The Killing Moon
17. Ramble On
Hudak almost laughs out loud when she kneels by the bed, breathes out the word in disbelief. "Ikea?"
She ponders it: the fact that somewhere in that miserable hole decorated with human body parts and jars of teeth, there had been a dog-eared Ikea catalogue that Pa Bender thumbed through to choose this bed, and heck, maybe he kept it on his pile of Sears catalogues. And maybe there was a copy of Playboy too, that the old bastard only subscribed to for the articles, and now she thinks of it she can just see him sitting with his feet up, perusing twenty questions with George Clooney. "Christ," she mutters to herself as she shakes her head. "Maybe he even had an Ikea card."
The sonofabitch phoned Ikea and ordered a bed, trotted out his card number and security code like normal people did every day of the week, had the damn thing run down from Bloomington. And then he hauled it up here and cursed the asshat who invented flat-pack furniture when the screwholes didn't line up. So fucking mundane, so not a monster, so human. And Hudak can't help thinking of the canned food in the pantry, Progresso, Campbell's, Chef Boyarde. "Pa Bender went grocery shopping," she announces to the room. "Pa Bender might have been a Springsteen fan. Pa Bender complained about the weather, bitched about the President, and wanted the troops to come home. Once upon a time, Pa Bender changed diapers."
She recalls Dean Winchester's wander down memory road, muses that Pa Bender wept at his kids' births, and Jesus, maybe Pa Bender had remembered when and where they said their first words, took their first steps. Because this whole miserable nightmare had started with people. And she can't even think about that, can't think those monsters were human under the skin, so, "Allen key," she sidetracks softly under her breath. "All this tat is put together with Allen keys." And if Pa Bender was anything even remotely reminiscent of human, there's only one place it'll be.
She stands, crosses to the dresser, forces its reluctant top drawer open, and it seems like the final irony that Pa Bender had something as normal as a sock drawer. There it is, the tool she needs and she sets to work taking the bed apart, ending up with some fairly fairly decent lengths of soft pine and a jumble of broken bed slats for her trouble.
Dean is sitting bolt upright when she walks through the doorway. His eyes are wide and alert, pupils so large she can barely see a rim of dirty green.
"You look perky," she notes.
"That stuff I took has some serious mojo, Kathleen," Dean confirms, and he smiles, lopsided, dopey, pleased with himself. "It gives you feelings of happiness and power. So that means I feel happy and powerful. Which I haven't felt for a while now, so don't knock it."
Hudak considers his words for a minute, deciphers the subtext. "You sound like you speak from experience."
He narrows his eyes. "Yeah, well in my line of work you do whatever you have to do to keep yourself awake when the boogeyman's under the bed," he says, the words flowing faster as he stares at the wood. "But I've never made a habit of it. Anyhoo. Wood. What do we need wood for? You making me a cane or something? Think I can do without. Hey maybe there's an actual cane. A lot of these Benders must have been old, walked with canes. Have you checked the closets? Might be worth a look. Or is it for the splint? I was thinking maybe the splint should come right down the sides to the ground. Don't have to go up to the knee, the knee isn't the problem. Just the ankle. And how-"
"And chatty," Hudak remarks, as she wads up a pillow, folds it over the top of the wood and frowns as she wonders how to make it stay in place. "Tape," she decides. "We need duct tape."
Dean waves a hand and burbles on, and she lets him. "Junk drawer, kitchen. All kitchens have junk drawers. It'll be next to the sink. The pills are making me more sociable is all, it's what they do. While you're there, grab the scissors and twine. All junk drawers have scissors and twine. And safety pins. And paperclips. Get those too. We'll need them. But leave the tape measure, the thread and the mystic grip disk. We won't need those. Don't ask me how I know all that, since I never had a kitchen. I know you know because you do have a kitchen. Maybe I saw it on TV. Roseanne or something. That African-American family with the big sweaters-"
Hudak doesn't fight the smile that forms. "You mean the Cosby show," she says as she pulls open the drawer. She rolls her eyes at the fact it's just as he described it, picks out duck tape, twine, scissors, safety pins, paperclips, leaves the tape measure, the thread, and the mystic grip disk. Almost idly, she tugs at the other drawer, finds a rolling pin, plastic heart-shaped cookiecutters. Again it strikes her that somewhere in the insanity there was love and caring. She reaches for one of the shapes, holds them up. "Can you believe it? They baked Valentine cookies."
"Yeah," Dean responds, hardly drawing breath as he speaks. "Them. The Cosbys. My mom baked cookies. She let me lick the spoon and sometimes she made chocolate chip ones. So as I was saying, how are we keeping it on? The splint, I mean? Rope? Bandages? Needs to be something that won't stretch or the splint'll wear loose and that'll give me problems, so maybe we should use the chain? Then at least Bender won't be able to hump my leg when it all goes down. No, use the twine. No, the duck tape. And food. Just a few cans. Can opener. Forks. If you offer me another power bar I think I might stuff it up your ass sideways and dry."
He does pause then, to suck in oxygen and he must see her face because his brow furrows. "And yes, I know I'm monologuing, Kathleen, it's the dexy. Sorry, can't help it, you'll just have to go with it. It's driving me crazy too, and my jaws are aching already. I just, I just really need to go get my brother. Have you got all that stuff packed?"
Hudak doesn't really know if she's on a tactical go-slow because she hopes he might take a turn for the worse that stops his plan in its tracks, doesn't even know if it's worth roadblocking him anyway, with the mess that is what's left of his foot sapping the life out of him. "It's an ongoing process, Dean," she says finally. "Which means it's ongoing." She can't help marveling at the irony that his rambling would be funny if it weren't so desperately sad that any energy boost the pills are fueling is being spent on breathless, pointless, inane and nonsensical witter. "Look, Dean, I think maybe you need to, you know, take stock, start calming down instead of calming up, maybe say your mantra, because you're wearing yourself out and-"
"It's a fuckin' nongoing process at the moment if you ask me," Dean races out. "Fuck mantras, we're burning daylight and the moon's been red these last few nights, and that's a killing moon, meaning this thing's about to hibernate for six months, okay? It'll be chowing down in a big way and it isn't snacking on my brother before it hits the sack. So let's mount up. Get the stuff in the packs. What the fuck are you doing with the wood and the pillow? Looks like a giant fuckin' Q-tip. Oh, I see. That fits under my arm, good thinking Batman. Can you strap a wodge of the tape round where my hand's supposed to go? So I have something to hold onto? And water. Need to fill up some bottles." He stops, passes a hand across his brow. " Jesus Christ. I wish, I really wish, I could stop talking. I haven't talked this much since I picked Sam up at Stanford. He usually does the talking, I do the ignoring, and I really need to just go get him back, because, because…"
He trails off suddenly, heaves in a breath, stares at her with a sort of exhausted sadness in his eyes, and she finds herself reaching out, laying her palm on his cheek for a moment.
"This is going to hurt, Dean," she says, soft, as she lines the slats she pillaged from the bed next to his leg, and starts pulling off a long strip of duct tape. "And I'm really sorry."
"You really think they baked cookies?" Dean says, and there's a note of hysteria in his voice now. "My mom baked cookies, chocolate chip ones, did I tell you that already? She let me stir in the chocolate chips, she let me lick the spoon, and sometimes she made pie, and I think that's why I like pie so much, and-"
He stops abruptly as she starts, even though she is being as gentle as she can be, before he starts in again. "Fuck! Fuck! Be careful! Don't lift it like that, what the fuck are you… Kathleen! Be careful with that, Jesus-"
Hudak pauses, takes a second to rubs away the butterflies that are making her feel nauseous. "I have to lift the leg to get the tape underneath-"
"But it's killing me," he gasps. "Christ, I need a fuckin' epidural… drugs, some drugs. A shot, morphine. A drink, anything, fuckin' anything, this is worse than childbirth."
