The Game of God: Day 155 - part 1
The Game of God: Day 155 - part 1
Short version: run really fast.
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Warnings at the end.
— Day 155 —
Dean wakes up alone.
This isn’t new—most of his life, come on—but rolling over, he views the lack of Cas in his bed and doesn’t like it. He remembers Cas telling him he missed his breathing when he was away at Ichabod that first time, and it occurs to him that’s actually a thing; five months of his life (minus a couple of weeks early on and visits to Ichabod) have been spent with Cas sleeping only a room away, ten days in the same bed, and he does miss that, but it’s more than that. They’ve only been here five days, but Christ, it feels like forever.
Rolling on his back, he stares up at the ceiling; it’s stupid, but he wants to go home. He wants to sleep in their own goddamn bed with the squealing springs announcing any too-hard breathing, he wants to wake up to the smell of coffee and Cas resenting mornings while cooking breakfast, he wants to drag his ass to the shower and spend his first hour of the morning talking to Cas about what’s going on today. He’ll listen to Cas’s efforts in turning their militia camp into a digital utopia with consistent plumbing while doing the dishes, look over his shoulder at the updated patrol schedule, check out the drafts for new cabins, and next week they’ll start pouring the foundation for the mess, and Dean’s looking forward to that.
He wants to go fix the generators, work with Sheila in auto, help finish up the repairs on the cabins for the new recruits, and help organize the new and improved armory (Cas is already thinking of an awesome new building for it; it’s on their list). Hopefully before spring, they’ll have the new room on the cabin built with two (2) private armories, an actual closet, and only one bed. And repaint and clean that old room into Cas’s perfect library within no memories at all of two weeks being locked inside it. He’s gonna break the lock on that door himself, just to be sure. Maybe the door, too.
Annoyed, he pushes off the blankets and sits up; no clock (no Cas to tell him) but it’s definitely after midnight. It’s also colder than he remembers, and a glance around the room shows the balcony door’s open, faint orange light staining the floor and letting in all the cold air in the world.
Ignoring his chattering teeth, he gets up, hissing at the way the cold floor cuts through his socks and makes a note to find some goddamn rugs or something as soon as possible. As he crosses the room, he wonders how much longer Cas and Teresa are gonna be when a low roar—like a huge crowd—rumbles through the room. If the geas whatever is creating mobs at midnight, this just became the stupidest emergency ever. Also, he should maybe check on that.
Walking outside, he emerges into dank heat, like summer in Memphis, sticky-hot and thick and heavy, but not like that at all: it’s wrong. Looking up, he blinks up at the angry red-orange sky, then the charred landscape, an eternity of bare rock and desert and swamp, and stops short as he recognizes the sound of screaming. Going to the railing, he sees the Pit splayed out in all its horror before him, but it’s not like he almost doesn’t remember and sometimes doesn’t quite not: before his eyes is a slaughter, the Pit in a war of succession unlike anything ever witnessed in Hell. They called in every favor and made deals with anyone who would listen, allowing armies to march across the borders of the Pit, but it won’t be enough.
It’s not enough; in the distance forms a swirling darkness, formless and pitiless, swallowing the broken sky in ebony gulps with flickers of silver like captive lightning. A frozen wind blows away the heat, and he can hear shouting below, confusion and growing fear, all eyes turned to watch an infinite storm in the Pit itself. Beneath them, the bedrock of Hell itself begins to tremble, and he grins as the screaming begins.
“There we go,” he whispers, watching them try to flee that endless darkness that sweeps down toward them like great wings; when it moves on, nothing’s left of them but absence. In only moments, the Pit’s deserted, pulsing rock the color of drying blood paving the ground as far as he can see. If he listens carefully, he can still hear their muffled screams. “I win.”
When he looks at his hand, he’s holding that knife like he never stopped.
“Dean?”
Closing his hand, he spins around to see Cas at the door, peering at him in bewilderment. “Hey.”
Cas tilts his head. “Is something wrong?”
Dean starts to ask what, then realizes his teeth are chattering; Christ, he should have grabbed a blanket or something. “Thought I heard something,” he says, shivering (seriously, it’s freezing) and nearly bowling Cas over to get back into the semi-warmth of their room and diving for the bed.
“Hurry up,” he says impatiently as Cas closes the door, reaching for the lamp on the stack of plastic milk crates that last he saw were being used to carry supplies in the morning. Their recruits are awesome. “How’d it go?
“Very good,” Cas says, sitting at the foot of the bed and removing his boots. “We verified they integrated with the existing sigils very well, and from what we could tell, they should work to—I think the best way to put it is ‘encourage them not to want to come inside’.”
“Will that work?” he asks dubiously.
“It will,” Cas answers. “Though for how long depends on their intelligence and determination. However, now knowing their paternal line, they should be vulnerable to that which affects Hellhounds, though how much is unknown.”
“And killing them?” Dean has a feeling this is a lot more complicated than combine Elder God plus Hellhound and split the difference to work out what to do about them. “I mean, just asking: can we kill them?”
Cas sighs, leaning back on one arm. “I would have preferred you asked ‘can they be killed,’ for the answer there is obviously yes.” Yeah, that’s what he was afraid of. “That Winchester House and Lucifer could tells us very little other than that it’s possible, not that we have the means or ability to do so.”
Does he want to know? “Be specific.”
“Dead flesh,” Cas says, frown deepening before he looks at Dean. “Do you remember when you suspected I’d resurrected you as a zombie?” Oh yeah, that was great, thanks for the reminder. “This would be one of the only times in the history of the world that might have been an advantage, though there’s no guarantee that the separation of mortal body and spirit wouldn’t still occur.”
So Dean maybe should regret not being a zombie? “Huh?”
“They may be a degraded form, but they’re still grandchildren of Ether and born of the dead flesh in which their mother was bound; that’s where their humanoid form came from. I don’t know if it’s possible for a mortal to kill something that on this plane qualifies as dead. I am going to test this extensively with our entire arsenal, however.”
Dean carefully places all that in the category ‘shouldn’t make any sense but does’ (a large fucking category, bigger every day) and gets down to practicalities. “So what we’re doing here is just trying to keep them outside the walls until the barrier comes back up.”
“Yes,” Cas agrees, nodding. “That would be the plan.”
Well, at least they have one. “Anything else happen?”
“I learned a great deal,” Cas says thoughtfully.
“Theory versus experience?”
“Knowing the abilities and ethical restraints of a bruja blanca isn’t the same as understanding them.” Getting up, Cas takes his boots to sit by the wall on the other side of the bed before getting one of their bags, setting it on the mattress. “She told me about her childhood training.”
Drawing his knees up, Dean nods. “Weird to imagine, and yes, I do get the irony of me saying that.”
Cas flashes him a grin. “It’s very much like any child’s, I think,” he says, taking out the soft sweatpants and clean long sleeve t-shirt, which reminds Dean to do some laundry in the morning. When they get home, restructuring of the chore list is gonna happen; if he has to fight for the right to at least one meal and cleaning the bathroom and trading off laundry duty, well, it’s weird, but he’ll do it. “Just more structured. Teresa’s abilities manifested very early—not a surprise with her bloodlines—and of course they’re also hunters. Glenn and Serafina at the daycare have implemented several of her suggestions in the education of the children to prepare them for their future here.”
Dean opens his mouth to protest that automatically and then realizes he actually has no objection, even philosophically. What no one says and everyone thinks about how long they’re gonna be in the infected zone aside, these kids aren’t going to grow up in a world where ignorance is a given but a luxury; what they don’t know is literally going to kill them.
“Any future witches in the daycare?” he asks curiously; Ichabod so far has shown every sign being smart when it comes to survival, and a new generation of practitioners to get trained would be top of the list.
“Teresa tests them regularly with their parents’ permission,” Cas replies, and Dean loses a moment when Cas drops his jeans, stepping out and folding them neatly before putting them away. “Several, most recently Tony’s elder daughter Dee.”
Dean grins; he can see Tony’s face. “What’d Tony say?”
“Asked what the chances were that she would turn him into a frog when oatmeal was for breakfast,” Cas says with an answering grin, sliding into his sweatpants and then taking off the flannel and thermal before frowning into the bag; yeah, they’re running out of clothes.
“Just put everything in the corner,” Dean advises casually. “I’m going to do laundry in the morning.”
