Dean had known those words had been the words of a man with nothing left to lose, and the gunshot just drove the final nail in. He exhaled deeply, eyes closed for a moment and fingers clenched around his own gun.
Dean?
He opened his eyes to see Anya looking up at him expectantly. Sam and Buffy were already at the front door, and Anya was only a few steps ahead of him at the foot of the stairs. From the look on her face, he knew if he hesitated a minute longer, she would reach up and physically drag him out of the house.
"I'm coming," he said, quickly joining her at the foot of the steps, placing a hand at the small of her back to ease her out the door behind the others.
Sam watched as Buffy quickly got into the car, already fumbling for her cell by the time he slid in beside her. He frowned as he watched her shaky fingers dial Giles' number, and he placed a reassuring arm around her shoulders as she placed her phone to her ear.
He looked up into the front seat where Dean sat, staring straight ahead into the empty street. "So what now? We got zombies apparently," --cause he really couldn't wrap his mind around this-- "we got a dead town. I say we head back to Bobby's and regroup."
"There was no blood at the gas station," said Anya, somewhat hopefully, "Not even sign of a struggle. We should head back that way anyway."
She had a burning desire to not encounter zombies until they had more weapons. A plan, even. More hunters. Their conversation a couple of nights ago came back unbidden and Anya frowned, hoping that this wasn't all connected. "Humans have this habit of talking. A lot. How did we not find out sooner?"
How hadn't anybody done anything about it yet?
"Giles, it's me, call me when you get this, okay?" Buffy's voice was terse. The third time she'd tried Giles' number and the third time the annoying computerized voice told her that it could not connect her call, Buffy had wanted to toss her cell out the window.
Okay, she was frustrated. Rightly so. The word's 'zombie' and 'apocalypse' would never go well in Buffy's book EVER and now they'd walked smack into the middle of a real one. One that had taken an entire town and in a week, too.
"No service," she murmured after her fifth attempt, listening to Anya wax lyrical about zombies in the front of the car. Telling Dean how the few zombies she'd encountered had been the slow and stupid kind and how they'd never actually had enough brain - or man! - power to take over an entire city before.
"What could do this?" She asked, making Anya look at her for the first time since they'd left the house. "I mean... Are we talking one serious Wicca here or what?"
"You're talking serious voodoo here, Buffy," Anya clarified, "And it's not just one walking dead, it's a whole town by the sounds of it." She shot a look at Dean, nodded towards the book, "How long did it take? Does it say?"
That was a damn good question, actually. When zombies start taking over the damn town, you maybe think about making a few calls, maybe a text or two to let people know what the hell is going on.
"It's just like the goddamn shapeshifter in Illinois," Dean muttered to himself as he began to flip through the journal. "We didn't hear about it sooner because the hunters here thought they had whatever it was contained, under control."
"Yeah, until they started dying," Sam replied from the backseat. He was starting to hate this more with each passing second. First shapeshifters targeting hunters and now a whole town wiped off the map by zombies? This week had yet to look up.
"It looks like the first incident started about two and a half weeks ago," Dean said as he skimmed the journal, a finger running down the pages as his eyes quickly took in the information. "Died off for a couple of days and then another attack, then another, then another until he couldn't keep track of the attacks anymore." He flipped to the last scribbled page of those assumed dead. "Until everyone was dead." He closed up the journal, tossing it onto the dash with a sigh. "It took less than fourteen days to wipe out a town."
"That's some serious voodoo, Dean," Sam sighed, thinking back to what little he had read about voodoo and zombies that didn't come from movie scripts. "A little too serious actually. I don't know of any spells or summoning charms that can raise all the dead. Usually it's just for one person."
"It's too wide-spread to just have been one person that started all this," said Buffy, shaking her head, "Fourteen days? And the only person who thought to get this out there was a hunter bordering on the seriously deranged anyway 'cause he had to kill his kids."
