sets my heart a-reeling
one two three four
They all pile back into the truck bed, leaving the shotgun seat for Amaya and her lapful of children, and Earl takes them in a westerly direction.
Dean and Sam are separated by the bulk of the covered cannon. Dean can see a bit of Sam's hair, still remember the soft crush of it between his fingers. There's a place on his neck that itches and burns, defined and brought into being by Sam's mouth. He shakes himself, feeling dizzy and sick, so far beyond tired there just aren't words.
Burt and Mindy are wedged in the same corner as Dean, everybody's elbows jarring together. Mindy's blonde ponytail flaps in the wind, pastes itself across her face and she scrapes it off.
"How's your shoulder?" Mindy asks him.
Dean touches the bulk of the bandage through the worn flannel shirt that Earl lent him. Still throbbing despite the six aspirin he swallowed, same stomach-turning pressure. He affixes an invincible grin.
"Not even worth complaining about. Takes more than that."
"Okay, He-Man," Mindy says on a laugh.
"It's gonna stiffen up pretty bad by tomorrow," Burt tells him. "Those fangs can get in pretty deep."
"Aw, I've had worse."
"Long as you can still handle your weapons," Burt says.
"Don't worry about that," Dean answers with an cocky scoff. "Also, where the hell are we going? I gotta get back to my car."
"We're not going back there till daylight," Burt says emphatically. "Your car will be fine, nobody's gonna mess with her."
Dean doesn't much like the sound of that, doesn't like the thought of the Impala parked on the side of a foreign highway all night, with the monsters underground and the thieves on top. But he's stuck in this truck, jammed in a corner with his knees against Mindy's and an obtrusive bag of ammunition at the small of his back, and there's eight other people here so Dean's opinion doesn't count for very much.
And there's something wrong with him, anyway. If he cranes his head to a specific angle, he can see the line of Sam's neck running into his shoulder. When the wind blows right, he can hear the halting pieced-together bilingual conversation that Sam is having with Josué, Sam's low careful voice.
When Dean closes his eyes, he can feel Sam pressed up against him, nudging his legs apart, huge hand open on his chest.
Dean opens his eyes, breath caught in his throat. Mindy smiles at him and offers some Skittles. Dean takes a small handful, moving on autopilot. This feels like a fucking dream--how many hours has he been awake now, anyway?
They're going to Amaya's cousin's place, which is a three-room apartment over a liquor store in a shady-looking part of town (not that that's saying much, Elko County being the rural wasteland that it is). The cousin is a skinny twitchy guy not much older than twenty, pencil-thin mustache under his nose, and he rushes around making up nest-beds for the kids out of blankets and beach towels emblazoned with the Corona logo. There's a fold-out couch for Josué and Amaya, and everyone else agrees that the floor looks pretty damn enticing, just now.
The conversation leading up to lights out is mostly in Spanish, and Dean is able to drift in and out, the patter and beat of the language washing over him. He relives the fantastical night they've had in the rises and falls of their voices, lying full-clothed on top of his sleeping bag, on the floor of this stranger's apartment in northeast Nevada.
Sam is on the floor in the other room. Dean can't see him and Sam's not talking so there's nothing to hear, but that awareness thing, that pinging radar in the back of his mind--Sam is right over there.
Dean closes his eyes tight, and there they are again, Sam backing him into the bathroom wall, fitting his fingers to the sleek bare skin of Dean's ribs. The pictures bombard Dean, and then they begin to fracture and dissolve as fast down he goes, dragged by total exhaustion. It's a hair-thin silver lining, but he's too tired to dream.
He wakes up some hours later when Burt steps on his hand.
Dean wakes instantly, stays motionless until his location and the location of Sam and the location of his car and the location of his Glock have all been established in his mind.
He opens his eyes to see Burt carefully easing out the front door, pulling it slowly shut to keep quiet. Dean's stomped hand hurts, faint bootprint in embossed red, and he curls it in against his chest, sits up to dig his phone out of pocket. His wounded shoulder comes awake violently at the movement, agonizing wave of pain flooding over him, and he hunches his back, shakes silently until it passes. Then he checks his phone.
It's six-thirty in the morning. Dean got about eight hours of sleep, which is probably why his skin doesn't feel like it's about to slough off anymore. His body feels like his own again, maimed and desecrated though it may be.
Dean gets up to use the bathroom, where the shadowy beginnings of violet light are growing in the beveled glass window, and when he's coming back he can see into the other room, see Sam's empty sleeping bag like a shed snake skin on the carpet.
Searching the apartment takes approximately twenty seconds, and requires no more than six total steps. There's Josué and Amaya on the fold-out with one of their boys tucked as a stowaway between them, there's the other little kid conked out with his thumb in his mouth, and Mindy next to him, white-socked feet sticking out at the end of a Corona towel. There's the point-counterpoint of Amaya's cousin snoring in the bedroom and Earl snoring on the bedroom floor. No Sam.
