The Killing Moon

[zatnikatel]

21. Last Man Standing

Hudak can see stars, the Pinwheel Galaxy. She's lying on the grass in the backyard, in overalls and Keds, and she can hear her brother's voice in her ear.

"Katie, that's Ursa Major, the great bear," he says, and he tells her a wondrous story about Zeus, and Callisto, and jealous Hera. "The bear never sets," he says, and then he points to the Little Dipper, "Ursa Minor," he notes, "the nymphs who cared for Zeus when he was a baby hidden on the island of Crete…"

Hudak stares up, enthralled, as he spins tales about the charioteer, the lyre, the herdsman.

But one day he never came back, her brother…

"Kathleen!"

Katie… see there, that's the lion, and there's Apollo…

"Kathleen!"

Riley knew about the stars but he never knew about the killing moon, Hudak suddenly thinks. Or did he? Did he find out about the killing moon here in these woods, running for his life? She wonders what would be worse, being hunted by humans or hunted by a monster, wonders then what the difference is, if any, because the Benders were as monstrous as the monster, and its humanity equal to theirs.

Her head aches worse than ever, feels wet. She puts a hand on her hair, wafts her fingers under her nose. Copper. Bleeding. She thinks she might sleep for a while, here under the stars, it's just like camping, Katie…

"Kathleen! Come on!"

"Shut up, Sam," she mutters, as she rolls onto her front and yomps along on her elbows to the edge of the root cellar. "What?"

Sam is goggling up at her, white-faced, for maybe ten seconds before he's suddenly swept out of her line of sight by something huge, a blur of motion she can't make out properly, and now she's staring down at Dean. He's gazing back up at her from the floor, and his mouth is open in a comical O of something that might be surprise but his eyes are huge and terrified, but then something grabs his leg and pulls him into the dark shadows off to the side, and she's staring at nothing.

There's something she should be doing but for the life of her, she can't remember what it is, so Hudak rolls over on to her back again and stargazes, while something warm trickles down her face.

"Kathleen! The gun, we need the… Jesus, no-"

"Shut up, Riley," she murmurs lazily, and she lies and ponders the fact that the stars are dead long before their light goes out.



Dean is fairly sure Lee pulls him across the ground so fast his fingers leave rubber tire marks on the hard packed soil and maybe even smoke billows up. Even so, he's prepared, and when the bastard rolls him over and straddles his hips he closes his eyes, flails wildly right through the pain barrier with his chain-wrapped fist, hears the apparition crackle away into thin air.

He can hear scuffling, the noise of yelling echoing around the pit, but it's all moving too fast for him to see properly: it's flashes of flying limbs, accompanied by a soundtrack of snarling, howling, crashing, the dull thuds of something heavy impacting against a solid surface.

He calls out thinly, his voice fading even as he tries to force it out. "K'leen. Gun…" But even if she were a foot away he knows she'd have trouble hearing him, because his throat is collapsing in on itself, clenching like a fist, squeezing the words back down instead of up and out. He focuses on the shaft of moonlight six feet away, rolls himself back onto his belly, shudders and pulls back, because he's among bodies, glistening bones that sear his nose with their stink, he's in its bed, and these ravaged, chewed, gnawed remains are his brother's fate, Bobby's too.

Bobby….

Dean can see a bulkier shape a few feet to the left, slumped, still. "Bobby…" he chokes out, and he starts to crawl, pulls himself with his hands, toes his good foot into the dirt and tries to propel himself faster. He reaches out when he's arm's length away, and pats the old man's face. "Wake up," he whispers, maybe even pleads. "Bobby. Wake up… please. Wake up. Wake up."

De. Wake up. De-De-De. Wake up.

Dead Squaw, Nebraska. Mom-and-pop grocery store, gas station, hamburger hovel, ten prairie dogs for every fat, dim hick with chewing gum on one side of his mouth and a cigarette on the other. Pay-by-the-hour motel, usual stained wallpaper, carpet like woven vomit, mildew and worse-spotted sheets, and four, five, six little red bumps tracking up the inside of his wrist in a straight line, itching like crazy, and the bedbugs went home with full bellies last night.

It's barely light.

