Chapter Two
It is too constricting to say that you must always think outside
the box; whether you are thinking inside or outside the box, you
are still letting the box dictate your thoughts, are you not? What
you are not acknowledging is the honest fact that "the box"
itself is figmentary, illusory. . . .
-- Erica Amelia Smith, An Address as to the Nature of the
"proper" Uses of Technology
* * *
You've finished your fourth whiskey, now, and are perfectly satisfied with your level of inebriation. You have another long ride ahead of you tomorrow, and it'll do you no good to try and do it hung over.
She's drinking now, too, though. You're alone in the bar; it must be past closing time. She nods to your bag, says something about taking notes as she pulls out a bowl of peanuts.
You want to ask why, but to speak would break the rhythm of the story she's weaving, and you're interested enough by now to want to know the rest, so you pull the journal out of your bag, find yourself a pen with a decent nib, and start writing. She gives you a few moments to catch up, then continues.
* * *
"We should go to DC," Sam said. He had to almost shout to be heard over the rumbling of the tow truck's engine, the rattle of the Impala behind them, and the whistle of the wind coming in through the open windows. Dean drove directly into the setting sun with his goggles pulled down over his eyes.
Dean turned his head slightly to look at Sam, the sun making the lenses of his goggles glow. "What?!"
"Go to DC!" Sam said louder, pitching his voice over the noises of the road and, he hoped, the fading ringing in Dean's still slightly bloody ears.
Dean rocked his head back, turning back to the road and swerving carefully around the remains of a wrecked Toyota. He shook his head. "This ain't The Stand, Sammy! We're not going to find a buncha plucky survivors rebuilding society in a big city!" Dean shouted so he could hear himself speak. Sam could hear him no matter how loud everything else was.
"I said DC, not Boulder!" Sam shouted, then let out a sigh when Dean stopped the truck. He lowered his voice. "I think we should check out the Library of Congress."
Dean snorted. "What, you've got a burning need to get your geek on?"
Sam looked to the ceiling, then back at Dean. "The government's been researching alternative sources of energy, Dean. Natural gas, coal, biodiesel. All of it will be archived at the Library of Congress."
Dean shook his head. "Don't need it. We've got a plan."
Sam pressed his lips together. "You're never going to get a steam engine into the Impala, Dean. Not with stuff you found in a high school theater. That's just. It's just physics, man."
Dean looked at Sam, then reached up and pulled his goggles down around his neck, then looked at Sam some more. The corners of his mouth tightened and twitched. It was almost a smile.
"Yeah," he said. "'Cause you and me, we've always followed the laws of physics."
* * *
They had always followed the laws of physics, actually. Even Dean had to admit that. They were, after all, only human.
Or, had been, at the very least.
But things were changing. Had been for a long time and were doing so even faster, these days. The steam engine would work. Dean could make it work. Sam might've had all the formal education. He might've been the one with the weird, probably demon-driven supernatural abilities. But Dean knew engines. And he knew the Impala.
It would work.
* * *
The tow truck had a large tank, so half of it was still a substantial amount. Unfortunately, the thing's mileage was for shit. Half a tank of gas didn't get them very far, only a bit of the way into the mountains of Tennessee before the truck started to sputter. Dean pulled it off to the side of the road again, climbed out, stretched and cracked his back and then headed back to unhitch the Impala. Sam followed after him silently, wishing Dean would take the goggles back off. They managed to get the Impala pointed downhill, and a few moments later they were coasting, Dean using the brakes only enough to keep them from flying off the road when they had to swing around an abandoned vehicle or swoop through a badly banked curve. It was a nice, long stretch at a decent grade, and Dean had the Impala doing almost sixty with no working engine whatsoever by the time the road bottomed out and started to climb again. He swung them seemingly effortlessly onto an exit ramp leading to a badly maintained two-lane blacktop and a single broken-down looking gas station.
The tiny road stretched into trees and nothingness in both directions. It, the overpass for the highway, and the gas station were the only hints of civilization around. Dean pulled the Impala in next to a pump, hit the brake, and sat for a moment, his fingers tapping gently on the wheel, his goggled gaze staring out the windshield at a half-rusted blue box labeled "ice" that squatted at the edge of the lot. Sam followed his gaze, then half-turned in the seat to look behind them, past the tubes and wires still sticking out of the trunk, toward the highway ramp.
He wondered if Dean had known this gas station was here. He wondered if he'd known there wouldn't be anything else.
