A little less conversation: Okay, I like the conversation as much as the next girl, but now – as unhingedintellectual reminds me – time for some ass-whupping. Rated for swearing and some nasty bone-crunching nasty nastiness. Grrr.
Disclamation-nation: Cleverly avoiding lawsuits, BigPink declares boldly that she'll go where no man has gone before...except WB/CW and Eric Kripke and his unholy minions.
Story thus far (just skip over if you don't need it): Dean has dragged a scoffing Sam to Virginia to meet an old family friend, Civil War reenactor and weapons specialist Beau McBean, who tells the brothers that a Confederate ghost and his nasty-assed dog are causing fatal accidents at reenactment events. On the morning of the battle reenactment, Beau's girlfriend, archaeology student Mira Bell-Hopkins, tells the brothers that someone is stealing artifacts from the Fredericksburg dig she's working on. Dean, suspicious of Beau's intentions with Mira, and mindful of Beau's predilection for lifting objects of interest whether they belong to him or not, confronts Beau in the woods immediately before the battle reenactment begins.
--
She was just at the point of spilling her heart out like a drunk fifteen-year-old girl at the junior prom when all hell came to visit earth.
Sam had done nothing to bring on the confessional, but he had, unfortunately, the word 'confidante' printed on his forehead in some secret code only girls understood. They were standing in the middle of mothers and fathers and diapered kids and old bearded men who smelled of last week's laundry and chewing tobacco. This was not, clearly not, a slumber party with a half-mickey of Dad's vodka under the pillow, yet Mira kept talking. And Beau McBean, if Sam remembered correctly, could shoot a bottle off a fencepost at half a mile without even using his gun's sights.
So this was unsettling.
"Ah," Sam stalled. "I'm sorry. You were saying that animals have been disrupting the dig site?"
And she hadn't actually been saying that, she'd been saying how lonely it got, having your boyfriend busy all weekend at reenactments, only to come to your apartment stinking of black powder and sweat, eager to crawl into bed with – and lalalalala, Sam was extremely close to sticking his fingers in his ears and humming 'When the Levee Breaks' as loud as he could.
Mira looked surprised. "Yeah. You and Dean should come by – I'm there most days." She made a face. "God only knows that Beau's not –."
She was interrupted by the very undeniable fact that a cannonball smashed into the dirt not twenty feet away, scattering clods of earth and lawn chairs and – spectacularly – a huge red umbrella advertising Brazilian beer. And a man. A man's body parts, not meant to withstand the impact of a cannonball to the chest, flung chunks of meat dropped into the crowd, spillage from the world's most disturbing piñata.
Then Sam heard the massive, concussive explosion. Lightning then thunder, he thought, at exactly the same time that he pulled Mira to the ground reflexively, like every human in history knew to do when someone is throwing iron balls at you from distances resembling city blocks. Duck and fucking cover. But cover with what? They were in the middle of a field, for god's sake.
Apparently, not everyone was familiar with the 'lie prone in a pasture and kiss your ass goodbye' response to Civil War reenactments gone awry. People were screaming, were running in all directions, some with blood streaming from wounds to their heads and bodies, one man carrying a young child whose arm swung tendonless from the shoulder socket. Sam, who had seen heaps of weirdness in his life, knew to suck in a breath so he'd have some extra oxygen, could keep a clear head. But the air around him seemed devoid of sustenance, like he had a plastic bag wrapped around his head.
Mira raised her face from the ground, blue eyes round. He looked to her, nodded once: I'm here, don't worry. He surveyed the battlefield around them, looked to the ridge, where the Confederate cannons were wreathed in smoke, just at the edge of the woods. They seemed surprisingly far away, but Sam supposed that if he'd been a soldier, they would look too damn close.
He wasn't a soldier, none of them were, but they were getting fired upon nevertheless. Another blast, another bucketing upheaval of earth and blood and bone, this time into the ranks of dark-blue clad Yankee soldiers who stood in groups farther across the farmer's field, not quite ready to march, confused and shouting.