Dean presses a hand to the incessant throb in his shoulder, and slips quietly out into the hallway. His choices are the front door or the fire escape, and Dean opts for the bird's eye view as a proper starting place, and climbs up onto the roof.
Sam's up there.
He's sitting on the edge, in the crushed gravel. He's facing east towards the rising sun, and Dean stands for a moment staring at his brother's back, the shape of his shoulders against the early morning sky.
You could leave, Dean says to himself, and considers the possibility, plays out the train of thought to its hypothetical ends. Turn around, back down the fire escape and through the hallway window, back into the quiet sleep-shrouded apartment overflowing with family, and when he sees Sam later in the morning they'll pretend that thing that happened yesterday never did, and go on for the whole rest of their lives pretending it never did.
To his immense surprise, Dean finds that he doesn't like that idea at all.
It's that thing that's gone wrong with him again. Whatever it was that kept him pinned to the restroom wall when one good shove, one harsh shout would have gotten Sam off him, whatever pushed Dean's body into his brother's and made him lose his breath and his mind and everything else, whatever this fucking malfunction is, he's been on the planet long enough to know he's not gonna get over it without bringing Sam with him.
So across the roof he goes. Boots crunching in the gravel, and Sam's body tightens as he registers it, his back turning into a shell. Dean clambers down to sit alongside his brother, maybe about a yard away in the interest of re-establishing boundaries and such. His legs hang over, boot heels tapping on the brick face. It's only a two-story building, so there's no real peril involved, but Dean still likes the look of it, the two of them sitting on a sheer ledge, cut out against the sky.
Sam hasn't looked at him. His eyes are trained down on the sidewalk, and Dean follows his gaze to see Burt standing at a pay phone outside the liquor store, one arm bent on top and his head down in that classic talking-on-a-pay-phone stance that Dean remembers mostly from old movies and train stations.
"I don't know who he's talking to," Sam says in a subdued pre-dawn voice.
"He's calling Heather in the hospital," Dean tells him, and Sam makes a little sound like he shoulda figured that out.
They watch for another few seconds, silent scene like watching television through a neighbor's window. Dean wonders what that conversation must be like, pay phone call to your wife of thirty years as she lies dying of cancer two hundred miles away. It makes him feel cold, and he shivers, looks down between his dangling feet.
A minute passes. The sky gets lighter so slowly you can't track it. Not much to look at, just two intersections and maybe a dozen places of business, half boarded-up and abandoned. Standard dying wide-spot-in-the-road kinda town, where it wouldn't be out of place to see guys riding in from the ranches on horseback, and everything feels a hundred years old.
Dean sneaks a look at Sam. Sam's eyes are scanning the sprawl of the desert in every direction, this sorta longing expression in it that makes Dean's stomach turn over.
"So," Dean says eventually, and figures that's probably enough for Sam to go on.
Sam makes him wait for it. He picks up a few pieces of gravel and chucks them into the street below. Dean watches Sam's nervous hands, his feet hanging over empty space.
"Can't explain it," Sam says at last, soft and doomed-sounding. "I, I've been trying to. Just for myself, trying to figure it out, but it's not--it's not the kind of thing that you can put words to, really."
"You're gonna have to, man," Dean tells him.
"I know. I know that."
Another long pause, like this is how their whole life is gonna be from now on, fractured bits of conversation interrupting spates of terrible silence. Can't live like that, Dean knows already.
"Everything gets magnified," Sam says. "On the road like this, and, and because of the job. Like, you almost died last night."
Dean tips his head, not seeing the relevance. "That happens a lot, though."
"That's the point. This--the job, all this life and fucking death stuff, it makes everything seem so. Final. Like every day could be my last chance."
"You can't--you can't think about that side of it," Dean says, basic stuff here. "It's the quickest way to lose your nerve."
"Yeah, well. If you know of some magic spell to keep it the hell out of my head, I'm all ears."
Dean rubs at the back of his neck. "That's why you've been in a such a shitty mood?"
"Yeah. Or, I don't know, I guess so. It's. Sometimes it's easier to deal with when you're pissed off at me."
"Only sometimes?" Dean asks. Sam nods, something so deeply goddamn sad in it that it hurts just looking at him.
"Only sometimes," Sam confirms in a soft voice.
"So, this, it's. It's new? I mean, you haven't always-"
"No," Sam says fast, and Dean jolts with unexpected relief, hadn't even realized how terrified he'd been that he'd misread his brother his whole damn life, that nothing had ever meant what he thought it did.
"It's since, since Dad," Sam goes on, grimacing like it actually physically hurts him to say the name. "I think maybe, maybe it's since Jess and since Dad, because you're all I got now and for awhile I was panicking about how you were gonna die next and maybe my brain just kinda. Warped. Got all fucked up about it."
Dean nods, but that doesn't mean he understands. Sam's face is in profile, his hand busy setting pieces of gravel on his knee and flicking them away. Sam's never gonna look him square in the eye again, Dean realizes.
"I didn't mean to ever actually do anything about it," Sam says to the street. "I was just, I was really tired last night," and his voice cracks on the last word. Dull flush on Sam's face, pinned-down corners of his mouth. "And I'm sorry."