De. Wake up. Rising shy.

"Rise and shine, Sammy," Dean mutters. "It's rise and shine."

Noise, he can still hear noise, muffled faraway cries, and they bring him back. Bobby is staring at him and then past him, and his lips are moving, and Dean crawls closer, lays his hand gently on the old man's bristled cheek again. "You're okay," he whispers, and he knows he's smiling the kind of smile he reserves for suspicious desk clerks staring at counterfeit credit cards in all those skeevy motels in so many one-horse towns up the ass of nowhere. "S'good."

Bobby's lips move again and Dean leans in, listens hard to the exhale.

"Sam…"

There are more confusing noises from the other side of the pit, but the thuds and crashes have died down, and now Dean can hear panting breaths and coughing. Bobby is still glaring into his eyes, eyebrows drawn down, mad at him again, and still saying his brother's name, and why the fuck are they lying down anyway, Dean wonders irritably.

And then Bobby is further away from him all of a sudden, disappearing into the gloom. He reaches out to grab at the old man's shirt, but his fingers trail uselessly over the fabric and then Bobby's out of reach, and it's him who's being hauled away.

Gabe Bendigo hoists him up and sits him down among the bones, patting his head gently. "Kin," it growls.

It's squatting there in front of Dean and he feels his stomach lurch, because Bobby did damn good work with the knife and its chest is a massive sucking wound. Black blood bubbles out of it, slick and burnished in the pale, filmy light of dawn that just now starts glowing into this Hell from the world above. It cocks its head for a second and its eyes burn less hot, before it twists, slowly prowls over to where it left Bobby, and it walks like a panther tonight, muscles rippling. It squats down, pokes a few times at Bobby, lifts his hand and lets it flop down, and when it glances back at Dean, it seems disconsolate at the old man's lack of reaction.

Through his haze of pain, because he hurts like a mother and all the girlfriends she met up with for mom's night off at a local bar with maybe a male stripper in the mix, Dean wonders hectically if Bobby might be playing dead, but the thought skips through his conscience, on and out the other side, because he's finding it hard to focus. "Listen," he slurs, and he stops, furrows his brow, because it turns out that his brain was crocheted by some old crumbly eking out her remaining years in a twilight home for the terminally bewildered somewhere, and it can't seem to hold onto anything sensible and coherent, it's all slipping through the holes.

"I'm me." He finally reaches out, grabs a hold of that one and pulls it back in before it tumbles into the abyss along with reason, judgment, planning, and self-control. "Just me," he whispers. "I got one brother. One. Him and me is all there is. Not you. Not Lee. Got that?"

It stares back at him. "Kin," it croons fondly, and Jesus, did it wink at him?

"Me," Dean repeats. "M' brother. Thassit…"

He glances around him, into the shadows, and there he is, his kid brother, not six feet away from him, lying with his arms outflung in a prone crucifixion, while Lee Bender leans over him, dips down closer, and nuzzles his cheek.

Bender bares his teeth, he bites, watch out, and his hands wander, and he trembles with anticipation. "Gonna teach you a lesson, boy," he hisses, reptilian, forked tongue, slimy.

He draws back, tenses, ready to pounce, and get away from my brother, Dean screams inside his head. Toxic anger surges up inside him, ground-zero energy, a Hiroshima of rabid ferocity that blasts through his brain, whites out his vision in a fireball of utter fury, because that, right there, is the last fuckin' straw that broke the camel's back. His lungs fill with air and he roars out a mushroom cloud of seething, bitter rage that he hears like a sonic boom, feels like a planet-shaking shockwave, but it comes out in a hoarse, helpless, panicked whisper, because Jesus, he's done with Lee, doesn't ever want to go back there. He doesn't want to press flesh with the sick sonofabitch again, doesn't want to feel Lee's lips mashing his skin, his teeth marking him, his fingertips branding him, doesn't want to be smothered by him again, ever again.