Dean had liked the kids at the school, Sam had thought. He'd even been worrying that Dean would start plotting how to take them with them when they left. But as Dean looked at the gas station, his lips pressed together into a hard, prissy line, his entire body straining forward, fingers tap-tap-tapping away, he seemed relieved. Tense as hell, yes, but he'd been that way for months, now. Sam opened his mouth to ask, then closed it again.
"No garage," Dean said, after a long moment.
Sam shook his head. "No. But there's a snack shop."
Dean nodded and opened the door, stepping out and turning to lean his elbows on the roof without closing it.
"Won't be comfy," he said at length. "But this could be home. For a bit."
Sam said nothing. Dean thumped his open hand on the Impala's roof, then stepped back to close the door and headed for the snack shop.
Sam rolled his head on his neck, felt no change in the alignment of his spine, then opened his door and got out.
* * *
There was no point in checking the pumps. Like most modern gas stations, they were electrically operated, and the computer screens and digital meters were all dark. If there was any gas left here, they'd have to access the tanks directly, but Dean made no effort to do so. The snack shop still had plenty of bottles of motor oil and solvents along with the bags of chips, bottles of soda, and cases of beer. It was completely deserted, with only a single pile of white powder, perfectly lumped behind the counter. They left it undisturbed. No point in stirring up any ghosts, here, if they didn't have to.
With no garage, Dean worked on the Impala outside, in the sun and the heat. With no showers, he splashed himself clean in the tiny, grimy men's room once a day. With no bed -- or costumes, for that matter -- he stretched out on the floor in the back of the shop, next to a refrigerator and an ATM, his leather jacket draped over his gun serving as a pillow.
They'd slept in worse places, but not many of them and not for very long. Sam seemed better off, since he didn't need to sleep, as far as either of them could tell. He didn't need to eat, though when he was solid, he breathed and had a pulse. He didn't tell Dean what he did while his brother slept. It was just one of the many, many things he didn't think Dean would want to know.
Sam pointed out, early on, that there had to be a town or something, somewhere close by. A place with beds and changes of clothing, more food and showers. It was a moot point, though; the road went uphill in all directions. They didn't have the propulsion to get the Impala going, Dean wasn't going anywhere without his car, and Sam decided, after the incident at the school, that he wasn't going anywhere without his brother, so they both remained at the gas station. Dean tinkered the days away on the Impala and spent his evenings going over his plans for her by candle light. Sam alternated his time between standing on the side of the highway overpass, trying to see as far as he could in either direction, and hanging around Dean, watching him work, and resisting the urge to remind him that what he was doing was impossible.
He was doing the former when the beat-up silver "New Beetle" came coughing and chugging down the highway from the west. He straightened from his slouch against the guard-rail and lifted a hand in greeting, walking up the shoulder towards it. It screeched to a halt, its engine whining, and swung sideways, its window rolling down. The woman behind the wheel had a wide-eyed glare and a pistol fixed on Sam.
Sam had just enough time to wonder what it might feel like to get shot in his current state before she pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Well. Something happened. The car stopped, for one, after spinning another thirty-some degrees, and the woman driving it started cursing not so much fluently as repetitively, and Sam jumped back from the shoulder and decided it might be a good idea to be somewhere else. But the gun never went off.
* * *
Two minutes later, Sam was next to Dean by the Impala, and the Beetle was rolling down the wrong ramp from the highway, then careening over the bare strip of dry grass that separated the gas station lot from the road. It wrenched to a halt a few feet from the pumps, and Dean straightened up, stepped back from his car, and wiped his hands on the sides of his jeans.
The woman sat behind the wheel of her car, beating on it with one open palm and clutching her gun in her other hand, staring forward through her windshield. Dean twisted his head to cast a glance at Sam, who remained steadfastly on the other side of the Impala from the woman, then shrugged, pulling his goggles down around his neck.
"No gas," he called to the woman, his hands loose and clearly empty by his sides. His t-shirt was drenched and sticky with sweat, clingy enough to clearly outline the hammer and two wrenches he had tucked into his waistband underneath it, as well as his gun, though that was at the small of his back and well out of her sight line. "Already checked. Sorry."
The woman stared at him, then flicked her gaze over towards Sam, her mouth tightening. She looked back to Dean and slowly raised her gun. Dean lifted his hands, the corner of his lips twitching upwards.
"That's not going to do you a lot of good."