He kicks out weakly, and Hudak chides, "You'll make it worse," as she keeps at the task, winding tape around the makeshift splint, ignoring the way blood splotches start to seep up through the clean dressing.
Dean is unimpressed and baleful. "More? Is that really necessary? Ow. The poker and the chain, we'll need those, fuck-fuck-fuck, and we should take the trap too, you never know. It's iron, we can throw it at him, and stop, stop, is there anything else here that's iron?"
He stops as she takes a time-out, dips her head down into her palm, and blows out air.
"Why are you holding your head?" he continues then, accusingly. "I told you I can't help talking so much, it's a side-effect, it isn't my fault. My mouth's hurting, my throat too. I'd stop if I could." His pitch rises as she reaches down again. "No more. It's done, you're done… if you got a headache check the first aid box, there it is, look, just pop a pill for it, there's plenty of the damn things, and we should bring some. Vicodin. Just in case. And the morphine, because Christ on the cross, I need it, you fuckin' butcher-"
Hudak sighs, "but morphine means show tunes," sits back on her heels, studies the taped-up leg. "Best I can do. I taped it up real good, under your boot too."
"I could tell you were taping it up real good."
Dean sounds bright, cheerful, but when Hudak glances up at him, he looks somehow less than he did slumped on the mattress earlier. He looks fragile, gray face strained and drawn. He looks like a kid up way past his bedtime, or maybe more like a sick man one step ahead of the grim reaper
"It's an awesome splint, Kathleen," he enthuses, "and it won't need any remedial work at all, I can guarantee it, because you are never going near my leg again as long as I fuckin' live. And show tunes, yeah! You should hear my Maria. West Side fuckin' Story totally rocks. Jets, Sharks. But that new crap sucks ass. Lee's Miserables? Keep it. Best-"
"Les Miserables," Hudak corrects faintly as she leans across him and reaches into the box. "Jesus, this must be what it's like to have kids," she considers under her breath as she squints at a bottle. "Aspirin. Thank you, God."
"-musicals are the old ones," Dean keeps going. "Singin' in the Rain. Guys and Dolls. Brando! Luck be a fuckin' Lady Tonight. Jesus, we must've watched a ton of that stuff when we were kids…"
And it all starts to go faint, it starts to go blurry, and the world tips sideways. Hudak's eyes swim, and her vision tunnels until all she can see is a pinprick of light, and she tries to suck in oxygen past the pressure on her throat.
The last thing she remembers is wondering how the hell Bender got past the salt.
The thing is a noisy eater, Sam thinks. "It eats like Dean," he whispers to Bobby, who's equally transfixed by the rending, ripping, sucking, slurping, chewing sounds coming from the corner.
The old man snorts, then, "Listen, Sam, the moon… was it still red last night?"
"I don't know," Sam murmurs. "We had the shutters closed. Maybe… I caught a glimpse when it pulled me out the window. Maybe it was red." He swallows hard. "Bobby, does a killing moon really send these things into hibernation?"
"That's the lore," the old man answers. "And it hasn't been eating like that since I got here."
"Feeding frenzy…" Sam breathes out. "We don't have much time, do we?" It snarls at that, and Sam can just make it out, cocking its head, listening. Listening to us? he wonders frantically.
It pushes up abruptly, and Sam feels Bobby lock rigid next to him, hears the tiny choked sound Bobby makes at the back of his throat. The thing is almost as tall as the pit it has them trapped in, and it looks down at them where they huddle, its red eyes glowing like Terminator eyes when they don't have their skin on. Sam suddenly realizes he knows damn well why people piss themselves in terror. Confined space, no weapons. This thing is going to kill them. Maybe not today, but soon. It'll kill Bobby first and he'll sit and watch, and shake, and dribble in horror because he's defenseless. And then he'll sit here and do exactly the same while it gouges chunks out of him a day later.
It takes a step towards them and they shrink back simultaneously. And it reaches up with spindly arms, graceful and balletic, and eye-piercing sunshine floods in, makes them blink with its sting. It bounds fluidly out of the pit in a reverse swan dive, and the light shuts off as it covers them up again.
"It's daylight," Bobby croaks after a moment of tense silence. "It usually stays here in daylight."
Sam stares up, down again, focuses ahead of him on the rough wall. "How deep do you think this pit is?" he whispers, and he shoves Bobby in the ribs when he gets nothing back. "Deep," he repeats. "How deep do you think this pit is?"
He can just see Bobby now his eyes have gotten used to the ghostly gray of the pit again, and the old man is staring up to where sunlight filters in, rubbing at his jaw. "What are you?" he says thoughtfully. "Six four, six five, pretty much?"
"Pretty much," Sam confirms. "That thing's got about four feet on me, I think." He stands, presses his back up against the wall, shuffles his heels in, and for a second he expects the phantom of his tweenage brother to loom up, pencil in hand, to mark the wall before breaking out their dad's tape measure and pronouncing him four foot two. How many motel rooms bear the evidence of Sam Winchester's gangling limbs and growing pains? Eight foot fuckin' nine, Sammy. Dad's got me wearing your hand-me-downs. It's fuckin' wrong…
Sam shakes himself back to awareness, cranes his neck. "Got to be another six feet or so," he says, and he narrows his eyes. "It pushed the cover up out of the way pretty easily, so it can't be fixed in place. If we could just get up there, try pushing at it… how much do you weigh?"
Bobby grunts. "Two sixty, but it's-"
"Two sixty?" Sam yelps. "God, Bobby, what-"
"As I was saying, it's one-hundred percent muscle," Bobby continues, and his voice takes on an amused tone. "Isn't it, kid?"
Sam rolls his eyes. "Definitely." He squints upwards. "If you can give me a hitch, maybe I can get up on your shoulders or something, and then if you bounce from the knees-"
"Bounce from the knees?" Bobby says witheringly. "With you sitting on my shoulders?"
"No, standing on your shoulders," Sam corrects, stepping back from the wall. "You know, like the Flying Wallendas. I'll have to reach though. We'll have to stand right up next to the wall…"
"You'll still come up short," Bobby judges.
Sam ignores the old man's despondency. "We have to try something." He glances at the ground, drops down on all-fours, starts patting around, scanning the soil as best he can in the dim light.
"What are you doing?" Bobby queries.
"We need something to push at the cover," Sam shoots back. "What the hell is this?" It's heavy, round, and he rolls it back towards Bobby. "Could be useful. A weapon." He touches cloth then, pulls at something. It follows, a dragging, heavy, limp, dead sensation. Too heavy. "Dammit." He crabs in the other direction, finds something lighter, can feel the smooth hardness through the rags. "Sorry, pal," he mutters as he feels his way up. He grips it tight, briefly marvels that it's so narrow, that he can get his hand around it. He pulls, pulls harder, hears a sick snap-crackle-pop as he forces the joint.
"It's a rutabaga," Bobby says from his spot over by the wall. "I was bowling it at the skulls for a while there, lost it in the dark though."
It takes Sam a few seconds to work out what the old man is talking about. The round thing. "Oh yeah," he says as he scoots back, brandishing his prize.
Bobby stares. "I can't believe you just did that," he comments. "Jesus. Everything I've seen and done for the last thirty years and that's one of the sickest things I ever saw."
"What?" Sam says, bewildered. "Christ, Bobby, it's just a femur. I need something to bat up against the cover with."
Bobby sucks in breath. "You ripped out that guy's thighbone."
"But he's dead, Bobby. He doesn't need his thighbone. And it's not as if there's any meat left on it." Sam shoves the bone up under Bobby's nose. "Look. Just some gristle on the end there."
"Jesus, Sam."