The tiny, rational portion of Dean's brain, the portion up in the top right hand corner, the portion that's wearing its helmet and flakjacket and reporting into the Nightly News a safe distance from the warzone as the missiles fly, is calmly reminding him just how much he doesn't want to unwrap the end of the chain from where Sam entwined it around his wrist, even as he grips its trailing end in his teeth and laboriously twists his hand free. But it turns out that decision-making didn't fall out through the holes in his gray matter at all, it hung on manfully, gritted its teeth, swung its leg up and clambered right back in there. And Dean flops himself forward and starts crawling towards his brother, hauling himself along on his elbows.

A foot or so away he cracks the chain like Indiana Jones's bullwhip, only not so much, because really he pats his hand down on Sam's arm and fuck, misses, the few inches of iron he managed to loose falling down a good foot clear of Bender as he necks away. Sam is coming round but he's dazed, blinking slowly, and he isn't fighting because maybe he isn't really there. Dean knows that feeling, and he mutters his brother's name, grips his shirt, pulls closer, finally stabs the chain links through the douche so that Bender flickers and vanishes.

Dean breathes his brother's name again, right in his ear, because he has nothing left to give now, and his mind is cloudy, nebulous. He curls up next to Sam, rests his cheek on Sam's shoulder and his chain-clad arm across Sam's chest, because it's finally time to rest.



It's like babes in the wood, Hudak muses as she peers in at them. All they need is robins fluttering around down there sprinkling them with leaves and petals, and-Christ.

The gun.

She scrambles to her feet, looks left, right, no gun. She lurches to the edge of the pit again, pulls back violently as a wave of dizzying, throbbing pain in her head threatens to pitch her back in there. She can see Sam lying flat on his back, staring up at her, but she can't see the thing and she daren't call down and draw attention to herself. She waves frenziedly at Sam, and he's blinking, frowning, lifting up his head and looking dazedly at his brother, nestled against his side.

Bobby, Hudak thinks frantically. Lamp, he said to get a lamp, fire good. Rope. Get a fucking grip.

She races around to the front of the cabin, slams in through the door, lamp, on the table. There is Sam's pack and she roots through the outside pocket for his lighter, fuck, upends the duffel entirely, and smashes her hand on the device as it skids across the table. Liquor, pantry, and her eyes rake the shelves. It's up top, corked bottles, home-made moonshine if ever she saw it, and she jumps, scatters, grabs, feels her hand close around smooth glass, hears a second bottle, a third, shatter on the floor at her feet.

Her boots crunch on glass chips and she skates across them back into the kitchen, rag, uncorks the bottle, feeds the end of the fabric in through the top. Her hands are shaking, she can't get the cloth in far enough, and she rips the junk drawer out of its housing, scatters the contents everywhere, pencil, thank God, and she uses the tip to push the end of the rag right down inside, into the liquid. Then she wheels, hurtles through the door, long-jumps clean across the porch, yelps as her ankle twists, and lurches back round to the pit.



A split-second after he sees Hudak's white, scared face peering down at him, Sam is in his own driving seat again, and he pushes up onto his elbows, shakes his head hard.

"Dean," he mutters, and he hooks a hand under his brother's shoulder, starts heaving him over to the wall. Dean doesn't know him, starts slurring nonsense and hitting out at him, and a split second after that Sam is thinking that body armor is going on the list when they restock after this one, as he exhales a visible puff of icy vapor that tells him Bender is somewhere close by.

The force with which his back crashes against the wall again tells him Lee is engaged elsewhere, however, which means that he's in serious trouble, the kind of trouble he somehow knows a tap on the chest and the claim of kin isn't bailing him out of this time. That realization rams home in a bolt of pain as the thing's claws rake through his jacket and shirt, scalpel sharp, and Sam cries out as they slice into his abdomen, the sting agonizing. He feels the wet sensation of blood start trickling down his ribs, grabs at himself just to make sure his bowels aren't spilling out all over the dirt, damn well takes a couple of seconds to say a prayer of thanks that his guts seem intact for now because evisceration might just cramp his style. He ducks as it looms up and sinks a fist into the wall where his head just was, and scoots between its legs, hoping to God it doesn't sit down, because being up close and personal with its teeth and claws is bad enough without getting intimate with its block and tackle.

"Ow! Christ!" Sam flinches, and his hand flies up to the back of his head, rubs hard, and something bounces off him onto the dirt in front of him, small, shiny, Jesus, salvation.

