Chapter 4 Parameters


Camp Chiaqua, Michigan

Bobby's office had been a parlour, of sorts, with a small, tiled fireplace and a graceful bay window. Now, it was wall-to-wall bookshelves, with a couple of armchairs in front of the fire, a sofa under the window and a big desk, covered in books, papers, notes, journals, two monitors, keyboards and mice, filing baskets and a couple of glass jars filled with the black fine-point biros he preferred to use for his notes.

Ellen, Jo and Rufus sat on the sofa. Tim, his fractured arm held in a sling to keep it still, sat in one armchair, Maurice in the other. Bobby was behind his desk and Cas, Rona, Chuck, and Dean leaned against the shelves, desk and the backs of the armchairs.

Bobby looked around the room at the faces of the men and women there. All hard, all experienced hunters. He sighed. Hadn't seen so many of them all together since the roadhouse, he thought tiredly. And whenever hunters were gathered in force, it wasn't a sign of anything good.

The door opened and Boze walked in, ushering Alex ahead of him. Bobby glanced at Dean and saw his slight nod. He waited until they found somewhere to stand, and looked at Ellen.

"Alright, Ellen, tell us."

"I can give you the background, but you'll need to speak to Hank. He was there," Ellen said, looking around at them. "We picked up maybe ten people and were heading through Kansas when we ran into them – over two hundred people, all walking, chained together –" Her lips thinned and her gaze cut away for a moment. When she looked back, her face was smooth and expressionless, whatever memory she'd had of that day shoved somewhere else.

"There were twenty guards there, spread out along the lines of people, and we thought they were all possessed, at first. Turns out they weren't, just doing the jobs they'd been given –"

"Given by who?" Bobby asked, a deep frown drawing the bushy, ginger brows together.

"The devil, I guess," Ellen said, looking at him. "We got one of the human guards alive, and he told us that there were a lot of people who were working for the demons – oh yeah, they knew that there were demons controlling some people – but they weren't, themselves, possessed." She looked down at her hands, folded tightly in her lap. "It took a while to get that straight, but Hank was being moved from Wichita down to Atlanta when we got there, and he said that the structure had been set up for a while. The demons have been looking for people like him, engineers, electricians, tradesmen and women, teachers, nurses, technical people … they're presented with a choice, depending on their skills. Very skilled personnel can walk free, if they agree to do the work. If not, they're possessed. The less-skilled but still useful people are branded and held in camps to work."

She looked at her daughter. "Jo, hon, go get Hank."

Jo nodded and got up, walking to the door.

Dean looked at Ellen. "Alright, fucking unbelievable, but alright. What happened to the rest of the people you found?"

"We'd killed the guards and freed everyone, and we were looking for vehicles, enough to get everyone loaded and moving when we were attacked."

"By what?" Bobby leaned on the desk, looking at her.

"Demons – actually, soldiers mostly, possessed by demons," Ellen said with a slight shrug. "They were in Army vehicles, armoured and armed, and they were dressed in uniforms. I think, at first, a lot of the people thought they were the Army, come to save us," she said, shaking her head. "But when they opened fire, that kind of torpedoed that idea."

"We lost half of them there on the road," she continued, rubbing her fingertips hard over her forehead. "Got the rest under shelter and found a back way out, but there just weren't enough vehicles to bring them all, and there was another attack while we were trying to get out. They had two tanks and … well, the rest didn't make it."

Dean stared at her. Lucifer had been working overtime, he thought disbelievingly. Tapping into Sam's memories of their father's knowledge, looking for people to get the cities – or some of them at least – up and running again. There would be a lot of people who would look the other way, ignoring the reality of their boss and co-workers if it meant going back to the way things had been, even in a small way, he realised slowly. Hitting the bases for vehicles, equipment and weapons was another good idea. A private army would keep the balance of power in his favour, enable him to take people by force … sonofabitch had really had it all planned out.

And he thought wearily, it explained why more than half of the people Ellen and Jo had brought in were kids.

They'd come into the house when the small convoy had stopped, eight adults and twelve kids ranging from a four-year old girl to a thirteen-year old boy; all of them thin, filthy, their hair matted and their clothing torn and worn out and he'd watched them sit down at the table and look at the food on it in complete astonishment, as if it was a mirage. Renee and Alex had been careful about the quantities they'd served out, but there'd been plenty and Michelle, Debbie and Renee had led them upstairs after they'd eaten, to wash, and find them clean, new clothes. Lisa and Father Michael had checked their eyes and teeth when they'd come down, apparently the first things to show malnutrition. The adults, with the exception of Hank, had been collected on the road, none of them branded or chained.

He looked around as the door opened and a tall, thin young man walked in, Jo following him and closing the door behind her.

"Hank, these are the hunters I was telling you about," Ellen stood up. "That's Bobby Singer, Rufus Turner, Dean Winchester, Boze Greenwood, Tim Janklow, Rona Marsh, Maurice Sweeney …" She gestured at the people sitting around the room. Hank nodded to them as his gaze moved from face to face.

"Just tell them what you told us," Ellen shifted to the arm of the sofa as Hank walked over to her.

He looked around uncomfortably, and sat down on the edge of the sofa, chewing on the corner of his lip. "I – uh – I was in Topeka, when the virus started," he said, looking down for a moment. "I mean, everyone's got the same story, right? No idea what was going on? Anyway, after a week, I ran out of food and figured I better get moving, find other people – real people, I mean – and food, or I was going to die, just sitting in my apartment, like a rabbit too scared to leave its burrow."