Dean feels like someone took hold of his insides and pulled hard. He touches a hand to his chest, and breathes through it, vaguely stunned. He doesn't want Sam to be sorry. What the fuck.
"That's," Dean says without a clear idea of where he's going next, and cuts himself off. Deep breath, and then another one, and then Dean says, "I was tired too."
It's accurate, and topical, but still feels like a non-sequitur. Sam steals a look at Dean, ducking his head, lower lip pulled briefly between his teeth. Dean stares blatantly back at him, thinking that he's done with goddamn subtlety, and if he wants to stare he fuckin' well will.
"Do you," and it's Sam's turn to stop short, regroup. "I know you never. Thought of me. I know it's just me."
That's a trick. It's a question masquerading as a a statement of fact. Dean picks up a jagged piece of gravel to roll between his palms, and hopes Sam doesn't think he's fooling anyone.
"I never thought of you," Dean says, and watches something flinch back in his brother's face. "Not like that."
Sam nods quick, his gaze locked on the place on the horizon where golden light is gathering, the rising sun just beyond the sharktooth mountains. Dean watches Sam's throat move, watches his nails scratching miserably at a crust of mud on his jeans. There's something huge beginning to stir in Dean, a creeping feeling like fault lines in his foundation, termites in the framework.
"I never did before, Sam," Dean tells him, secret-keeping voice with the slightest weight on the word before, and then Dean watches in awe as Sam blinks at the sky, turns to look at him with shock and disbelief and wild unspooling hope in his eyes.
"What's that mean?" Sam wants to know, all wrecked and desperate-sounding. "What do you mean by that?"
Dean shakes his head, he doesn't want to explain it. He doesn't really think he can, Sam should understand that at least.
"I don't know," Dean says. "Of course I have to think about it now, you made that kind of inevitable. But then I. I keep trying to figure out why I didn't tell you to stop."
"Yeah. Me too."
They fall silent, looking at each other from sideways angles. Tripping vertigo sense in Dean, and it's less the open air under his swinging feet, more to do with the tentative shifting forms of his brother's mouth.
"Dean," Sam says below a whisper, and Dean tips closer to him automatically. "If there's even a chance--you should tell me."
Dean can't speak. There's a part of his mind that is alive with horror and outrage, forcefully reminding him exactly what they're talking about here, his brother Sam, his little brother Sam who wants to fuck him, and the answer is no, of course it's no, what the fuck is wrong with you if the answer's not no?
Sam curls his hands around the edge of the building, looking down. Dean's been quiet too long and Sam has read into it, rejection and misery etching familiar lines on his forehead and Dean hates that look on him, can't fucking stand it.
Dean reaches out, touches the back of Sam's wrist. Sam's head jerks up, searching Dean's face intently, and Dean swallows hard. He wants to know what Sam sees in him, if he can define it, but that's not the kind of thing you just ask a guy. Dean draws a little figure-eight on Sam's wrist with his fingertips, watching as if it's happening to someone else.
"I don't know if I can," Dean says, and pauses, catches his breath. "If I'd be able to."
Wide-eyed look from Sam, looking from Dean's fingers on his wrist to his brother's face, and back again. "But you. You don't know that you can't, either."
"I don't know that I can't," Dean agrees quietly, the truth of it coming to a shuddering rest inside him. He takes his hand away from Sam's arm.
"Then there's a chance," Sam says, and the ill-concealed ascent in his voice makes Dean's skin draw tight, feeling accused in a weird way.
He bites the inside of his cheek, not looking at his brother. A cold flush washes across him. What did he just admit to? What is Sam doing to him?
"I don't know," Dean says, feeling like his own echo.
Sam makes as if to reach out for Dean, and then stops his hand, draws back. Dean is grateful for that, doesn't think he could take Sam initiating contact right now. Dean is raw nerve endings all over.
"Listen, I won't, I, I don't want to make you think-" and Dean doesn't get to hear what Sam doesn't want to make him think, because at that moment, from down below:
"Hey, Winchesters!"
It's Burt, down on the sidewalk peering up with his cap knocked back on his head, and the identical jolts of ugly shock rip through Sam and Dean, the thought that someone might have been watching. You forget about the rest of the world, sitting on the edge of the roof and having a conversation that might wreck two lives.
"Get your asses down from there, we gotta get some grub and then hit the road!"
Burt is casual, voice raised enough that Dean feels secure they were only seen and not overheard, but still, jittery near-miss adrenaline has his hands shaking.
"Yeah, we're coming in," Sam calls down, and Burt lifts his hand, goes in through the street door.
Dean is careful getting up from the ledge, learned behavior from a lifetime of lousy luck. Sam attaches less grace to the maneuver, pushing a shallow spray of gravel off the roof as he climbs to his feet, and sways like a headrush, canting dangerously towards the drop. Dean catches Sam's arm without thought, pulls him back.