Cas performs ‘blatant shock’ plus “I am amused you think that” before placing the clothes in the nearby corner and getting into bed with a contented sigh.
Then, casually, “Laundry can wait. I think we should visit the daycare tomorrow morning after breakfast.”
Dean opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
He actually still doesn’t remember much about what happened at the daycare between reaching the stairs and Cas appearing in the courtyard; the difference is, now he’s very aware of that missing time and while he can’t say he’s curious or really wants to know, it’s pretty inevitable that’s going to happen and soon.
Grant is a special case: Dean doesn’t have all of it, but the sampling gives him enough to know pretty much how it must have gone, and it’s familiar in that way things are that you’ve done before, just not on earth but in unremembered, sometimes-remembered fever-dreams of Hell. He probably didn’t have to think about it too hard, that much he’s sure of; he’d done it before, many times, in many variations, and for all its apparent brutality, it was kinder than some he could have done on earth (though he suspects that was simply a lack of time to fit anything exotic in there).
He’s still trying to work out how words work when Cas reaches across to flip off the lamp, because some things can’t be said anywhere but in the dark.
“You know,” Dean hears himself say. “I can’t figure out if I’m okay with you not telling me because you were probably right, or because I’m glad I didn’t know. I wish—I almost wish I didn’t now.” It’s not almost, but Cas knows that. “Who else knows?”
“Amanda’s the only one,” Cas says quietly from beside him, a close, comfortable source of warmth and simple presence. Breathing, Dean thinks again for no reason; how long has it been like this anyway? He remembers telling Cas once—Christ, forever ago—he didn’t have to stay and babysit every night and how even saying it, he didn’t mean it, hoped to God that Cas didn’t take him up on it. He sure as hell made no effort whatsoever to give Cas space to actually get around to doing it. “As far as I know, everyone assumes it was some unknown consequence of the interaction of demons and Croatoans and the human infiltrators.”
Dean rolls onto his stomach, taking the time to grab a pillow to stuff under his chest before he looks at Cas incredulously. “No relation to the hunter in the daycare who just happened to take a lot of them out?” Not that he was a one-man army: every teacher, parent, and kid old enough to hold a weapon stepped up, and if Teresa’s the one that encouraged Glenn and Serafina to start teaching those kids, he owes her thanks or no one would have survived.
Everything up to the stairs is as vivid as if it happened yesterday: Emmy let a Croat eat her goddamn arm so Una and Callie could get the kids down the hall; Callie threw herself on top of one of the fuckers to buy them more time, Una and her son Clark bodily blocked the stairs; Linda was trapped in the kitchen with a Croat, locked her kids in the pantry and beat the fuck out of the Croat even as it ate her alive. Jimena and her partner Cia were ripped apart and never knew, thank God, their kids would be killed a few minutes later; Dorian and his daughter Betts; Angelique and her four year old twins, Tyler and Todd.
Callie and Emmy kept Dwayne and three other kids in that goddamn locked room before they were taken to isolation, and now he wonders what Sissy said when they told her that her best friend and co-castle-maker wasn’t coming back to help finish. What Dee said when Tyler and Todd weren’t in class anymore. How the everloving fuck Jessie and Lian are dealing with losing their mother, how Sandy is with her mother and brother gone, all the family she had; how those ten kids of the infiltrators are even able to process what the fuck happened to their lives.
He can practically hear Cas thinking (not like that, though; at least, he doesn’t think so). “You haven’t visited the daycare since that day.”
“I did,” he protests. “When you were getting more groupies.” Oh Christ, that sounds terrible. “Uh, I mean, hanging out with the kids from the church.”
No need to see if Cas’s eyebrow is doing anything; it is.
“If you feel guilty—”
“It’s not that.” Well, no, it is, but that’s the easy part; this is what he calls the crazy part and he doesn’t know how to explain in a way that makes any kind of sense. “I’ll look for them.”
Cas doesn’t answer, and Dean risks a glance to see he’s simply waiting.
“I know they’re dead,” he says. “I talked to some of the parents, for fuck’s sake, I remember…but—”
“You haven’t seen where they used to be.”
Dean lets out a shuddering breath. “Dwayne and Sissy were building a castle. Todd, Tyler, and Dee were best friends, did everything together. Clark wanted to be a doctor, was apprenticing with Dolores after school every day, Dolores said he was picking up everything so fast. Sandina was eight, Cia and Jimena found her in an abandoned car two years ago, and she was so smart, Cas. They adopted Kelso when they got to Ichabod, and she loved having a little brother. They just got married last spring, did you know that? Sandina got to be a bridesmaid, told me that her moms learned to sew to make all the dresses for the wedding. She wore it to school the day after I told her I bet it was pretty, just so I could see it.” He swallows hard, eyes stinging. “She looked like a fairy. All that was left of it was bloody gauze when they were done.”
He feels the light touch of a hand against his back, a question; when he doesn’t push it away, it firms, resting warm and comforting between his shoulder blades.
“We—we thought it was over,” Dean whispers, closing his eyes, but that doesn’t change anything; all he can see is the daycare. “We got the kids herded into the hall with Una while Emmy and Callie carried the babies, and half of us made a perimeter while the rest of us searched the first floor for any more. We thought we got them all, should have—didn’t know it was just the infiltrators and fuck, should have counted. I was in the kitchen with Lian and Jessie, told them not to leave the pantry until someone came to get them, made them promise and—I heard screaming.” He licks his lips, mouth dry. “Croat—this one—it was like it was after those kids, didn’t even slow down after killing anyone in its path. When I got there…”
Distantly, he can feel Cas’s hand on his back, making slow, gentle circles, grounding him in the room enough to say, “Una and Clark were dead, blocking the stairs, I think, there were bodies… the kids were—”
Fuck “It had Del. It looked right at me and ripped out her stomach with its teeth while I watched.”
He could hear it, the wet, ripping sounds, Del’s baby screams, the sight of the tiny bodies around the stairs, and that’s when he put away his useless fucking gun and pulled the knife Cas gave him weeks ago, because he was done with this bullshit.
It stops there, everything going uncertain and vague again, but that was more than he had before, and he’s not grateful for that. He could have spent the rest of his life happy if he couldn’t remember what it sounds like when a baby screams.
“I killed the two who were still human,” he says without regret, looking at Cas and seeing nothing but the same satisfaction he felt then and still does. He never took a human life like that before, but he didn’t hesitate, point blank range while they cried and begged for mercy. What Alicia said about them doesn’t change that; if anything, it confirms it. There are some trades you just don’t make, some things you don’t do, some things you shouldn’t even be able to think—and they did all three. That they weren’t happy about it doesn’t change the fact that they still did it, and it sure as fuck doesn’t change the roll call of the dead.
“Grant wanted to be a hunter,” he hears himself say, and Cas’s hand goes still. “It possessed him to use him against his own family and friends, killed a few itself and planned to help kill those kids from the church. I…” He makes himself say it. “I don’t regret anything I did to it.” He makes himself say it. “Today, the totally didn’t happen hallucination thing—”
“A hallucination induced by a geas,” Cas supplies, in case Dean missed that part or something.
“And last time it was ‘goes crazy’,” Dean says deliberately. “What’s it gonna be next time? I slipped and fell on someone with my knife out? How many times does it take before this goes from ‘weirdly specific random ass chance’ to ‘pattern, I have one’?”
“What do you think is happening?”
That would be the question. “I was hoping you’d tell me.”
Cas looks at him for a long moment before closing the small amount of space between them and appropriating half of Dean’s pillow, cheek pressed against Dean’s arm. “I regret those four people in Volunteer Services survived.”
Uh. “What?”
“They shot at you,” Cas explains, resting his chin on Dean’s upper arm, close enough he can feel the warmth of his breath. “They could have killed you—”
“They were fucked up by the geas,” Dean starts to argue and realizes in horror not only did he walk into that one, Cas didn’t even bother with making an effort in subtlety for the analogy. “That’s not the same thing.”
Cas nods, looking very patient, like he could wait here all night for Dean to explain just that. Which— “You don’t think—”
“No,” Cas answers firmly. “When you start indulging in sadistic forms of torture for entertainment, I’ll worry, but until then, I reserve the right to think it is highly unlikely that you might potentially—while in your right mind, in control of your own actions, not under the influence of what appears to be a very powerful and terribly designed geas, or not watching a Croat kill children in front of you—become a very specialized serial killer.”