Hudak comes round lying on something soft. Mom, I don't wanna go to school… She cracks her eyes, stares up. Scarred wooden beams. Please be a rustic lodge with full room service at an exclusive spa in Aspen…
Initials dancing their way across her line of vision. Fucking Benders.
She lifts her head and he's gone, like she knew he would be. And she squeezes her eyes hard closed against the sting of tears. Jesus, Dean. How did he get in? "It's over," she sighs out. "Finally. I can go home…" But there's no relief, no respite, only regret.
Hudak pushes up on her shoulders, reaches for her throat, gets her hand about a foot off the mattress. "What the hell?" she murmurs as she stares at her wrist, at the bracelet linking it to the fender. It dawns on her them and she huffs. "My own cuffs. How the hell am I supposed to…" It's right there, carefully placed on her belly, a small cardboard carton. "Paperclips. We'll need them," she spits. "You devious bastard."
She grabs the box, shakes out a couple, straightens one, inserts it in the lock and jiggles it about. "Yeah well," she mutters. "Bobby showed me." She hears the click, smiles in triumph. "How do you like them apples, Winchester."
She pushes to her feet, glances about her. Note on the table, untidy scrawl, the ink blurred and blotchy in places.
Kathleen, it's for the best. Bender won't follow you. Took the poker, the chain and the flaregun. Left you the gun and the salt rounds. Some silver ones in the pistol. The crutch works. Get out while it's daylight. Thanks for everything. Go live life. Dean Winchester.
"As if," she snaps as she bends to ram the pistol into her pack. She cracks the shotgun, loads up two. "Water…" She sees the pile of kitchen drawer booty on the table, stuffs it all in the bag. The filthy trap is languishing by a chair. "Ugliest doorstop in history," she murmurs. "Well. You never know." She hefts it all up, makes for the door, steps cautiously into the light.
It's quiet, but there are birds singing. A good sign, but she was a girl scout after all, so she crosses back to the burlap sack, half empty now, starts filling her pockets with salt. She wriggles out of her pack, roots out a couple of pair of socks, fills them with salt and knots them. "I'm ready," she announces to the room. "Maybe not willing or able, but I'm ready."
"Stand still," Sam scrapes out as he tries to keep his balance.
"I'm trying," Bobby growls up from beneath him. "You aren't exactly a lightweight."
"Can you bounce?" Sam asks him.
"Bounce?!"
It comes out like the vilest cussword ever, but Sam persists. "Yeah. Bounce from the knees. Like we discussed…" He spares a glance down, sees that Bobby is glowering up at him, arms braced on the wall, legs apart and firm.
"Like we discussed my ass," Bobby spits back at him. "You're going on a fuckin' diet, kid."
Sam looks back up, stretches once more, dances a brief jig on the old man's shoulders before he overbalances and crashes to the ground. Winded, he stays there for a moment while Bobby twists and eases himself down onto his butt.
"You're fat," the old man grouses, rubbing at his back.
Dean said that, Sam thinks as he stares up at the thin slivers of light that mark the trapdoor. "Dean isn't getting out of this if we don't get out of here, Bobby," he says dully. "He needs a hospital. Kathleen isn't going to be able to get him out of here by herself. He can't walk." He rolls over, groans, pushes up and crawls over, slumps to the right.
"Dean's a tough customer," Bobby says after a moment. "If anyone can-"
"Not this time," Sam cuts in, and he's remembering the bleak look his brother fixed him with back in the cabin, when he told Sam to light out of there come sunup. "I think he knew it too. It was in his eyes." He picks up the discarded can, flings it away into the darkness. "Christ. If only he could walk."
Bobby tsks thoughtfully. "Could she leave him, maybe? Go for help?"
"She won't leave him." Sam doesn't know why exactly he's so sure of that, but he is. He leans his head back against the dirt wall. "I think she knows too. So she won't leave him."
Bobby grates out an incoherent expletive, pushes up onto his feet and bites back a groan, leaning forward to place his hands on his knees. "Jesus. My back." He eases up gradually. "Get up. We go again."
"It's no good," Sam mutters. "We'll never reach it."
Snorting, Bobby says, "You started this, boy. Come on. Time to plow."
"What's the point, Bobby?" Sam counters. "We're never getting-"
"Your brother's the point, Sam," Bobby snaps. It's loud in the quiet, and his voice breaks. "Your brother's always been the point. Jesus."
Sam doesn't offer anything, watches and waits as Bobby shakes his head. He walks a few feet away then, into the center of the pit, doesn't look at Sam. "I buried my son," he says into the stillness. "I carried the box all by myself. He was a small kid."
He clears his throat, pauses for a beat. "You know, Sam, being a parent is real hard work. You get tired, you snap. You aren't always as patient as you should be. Maybe you bite your kid's head off when he asks you the same thing for the umpteenth time. Maybe you holler at him to go back to bed when he gets up with nightmares. Maybe you make him sit at the table and finish his damn dinner when it's gone cold. Maybe you clip him round the ear when he isn't doing what he's told. And then…" He puts his hand up to his face, over his eyes, as he goes on.
"Then one day, maybe you bury him. And you come home and you sit and stare at nothing. And what you want to do most in the world in that moment when you know it's all gone and it's never coming back, is listen to your kid, hear what he's saying, what he's asking you for the umpteenth time. Hear his voice because you can't remember what it sounds like. Maybe you want to just roll over in the bed and let him get in next to you so he can sleep, and maybe you want to make him peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches when he doesn't like what you cooked. And maybe you want to laugh at the way he stands there and backchats you when he don't do what he's told, because you can't remember the expression on his face when he did that, can't remember what he really looked like smiling, laughing. Living."
"Bobby…" Sam whispers.
"No. Let me just…" Bobby shakes his head. "Your dad turned up out of the blue with you two boys and then he just took off, didn't ask, didn't tell. Christ, I didn't have anything, no diapers, nothing kids like to eat. You know what I told you before, Sam, about the drugs. I wasn't in it for the long haul back then. Too much had happened and hunting didn't fill that void for me like it did for your dad. So I was pretty pissed off I couldn't just get on with ending it the way I wanted to. And Dean… he never said a damn word for weeks. Just looked up at me with these big saucer eyes. Saw right inside me." He snorts. "He still sees more than you think, more than he lets on. Anyhoo, you'd just sit there eating the dirt, and he'd just walk around the place. So I'd pick you up and follow him. And I got to thinking, well, all those clothes in the garage were going to waste. And toys."
"Toy soldiers," Sam says, on the memory of sitting next to his brother in the mineshaft, and Dean's own halting recollection. "Cars. Wacky races."
Bobby turns to look at Sam, chokes out, "You boys… you were my second chance. Your brother. He was my second chance, Sam. And like I told him last time we were up here, I'm not burying another son. So…"
"We go again," Sam picks up softly, and as he pulls his feet up under him, his boot brushes against the rutabaga. "Maybe if we throw this up there, we can dislodge the cover," he muses as he reaches for it. "At least we'll be able to see better then." He stands, measures the distance, bends and hurls the vegetable up, and it crashes into the wood.
"I think it moved…" Bobby ventures, collecting himself, scrubbing at his eyes.
Sam bends to retrieve the rutabaga, pulls his arm back again. "I wonder how the hell the damn thing thought you were going to eat a rutabaga," he grunts, as he lets it fly, hears it impact the wood again.
"That was here already," Bobby replies.
Just like that, everything screeches to a halt, like mental brakes burning rubber in Sam's brain. "It was here already?"
"Yeah, found it on day two," the old man confirms. "The thing brought canned food for me to eat. Don't know where it got them."
"Cans…" Sam stumbles through bones, rotting flesh, drops to his knees. "Cans… find me a can, Bobby…"
"Sam, what the hell? What is this? What about the cans?"