The only phone call had been to Bobby. A garbled message a couple of States over. The police and the authorities wouldn't have known what'd hit them, literally - people had a way of rationalising things they didn't understand, but this was ridiculous. "You don't know of any rituals or anything?" She looked at Anya.
"I know about a thousand," Anya frowned, "but we're talking old school voodoo here and I'm going back about 800 years. I don't even know how anyone would get their hands on something like that..." And to be honest? She wasn't sure she wanted to.
Buffy hesitated, "Probably not something we've faced, then?"
"Probably not," said Anya, "Voodoo still exists but it's mostly diluted from it's original form. Like I said, old school."
Dean sighed, rubbing a hand across his tired eyes. The lack of sleep and talk now of zombies was really starting to wear him down.
Like I said, old school.
Dean looked over at Anya as she said that, those two words striking a chord in him. What if they were wrong, just like Warren Fischer? He had thought it was a typical cut and dry voodoo hunt too, and that hadn't turned out in his favor. Maybe....
"Maybe...it's not a person," he said, his thoughts spilling out of his mouth.
"You thinking demonic?" Sam asked, not sure what was worse--some really magically powerful person raising the dead or demons.
"The shapeshifter in Illinois wasn't the typical MO either. Killing specifically hunters and hunter families?" Dean said, turning slightly in his seat to look at Sam and Buffy in the back. "Not usually their deal. They're random killers. That's why they're so hard to track. And now we got the dead rising up and making an entire town their own zombie all-you-can-eat buffet. None of these bastards are acting the way they're supposed to." He frowned at the thought even as he was having it. "So maybe it's all connected. The shapeshifters, the zombies, the coming war. Hell, maybe the war is already here."
"What, and we're right in the middle of it?" Buffy frowned, "We'd have had a heads up, right? I mean, we usually get a heads up about these things..."
"Not always," said Anya, carefully. "You didn't start getting those wacko dreams with The First until it was way past too late and all those girls had died."
She was right with that, Buffy knew, but that still didn't make it any easier to hear. "Yeah, but this--"
"I think Dean's right," Anya interrupted, holding up a hand. Buffy closed her mouth abruptly and Anya knew she hated that as much as she'd hate the next words coming out of her mouth. "Something demonic, all those things working together... It's not your usual demon way. Add zombies into the mix..."
"Okay, so we have wacky. We've done wacky," said Buffy, though the tension in her voice was plaintive. "That doesn't mean the apocalypse is already on us."
Anya sighed, "I think it does." She hated having an enraptured audience on a topic such as this. Give her anything to talk about - money, sex,, hell even Bunnies - and she'd be happier than this moment right here. "There's a demon," she murmured, "A real powerful, vindictive, bastard of a demon... And this? Has him written all over it."
Okay, Dean liked to be right about a lot of things, but the end of world breathing down their neck? He would have preferred to be wrong. "A single demon can pull a move like this?" he asked, eyebrow raised.
Sam sighed, running a hand through his hair. He'd had a lot to take in the past few days, and he was honestly still just trying to keep his own head on straight; and now they had to worry about zombies. "A demon is good though, right? Means we can destroy him."
Dean turned to Anya, who was currently chewing nervoudly on her lower lip. "So who is this guy, Anya?"
"He's not your typical demon, Sam," said Anya, shooting a look back at Fischer's house and wondering if he'd even come close to what was actually causing this. She didn't think so.
"His name is Samhain," she said quietly, "The God of the Dead. Go back a few thousand years and the Celts of old believed that from sunset on the last night of October, to sun-up on November 1st, the veil separating the worlds between the dead was thinnest."
"Halloween?"
Anya nodded, "Halloween was Samhain's night. Think what Santa is to Christmas... What the Easter Bunny is to Easter," she shuddered, "Those who worshipped him carved his face into pumpkins, left candy on the doorsteps to appease him and wore masks to hide their true face... Once he was banished to Hell, Halloween changed. Commercialised, I guess, until we have what we have now. Kids, trick-or-treaters... Nobody remembers the true meaning of Halloween."