He rakes his fingers in the dirt, closes them tight over it as he flips over onto his butt, risks a look up. Hudak is staring down at him again, wide-eyed, holding a bottle, and now Lee looms over him, a foot on either side, leers down at him, lifts his boot.

Sam pulls up his legs, rolls as the boot slams down into the dirt, scrabbles around the apparition, shoots upright. "Throw it down!" he hollers. "Now!"

Hudak is leaning in as far as she can, dropping the bottle, and Sam hears it thud to the ground as a violent push sends him careering out of range. He yells out in frustration and hears her echo him from above. He drops to his knees, dives for it, please don't be cracked, and suddenly he's swept up by his ankles, dangled upside down like his dad used to do when he was a kid, or was it Bobby?

He can feel the blood racing to his head, hears it rushing in his ears like the sea crashing on the shore, and the thing is swaying him gently to and fro. Sam swings like a pendulum do for a full minute, and he can see Bender closing in on his sprawled brother all the while. Dean's arm is flung out to his right, chain trailing in the dirt, too far away to repel the bastard, and Sam stutters out horror and panic as he flicks desperately at his lighter, barely touches the flame to the skin of the thing's leg, and holy mother of God, the fingertips of his other hand land on cold glass and he grabs hold, grips the bottle tight, hugs it close to his body as the beast shrieks and drops him on his head.

It bounds away, and Sam's legs timber down to earth, his feet slamming so hard into the dirt they bounce several times. And before he has time to draw breath, he's pushing up onto his elbows, his haunches, up onto tired, tremulous legs, and he's flicking on the flame again, lighting the makeshift wick.

He shouts it out at the top of his lungs. "Hey! Lee Bender!" Bender's head whips round, and this is the gamble now, this is the moment Sam finds out if he's right, as the spirit turns, grins, starts ambling towards him.

"Have a drink on me, you sack of shit," Sam snarls, and he turns, slams the bottle down among the piled up bodies.

It all explodes in bright orange flames, because Pa Bender knew how to brew up hooch like no man, and this is ten-thousand-proof Martian rocket fuel. Bender's face falls, anger fading to disappointment, and he's less distinct, his edges are softening, blurring. He dissolves into nothing as the beast looms up behind him, and throws a roundhouse punch that knocks Sam down onto the dirt again. It kicks him aside then, transfixed by the flames, reaching out its clawed hands to the smoking, popping, sparking ruins, shrilling out its fear and grief.

Sam blinks slowly, breathes slowly, because truth is he doubts he'll ever be able to do anything fast again. He can feel the blood pooling underneath the skin of his shoulders, that'll hurt in the morning, rests his hand on a warm, sticky, growing patch on his shirt front. But he wills himself up onto his hands and knees, crawls towards his brother, folds his long body around and behind him, leans against the wall, gathers him up and grips him tight. Dean feels hot, he's shivering, breathing fast and shallow, but it doesn't matter now, Sam knows, because the smoke is already starting to make his chest feel tight. This is how it ends, he thinks. We go together. And at the end of it all, it's a relief, it's how it should be, it's right and it's comforting, and it's what Sam wants.

The sound is like nothing he's heard it make before: it's the sound of reprisal, retribution, revenge, and for a second Sam marvels at the fact that after all this, his skin can still crawl.

And then it's right there, crouching, curling its maw back from dripping teeth. It's raising its fist, claws like tusks on the tips of its fingers, because it's getting even with Sam Winchester, and Sam knows that in a fraction of a second he'll be dead, his skull pierced, caved in, his brains spattered across the dirt wall he's slumped against. He says his brother's name, holds him tighter.

"Enough," Dean whispers.

And he detonates, explodes with a strength Sam doesn't believe possible, punches out and doesn't stop, driving his fist into the monster's wide-open, shredded chest, elbow deep.

Sam hears ribs snap like dry branches, and Dean freezes.

It's still looking at them, but now its eyes are dull, sad, and it speaks, its voice rasping, mournful, desolate.

I-pray-the-Lord-my-soul-to-keep…

It glows from within, from its chest outwards, fizzles, flares, flashes, flames blue and green around Dean's hand as it melts into nothing.