"I was about halfway to Hays when they came up the road behind me, and I stopped, waving my arms. Dumb, but I thought that the infected people were the only danger, didn't realise that there'd be other … things … that were worse." He looked at his arm and unbuttoned the cuff, rolling up the sleeve slowly. "I didn't know they weren't people, not at first. They said they were rescuing everyone, and I – I just climbed on board. At Hays they picked up another six or seven people, and then we turned around and went back to Wichita."

"When we got there, they stopped being friendly. We drove in and we could see people, a lot of people, with leg-chains, you know, like they have in jails and they told us that they were prisoners, that they'd been let out to help clean up the city." He shook his head. "I mean, I think most of us were uneasy, by the explanation, you know, but not one person asked about it, not one of us. We got to a big park, and a lot of it had been burned out, right down to the ground, and they said, get out. Then they pulled out the guns, and even then, I didn't get what was going on. I looked around and most of the people they'd picked up were like me, with this look – just a blank look on their faces. But a few, maybe four or five, they got it straight away. Two of them broke, started running and they were gunned down before they'd made the edge of the park, and a bunch of people with the chains on came right away to pick up the bodies and carry them away. The others, they hung back, together, and when the first people started getting processed, they attacked a guard."

Watching him, Dean saw his eyes darken with the memory, a shiver run through him.

"They grabbed him and his eyes turned black, jet black, from corner to corner," Hank said slowly. He glanced up at Ellen. "Ellen, uh told me, that was a demon possessing a human, but back then I didn't know what it was. Only that I was looking at evil like I'd never seen before. Like I'd never even imagined before."

"It didn't matter that there were three men on this thing. It tossed them like they were nothing, just like they were dolls and it shot them straight away, before they could get to their feet."

"The rest of us, we just stayed put, just shuffled forward in our lines. At least until they brought out the irons." Hank lifted his arm and Dean saw the brand on the top of the forearm, burned into the skin and muscle, the outline still a deep red, thickened with scar tissue. The design was familiar but he couldn't remember where he'd seen it before.

"What is that?" he asked, looking at Bobby.

Bobby scowled. "Sigil of Lucifer. His Enochian sigil."

Hank looked from one to the other, waiting, and Dean shrugged.

"There was a guy, at the front, he had the black eyes and he laughed at everything. He took down all our details and he – sorted – the people into three groups. I don't know what happened to the other two groups. He asked me if I wanted to work for them, voluntarily and I didn't say anything, hell, I couldn't say anything. I guess he figured that for a no. The next thing he pressed that iron into my arm and I just about dropped from the pain. They did another one on the other arm and that's all I remember of that." He rolled up the other sleeve, and a smaller brand, equally deep and raw-looking marked the skin over the big muscle of the forearm. SLW-15631.

"When I came to, I was on a bus, my arms throbbing like a bitch and my legs chained at the ankle. I had to do about a weeks' labour, moving bodies, mostly, and burning them. Then they put me on a team downtown, working on repairing and rebuilding the buildings that had been destroyed."

"How long did you do that for?" Bobby asked him.

"Two months, I think," Hank said. "A lot of them had to be demolished, they couldn't be rebuilt. They were cleaned out and levelled and left."

"And the power was going?" Dean looked at him.

Hank nodded. "Power was on when we got there. Substation had been fixed and the generators were going. But I overhead the demons saying that only five cities were going to be turned back on. The rest weren't worth the effort."

"Why'd they have you on the road?" Rufus asked, his eyes hooded and dark. Hank looked up at him, spreading his hands helplessly.

"They just said that Wichita was finished, there was work to do in Atlanta," he said diffidently. "A lot of the demons were griping about that, but the key people, the ones who'd actually figured out how to get the power back and what to do about the bodies and the sanitation and turned the water on, that kind of stuff, they all stayed."

Dean glanced at Ellen who widened her eyes slightly at him. Did it mean Lucifer – Sam – was at Atlanta? Or was the devil just being methodical?

"Do you know what the other cities were?" Bobby asked, writing fast on his notebook.

"There was a lot of talk, but I don't know how accurate it was. The most consistently named cities were Atlanta, Austin, Las Vegas and Boulder, in addition to Wichita. That makes sense, mostly. Aside from Atlanta, they're not really huge towns and getting them back into order wouldn't be so hard. I don't know about Vegas, though –"

"Proximity to military bases," Franklin growled from the corner. "There's a helluva lot of ordnance in Nevada."

Rufus nodded, looking at Dean. "I'd agree with that."

Dean looked at Bobby. "Perfect."

"Yeah, well, we better figure out who to send out to pick up our own stash of military gear, if we're going to be facing a war," Bobby said, scratching his brow.

Alex looked at him. "You might want to send out anyone you can spare to destroy what you can't use too."

Tim frowned as he looked at her. "Why?"

Bobby sighed deeply. "'Cause, Lucifer won't just be looking for engineers and power technicians, idjit. He's gonna be looking for pilots, an' anyone who can give him an unbeatable tactical advantage over folks like us who think we can fight him."

Dean ran a hand over his jaw. Bobby was right. Airpower would wipe out any resistance, more efficiently and more effectively than any kind of ground attack. They didn't have enough people to handle that kind of initiative.


"Can we fit them all in?" Dean asked Alex as they walked down the hall.

"If the guys don't mind doubling up in the cabins for a while. We've put bunk beds into two of the bedrooms upstairs, and all the younger children will be in those, the older ones are sharing as well," she said, hurrying a little to keep up with his longer stride. "We'll need to build more housing, but not right away. After the winter should be fine."

"What about the food?"

"Well, the menu might not be too varied, but with more game from the forest, I think we'll be able to go without rationing. We won't have milk, or butter or eggs, in fact we're pretty looking at running out of those now."

