I know it's been a while since I wrote anything on the Andrea series, and the show has moved on and changed so much since the end of season 2, when these stories are set. I found this beginning for Before the Gates in an old folder and was inspired to finish it. I'm back on the road driving a truck now, and don't have as much time for writing, but I will try to make sure there are more chapters, because there is definitely more to Andrea's story with the boys. If you haven't read the first five stories in the Andrea series, please do, I'm not going to be adding much back-story in this installment.

Before the Gates

"Storm's coming, and you boys… you are smack in the middle of it."

The Road So Far:

"You know the truth, about Sammy, and the other children."

"You heard what the Demon said. He said he had plans for me, and children like me."

"It all started about a year ago, didn't it? The headaches, then you discovered you could do things…"

"It's mind control, Sam. He full on Obi-waned me."

"He said they have soldiers to fight in the coming war. Psychics to fight on Hell's side."

"He said I might have to kill you, Sam."

"You're one of us… the psychics."

"Screw you, buddy, cause I'm a secretary from Peoria. I'm not part of anything."

"Ava…"

"Damn it, Sam, this whole thing is spinning out of control."

Now

We had been on the road all day by the time we hit the Montana-South Dakota state line. Night had fallen and we were on some little traveled backroad cutting through a dense forest. Dean saw a lit up red and yellow sign ahead advertising the Sunrise Diner. He slowed and took the turn.

"I don't know about you two, but I'm starved." He said as he pulled down the short drive to the tiny diner.

"I could do with a little food." Sam agreed, and he looked back to where I was stretched out in the back seat. "You hungry?"

"Yeah, a chicken sandwich sounds pretty good right about now." I smiled.

Dean pulled in next to a beat up red and white pick up. He handed Sam a wad of cash. "Make mine a cheese burger, and don't forget the extra onions this time."

"Yeah, well, we have to ride in the car with your extra onions." Sam opened his door and swung his long legs out into the gentle drizzle that was falling.

"Hey, see if they have any pie." Dean called as Sam closed the Impala's door with an annoyed glance at his brother. "Bring me some pie!" he yelled again to make sure Sam heard him. "I love me some pie."

.o0o.o0o.o0o.o0o.o0o.o0o.

The memories used to keep me from sleeping, but that doesn't happen so much anymore. Missouri told me I should write them down and burn them, so I did, and it helped, a little. It was like the act of taking all those sights and sounds and smells and emotions and putting them into words took a little of their power away, trapped them on paper like a demon in a Devil's Trap. But they aren't gone. They are still there, just under the surface, and fear and stress give them power again.

Sitting in that motel bathroom, staring at a little window on a little white plastic stick as I counted to sixty was a lot more stressful than I thought it would be. I was waiting for it to tell me my future, like some sort of single use Magic Eight Ball with a money back guarantee. I tried to focus on the numbers… twelve one thousand, thirteen one thousand, fourteen one thousand… I tired to think about anything but my worries, but it didn't work. The bathroom lights seemed to dim as the magic that is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder brought the memories of the worst days of my life rushing back to me in HD clarity and Dolby Digital Surround Sound.

.o0o.o0o.o0o.o0o.o0o.o0o.

Dean tapped on the steering wheel of the Impala as he gazed out through the rain dotted windshield at the little diner. He flicked on the windshield wipers and turned to say something to me, but he never got the words out. The radio went to static. He looked down at it with a frown and tapped the dial before realization hit both of us. We looked up in alarm. There was no sign of anything out of the ordinary around us in the lot. Then Dean noticed… the diner was empty.

"Andrea… Sam…" Dean was out of the car in a flash. I grabbed my pistol and followed, tucking it into the back of my pants as I splashed through the puddles in Dean's wake. We burst through the door of the little diner with a wild jingling of bells. A sad country song played on the jukebox, and burgers sizzled on the grill, but there was no sign of life. There was a sickly copper smell in the air, mixing with the smell of grease. My stomach lurched. It was the unmistakable smell of blood.

I saw the first body only moments after Dean did. I gasped and covered my mouth. It was an older man in a ball-cap. He was face down in his food, a crimson puddle forming on the table where blood flowed from his slit throat. Dean drew his gun and cocked the slide. Holding the gun low he moved to check behind the counter.

My heart raced as I followed him, my gun also held ready before me. I was screaming on the inside, but I clamped down on my fear. Panic wouldn't help anything. There were two more bodies behind the counter, their throats slit as well. Thankfully, neither of them was Sam.