Sam flashes a grin that makes him look more crazy than anything else, manic and frayed at the edges. "My hero," Sam says, high false ring to it, and Dean has never experienced the sensation that rolls through him at that, never even come close.
*
Breakfast is eggs and honey toast and beans, with canned pineapple for desert--basically whatever Amaya's cousin Ricky has on hand. Burt offers him a fifty to go grocery shopping and Ricky nobly refuses the first time, only to immediately take Burt up on his automatic "You sure?" response.
The apartment is overcrowded, but everyone's pretty chummy by now, so it works. They sit around on the couch and floor of the living room, eating beans out of coffee mugs and talking about the job.
"You say you did some damage to the graboid that busted into the farmhouse, right?" Burt says, and gets a nod from Dean, remembering orange blood and the great writhing worm slinking back. "Hopefully we'll be able to track it back to its nest then."
"How exactly are we gonna track something that moves underground?" Dean asks, feeling like it's one of those big obvious questions that can go unasked because everyone assumes everyone else already knows.
"If it was hurt, it'll stay close to the surface, looser dirt to move through up there," Earl says. "There should be signs."
Burt nods along confidently, but Mindy snorts a laugh, sitting on the floor with the slightly bigger of the two little boys on her lap.
"You guys are really just pulling things out of your asses at this point, huh?"
"What? It makes sense," Earl says defensively.
"Oh for sure. It's still speculation, but at least it's pretty reasonable speculation. Guess that's all we can hope for with these things."
"If you got any other ideas, I'm dying to hear 'em," Earl says, spreading wide his hands.
"Well, since you asked," Mindy says with a syrupy sweetness that instantly rouses Dean's suspicion. "I think it might be about time to call in the cavalry."
Dean glances at Sam, lifts his eyebrows. "You guys still have a cavalry?"
Mindy laughs obligingly, but her eyes are lit up, intent. The kid in her lap is solemnly gnawing a boomerang of toast crust, oblivious to the rest of the world.
"We gotta tell somebody official, get some real firepower out here."
"Wait, you're talking about calling the damn cops?" Burt asks.
"I'm talking about calling the damn army," Mindy fires back. "I saw what that thing did to the farmhouse, and I think we're out of our league."
"What happened to, 'I've been waiting to face down one of these bastards my whole life'?" Burt wants to know.
Mindy smiles, humorless. "Be careful what you wish for, I guess."
"C'mon, you're not just gonna give up," Dean says.
"Somebody's gonna get killed, Dean," she says sharply. "And that's gonna be on us, because we thought we could handle these things when obviously we can't. The government can come out here with tanks, and, and tracking equipment, and special underground weapons, and they can get these things, that's their job."
"Won't happen like that," Earl says, and then looks mildly surprised when everyone's attention turns to him. "I mean. Government's official position is that the graboids never existed and any reports to the contrary are the result of a mass delusion. We call 'em up and tell him about this new deal, they'll just stonewall and deny it. Especially without any victims yet."
"You don't know that," Mindy says.
"Yeah, I do. Val told me that Rhonda was writin' letters and petitionin' for almost a decade, just trying to get some kind of acknowledgement that what happened actually happened, but nothing ever came of it, just a bunch of hot air and half-assed intimidation tactics. And then she got that job teaching at the university and they figured it wasn't worth the risk to keep on rocking the boat about it."
"But there's, we have other witnesses now," Mindy protests, gesturing through the kitchen doorway to where Josué and Amaya are seated at the table with Ricky. "They weren't with us the first time, and they got no reason to lie about what happened to their house."
"Yeah, they got no reason to lie, but the federal government sure as hell does," Burt says. "If it comes down to our word against theirs, you think they'll hesitate for even a moment before screwing with Josué and Amaya's immigration status, just to keep their mouths shut?"
Mindy huffs, and shakes her head, shifting the kid to a more comfortable position. "That's so paranoid."
"That's the world, girlie, that's how it works," Burt snaps. "The sooner you learn that, the better."
Dean is watching the debate like it's a soap opera, Sam sitting against the wall next to him just as enthralled. They've never traveled with an ensemble like this, never had the chance to appreciate all the attendant drama.
"I want to know if you have an actual plan," Mindy says, her fierce expression looking incongruous on top of the kid's detached toast-eating Zen state. "If we're even able to track it, what happens then?"
"Grenades," Burt says with a matching steely glare. "We got enough to blow up a dozen of those mothers."
"Grenades," Mindy repeats flatly, drawing it out to make sure it sounds extra stupid. "Just gotta figure out how to get the giant underground snake monsters to swallow grenades, piece of cake."
Hard cold smile from Burt, his head inclined. "Pretty much."
Mindy exhales tightly against the kid's spiky black hair and levels Burt with a distinctly unimpressed look.
"If you don't like it," Burt says with a warning tone, "you feel free to stay here with the kids and we'll pick you up when we're heading home."
"Shut your mouth," Mindy says hotly, offense blooming stark on her face. "If you're gonna do stupid things, you're gonna need me there twice as much."
Burt coughs, half a laugh, and rolls his eyes. "Then what the hell are we arguing about?"