“’Unlikely’?”
“I would have used the word ‘ridiculous’,” Cas offers, “but I was trying to be sensitive to your feelings.”
Because Cas. “You’re a dick,” Dean tells him before closing the tiny space between them for a kiss. It still feels electric, just to be able to do that, so he does it again before pulling back to just look at him. “What’s on the agenda for morning?”
“Breakfast, verify the shift schedule, adjust for any unforeseen difficulties or changes, update everyone on the probable forms of the Misborn—”
“Not visit the daycare?” Dean interrupts a little snottily.
“Not until you’re ready,” Cas says, fingers sliding up and down his spine. “It’s not a test—”
“Where have I heard this before?”
“It’s a pleasure, or should be.” He hesitates, mouth tightening briefly. “When I accused you of preferring Ichabod to Chitaqua, it didn’t occur to me that part of that was the presence of children. You enjoy their company very much, and I forgot that.” Cas shrugs, a lift of one shoulder. “You have very few pleasures here,” he says quietly. “Spending time with the children is one of those, and I don’t want you to lose it.”
“Dude, there are lots of things I enjoy.” Cas’s expression is carefully non-committal but whatever. “You know what I was thinking before you got back?”
Cas shakes his head.
“How much I want to go home,” he admits. “I’m starting to miss our goddamn bed, and I’m pretty sure one of those goddamn springs is trying to break my back.” Cas’s eyebrows jump. “Mess, new addition on the cabin, figure out where to put your garden—and hey, while we’re here, let’s grab some gardening books or something. Ask Alicia with her magical library book powers.” He grins at Cas. “And you’re not so bad, either.”
Cas rolls his eyes but Dean can feel him smile when he kisses him. “Let’s get some sleep,” he murmurs, wishing to God he meant that euphemistically. “I’ll get breakfast, okay?”
Lifting his head enough for Dean to roll over, he waits for Dean to extend an arm before settling against his shoulder. “You’re setting a terrible precedent,” he observes sleepily. “Breakfast in bed two mornings in a row: I’m becoming spoiled.”
“You could use a little spoiling,” Dean decides, eyes falling closed despite himself. “We’re gonna work on that.”
Luckily, the shift change is an hour after dawn, which gives Dean plenty of time to get breakfast from Brenda and Brit in the mess and enjoy the sight of a rumpled, sleepy Cas having an intimate moment with his first cup of coffee in the morning, which is a legit argument for why Dean needs to man up and start getting his ass up at dawn (sometimes). Leaving Cas to shower, Dean briefs the team leaders on what the Misborn may look like and what their probable vulnerabilities are as well as verifying everyone knows about the geas.
Alicia, James, Damiel, and Lee are assigned with their teams to the checkpoints until the noon shift change while Mel and Christina do wall duty. Ana, Kamal, and Sarah are going straight to bed and do not pass go (except breakfast, that they’re allowed to do), and Joe has a check in with Alison and then goes to bed because yeah, Dean does know he’s been moonlighting with the volunteers helping organize refugees.
“And Sean,” Dean says in relish, because irritable due to maybe-geas isn’t an excuse, “your team’s on Alison-watching duty today.”
Sean’s face drains of color while Christina and Alicia grin maliciously, so he feels good about this. “Anyone seen Amanda this morning?” She’s been overseeing making teams out of the non-patrol members and recruits, and now that all of Chitaqua’s here, she’s going over basic patrol and checkpoint protocol with them before sending them out.
“She stayed with Vera at the infirmary after she went off-duty,” Sarah says colorlessly, dark blonde hair in a severe braid and looking like she’s never in her life experienced an emotion and isn’t even curious what they’re like. “She left word at front desk she’d be back this morning with any updates.”
“Good. Any questions?” He looks around, noting Kat and Andy are exchanging looks of yearning and regret at their tragic separation for the call of duty (or something). “No one does doubles at the checkpoints; we have four hour shifts for a reason. We can’t risk tired people out there as first responders with people who may be under a coercive, and we really can’t risk that in combination with any of us affected by the coercive. Also, the barrier’s coming down, so if you need something else to worry about, there’s that.”
“What are the chances we have it now?” Mel asks neutrally.
“Assume you got it,” Dean answers honestly. “Physical contact or proximity can do it and most of you have had that much.” He just avoids looking at Andy and Kat, who according to Alicia had a very audible reunion in their room yesterday. “Teresa, Wendy, their apprentices, and a couple of others are working on pulling the exact instructions, but Teresa says at this point, we could all be playing telephone, and no one’s gonna win if we’re not careful. Now, catalyst situation procedure. First rule: if you’re affected, don’t panic. This is artificially induced, it’s meant to fuck with your head; if you can tell it’s happening, your only job is not to make it worse by giving it more fuel.
“Which leads us to rule two: if you are the five percent crazy, see rule one and disarm yourself if you can. I know it’s not as easy as it sounds; this is artificial but it sure as fuck feels real. Rule three: if you’re five percent and something happens, when it’s over, you disarm yourself, follow the instructions of whoever is handling the situation, and wait for me to get to you. I’ll be there the minute I hear about it.”
There’s a brief, uncomfortable silence. “And what happens then?” James asks quietly.
“I’m going to tell you the same thing then as I am right now,” he answers. “It’s not your fault.”
Searching their faces, he fights back a sigh; surprise (not really), not one of them believes him.
“Here’s some context,” Dean starts. “Wendy is a fully trained witch and her formal apprenticeship required learning about coercives and how to break them both in theory and practice. Until the catalyst situation in Volunteer Services, she didn’t even know she had the geas, and despite the fact she knew what was happening to her, she couldn’t break it. This isn’t about willpower and can-do; this thing was designed to get an entire state here in under a week and worked. People left everything they had, packed up their families, and ran because of this. They were willing to walk for miles in a goddamn snowstorm; it was meant to be hard to work against, and it’s hitting us the one place we can’t fight; how we feel.”
“You broke it,” Lee says, cocking his head curiously.
“It’s simple to break,” Dean agrees, noting Joe’s furtive glance toward the door. “All you have to do is not believe what you see, hear, and feel: simple. That doesn’t make it easy. A lot of people have probably broken it, but there’s no way to know what will until it does; this is personal to you.” He looks around their face before taking a breath. “Rule four: shoot to kill is last resort, and I do mean last resort. Use everything you know; that fails, you have an imagination, use it, too. I don’t mean just civilians; I mean each of you. You work together, you train together, and you can’t tell me you don’t know how to bring down your own without killing them. Got it?”
This time, the nods are more certain.
“Good,” he says, relaxing. “You’re back at noon; check in at front desk and see if there’s been any changes to the schedule. Dismissed. Joe? You have a minute?”
Joe, who is looking toward the door again with what is unmistakably an anticipatory expression, jerks his gaze back to Dean in guilty surprise. Oh yeah, this is gonna be interesting. Watching the other members of Chitaqua’s patrol clear out, a couple share amused grins when they look at Joe, which just confirms Dean’s instincts are spot-on.
Reluctantly, Joe crosses the now mostly-empty lobby. “Yeah?”
“Haven’t seen you much recently,” Dean says brightly. “Wanna catch up, see how you’re doing. Wanna do breakfast?”
Joe’s face. “Uh, well…” He trails off, eyes narrowing. “You’re fucking with me.”
“I am,” Dean agrees, crossing his arms and looking ostentatiously toward the door, utterly delighted when Joe turns desperately toward it. “Made you look. Who’s coming by anyway?”
Joe glares at him. “The co-conspirators for my coup. All your lieutenants are doing it these days, didn’t want to be left out.”
“Promise?” Over Joe’s shoulder, he sees the door open and an unfamiliar woman—of course—comes inside, curly brown hair tucked up under a thick green stocking cap that looks warm and hand-knit, which Dean notes down for future trade purposes, and wearing a matching green scarf. Unbuttoning her plain grey coat, she looks around hopefully, tugging off the hat before she sees them. “Hey, Joe?”
Joe opens his mouth and then closes it with a sigh. “She’s here.”
“Introduce me,” Dean says smugly. “Or I introduce myself and dude, who knows what I’ll say?”