"What, you're immune to bullets?" The woman scoffed.
Dean's smirk turned into a full blown grin. "Nah. But you've got the safety on."
The woman looked at her gun and started cursing, again. Dean half-turned back to Sam with a wave of his hand. Sam scowled and shook his head, standing his ground. But he didn't come any closer, and Dean supposed he'd have to make due with what he could get. He turned back to the woman. "I'm Dean."
"That's great," she said. She managed to flick the safety off and trained the gun on Dean again. "I know how to use this."
Dean wasn't so sure she did. "That's great," he parroted back at her. "How about you put it away? We're not going to hurt you."
"Bullshit," she said, her eyes flicking back to Sam. "It's him."
Dean sighed. "His name's Sam."
"I don't care."
"Then leave."
"I can't."
"We don't have any gas," Dean said again.
"I'm not looking for gas." She cocked her head toward the back of her car, the gun wavering. "I need grease."
Dean frowned and sniffed the air. Got a nose full of french fries and exhaust. "You're running on grease?"
"Biodiesel."
"We don't have any of that, either."
"Fuck."
That seemed to pretty well sum it up.
* * *
Her name was April. She was a forty-three year old science teacher and mother of two from Nashville, and she was the only person she knew who'd survived.
Dean got that much from her, and her out of her car, only when Sam promised to keep his distance and went to go hang out by the store -- far enough away, apparently, that she felt safe, but close enough for him to listen in on their conversation and hopefully put a stop to things if they started to go pear-shaped. He crossed his arms as Dean tried telling her Sam was harmless. She apparently wasn't listening.
"I saw him," she insisted. "When it -- I saw him." Sam tensed, wondering what she was talking about.
Dean nodded, then shrugged. "He doesn't know."
Doesn't know what? Sam narrowed his eyes at Dean, but continued to keep back. What haven't you told me, Dean? It was a stupid question, of course. He and Dean barely talked about anything, anymore.
"How could --" April cut herself off, her eyebrows lowered, her chin jutting out.
Dean shrugged again. "He just doesn't."
April leaned back against her car. Her gun was still clutched in one hand, but she finally put the safety back on, and Sam let himself relax, slightly. She gave Dean a measuring look. "You saw him, too."
Dean nodded. Sam fumed. Saw me what?
"Then why are you still with him?"
"He's my brother."
"Some brother."
"Only one I got." April looked down and away, and Sam heard Dean sigh. "Look. We don't have any gas. We don't have any" he let out another hard breath and scowled, like he couldn't believe the word he was about to use, "grease. But I'm pretty good with engines. Maybe we can figure something out for you."
"I'm not letting him near me."
"I'm not asking you to."
"As soon as I get some fuel, I'm out of here."
Dean nodded. "Honestly, that's probably for the best."
"Is that a threat?"
Dean looked at her. "No. Just the truth."
She nodded, then. "You keep him on a leash."
Sam bristled, tempted to storm over, now that the gun wasn't an issue, but held himself back. Dean laughed. "I've been tryin' my whole life. I'll do my best."
April was silent for a long moment, looking Dean over. She lowered her chin and raised it once in a nod. "What have you got then?"
Dean licked his lips, turning his face skyward, then smiled. "Beer and wine, mostly. Some chips and soda. And half a steam engine."
"Well." April sighed. "I guess that's a start."
Sam let out a slow, silent breath, cringing inwardly at the thought of her sticking around, a not-entirely-new jealousy bubbling up in his chest. Still, Dean had said more in the few minutes since April arrived than he had in the last several months with just Sam. If she would keep Dean happy -- or as close to happy as either of them seemed to get, these days -- Sam supposed he could put up with her. He eased the door to the shop open and slipped inside, taking up a post near the window where he could keep an eye on things.
He could keep himself "on a leash", thank you very much.
* * *
"This is. . . ." April stared at what Dean had so far of his steam engine. Dean looked as well, his mouth curved into a fond smile, his fingers crumpling and recrumpling a rag.
"Pretty awesome, right?"
"Is that a trumpet?"
"Last place we holed up was an old school."
"A trumpet." She leaned in closer, brushing dirty fingers along the bell of the instrument, tracing the curve of it back to where it was fused to the rest of the engine. "It's welded in."
"Seemed to have a lower melting point than most of what I work with."
She nodded. "It would. That's not necessarily a good thing. You were lucky the school had an auto shop."