Sam's breath wheezes out in tune with his brother's, and he stares into the half-light for a long moment of silence, a silence that's golden, he thinks, fucking golden, before he swallows thickly. "How did you do that?" he whispers.

His brother coughs weakly, holds up his hand, tilts it, and through the thick, dark slime coating his fingers Sam sees his ring glinting.

"S-silver," Dean slurs. "S'a bitch, Sammy… Silver's a fuckin' bitch."

And his hand falls and his head lolls on Sam's shoulder.



Hudak isn't quite sure what she just witnessed, hangs her head over the edge for several minutes, can just make out Sam's sneakers protruding from the smoky gloom.

"Rope," she says out loud into the dawn.

She's lethargic, has to force herself upright, she's wrung out, used up, and her head is exploding. She totters along, looks up at the sunrise, a new day. She can still see the moon high above, no longer blood-drenched but pinkish now, the color of baby clothes and powder rooms and strawberry ice cream, and maybe it's finally over.

The rope is tied around the tree stump where she left it yesterday-a-lifetime-ago, and she looks back at the gaping cellar, wearily tries to figure out where she can loop it, doors won't do because they're rotting.

More rope. There must be some in the cabin, because how the hell else would the Clampitts have gotten down to and up from the poor bastards they stowed in their hellhole, and as she nears the side of the porch she slows to a stop, sinks down onto the dew-soaked grass, stares dumbly at the metal hooks on the side of the cabin, the other side of the cabin, the metal hooks holding the ladder the Clampitts used to get down to and up from the poor bastards they stowed in their hellhole.

She chokes out a frantic giggle that evolves into a patented Dean Winchester drug-and-agony-induced insane cackle, and she buries her face in her hands and weeps, gulping, shoulder-heaving sobs that make her head pound even more.



Bobby comes round with a jolt, breathes in the stink of burning meat and sputters. "Jesus. What the hell?"

He stares owlishly into the pit from his vantage point, pushes up onto his hands, breathing in sharply. His eyes are watering, his chest is tight, and he hurts all over. He took a beating, a good one, and he remembers being kicked around this hole like a fuckin' football.

"Smoke," he spits out, rubbing at his stinging eyes, and ducks back down nearer the ground, where it's less thick, to take a breath. "Lamps. It worked."

He squints up, can see light through the blue-gray fumes, can hear sounds, metallic clangs and groans.

"Kathleen?" he coughs out. "Sam?"

He hears a muffled cry, sees a dim shape.

"Bobby? Bobby? Oh my God. Bobby…"

"Are the boys up there with you?" he calls out tightly.

"No… still down there. Ladder, I found a ladder. Just a second… can you see it?"

He can see Hudak's blurred figure maneuvering the ladder in, stands as it drops towards him, waves smoke away from his face. "Just about… what the hell happened? Where are they?"

"I'm throwing down a cloth, wet… wrap it around your face."

Bobby barely has time to reply before it flops down on top of his head and he spits saturated fabric, plucks it off, wipes his eyes, holds it up over his nose and mouth until his breathing eases.

Hudak is stepping off the ladder, her face half covered, and she stands up close. "They're over there, somewhere," she says, muffled by the cloth, and Bobby turns, scrunches his eyes to see through the smoke.

She puts a hand on his arm. "Bobby, wait a minute… I don't know if they're okay or not. It got pretty rough and I was up top, out cold."

Bobby ignores her, has to know even if a part of him wants to stop the world and get off so he won't ever find out he lost his family while he slept, and he's already over there falling to his knees. Hudak drops down beside him, pressing soaking wet cloth into his hands and wrapping another piece around one of them, he can't even tell which.

He feels his way up the body in front, head hanging limp, buzzcut. "Dean," he breathes, puts his lips close up to his boy's ear. "Dean."

Nothing, and he winds the cloth around, tucks the ends in, starts pulling the body forward. It flops like a ragdoll in his arms, won't come any further because arms are locked tight around it and not letting go. Bobby leans in close again, pushes Sam's hair back off his face, and his voice is soft as he looks into dark eyes, John Winchester's eyes, gleaming ice-cold, fixed on him, wary, apprehensive, suspicious.