“Fuck you,” Joe mutters, turning around and walking toward her with what is unmistakably one fuck of a bounce in his step. Dean knows from camp gossip (lifeblood) and Joe’s drunken conversation that Joe hasn’t been into the commitment thing with anyone, but he’s showing every sign of reviewing that decision right now. Taking the woman’s coat, scarf, hat, and gloves, he says something to her before she nods firmly and leads her to Dean, giving him a warning look over her head that Dean blatantly ignores.
“Dean, this is Mariamne,” he says, and Mariamne smiles at him, extending one work-hardened hand, brown eyes warm and curious. He likes her already. “She’s been acting rabbi here for the Jewish contingent. Mari, this is Dean.”
“You make us sound like an army,” she tells him, shaking Dean’s hand firmly. “We are, actually. Ancient Judea was famous for its soldiers: best mercenaries in the world. It’s nice to meet you. Joseph’s told me a great deal about you.”
“Jewish history major,” Joe says with a sigh that does shit to hide his admiration. Mariamne looks up at Joe with a mischievous smile, and oh God, is Joe blushing? “We’re meeting for breakfast. She and Aaron want to do the whole formal training thing, so I’ve been studying with them when I’m off duty when I can get over there.”
Oh yeah, that’s totally what Joe is doing. “It’s great to meet you,” Dean says sincerely. “Joe, put her and Aaron on the list at the front desk so you can meet them here if you can’t get over there.” Letting go of Mariamne’s hand, he tips his head toward. “Joe’s been officer on duty pretty much anytime I’m not here. Great at his job.”
“Oh God,” Joe mutters as Mariamne bites her lip.
“Can hunt, too,” he adds sincerely, nodding. “Animals and monsters. His record for squirrels is—”
“Please, Dean,” Joe begs.
“—unbeatable,” Dean continues ruthlessly. “You kids get breakfast and have fun, you hear me? Joe needs to relax a little, I’ve said it before.”
“You’ve never said that,” Joe counters, clutching Mariamne’s outerwear like it’s the only thing keeping him from going for Dean. “Mari, you ready?”
“Sure,” she answers, nodding at Dean with another smile. “Thanks, Dean.”
“Hope to see you again,” Dean answers enthusiastically, ignoring Joe’s hateful glare as they start toward the front desk, where Joe hangs up Mariamne’s coat and sets her hat, scarf, and gloves on the shelf above like they’re major religious artifacts. Satisfied with helping the course of true love (yenta, just like in the Torah. Hey, he should ask Mariamne about that), Dean goes to the Situation Room.
He barely has time to go through the reports he’s ignoring and look resentfully at Cas’s laptop before there’s a knock on the half open door and Amanda’s head appears. “Dean?”
“Hey.” Her expression isn’t encouraging. “Everything okay?”
Coming inside, she shuts the door, and he waves her to the couch, taking the seat beside her and wishing he’d remembered to grab more coffee from the mess for the pot in here. “What happened?”
She swallows. “One of the shooters from the library ate a bullet an hour ago.”
Christ. “How’d he get a gun?”
“Tackled one of Naresh’s people and blew his head off before anyone could stop him,” she answers tonelessly. “That’s the first success, but there have been at least five attempts as they come out of shock and realize what happened.”
He nods, looking at the helpless slump of her shoulders. “What else?”
“I touched the maps,” she says quietly. “I was at the infirmary with Vera most of the night and every time I went in the ER, I tried to count how many—we don’t even know the threshold number of people yet that sets it off, but anything greater than one—paranoia is part of it, right?” She looks at him, mouth trembling. “Vera thought I was crazy when I disarmed and made her hide my weapons, but I couldn’t risk…”
“Very sensible of you,” Cas says as he comes in the Situation Room carrying three thermal cups, hair still wet, and despite the very serious conversation happening, it’s an effort not to stare. Or keep staring, anyway. “Evelyn said you’d checked in but came straight here, so I thought you might like coffee.”
She smiles up at him, taking the cup. “Thanks.”
“Thanks,” Dean says belatedly as Cas hands him the second cup with a significant look. “I got distracted before I could get more for here.”
Seating himself on the arm of the couch by Dean, Cas sips from his own cup before asking, “How did Carol’s surgery go?”
Amanda grimaces. “Vera did the repairs, but—she didn’t say it, but she’s pretty sure Carol’s going to lose the leg.” Sitting back, she looks at the thermos. “It gets worse. Part of the reason Vera wanted to try the surgery first is the risk when trying to amputate that high on Carol’s thigh when there’s almost no room for a stump. Dolores has only done a couple of amputations, both below or at the knee, and this—it might be safer to take the whole leg.”
“Hip disarticulation,” Cas says, adding for Dean’s benefit, “That removes it from the joint itself at the hip.”
It takes no effort at all for Dean to get what that entails. “That’s safer?”
“In this case, yeah.” Amanda swallows. “Before Carol went under, she refused consent for amputation, and honest to God, with that on the table, I’m not sure I blame her.”
“She’d be alive,” Dean argues without meaning it; every inch of his right arm that he can’t feel reminds him just how close he came to losing it, and back then, if he’d been asked (or in his right mind enough to ask), he isn’t sure he wouldn’t have given the same response.
“It’s not just her leg—or it is,” Amanda says, shaking her head. “The town she came with? She’s been with them since she left Chitaqua, protecting them. Including from us, so whoever got that town while on patrol might want to have it confirmed fuck yes, it was personal.”
He wonders if that is supposed to be comforting or not. “Any of them talk to her—”
“She won’t see anyone, and if her leg wasn’t on the line, I’d be having a talk with her about how she’s treating Vera,” she answers evenly, and Dean makes a note to talk to Vera, soon. “Some people never change, and surprise, Carol is exhibit A.”
“What about Andy?” he asks. “They were involved, right?”
“Good idea, if Kat doesn’t get weird,” Amanda agrees, rolling her eyes. “There’s a reason he hasn’t visited yet and the reason is a three letter name I just told you.”
“Seriously? That was what—two years ago?”
“Feelings,” she answers succinctly, wrinkling her nose. “I’ll talk to Andy when they get back at noon; this is more important than a two year old breakup by way of abandonment. Anyway, I have the ad hoc teams to organize this morning, shouldn’t take more than an hour to brief them. Anything you need me for?”
Dean looks at Cas, who shrugs as he takes another drink from his cup. “Claudia sent over a list of needed skills, so I’ll be spending the morning matching with those of us available. I’m meeting with Alison at noon for lunch for a few exercises; Teresa told me last night she’s having problems with this many people in such close quarters.”
Dean cocks his head. “Stupid question: isn’t there a way for her to turn it off or something? Just for a little while, I mean?”
“That’s what she’s doing now,” he answers. “The dam metaphor would not be inapplicable here, and considering she still hasn’t reached her threshold, I doubt there will ever be a time she can block for more than a few hours, perhaps days at best. If it had begun earlier and her mind grew with it, it may have been possible, but there’s no way to know for certain.
This may require a more technical solution, but I’m not sure yet on the advisability.” Before Dean can start to wonder what that means, Cas asks, “Do you plan to leave headquarters today?”
“Yeah,” Dean says without thinking and doesn’t even need to see Amanda perk up to know he’s fucked. “You’re kidding, right?”
“All the other teams have important work to do,” Cas says reasonably. “Amanda qualifies as at least one team by herself.”
“Thank you,” Amanda tells him, grinning at Dean. “Give me an hour, I’ll have the kids sorted out and update Cas before we hit the town. You go anywhere before then…”
“What?” he asks challengingly, which qualifies as even stupider than answering Cas’s question.
“I’ll re-enact the Kat-Andy reunion in the middle of the goddamn street with you,” she answers, sitting back smugly while he stares at her in horror. “Run down the street with my hair flowing behind me and jump passionately into your arms in front of as many people as humanly possible.”
“I’d like that recorded,” Cas says thoughtfully. “Also, if you plan to be on the wall, please go fully armed to set an appropriate example for the recruits. Amanda, I’ll want to check them before they leave today. Haruhi’s back on duty with Rosario?”
Amanda nods as she gets to her feet. “I’ll come get you for the shock and awe and better have all your ammunition or God help you treatment,” she confirms as she starts toward the door. “Not kidding, Dean. Can cry on command, too.”
Dean waits until she’s out the door before looking at Cas. “Really?”
“Speaking of appropriate armaments,” Cas says, standing up, “we should go see to yours as well.”