"Is that a problem?" He looked down at her, slowing down as he realised she was struggling to keep up with him. "I mean, for the kids?"

"We put up a lot of cheese, and we've got a reasonable store of salted butter." Alex shrugged. "We'll ration that and make sure that the youngest get the most of it. There's calcium in a lot of vegetables as well, so I don't think we'll see rickets or rotten teeth."

"Is there anything you have to do here for the next few days?"

Alex stopped. "Why?"

"We could get to Grand Rapids and back," he said, looking down the hall. "Get what you wanted, or look for it at least. Depending on what we have to avoid, it'll take about five-six hours to drive there, give us a bit more than two days of searching."

"We don't need to search that hard, I know where to find most of the stuff. I used to live there," she said, frowning slightly. "But I can go with Rufus, or Maurice –"

Dean shook his head. "No, we'll take my car, it'll be faster. And if this stuff is important, I'm not sending anyone else out to get it." He lifted an eyebrow. "So, is there anything you need be here for?"

"No."

"We'll leave just before sun-up." He waited for her nod and turned away, heading for the stairs. He'd already worked it out with Bobby and Rufus, both men would be running the show for the time he'd be gone. And Tim, Boze and Ty should have a bit more mobility by the time they got back. Bobby'd been right. They needed to think more proactively about this, both for offence and defence.


The candle flame burned steadily on the nightstand, casting a small pool of golden light around it, enough to see by. His eyes half-closed, Dean could see the gleams outlining Lisa's hair and cheekbone as he slid into her, her face screwing up a little as she lifted her hips to drive him deeper. He ducked his head, his mouth trailing up the soft skin of her neck, knowing the sensitive spots, feeling her shiver as he kissed along them.

She started to move faster, thrusting against her hips against his and he slowed down, shifting his weight slightly to pin her down. It was an unspoken contest between them and he couldn't remember when it had started, only that it been a part of their sex life for the last few weeks, her trying to force him into losing control, and him resisting it. He wasn't sure what it was about, but his instinctive reaction was to counter. He shifted his position slightly again, and slid his hand down between them, seeing her eyes fly open and her lips part.

Over the last eight months, he'd slowly come to realise that in spite having a wide variety of partners in his life, he'd never had just one over any period of time. And the whole ballgame was different, different rules, different expectations, different outcomes. They hadn't talked about it and he wondered if she wasn't satisfied with what they did, if it was leaving her wanting. It wasn't exactly that it had become boring, but the initial highs, the unknown things, he guessed, had faded a bit.

He felt her getting close and started to move faster, long, deep strokes that caught at her breath until she was hitching in small sucked gasps. The deeper tremors that dragged at him, building his need for release, were still well within his control. Abruptly her arms tightened around his shoulders, nails driving into his skin and she was bucking up against him and he smiled inwardly, pounding through tightly swollen spasming muscles that rippled up him and clenched around him. Then he let go.

He wrapped his arm around her as he rolled over, slipping out, Lisa rolling over as well, one arm across his chest and her head nestled into the hollow of his shoulder. He could feel her breathing slow down and settle back to normal.

"How are the new people settling in?" he asked her, tilting his head to look down.

"Fine, I think," Lisa said slowly. "Renee and Michelle sorted out the sleeping arrangements and we've got enough linen and clothing for everyone. One of the guys is a mechanic, so that'll help. And I think Alex said the older guy was a teacher, high school, maybe."

"Good." He nodded slightly. "We're going to need a bigger schoolhouse."

She smiled, her cheek lifting against his skin. "Yeah, nine of the new ones are in grade school."

"Tell Father Michael that if he can get Hank to help him draw up some plans, we'll get the timber from the factory before mid-December."

Lisa looked up him. "You don't want to tell him yourself?"

"I'll be heading out for a few days, first thing," he said. "If he wants it before Christmas, then they'll have to start doing something before I get back."

"Where are you going?" Lisa lifted herself onto her elbow, looking at him, her expression a mix of accusation and concern.

"Over to Grand Rapids."

"Why?"

"See if they have the things we need that we haven't got yet," he answered shortly. "I told Alex we'd do a run before the weather set in and this'll be the last chance."

"Who are you taking with you?"

"Just be me and Alex," he said with a shrug. "It'll be quicker."

"Just you and Alex," she repeated, an edge to her voice. "Why her?"

"Because she knows what we need and where to find it," he said, looking at her more closely. "It's not a weekend getaway, Lise."

"And what if the camp's attacked while you're road-tripping across the state?" she asked tightly.

"Then Bobby and Rufus and everyone else will deal with it," he replied mildly. "Are you worried about the camp, or about me?"

Lisa looked away, the long curtain of her hair hiding her face.

He let the silence stretch out a moment or two, then ran his hand down her arm. "Seriously? You don't trust me?"

"You spend a lot of time with her anyway," she said quietly.

"Yeah, I spend a lot of time with Bobby and Boze as well, for the same reasons, don't tell me you're worried about them too?" he asked, trying to lighten the conversation.

"Doesn't matter," she said stiffly.

For a moment he hesitated, not entirely sure he was understanding the problem. Was this a trust issue, or a jealousy thing?

"It matters to me if you don't trust me," he said slowly, shifting up to lean back against the pillow as he looked at her. "But if this is about something else, I'd like to know."

"No," Lisa said abruptly. "I trust you."

"Then what's the problem?"

She looked down at the covers, and he could see the tension in her back.

"Lise, whatever it is, don't you think it'll help to deal with it?" he asked, a little reluctantly, aware that he was well out of his comfort zone with this stuff. It hadn't really occurred to him before that he was in a relationship, a partnership, of sorts anyway. And that it was his responsibility to at least hold up his end of it.