"Sam."

No reaction.

"Sam," Bobby tries again, soothing. "It's me, Bobby. I got you boys now. Kathleen's here too. You hear me? You can let go of your brother now."

Sam nods, just barely, looses his grip, and Bobby lifts Dean up and out, lowers him flat. He squints but can't see the damage, crouches with his cheek close to lax lips, breath faint, and he heaves a sigh of relief. He feels a tap on his arm then, glances up to see that Hudak is holding up a hand, stained dark and glistening in the dawn light, and Bobby feels his guts lurch.

"Where are you hurt, Sam?" he asks gently, and then again more forcefully as Sam stares, obstinately silent.

Bobby shuffles back on protesting knees, pats the kid up and down, feels a cold, tacky, saturated patch at the front, can't see the damage, too shadowed. "Dammit," he mutters softly. "He's cut up here, or something… still too dark to see. Is there a flashlight up top?"

Hudak vanishes and he hears the ladder creak, followed by a brief silence and then more creaking as she descends. "Batteries are about dead," she warns as he clicks it on, shines it in.

"Jesus, Sam," slips out before Bobby can stop it. He gingerly raises the shirt and tee, hisses as he takes in the two parallel shallow gashes a good fifteen inches long, cutting diagonally across Sam's torso. He swallows hard, because an inch deeper and his boy would have been disemboweled.

"Is he going to be okay?"

Hudak's voice is small and frightened, and Bobby sighs. "Looks worse than it is, I think, but he's lost some blood alright and he's shocky. He isn't bleeding just now, but it'll start up again once we move him. How close is this cabin?"

"We're right behind it," Hudak says, her voice stronger. "There's a ton of first aid stuff there… we can fix this, yes? Bobby?"

Bobby sits back on his heels, rubs at the ache in his head, and he can see her more clearly now the smoke is rising up and out.

"Christ, Bobby," she starts, and the words tumble out. "You, what about you, are you okay? God, it was awful, we thought it, we thought you were, we, we-"

"You need to calm down, Kathleen," Bobby says, putting a hand on hers. "It threw me about some, knocked me out, and I hurt like a sunburned neck. But I played dead some of the time, and I'm in one piece bar the odd bump and scrape. Okay?"

Hudak nods, pulls the wet cloth away from her face, swipes at her eyes, gets a hold of herself and leans into Sam. "Sam, can you hear me?"

"Yeah," Sam breathes out finally.

"We have a ladder. We're taking Dean out of here, and then we'll be taking you up… You're going to be fine."

"'Kay… Dean?"

Bobby looks at Hudak, clears his throat, schools his tone into something approximating convinced assurance. "He's just taking a nap. He'll be fine. Both of you will be fine."



Hudak feels Dean lock tight and then spasm three-quarters of the way up the ladder, and there's a horrifying moment when she thinks she might not be able to hold on. "I don't think he's doing too well, Bobby," she grits out as she heaves.

Bobby's voice floats up, gruff and determined. "Just keep pulling, we'll deal with it up top."

"I am pulling," she manages, the sharp burn of the rope on her palms reminding her of the fact all too painfully. "Are you pushing?"

"Of course I'm damn well pushing," Bobby growls. "Christ. Just because he's dropped twenty doesn't mean he still don't weigh in. And it's dead weight."

Dean jerks again, Hudak can see the muscles of his shoulders go rigid. "I think he's seizing or something," she calls down into the dark. "Can you feel that? Spasms."

Bobby curses loudly. "Just pull him the fuck up, Kathleen. Whatever is going on with him we can't deal with it halfway up the ladder."

Hudak digs her heels in, hauls with all her might, finally gets Dean up and onto the muddy grass. She grips the rope further down, near where it's looped under his shoulders, and heaves him two or three yards away from the edge of the cellar, because she's damned if she's watching him roll over unconsciously and plummet back down there.

"How's he doing?" Bobby barks, emerging behind them. He's red-faced with exertion and he narrows his eyes as Hudak glances over at him. "And your head is bleeding."