Dean just misses stupid moment number three as his brain catches up before he can protest he can arm himself. Who the hell would say that? “Good idea,” he agrees quickly, finishing off the cup because they have only fifty-nine minutes now. “Let’s do that.”
Considering the number of people who are making an effort to find something necessary to do that requires being on the wall, Dean doesn’t think he can be blamed for taking the time to come up here for totally professional reasons (like it’s a goddamn awesome wall and who the hell doesn’t want to be up here). The twenty-four foot elevation gives a fantastic view of the countryside, the sun sullen even this late in the morning, though the view of the only working road into Ichabod is still a little iffy due to the twists and turns of what was once a county road that supported two lanes only in theory.
Barely more than individual blobs as they make the rise, he watches the arrival of another shivering group of survivors. To conserve gas and speed up the relay, the buses drop people off at the base of the hill into Ichabod, where one of Dolores’ people has a triage station for injuries, and Glenn’s got one of the new teachers, Kishore, handling any incoming kids; the elderly, disabled, anyone injured or in need of medical help, and kids six and under with one parent or adult guardian are driven up. For everyone else, it’s about a mile walk, but they’re clearing the snow as much as they can to make it easier, and final stop before Ichabod is at the ward line, where there are two groups of volunteers: one gets information from those incoming while the other watches the ward line as people start to cross.
Inside the now-existing gate, they’ll be escorted to the YMCA on Fifth (since the old Volunteer Center is sort of a crime scene) to be handed off to the endless volunteers from Ichabod to have a check with whoever from Dolores’s staff is on duty while someone desperately searches through the available space in one of the cleared buildings to send them when they’re done.
Automatically shifting his rifle, Dean rests his elbows on the battlements; this is the third arriving in the last couple of hours. “Amanda, how many buses are running right now?”
“Two between Ichabod and Checkpoint A, one between D, C, and B to A,” she answers, joining him to observe proceedings. “The groups coming in are a lot smaller, so turnaround is hourly now to save gas.”
“I’m trying to decide if that’s good or bad,” he admits, thinking of space, the sheer miracle that food hasn’t run out, and other than the situations, no real problems with the incoming people. Which admittedly is at least partially exhaustion, partially the number of refugees who are also volunteers and busy working with patrol, on one of Tony’s crews getting buildings fixed up for occupation, and probably more than a little the fact that Naresh has his teams assigned to every street and in all the buildings with a large population of people. The number of those has increased to five: the YMCA, the library, and the bank on Third that was Gambling Central on New Year’s, have been joined by the newly cleared movie theatre on Fourth and as of this morning, a massive two story picture frame manufacturing building on Seventh. It was originally marked yellow-orange due to a lot of missing roof, but that was before Tony had legions of volunteers at his beck and call (all with visions of not sleeping on the street, on a guess), and with their help, they were able to patch the roof enough for occupation, clear most of the equipment out, and even get it partially on the grid.
The latest problem is finding enough sleeping bags or even bedding, since beds are officially a fantasy and any new cots earmarked for the new infirmary in the YMCA. (He also knows that most of Chitaqua is sleeping on the floor and are sharing sleeping bags and bedding between shifts, all excess appearing as if by magic in the YMCA.) From what Dolores said when he and Amanda stopped by, it’ll handle first aid, minor injuries, and those with medical conditions that don’t require much beyond medication or checkups now. Claudia may not be giving out numbers (though he’s pretty sure Alison’s lying through her teeth and knows exactly how many people are in her town and Lanak as Supply Dictator definitely does), Dean can do basic math, and he’ll be deeply surprised if the town of Ichabod isn’t hosting more than one hundred and fifty thousand at this point and that’s low-end.
Right now, over half of Kansas is inside Ichabod’s walls. Jesus Christ.
Shaking himself, Dean turns his attention back to the new arrivals, watching them slow down even more as they approach the ward line and waiting volunteers. Probably tired (can’t blame ‘em, just thinking about that hill makes him tired) and pretty much like the last two groups that came in, but…
“Hey,” he says, pushing off the battlements (he loves that word), “let’s get down there.”
“Huh?” Amanda jerks her attention from the view—which he’s gotta admit is pretty damn awesome—and looks at him in surprise. Behind the new arrivals, he sees a patrol team just making the hill, and even from here, he can tell they’re Chitaqua; it takes him another second to identify the one walking a little ahead of her team as Alicia.
“Come on,” he says, already on his way to the nearest ladder. Turning, he starts down, glancing up to see Amanda just above him, and then concentrates on getting to the ground.
He’s halfway to the gate when Amanda catches up, but to his relief, she doesn’t ask him anything as they dodge between groups of people. By the time they go out the open gate, Dean’s beginning to wonder if he’s going crazy. Slowing down, he takes in the scene—new arrivals, volunteers, patrol team—trying to figure out what bothered him.
“Thirty this time,” Amanda observes neutrally as she falls into step beside him. “Look better than the last few groups.”
They do, though the scale for ‘better’ is pretty shitty; bundled up in coats and the occasional hat, they’re gathered in a tight knot against the occasional biting breeze. Pinched looking faces, some reddened from the wind or the walk, stare with the blank acceptance of people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing anymore and are just going through the motions at this point. It’s not, he reflects, an unfamiliar look, nor the way they pause, huddling closer together well as the volunteers approach; being offered sanctuary doesn’t necessarily mean you trust those that offered it.
“Alicia doesn’t look too good,” Amanda adds in a different voice, starting to frown, and following her gaze, he has to agree; shoulders slumped, the frantic energy he associates with Alicia is gone, and the fact her team is following at a careful distance says something’s wrong. Considering it’s still a couple of hours until the noon shift change, he’s going to say something pretty bad.
They’re halfway to the ward line when he sees one of the volunteers break from the others, circling around the waiting group and straight toward Alicia.
“Son of a bitch,” Amanda breathes followed by the unmistakable motion of her hand dropping to her gun barely aborted. “What’s Micah doing out here?”
Stiffening, Dean tries to get a look at the guy’s face, but all he has is an impression of a neutral colored hat and dark hair around a pale, indistinct blur, the thin, rangy body lengthening its stride in a definite course to intercept Alicia.
“Let’s find out.” Keeping half his attention on the new arrivals—the volunteers are starting to realize coaxing may be on the agenda unless they want to stand here all night—Dean starts toward Alicia, Amanda on his heels. As they get closer, Dean can just make out her expression, and something tells him this is gonna be shitty news. “There’s no way Manuel approved him out here.”
Micah raises a hand, shouting something that Dean can’t quite hear, but Alicia stops short, straightening so fast he almost hears her spine pop as she turns sharply. He can’t see her face, but her left hand drops to her side, and he sees she’s removed her glove, fingers flexing before curling in around something that glints dully as it slides down her palm, sharp tip suspended just behind her first finger.
Okay, there are bad breakups and then there’s—this.
“What’s her range?” Dean asks as Micah says something else, fighting the urge to start running as he mentally measures the distance between Alicia and Micah: forty feet.
“Depends on what she’s carrying,” Amanda answers, still matching his pace, and he remembers how casually Alicia flipped that knife between her fingers, callused fingertips and the network of scars that were as good as a warning. “Fifteen feet, she can break his ribs and hit his heart with most of what she’s got. I’ve never seen her miss when she meant it.”
“She’s not gonna—”
“Yeah, she is,” Amanda says shortly. “That’s why she’s using her left.”
Where the angle of her body hides it from Micah. “Handle it.”
“Got it.” Lengthening her stride, she starts toward them, but a sudden ruckus among the new arrivals draws his attention. As a couple of the volunteers reach them, motioning them forward, one of them touches the woman in front. Abruptly, her head snaps up, looking surprised before jerking away. Stumbling backward, she nearly falls into the people behind her before scrambling for her feet, looking around with a desperate expression.
He doesn’t even realize he’s reached for his gun until he feels the hilt slide into his hand, thumb hovering over the safety as he measures the sixty feet between him and the new arrivals as their passive resistance to the volunteers’ urging starts to look a lot less passive. There’s shock and there’s fear and then there’s twenty-nine people who came all the way here and suddenly refuse to move, and one who’s starting toward Micah and Alicia.