"The problem is … I don't really know how you feel, Dean," she said finally, sounding as unwilling to voice the words as he was to hear them. "I thought, it seemed like we had more than just sharing a bed, you know?"

He made a noncommittal noise in his throat and she looked at him warily. "Is that all it is? Because if it is, just tell me now, so I don't have to keep wondering."

"Honestly? I don't know what exactly this is," he said, pulling in a deep breath. "This is new territory for me. And it's happening in a situation where I don't have time to think about it or worry about it, it's just too far down the list of priorities."

"Right."

"If you want me to leave, just tell me, I'll go," he said, looking at the set of her jaw. "I know this probably isn't what you want, but it's the best I can do right now."

She drew her legs up, leaning her forehead on her knees. "I don't want you to go."

He closed his eyes, tipping his head back against the bed head. "Then you're going to have to accept that this is all I've got to give."

She didn't respond and he turned his head to look at her. "I'm not looking around for anyone else, if that's what you're worried about, but there's just no way I can do or be any more to you. Not now."

The silence stretched out between them, and he closed his eyes again, not knowing if he should get up and find somewhere else to get the few hours' sleep he needed before he had to go, or if he was supposed to just wait, until she was ready to say something, or move or show some sign that a resolution had been reached.

He realised uneasily that he was wishing he hadn't taken the comfort she'd offered, hadn't given in to the need to feel someone else's warmth and closeness. He had no idea of how he felt about her, other than it was comfortable, and easy and up till tonight, it hadn't demanded that much from him. He didn't have the time or the … whatever it was that the relationship needed, that she obviously needed. He was in the middle of a fucking war, for god's sake, as far as he'd ever been from getting Sam free of the devil, and the latest news hadn't improved any of it.

He felt her movement as the mattress dipped very slightly and looked at her as she lifted her head.

"You're right," she said softly. "It's – it's not fair to expect anything now."

Dean wasn't sure if the feeling that trickled through him was relief or disappointment. It would've been easier, he guessed, if she'd told him to go. He had the feeling that this conversation wasn't over, it'd just been shelved, to some future date when it would rise again, like some bloated, drowned corpse. He didn't think that what he say then would any different to what he'd just told her.

"If this makes it too hard –" he started and her eyes met his as she cut him off.

"No. I don't want to end this, Dean."

He saw her eyes narrow slightly as a thought hit her. "Do you?"

"I don't know," he said, shrugging slightly. "I don't want to have to worry that I'm hurting you. I don't want to feel like there's something I'm not doing right, something that you're missing out on because I can't give it to you." His mouth twisted up to one side. "There are other guys here, Lisa. Guys that can probably make you happier than I can."

"I don't want them." She looked defiantly at him and he let out his breath slowly. "I want you."

"Like this?" He gestured vaguely. "Nothing else?"

"Yeah," she said, unfolding herself and moving tentatively toward him. He shifted back down the pillows until his head was resting on them and held out his arm and she pressed herself against his side. "Yeah, like this, if I can't have anything else."

Turning his head, he blew out the candle beside them, welcoming the darkness that enveloped the room. It wasn't going to improve, he wanted to tell her. It wasn't going to all magically come right again and give them – give him – as chance to explore being in a relationship. This, what was here right now, right here, was all there was ever going to be. But he had the feeling that deep down, Lisa already knew that.


Alex was waiting in the hall when he came down, carrying his boots in one hand, the gear bag, with a dozen weapons, boxes of ammunition, bottles of holy water and canisters of salt weighing it down, in the other. He followed her out through the front door onto the porch and pulled it closed behind him, stopping at the top of the steps to pull on and lace up his boots, glancing at her as she looked south to the lake.

She was wearing jeans, boots, a turtle-neck undershirt, thick flannel over-shirt and a heavy Army coat, padded and covered in pockets, a pair of gloves tucked in one, looking warm enough for the freezing cold darkness. Over her shoulder was a small Army day pack, not full, heavy at the bottom.

"You get a gun and some ammo?" he asked quietly as he got up and picked up the bag.

She nodded, and turned to go down the stairs as he started down them. He'd moved the black car up to the driveway the night before, and he opened the passenger door for her, closing it and going around to the driver's side, slinging the bag onto the back seat.

"Gun in the pack, or your jacket?"

"Pack. Loaded, safety's on," she said, looking through the icy windscreen as he started the engine and flipped the de-icer on.

"Well, shift it to your jacket," he told her. "You might not have all that much time to get it out."

The windscreen cleared reluctantly and he shifted into gear, letting the car rumble slowly up the driveway to the gate. Alex opened her pack and pulled out the blued steel Beretta 9mm automatic she'd been practicing with, double-checked the safety and slid it into the outside pocket of her jacket.

"See you in a few," Dean said to Rona as she waved down to him and opened the gate.

"Stay alive," Rona responded, watching the woods to either of the side of the road as the black car drove through, and closing the gate after them.

"You get any sleep?" Dean flicked a glance at Alex as he turned toward town, the car lurching over the new potholes. In the faint light of the dash, her face looked pale, shadowed around her eyes.

"Yeah, just not much," she admitted. "I went through the street maps of the city, marked out all the places I'm pretty sure will have what we need. Do you think there'll be – anything – living there?"

"No clue," he said with a shrug. "We'll take the back way in but basically your guess is as good as mine."

She nodded again, her gaze on the road in front of them.

"What'd you think of Hank's story?" he asked, curiously. "I mean that people are working for the demons of their own free will."

Alex smiled as she heard the faint outrage in his voice. "Well, it wasn't much of a surprise."

"No? Fuck, I was surprised," he said, his bitterness more overt. Surprised. Shocked. Angry.