Hudak shuffles up to Dean's shoulders, chewing her lip. "Something's not right. He seems to be in spasm or something, his muscles are locked tight, rigid." She wipes the trickle of moisture away from her temple, scowls at the red blotches on her fingertips. "Yeah, I hit it or something. It was pretty wild down there after that thing knocked you out." She leans down, studies Dean closer, and she can see that even his jaw is set tight. "Dean?"

Nothing, but suddenly his features lose their tension and visibly relax. His shoulders drop, and air puffs out between his lips. She can't shake a sense of unease as she strokes his cheek gently. "It seems to have stopped. But whatever it was, I don't like it. We need to get this moving along, jury rig a stretcher or something. Do you think Sam can walk?"

Bobby turns, looks down and then back. "No idea. He's conscious… Maybe if we strap him up good he'll stay upright. We need to get those scratches padded for this, maybe it'll stop them from coming open again. Is there anything-"

Hudak is standing up already. "There are sheets and towels in the cabin." She finds that she's swaying, though, that her head is spinning and throbbing at the same time, that nausea is welling up. She throws her hands out to balance herself because it feels like someone grabbed a hold of the grass and pulled it out from under her.

"Kathleen?"

Eyes closed, she waits for it all to settle before she starts walking carefully towards the cabin. "Just dizzy," she calls backs. "I hit my head again when it threw me out. There are painkillers in the cabin, it'll help I think."

"It threw you out?" she hears Bobby echoes her in disbelief, as she heads for the ramshackle building. "Christ. Why do I miss all the really good bits?"

Inside, another wave of vertigo has Hudak gripping onto the countertop for a few seconds, has her swallowing back bile. It passes as she inhales deeply and blows out in a whistle, and she's careful to hold her head as steady as she can as she tucks a wad of towels under her arm and retrieves the duct tape, before making her way back to where Bobby is studying Dean.

"Towels," she says wearily, as she kneels down. "You can wodge them up against the cuts and duck tape it on. I didn't think you'd want to use the bandages until we're dressing it properly."

Bobby eyes her suspiciously as he tucks the towels under his arm. "Take something for your head," he instructs her as he climbs back down. "We're it as far as getting these boys out of here, Kathleen, and it won't be easy if Sam can't walk."

She nods, stops dead because her head is about to spark and blow to kingdom come again. "Travois," she replies. "One each, maybe." She crawls back over to Dean, then a few feet further on to her discarded pack, roots out a bottle of water, gulps at it, sloshes some over her head for good measure, wake herself up maybe.

She shuffles back, lifts Dean's head up onto her thigh. He's a mess, filthy, bloody, scratched and bruised, hair scruffy with dirt, stubble patching his jaw, sweat soaking dark patches through his ragged tee. "Hey, kiddo," she says ruefully. "Not so pretty now, huh?" She rests her hand on his brow. "You got a decent fever going there."

Hudak casts a glance further down to the dried blood staining the messily wrapped foot, mentally reminds herself to climb back down and fetch his boot for him before they leave. And then, suddenly, he's spasming again, his whole body going rigid, his back arching a few inches off the grass. His eyes snap open and he's looking up at her, his expression is bewildered, confused. She takes his hand and he grips hers so tightly she winces.

"Relax," she soothes. "Breathe, in, out. Relax."

After a minute he slumps again, breath fast and shallow. Hudak forces his fingers open, reaches for the water. "Drink."

He barely cracks his lips, makes sputtering noises, eyes wide and alarmed now as the water dribbles out. He's choking as he forces it down, and he coughs, shakes his head, mutters out between set jaws. "Can't… no more."

"But you have to drink something," Hudak insists, pressing the bottle up to his mouth again.

He waves a hand feebly, pushes the bottle away before he locks up again. This time he flexes up so high that he's on his heels and his head, the rest of him clear off the ground, and all Hudak can do is crouch down and talk him through it.



Bobby rips off the last strip of tape, eases Sam back up against the wall and taps his cheek, and Sam opens bleary eyes.

"You up to this, boy?" Bobby asks him. "We hauled your brother up with a rope around him, so if you think you're likely to keel over, maybe we should take the precaution?"