Micah raises a clenched hand then abruptly drops it, eyes widening at something beyond Alicia before he backs off a couple of steps and starts toward the ward line. Dean checks (nothing) and has just enough time to wonder what the hell before the woman stops short, visibly shuddering as her expression changes, mouth twisting up into a hungry grimace before darting toward Alicia in a burst of speed, eyes filled with inhuman, mindless hatred.
Son of a bitch. “Alicia! Down!” he shouts, taking aim, but Matt and Amanda are both a hair faster, taking the shot just as Alicia drops flat, rolling out of the way when the Croat stumbles, having lost half its head. Rolling to her feet as she draws her gun, Alicia kicks its knee with one foot to push it farther away and blows off the remains of its head, skipping backward from the spray of blood and bone.
“Close the gate!” Dean shouts as he starts toward the new arrivals, dangerously still for people who just saw a Croat attack go down only a few feet away from them. From the corner of his eye, he sees a few of the volunteers closest to the ward line break for the gate, but the rest are still staring at Alicia in surprise, and fuck, they should know better. “Get back!” he yells helplessly as he changes direction to get between the ward line and the gate, scanning the new arrivals and hoping to God he’s wrong about what’s coming next.
He’s not.
The groan of metal and wood as the gates start to swing shuts cut through the unnatural quiet, and like the sound was a catalyst, everything happens at once. Baring his teeth, one of the men suddenly leaps toward the nearest volunteer with a screech of rage while three others dart past him and head straight toward the people still standing at the ward line. As the Croats close in on them, a couple seem to remember they have guns, hand fumbling at the holsters, but it’s too late; teeth bared in a snarl, the first Croat tackles him across the ward line, ripping out his throat with his bare teeth as the wards flare up in a ten foot high sheet of eye-searing sparks bright enough to pass as fireworks.
Dean’s first shot hits the Croat in its left temple; it barely rocks him, one good eye glaring at him despite the loss of half its face as it climbs to its feet. Holding his ground, Dean keeps shooting until the Croat finally stumbles, collapsing less than six feet away and writhing helplessly on the ground from more bullets than any human body should be able to survive.
Darting forward and switching to the rifle, he tunes out the fighting at the ward line as Alicia’s team and Amanda join in, the screams of the dying volunteers as they’re ripping apart as casually as a toy by a careless kid punctuated by gunshots, Amanda’s voice calling commands to Alicia and her team, and concentrates on the ones crossing the ward line toward Ichabod’s walls. The only thing he cares about is the Croats in front of him and the gate behind him, listening for the sound of it closing, and that’s not yet.
Croats are like the shittiest video game villain ever; you shoot and you shoot and eventually they go down and might even die, but killing is for later; right now, stopping them takes priority. Darting back each time, he knows the wall’s getting close by the rise in volume behind him, and he hears the unmistakable sound of the giant doors closing just as his back hits something solid. Lining up his last shot, he fires, and five feet away, the Croat goes down with a wet gurgle, chest splayed open.
Swallowing, he realizes that’s the gate behind him, and it’s closed. Right. Time to clean up.
Pausing long enough to get in a last headshot as he starts toward the fight at the ward line, he thinks it’s stopped moving, but he can’t stop to check because another one abruptly breaks away with a burst inhuman speed despite the fact his jugular’s pumping blood into the air with every step he takes. Flexing his hand, Dean ruthlessly suppresses the tremor as he takes aim, hyperaware of the grimace of barely-checked rage twisting its face into unrecognizability before he shoots it, counting down the last bullets in his head and watching in relief as its head dissolves in a spray of blood and bone five feet away, body falling over with a meaty thud.
Lungs burning, he ignores the twist of pain up his wrist and burying itself in his elbow as he scans the ground to the ward line, breathing a sigh of relief as Alicia coolly shatters the knee of the last Croat standing with a well-placed kick, its bloody fingers just short of her throat. Stomping down on its chest, Dean hears the crack of ribs drowned beneath the high-pitched scream of rage before she jumps back for the headshot and skips back another step to avoid the spray of bloody bone and brain.
Jogging up to the ward line, he nods at Amanda’s tired thumbs-up as she reloads while Alicia and her team fan out in a loose circle around the bodies, guns trained on the group as they carefully kick over the Croat bodies, checking for any signs of life. A few are still moving, but from the look of them, it won’t be for long.
Thirty Croats, and he took out seven of them himself; lightheaded, he wonders if Cas was watching. A little flicker from that place in his head tells him yeah, he definitely is. Weirdness is awesome when it shows off how he’s kicking ass out here.
Keeping his rifle out and ignoring the ache of his palm—the weight is definitely a problem he’ll have to think about—Dean tries not to notice the flashes of familiar faces among the volunteers gone still or worse, not still at all when God knows they should be if there was any justice left in the world. Joining Amanda, he reloads the rifle before stretching his hand carefully, relieved to see no tremor yet.
“Everyone okay?” he asks, more from the need to say something than anything else. Everyone’s on their feet, and the splashes of blood seem to be exclusively Croat related and nowhere dangerous, but despite that, he relaxes at the chorus of ‘yeah’ in response.
Sliding the rifle back over his shoulder, he finds himself staring at the people spread out before him, his mind stuttering to a stop when he tries to think of what comes next. Most are dead, but most isn’t all; a few are still breathing, clinging to life despite the fact that life’s gotta be nothing but pain right now. Beside him, Amanda’s wearing an expression he doesn’t want to recognize, and from the other side of the bodies, Alicia’s looking at him for an order he doesn’t want to give.
“They’re not contagious,” he says; exposure is a given, and Croat is one hundred fucking percent contagious. “Not yet.”
“Even if we could risk opening the gate right now—”
“No.” His hand itches, palm flexing against his gun; they can’t risk it until they know it’s safe, he gets that. “This isn’t what we do.”
Like someone just turned up the volume, he can suddenly hear the faint, airless screaming from throats too raw to even make the sound, interspersed with breathless pleas and prayers and agonized moans.
“If we don’t,” Amanda says quietly, “who will?”
Forcing himself to look at them, he fights down nausea at the sight of what a Croat feeding looks like on a still living body; a few Croats died with their teeth still buried in someone, and a few are still alive to feel it. He can’t imagine how some of them survived this long, and he doubts anything medical could do for them would help; that doesn’t mean they might not try.
He tries to imagine letting anyone else near enough to touch those blood-soaked bodies, pick among the Croats and human parts scattered across the ground, so closely there’s barely any space between, and can’t. No one survives Croat, one way or another; what happens to you when you’re infected isn’t living by any definition of the word.
He takes another breath and pulls his sidearm, thumbing off the safety. This was always coming, he’s always known that, and lying to yourself only works when you’re not holding the gun. There are things you don’t ask of anyone, he told Cas once upon a time, and this is one of them.
“Everyone get back—”
“No.” Startled, he looks at her, then at Alicia and her team, then back to Amanda, who licks her lips nervously but doesn’t move. “We don’t do this alone. Not anymore.” She reaches down, pulling her sidearm. “On your mark.”
It takes two tries for Dean to say the words, wondering if it helps or not that most of them on the ground don’t even know they’re here. If they’re lucky, they never will, not until they’re far beyond here. “Let’s do it.”
When they’re done, they put a bullet in the head of every Croat one more time, just in case.
Dean checks his hand for any trace of blood one more time before wiping the sweat from his forehead, barely feeling the icy bite of the air around them. His bloody coat, like everyone else’s, was discarded when they were done in a pile near the bodies, and he automatically checks everyone again for potential danger points from the blood splatter. The jeans may be a loss, but winter means coats, hats, and layers, and in this case, their coats took the worst of it, and the layers mean the chances of blood getting to any skin is a hell of a lot lower.
Glancing at the walls is a mistake; it reminds him, like he could forget, that they’re being watched, and right now, it feels like every pair of eyes in Ichabod just saw them execute helpless people who forty-five minutes ago were just volunteers helping desperate survivors get past the last obstacle between them and safety. Friends, family, God knows who just had to watch him cut off each scream with a shot to the head before going grimly to the next. It was fast, and it was mercy, but that doesn’t change the fact they might have been dying from the Croats, but he’s the one who gave the order to kill them.
Numb, he guesses he may owe his predecessor an apology; that wasn’t nearly as hard as he thought it’d be. Should have been.