Dean frowned. "It, uh. It didn't."
"You had to get the torch from somewhere."
"Made one."
"You made a welding torch. Out of what?"
"Paint sprayer and some solvents."
"A paint sprayer."
"Uh." Dean shrugged. "Yeah."
"You turned a paint sprayer into a blow torch."
Dean took a step backwards, dropping the rag. "Uh, yes."
"The amount of pressure required to propel the 'solvents', not to mention finding one that would burn at the right temperature. . . ." She spoke in a low tone, shaking her head as she stared at his engine. Finally, she looked up, her expression skeptical. "It's ridiculous. Impossible. You expect me to believe that you created that weld," she pointed at the trumpet, "using what essentially amounts to a lit can of hairspray?"
Dean frowned and shrugged. "Yeah, I guess."
The gun came out again, and Dean sighed, lifting his hands. "Either you're lying to me, and I don't see what that would get you, or you're some kind of -- like that fucking brother of yours --"
"Hey, lady, that 'fucking brother of mine' happens to agree with you --"
"What are you?!" She was shouting, now, emphasizing her words with her gun, and Dean was pretty sure he was about to die. No one with any clue how to use a gun would be holding it the way she was holding hers, and people with guns who didn't know how to use them properly scared the shit out of him.
"Woah, hey, Jesus." Dean backed up a step, hands still out and open. "Put that thing down, would you? I'm not -- I'm just a guy."
"Bullshit," she said, the gun in her hand shaking. Dean swallowed. "Stop. Stop lying to me. You're traveling around with him and you tell me you made that and you expect me to believe you're normal? That's impossible. People don't -- fire doesn't -- why them?"
Dean blinked. "Uh. What?"
"Why them? David and Antonia were good kids! Why them? Why not me? Why did this happen?"
He swallowed again, something catching in his throat. He kept his hands up, but dropped his chin and lowered his voice. "I don't know."
"Bullshit."
"I don't know!" Dean shouted it this time. "Do you think I wanted any of this? I don't know why you didn't die. I don't know why they did. I don't know why any of this is happening or how I can --" he gestured uselessly with one hand toward the Impala. "I just don't know, okay?" He shut his eyes, fisting his hands in the air without dropping them, as though they could somehow block a bullet if she got around to pulling the trigger. He shook his head and opened his eyes wide at her again, keeping his posture defensive, despite the instinct to pull his own weapon.
"Please." He poured all of it, all the fear he wouldn't let himself recognize, the grief over every single person he hadn't been able to save, into the one word. "Please, enough people have died."
She stared at him, the gun shaking, her mouth pressed into a thin line, the folds around her mouth standing out in stark relief. "I should kill you."
Dean didn't say anything. He wondered if he agreed with her.
She dropped the gun.
Dean's legs gave out, and he sat down hard on the asphalt, scraping his palms and letting out the breath he didn't know he was holding in a heavy rush. She crumpled a moment later, her arms wrapping over her stomach, her expression collapsing in grief as she curled up into a ball next to the Impala.
* * *
Sam stood -- hovered, practically -- inside the shop, staring out the window at April and Dean, his eyes focused intently on April's gun. He could feel energy gathering around him as he watched her wave the weapon at his brother. Company or not, this couldn't happen. The air in the shop crackled, kicking up into a light breeze, but Sam ignored it, his entire focus on the woman threatening Dean. His mouth fell open before he realized what he was doing, and started to shape Dean's name --
And April dropped the gun and she and Dean both sat down on the pavement, and Sam snapped his mouth shut. The air in the shop settled, humidity seeping back in through the badly insulated doors and windows. Ten minutes later, when Dean came in to grab a case of beer, Sam was just as he had always been -- at least over the last few months. Quiet, cautious, and slightly bewildered, but harmless.
Neither of them quite realized what had nearly happened, what would have happened if April hadn't dropped that gun.
* * *
"I wanted to work for NASA," April said, staring into her can of beer.
It was night, but they were still outside, sitting propped up against her Beetle, a case of beer between them. Dean could see Sam, sometimes, watching them through the glass door of the snack shop, but he didn't come outside and April wouldn't go inside, not even for the bathroom.
At least she didn't seem to want to kill them, any more.
"That's cool," Dean said, passing his own beer can from hand to hand, watching it reflect the moonlight. In the darkness, she was little more then a silhouette, hunched over with her knees drawn up towards her head.