He felt her gaze turn to him. "You must know people who'd sell their souls to get their conveniences back?" she said. "I know I do – did."

There was a slight edge to her voice as she corrected herself and he wondered if there was a specific person she'd been thinking of.

"You think that's all it is?"

"Yeah, I don't think there are many in the general population who are genuinely evil," she said, the edge that had been along her words gone now, leaning back against the window. "But there are a lot who are lazy. Or want things the easy way, or what they think is the easy way. People who don't really care much about others. There always have been."

He thought of the people he'd met, in the towns and cities, in the quiet rural stretches, in the desert and mountains. He supposed there had been some who'd been that way inclined.

"You sound cynical."

"No, I have a lot of hope," she said. "But I try not to kid myself that it's all sunshine and rainbows, you know? People haven't changed that much since the coliseum days."

"Mmm."

"You're … you and the others; you're not really soldiers, are you?"

He smiled humourlessly. "No."

"What do you do then? I mean, that thing in the basement, how'd you know?" Her voice was a little unsteady and he wondered how well she was doing with getting past that experience.

"We're hunters," he said, glancing sideways at her. "Before all this, we hunted monsters, the things that live in the dark." He hesitated, partly at the novelty of saying it to someone who wasn't in the life, partly at the realisation that everyone, everyone left alive, was in the life now. "You know, all the monsters your parents told you weren't real."

"What was the –"

"Ghoul," he said. "Not very common, but they hunt in packs, and they can change themselves to look like their last victim, mimic them perfectly."

"Then how'd you know it wasn't me?" she asked, frowning slightly. "How'd you know I'd still be alive, not … eaten?"

"It looked like you, but it wasn't like you," he answered, a little uncomfortably, remembering the coldness in her eyes in the store room. "And I didn't."

"What else is out there?"

"Vampires. Werewolves. Shapeshifters," he said. "A lot of things that are hard to kill and are going to be competing for a much smaller population now."

"How do you kill them?" Alex asked. "I mean, is all the mythology right? Can you kill a vampire with a stake through the heart? Or a werewolf with a silver bullet?"

"What are you, a horror fan?"

"Yeah, well …" she admitted, a little unwillingly. Flicking a sideways look at her, he saw the embarrassed smile he'd heard in her voice.

"Vampires, no. The only way to kill them is decapitation. Most of the lore about them is totally wrong. But werewolves, yeah, a silver bullet to the heart will kill them. And most of the other shapeshifter types as well."

"Other shapeshifter types?"

"Shapeshifters themselves," he elaborated. "Skinwalkers, wraiths –"

"That's – stop. For a second. I might need to approach this is a bit slower," she said, shaking her head. "And you know all this, how?"

"Grew up with it."

"Your parents were hunters too?"

"Yeah." He felt his fingers tighten slightly on the wheel, not wanting to talk about that.

Alex heard his reluctance to discuss that in the single word.

"But these … monsters," she said slowly as another thing occurred to her. "They don't hunt together, they're more lone predators?"

"Yeah," he said, relaxing a little at the shift away from the subject of his family.

"So, the dangers of the croaties, and the demons, that's really a lot worse, isn't it?"

He nodded. "Yeah, especially if Sa-Lucifer's got them outfitting themselves from army bases."

"There's a National Guard base, that the military use too, at Battle Creek," Alex said. "I would guess they'd have a pretty good inventory there."

He turned to look at her, his mouth quirking up to one side. "You would, huh?"

"Well, yeah, it's only another thirty miles from Grand Rapids, and the army have mines that can be set off remotely, don't they?"

"They do," Dean said consideringly. They do indeed, he thought. Mine the roads and the forest between the town and the camp, claymores with concentric kill zones and they could wipe out a ground force coming for them without having to leave the camp or expose themselves at all.

"Not bad," he said, nodding.

"Well, you know, horror isn't the only thing I read."


Camp Chitaqua, Michigan

Ellen wandered through the house slowly, familiarising herself with the layout and the contents. Someone had done a good job of organising everything, she thought, looking through the store-rooms in the basement. Even with the extras she and Jo had brought along, there'd be enough to feed everyone. And keep them warm and clothed, with a bed to sleep in. She walked back up the stairs to the kitchen, closing the door behind her and going to the island counter when she saw that Renee was the only one there.

"It's Renee, isn't it? I'm Ellen," she said. "You've done a good job of getting this outfit on its feet," she said to the younger woman. Renee smiled as she kneaded the dough mix for the day's supply of bread.

"Oh, can't take credit for that," she said, gesturing with a floury hand. "Most of this was Alex's idea, and Dean and Bobby and Rufus have been organising the runs out to the farms for months now, bringing in everything they can find."

Ellen filed that information away without questioning it. When they'd pulled up out the front of the house, it'd been Dean's girlfriend who'd come out to welcome them, and she'd assumed that Lisa had been the driving force behind the camp and its smooth operation. She'd watched her daughter's mouth tighten slightly when that relationship had become apparent.

"How many of the people here can shoot a gun?" she asked now, passing Renee a clean, damp cloth as the dough was tipped back into the bowl to rise. "Or handle themselves in a fight?"

"Well, we all got target shooting 101," Renee said, moving the bowls one by one to the wide, sunny windowsill and covering them with cloths. "And when Tim and Boze and Maurice turned up, we started some – I don't know what you'd call it, like self-defence classes, really. Just learning a few basic moves to disable, or bring an opponent down."

"All the kids have both every day, before and after their school lessons," Renee continued, wiping down the counter and putting the ingredients away as she explained. "Dean and Rufus and Bobby have all been adamant that everyone knows how to load, shoot at close range, break down their weapons and at least understand what it feels like to hit someone, or get hit."