The tension subsides. Mindy leans back with a surrender of breath, smoothing her hand across the kid's hair. Earl passes her a pineapple can as an olive branch, and she gives him a little smile.
Dean looks to Sam, corner of his eye. Sam has his head tipped back on the wall, his throat a knobby line, and his eyelids are half-mast. Dean wonders for the first time how much sleep Sam got, how long he was up on the roof before Dean found him there.
Such a strange feeling, like Pop Rocks and Coke or licking your fingertips and touching a wall outlet, not entirely pleasant but for some reason worth doing again. Dean hunches into his dad's leather jacket, flipping up the collar because sometimes he likes it better like that.
Josué comes to stand in the doorway separating the living room from the kitchen, and says, "Okay, we go?"
Earl sits up on the couch, wagging his finger at the other man. "Oh no, I told you. We got enough hands on deck as it is." He switches to Spanish, remembering himself.
Josué's eyes become stony behind the lenses of his glasses. His response is heated, but Dean can't shake his impression of a kindly high school science teacher, short-sleeve plaid button-up and all.
Earl responds, and they go back and forth for a minute, as cousin Ricky and Amaya watch from the kitchen, wearing identical expressions of concern.
"Hey, can we get some subtitles over here?" Dean asks after a decent interval. Earl throws him a look, his frustration evident in the heavy lines etched on his face.
"I'm trying to tell him it's too dangerous even for those of us who know what we're dealing with, but he won't hear it. He's a stubborn cuss."
"What about training?" Burt asks. "Weapons training, the military, anything like that? We don't have time to teach someone how to take the safety off."
Earl asks quickly, and Josué's flash of hesitation before his brief answer tells the room everything it needs to hear.
"No, definitely not," Burt says like a decree. He inclines his head to Josué. "Lo siento, amigo, but I can't be worrying about an amateur, not when it's up against a graboid."
Earl translates, and Josué pounds his palm with his fist, determined and speaking fast.
"Oh, c'mon, Josué!" Earl says in exasperation, dragging a hand through his hair. "It's like a damn quest with this guy, I don't know what else to tell him."
Just then, the kid crawls out of Mindy's lap and goes tugging at his dad's pants leg, lifting his arms above his head. Josué bends down and picks his son up, still arguing his case in rapid-fire Spanish, and Sam says, "That's it, that," pointing at the two of them. Josué stops short, looking at Sam.
"Tell him we can't take him with us, and not 'cause he doesn't know how to use a gun or 'cause he's never hunted these things, but just 'cause of the kids. Because he thanked us for saving his family last night, and it's the same thing. We're not gonna take anybody's dad out there. That's why."
Earl blinks at Sam, and he's in good company because Dean is too, back to staring ceaselessly, entranced. Sam's jaw is tight and he doesn't look back at Dean, but Dean gets this bedrock feeling that Sam really wants to.
"Go on and tell him, Earl," Burt says, and Earl nods, getting up to walk over to Josué and tell him right, a hand on his shoulder and a hand on his son's back.
Josué's eyes grow large and shaken behind his glasses, and he looks mutely at Sam, tired and scared and hugging his little boy tightly to his chest. Sam just looks back, slumped against the wall with the entirety of his family at his side, and Dean doesn't know how anyone could argue with that.
So they are reduced again to the five they came with, and the kids wave goodbye out the apartment window at Dean and Sam and Mindy in the back of truck as they drive away. Dean and Sam and Mindy wave back, big smiles and all, but it's pretty much an act, and they drop it as soon as the kids are out of sight, road dust on their teeth and the perilous day rushing up to meet them.
*
First things first, and that's getting the Impala.
Dean slips into the front seat with a greedy sigh, running his hands over the steering wheel. Sam fits himself into the passenger seat, giving Dean a faintly amused look.
"Should I give you two a minute alone, or what?"
"Don't be a smartass," Dean says absently, petting the dash. He starts her up, great rumbling purr that envelopes them, and Dean shifts around just to hear the leather squeak, see the sunlight bounce off different pieces of chrome.
It's always easier once Dean's got his car around him.
Just a taste of it, though, the half-mile roll down to the yard of Josué and Amaya's farm where Earl's truck is parked. Mindy and Burt are standing in the truck bed, unhooking the tarp and revealing the cannon, which looks ludicrously out of place.
"Finally putting that thing to use, are we?" Dean says as he gets out of the Impala, one reverent hand sliding along the perfect black line of her hood.
"It's the secret weapon, ain't it?" Burt answers. "Grab the shells for me, huh?"
Sam's already at the propped-open trunk, and Dean joins him there, briefly hidden from the others' view. Sam glances at him, momentary gouge of a look that feels like Dean's skin being coarsely stripped off, and hands him a shotgun.
"It's a dirty shame that we don't own a bazooka, am I right?" Dean says, mugging slightly in his attempt to break the moment.
Faint almost-smile from Sam as he fills his pockets with shotgun shells and his satchel with magazines for the Browning.
