Chapter Four

They made it back to Great Falls before Baby's engine began to splutter; Dean managed to find an unlimited park before she gave one last juddering choke, and stalled.

"What's wrong with the car?" Sam asked anxiously.

"Same thing that's wrong with me," Dean answered gloomily, "She's hungry." He tapped at the fuel gauge, knowing as he did so that there was nothing wrong with the sensor. "She aint goin' anywhere else until I can fill her tank again. Damn, I never let the tank run empty, you can get all sorts of crap getting through the line, even if you regularly drain it and clean it out..."

Sam got out, and looked around. "There," he pointed at a bus stop shelter, then headed for it. "Here we go. Map."

"What are we lookin' for?" Dean asked.

"Library," Sam replied – just saying the word out loud seeming to put more confidence into his demeanour. "Somewhere in this town is a public library, where we can charge our cells and this laptop. These days most libraries have wifi, or at the very least a limited data service. I'll send Bobby an email, we re-establish comms, brief him on what's happened, and plan from there."

"Attaboy Sammy," Dean grinned, "There's a reason he wants you to take over when he retires."

"No he doesn't," Sam muttered, his face pinking slightly.

"Yeah he does," Dean insisted, "It's called 'succession planning'. Every successful organisation must have strategies in place to ensure a seamless transition when members of senior management leave, to ensure retention of business knowledge and avoid loss of corporate memory..."

Sam stared at his brother. "Where the fuck did that bit of jargon come from?"

Dean's face darkened. "Bobby made me sit through the corporate restructuring briefing," he griped.

"Dean, everybody had to sit through the corporate restructure briefing," Sam reminded him.

"He made me sit through it again!" Dean practically pouted. "Twice!"

"Well, you should've taken it more seriously first time around," Sam told him a little primly.

"How the fuck am I supposed to take that sort of thing seriously?" Dean asked the uncaring universe, "What difference is it gonna make to the way I do my job, huh? Will it make black dogs easier to kill? Will it help me identify a rugaru? Noooooo, some bean-counter comes to talk to us about the way the chairs are gonna be re-arranged in the bigwigs' boardroom, and..."

"The restructuring of the Senior Leadership Team is actually a big deal," Sam interrupted, "And if you'd paid attention, you'd know that! It brings FOOCER under the aegis of..."

"I did pay attention!" Dean cut in, "I even offered to join the group who would brief everybody on the changes! I put my hand up to be a Change Champion, Sam! Just like you! I was willing to do my bit for the organisation of the organisation!"

"Yeah, you were," Sam agreed, "And what a triumph that turned out to be."

"It's not my fault if they wouldn't take me seriously," Dean complained snippily.

"Dean, they wouldn't take you seriously because you wouldn't take the whole process seriously!" Sam snapped back.

"I did so," Dean said sulkily, "I turned up to the Change Champion workshop and everything!"

"Well, maybe you might've been taken more seriously if you'd tried to be a bit more professional about it," suggested Sam.

"I was!" Dean insisted, "I was on time and everything!"

Dean, you turned up wearing a suit of armour!"

"Yeah, I was gonna be somebody's champion, that's how you do it."

"Seriously, I still haven't gotten an adequate answer out of you, what the fuck possessed you to turn up in chainmail?"

"Well, you'd have pulled the mother of all Bitchfaces if I'd worn a cape with my shorts over my pants and called myself Captain Corporate..."

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose, visibly reining in his temper. "Okay, let's see... yeah, there. It's just a couple of streets from here. Let's go."

They headed back to the car, where it became apparent that a vital item was missing.

"Where's the damned wall socket charger?" complained Sam, ratting through the glove compartment, "The charger should be in here! With my power bank! Oh, God, I miss my power bank..."

"We could look in the trunk," Dean shrugged, moving to the rear of the car and opening it. "There might be some... holy crap."

"What?" Sam left of his futile search and joined his brother. "Why do you say... oh. That's... that's..."

Two battered duffel bags, scuffed and repaired, and stuffed completely full, were jammed into the trunk.

"Are they... Sammy, are those ours?" asked Dean in a dazed tone.

"Uh, well, they look like ours," Sam said uncertainly, "I mean, they look like what ours would look like, if you aged them another twenty years and occasionally ran them over with a tracked vehicle, maybe."

"If they're ours... why are they so full?" Dean paused, then went to unzip one of the completely full duffels. "Shit, there's... Sam, this is like I'm carrying my whole life around in this thing!" He unzipped the other one. "And that is definitely yours."

"Let me check," said Sam.

"No need, bro." Despite the baffling circumstances, Dean managed to find a small grin as he reached into his brother's bag and withdrew a bottle of shampoo. "This is definitely yours."

Sam snatched it away from his brother. "Okay, if I wasn't before, I am, of this moment, officially weirded out," he announced, "Why the hell are we in your car, with large quantities of our belongings in our duffels as if we've, we've, we've run away from home or something?"