Sam stood up, shouted, waved a family to the far side of the field, away from where the cannon muzzles were trained. Once that family was on its way to safety, he gathered another, guided them to the higher, safer ground. After a moment of this, Mira struggled to her feet, helped him in this task. He recalled thinking that this farmer's field was going to be a furnace today, when in actual fact, it had become a slaughterhouse.
And his next thought was: Dean?
The children and the parents and the old folks, they were imminent, they were right here, and he could help them. He should help them. But as he did so, as he assisted bewildered, sobbing tourists to the higher ground, he kept scanning the woods to where Dean had said he needed a word with Beau, trying not to see the bodies lying on the ground between where he was and where the cannons were and where he hoped Dean was, safe.
--
Dean noticed the dog before he noticed the ghost.
A difficult thing to miss, the dog, considering it came at full-throttle, hitting him like a fanged boulder to the chest. Dean fell onto his back, a yell trapped in his throat, twisting there in unbelievable pain like some kind of creature trying to get out. The dog had a mouthful of his jeans in its jaws, the part alarmingly close to his groin, but thankfully no skin, no meat, and was pulling on it, shaking it back and forth, the bulk of the front pocket taking the brunt of the attack. The dog lessened its grip to get a better bite, and in that instant, Dean rolled away and came to a shaky stand by a tree. He grabbed a rock in the process, and roughly calculated his chances of beaning the dog on the head.
Pretty good, he thought, winding up.
Then he felt how cold it had become, how the sweat on his forehead and across his back had become ice, just plain uncomfortable. The dog halted its advance, foam flecked muzzle snapping, its eyes glowing a bloody sick red. The next two things happened more or less simultaneously: the ghost stepped out from behind a tree not ten paces from Dean, and the screams of people being torn apart by cannonfire reached Dean's ears.
Dean could not afford to take his eyes off the dog and the ghost to find out what was happening on the field just through the trees. Sam, he thought, so hard it hurt. The ghost put his hand on the dog's head, calming the growls for only a moment. The specter was tangible: Dean knew his ghosts same as he knew the Metallica back catalogue, and this one looked like it meant business, was not some dime-store flimsy thing moaning in the attic and shrinking away from the first splash of holy water or muttered Latin.
A young face stared back at Dean, with pale eyes and a soft beard, so thin that the eyes looked hollow. Their eyes met, and Dean suppressed a shudder: what he saw was pure need. He wasn't scared, though, not of a ghost, and not of a dog. His fingers tightened on the rock and every muscle sang with expectation, an electric code vibrating from brain to nerve to muscle to will. The ghost smiled slightly.
Wired for what was in front of him – and shit, wasn't that diverting enough? – Dean didn't hear what was coming behind him until it crashed into him like a freight train. He clutched the rock in his hand, not willing to let go of his only immediate weapon, as a huge man in Confederate gray pushed him to the ground, smashing against his body, driving every molecule of air in his lungs out. Instinctively, Dean rolled, pushing the sheer weight of the man to the side as he did it, looking wildly around for the ghost and the dog while trying without success to make his lungs work.
Damn it, he thought, as the soldier, a glassy crazed look in his eyes, lifted the rifle in his hands and turned it, bayonet down, to where Dean wheezed uselessly on the leaf-soft ground. Not thinking, ignoring his lungs for the moment because they were really the least of his problems, Dean brought his legs up and slammed his feet into the attacking soldier, throwing him back against a tree. He heard the crack of gunfire, close, closer than the cannons which were still going, and another rebel soldier came running past, long blond hair flying as his kepi dropped to the ground. Beau. Dean hauled himself to his knees, forcing his lungs to take in some air.
And Beau brought his rifle up to his shoulder, made it look easy.
Dean turned in the direction of whatever it was that Beau was aiming at, saw the dog coming right at him. Shit, Beau, I hope you're as good a shot as I remember. The dog, once a golden lab, some kid's happy embodiment of unconditional love, seemed bent on sinking its teeth into whatever part of Dean was convenient. Dean braced himself for the dog, and for the shot, which he reckoned would converge on him at the same time.