Bobby's down on his knees too, and he's pulling at his arm, and Sam shouts in the old man's face. "The cans. Find one of the cans it brought. It's important…"
He roots feverishly through bodies, heaves, rolls them out of the way, hears Bobby from miles away.
"Sam. Sam - here. Here's one…"
Sam snatches it out of Bobby's hand, shots upright, spins, holds it up close to his face in the dim light. "Spaghettios… Jesus. Jesus…" He tosses it again, squats. "Rutabaga…" he mutters, and he pushes up, bends his arm to throw it only to find Bobby right up in front of him.
"What. The. Fuck. Is. Going. On?" Bobby growls. "Now."
"We're in the root cellar," Sam snaps back at him. "We're in the fucking root cellar."
Bobby shakes his head. "What root cellar? You're making no sense."
"The cabin!" Sam yells. "The root cellar! Behind the cabin. Spaghettios… the can. It's from the cabin…"
Hudak steps out onto the porch, feels a sudden icy chill that's at odds with the sun, sees her breath mist out, and shudders.
Bender is standing in her peripheral vision, and she slants her eyes, assesses him. He's watching her, his face impassive, but for all his bulk there's no substance. His mouth opens, his lips form words, but nothing comes out.
Is it only Dean who hears you then? Hudak wonders. Or did that thing somehow steal your voice?
It's tranquil, peaceful. He's non-threatening, almost friendly. It's like he's harmless.
She raises the shotgun and gut-shoots the spectre with pleasure.
The blat of gunfire echoes in from above, and Sam freezes where he is, perched on Bobby's shoulders again. "Did you hear that?"
"You bet I did… come on, boy, we go again, now."
Sam feels himself jerk upwards again as Bobby pushes, groaning with the weight of Sam and his rutabaga, and Sam throws the missile with all he has, finally sees the cover shift. "The door's broken… if I could just… my bone! I need my bone…"
"Hang on…" Bobby strains, reaches. "It's propped right here… just let me… got it."
He passes it up, and now it's Sam's turn to reach, and now the bone is balanced on the tips of his fingertips, and he's barely exerting any pressure on it at all. "I Can't get behind it. Bounce."
Bobby groans again. "I'm trying."
Sam detours into a different strategy. "The gunfire, it must be Kathleen." He yells her name at the top of his lungs, towards the two-inch wide gap he's managed to open up, hollers and hollers until he can taste copper and thinks he might have drawn blood deep down in his throat because he's screaming so hard.
And when the cover pushes aside and she's staring in at him, she's the most beautiful thing Sam's ever seen. "God. Kathleen. I think I love you a little bit," he says stupidly, and he feels tears spring.
"At this moment in time, Sam, I can assure you the feeling is mutual," she repliess, and she's as economical and efficient as ever, slipping her duffel off her shoulders and unstrapping the flap as she speaks, not remotely phased. "I've got a rope."
"We knew you would have," Bobby calls up. "You got any water there?"
"Incoming."
It bounces off the dirt, rolls into a corner and Bobby scrabbles about for it, gulps it down avidly. "Damn water in these old canteens is like treacle mixed with horse piss," he says feelingly, as Sam grins at him. "Christ, this is better than Jack."
Hudak pokes her head in again. "I'm going to tie this off - there's a tree stump I can use."
"Wait, Kathleen," Sam shouts, and her face bobs back into sight.
"Dean," Sam says, feeling his voice crack slightly. "How is he? His leg? Did you manage to-"
"He's fine," she says tersely. "In fact, we've managed to get him up on his hind legs and he's more mobile than you'd have thought possible, Sam. Surprisingly active, in fact. Let me just get this tied off."
"But Kathleen-"
Bobby tugs at Sam's arm. "Let's just get out of here while we can, before that thing gets back," he says. "You'll see your brother soon enough."
Thank Christ, Sam thinks, and he's already mentally building the travvy, no, stretcher, he thinks, wood from the bedframe in the cabin threaded through their jacket sleeves, because they're getting his brother out of here for once and for all and it's the last time he'll ever let Dean near so much as a fucking shrub, let alone a forest.
The rope drops in over the lip of the pit. Roughly a foot in, and Sam huffs in frustration, fists his hands. "Just once, can't it be fucking easy?" he mutters. "Just one time, is it so much to ask?"
"It's not long enough," Hudak calls down now. "As you can see. Hang on, I'm going to tie my jacket to it."
Bobby hollers up, "Kathleen. Keep your eyes peeled. Thing took off a while back, that isn't its usual MO in daylight."
Silence.
"Kathleen?" Sam tries.
And there's a sudden flurry of gunfire, unholy howls of rage, a cry abruptly cut off, followed by a moment that seems like an eternity until a shadow blots out the light and Sam sees her fall. He reacts without even thinking, dives, twists, spreadeagles himself at the point of impact, but the thud as her head hits the ground is sickening.
Dean meanders along, dragging his foot because sliding it along the ground keeps the pain excruciating, which he can just about manage, unlike the first few steps, when the sheer torment had him weeping in misery and self-pity before he even reached the table, had teardrops splotch the ink as he scribbled the note.
He has his poker gripped tight in his right hand, crutch tucked firmly under his left arm, slanting out at a fifteen-degree angle because Kathleen, how fuckin' tall do you think I am? This damn thing's about a foot too long.
He freezes when he hears distant gunfire, glances behind him uneasily. "There's no way she got out of those cuffs already," he thinks aloud. He runs through it in his mind, hunters maybe, someone off in the woods, someone who might help. It wasn't her and she's fine. Or maybe Lee popped up, and she took a shot at him. He works through it logically, even if it is Lee, he won't follow her… he doesn't swing that way, so she'll be fine. His mind touches briefly on the fact the shot can't be anything to do with the thing because it's holed up with his brother, and he shudders, jumps off that train of thought then and there.
"How many shots was that anyway?" he mutters. "Jesus, my neck hurts. My shoulders. My leg. Fuck. Rest. Quick one."
It's like he just grinds to a halt, and he eases himself down his crutch a hand at a time, until he's a shivering curled-up ball of fuckin' agony on the soil, his vision foggy, his heart racing, breath whistling in and out so fast he can almost feel the air blow dry his lips to papery harshness, feel his mouth bake dry. He lies and pants and stares at nothing, until he realizes he's lying on his pack. Water. Drugs. Pain, in his shoulders, neck, throat. Leg, clenching, rigid, please stop…
Dean shifts himself forward, inch by inch, feels his arms come loose from the straps, and rolls onto his belly. He's crashing, and, "Fuck," he gasps. "Down cycle…"
His head spins. Water. Bottle. Right there. He sips it down, slow, hard to swallow, sore. "God… hurts." He fumbles tiredly in the outer pocket of the pack, Tylenol, oh thank God, and he shakes three of the pulls out with trembling hands, down the chute.
He doesn't know if it's sixth sense per se. It's not a chill up his spine, or a shiver, or the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. It's not the cold, because he's furnace-hot and bathed in sweat that saturates his tee; and it's not even that he can see his breath, because he's face down. It's what's in his mind's eye right at that moment, as he sees himself sitting on a log, Sam right there next to him, just a boy and his dog, all peaceful. No family, because family doesn't mean what it once did, family isn't what it used to be, and now instead of running to his brother he wants to run as far away as he can. But right now, just him and Sam, it's safe. Only then reality bites, and his brother is back, crashing into the campsite, stalking up to him, fixing him with cold, blank eyes that lost the warmth they used to have somewhere along the way.
And that's what it is: the memory of boots shuffling through crunchy undergrowth, trampling all over his daydreams, and stopping right there in front of him. And it's Pavlovian, because it's expectation, resignation, fear. That's what tells him he's got company.
"Hey, Lee," Dean rasps into the dirt. "Long time no see."
