially swiveled so as to keep Dean in his sights, shakes his head. “You just don’t know when to shut it, do you?”
Dean shrugs, a witty retort on his tongue, but before he can get it out, the windshield shatters, sending down a rain of glass, and a bullet ploughs into the driver’s seat.
“What the fuck?”
“Told you.” Dean doesn’t even bother to brush the glass from his hair. “Now, if it’s all the same to you, I suggest we get going.”
Henricksen’s up and alert, gun out, and he knows what he’s doing, Dean will give him that, scanning the area for the position of the gunman, but at Dean’s words, he shakes his head. “I’m not going anywhere without my team.”
“Well great, we’re just a sitting target, then.”
The radio crackles and Henricksen grabs it, speaking into it quickly and urgently, requiring the other cops in the field to report. His request is met with static.
“Fuck.”
“Now can we go?”
Henricksen sweeps the parking lot one more time with his gaze before nodding brusquely and sliding over into the driver’s seat, turning the keys in the engine, releasing the handbrake, and putting his foot on the gas. The car flops forward a couple of feet before they realize that someone’s shot the tires out.
More bullets, screeching into the metal door of the car, smashing windows, pattering into the ground, and Henricksen ducks to avoid being hit even as Dean lets forth a string of profanity that would make a sailor blush, ferociously glaring into the bushes by the Roadhouse.
“There,” he says finally, nodding in the direction he had been looking. “Gordon’s there.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do, okay? Now shoot the bastard!”
Henricksen’s good, but he’s not that good. Not shooting blind. He empties his clip into the bushes, then grabs another and slots it in, eyes narrowed as he tries to find his target again.
Everything’s quiet. Still. Dust rises from the ground where the bullets fell, the radio crackles, the car’s engine shudders, but nothing else. And Dean finds himself wondering if Gordon’s gone.
“We have to get to the other car,” he says when the tension becomes too great.
“What?”
“The other car. The Sheriff’s car. Look at its tires.”
Henricksen does. “They didn’t shoot them out.”
“Which means we can get away in it.”
Henricksen nods once. “Fine. Let’s go.”
“Hey, just wait a minute. I’m still a little tied up here. Mind undoing these?” he rattles the cuffs.
For a moment, Henricksen doesn’t look like he’s going to do it.
“Hey. I’m your best chance of getting out of here alive. I know this guy. I know what he’s capable of. I also know how he behaves. You wanna live? Let me go.”
To any sane person, this would be an easy choice. But ever since he lost Nancy, Victor has been... Well. Just a little crazy. Not insane, not dangerous. It’s just that his priorities have shifted drastically.
Even so, he’s still human. which means his basic instinct is still one of survival.
He undoes the cuffs.
“Thanks, man. Now we can go.”
They get out of the car gingerly, and when no bullets come raining down on them from the heavens (or anywhere else, for that matter), they walk quickly over to the other car, Henricksen’s gun at the ready, Dean scanning the perimeter. The only way it could have looked more action-movie-ish is if they stood back to back in dark glasses. (Which, by the way, they’re not going to do. Sorry.)
They’re halfway to the car. Three quarters. Nearly there ...
Which is when Gordon appears: a tall, dark executioner with a gun. Which he proceeds to put to very good use.
Dean dives behind the police car, rolls, comes up on the other side and ducks as more bullets screech over the metal roof. He’s no idea where Henricksen is, can’t see him, can’t hear much besides the sound of shots firing and his own heart pumping adrenaline around his body.
Gordon stops firing and Dean can hear Henricksen taking his turn, but he’s only got a small gun, and he can’t have many bullets left, and Dean knows if they’ve got a prayer of getting out of this, he’s going to need his own weapon.
Good thing the dead cop is only a few feet away from him.
He creeps slowly around the side of the car, his arm cradled against him ’cause his shoulder still hurts like fuck, bent almost double in an attempt to make himself less of an obvious target for the trigger-happy Gordon. Gordon will do anything for money, but he’s not like most mercenaries. He gets passionate about the kill. He’ll finish a job through hell or high water. He’s practically the Terminator. Arnold Schwarzenegger. ‘I’ll be back’. All that jazz.
Once he gets going, there’s little or nothing that can stop him.
But a bullet might.
Dean reaches the door beside the body of the Sheriff, opens it as quietly as he can and plucks the gun from its holster on the Sheriff’s hip.
Now. Now he’s got an advantage.
Which is when he realizes that the gunshots have stopped. And this is either very good (Gordon’s dead) or very bad (Henricksen’s dead).