--
There, there, THERE. Damn it, fucker, stop moving. You think I can't see that rock in your hand? Very funny, asshole. You're not here to play fetch. I'm not that dumb twice. Stop moving, already.
Right there, right there, I can smell it. Oh, I promise, it'll be yours. I can do it. So near, and...
Buttercup wasn't quite sure what to do. Her new master needed it, needed it to feel better, to feel whole, to be himself. There, in that one's pocket. Easy.
So close. Just hold still a second, dumb wiggly fucker.
--
The dog hit him at the same time as the bullet. Luckily, both were a little off.
The bullet passed through the dog's neck, kept going. Whispered past Dean's shoulder at an angle meaningful enough to draw blood, but not to lodge permanently. It ended up in the tree trunk behind him. Which was good, because a soft lead minié ball at this range went in like a needle and came out with a hole the size of a man's fist, obliterating flesh as it went.
A bullet, minié ball or otherwise, wasn't going to stop this dog, though, not today. The dog ricocheted off Dean's chest, yelped, and fell back, blood pouring from its neck, but it shook itself and came again. Dean staggered back on his heels, not even feeling the hit to his shoulder, eyes still on the dog. Beau was yelling something, Dean saw him flail his arms and his mouth might have been moving, but it was all so removed, might as well have been on an old TV set with the volume turned down.
A group of twenty or more soldiers were running through the woods now, and the dog looked around, confused. The soldiers were fighting each other, rifles used as clubs, insanity literally running amok. Dean felt obliged to take his immediate attention off the dog as another soldier, eyes the same glassy non-compliant way Dean was coming to associate with getting his ass kicked, raised his rifle butt-first, intending perhaps to slam it into Dean's face.
Oh, enough of this shit already. Dean reached up to meet the gun halfway, pulled himself up on it, coming to his feet in one smooth motion, stepping out of the way, taking the gun easily out of the soldier's hands. In the same move, he pivoted and brought the gun's stock down on the man's temple hard enough to knock him out. Turning, he found Beau beside him, eyes dancing, fully into period rush and Dean thought he might just shoot Beau himself.
Tiny Tim and big Riddicker burst into the underbrush, and they were shouting too, had their muskets primed and at the ready. As Dean watched, Riddicker shot the dog again. Dean actually saw the bullet hit the dog on the shoulder, but it was snarling madly, foamed and bloody and fucking unstoppable. It leapt at Tim, who was slow bringing up his gun. Dean despaired, knowing that this dog was not going to be stopped by ordinary bullets. It buried its teeth into Tim's throat, an enormous, appalling gush of red following, splashing down the era-appropriate threads, so surreal Dean had to blink the sweat out of his eyes. Tim's scream choked into the garbled noise a live pig might make as it was thrown into a wood-chipper.
The dog flashed away, covered in blood now, parted the astonished men and the haze of cannon smoke, heading deeper into the woods. The day was hot again, Dean realized, and he was drenched in sweat and his head was swimming.
Beau was shouting something next to Riddicker, both of them bent to Tim's still body on the forest floor, but Dean had trouble hearing them, his ears still ringing from the close gunfire, his nostrils filled with the sharp odor of sulfur and flame. He thought the cannons might have stopped. The ghost and the dog were gone, and the soldiers around them were resting – oh, those were the ones he and Beau had taken on, so 'resting' was maybe a nice way of saying 'beaten unconscious' – while the others looked blankly around, just starting to come back to themselves.
The ringing helped disguise the screams coming from the field, but Dean could only ignore that for so long.
--
Several men from the 22nd handed in their guns that night. Sam watched them under the police lights, weirdly noble, the Lost Cause once again bowing to superior numbers. The clean-up had been going on for hours now, and the whole thing was such a total mess that the real army had been called in and now the field was cordoned off with miles of yellow tape, investigators combing the ground for indications of how the hell this had gone wrong.