Next
Hudak almost laughs out loud when she kneels by the bed, breathes out the word in disbelief. "Ikea?"
She ponders it: the fact that somewhere in that miserable hole decorated with human body parts and jars of teeth, there had been a dog-eared Ikea catalogue that Pa Bender thumbed through to choose this bed, and heck, maybe he kept it on his pile of Sears catalogues. And maybe there was a copy of Playboy too, that the old bastard only subscribed to for the articles, and now she thinks of it she can just see him sitting with his feet up, perusing twenty questions with George Clooney. "Christ," she mutters to herself as she shakes her head. "Maybe he even had an Ikea card."
The sonofabitch phoned Ikea and ordered a bed, trotted out his card number and security code like normal people did every day of the week, had the damn thing run down from Bloomington. And then he hauled it up here and cursed the asshat who invented flat-pack furniture when the screwholes didn't line up. So fucking mundane, so not a monster, so human. And Hudak can't help thinking of the canned food in the pantry, Progresso, Campbell's, Chef Boyarde. "Pa Bender went grocery shopping," she announces to the room. "Pa Bender might have been a Springsteen fan. Pa Bender complained about the weather, bitched about the President, and wanted the troops to come home. Once upon a time, Pa Bender changed diapers."
She recalls Dean Winchester's wander down memory road, muses that Pa Bender wept at his kids' births, and Jesus, maybe Pa Bender had remembered when and where they said their first words, took their first steps. Because this whole miserable nightmare had started with people. And she can't even think about that, can't think those monsters were human under the skin, so, "Allen key," she sidetracks softly under her breath. "All this tat is put together with Allen keys." And if Pa Bender was anything even remotely reminiscent of human, there's only one place it'll be.
She stands, crosses to the dresser, forces its reluctant top drawer open, and it seems like the final irony that Pa Bender had something as normal as a sock drawer. There it is, the tool she needs and she sets to work taking the bed apart, ending up with some fairly fairly decent lengths of soft pine and a jumble of broken bed slats for her trouble.
Dean is sitting bolt upright when she walks through the doorway. His eyes are wide and alert, pupils so large she can barely see a rim of dirty green.
"You look perky," she notes.
"That stuff I took has some serious mojo, Kathleen," Dean confirms, and he smiles, lopsided, dopey, pleased with himself. "It gives you feelings of happiness and power. So that means I feel happy and powerful. Which I haven't felt for a while now, so don't knock it."
Hudak considers his words for a minute, deciphers the subtext. "You sound like you speak from experience."
He narrows his eyes. "Yeah, well in my line of work you do whatever you have to do to keep yourself awake when the boogeyman's under the bed," he says, the words flowing faster as he stares at the wood. "But I've never made a habit of it. Anyhoo. Wood. What do we need wood for? You making me a cane or something? Think I can do without. Hey maybe there's an actual cane. A lot of these Benders must have been old, walked with canes. Have you checked the closets? Might be worth a look. Or is it for the splint? I was thinking maybe the splint should come right down the sides to the ground. Don't have to go up to the knee, the knee isn't the problem. Just the ankle. And how-"
"And chatty," Hudak remarks, as she wads up a pillow, folds it over the top of the wood and frowns as she wonders how to make it stay in place. "Tape," she decides. "We need duct tape."
Dean waves a hand and burbles on, and she lets him. "Junk drawer, kitchen. All kitchens have junk drawers. It'll be next to the sink. The pills are making me more sociable is all, it's what they do. While you're there, grab the scissors and twine. All junk drawers have scissors and twine. And safety pins. And paperclips. Get those too. We'll need them. But leave the tape measure, the thread and the mystic grip disk. We won't need those. Don't ask me how I know all that, since I never had a kitchen. I know you know because you do have a kitchen. Maybe I saw it on TV. Roseanne or something. That African-American family with the big sweaters-"
Hudak doesn't fight the smile that forms. "You mean the Cosby show," she says as she pulls open the drawer. She rolls her eyes at the fact it's just as he described it, picks out duck tape, twine, scissors, safety pins, paperclips, leaves the tape measure, the thread, and the mystic grip disk. Almost idly, she tugs at the other drawer, finds a rolling pin, plastic heart-shaped cookiecutters. Again it strikes her that somewhere in the insanity there was love and caring. She reaches for one of the shapes, holds them up. "Can you believe it? They baked Valentine cookies."
"Yeah," Dean responds, hardly drawing breath as he speaks. "Them. The Cosbys. My mom baked cookies. She let me lick the spoon and sometimes she made chocolate chip ones. So as I was saying, how are we keeping it on? The splint, I mean? Rope? Bandages? Needs to be something that won't stretch or the splint'll wear loose and that'll give me problems, so maybe we should use the chain? Then at least Bender won't be able to hump my leg when it all goes down. No, use the twine. No, the duck tape. And food. Just a few cans. Can opener. Forks. If you offer me another power bar I think I might stuff it up your ass sideways and dry."
He does pause then, to suck in oxygen and he must see her face because his brow furrows. "And yes, I know I'm monologuing, Kathleen, it's the dexy. Sorry, can't help it, you'll just have to go with it. It's driving me crazy too, and my jaws are aching already. I just, I just really need to go get my brother. Have you got all that stuff packed?"
Hudak doesn't really know if she's on a tactical go-slow because she hopes he might take a turn for the worse that stops his plan in its tracks, doesn't even know if it's worth roadblocking him anyway, with the mess that is what's left of his foot sapping the life out of him. "It's an ongoing process, Dean," she says finally. "Which means it's ongoing." She can't help marveling at the irony that his rambling would be funny if it weren't so desperately sad that any energy boost the pills are fueling is being spent on breathless, pointless, inane and nonsensical witter. "Look, Dean, I think maybe you need to, you know, take stock, start calming down instead of calming up, maybe say your mantra, because you're wearing yourself out and-"
"It's a fuckin' nongoing process at the moment if you ask me," Dean races out. "Fuck mantras, we're burning daylight and the moon's been red these last few nights, and that's a killing moon, meaning this thing's about to hibernate for six months, okay? It'll be chowing down in a big way and it isn't snacking on my brother before it hits the sack. So let's mount up. Get the stuff in the packs. What the fuck are you doing with the wood and the pillow? Looks like a giant fuckin' Q-tip. Oh, I see. That fits under my arm, good thinking Batman. Can you strap a wodge of the tape round where my hand's supposed to go? So I have something to hold onto? And water. Need to fill up some bottles." He stops, passes a hand across his brow. " Jesus Christ. I wish, I really wish, I could stop talking. I haven't talked this much since I picked Sam up at Stanford. He usually does the talking, I do the ignoring, and I really need to just go get him back, because, because…"
He trails off suddenly, heaves in a breath, stares at her with a sort of exhausted sadness in his eyes, and she finds herself reaching out, laying her palm on his cheek for a moment.
"This is going to hurt, Dean," she says, soft, as she lines the slats she pillaged from the bed next to his leg, and starts pulling off a long strip of duct tape. "And I'm really sorry."
"You really think they baked cookies?" Dean says, and there's a note of hysteria in his voice now. "My mom baked cookies, chocolate chip ones, did I tell you that already? She let me stir in the chocolate chips, she let me lick the spoon, and sometimes she made pie, and I think that's why I like pie so much, and-"
He stops abruptly as she starts, even though she is being as gentle as she can be, before he starts in again. "Fuck! Fuck! Be careful! Don't lift it like that, what the fuck are you… Kathleen! Be careful with that, Jesus-"
Hudak pauses, takes a second to rubs away the butterflies that are making her feel nauseous. "I have to lift the leg to get the tape underneath-"
"But it's killing me," he gasps. "Christ, I need a fuckin' epidural… drugs, some drugs. A shot, morphine. A drink, anything, fuckin' anything, this is worse than childbirth."