"Not a bad idea," Ellen offered.

Renee nodded. "I agree. We're vulnerable here, to some extent, because there's not many people who really know what they're doing. But we're working on it."

"So what's the structure?"

"Chain of command?" Renee turned from the sink to look at her. "Pretty simple. The hunters have final say over everything. I think that's really just Dean, Bobby and Rufus, but I'm not sure about that. Alex and Chuck and Father Michael manage most of the supplies, our staples and the fresh food and livestock, the school, the machinery on the place so that things keep running. Lisa and Michelle generally handle the older children, chores and so on. Debbie's teaching the younger ones. The rest of us have various responsibilities. I'm more or less in charge of cooking for everyone, and I used to be a nurse, before I got married, so injuries generally come my way."

"And the other areas of responsibility?"

"Cas and Alanna check the perimeter fence every day. Um … the hunters take shifts on the gate tower, it's manned twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Rufus organises the teams for the supply runs now. Bobby handles everything else, from checking the ammunition to spot-checking weapons. But he also spends a lot of time in some kind of research."

She turned to the coffee pot on the counter and reached for a couple of mugs. "Coffee?"

"Always." Ellen walked around to take the mug as Renee filled it.

"The boys, Ben and Duncan, have been doing the firewood for the main house. And both have been learning about the livestock for a few months now."

Ellen listened to her detailing the camp's daily routine and those responsible for seeing it run smoothly. It was a good set up, she thought. She'd have to go and have a long chat with Bobby about her and Jo's involvement, but she thought they, and the people they'd brought in, would be able to fit into the existing framework easily.

"So Alex, she's a hunter?" Ellen asked Renee. She'd never seen or heard of her, but that wasn't exactly unusual. Most hunters kept themselves to themselves, especially since the Wyoming gate had been opened.

"What?" Renee raised her brows quizzically. "No, she owns the camp. Well, she did, before the world crashed down around us. She bought it to turn into a camp for disadvantaged kids, a few months before the virus."

Ellen hid her surprise. The woman's inclusion in the meeting the previous evening had given her the impression that she was someone trusted, someone Bobby or Dean knew well.

"Do you know much about her?"

"Not really," Renee said, carrying her coffee to the clean, scrubbed table and sitting down. "I mean, we're friends, but she doesn't talk much about her past. She was married, she told me that. I don't know what happened to the husband. She said she was hospital for a while, last year, and it changed her outlook. When she saw this place, she bought it on impulse and started to fix it up."

"Lucky for us," Ellen commented mildly, finishing her coffee and setting the cup down.

"Yeah, very lucky. When we got here, there was food and beds and power. It was …," she paused, shaking her head a little. "It was like … coming home. She had everything we needed."

Ellen nodded. She'd felt the same way when they'd walked into the house and seen the dining table, loaded with food. Disbelief. Relief. Hope. All of the above.

"I'd better go talk to Bobby about getting jobs for the rest of us," she said, getting up. "Thanks, you helped fill in the gaps."

"Anytime," Renee smiled. "If you can cook, I'd sure appreciate a hand in that department."

"I can do a mean lasagne," Ellen acknowledged dryly.

"Ha! You're hired."


M-66 S, Michigan

"Where's the first stop?" Dean asked, slowing down to make the turns between the abandoned vehicles that littered the road. They hadn't seen any signs of life, other than wandering cows, sheep and the ubiquitous white-tails along the dried out verges and in the fields.

"Kessler, Inc.," Alex told him, looking at her street map. "It's on Woodworth Street in Northview. Be a right about three miles after we cross the river."

He nodded, watching everything, his mind on high alert. He wondered if he should've brought someone else, Maurice or Jo. Alex wasn't a bad shot, but she wasn't trained for a running fight, or even a standing one, and he suddenly realised that left it all to him.

"Get the pump action from the bag in the back," he said. "Just in case."

Turning in her seat, she leaned over the back and opened the bag, pulling out the gun and zipping the bag back up again. He heard her check the chamber and the load and the soft click of the safety as it went on again. At least she'd remembered everything, he thought.

It was an hour before midday, and the streets were empty, the town abandoned, by the look of it, not long after the virus outbreak. He couldn't see any bodies, either in the wrecks of the cars that lay scattered on the streets, or on the sidewalks and he wondered what that meant. Cannibal croaties or ghouls or citizens who'd all thoughtfully gone to their houses to die, or what?

"What are we looking for here?" he asked, making the right onto Woodworth and seeing the big sign for the factory building a block ahead.

"Surgical equipment," Alex answered tersely. The emptiness of the town was getting on her nerves.

"Is that a must-have?"

"Unless you like being sewn up with a straight needle or using a carving knife to dig out a bullet." She looked behind them, through the rear window, seeing the same emptiness and lack of life. "They do blood and saline bags, IVs, syringes and needles, a lot of stuff. We don't need huge quantities, but having the right stuff means a better chance of survival if someone's injured."

The loading dock was around the back of the building and he pulled around the corner slowly, watching for movement rather than shapes. He backed up to the dock, inside the hangar-sized bay and stopped the engine, leaning over the back of the seat to grab a couple of magazines for his .45 and the machete in its sheath.

"Give me the pump action." He looked at Alex and lifted a brow. "Ready?"

"Sure."

He opened his door, and was out, the door shut and locked, keys in his pocket, pump action held in one hand. On the other side of the car, Alex was slower, but just as smooth, the door locked and her 9mm in her hand as she looked around the shadows of the building.

They climbed the short, narrow flight of stairs to the freight area and Alex stopped and looked around, seeing the sections clearly sign-posted and heading into the first aisle between the walls of stacked, sealed boxes.