"I was thinking that landmines would do the trick," Sam says, confidential like a trade secret. "Course it's generally looked down upon to bury landmines on other people's property."
"Well, hell, Sammy, don't let them fence you in."
That earns Dean an actual laugh, short and covered up in a cough though it is, Sam pushing his arm across his nose. Dean's reaction is extraordinary, a razor-edged heat coalescing in him, stupid tic of a grin passing across his face.
They finish with their own cache and regroup with the others, who are clustered around the truck gate Ramboing up. Earl has the elephant gun braced between his feet to be loaded, the barrel against the dirt. Burt examines every grenade before he clips it carefully to the bandolier that he'll be wearing. Mindy is using a multitool to punch extra holes in a holster belt that's too big for her.
"You see that?" Earl says, pointing out a long furrow of churned earth stretching east from the farmhouse. "That's what the ground looks like after one of them has been through it close to the surface."
"So he says," Mindy murmurs, and looks up to find herself the subject of a disapproving avuncular glare. She smiles with a self-conscious eye-roll. "Just messing with you, Earl."
"Yeah, quit that," Earl says.
"Anyway," Burt says pointedly. "We're gonna follow it out in the truck, see where it goes."
"Drivin' out into its territory, you're gonna have one busting up out of the ground before we get a half-mile," Earl says, not quite a reprimand so much as a promise.
Burt grins, and pump a shell into the shotgun's chamber. "I can only hope."
This whole job has been ridiculous, Dean decides. They're all overloaded, hunchbacked under the weight of their weapons and climbing carefully into the truck. This pervasive delusion that enough guns can kill anything, which Dean has lived long enough to know is total bullshit. He wonders if this is how Burt and Heather have hunted their whole career, just suit up and stride right the fuck in there. It's amazing that the two of them have lasted this long.
Sam and Dean and Burt hunker in the truck bed, and Mindy sits in the open passenger side window, assault rifle steadied against the roof of the cab, eyes scanning the ground as they inch along at no more than ten miles an hour. Burt mans the Howitzer, long slow sweeps across the land behind the truck.
Sam is close to Dean, close enough that their knees bump when Earl drives over a bigger rock or chunk of scrub brush. They have shotguns in each hand, propped on the sidewall of the truck, and Dean feels like he's in a Mad Max movie, which is awesome.
The furrow of churned earth that they're following leads them up towards the mountains. There are signs that they're going in the right direction, smears of pumpkin-colored blood on the bare rock, but then the trail abruptly vanishes, the ground settling to its usual desert disarray.
Earl comes to a gentle stop, and sticks his head out the window to look back at the guys in the truck bed.
"Where the hell did it go?"
"Deeper underground," Mindy says, and climbs up on top of the cab to get a better perspective. Earl joins her up there, pulling himself sturdily out the window.
"There ain't nowhere for it to go," Earl says. "Look how rocky the ground gets just up there, that's the mountains starting and we know it can't go through that."
"It was hurt," Sam says. "Bleeding pretty badly, right, so maybe it burrowed down to, like, pass out or whatever graboids do to recuperate."
"Well then," Burt says. "Let's try waking that mother up."
"Hey, Burt, don't-" Earl starts to say in a warning tone, but Burt has already tugged a grenade free of his bandolier and tossed it onto the ground.
"Fire in the hole!" Burt shouts, and they all duck, turn their shoulders, Mindy lying flat on the cab of the truck and burying her head under her arms.
Tick tick, BOOM, and a short spray of dirt and rock rattles against the side of the truck. Dean rustles grit from his hair, aiming his shotguns at the dust settling on the grenade crater.
"Goddamn it, Burt!" Earl shouts familiarly, and Burt shushes him with a cut of his hand, dropping his voice to a stage whisper.
"Quiet, be quiet and listen."
They lean forward. Dean shifts his weight in the truck bed to get a better angle with his shotguns, and his leg presses up against Sam's. Sam glances at him from the side, through his eyelashes, and then back to the crater.
A minute passes, and nothing. Earl is the first to lower his weapon, whispering at Burt, "You wanna keep the authorities out of this, you should probably stop hucking grenades before the thing even shows up."
Burt straightens up over the Howitzer, keeping his hands on the grips. His jaw works over an invisible piece of cud, sending Earl an irritated look.
"And what's your great plan-" Burt starts, but then the ground begins to shake, the truck rattling with life, and everybody shuts up, readiness whipping through their company.
Dean is expecting the graboid to come bursting through the ground like it did through Josué's floorboards last night, but instead the snake tongues emerge first, seeking carefully at the seared edges of the crater. One and then two and three hideous blind snake tongues pushing up through the dirt, slime seeming to exude from every inch. Sam nudges Dean, getting his attention without them having to look at each other.
"That's not the one from last night. This one's not hurt."
Dean nods, very gingerly cocking his shotguns back as he tosses a glance back and holds up two fingers, pointing at the monster.
"Gross," Mindy breathes out from where she's in a prone position peering through her assault rifle's crosshairs.