Sam heaves out a sigh, looks across at the ladder. "I can do it," he mutters, reaches out a hand. "I think."

"Just put your other hand there, give your belly some support," Bobby says as he rises. "We should try to keep the cuts from opening up again if we can. You ready?"

Sam nods, maneuvers his legs underneath, pushes as Bobby pulls, groans as he comes to a halt slumped across Bobby's shoulder, panting, sweat dripping down into his eyes. "Fuck," he grinds out. "That's just… fuck."

Bobby pats his hand on Sam's back, rubs a circle or two there. "How're you doing, kid?" he prods softly.

Sam blinks hard, screws his eyes shut for a minute. "Getting there," he mutters. "Getting there. Walk me over."

Bobby twists around and under, drapes Sam's arm across his shoulder. "Slow and easy," he soothes, keeping his voice as patient as he can, glancing up at the sun, already bright and glowing hotly. Tempus fugit when you're having fuckin' fun, he thinks venomously, and he shoots a savage look over at the smoking remains in the corner, wonders if they're all gone, thinks they damn well will be in ten minutes when he empties the kerosene lamps down here and lights it all up again just to be on the safe side. And Christ he wants out of here, wants out of this open grave, wants to stand under that sun, bask in its golden rays, and fuck skin cancer, because he's damn well going into the light and taking his boys with him no matter how much Dean pinks up and peels.

Sam's groaning again as he lifts one foot, then the other, and Bobby climbs up close behind, gets a faceful of the boy's denim-clad ass for his troubles. And then they're up top and Hudak is helping Sam ease himself up onto solid ground.

Sam looks straight over at his brother. "I heard you," he says faintly. "When you were pulling him out. What's wrong with him?"

Hudak is biting her lip, eyes darting nervously from Dean's prone body to Bobby to Sam and back to Bobby. "I think he's okay, Sam," she says carefully, widening her eyes at Bobby where Sam can't see. "I think he was just feeling it is all."

"You're sure?" Sam mutters.

"I'm sure."

Bobby climbs out, stands, starts walking stiffly towards the cabin, limping on his left side, rubbing at his back. "Be right back," he throws out over his shoulder, and once inside he navigates his way past discarded possessions, his boots crunching on smashed glass and salt crystals. He winces at the swathes of bloodsoaked cloth piled on the floor as he picks his way through it all to an open door off the kitchen. "Pantry," he murmurs. There's a rusting metal can on the floor, tucked in out of the way, and he pulls it out, squats, has to put his back into it to twist the cap off. He sniffs briefly. "Yahtzee."

They're still where Bobby left them, in various degrees of alert and aware, when he approaches the pit again. He stops at the lip, cautions, "You might want to shuffle back from the side there, Sam," as he unscrews the lid of the kerosene can.

"What is that?" Hudak asks, as Bobby upends the can, emptying it before he sets it down onto the grass, pulls a matchbook out of his back pocket, lights it up and flicks it into the depths.

"Insurance," he says dryly, and he stares down into the pit for a long few seconds as smoke wreathes up again. "It's over," he says then, palming his brow, rubbing his temples with thumb and fingers. "Jesus." He looks over at Sam, still dazed, and Hudak. "This clusterfuck is finally over."

Hudak grimaces up at him. "Dean's boot was down there," she muses. "I was going to-"

"What's wrong with him?" Sam cuts in, and he's shifting painfully over onto his hands and knees, using one hand to support himself while he clamps the other to his gut, shuffling over towards his brother. "Is he seizing? What's wrong with him?"

Bobby finds his legs are on autopilot, just like they were in the root cellar, and he's already striding over, dropping to his knees, hands planted on Dean's shoulders to restrain him as he twitches and jerks. "Don't panic, Sam, he's fine," he throws over his shoulder. "Low blood sugar can bring on seizures."

"You're sure?"

Sam's face is drawn and his eyes are bleary with pain, and worry. And Bobby tells himself that what he's about to do is the best thing he can do for the kid right here and now, tells himself that keeping Sam's hope alive is the one thing that will get him up and walking, tells himself that he can deal with his regrets and Sam's rage afterwards.

"I'm absolutely sure," he lies.



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