She found a rolling cart and started to walk fast down the corridors between the products ready for distribution, her eyes scanning the box labels as she passed. Sutures. Clamps. Scalpels. Syringes. Needles, of different gauges. IV tube. Cannulas. Box after box, none of them large, was packed onto the cart as she went. IV bags. Curved needles. Sterilised dressings. Burn dressings. Pure alcohol. Gloves. Masks. Swabs.

Five or six feet behind her, Dean watched the aisles, the barrel of the shotgun moving lightly from side to side. There was too much for a single trip, she thought unhappily, watching the boxes mount up on the cart. If they could lock the loading dock, they could come back, maybe after winter. None of the products here were perishable.

"Done," she said, pushing the cart back to the edge of the dock. Dean nodded, following her until they reached the stairs, then moving in front, unlocking the car as she levelled the handgun to cover him, her gaze moving slowly from side of the building to the other.

He unloaded the cart into the back seat and shut the door. "C'mon."

Five minutes later, they were driving toward the next location, Michigan State University, taking the small surface streets under the freeway as they drove along the river.


Standing in the quiet and undisturbed library, Dean watched Alex absently as she moved through the stacks, taking books from the shelves, filling the canvas bag they'd brought with them. The books would undoubtedly help, but they needed a doctor. He thought of the set up Hank had detailed in Wichita and wondered when they could hit the city. Not in the next few weeks, he thought sourly.

Moving down to through the levels of the huge university library, they took a combination of basic texts and advanced studies on engineering and construction, mechanics and veterinary science. Dean watched Alex stagger down the stairs, the bag digging into her shoulder, wincing inwardly at the sight. He didn't offer to take it from her. He needed both hands free.

"Is that all we're taking?" he asked as they crossed the sidewalk, glancing back at the library.

She nodded, easing the bag off her shoulder gratefully as he unlocked the car and opened the door. "It's enough for now. We'd need a truck to get everything."

"Where now?"

"Fenix Pharmaceuticals," she said, getting into the car.


It was full dark when they'd finished packing the boxes into the car and he was acutely aware of how easy they were to target, with the engine running and their flashlights moving around in the silent, dark city.

"We done here?"

"Yes, I think so," Alex said, squinting down at the list in her hands as he pulled out.

"So … Battle Creek?"

She nodded, looking around. "Are we safer to try that at night, or in the daylight?"

He'd been wondering that himself. They hadn't seen any life in Grand Rapids. But he'd sensed that there was. It was just keeping out of sight. There was enough room left in the back seat and trunk for a few cases of mines and some ammunition. Even if they were fast, working at nights with lights on would draw any attention to them that was out there.

"Daylight, I think. Lights at night are visible from a long way."

He drove slowly out of the city, finding smaller and smaller roads to bypass the rusting piles of cars that still filled the larger thoroughfares. Once they were clear of the houses, he headed south, pulling off the road after ten miles onto a long, gravel farm road and backing the car into a small clearing in the midst of a copse, back from the road.

"Wake me at midnight," he told her, pushing the shotgun across the seat and shifting along it slightly to lean back into the corner between the seat and door, his head resting against the window.

Alex watched his eyes close and picked up the shotgun, straightening in her seat to be able to see all around the car. She was warm enough now, she thought, but had the feeling by midnight the car would be an ice-box. There were a couple of blankets in the back, thrown over the boxes and bags that filled that seat and she leaned back, hooking them and pulling them across to the front seat, leaving them in a pile in the middle.

Brave new world, she thought with a certain amount of self-mockery, looking down at the gun in her hands. Vampires and ghouls, werewolves and demons, and basically everything she'd ever known, gone. Her neck felt stiff and sore, and she knew it was from the tension of the day, watching and listening and waiting, constantly alert for anything that might mean she would have to use the guns. As much as she'd liked the vicarious thrill of action and horror films and books, she was ready to admit that having it in real life was not so much fun. The few, fragmented memories she had of the farm basement and the creatures she'd glimpsed down there floated just beneath her consciousness. She was aware of them, aware of the constant frisson of fear they generated, keeping it down by will through the day. But the nightmares were hard to deal with, making her afraid sometimes to close her eyes and go to sleep. They got mixed in together with other things in her past and brought her to wakefulness, panting and soaked in sweat and feeling exhausted.

There was only one sliver of memory of her rescue, jolted close to consciousness with pain as he'd carried her to the car, she thought. Just a blink of his face, drawn and hard, blood crusted along three long scratches over one cheek. He was a conundrum, the man sleeping hunched up in the seat next to her. When she'd first seen him, she'd seen a hard-edged man, confident and intolerant of weakness and clearly prepared to do whatever was needed to secure the camp for the people he was leading. He'd broken that impression when he'd taken the bottle back from her, swallowing a mouthful with a one-sided smile.

She'd watched him with the others, after that, trying to see who he was. She still wasn't sure. He trusted only three of the people in camp completely, she thought. Bobby, Rufus and the angel, Cas. Everyone else, even the men he laughed and joked with, even the woman he slept with, seemed to her to be held at arm's length, with a slight wariness that made her wonder why he found it hard to trust them. He took on the overwhelming burden of responsibility for all the people living there, and she could see that he worried about that, about them, all the time, but that responsibility, that worry, chafed at him as well, holding him like a bond when she sensed he wanted to be doing something else, wanted to leave to do something else. But he never gave the slightest hint of what that something else was. She saw it only in contrast to the time and effort he gave to securing the camp, securing the safety of the people under his protection.