"We gotta get Daddy up here," Earl says, loud enough that the snake tongues jerk in his direction, and then he fires at them. He takes off a chunk of orange flesh, and the ground shakes, the urgent sense of mammoth weight jarring under their feet.
Sam blasts a scatter pattern across the snake tongues, pellets chipping into them, and the graboid roars, still mostly underground but rising, surging upwards. The dirt buckles and bends and here it comes, jailbreak out of Hell and here now, filthy black pinchers opening and enormous thumping worm body propelling itself forward out of the earth.
And then: pandemonium.
Gunfire from every side of Dean, the rat-a-tat of the assault rifles and thudding echo of each shotgun blast, and it occurs to him that earplugs would have been a sensible purchase for the group. The monster roars and lunges towards them, pockmarked with bullet wounds but not visibly slowed, snake tongues swiping within a foot of Sam's face, and Dean grabs his jacket, pulls him sharply back. A blast from Sam's shotgun flies high and wide, and he shakes Dean off, lips moving, I got it I got it, the world too loud for Dean to actually hear.
Then Burt is screaming from behind and above them, "Giddown, giddown!" and Sam shoves against Dean and into the window of the cab, barely getting hands over their ears before the Howitzer fires.
Huge explosion like the granite of the mountain cracking apart, like being inside a cloud for a thunderclap. Dean isn't watching, pressed between his brother and the cab of the truck, Sam's breath hot on his neck, shotgun against his thigh, and so he doesn't see the shell disappear into the monster's gullet, direct hit. And then the graboid blows up.
It gets fucking everywhere.
Big chunks of snake monster whap against the truck and the five of them, nauseating orange viscera raining down for a good few seconds. Identical cries of disgust from all of them, but even as they're recoiling back, Burt is hollering with triumph:
"Got you, you graboid bastard!"
"Hey, nice shot, man, hole in one!" Earl calls, a white grin breaking the block of his gray beard.
"There's still another one," Sam says, pushing away from Dean and steadying his shotguns again. "That wasn't the one from last night."
"Uh, yeah," Mindy says, and Dean looks up to see her facing the other direction, assault rifle raised. "I think that one's over here."
They all spin around, crowding to the other side and there's an approaching furrow of earth, brief glimpses of the graboid's long body breaking the dirt. A volley of rifle fire from Mindy and Earl on the cab, as Dean and Sam are shoving fresh shells into their shotguns and Burt is trying to get the Howitzer spun all the way around. Bullets chew up the land, but the graboid surges forward, too close already and then it's directly beneath them and erupting up through the surface. The truck flips like a fucking toy.
Dean is flung a fair distance and lands mostly on his head, so there's minute or two there that he doesn't quite remember. He returns to his senses to Sam's face hovering above him, big hand feeling carefully across his head. Dean is dazed, a reddish fuzz on things, the time and location uncertain but he knows he's happy that Sam is here with him.
Sam's mouth moves, fast urgent shapes forming, but Dean can't hear him. The sky looms far above Sam's head, and there's that sound like when you wet your finger and run it around the rim of a water glass, eerie high-pitched ringing everywhere and everywhere. Dean gazes at his brother, blind to all else.
Sam has Dean by his shoulders, and he pulls him up to a sitting position, hands cradling Dean's head and Dean kinda twists away because his head hurts, everything. He catches sight of the pick-up truck then, lying on its side in the scrub brush and dust.
Dean snaps back. His hearing returns in a rush, and he can hear Sam now, he can hear someone screaming.
"I'm okay, 's okay," Dean mumbles, and pushes shakily to his feet. Sam stands up alongside, hand attached to Dean's arm.
"Your head, Dean, you're bleeding," Sam says, clumsy fingers pushing across Dean's forehead.
Dean wipes his eyes clear. "It's okay," he says again, and there's one shotgun still in his hand. There's still someone screaming in the background.
Dean hobbles around the truck (left ankle feels sprained but not broken, can't worry about that now), Sam right behind him, and there's the graboid, shoved up out of the ground with its shrapnel-scarred hide crusted with dirt. Only one snake tongue survived the assault of the night before, and it's wrapped firmly around Earl's lower leg.
Earl himself is clinging desperately to the door of the flipped truck, and he's the one screaming. His leg is already soaked with blood, the snake tongue's fangs ripping deep into his flesh, and his whole body strains in an effort to deny the immense strength pulling him back towards the mouth.
Grabbing onto Sam for balance, Dean blasts at the snake tongue, but the shot kicks up dirt short of the target. Dean tries again and his shotgun clicks empty.
"I'm out, fuckin' out," Dean says, trembling hands scrambling into his jacket pockets but he musta been upside-down at some point while being thrown off the truck, 'cause his pockets are empty now, useless.
"Earl, hang on!" Sam hollers, and jerks Dean back behind the truck, snatching the shotgun away and digging into his jeans pocket for a shell, and Earl wrenches violently, arms hooked through the truck door and his leg whipping the snake tongue back and forth but it doesn't let go, wrenches right back and there is a sudden crack like ice breaking as Earl shrieks in pure agony--the graboid has fractured his leg.