Buffy's stomach which had already been doubled in knots, turned even more. "So what, he decides to come out and play now?"
"You didn't release him," Anya's gaze went straight to Sam's, "not with the Devils Gate. Yellow Eyes could only dream of being that powerful. The chance to bring Samhain back only comes around once every 600 years so... Somebody's been waiting. There would've been a spell, right here in town. Serious voodoo, requiring sacrifices, blood... Probably a witch, someone who worshipped the guy in all his former glory."
Dean sighed, glancing back at Sam. "Have I mentioned lately how much I friggin' hate witches?"
Witches Sam could deal with. He was still having issues with the army of walking dead led by a god. "Okay, so we regroup at Bobby's, research up whatever else we can find about this Samhain guy...."
Dean shook his head at that. "Dude, you heard Anya. She's right. This is demon ground zero. We need to stick around here and figure this out." He raised a hand to stop Sam, as he was already giving Dean a "seriously?" sort of look. "Yeah, I don't like the idea of zombies creeping up on us either, but it makes sense."
They're not coming back for me. This town is dead.
He pushed Warren's voice out of his head as he continued, "We grab some supplies, arm ourselves to the teeth to be on the safe side--" He picked up the journal from the dash. "And we start from the beginning."
"Not all Witches are evil," Buffy felt the need to point out, "And if I can get in touch with our resident Wicca-who-Won't-Often, I can see if she can help us. Maybe she's heard something..."
Not that she was clutching at straws or anything here. She knew nothing about spells or spell-casting but she assumed that a spell of this magnitude would leave traces somewhere.
She opened her cell again, frowning at the lack of messages. Or call-backs, especially from Giles, how come the guy was never around when you really needed him?
"I'm with Dean," Anya nodded, "but I want something bigger than that machete. A pitchfork could work." She could definitely get behind stabbing at a distance. "If Samhain's out and all these people are walking around... We're heading right into a bloodbath, you guys know this, right? It's not going to be pretty."
Usually, this would be the point where Anya ran - got the hell out of dodge and left the idiots behind to deal with the bad. She glanced at Dean, gave a tiny sigh. If he'd been less pretty, maybe, or less accomodating... Or hell, even if he'd just let Bobby talk him right into his senses, maybe she wouldn't have had to stick around.
"We need to canvas the town first," said Buffy, shooting a wary glance back at Fischer's house as if the ghosts were gonna start pouring out all on their own. "Make sure it's really most sincerely dead before we set up camp."
Dean had known those words had been the words of a man with nothing left to lose, and the gunshot just drove the final nail in. He exhaled deeply, eyes closed for a moment and fingers clenched around his own gun.
Dean?
He opened his eyes to see Anya looking up at him expectantly. Sam and Buffy were already at the front door, and Anya was only a few steps ahead of him at the foot of the stairs. From the look on her face, he knew if he hesitated a minute longer, she would reach up and physically drag him out of the house.
"I'm coming," he said, quickly joining her at the foot of the steps, placing a hand at the small of her back to ease her out the door behind the others.
Sam watched as Buffy quickly got into the car, already fumbling for her cell by the time he slid in beside her. He frowned as he watched her shaky fingers dial Giles' number, and he placed a reassuring arm around her shoulders as she placed her phone to her ear.
He looked up into the front seat where Dean sat, staring straight ahead into the empty street. "So what now? We got zombies apparently," --cause he really couldn't wrap his mind around this-- "we got a dead town. I say we head back to Bobby's and regroup."
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She had a burning desire to not encounter zombies until they had more weapons. A plan, even. More hunters. Their conversation a couple of nights ago came back unbidden and Anya frowned, hoping that this wasn't all connected. "Humans have this habit of talking. A lot. How did we not find out sooner?"
How hadn't anybody done anything about it yet?
"Giles, it's me, call me when you get this, okay?" Buffy's voice was terse. The third time she'd tried Giles' number and the third time the annoying computerized voice told her that it could not connect her call, Buffy had wanted to toss her cell out the window.