As Amanda joins him, the slump of her shoulders tells him he’s not the only one feeling it. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she answers, glancing back as Alicia motions her team to watch the bodies before making her way toward them. Looking at her red-rimmed eyes, he starts a question that she cuts short, shifting her rifle back tiredly as she stops beside Amanda.
“I should have…” She grimaces, pushing back a strand of hair escaping from her pony-tail after checking her hand. “I don’t know, something.”
“Your checkpoint?” She nods shortly, and Dean remembers how she looked when she came in. “What happened?”
“Checkpoint A didn’t have anything for an hour,” she says tonelessly. “The civilian volunteers offered to watch the checkpoint while we took the emergency truck down the road, see if—anyway, ten miles out, found this group coming in from one of the side roads. They told us they hadn’t seen anyone else, seemed pretty calm but Jody and Andy offered to wait with them while me and Matt checked ten more miles of Road A, just to make sure.”
Dean nods, watching Alicia take a quick breath.
“It’s quiet out there,” she says. “Even with the engine going, I—I thought I heard gunshots.” She swallows hard, and Dean sees Amanda focus on Alicia in growing alarm. “A couple of miles ahead, we—I guess they didn’t hear us coming. If they’d waited five minutes, I would have been there. If we hadn’t stopped…”
Yeah, he thinks he knows where this is going. “How many?”
“Six,” she whispers. “Three adults and two kids. The back door of the car was open and there was a carseat, and—I had to be sure, maybe they didn’t—couldn’t do it, and…five fucking minutes, I would have been there!”
“Jesus.” Reaching for her, Dean pulls her into a hug as she starts to shake. “It’s okay,” he breathes, wondering how the fuck Alicia fought those Croats—hell, how she even made it back—carrying that shit in her head. A carseat. Jesus Christ. “You—”
“I’m okay,” she says, voice thready, drawing in a shuddering breath before pulling away from him, and he watches as she brings herself under control, stripping out everything until she raises her chin, and all he sees is the hunter reporting to her leader. “Me and Matt went down to the fifteen mile mark and stopped every mile on the way back to Jody and Andy to check; we counted ten to fifteen bodies at each stop, and that’s just the ones we could see still in their cars or near the side of the road.”
“None of the earlier groups—”
“The last couple of days, no one who’s come in was in any condition to notice anything,” Alicia confirms bleakly.
And the people coming in didn’t want to see: hard enough to keep going without seeing the other option and knowing you might need to take it.
“We should have stopped to check the bodies more closely,” she adds bitterly. “Croat bites wouldn’t be hard to spot, and the bullet solution would be my choice if I was out here. I just… I couldn’t look at another carseat.” She trails off, looking down, and he can see her hands fist briefly before they relax again. “I should have checked.”
“No, you did the right thing.” The potential for blood contamination is always there, no matter how careful they are. No reason to risk it if there wasn’t a reason for it, and they just experienced the proof. Turning back, he surveys the bodies, the ones sprawled across the ward line still setting off constant showers of golden sparks, and figures it’s been long enough since the attack to risk opening the gate long enough to get a couple of teams out here. “Okay, let’s get a crew out here to burn the bodies and get this done.”
“Here?” Amanda makes a face. “Stupid question: we can’t move them. Ichabod has a procedure for a fast burn; it’s happened before. Want me to give the order for them to open the gate and get some teams out here to keep watch?”
“Yeah, go ahead,” he answers, eyeing the sun just reaching its zenith and wondering how the fuck it’s not even noon yet; it feels like days have passed. “We’re not leaving them out here for…” He trails off; the faint sense of something off from the wall that he almost forgot is back again, and looking at those bodies, it suddenly clicks: carseats. “Amanda, wait.”
She stops a few feet away, looking a question, but Alicia follows his gaze, staring at the bodies with a frown. “Just them, no one else?” Alicia nods, frowning deepening, and Dean tries to think. “Why’d you bring them back and not the bus?”
“I was coming back to report,” she answers distractedly. “We took them back to the checkpoint, but when they found out the bus wasn’t coming back for another hour, they—” She shakes her head sharply. “No one wanted to risk a situation, so we agreed to bring them in if they didn’t mind being crushed in the back of the truck. They didn’t mind at all; seemed pretty goddamn relieved, in fact.” Suddenly, she stills, eyes widening. “Thirty adults walking along the road, son of a bitch.”
“And no kids.” Thirty adults, and from what he can see, none above fifty. Not every group came in with kids, elderly relatives, injured people, or disabled members, but he can’t think of any this size without at least one of those. Tensing, he scans the area around them, focusing on the empty road and the slight rise a quarter mile out that creates a two mile blindspot even from Ichabod’s new walls, aware from the sudden pain in his right arm that he already has the rifle back out and pointed at the empty road.
“Get behind the ward line,” he says flatly. “Now.”
He waits until Andy and Jody run past him before he starts backing toward the line, aware of Amanda and Alicia just behind him on either side and counting the steps back to the ward line. Just as his foot crosses the line, however, he knows it; that’s when the world drops out from under him and closes around him all at once.
Dean has just enough time to wonder what the fuck before he’s frozen in place; for a single, shattering moment, he’s buried alive and floating in endless space at the same time, something massive and formless and impossible bending around him and through him, alien beyond anything that ever used the name. And it knows him.
“…Dean!” Amanda is saying, sounding frantic, and Dean blinks, rocking a little, feet planted just a few inches from the right side of the ward line. “You okay?” Her hand is on his forehead before he can stop her. “You feel a little—”
“Hot, fighting does that.” Scowling, he pushes her hand away and gives the bodies a pointed look. “Is it just me, or is this a little familiar?”
She nods grimly. “There’s some definite similarities, yeah.”
“Alicia, get over here,” he says. “Rest of you, watch that rise.” Alicia slides her rifle over her shoulder as she jogs toward them while her team focuses on the road with the same intensity they turned on the Croats. “How were they acting when you picked them up?”
“Kind of out of it, at least until we got back to the checkpoint. One was crying, but a couple of the others seemed to be helping her out…” She stops, and beneath the dirt, he can see her blanch. “The one that attacked me. You don’t think—?”
“That woman was feeling seller’s regret and they were keeping her quiet? That’d be my guess.” He turns to Amanda. “The first attack on Ichabod, it’s not just me here?”
“Nope,” she answers, eyes fixed on the bodies with a set expression. “You know, I was wondering how the hell you transport Croats for a murderspree without them killing each other before you get there.”
“Answer: you do it before they’re Croats.” That gate isn’t opening until he knows exactly what happened here. “Alicia, how long was it between when you found them and when you got them here?”
“About two hours,” she answers. “They must have been timing it to get that bus, but how the hell they’d know the schedule today…” She stills, and Dean can see her left hand start to flex before she makes a fist. “That’s what he was doing with the volunteers today. I can’t believe I missed this. The fucker set us up.”
Dean would love to know how the fuck Micah got word out this morning when they no longer live in cellphone country—and how the fuck he got on the volunteer list—but that’s for later. “What did he say to you?”
“Bullshit, par for the course,” she spits, and Dean gets a glimpse of something deeper than anger, old and very dangerous, and remembers the tip of that knife between her fingers. Even seeing her holding it, he couldn’t quite believe she’d do it; now, he thinks the only thing that held her back was waiting until he got in range. Because when she meant it, she didn’t miss. “He said, ‘She’s coming for us both,’ and something about getting out of here, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean.”
He files that away for later as he calculates the window for Croat: six to eight hours, whoever did this had to have a Plan B for failures in Plan A.
“Alicia—”
“Plan B, I know,” she says grimly, looking around the empty area around them and then the road. “If we hadn’t driven them back, they’d be at the checkpoint killing everyone, so Plan B; survivors come back—they couldn’t have been counting on us fucking up with the gate when we knew there was a Croat attack at Checkpoint A!”
“Assume smart demons who know that,” he answers, focusing on the place the new arrivals were clustered and measuring the distance to the ward line. Add in the positions of the volunteers one by one at the moment the woman attacked Alicia. Even shock and terror don’t block out a Croat attack from someone in your group. They didn’t even turn their heads, staring straight at… “Alicia, get down to Zero at the bottom of the hill and if anyone’s still there, tell them to get in the trucks and start driving anywhere but here, and don’t stop for passengers.” She nods grimly. “Matt, you’re with her. Jody, Andy, keep watch.”
“Got it.”