Dean pushed through into the back storage room, looking around alert. He went to the back door and opened it, calling out into the night for his brother, "Sam! Sammy!" There was no sign of him, and Dean let the door close. He paused and looked down at his hand. I saw him go pale in the dim light. He lifted his fingers to show me the yellow powder that coated them. "Sulfur."

"Shit!" The screaming in my head grew louder, No! No, no, no, no, no. This can't be happening. No, it's too soon. Sam! I covered my mouth to keep the screams from escaping. Dean pushed past me and out into the night, still calling his brother's name. I followed on shaky legs.

We searched all around the Café, but there was no trace of Sam. No tracks in the muddy ground, no sign that he had been dragged from the Café, not a single clue. He was just gone.

Dean paced back and forth by the Impala, his gun still clasped tightly in his hand. He wiped the rain from his face with his jacket sleeve, and I could see he was fighting to pull himself together, to think. I was still looking out into the night, hoping for a glimpse of Sam, or some clue of what might have happened to him. Johnny's words, and Sam's, echoed through my head in a jumble. My mind and heart rebelled at the thought and the words spilled out, though I didn't mean them too. "We'll get him back. It can't be too late. This can't be happening, not now." I turned to Dean, "We have to get him back… what do we do?"

Dean stopped pacing. "I don't know." He slammed his fist into the side of the old red truck that was parked next to the Impala. The pain seemed to clear his mind. He reached into his jacket for his cell phone.

"Come on… answer already." He had only just dialed, and Bobby's phone couldn't have rang more than twice before the man answered. "Bobby. Sam's gone." Pause, "No… I don't know. He's just vanished." Pause, "No, he didn't just take off this time. He literally vanished." Long pause, "He went into a diner for food. I didn't have my eyes off him for more than two minutes." Pause, "Yeah, throats slit. There was sulfur."

Dean's jaw clenched. He still held his gun in his right hand, and he raised that arm to wipe the moisture from his forehead as he listened to whatever Bobby was telling him. He motioned to me, "Andrea, get the map. Yeah Bobby, I'm listening."

Bobby was giving him directions. I pulled out the map and followed as Dean repeated what Bobby was telling him. He told us how to get to a little motel and biker bar where he would meet us. It was about three hours away, closer to where Bobby lived. Bobby would be there at sunrise, he had some checking to do before he left his house.

"Don't tell me not to panic, Singer." Dean growled, "He's my brother, of course I'm going to panic." He hung up the phone.

I put a hand on his shoulder, and he gave me a grateful look. His eyes were full of fear and worry, they shone with unshed tears.

Dean made another phone call while he drove. It was to Ash. "Ash… I don't care what time it is. Since when do you go to bed this early anyway?" Pause, "Listen, damn it. Sam's missing." Pause, "Yeah, Lo-Jack, cute. Shut-up and listen." Dean explained the situation, "Please, Ash… anything you can find. Yeah. Thanks, man."

We made the rest of the trip in tense silence. This was Dean's worst nightmare, and there was nothing that I could say that would help him feel better. It was my worst nightmare, too. I didn't know where Sam was, or what was happening to him. I was afraid that the vision he and Johnny had shared was coming true. I was afraid we would never see him again. Nausea twisted my gut, and I fought back tears.

It was around one AM when we got to the place where Bobby had sent us. There wasn't any real parking to speak of, so Dean pulled the Impala to the side of the potholed road. It was a run-down wooden bar… no, saloon would be a better description. The building looked like something out of a western. Right down to the bat-wing doors. Instead of horses hitched out front, though, there were rows of motorcycles. Next to the biker bar there was an equally run down motel with a neon sign that only worked intermittently. When it flickered on it read "The Silver Dollar Motel."

Dean started to head for the bar, but I grabbed his arm. "Getting drunk, and getting into a fight with a room full of bikers, as therapeutic as it may sound, isn't going to help us get Sam back." He looked at me, his eyes empty. He shook his head.

"I wasn't. But you're right." He changed direction and we went to the motel instead. Neither of us was likely to sleep, but it was better than sitting in the Impala all night.

Bobby wouldn't be there until sunrise, which gave us five hours for pacing and worrying. Dean couldn't be still. He wanted to be out doing something to find Sam. I set up my laptop and started searching for other cases like this. Sam had vanished the same way Ava had. I ran a search for 'missing person body throat cut'. I was shocked by what I found. "Dean, come look at this."