Okay, she was frustrated. Rightly so. The word's 'zombie' and 'apocalypse' would never go well in Buffy's book EVER and now they'd walked smack into the middle of a real one. One that had taken an entire town and in a week, too.
"No service," she murmured after her fifth attempt, listening to Anya wax lyrical about zombies in the front of the car. Telling Dean how the few zombies she'd encountered had been the slow and stupid kind and how they'd never actually had enough brain - or man! - power to take over an entire city before.
"What could do this?" She asked, making Anya look at her for the first time since they'd left the house. "I mean... Are we talking one serious Wicca here or what?"
"You're talking serious voodoo here, Buffy," Anya clarified, "And it's not just one walking dead, it's a whole town by the sounds of it." She shot a look at Dean, nodded towards the book, "How long did it take? Does it say?"
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That was a damn good question, actually. When zombies start taking over the damn town, you maybe think about making a few calls, maybe a text or two to let people know what the hell is going on.
"It's just like the goddamn shapeshifter in Illinois," Dean muttered to himself as he began to flip through the journal. "We didn't hear about it sooner because the hunters here thought they had whatever it was contained, under control."
"Yeah, until they started dying," Sam replied from the backseat. He was starting to hate this more with each passing second. First shapeshifters targeting hunters and now a whole town wiped off the map by zombies? This week had yet to look up.
"It looks like the first incident started about two and a half weeks ago," Dean said as he skimmed the journal, a finger running down the pages as his eyes quickly took in the information. "Died off for a couple of days and then another attack, then another, then another until he couldn't keep track of the attacks anymore." He flipped to the last scribbled page of those assumed dead. "Until everyone was dead." He closed up the journal, tossing it onto the dash with a sigh. "It took less than fourteen days to wipe out a town."
"That's some serious voodoo, Dean," Sam sighed, thinking back to what little he had read about voodoo and zombies that didn't come from movie scripts. "A little too serious actually. I don't know of any spells or summoning charms that can raise all the dead. Usually it's just for one person."
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"It's too wide-spread to just have been one person that started all this," said Buffy, shaking her head, "Fourteen days? And the only person who thought to get this out there was a hunter bordering on the seriously deranged anyway 'cause he had to kill his kids."
The only phone call had been to Bobby. A garbled message a couple of States over. The police and the authorities wouldn't have known what'd hit them, literally - people had a way of rationalising things they didn't understand, but this was ridiculous. "You don't know of any rituals or anything?" She looked at Anya.
"I know about a thousand," Anya frowned, "but we're talking old school voodoo here and I'm going back about 800 years. I don't even know how anyone would get their hands on something like that..." And to be honest? She wasn't sure she wanted to.
Buffy hesitated, "Probably not something we've faced, then?"
"Probably not," said Anya, "Voodoo still exists but it's mostly diluted from it's original form. Like I said, old school."
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Like I said, old school.
Dean looked over at Anya as she said that, those two words striking a chord in him. What if they were wrong, just like Warren Fischer? He had thought it was a typical cut and dry voodoo hunt too, and that hadn't turned out in his favor. Maybe....
"Maybe...it's not a person," he said, his thoughts spilling out of his mouth.
"You thinking demonic?" Sam asked, not sure what was worse--some really magically powerful person raising the dead or demons.
"The shapeshifter in Illinois wasn't the typical MO either. Killing specifically hunters and hunter families?" Dean said, turning slightly in his seat to look at Sam and Buffy in the back. "Not usually their deal. They're random killers. That's why they're so hard to track. And now we got the dead rising up and making an entire town their own zombie all-you-can-eat buffet. None of these bastards are acting the way they're supposed to." He frowned at the thought even as he was having it. "So maybe it's all connected. The shapeshifters, the zombies, the coming war. Hell, maybe the war is already here."
The was was here, and they were currently losing.
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"Not always," said Anya, carefully. "You didn't start getting those wacko dreams with The First until it was way past too late and all those girls had died."