"Hurry, Sam!" Dean shouts, pulling out his Glock and firing a few ineffectual small rounds into the graboid's thick hide.
But Sam is off his game today and shaky, and the shotgun shell slips out of his hand as he attempts to press it home. Sam swears brokenly, reaching down for it.
Too late already, too late. The graboid rips Earl away from the truck and begins reeling him in, and Dean catches sight of the man's rolling white eyes, the frantic loose hinge of his jaw, bloody-nailed from clawing at the dirt.
Dean says like a plea, "Sam," but before his brother can save the day, there is a deafening clatter of assault rifle fire from above and behind, a raze of bullets tearing raggedly through the snake tongue.
Fast twist of his head to see Mindy, standing on top of the flipped truck with her feet shoulder-width apart, absorbing the battering kick of the Browning. Her face is stricken and flour-colored, and she pulls up as soon as the snake tongue is fully severed, shouting down to the Winchesters:
"Get him out of there quick!"
Possibly-sprained ankle be damned, Dean dashes forward with Sam, grabbing double handfuls of Earl's shirt and dragging him back. The graboid bellows and ripples hugely towards them, but it's sluggish, half-crippled, and they're fast enough. Earl is mostly unconscious, face a shade of gray several shades paler than his hair and beard, half-mast eyelids flickering. His leg is a work of gore, long trenches of raw flesh and foot dangling at an unnatural angle.
They get Earl behind the truck, Mindy's assault rifle a constant riot in the background, and Sam immediately sets to some first aid, taking off his belt for use as a tourniquet, covering Earl with his jacket as a flimsy guard against shock.
Dean grabs the shotgun from where Sam let it fall, intending to climb on top of the truck and help Mindy finish off the injured graboid, but then he spots a flash of khaki and denim in a mess of scrub brush, Burt, and Dean staggers over there instead.
Burt is strewn like he doesn't have bones, legs and arms all akimbo, bandolier of grenades heavy on his chest. Dean checks his pulse and it's there, steady and strong, he's only been knocked out.
"You'll be all right, man, but you're gonna miss the big finish," Dean mutters, putting his numb fingers to work on the buckle of Burt's bandolier.
"Is he alive?" Sam shouts over from where he's trying to staunch Earl's bleeding.
"Yeah," Dean calls back, and then hears Mindy from on top of the truck, "Hey, little help up here!" as she fumbles to fit a fresh magazine into her Browning.
Dean runs over, bandolier loose in his hand and held high so the grenades at the end won't bump on the ground. The truck is lying onto its side, and he scales the wheels and undercarriage, joining Mindy in standing on the dented doors.
"Hiya," Mindy says, and Dean grins, liking her a great deal at the moment. "Excellent, you brought grenades."
"Yep."
The graboid is within a few yards of the truck, blind and grimy with a mud of new blood and dirt, making its last tremendous surge forward. Dean yanks the pin out of a grenade, cocks his arm back as his father counts in his head, one mississippi two mississippi three--now Dean!
He pitches hard overhand, and it's a perfect strike, disappearing immediately down the graboid's jag-toothed maw. Dean grabs Mindy and they both jump to the other side of the truck, hitting the ground and rolling clear just as the collapsing boom of the grenade rattles the world.
The force of the explosion knocks Earl's truck back onto its wheels, big clanking thud reverberating in the ground as Dean lies face-down on the dirt, face buried in his arms.
Chunks of the graboid shower down on them again. Thick warm wet slap against Dean's legs, and he squirms and scrapes disgustedly against the scrub, trying to get it off.
He sits up. The world has gone abruptly silent, no more assault rifle or shotgun blasts, no more unearthly roaring from the graboid. Mindy is coated in graboid gunk, her face twisted in disgust.
"Is that it?" Dean asks, and his own voice has a ringing echo in his mind. "Is that all of them?"
"Yeah, seems like," Sam says from over where he's hunched over Earl, barely having missed being crushed by the truck tipping back over. "We gotta get Earl out of here or he's gonna lose his foot."
That jolts new urgency into the scene, and they run around testing to see if the truck will still drive after having been on its side for several minutes (it does, thank god), and then hauling Earl and Burt's unconscious forms into the truck bed and getting the hell out of there.
Dean is standing in the back of the truck as they speed away, one hand braced on the Howitzer cannon, which now rests at a distinct tilt. Shotgun in hand, eyes on the charred earth and moon craters and gore as orange as homemade napalm splattered across the whole scene, Dean breathes out for the first time in what feels like days.
"What the living fuck," Burt says in a gravelly voice.
Dean looks down to see him blinking away on the floor of the truck bed, an expression of such perfectly enraged bafflement on his face that Dean is surprised into an actual laugh. He looks immediately to Sam and his brother grins from where he crouches near Earl's mutilated leg. The crash when their gazes come together bears all the earmarks of a sucker punch, but Dean is high on adrenaline and triumph, and he can't feel anything but the thrill.
*
and to the end!