As Alicia, Matt on her heels, starts running toward the rise in the road, Amanda steps closer. “Okay, thought: last time, came as human and waited it out, didn’t cross the wards until they were Croats because they were hiding from Teresa. This time, though—why’d they wait? If they wanted inside Ichabod, all they had to do is start running once they hit the ward line as a group; no way would we have gotten all of them, and chances at least one of them would have gotten inside.”
“They weren’t trying to get inside the gate,” he answers as Alicia and Matt disappear from view. They’re armed to the goddamn teeth and he’s just watched them live and in action, but he doesn’t think he’s gonna breathe until he sees them come back. “Second verse, same as the first: Croats are the distraction for something else. Last time, killing them was the distraction for the kids; they needed fodder to slow us down and keep our attention away from the daycare. This time, killing them on the ward line was to create the distraction. Look down.”
She follows his gaze to the ward line; even here, twenty feet from the bodies, faint sparks hiccup up from the ground, almost invisible even in the pre-dawn gloom unless you’re paying attention. Around the bodies it’s still going strong, the golden sparks massed together like a swarm of fireflies, though nothing like the eye-searing brightness of that many living Croats all concentrated in a single spot. Probably no way to tell the difference between that and a new flare inside the one you already expect to see. Teresa only knows when something crosses it, not what, and he’s going to bet that Croats lying across it like a goddamn bridge is pretty much a perpetual ‘something crossing it.’
Croats don’t follow orders on who to attack; they go after the first person they see, like that woman did when she changed and Alicia was in her line of sight. From where the group was standing, the only people they could see were those volunteers waiting for them by the ward line, the tempting buffet located right where those Croats needed to die.
“Something wanted to cross the ward line without being noticed,” he says softly. “The wards won’t stop anything that isn’t using a physical form, but it’ll light the hell up when they cross. So it needed some cover. Then all they had to do was wait until everything calmed down and someone stumbled the fucking twenty foot long salt line.” Amanda sucks in a breath, reaching for her other gun, and he grabs her wrist, stopping her mid-motion. “Don’t move.”
With a visible effort, she lets her hand relax in his. “Did anything get inside Ichabod?”
“By now, we’d have heard about it if they had,” he answers evasively, trying to remember exactly how long it took them to close the gate after his order: yeah, those things could make it easy if he times it from that first flare at the ward line. Teresa can’t tell what, just where, and Croat was right there for cover. This is a town waiting for an attack after two years of fighting them off, though; the second something crossed the ward, every person not closing the gate would be pointing guns loaded with salt, blessed silver, or lead right at the opening and firing until they ran out of ammo while doubling down on the salt line, and not a lot would make it through that. Assume smart: why bring attention now to something inside the ward line when they can wait for that one, inevitable mistake with all the incoming people? “They’re definitely inside the wards. Check out the view of the road; for fuck’s sake, don’t look around. They’re watching us now. They want inside, and they need us to order the gate opened or give the people inside a reason to do it.”
“What do you think—” Amanda stares at the road, expression blank, and says, very softly, “Carol.”
The skin of his back prickles, and he has to fight the urge to jerk around and start shooting at nothing. It could be anything, but why assume anything else when they got a confirmed Hellhound only thirty miles away, and Hellhounds move in packs. There’s no reason the pack should have hung back, especially after seeing one of their own under attack, not unless she was a side issue—for some reason—while they were on their way somewhere else. He really should have followed up on that.
“If we warn them…” She trails off, grimacing. “We stop being useful, we’re dead.”
“If you think you can shout the plot to this twenty-four feet up in under five seconds, go for it,” he murmurs and feels a very not subtle kick to his shin. “Can Alison read you down here? She’s gotta be on the walls, and if she can see you—”
“We’re not linked, and right now, even the residue’s gone,” Amanda murmurs. “When it was just Ichabod here, she knows me well enough that she could risk finding me without getting overwhelmed, but this many minds she doesn’t know?”
“Cas mentioned that earlier, yeah.” Cas is up there, and of all the times random-ass telepathy should show up, this would be it. It won’t, of course; that would make it useful, can’t have that. He’s torn between wanting Cas to do something crazy and awesome like grab a gun and leap down the wall—twenty-four fucking feet—and hoping he stays right where he is. It’s possible someone at the gate might assume all clear (and Dean just forgot to say anything), but Cas won’t assume anything, will make sure they wait if he has to hold the gate himself at gunpoint.
“You know, I never asked—” The unmistakable sound of a couple of motors interrupts him, and Dean starts toward the ward line, not really surprised. “Uh, what—”
“Motorcycles, there were a couple at Zero,” Amanda answers grimly. “Dean, if a fucking Croat can figure out how to drive a motorcycle and I can’t even get it into gear without it falling over—”
“Let’s assume Alicia and Matt,” he says, though he kind of sees her point. Checking his rifle, he shifts it to his left, relaxing his right hand deliberately and rubbing it against his thigh. He’s still better with his handgun; he has to think when he pulls the rifle, a millisecond to adjust to the slight but important difference between right and left, but hopefully, he’s good enough for this.
As the bike makes the hill, Dean sees Alicia driving (of course) and Matt clinging to her for dear life as its engine sputters dangerously, probably running on nothing but fumes. He motions for Andy and Jody to get closer but to keep watch as the bike coasts the last few feet toward them before Alicia and Matt are off before it stops, glancing back once as they both sprint toward the line.
“How close?” he asks.
“Almost to the bottom of the hill by now,” Alicia says breathlessly, cheeks flushed with hot color as they cross the ward line. “Zero was empty, saw something that looked like blood on the doorway and didn’t stop to investigate. Grabbed the first bike just as they came out of the brush. Matt counted thirty before we took off and it was double that when we hit the top of the hill and still counting. Ambush, and a really good one; if we hadn’t made for the bikes after I saw that blood, we’d be dead.”
Dean nods. “Okay, we need options.”
“We have time to get in the gate,” Andy says immediately, brown eyes traveling around the circle and licking his lips nervously as Dean gives a quick shake of his head. Alicia’s eyes narrow as they dart from him to the gate speculatively.
“Climb the walls?” Jody murmurs, and Dean looks at Amanda, who shakes her head and confirms it’s not just him; they’d need superpowers to get up the wall before a Hellhound got to them, and he doesn’t count on them waiting any longer than seeing the ropes come down.
“What about somewhere with something a little smaller?” Alicia interrupts, jerking her head at her team to get closer before dropping her voice to barely a breath. “The gate’s too big, right? We can’t risk the salt line.” He nods. “What about the doors?”
“What—” He feels like an idiot; Cas made more than just the gates. “Those doors.”
“They’re called postern doors,” Matt says, flashing Dean a quick grin. “Six.”
“You’re geek of the day,” Dean tells him. “I thought Tony had them bricked over until this is over.”
“Priority was getting the gates up, so they fit some temp doors first and only started bricking yesterday,” Amanda says, adding at Dean’s baffled expression. “Quick dry cement, fast and dirty. It’s maybe a half a foot thick at best, but whatever, doesn’t matter; that shit could be solid titanium and we’d be fine.”
Dean raises an eyebrow. “It doesn’t?”
Her eyes briefly flicker to the wall. “Cas is up there. Think he can punch through a foot or so of brick and concrete?”
“They have sledgehammers,” Alicia offers. “Hope they have a lot, though; he’ll go through them really fast.”
Jody shifts uncertainly. “How will he know—”
“He’ll figure it out,” Dean interrupts, because this is Cas. “Closest?”
“Northwest,” Alicia answers. “If we—”
“Incoming,” Matt interrupts, gun up, and following his gaze to the rise, Dean sees the first Croats stagger over the rise.
“Alicia, how many did you see again?” Dean asks, thinking of whatever (Hellhounds, he knows it) is watching them.
“Are numbers really important here?” she asks, facing the rise and the approaching Croats with a set expression. “I like ‘a lot and more coming,’ how about you?”
“Overwhelming numbers, no hope of winning,” Dean agrees, joining her at the ward line. “Fun.”
“Fun,” Amanda agrees, joining him at the line a few feet away. “So what’s the plan?”
“I’m getting to that,” he answers generously. “Short version: run really fast. Any questions?”
“I call tail,” Alicia volunteers cheerfully as she raises her rifle. “This is gonna be great.”
Warnings: explicit violence, explicit descriptions of death of children as well as references.