She was right with that, Buffy knew, but that still didn't make it any easier to hear. "Yeah, but this--"
"I think Dean's right," Anya interrupted, holding up a hand. Buffy closed her mouth abruptly and Anya knew she hated that as much as she'd hate the next words coming out of her mouth. "Something demonic, all those things working together... It's not your usual demon way. Add zombies into the mix..."
"Okay, so we have wacky. We've done wacky," said Buffy, though the tension in her voice was plaintive. "That doesn't mean the apocalypse is already on us."
Anya sighed, "I think it does." She hated having an enraptured audience on a topic such as this. Give her anything to talk about - money, sex,, hell even Bunnies - and she'd be happier than this moment right here. "There's a demon," she murmured, "A real powerful, vindictive, bastard of a demon... And this? Has him written all over it."
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Sam sighed, running a hand through his hair. He'd had a lot to take in the past few days, and he was honestly still just trying to keep his own head on straight; and now they had to worry about zombies. "A demon is good though, right? Means we can destroy him."
Dean turned to Anya, who was currently chewing nervoudly on her lower lip. "So who is this guy, Anya?"
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"His name is Samhain," she said quietly, "The God of the Dead. Go back a few thousand years and the Celts of old believed that from sunset on the last night of October, to sun-up on November 1st, the veil separating the worlds between the dead was thinnest."
"Halloween?"
Anya nodded, "Halloween was Samhain's night. Think what Santa is to Christmas... What the Easter Bunny is to Easter," she shuddered, "Those who worshipped him carved his face into pumpkins, left candy on the doorsteps to appease him and wore masks to hide their true face... Once he was banished to Hell, Halloween changed. Commercialised, I guess, until we have what we have now. Kids, trick-or-treaters... Nobody remembers the true meaning of Halloween."
Buffy's stomach which had already been doubled in knots, turned even more. "So what, he decides to come out and play now?"
"You didn't release him," Anya's gaze went straight to Sam's, "not with the Devils Gate. Yellow Eyes could only dream of being that powerful. The chance to bring Samhain back only comes around once every 600 years so... Somebody's been waiting. There would've been a spell, right here in town. Serious voodoo, requiring sacrifices, blood... Probably a witch, someone who worshipped the guy in all his former glory."
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Witches Sam could deal with. He was still having issues with the army of walking dead led by a god. "Okay, so we regroup at Bobby's, research up whatever else we can find about this Samhain guy...."
Dean shook his head at that. "Dude, you heard Anya. She's right. This is demon ground zero. We need to stick around here and figure this out." He raised a hand to stop Sam, as he was already giving Dean a "seriously?" sort of look. "Yeah, I don't like the idea of zombies creeping up on us either, but it makes sense."
They're not coming back for me. This town is dead.
He pushed Warren's voice out of his head as he continued, "We grab some supplies, arm ourselves to the teeth to be on the safe side--" He picked up the journal from the dash. "And we start from the beginning."
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Not that she was clutching at straws or anything here. She knew nothing about spells or spell-casting but she assumed that a spell of this magnitude would leave traces somewhere.
She opened her cell again, frowning at the lack of messages. Or call-backs, especially from Giles, how come the guy was never around when you really needed him?
"I'm with Dean," Anya nodded, "but I want something bigger than that machete. A pitchfork could work." She could definitely get behind stabbing at a distance. "If Samhain's out and all these people are walking around... We're heading right into a bloodbath, you guys know this, right? It's not going to be pretty."
Usually, this would be the point where Anya ran - got the hell out of dodge and left the idiots behind to deal with the bad. She glanced at Dean, gave a tiny sigh. If he'd been less pretty, maybe, or less accomodating... Or hell, even if he'd just let Bobby talk him right into his senses, maybe she wouldn't have had to stick around.
"We need to canvas the town first," said Buffy, shooting a wary glance back at Fischer's house as if the ghosts were gonna start pouring out all on their own. "Make sure it's really most sincerely dead before we set up camp."
Who knew who - or what - else was out there.
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