He never thought he’d see the day when he was on the same side as a cop. Well. Desperate times.
Dean peers over the roof of the car; Henricksen and Gordon are on the other side, and Henricksen is on the ground. Alive, but there’s blood. And Gordon is still armed.
He hasn’t even had a chance to check the clip, check whether he really does have any bullets or not, but it’s too late now; it’s all or nothing. He stands, aims, fires, but Gordon turned when he saw movement and the bullet only hits his arm.
Fuck.
Gordon retaliates in kind, and Dean ducks, until he hears what must be the best sound ever: the trigger clicks, clip emptied, and Gordon chucks the useless gun away in disgust.
Now that’s more like it.
Dean stands to fire again, but Gordon’s gone, moving fast towards him, too fast, and he fires again, but he has no time to tell whether he’s hit Gordon or not because suddenly the other man is upon him, ramming him with more force than Dean ever thought possible, and he goes down, arm falling wide and gun flying from his grip, and Gordon’s fists are everywhere, pummeling and punching. Dean’s pinned underneath the other man’s greater strength and build, and he knows that if he’s down for more than 10 seconds then the fight is practically over; he’ll have lost.
He never did like losing. He shifts his weight, pushing up against Gordon’s bulk, and tries to roll, but Gordon’s arms come down again, shoving him to the ground, his fingers around Dean’s throat, and - oh shit - this is it. He struggles, he bucks, he tries to reach Gordon’s face to claw at his eyes, hit his nose, scratch his cheek, anything, but from this position there’s very little he can do, and already he needs to breathe, black spots blinking before his eyes, his chest burning, and he can feel his pathetic attempts to escape waning in strength and fortitude.
He looks to the side, to where the gun fell, but it’s gone, and that was his last hope, and fuck, Sammy, I’m so sorry-
His ears ring as Henricksen shoots Gordon twice with Dean’s gun, and it’s over.
The crunching of gravel that can mean only one thing - company.
“Fuck,” he growls, because even though he doesn’t know who it is that’s just decided to join their little posse for some quality time, it’s highly unlikely to be anyone good. Not with his track record, anyway. Bad luck follows the Winchesters around like a dark cloud, a grease stain on their already pretty tarnished lives that won’t wash away no matter how hard they try. He’s just learnt to go with it by now. Although it’s still pretty damn annoying.
“You stay here,” he says, motioning to Jo to keep looking. If anyone’s going to find this thing, it’s her. Dean’s not sexist, but there is something about women that means they find things twice as easily as men do. A sixth sense, or some shit like that. “I’ll see what I can do to buy you some time. But do me a favor? Be speedy.”
Jo nods seriously, all playfulness wiped from her expression by a combination of several hours exhaustingly futile work and the new added stress of company. At least she’s got a good head on her shoulders; Dean can trust her to do her job and get the hell out of dodge with no beating about the bush. She may not be as good as him or Sam - yet - but she’s still a good person to have on your team.
“Try not to get shot, okay?” she asks and Dean smirks.
“Do my best.”
The slamming of car doors greets him as he walks into the main bar, peering through the windows as surreptitiously as he can, because he really would rather not end up with a hole in his body caused by a red hot piece of metal if he can at all help it.
The glass is thick and slightly misshapen, causing the outside world to look uneven and distorted, but Dean can still see through it well enough to make out the three police cars sitting almost triumphantly in the parking lot. It’s like they’re laughing at him. Ha. Can’t even find a fucking memory stick without getting into a situation with the fucking cops.
Castiel appears by his side, his face unreadable as ever. “It’s the police,” he says quietly, and gee, thanks, ’cause we really hadn’t noticed that before Mr Observant over here pointed it out.
Dean shakes his head. “Well, screw them.”
Someone gets out of the back of the third police car, the sharp corners of his black tailored suit and crisp white collar contrasting with the arc of his balding head.
Zachariah Adler. Of course.
Dean feels Castiel tense slightly beside him, the first time the man has ever shown any emotion approximating fear, and knows that he should probably say something witty or reassuring or something, anything just to take Castiel’s mind off the slimy git who is technically still his master.
“Screw him, too,” he mutters.
Actually, if anyone is screwed, it’s them. Three against five cops and a businessman are not fun odds, especially when one of the three is a sort of semi-slave who Dean’s willing to bet has similar combat skills to a pineapple. The only way they’re getting out of this is if it doesn’t come to a fight.
Which means they need to leave, like, yesterday.
Dean turns and strides back to Ash’s office.