"I was good enough," she said. "I was really good, with chemistry and with physics. That's how I know, about your car."
"Why didn't you?" He kept his voice low, looked out across the lot to the snack shop. Sam had a few candles lit for Dean when he eventually came in. They cast strange shadows through the windows, made Sam's tall form seem leaner and more unearthly as he watched them.
"I." She took a gulp of beer, finishing the can, then dented it with her thumb and crushed it against the pavement. "I got pregnant."
Dean nodded. "Your kids?"
"David and Antonia. David was older, by about seven minutes. I'd show them off, but I don't have any pictures." She folded her arms across her chest again. It was a warm night, but Dean knew that ghosts, even the ones that lived in memories, brought a chill. "It was too hard. Afterwards, I couldn't see their faces without remembering. So I left it all behind."
Dean nodded. "My dad, uh. He was the same way." She lifted her head, and he shrugged, looking down at his beer. "Our mom -- mine and Sam's -- she died when Sam was just a baby. A fire."
"Did he --"
"No." Dean's cheeks tightened, his lips tense. "No, nothing like that. It was, uh. They said it was bad wiring."
"They said."
"Yeah."
"What happened to David and Antonia wasn't bad wiring."
"No."
"Spontaneous human combustion."
"I know."
"We were eating dinner. A late one. Antonia had a game in the afternoon. Field hockey. Her team won. And. I was just. I asked for the gravy. And there was --"
"You don't have to," Dean cut in.
"I want to."
Dean swallowed. He didn't want to hear it, what it was like for her. But maybe he had to. "Yeah. Okay."
"There was a light. Like nothing I'd ever seen. It didn't come in the windows or from the chandelier or anything, it was just there. And I couldn't see anything, but I felt this heat and I saw him, his face, his mouth open like he was shouting for something and then they started screaming."
There was a sharp crackle of aluminum and a pain in Dean's palm. He'd crumpled his beer can. He coughed, then threw it out across the lot, listening to it clack as it hit.
"You shouldn't do that. You should recycle it."
"Who's left to care?"
"Just because the world's half-dead doesn't mean we get to kill it the rest of the way."
Dean shook his hand out. The aluminum hadn't cut him. He pushed himself to his feet. "Whatever. We should get some sleep."
"I'm not going in there."
Dean nodded, looking up at the sky. There were more stars there than he remembered ever seeing before, even in the most remote parts of the country. Dean thought about the stories of dead souls becoming stars. "Yeah," he said. His voice rasped in his own ears. "I know."
* * *
April slept in her car. Sam had to admit, that impressed him. Beetles weren't exactly known for being spacious, and while she certainly was no Amazon, she wasn't exactly petite, either. But she'd insisted, so Sam watched as she and Dean pushed the car around to the other side of the building, where it wouldn't be visible from the road. Dean came back in briefly for a large bag of rock salt, then returned with the bag still full. Sam raised his eyebrows.
"She wouldn't let me," Dean said by way of explanation. "I'm not sure what she's thinking."
Sam could guess. The woman, as far as he could tell, had had no interaction with the supernatural before. Scientists could be the easiest to convince, but only when there was direct, observable evidence in front of them.
He didn't like her staying there, and said as much as Dean settled himself down on the flattened cardboard boxes he'd set up in the back corner to serve as his mattress. Dean pulled off his goggles, setting them close at hand, and lay back, one hand between the back of his head and the folded leather jacket.
"Not like she's got anywhere else to go," Dean pointed out.
"She tried to kill you."
"She's more interested in killing you."
"I can handle a bullet."
"We don't know that."
Sam sighed, sitting up against the ATM near Dean's head, one knee pulled up, his hands folded over it. "We know I'd probably take it better than you," he said.
Dean grunted and shut his eyes, as though that could put an end to the conversation. And normally, it might. For all the time they'd spent together recently, they spent very, very little of it just talking.
"Dean."
Dean grunted again, half-questioning.
"She's scared of me."
"Scared of both of us."
"She had a beer with you. She won't go near me."
"You're pretty freaky."
"The kids at the school were scared of me, too."
"Mmm." It wasn't a confirmation, but it wasn't a denial, either.
"Dean."
"What, Sammy?"
"What happened?"
Dean opened his eyes, frowning up at Sam in the candle light. Sam refolded his hands across his knee with an awkward shrug.
"I mean, to everything."
"You don't remember." It wasn't entirely a question. Wasn't entirely a statement.