"I don't know, Sam," Dean replied quietly, "But we'll figure it out."

Sam glared at 'his' bag, and then began to rummage around down the side of the tightly packed contents. "Well, if it is 'mine', there should be... aha!" With a triumphant flourish he pulled a charger from the bag. "Right, let's go and get re-connected to the rest of the world."

"We can't leave Jimi the big-ass dog by himself in the car," Dean protested.

"Well, he'll have to come with us, and wait outside," replied Sam.

"He might not like that," Dean murmured.

"Well, you can't bring dogs into a public library," Sam stated, "So he doesn't have a choice. We won't be long."

"Yeah, but..." as he spoke, Dean's eye fell on something tucked behind one of the duffels. He pulled it out, and inspected it. Then he turned to his brother, and smiled.

...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...

Cathy was just starting up the public access terminals as the first visitors of the day arrived. There were a few regulars, but also a couple of newcomers, two guys who looked slightly scruffy, as if they'd been sleeping rough for a couple of days. But they were polite, and the slightly shorter one gave her a smile that made her wish she was ten years younger.

One of her more curmudgeonly regulars who came in every morning to read the papers and compose rude letters to the editors shot them a pointed glare, but she just smiled pleasantly, and asked to see the accreditation. Satisfied that all was in order, she directed them to the study desks and the terminals, then gave Mr Bullen an expression best described as The Librarian Stare Of Doom, because nobody was going to make trouble for a veteran and his PTSD support service dog on her watch.

...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...

"I'm not happy about the thing with the dog," Sam muttered, eyes on the monitor as he typed. "It's fraudulent. And do NOT get me started on the moral atrocity of impersonating a veteran. There's a term for that. Stolen valor. Well, that's the polite term..."

"Granted, it's not ideal," Dean agreed, "But under the circumstances, it was absolutely necessary. You can't just leave a dog in the car and walk away on a warm day, that sort of thing attracts attention. Law enforcement attention. And... I think it might be best if we don't attract attention until we figure out what's goin' on. Anyway, we're not usin' him to gain any sort of advantage, we just don't want to leave him alone. This is clearly something he's done before." Jimi the big-ass dog was obviously accustomed to his service dog vest and harness; carefully tucked in with it had been half a dozen different service dog accreditation cards, each a fake as high quality as the licences in their wallets. "Next time, I'll use a different accreditation. How do you feel about an Emergency Services PTSD service dog?"

"Frankly, not a whole lot better... damn it!" Sam scowled at the screen.

"What?"

"It keeps bouncing. I can't get onto the internal network from an unsecured public system – well, actually, I could, but Charlie would kill me..."

"Incur not the wrath of Her Supremacy The Great Queen Sys-Op," Dean intoned ominously.

"...So I'm trying to use his unsecured address, and it keeps bouncing," Sam humphed.

"Can't say I'm completely surprised," Dean shrugged, "Since the security upgrade on the intranet it's hard enough to send a message to the other end of the building – trying to get a message through from outside, well, your electrons will just be bangin' their heads against the direwall until they get headaches."

"The term is 'firewall', Dean."

"Nuh-uh. At our office, we got a direwall. As in, if you try to get around it, the rage of The Great Queen Sys-Op will rain down upon you, and the consequences will be dire – you will be spend the next six months on dial-up speed with 8-bit graphics."

Sam turned to his brother. "How do you know she'd do that?"

"Because she threatened to do it to me," Dean told him cheerfully, "If I tried to get onto Busty Asian Beauties again from my office."

Sam shot his brother a brief Bitchface #3™ (I Wish You'd Let Your Upstairs Brain Drive More Often). "It would serve you right, you jerk... what? Damn!" He ran a hand through his hair. "Okay, there's a private address I can use, it's better than nothing... okay." He paused. "Okay, message away, finally. How are we doing with recharging?"

"Just about," Dean peered at the phones, "Enough to make 'em useable, anyway. Let's get out of here, and get on with pressing business."

"Yeah, look, I was wondering if this might not be a translocation, what if this is actually a movement in our timeline, and..."

"Not that!" Dean interrupted, "I mean breakfast!"

As if to make the point, his stomach rumbled again, this time loudly enough to draw disapproving glares from a couple of other library patrons.

"Yeah, yeah," Sam rolled his eyes and stood up, "Though how we're supposed to eat with no money..."

"That will not be a problem," stated Dean firmly as they left the library.

Sam gave his brother a level stare. "Dean, I hope you are not suggesting that we try to find a soup kitchen, those services are for people who are genuinely impoverished."

"Nope." Dean turned his most winning smile on his brother. "You, Sam are going to get breakfast for us."

"What? Dean, have you not been paying attention? Because I'm telling you, I do not have any money, cash, legal tender, working cards, whatever you want to call it!"

"You're not gonna buy breakfast, Sam," Dean was positively beaming. "You, baby bro, are gonna do the thing with the sandwich."

... because nothing could possibly go wrong with that...

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