“It’s the cops, and we need to make ourselves scarce,” he announces authoritatively. One of the many skills he learnt from his dad. All of them are useful; none of them are the type of things he actually wants to know.
“What? We can’t. We have to find the password.”
“Personally, I’d rather take my chances without the password than get killed or arrested or some shit like that. We can cope without whatever Ash found on Divinity.”
“Not if you want to see your thirtieth birthday,” Jo snaps. “And, more important, not if you want Sam to see his thirtieth birthday.”
Ouch. A low blow, but also, unfortunately, a realistic one.
“Now stop being chicken and get me some more time.”
Dean doesn’t even try to hide his frustration, but he knows she’s right. Without Ash’s intel, they’d be dead within the year. “You’ve got five minutes, tops, before everything goes to hell.”
“Then that’ll just have to do.”
Five minutes was a grand overstatement: the amount of time Jo will get is closer to 1 minute, 58 seconds, because that’s how long it’s going to take for Dean to get shot.
He doesn’t know this, of course, so he just barrels straight on.
The plan (devised in his mind as he’s running out the back door of the Roadhouse towards his car) is to create a distraction by driving away as fast as he can. It’s not nearly planned enough to count as being an actual plan, maybe more of an intention, but still, if the fates weren’t so damn demanding he might actually have a chance of its succeeding. Dean Winchester runs mostly on luck and charm, and most of the time it’s enough to get him through, but neither of these things will stop a bullet.
As his shoulder will testify, in about 20 seconds.
He’s almost made it to the car, feet pounding into the dirt beneath him. There’s shouting off to one side - the cops must’ve seen him, which is frustrating because he was counting on them being less observant and more focused on the front of the building. Seconds later, bullets patter into the ground, sending up puffs of dust and he puts on a burst of speed because getting shot is not on his ‘to do’ list right now.
Well that’s too bad. ’Cause that’s what happens.
The adrenaline delays the pain for a heartbeat before bringing it crashing down, and Dean’s been shot before and it’s not even that bad but Jesus Christ it still fucking hurts and he trips over his feet and manages to teeter on the edge of nothing before face-planting into the dirt, his hands naturally flying up to protect his shoulder from the impact.
It’s been just under two minutes, and Dean promised her five.
Good thing Jo’s already found the memory stick, eh?
Henricksen breathes a sigh of relief when they’ve finally got Dean Winchester locked up, handcuffed in the back of Deputy Hudak’s car. It’s been a bit of a chase, but it could have dragged on a hell of a lot longer, and now he’s got one of the Winchesters at least, he’s that much closer to getting back to his real goal: finding out what happened to Nancy and getting his revenge on the people that took her from him.
“You stay here and keep an eye on him,” he says to Hudak and Reidy, before turning to Sheriff Dodd and Reed and motioning for them to follow him into the Roadhouse. If there’s one thing he knows about the Winchesters, it’s that they work together, so if Dean’s here, then Sam can’t be far away.
Zachariah Adler seems content to stay behind, which is a relief because Henricksen didn’t fancy having to explain why he couldn’t come into the Roadhouse with them. The guy’s lucky enough to have been allowed to accompany them at all (he still doesn’t get why Groves allowed that, but he’s so close to the finishing line he’s not going to complain and risk screwing it all up now).
The moment Dean sees the cops enter the Roadhouse, he palms his safety pin and gets to work on the locks of his cuffs. It’s tricky, complicated, and extra-difficult because of the limited amount of movement he has, because if he moves too much the two cops left behind to guard him might get suspicious. His fingers are sweaty, he nearly drops the safety pin three times, and by the time Henricksen appears again, his heart is in his mouth and his wrists are still cuffed.
He immediately notices two things. First, the good FBI detective is only accompanied by one person, who is not Jo. Which could either mean that she’s hiding inside, or she’s gotten out. He hopes the latter. He also hopes she’s got the memory stick, or all of this was a fucking waste of time.
The second thing he notices is that Henricksen has Castiel.
Which, for the slow kids, is bad.
And it gets worse when Dean sees the expression on Castiel’s face. Or rather, lack of. There is no expression, it’s completely blank, completely emotionless, but Dean can still see the terror and disappointment and frustration and complete despair in Castiel’s eyes. And it breaks his heart.
He watches as Adler walks up to Castiel, who bows his head. Dean can see their mouths moving, can tell they’re speaking, but the window blocks out anything beyond muffled murmuring. He wants to yell, to scream, to tell Castiel to fight, tell him to run, tell him not to give in because, dammit, Dean will find him again.