Over the past five months there had been twelve people who had gone missing, leaving behind the bodies of friends, coworkers, and loved ones with their throats slashed. They were scattered all over the country. Women, men, black, white, Hispanic, rich, poor, college students, athletes, artists, fry cooks, gang members - they had only one thing in common – the missing people were all 23 years old. The circumstances surrounding the deaths were all different, different places, times of day, though mostly at night. I could understand why the police might not have put together the pattern, but I was amazed no hunters seemed to have found it. Or maybe they had. Maybe they were all coming up as empty handed as Sam and Dean had after Ava's disappearance. My heart dropped into my stomach at the thought.

"Son of a bitch…" Dean said slowly as he read over my shoulder. "He's gathering his army… it has to be. That bastard is gathering his army." He turned and paced two steps away, then paced back, "We just have to figure out where he's taking them." He looked up, a thought occurring to him, "River Grove, maybe? Maybe that's what the virus was for, to empty out the town for him." He ran with the theory, "And the infected people would add to the army." He turned pale at the thought, and so did I.

"Shit, they could spread it… that would be…" I couldn't think of an adjective strong enough to describe how bad it would be, so I trailed off. I pulled up another browser window and ran a search on River Grove, Oregon. Thank all the gods for Google. It didn't take long for my search to pull up results.

"The town is still empty as of last month. It looks like a local paper did a special report." I pointed to an article headline that read Return to River Grove. I read the article aloud, "Six months after the mysterious disappearance of the entire town, River Grove still stands eerily silent. Meals still sit uneaten, houses unlocked. The streetlights still come on at dusk. But the residents of this overnight ghost town still have not been heard from." I silently scanned down the rest of the article and summed up, "The reporter went back to the town. It's empty, and the government still has no explanation."

Dean's shoulders slumped. As bad as it would have been if it really had been River Grove, it would have at least been a place to start looking, hope that we could have found Sam there. But it looked like a dead end.

We spent the next couple of hours searching the web. We tossed out theory after theory, each one wilder and more unlikely than the next, but it got us nowhere. Eventually exhaustion overcame us and we lay down for the last hour or so before Bobby got there. Dean wrapped his arms around me and we spooned together on the bed, still fully dressed. We wouldn't sleep, but we needed the comfort of each other. I entwined his fingers in mine, pulled his strong arm around me like a blanket and snuggled into him.

"We'll find him, Dean. And he's strong. Wherever he is I'm sure he's fighting to get back to us, as well." He didn't reply. He just pulled me closer and held me as we lay there waiting for the sunrise.

Before the first gray shreds of sunlight brightened the overcast sky, Dean was already out of bed looking out the motel room window at the road. I pulled my shoes on as the watery light of dawn began to filter into the room. There was no point in laying there pretending to rest. I closed my laptop and Dean went with me to take it back out to the Impala. Bobby's beat up blue truck grumbled to a stop, parked facing the Impala on the side of the road. The old hunter hopped out and hurried over to us where we waited at the front of the Impala.

"Bobby, what did you find out?" Dean asked with hope in his voice. Bobby spread a laminated map of the USA on the hood of the old Chevy. Dean and I leaned over to look at it.

"This is it. All demonic signs and omens over the past month." Bobby said.

"Are you joking, there's nothing here!" Anger and frustration were clear in Dean's voice.

"Exactly." Bobby answered quietly, sadly.

"Aw, come on, there's got to be something, I mean what about the… the normal low-level stuff? You know, exorcisms, that kind of thing?"

"That's what I'm telling you, there's nothing. It's completely quiet."

"How are we supposed to look for Sam. What do we do, just close our eyes and point?" Dean was almost yelling now, but his rising argument was cut short by the ringing of his cell phone. He glanced quickly at the caller-id and flipped the phone open. "Ash, whatta you got?" He paused, "Aw, come on, man, you gotta give us something. I mean we're looking at a three thousand mile haystack here!" Another pause, "Well, what?" pause, "Come on we don't have time for this." There was another long pause and he hung up the phone. "I guess we're going to the Roadhouse."

I looked at him questioningly as Bobby folded the map, but he didn't take time to explain. He was behind the wheel with the engine started, and Bobby and I climbed in with him. The Impala was rolling before we even had the doors shut.

"Dean, what did Ash find?" I leaned forward on the seatback. Bobby was in the passenger seat.

"He wouldn't say." Dean's knuckles were white on the steering wheel. His anger threatened to boil over.

"Wouldn't say!?" Bobby echoed in disbelief, "Well, why the hell not?"

"I think he was afraid the phone was tapped. Said he couldn't talk on that line. Whatever it is, it had better be worth it, 'cause this cloak and dagger shit is stepping all over my last nerve." Dean snapped on the radio to signal an end to the conversation. Obviously, he didn't want to talk about it. He listened to two songs, but when the first bars of Metallica's Enter Sandman started, he flicked it off again.