In the aftermath, a few scenes played out memorably: General Lee with bandage round his head, thrown from his horse in the confusion; southern belles in ersatz sateen streaked with blood, staggering about like a gaggle of Scarlett O'Haras after the burning of Atlanta; a horse running riderless through the hazy smoke, sweat dripping from its flanks, several US Army soldiers running after it, one with a lasso. No one had been arrested yet, but that was only a matter of time. The event organizers were openly weeping, and one of them had to be sedated and taken to hospital. CNN had arrived. It was time to go.
Five dead, four from cannonfire, one from a dog attack. Thirty people hospitalized. At least fifty treated at the scene by paramedics. One of them Dean, who had remained silent and aloof while the paramedic had sewn up his shoulder. The paramedic was so rattled that he'd made a mess of it, had to actually take out his first few stitches and start again, and Sam had almost volunteered to do it for him. Dean had said almost nothing. Throughout the course of the afternoon and into the early evening, Dean had retreated into a rare but recognizable mood: he was ready to get down to business, and he'd gone to that hard and unforgiving place he'd cultivated for just these sorts of situations.
Sam wasn't far behind him. If the ghost had caused this mass hallucinatory event – and Sam had no doubt now that it had – then Sam wanted it stopped. They needed to find its bones and burn the shit out of them, and he had a pretty good idea of where to start. That kind of knowledge was the best gift he could give his brother right now.
"C'mon, Dean," Sam said, sick of watching Dean pace the taped field's perimeter, tired of this day, just wanting to go back to the motel. A swim. God, a swim would do him a world of good.
They walked back to the parking lot, dark and difficult to negotiate because of all the emergency vehicles and news network vans parked randomly around it, and Sam couldn't for the life of him remember where they'd left the Impala, because that had been, like, a lifetime ago. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Dean stumbling a little and he knew that his brother was sore and tired and would thump Sam if he mentioned it. Suddenly, Dean was standing beside the Impala, which had appeared as though whistled for.
Dean went to the trunk, and Sam knew this wasn't a good sign, meant that Dean was searching for the first aid kit, probably for some kind of painkiller, which he would never admit to Sam. Despite Dean always listening to Sam, he rarely told Sam anything, the exchange so lopsided it could make Sam grin. The situation demanded that Sam step up to the plate, that he make the notion of 'help' palatable enough that Dean would accept it.
"Keys?" Sam called out, instead of pointing out how bushed Dean was, which was kinda like pointing out how bushed Dean was. Sam stood by the driver's door, his intentions obvious. Dean stopped rummaging, turned to him. In the darkness, Sam couldn't make out his expression.
Then Dean threw the keys over the open trunk to Sam, who immediately dropped them, having half-expected Dean to refuse. A capitulation of sorts, letting Sam drive, a tacit admission that he was hurting. Bending down to retrieve the small bundle of keys, Sam heard the growl. He almost sighed. Of course. Why not.
--
She'd eaten a human hand today. First for everything. It wasn't much more exciting than frogs, but it had been warm, which frogs certainly weren't. Also, frogs tasted like mud and the hand – once she'd gotten past the crunchiness of the cartilage, so much less tasty than bone – was more like a hotdog, which she vaguely remembered.
She had some holes in her now that she hadn't had before, but they weren't bothering her too much, were only somewhat distracting – itchy – but they weren't going to put her off her mission.
Her master bent down beside her and whispered in her ear. She never understood a damn word he said but she recognized the notions of smell and hunger well enough, which lay behind the words.
So fuck it, here she was again with her master, trying to get that wiggly, tricky one to give it up. The bigger one was afraid of her – she retained that from the other night – but the wiggly one would kill her, if she let him.
And then came the confusing part. The wiggly one didn't have it. Not anymore. But it was near, it was close, so she circled around the cars – and they would have been a distraction, if they'd been moving, very enticing, like big noisy squirrels – and her master came with her, silent on his feet.
Got it back in focus. Excellent. There. Drop it, asshole.
--
"Dean," Sam warned, low in his throat. He'd heard about the dog today, had seen what it had done to Beau's friend Tim; it was why the Parks Boards' animal control truck was in the lot this evening.
Dean was already moving, maybe he'd seen the glowing eyes emerge from between two parked cars, or maybe he'd heard the growl, Sam didn't know which. What was important was that he had the trunk open and he could hear the distinctive sound of the salt gun being loaded.