Adler starts walking towards the third car, and Castiel looks up momentarily, eyes locking with Dean’s, and there’s some flash of emotion, sadness, or betrayal, or ... an apology. Dean can’t tell, because in a second it’s gone again.
And so is Castiel.
Locked in the back of a police car, with his wrists cuffed behind him and a bullet hole in his shoulder, Dean is fast running out of swear words. Castiel is gone, Dean’s been arrested, Jo is AWOL, and seriously? Dean cannot think of anything that could make this situation any worse.
Well done, Dean. You just made the situation worse.
Optimistic sentences like ‘at least it can’t be any worse’ or ‘it’s all going according to plan’ or even ‘well that was easy’ have a way of tempting fate, and, well, I guess fate has just been tempted, because things are about to get epically worse.
Now, this story has quite a large cast of characters, from the leads like Sam, Dean and Castiel, to the supporting roles like Bobby and Jo, to tiny side characters mentioned only in passing, like Chuck or Azazel. So I guess you can be forgiven if you forget about some of them.
However, if you’ve forgotten about Gordon Walker, then you probably need your head seeing to, and then you need to look him up on Wikipedia and promise on the Good Book never to forget him again, because Mr Walker Esq., widely regarded as the most irritating character ever invented, and also winner of the Character Most Likely To Recur (and Continue Recurring Until the End of Time) award three years running, is how Dean’s currently less-than-ideal situation is about to get a whole lot worse. He’s the proverbial shit that hits the proverbial fan. So to speak.
If Dean hadn’t happened to glance out the window, if his eyes hadn’t happened to alight on the cop in the other car, and if the angle of the man’s neck had been just a tiny bit more natural, then he probably wouldn’t have realized anything was even wrong until Gordon started shooting, by which time, of course, it would have been too late. Even as it is, he’s cutting it pretty fine.
Henricksen is the only cop in this car. The guy in the other car, Sheriff Dobbs, or something, is now dead. The third cop, the lady, (Deputy Kathleen Hudak, to those of us in the know) is still in the Roadhouse, presumably looking for clues, or preferably Dean’s signed confession. He wishes her luck finding anything in that place. Or rather, he doesn’t, ’cause if she does find anything then he’s ready to bet his bottom dollar it’s not going to be good news for him.
Dean weighs up his chances of getting shot again if he tries to warn Henricksen, ’cause even though he doesn’t have this handy commentary, he’s pretty sure he knows who’s gunning for him right now. (And he’s got it right, by the way, because, contrary to popular belief, Dean is actually a clever man. He knows what he’s doing. Otherwise he’d have died 100 times over already - and that’s just on Tuesdays.)
He decides the benefit outweighs the risk, and goes for it. “Hey, buddy. Henricksen. We’ve got company.”
Henricksen, who’s been sitting partially swiveled so as to keep Dean in his sights, shakes his head. “You just don’t know when to shut it, do you?”
Dean shrugs, a witty retort on his tongue, but before he can get it out, the windshield shatters, sending down a rain of glass, and a bullet ploughs into the driver’s seat.
“What the fuck?”
“Told you.” Dean doesn’t even bother to brush the glass from his hair. “Now, if it’s all the same to you, I suggest we get going.”
Henricksen’s up and alert, gun out, and he knows what he’s doing, Dean will give him that, scanning the area for the position of the gunman, but at Dean’s words, he shakes his head. “I’m not going anywhere without my team.”
“Well great, we’re just a sitting target, then.”
The radio crackles and Henricksen grabs it, speaking into it quickly and urgently, requiring the other cops in the field to report. His request is met with static.
“Fuck.”
“Now can we go?”
Henricksen sweeps the parking lot one more time with his gaze before nodding brusquely and sliding over into the driver’s seat, turning the keys in the engine, releasing the handbrake, and putting his foot on the gas. The car flops forward a couple of feet before they realize that someone’s shot the tires out.
More bullets, screeching into the metal door of the car, smashing windows, pattering into the ground, and Henricksen ducks to avoid being hit even as Dean lets forth a string of profanity that would make a sailor blush, ferociously glaring into the bushes by the Roadhouse.
“There,” he says finally, nodding in the direction he had been looking. “Gordon’s there.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do, okay? Now shoot the bastard!”
Henricksen’s good, but he’s not that good. Not shooting blind. He empties his clip into the bushes, then grabs another and slots it in, eyes narrowed as he tries to find his target again.
Everything’s quiet. Still. Dust rises from the ground where the bullets fell, the radio crackles, the car’s engine shudders, but nothing else. And Dean finds himself wondering if Gordon’s gone.
“We have to get to the other car,” he says when the tension becomes too great.