It was a five hour drive to the Roadhouse, but thanks to Dean's driving skills, we made it in three and a half. The ride was quiet, none of us had anything to say that could help the situation, and we were all lost in our own thoughts. I kept playing over every word that Johnny had said, looking for any clue I might have missed, but all I kept coming back to were two sentences, "You have to promise me, when he tells you to 'just go,' you'll go" and, "That's how you being here changed things, and the only way to change them back to the way it was supposed to be is for you to desert him in his time of greatest need."

Those two lines kept playing over and over in my head, that and Sam, in tears, explaining why he had to die. Tears coursed silently down my cheeks, and I made no effort to stop them. I prayed with all my might that the time hadn't come yet, that this was not what Sam and Johnny had seen in their shared vision. I didn't want to lose them. I couldn't bear to think that I might have to live the rest of my life without them in it. I had tried and tried to come to terms with the idea that Sam was going to die, but I couldn't. How could I? How could I possibly accept the fact that his kind face, his big hazel eyes, his tall, lanky form would never be there again? I shook my head. I refused to believe that the worst had happened. Until I could see his body, I would hold firmly to the hope that he was still alive, that there was still time. By the time we rounded the last corner I had myself under control, and my tears were dry.

The sight that greeted us wasn't what I expected. I'd seen the roadhouse on TV, and I was actually looking forward to seeing it for real. I wanted my chance to sit at the bar, to meet Ellen and Ash, maybe even drive Jo wild with jealousy if she and her mom were back on speaking terms. But it wasn't to be.

What greeted us wasn't a dusty lot with a couple of beat up cars parked in front of a ramshackle wooden building with its Harvelle's Roadhouse sign... It was a pile of charred wood and chaos. Smoke still rose from the ruins. The place wasn't just burnt, it was gone.

"What the hell?" Dean was stunned. He slipped the Impala into park before the smoking pile of lumber and bodies. He and Bobby looked at one another with eyes wide. We piled out of the car and walked to the front where we stood, speechless. The air was full of the scent of woodsmoke, but under that familiar smell was the stomach lurching scent of burnt flesh.

"Do you think it was a bomb?" I asked in a quiet voice.

Dean shook his head, "The debris isn't scattered enough. No, it just burnt."

"And it went up pretty fast, by the looks of it." Bobby's voice held an odd tone, and he gestured to something sticking out of the debris. My brain refused to translate what my eyes were seeing for a long moment, but eventually I realized that I was looking at a charred foot. I gagged. Then the wind shifted and I caught a strong whiff of the smell. It was all I could do to make it three steps away before my stomach heaved. There wasn't much there to come up, I hadn't eaten in almost twenty four hours, but I still heaved. I'd seen bodies before. But these had been hunters, colleagues, people who might have even been friends if I'd had a chance to get to know them. This was personal.

I felt Dean's warm hand on my back. He smoothed his other hand across my forehead and held my hair back as I retched one last time and stood, wiping my mouth. My hand was shaking.

"Hey," His voice was soothing, but I could hear the emotion underlining it. He was shaken too. "You don't have to see this. Bobby and I will check it out.

I nodded, "Ok. I'll just wait back here." I motioned to the back of the Impala. My voice was as shaky as my hands. Some big brave hunter I was. I moved to the back of the car and leaned on the trunk. I shot a glance over my shoulder and saw Dean and Bobby carefully picking their way through the charred rubble, and I heard Bobby say, "My God." I looked away. I looked at the sky, then at the ground, my eyes unfocused. As I got a hold on myself and calmed down, I started to pay attention to what I was seeing. There were tire tracks in the dust. It looked as though someone had pulled in, and then pulled away in a hurry. I was studying the tracks, trying to figure out what they might mean, when Dean and Bobby returned.

"What the hell did Ash know? We got no way of knowing where Ellen is, or if she's even alive. We got no clue what Ash was gonna tell us. Now how the hell are we gonna find Sam?" Dean leaned on the trunk of the Impala next to where I was leaning. I put a hand on his arm.

"We'll find him." Bobby reassured him, and he started to say more, but Dean suddenly shook his head and put his hand to his forehead with a grunt of pain. "Dean?"

"Dean, what's wrong?" I asked, concern suddenly twisting my gut into knots.

Dean looked up as if whatever it was was over, then he gasped with pain again and nearly doubled over across the trunk of the car. He pressed both hands to his head and screwed his eyes tightly shut. It was over as quickly as it had started. He shook his head to try to clear the pain.

"What was that?" Bobby asked, and I could hear the concern in his voice.