"Salt?" Sam asked softly, trying not to doubt Dean. It rarely did him any good, doubting Dean. He stood slowly, keys in his hand, unlocked the door. Driver's door open, passenger side not. If push came to shove, Dean could jump in the trunk and Sam could drive off, which was such a fucking stupid possibility that he almost laughed out loud. The dog whined in the dark and Sam shook his head. It had killed a man today, been shot twice, and it had a ghost beside it. Not your average dog.
Dean didn't answer him. Instead, he circled round the side of the car, trying to get a good line on the dog, Sam thought. The dog was crawling forward, almost cat-like, hunched down, coming right for Sam, growling, hair spiky with dried blood. Sam held his arms away from his sides, the keys jangling in the night, and he watched in amazement as both the dog and the ghost followed the movement.
Just a moment, and then the loud blast of a shotgun as Dean fired a load of salt right into the ghost, not the dog. The rebel ghost disintegrated immediately, dissipated like the smoke from the cannons, and Sam could hear the splatter of rock salt pinging against the cars in the lot. Dean was standing steady, already pulling the gun down and throwing it back into the trunk, slamming it shut with a curse. When Sam looked back to where the ghost and dog had been, there was only darkness. That and distant shouting. The Army was just over the ridge. Like they wouldn't jump when they heard gunfire.
"Sammy, if you've figured out what's going on, I'd be happy as shit for you to tell me, but let's do it in a moving car, okay?"
Once they were out onto the highway heading for the motel, Sam felt that maybe the cops and the US Army hadn't followed them. He was driving faster than usual, but not as fast as Dean usually did, so he wasn't surprised when his brother cleared his throat and drummed his fingers on the console between them. Hurry up, Sam, it meant.
"Why's the dog going for us?" Sam asked, not expecting an answer, just putting it out there.
"Dog's not just going for us," Dean mumbled.
"How do we stop it?" He had some ideas, but wanted to hear what Dean was thinking first. Because Sam knew that dog was after them, felt it in the steady malicious gaze of the beast, didn't need Dean to lie to him.
His brother was quiet for a few moments, watching highway signage flash by in blurs of green and phosphorus. "Dog's been possessed by the ghost. Bet it used to be some family's mutt, must have met up with..."
"Dug up its grave," Sam turned to Dean, quickly. He liked to keep his eyes on the road mostly, and it was usually easier talking to Dean when he didn't have to look at him, but this was important.
"What?"
"Betcha that dog dug up the soldier's grave," he clarified. He was pretty sure of it. He was sure of something else, too. "And I bet that it's got something to do with the archaeology dig on Marye's Heights."
"Yeah?" And despite what they'd just been through today, this was nice, having Dean all surprised, because his brother would usually prefer to chew off his own tongue than show any sort of lack in his body of knowledge, especially where ghosts and Sam were concerned.
"Mira said that an animal had been in the dig the day before they'd discovered a bunch of human remains – old remains, Civil War remains, just behind the stone fence by the sunken road. And only a few days before this all started at the Spotsylvania reenactment."
Sam concentrated on the road, but it was sweet, imagining Dean's face then.
After a few road signs and their turn-off for the Gray & Blue Motor Inn, Dean sighed. "I need to make a bullet," he said, as though that was something he did regularly, like getting a tetanus shot. "Fill it with holy water. That'll do it."
Sam turned off the engine, sat still for a moment, fatigue washing over him. "You know how to do that?"
And Dean grinned, bringing considerable cocky charm to the assurance, "I know how to do that."
TBC
And, bringing up the rear: We have new people to thank in my seemingly endless litany of thank yous...jmm001, for her Evil Eye of Character Continuity, and Eric the Civil War Reenactor, with whom my intrepid beta Lemmypie has struck up a massively productive email correspondence. So, you know? This shit is the bomb. You're getting the good stuff now. And that being said, I'm fairly sure Eric would be appalled at what I've done with the nice reenactment event in this story. Sorry.