"No. I mean, sort of, but." He leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands and closing his eyes, wishing he could sleep. Wishing he knew if he could shut himself off without disappearing completely. He breathed. His heart beat. But he wasn't sure he was alive, any more.
"We were in Florida. Jacksonville." Dean said. Sam could feel him watching him. He nodded.
"I remember that."
"Ruby showed up."
He remembered that, too. Ruby, looking as pissed as she had when she found out they'd lost the Colt. As pissed as she'd been when she made them watch the news broadcast about the jail in Colorado. He couldn't remember what she'd been pissed about.
"She, uh." He heard Dean shift. "She wasn't alone."
"Lilith?"
"I guess."
"Then what?"
"I don't know. We were penned in. There was a bunch of them. And the girl. Lilith's a kid, you remember that, right?"
Sam nodded, and though he wasn't sure if Dean could see him do it, Dean went on.
"The kid's eyes went white. And so did everything else. You shouted my name."
"It was hot."
"Yeah. I don't know what happened after that. Just, awhile later, the demons were gone. And so were most of the people. And you were. . . ."
Sam remembered that. Remembered Dean, curled against a wall, covered in white powder, staring at him. Remembered trying to ask what was wrong, remembered Dean reaching out to him and reaching through him. Remembered standing in a bathroom, staring into a mirror, and seeing someone else reflected back at him, simply because he didn't want to be "Sam", anymore.
"Yeah," he said, his voice strangled by a tightening in his throat that he couldn't quite feel.
"Hey." Dean's hand landed on his shin, and Sam opened his eyes, looking down at his brother. Dean gave his shin a small squeeze. "We're alive, dude. You and me. Whatever else is happening, that's still what's important. We -- you just -- adapted. That's all."
Sam nodded slowly, though he didn't believe it. Didn't believe that Dean believed it. "Get some sleep, dude. You've got a crazy chick in a fuckin' Beetle to deal with, tomorrow."
Dean huffed a laugh, smiled without humor. "Yeah. She fuckin' criticized my steam engine, too."
"That bitch," Sam said softly. "Only I'm allowed to do that."
"Damn straight," Dean replied, just as softly. He shifted again, rolling onto his side, the hand not on Sam's shin still tucked under his head. "You stickin' around?"
"Yeah, dude." Sam slid his foot over a few inches and watched as Dean shifted again, laying the side of his head on the toe of Sam's sneaker. Sam closed his eyes and concentrated on making the sneaker, along with his foot, larger and softer, and Dean mumbled a soft thanks.
Feet weren't great pillows. But they beat the hell out of pistols.
* * *
April was more willing to listen, the next morning. More willing to accept what Dean could do without as many questions. They ate cold pop-tarts for breakfast, sitting against her Beetle, while Sam hung back, out of sight. They discussed the probability of being able to adapt her biodiesel engine to run on beer and wine, which mostly got slightly hysterical laughter out of her, and a broad grin in return out of Dean. After breakfast, she offered to help him out a bit with his steam engine, and they tried to work out the best ways to balance the needs for efficiency and power, what fuels would burn the best and the longest. April's expression got more and more bemused with each of Dean's suggestions and theories, and downright bewildered at the handful of notes he showed her.
"It's basic mechanics, right?" Dean shoved his hands in his pockets, frowning at her expression. "All this crap has been figured out before."
"Do you actually have any idea how a steam engine works?"
"Mostly."
She stared at him, shaking her head, then turned to look over what he'd done so far. "You're some kind of mechanical genius, you know that? And you're working on a steam engine. For all I know, you could build a nuclear reactor out of duct tape and paper clips. And you're working on a technology that was perfected in 1914."
"You done?"
"No! You're building a damned Stanley Steamer out of an orchestra pit."
"The steam's gotta come out through something."
At which point, April threw her hands into the air with a huff of frustration and stormed off.
* * *
"Nuclear power is basically giant steam engines using radioactive material for heat," Sam pointed out when Dean came into the shop for some water.
"Can it, Sammy."
"I'm just saying."
"Yeah, well. Don't tell her that."
Sam wasn't going to. Sam didn't plan on telling April much of anything.
* * *
The trouble was, where Dean's education in mechanics was entirely hands on, April's was almost entirely theoretical. So while Dean just knew he could make it work eventually, April had to make all the numbers and charts and math and previous knowledge match up. She just couldn't explain how Dean was managing to slap this thing together on the fly.