He was impatient with adults but relaxed and very tolerant with the children, another puzzle. He didn't seem like the type of man who would settle down and want a family of his own. He listened. That had surprised her a little at first, when she'd noticed it. He listened to everyone, didn't leap to conclusions, didn't make hard and fast decisions about the future until he'd heard others' opinions. And the decisions he made were carefully thought out. It conflicted with her impression of his impatience, that underlying desire to be somewhere else. Self-discipline, she thought absently, staring into the darkness that filled and surrounded the car. A lifetime of it.

The others, most of the others, were easy to read. The hunters were, as a general rule, pragmatists, unsentimental and in many ways, uninvolved with the civilians in their care, seeing a greater picture than just survival, she thought. The talk of the devil – of Lucifer – down in the south had created a surrealism that she wasn't sure how to process. Bobby had told her a little, Rufus a little more. The devil's rising and the demons he commanded walking the land, walking the world. The virus and how it was supposed to subdue mankind, for a next step of sieging Heaven. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, bringing War and Famine, Pestilence and Death to the world and a death match between two archangels to determine the fate of the world. Even for a lapsed Catholic, it was a lot to swallow. But difficult to deny when the evidence lay around them in abundance, the world as it had been gone and nothing was just a matter of survival now, because surviving to see the end of days wasn't such a palatable option either.

Rufus had grinned at her expression when he'd told her about bringing down War. Dean has the Horseman's ring, he'd said, ask him to show it to you. She hadn't.

She and the older hunter had done a lot of miles together over the past few months, up and down and across the county, looking for anything that the camp could use. Rufus was prickly and sardonic, but not with her. He'd filled her in on a lot of the background of the hunters.

"I've seen a lot of shit, crazy, crazy shit, Alex," Rufus had said, driving along on yet another farm run. "But this was … harder to accept."

She'd looked at him. "Because of the religious aspect?"

"Yeah," he'd nodded. "We go along and kill demons and we don't think too much about the other side of that equation."

"Everything in nature, everything in life, has an opposite."

"Exactly," Rufus had said, slapping the wheel in frustration. "But it's easy to forget about it when you don't see it. And it's impossible to credit it when you do."

"You said Castiel was an angel?" She'd looked across at him questioningly.

"He is," Rufus snorted. "You'd think that'd be enough proof, right?"

"Well, yeah."

"Wasn't until we saw War, saw what he did, turning those folks on each other, easy as pie, that I let myself believe that we were really in it. Signs and omens, they're a part and parcel of our lives, but those signs, those omens – hell, they're from fucking Revelations, you can't get any more biblical than that."

"If there's a devil and a Hell, then there must be a God and a Heaven," she'd mused, mostly to herself. He was right. It was hard to get your head around.

"Mmmm … 'cept apparently God's AWOL and the angels aren't cute and fuzzy and here to help."

She'd shaken her head, not knowing what to say to that. "Well, you can't have everything."

He'd said that Dean, and his brother, Sam, were in it up to their eyeballs. Some prophecy about the brothers that meant they were chosen for something. Dean had never mentioned a brother to her, and she wondered why, wondered if it had to do with that need to be gone, to be somewhere else, doing something else.


Camp Chitaqua, Lake Solitude, Michigan

"How the hell are we supposed to figure out what he's doing?" Ellen sat next to Bobby's desk, looking over the files he'd been compiling.

Bobby looked at Franklin, who shrugged. "We've got two options that are possible. We send in spies, and hope that they aren't killed before they can report back."

"And option two?" Ellen asked sourly.

"Take a trip down to Dallas, get the power back on, get NASA's networks running and plug into the military satellites to see it remotely."

"I thought you said they were possible."

"They are possible. They're also just extremely fucking hard to do," Franklin said.

"If he's getting the cities up again, he's planning on a longer-term schedule than we'd figured," Bobby said, looking at the files in front of him. "But we don't even know if he has that time. The arcs are hunting high and low for Dean."

"And if they find him?"

"According to Cas, we're looking at most of the planet being in a fairly unusable state by the time they're finished. That's if Michael wins," Bobby said dryly. "If Lucifer wins, who knows?"

"You make sure you give this to me straight, Bobby." Ellen looked at him, her mouth twisting down. "Don't want it sugar-coated."

Bobby smiled slightly. "That's what we're looking at."

"And this is all going to end up resting on Dean?"

"No, hopefully not," Rufus said from the armchair. "If we can figure a way to shut down what Lucifer's put into place, to get those slaves free, we could probably throw a good-sized wrench into the whole plan."

"A front assault on Atlanta?" Ellen turned to him. "That's what we're looking at?"

"On Wichita first. To take Atlanta we're going to need an army."

Leaning back in her chair, Ellen exhaled audibly. "In case you hadn't noticed, we don't have an army. They do."

"Well, we're gonna have to take it back from them."


Fort Custer, Battle Creek, Michigan

Dean twisted the last pair of wires together, glancing around as he put the mine back on the shelf.

"Ready."

The Impala was parked in the ordnance shed, engine running quietly, the trunk packed with mines and detonators, and several more cases of ammunition for the guns they carried, low down on its rear wheels with the weight. Alex stood on the other side of the car, turning slowly to watch the interior.

The scuff of a boot on the concrete was the only warning they had before the open doorway was filled with soldiers, carrying machine guns and rifles, their shadows reaching across the smooth concrete floor toward them in the early morning light.

Behind them, Dean could hear more movement, and he turned his head slightly, seeing another six men spreading out across the span of the building. He shifted his gaze to Alex. She was standing by the passenger door of the car, gun still pointing at the men who walked closer, her finger tight on the trigger. He couldn't see her face.

"Well, well," the man at the front of the group of soldiers said with a low chuckle. "If it isn't Dean Winchester – and friend. As I live and breathe. What a fucking coincidence!"