"I dunno, headache?" Dean was breathing hard from the lingering pain.

"You get headaches like that a lot?"

"No," Dean shook his head, "No, must be the stress." He tried to laugh it off, put on his cocky mask and pretend it was nothing, but I could see the pain was still affecting him. I tightened my grip on his arm and was about to call his bluff when he ran a hand across his face and said, "I could have swore I saw something, though."

"What? You mean, like a vision or something?" I asked, my brows knitting together in puzzlement.

"Like what Sam gets?" Bobby asked.

"What? No." Dean denied the possibility.

"Well, I'm just saying…" Bobby was taken aback by Dean's protestations, and so was I after the way he'd used his and Sam's link back at Bobby's place. I'd thought he'd come to terms with the link he and his brother shared. I had to wonder though, and I also wondered why it was suddenly causing him pain, and how had it happened long distance?

"Come on, I'm not some psychic." Dean bit off his words. He looked like he was going to say more, but it happened again. This time it nearly floored him with the pain, and I took his weight to keep him from falling.

"Dean!"

"Dean!" Bobby and I spoke almost simultaneously as Bobby rushed around the car to help me hold Dean's weight. He had both of his hands to his head and was gasping with the pain. Dean recovered again almost immediately, though he was still limp and breathing hard. "Dean, are you with us?"

He nodded his head slightly, "Yeah," his normally strong voice was soft and hoarse. "Yeah, I think so." I could feel him shaking with the effort to stand on his own. Even floored by a mysterious, blinding headache he was trying to be strong, to shake it off so he could work on saving his brother. His next words shocked me, "I saw Sam. I saw him Bobby."

"So it was a vision."

"Yeah. I don't know how, but yeah." He found enough strength to pull away from my supporting arm. "Whoo! That was about as much fun as getting kicked in the jewels."

"What else did you see?" Bobby insisted.

"Uh… ah, it was a bell…"

"What kind of bell?"

"Uh… it was like a big, a big bell with a… some kind of engraving on it. I dunno."

"Engraving?"

"Yeah."

"Was it a tree? Like an oak tree?"

"Yeah, exactly."

"I know where Sam is."

"You what? How?" I had been watching the exchange in silence, but Bobby's words startled the question from me.

"Forget how. Where? Where is he Bobby?"

"Cold Oak, South Dakota. Come on, I'll drive." Dean started to protest, but when I let go of his arm he realized how shaky he still was. He tossed the keys to Bobby and got in the passenger seat.

We got to Cold Oak just after sundown; almost twenty four hours after Sam had disappeared. We'd had to stop for gas, and Dean was driving now, Bobby in the passenger seat. The road to the old town was just a couple of washed out ruts, and we were still a mile away when we found the trail blocked by a fallen tree. Dean pulled the Impala to a stop and we all stepped out.

"Looks like the rest of the way is on foot," Bobby said.

We armed up from the stash in the truck. I grabbed a couple of extra clips for my pistol and a small bag with salt and other basic supplies, Bobby picked out a machete and a rifle, and Dean checked the load on his favorite sawed off shotgun. He closed it with a snap and said, "Alright, let's do this."

With the road half overgrown and bogged down with mud it took us about fifteen minutes to walk the last mile, but it seemed to take forever. We walked in silence, alert for anything the woods might throw at us, none of us wanting to voice our worries and make them real. We came around a last corner and the ghost town came into sight. My heart jumped for joy in my chest. There was Sam, walking down the middle of the road toward us. He was alive! I broke into a grin and started to call out to him just as Dean called his name. Then something moved behind him. Bobby called out a warning, Dean and I called out Sam's name in unison, but none of us were fast enough. The shape behind him resolved into a dark skinned man in digital camo BDUs. He threw himself at Sam from behind. The knife in his hand sunk into Sam's back to the hilt.

"No!" I screamed. Dean dropped his shotgun and ran to his brother as Sam's attacker turned and ran off back into the town. Bobby took off in pursuit, but my knees were too rubbery to do anything but watch as Dean caught Sam to him and they both dropped to their knees.

"Sam, stay with me, let me see. It's not so bad, Sam, it's not so bad. Sam, you stay with me, I'm your big brother, I'm supposed to take care of you. What am I supposed to do without my pain in the ass little brother? Huh?…. Sam… Sammy!"

I dropped to my knees beside them, I dug in the bag I'd grabbed for a first aid kit, but as I watched I saw Sam's skin go pale, and the light leave his eyes as he died in his brother's arms. "No… Sam. Oh, God. No!" I reached out and touched his face as Dean screamed his name one last time.