“What?”
“The other car. The Sheriff’s car. Look at its tires.”
Henricksen does. “They didn’t shoot them out.”
“Which means we can get away in it.”
Henricksen nods once. “Fine. Let’s go.”
“Hey, just wait a minute. I’m still a little tied up here. Mind undoing these?” he rattles the cuffs.
For a moment, Henricksen doesn’t look like he’s going to do it.
“Hey. I’m your best chance of getting out of here alive. I know this guy. I know what he’s capable of. I also know how he behaves. You wanna live? Let me go.”
To any sane person, this would be an easy choice. But ever since he lost Nancy, Victor has been... Well. Just a little crazy. Not insane, not dangerous. It’s just that his priorities have shifted drastically.
Even so, he’s still human. which means his basic instinct is still one of survival.
He undoes the cuffs.
“Thanks, man. Now we can go.”
They get out of the car gingerly, and when no bullets come raining down on them from the heavens (or anywhere else, for that matter), they walk quickly over to the other car, Henricksen’s gun at the ready, Dean scanning the perimeter. The only way it could have looked more action-movie-ish is if they stood back to back in dark glasses. (Which, by the way, they’re not going to do. Sorry.)
They’re halfway to the car. Three quarters. Nearly there ...
Which is when Gordon appears: a tall, dark executioner with a gun. Which he proceeds to put to very good use.
Dean dives behind the police car, rolls, comes up on the other side and ducks as more bullets screech over the metal roof. He’s no idea where Henricksen is, can’t see him, can’t hear much besides the sound of shots firing and his own heart pumping adrenaline around his body.
Gordon stops firing and Dean can hear Henricksen taking his turn, but he’s only got a small gun, and he can’t have many bullets left, and Dean knows if they’ve got a prayer of getting out of this, he’s going to need his own weapon.
Good thing the dead cop is only a few feet away from him.
He creeps slowly around the side of the car, his arm cradled against him ’cause his shoulder still hurts like fuck, bent almost double in an attempt to make himself less of an obvious target for the trigger-happy Gordon. Gordon will do anything for money, but he’s not like most mercenaries. He gets passionate about the kill. He’ll finish a job through hell or high water. He’s practically the Terminator. Arnold Schwarzenegger. ‘I’ll be back’. All that jazz.
Once he gets going, there’s little or nothing that can stop him.
But a bullet might.
Dean reaches the door beside the body of the Sheriff, opens it as quietly as he can and plucks the gun from its holster on the Sheriff’s hip.
Now. Now he’s got an advantage.
Which is when he realizes that the gunshots have stopped. And this is either very good (Gordon’s dead) or very bad (Henricksen’s dead).
He never thought he’d see the day when he was on the same side as a cop. Well. Desperate times.
Dean peers over the roof of the car; Henricksen and Gordon are on the other side, and Henricksen is on the ground. Alive, but there’s blood. And Gordon is still armed.
He hasn’t even had a chance to check the clip, check whether he really does have any bullets or not, but it’s too late now; it’s all or nothing. He stands, aims, fires, but Gordon turned when he saw movement and the bullet only hits his arm.
Fuck.
Gordon retaliates in kind, and Dean ducks, until he hears what must be the best sound ever: the trigger clicks, clip emptied, and Gordon chucks the useless gun away in disgust.
Now that’s more like it.
Dean stands to fire again, but Gordon’s gone, moving fast towards him, too fast, and he fires again, but he has no time to tell whether he’s hit Gordon or not because suddenly the other man is upon him, ramming him with more force than Dean ever thought possible, and he goes down, arm falling wide and gun flying from his grip, and Gordon’s fists are everywhere, pummeling and punching. Dean’s pinned underneath the other man’s greater strength and build, and he knows that if he’s down for more than 10 seconds then the fight is practically over; he’ll have lost.
He never did like losing. He shifts his weight, pushing up against Gordon’s bulk, and tries to roll, but Gordon’s arms come down again, shoving him to the ground, his fingers around Dean’s throat, and - oh shit - this is it. He struggles, he bucks, he tries to reach Gordon’s face to claw at his eyes, hit his nose, scratch his cheek, anything, but from this position there’s very little he can do, and already he needs to breathe, black spots blinking before his eyes, his chest burning, and he can feel his pathetic attempts to escape waning in strength and fortitude.
He looks to the side, to where the gun fell, but it’s gone, and that was his last hope, and fuck, Sammy, I’m so sorry-
His ears ring as Henricksen shoots Gordon twice with Dean’s gun, and it’s over.