Of course she also couldn't explain the spontaneous combustion of her children at the dinner table, burned up from the inside, leaving behind white powdered ash and not a hint of a scorch mark. But she didn't say it, and he didn't call her on it. He just shrugged, when she finally made her way back from her sulk, offered her a bottle of water, and said "I think I can make it work."
She gave a very small nod and wiped at her forehead.
"Well. Think your weird science can distill me some vegetable oil from some bags of corn chips?"
"Either that or some seriously horrible moonshine," Dean said, still holding out the water.
She nodded and took the bottle. "Ethanol. Even better. Guess we've got work to do."
* * *
Sam resented April. He resented that she and Dean could stand outside, leaning over their cars and talking shop, but that if he tried to join them, she might panic and hurt Dean. He resented that it took her showing up to get Dean really talking about things that mattered again. He resented that she looked at the caterpillar treads, so far still only operational in concept, and called them "genius". He resented that she and Dean could laugh, when he and Dean hadn't been able to since Jacksonville.
But he stayed out of their way. Kept back and only watched. And hoped she'd leave, soon.
* * *
The still was mostly successful, though the first batch of "fuel" they got from it refused to burn. It took two weeks to construct, two weeks of Dean sleeping on his pallet in the snack shop and April sleeping in her Beetle behind the building. Dean kept offering to circle it with salt, but April continued to refuse. She could handle the steam engine and the still, but only barely, she said. She couldn't handle ghosts that were afraid of condiments.
It was early September when April decided she wanted to try their latest batch of "fuel" in her car. Dean tried to talk her out of it, and Sam wondered if maybe he was starting to grow attached to her. If he wasn't enough company for his outgoing, gregarious brother. If Dean wanted to sleep with her. She was the only other person they'd seen since the school -- no one else had come trundling down the road. Even the wildlife they only encountered in brief snatches: a hint of movement in the trees, a squirrel making a hasty run across the road before vanishing into the bushes. It had been five months since Jacksonville, when the world as they'd known it had ended, and Sam knew that he, for one, was getting very lonely. April was willing to let him closer, these days, but still refused to look at him or talk to him. He could come out of the snack shop, but couldn't cross the pavement to where she and Dean were working. Close enough to hear their conversations, but not close enough to join in.
He was sitting on the hood of the Impala, looking through a couple of their old books while she poured the modified corn oil into the Beetle's gas tank, thinking that at least once she'd gone, he and Dean could get to a long overdue cleaning of their weaponry. The air was cooler than it had been, and Dean had his leather jacket on over his t-shirt and his goggles over his eyes against the still-bright sunlight, and Sam couldn't tell what he was thinking. It seemed to be getting harder to tell even without the goggles, these days.
"Where are you going to go?" Dean asked April.
"I've got -- I had -- some relatives in Virginia. My cousin, his family. I have to see if they made it through.
Dean nodded. "I'd tell you to call me and let me know, but, uh."
"Yeah. Think it's gonna be a little while before we have enough infrastructure for even a mail service." She finished fueling the car and straightened. "I guess I'm never going to see you again."
Dean shrugged. "Dunno. I've known weirder shit to happen."
"Like your steam engine."
"Don't knock the steam engine."
She laughed softly, and suddenly pulled Dean into a hug. Sam winced, his fingers tightening on the pages of his book until the paper started to tear. He took a deep breath, smelled nothing, and willed himself to calm down. Dean hugged her back, just for a moment, then stepped away, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
"Be careful," he said.
"You, too." She flashed him a small grin, then turned and suddenly looked right at Sam. Sam stiffened. Her mouth was tight, but she raised one hand in what might have been a wave. "And you, Sam."
It was the first words she'd said to him since she'd cursed him out on the side of the highway. She didn't seem sure whether or not she meant it, but Sam nodded back, careful to keep his anger and resentment off his face. She wasn't a bad person, he knew that. She was scared and she was dealing with the situation they were in in the only way she knew how. He had to respect that, however grudgingly. Lord knew there were worse ways she could have responded.
She reached out to pat Dean on the arm once, then climbed into the car. Dean took several steps backwards, his hands still in his pockets, and watched with a hard expression as she spent a few moments adjusting various things in the car, then raised her keys in a jingling wave and lowered them to the ignition. There was a churning chug, an electronic *ding* warning her to put on her seatbelt, and then a firm growl.
And then the Beetle exploded.