He kicks out weakly, and Hudak chides, "You'll make it worse," as she keeps at the task, winding tape around the makeshift splint, ignoring the way blood splotches start to seep up through the clean dressing.
Dean is unimpressed and baleful. "More? Is that really necessary? Ow. The poker and the chain, we'll need those, fuck-fuck-fuck, and we should take the trap too, you never know. It's iron, we can throw it at him, and stop, stop, is there anything else here that's iron?"
He stops as she takes a time-out, dips her head down into her palm, and blows out air.
"Why are you holding your head?" he continues then, accusingly. "I told you I can't help talking so much, it's a side-effect, it isn't my fault. My mouth's hurting, my throat too. I'd stop if I could." His pitch rises as she reaches down again. "No more. It's done, you're done… if you got a headache check the first aid box, there it is, look, just pop a pill for it, there's plenty of the damn things, and we should bring some. Vicodin. Just in case. And the morphine, because Christ on the cross, I need it, you fuckin' butcher-"
Hudak sighs, "but morphine means show tunes," sits back on her heels, studies the taped-up leg. "Best I can do. I taped it up real good, under your boot too."
"I could tell you were taping it up real good."
Dean sounds bright, cheerful, but when Hudak glances up at him, he looks somehow less than he did slumped on the mattress earlier. He looks fragile, gray face strained and drawn. He looks like a kid up way past his bedtime, or maybe more like a sick man one step ahead of the grim reaper
"It's an awesome splint, Kathleen," he enthuses, "and it won't need any remedial work at all, I can guarantee it, because you are never going near my leg again as long as I fuckin' live. And show tunes, yeah! You should hear my Maria. West Side fuckin' Story totally rocks. Jets, Sharks. But that new crap sucks ass. Lee's Miserables? Keep it. Best-"
"Les Miserables," Hudak corrects faintly as she leans across him and reaches into the box. "Jesus, this must be what it's like to have kids," she considers under her breath as she squints at a bottle. "Aspirin. Thank you, God."
"-musicals are the old ones," Dean keeps going. "Singin' in the Rain. Guys and Dolls. Brando! Luck be a fuckin' Lady Tonight. Jesus, we must've watched a ton of that stuff when we were kids…"
And it all starts to go faint, it starts to go blurry, and the world tips sideways. Hudak's eyes swim, and her vision tunnels until all she can see is a pinprick of light, and she tries to suck in oxygen past the pressure on her throat.
The last thing she remembers is wondering how the hell Bender got past the salt.
The thing is a noisy eater, Sam thinks. "It eats like Dean," he whispers to Bobby, who's equally transfixed by the rending, ripping, sucking, slurping, chewing sounds coming from the corner.
The old man snorts, then, "Listen, Sam, the moon… was it still red last night?"
"I don't know," Sam murmurs. "We had the shutters closed. Maybe… I caught a glimpse when it pulled me out the window. Maybe it was red." He swallows hard. "Bobby, does a killing moon really send these things into hibernation?"
"That's the lore," the old man answers. "And it hasn't been eating like that since I got here."
"Feeding frenzy…" Sam breathes out. "We don't have much time, do we?" It snarls at that, and Sam can just make it out, cocking its head, listening. Listening to us? he wonders frantically.
It pushes up abruptly, and Sam feels Bobby lock rigid next to him, hears the tiny choked sound Bobby makes at the back of his throat. The thing is almost as tall as the pit it has them trapped in, and it looks down at them where they huddle, its red eyes glowing like Terminator eyes when they don't have their skin on. Sam suddenly realizes he knows damn well why people piss themselves in terror. Confined space, no weapons. This thing is going to kill them. Maybe not today, but soon. It'll kill Bobby first and he'll sit and watch, and shake, and dribble in horror because he's defenseless. And then he'll sit here and do exactly the same while it gouges chunks out of him a day later.
It takes a step towards them and they shrink back simultaneously. And it reaches up with spindly arms, graceful and balletic, and eye-piercing sunshine floods in, makes them blink with its sting. It bounds fluidly out of the pit in a reverse swan dive, and the light shuts off as it covers them up again.
"It's daylight," Bobby croaks after a moment of tense silence. "It usually stays here in daylight."
Sam stares up, down again, focuses ahead of him on the rough wall. "How deep do you think this pit is?" he whispers, and he shoves Bobby in the ribs when he gets nothing back. "Deep," he repeats. "How deep do you think this pit is?"
He can just see Bobby now his eyes have gotten used to the ghostly gray of the pit again, and the old man is staring up to where sunlight filters in, rubbing at his jaw. "What are you?" he says thoughtfully. "Six four, six five, pretty much?"
"Pretty much," Sam confirms. "That thing's got about four feet on me, I think." He stands, presses his back up against the wall, shuffles his heels in, and for a second he expects the phantom of his tweenage brother to loom up, pencil in hand, to mark the wall before breaking out their dad's tape measure and pronouncing him four foot two. How many motel rooms bear the evidence of Sam Winchester's gangling limbs and growing pains? Eight foot fuckin' nine, Sammy. Dad's got me wearing your hand-me-downs. It's fuckin' wrong…
Sam shakes himself back to awareness, cranes his neck. "Got to be another six feet or so," he says, and he narrows his eyes. "It pushed the cover up out of the way pretty easily, so it can't be fixed in place. If we could just get up there, try pushing at it… how much do you weigh?"
Bobby grunts. "Two sixty, but it's-"
"Two sixty?" Sam yelps. "God, Bobby, what-"
"As I was saying, it's one-hundred percent muscle," Bobby continues, and his voice takes on an amused tone. "Isn't it, kid?"
Sam rolls his eyes. "Definitely." He squints upwards. "If you can give me a hitch, maybe I can get up on your shoulders or something, and then if you bounce from the knees-"
"Bounce from the knees?" Bobby says witheringly. "With you sitting on my shoulders?"
"No, standing on your shoulders," Sam corrects, stepping back from the wall. "You know, like the Flying Wallendas. I'll have to reach though. We'll have to stand right up next to the wall…"
"You'll still come up short," Bobby judges.
Sam ignores the old man's despondency. "We have to try something." He glances at the ground, drops down on all-fours, starts patting around, scanning the soil as best he can in the dim light.
"What are you doing?" Bobby queries.
"We need something to push at the cover," Sam shoots back. "What the hell is this?" It's heavy, round, and he rolls it back towards Bobby. "Could be useful. A weapon." He touches cloth then, pulls at something. It follows, a dragging, heavy, limp, dead sensation. Too heavy. "Dammit." He crabs in the other direction, finds something lighter, can feel the smooth hardness through the rags. "Sorry, pal," he mutters as he feels his way up. He grips it tight, briefly marvels that it's so narrow, that he can get his hand around it. He pulls, pulls harder, hears a sick snap-crackle-pop as he forces the joint.
"It's a rutabaga," Bobby says from his spot over by the wall. "I was bowling it at the skulls for a while there, lost it in the dark though."
It takes Sam a few seconds to work out what the old man is talking about. The round thing. "Oh yeah," he says as he scoots back, brandishing his prize.
Bobby stares. "I can't believe you just did that," he comments. "Jesus. Everything I've seen and done for the last thirty years and that's one of the sickest things I ever saw."
"What?" Sam says, bewildered. "Christ, Bobby, it's just a femur. I need something to bat up against the cover with."
Bobby sucks in breath. "You ripped out that guy's thighbone."
"But he's dead, Bobby. He doesn't need his thighbone. And it's not as if there's any meat left on it." Sam shoves the bone up under Bobby's nose. "Look. Just some gristle on the end there."
"Jesus, Sam."
Hudak comes round lying on something soft. Mom, I don't wanna go to school… She cracks her eyes, stares up. Scarred wooden beams. Please be a rustic lodge with full room service at an exclusive spa in Aspen…
Initials dancing their way across her line of vision. Fucking Benders.
She lifts her head and he's gone, like she knew he would be. And she squeezes her eyes hard closed against the sting of tears. Jesus, Dean. How did he get in? "It's over," she sighs out. "Finally. I can go home…" But there's no relief, no respite, only regret.
Hudak pushes up on her shoulders, reaches for her throat, gets her hand about a foot off the mattress. "What the hell?" she murmurs as she stares at her wrist, at the bracelet linking it to the fender. It dawns on her them and she huffs. "My own cuffs. How the hell am I supposed to…" It's right there, carefully placed on her belly, a small cardboard carton. "Paperclips. We'll need them," she spits. "You devious bastard."
She grabs the box, shakes out a couple, straightens one, inserts it in the lock and jiggles it about. "Yeah well," she mutters. "Bobby showed me." She hears the click, smiles in triumph. "How do you like them apples, Winchester."
She pushes to her feet, glances about her. Note on the table, untidy scrawl, the ink blurred and blotchy in places.
Kathleen, it's for the best. Bender won't follow you. Took the poker, the chain and the flaregun. Left you the gun and the salt rounds. Some silver ones in the pistol. The crutch works. Get out while it's daylight. Thanks for everything. Go live life. Dean Winchester.
"As if," she snaps as she bends to ram the pistol into her pack. She cracks the shotgun, loads up two. "Water…" She sees the pile of kitchen drawer booty on the table, stuffs it all in the bag. The filthy trap is languishing by a chair. "Ugliest doorstop in history," she murmurs. "Well. You never know." She hefts it all up, makes for the door, steps cautiously into the light.
It's quiet, but there are birds singing. A good sign, but she was a girl scout after all, so she crosses back to the burlap sack, half empty now, starts filling her pockets with salt. She wriggles out of her pack, roots out a couple of pair of socks, fills them with salt and knots them. "I'm ready," she announces to the room. "Maybe not willing or able, but I'm ready."
"Stand still," Sam scrapes out as he tries to keep his balance.
"I'm trying," Bobby growls up from beneath him. "You aren't exactly a lightweight."
"Can you bounce?" Sam asks him.
"Bounce?!"
It comes out like the vilest cussword ever, but Sam persists. "Yeah. Bounce from the knees. Like we discussed…" He spares a glance down, sees that Bobby is glowering up at him, arms braced on the wall, legs apart and firm.
"Like we discussed my ass," Bobby spits back at him. "You're going on a fuckin' diet, kid."
Sam looks back up, stretches once more, dances a brief jig on the old man's shoulders before he overbalances and crashes to the ground. Winded, he stays there for a moment while Bobby twists and eases himself down onto his butt.
"You're fat," the old man grouses, rubbing at his back.
Dean said that, Sam thinks as he stares up at the thin slivers of light that mark the trapdoor. "Dean isn't getting out of this if we don't get out of here, Bobby," he says dully. "He needs a hospital. Kathleen isn't going to be able to get him out of here by herself. He can't walk." He rolls over, groans, pushes up and crawls over, slumps to the right.
"Dean's a tough customer," Bobby says after a moment. "If anyone can-"
"Not this time," Sam cuts in, and he's remembering the bleak look his brother fixed him with back in the cabin, when he told Sam to light out of there come sunup. "I think he knew it too. It was in his eyes." He picks up the discarded can, flings it away into the darkness. "Christ. If only he could walk."
Bobby tsks thoughtfully. "Could she leave him, maybe? Go for help?"
"She won't leave him." Sam doesn't know why exactly he's so sure of that, but he is. He leans his head back against the dirt wall. "I think she knows too. So she won't leave him."
Bobby grates out an incoherent expletive, pushes up onto his feet and bites back a groan, leaning forward to place his hands on his knees. "Jesus. My back." He eases up gradually. "Get up. We go again."
"It's no good," Sam mutters. "We'll never reach it."
Snorting, Bobby says, "You started this, boy. Come on. Time to plow."
"What's the point, Bobby?" Sam counters. "We're never getting-"
"Your brother's the point, Sam," Bobby snaps. It's loud in the quiet, and his voice breaks. "Your brother's always been the point. Jesus."
Sam doesn't offer anything, watches and waits as Bobby shakes his head. He walks a few feet away then, into the center of the pit, doesn't look at Sam. "I buried my son," he says into the stillness. "I carried the box all by myself. He was a small kid."
He clears his throat, pauses for a beat. "You know, Sam, being a parent is real hard work. You get tired, you snap. You aren't always as patient as you should be. Maybe you bite your kid's head off when he asks you the same thing for the umpteenth time. Maybe you holler at him to go back to bed when he gets up with nightmares. Maybe you make him sit at the table and finish his damn dinner when it's gone cold. Maybe you clip him round the ear when he isn't doing what he's told. And then…" He puts his hand up to his face, over his eyes, as he goes on.
"Then one day, maybe you bury him. And you come home and you sit and stare at nothing. And what you want to do most in the world in that moment when you know it's all gone and it's never coming back, is listen to your kid, hear what he's saying, what he's asking you for the umpteenth time. Hear his voice because you can't remember what it sounds like. Maybe you want to just roll over in the bed and let him get in next to you so he can sleep, and maybe you want to make him peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches when he doesn't like what you cooked. And maybe you want to laugh at the way he stands there and backchats you when he don't do what he's told, because you can't remember the expression on his face when he did that, can't remember what he really looked like smiling, laughing. Living."
"Bobby…" Sam whispers.
"No. Let me just…" Bobby shakes his head. "Your dad turned up out of the blue with you two boys and then he just took off, didn't ask, didn't tell. Christ, I didn't have anything, no diapers, nothing kids like to eat. You know what I told you before, Sam, about the drugs. I wasn't in it for the long haul back then. Too much had happened and hunting didn't fill that void for me like it did for your dad. So I was pretty pissed off I couldn't just get on with ending it the way I wanted to. And Dean… he never said a damn word for weeks. Just looked up at me with these big saucer eyes. Saw right inside me." He snorts. "He still sees more than you think, more than he lets on. Anyhoo, you'd just sit there eating the dirt, and he'd just walk around the place. So I'd pick you up and follow him. And I got to thinking, well, all those clothes in the garage were going to waste. And toys."
"Toy soldiers," Sam says, on the memory of sitting next to his brother in the mineshaft, and Dean's own halting recollection. "Cars. Wacky races."
Bobby turns to look at Sam, chokes out, "You boys… you were my second chance. Your brother. He was my second chance, Sam. And like I told him last time we were up here, I'm not burying another son. So…"
"We go again," Sam picks up softly, and as he pulls his feet up under him, his boot brushes against the rutabaga. "Maybe if we throw this up there, we can dislodge the cover," he muses as he reaches for it. "At least we'll be able to see better then." He stands, measures the distance, bends and hurls the vegetable up, and it crashes into the wood.
"I think it moved…" Bobby ventures, collecting himself, scrubbing at his eyes.
Sam bends to retrieve the rutabaga, pulls his arm back again. "I wonder how the hell the damn thing thought you were going to eat a rutabaga," he grunts, as he lets it fly, hears it impact the wood again.
"That was here already," Bobby replies.
Just like that, everything screeches to a halt, like mental brakes burning rubber in Sam's brain. "It was here already?"
"Yeah, found it on day two," the old man confirms. "The thing brought canned food for me to eat. Don't know where it got them."
"Cans…" Sam stumbles through bones, rotting flesh, drops to his knees. "Cans… find me a can, Bobby…"
"Sam, what the hell? What is this? What about the cans?"
Bobby's down on his knees too, and he's pulling at his arm, and Sam shouts in the old man's face. "The cans. Find one of the cans it brought. It's important…"
He roots feverishly through bodies, heaves, rolls them out of the way, hears Bobby from miles away.
"Sam. Sam - here. Here's one…"
Sam snatches it out of Bobby's hand, shots upright, spins, holds it up close to his face in the dim light. "Spaghettios… Jesus. Jesus…" He tosses it again, squats. "Rutabaga…" he mutters, and he pushes up, bends his arm to throw it only to find Bobby right up in front of him.
"What. The. Fuck. Is. Going. On?" Bobby growls. "Now."
"We're in the root cellar," Sam snaps back at him. "We're in the fucking root cellar."
Bobby shakes his head. "What root cellar? You're making no sense."
"The cabin!" Sam yells. "The root cellar! Behind the cabin. Spaghettios… the can. It's from the cabin…"
Hudak steps out onto the porch, feels a sudden icy chill that's at odds with the sun, sees her breath mist out, and shudders.
Bender is standing in her peripheral vision, and she slants her eyes, assesses him. He's watching her, his face impassive, but for all his bulk there's no substance. His mouth opens, his lips form words, but nothing comes out.
Is it only Dean who hears you then? Hudak wonders. Or did that thing somehow steal your voice?
It's tranquil, peaceful. He's non-threatening, almost friendly. It's like he's harmless.
She raises the shotgun and gut-shoots the spectre with pleasure.
The blat of gunfire echoes in from above, and Sam freezes where he is, perched on Bobby's shoulders again. "Did you hear that?"
"You bet I did… come on, boy, we go again, now."
Sam feels himself jerk upwards again as Bobby pushes, groaning with the weight of Sam and his rutabaga, and Sam throws the missile with all he has, finally sees the cover shift. "The door's broken… if I could just… my bone! I need my bone…"
"Hang on…" Bobby strains, reaches. "It's propped right here… just let me… got it."
He passes it up, and now it's Sam's turn to reach, and now the bone is balanced on the tips of his fingertips, and he's barely exerting any pressure on it at all. "I Can't get behind it. Bounce."
Bobby groans again. "I'm trying."
Sam detours into a different strategy. "The gunfire, it must be Kathleen." He yells her name at the top of his lungs, towards the two-inch wide gap he's managed to open up, hollers and hollers until he can taste copper and thinks he might have drawn blood deep down in his throat because he's screaming so hard.
And when the cover pushes aside and she's staring in at him, she's the most beautiful thing Sam's ever seen. "God. Kathleen. I think I love you a little bit," he says stupidly, and he feels tears spring.
"At this moment in time, Sam, I can assure you the feeling is mutual," she repliess, and she's as economical and efficient as ever, slipping her duffel off her shoulders and unstrapping the flap as she speaks, not remotely phased. "I've got a rope."
"We knew you would have," Bobby calls up. "You got any water there?"
"Incoming."
It bounces off the dirt, rolls into a corner and Bobby scrabbles about for it, gulps it down avidly. "Damn water in these old canteens is like treacle mixed with horse piss," he says feelingly, as Sam grins at him. "Christ, this is better than Jack."
Hudak pokes her head in again. "I'm going to tie this off - there's a tree stump I can use."
"Wait, Kathleen," Sam shouts, and her face bobs back into sight.
"Dean," Sam says, feeling his voice crack slightly. "How is he? His leg? Did you manage to-"
"He's fine," she says tersely. "In fact, we've managed to get him up on his hind legs and he's more mobile than you'd have thought possible, Sam. Surprisingly active, in fact. Let me just get this tied off."
"But Kathleen-"
Bobby tugs at Sam's arm. "Let's just get out of here while we can, before that thing gets back," he says. "You'll see your brother soon enough."
Thank Christ, Sam thinks, and he's already mentally building the travvy, no, stretcher, he thinks, wood from the bedframe in the cabin threaded through their jacket sleeves, because they're getting his brother out of here for once and for all and it's the last time he'll ever let Dean near so much as a fucking shrub, let alone a forest.
The rope drops in over the lip of the pit. Roughly a foot in, and Sam huffs in frustration, fists his hands. "Just once, can't it be fucking easy?" he mutters. "Just one time, is it so much to ask?"
"It's not long enough," Hudak calls down now. "As you can see. Hang on, I'm going to tie my jacket to it."
Bobby hollers up, "Kathleen. Keep your eyes peeled. Thing took off a while back, that isn't its usual MO in daylight."
Silence.
"Kathleen?" Sam tries.
And there's a sudden flurry of gunfire, unholy howls of rage, a cry abruptly cut off, followed by a moment that seems like an eternity until a shadow blots out the light and Sam sees her fall. He reacts without even thinking, dives, twists, spreadeagles himself at the point of impact, but the thud as her head hits the ground is sickening.
Dean meanders along, dragging his foot because sliding it along the ground keeps the pain excruciating, which he can just about manage, unlike the first few steps, when the sheer torment had him weeping in misery and self-pity before he even reached the table, had teardrops splotch the ink as he scribbled the note.
He has his poker gripped tight in his right hand, crutch tucked firmly under his left arm, slanting out at a fifteen-degree angle because Kathleen, how fuckin' tall do you think I am? This damn thing's about a foot too long.
He freezes when he hears distant gunfire, glances behind him uneasily. "There's no way she got out of those cuffs already," he thinks aloud. He runs through it in his mind, hunters maybe, someone off in the woods, someone who might help. It wasn't her and she's fine. Or maybe Lee popped up, and she took a shot at him. He works through it logically, even if it is Lee, he won't follow her… he doesn't swing that way, so she'll be fine. His mind touches briefly on the fact the shot can't be anything to do with the thing because it's holed up with his brother, and he shudders, jumps off that train of thought then and there.
"How many shots was that anyway?" he mutters. "Jesus, my neck hurts. My shoulders. My leg. Fuck. Rest. Quick one."
It's like he just grinds to a halt, and he eases himself down his crutch a hand at a time, until he's a shivering curled-up ball of fuckin' agony on the soil, his vision foggy, his heart racing, breath whistling in and out so fast he can almost feel the air blow dry his lips to papery harshness, feel his mouth bake dry. He lies and pants and stares at nothing, until he realizes he's lying on his pack. Water. Drugs. Pain, in his shoulders, neck, throat. Leg, clenching, rigid, please stop…
Dean shifts himself forward, inch by inch, feels his arms come loose from the straps, and rolls onto his belly. He's crashing, and, "Fuck," he gasps. "Down cycle…"
His head spins. Water. Bottle. Right there. He sips it down, slow, hard to swallow, sore. "God… hurts." He fumbles tiredly in the outer pocket of the pack, Tylenol, oh thank God, and he shakes three of the pulls out with trembling hands, down the chute.
He doesn't know if it's sixth sense per se. It's not a chill up his spine, or a shiver, or the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. It's not the cold, because he's furnace-hot and bathed in sweat that saturates his tee; and it's not even that he can see his breath, because he's face down. It's what's in his mind's eye right at that moment, as he sees himself sitting on a log, Sam right there next to him, just a boy and his dog, all peaceful. No family, because family doesn't mean what it once did, family isn't what it used to be, and now instead of running to his brother he wants to run as far away as he can. But right now, just him and Sam, it's safe. Only then reality bites, and his brother is back, crashing into the campsite, stalking up to him, fixing him with cold, blank eyes that lost the warmth they used to have somewhere along the way.
And that's what it is: the memory of boots shuffling through crunchy undergrowth, trampling all over his daydreams, and stopping right there in front of him. And it's Pavlovian, because it's expectation, resignation, fear. That's what tells him he's got company.
"Hey, Lee," Dean rasps into the dirt. "Long time no see."
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