Disclaimer: I own nothing Supernatural. All characters belong to Kripke Scrap Metal and Entertainment Company.

A/N: Chapters will alternate between pre-season and early Season 1, after Phantom Traveller. My thanks as always to my betas: Merisha and Scotia. This story is infinitely better because of them. All remaining errors are entirely my own. The story however belongs to Merisha.

ooooo January 2004 ooooo

The ape was still dead - it hadn't moved at all, for which he was insanely grateful. He splashed it liberally with kerosene before firing a flare into its chest. The body whooshed alight smoking furiously, and he was relieved to see most of the smoke venting away following the stream futher back into the caves. He reloaded the duffle and slung that over his back but held onto his gun. He tried to trot back to the exit, but his left leg was really starting to throb, so he settled for a fast limp. Just as he reached the flashlight he'd left he was bent double with a sneeze, rocking back up to pull in a breath.

He lost count of how many times he sneezed before he reared upright to find the second Skunk Ape looming over him. It opened its mouth and began making that howl, stunning him almost motionless, before swinging its right arm across him, swiping over his chest. He probably couldn't have moved at all if the things claws and the force of it's blow hadn't spun him smartly to the left. It brought his right side and right arm and right hand with the Colt into perfect alignment. He brought the gun up with a jerk, firing as fast as he could, emptying the clip point blank into whatever he could hit.

As he stood gasping for breath, watching the phosphorus spark and sputter, all he could think was what a nice fugly to come right to him and die at his feet, so close he wouldn't have to take even two steps to find it. Especially since he wasn't at all sure he could take two steps right this minute. He prodded it with his right foot, forgetting for a minute that placing all his weight on his left leg would probably hurt like a son of a bitch, and it did, but he still kicked the ape for good measure.

"God damn evil cave-dwelling baboons, think you can just start eating us?" He shoved and hammered and wrestled a cedar stake up under its ribs angling to where the heart should be. He liberally doused it with holy water. "You furry pieces of shit - we don't eat you." Next, he emptied the kerosene container over the body and set it neatly on its chest. "But this time, you found yourself a Winchester and we don't fall for the whole 'aren't we mysterious innocent creatures?' routine." He was having trouble breathing and his chest was on fire. He needed to calm down, so he stopped to wash his hands and arms in the stream, splashing his face and eyes, and sneezed a few times for good measure. The chest he'd look at later. "No, we Winchester men are not snacks! First we sneeze on you", he demonstrated, "then we shoot you, and then", he said backing up the hill with his flashlight and pack, "and then, we set you the fuck on fire and watch you burn." He fired the flare gun and watched as the corpse was enveloped in flame.

He got up the incline as quickly as he could and watched the corpse burn until he couldn't take the smoke anymore. He felt like he'd been wrung out and left to dry. He called out to Jill and Adam as he wormed his way through the tight passage, pushing the duffle ahead of him, but his blood was pumping so loudly in his ears that he didn't hear a reply. He got out and both Jill and Adam were waiting for him.

"Good thing I stayed back – the second one was behind us." Jill had her flashlight on him and he thought she was looking at him oddly. Her mouth opened but all he could hear was a high pitched buzzing in his ears. It was getting dark, and he tried to say "We need to put new batteries in the flashlights" but he wasn't sure how much actually came out before the ground rushed up and hit him.

OOOOO

When he woke up the most he could do for a few minutes was breathe. He felt a hand on his shoulder and a woman's voice. His head felt ten times larger than it should, like it was stuffed full of chamois cloth, and he couldn't breathe through his nose. The woman and a kid were sitting next to him when he was finally able to pry his eyes open. Pain flared across his chest and stomach when he tried to lift his head, so he let her, and Sa – no, just a kid because Sam is a million feet tall - hold his head up so he could drink some water. He blinked a couple of times, and said, "Where are we?" It sounded like gibberish even to him, so cleared his throat. The woman lifted his head again and gave him more water. He tried again, and this time it came out mostly clear to his ears. "Where?"

"We're still in the cave, just past the first tight passageway. We were leaving when something attacked you. You're injured."

Her voice drifted away for a while and it got dark again, but the sound of Sammy crying dragged him awake. "Sam? You OK?" It got quiet suddenly. He opened his eyes but couldn't see him. "Sam? Where are you?" He tried to get up but hands were holding him. "Sammy! Where's my brother?"

"Your brother's not here, Dean, Sam's fine, he's not here. Don't worry. This is my son, Adam, you remember him don't you? He's crying because he's worried about you." She pulled Adam forward. He was looking freaked out, his eyes huge, and there wasn't much light. Oh, right, she said cave, didn't she. He felt like hitting his head against something to get his brain jump started.

He stared at the kid, then looked at the woman, "Jill…" He licked his lips. He looked over at the kid, "and Adam, of the Baraboo McDevitt's." Adam brightened up a little.

"Dean, are you OK? What's wrong with you? I really don't want to be here anymore but Mom says you needed to wake up, and I totally didn't want to leave you, and I'd never leave you and Mom alone in here and no matter what she says I really could follow the string out and get help, but Mom won't let me, she says we all have to go together but you were asleep", he finally took a breath, "a really long time and I want to go now." He looked at his mom, "Can we go now, Mom, please?"

Suddenly, Dean had to rub his nose and he felt something in the back of his throat. Oh crap. He sneezed which almost caused him to do an very involuntary sit up. "Oh, I could have done without that. I have to get up." Jill reached forward and helped him up to a sitting position. His head felt like it wasn't attached anymore, floating a few feet away from his shoulders. He tried to glance down at his chest but his coat was covering it. He plucked at it absently, running his hand over his head. Puzzled he asked Jill, "Did I hit my head?"

"I don't think so, at least not when you passed out."

"Yeah, you fell right on top of Mom!"

"Ah, sorry. I'm feeling a little weird." He pulled his jacket to one side and watched something fall into his lap. He picked it up and eyed it suspiciously. It was his T-shirt. He saw his flashlight and pointed it at his chest, saying "Shit" when he saw the bandages. Adam laughed, which made Dean remember. "Sorry, sorry, I shouldn't have said that. This looks, um, OK, I guess." Jill must have used his tee shirt to stop the bleeding. At least she didn't cut up his long sleeved shirt. He looked at her and asked, "How long was I out?"

"A couple of hours. You were in and out a few times."

He pushed a hand down, and used an outcropping to pull himself up. When Jill tried to help, he waved her off, hissing through the pain. He almost fell but made it upright and held onto the wall until his feet steadied under him. A sharp pain in his left leg made him catch his breath. He tried to look down at his leg, but that only made him dizzier, and damn if it also didn't make his heart pound in his chest.

Adam bounded over, waving the maglite, "Does this mean we can go now?"

"I'm working on it, sport." He used both hands to pull up his leg by his jeans and set his foot on top of a rock at about knee height. He looked at Jill, "Just want to take a quick look. How are your arms?" He tugged up the jeans leg and reached out a hand but Jill stopped him.

"My arms are OK. I can check your leg." She unwrapped his calf, revealing more and more blood on the wrap as she worked. "Adam, I want you to take my flashlight, hold the string, and walk three hundred steps out and then walk back – let me hear you counting, so talk loudly, OK? See if you can check out what's ahead." As he started off, she picked up the first aid kit and took out some bandages. "This kit is sure heavy on bandages and sutures – I take it you bleed a lot?" She smiled and pulled out an epi-pen and showed it to Dean. "Just in case there are bees underground. For Sam?" He nodded. She set it back in the kit and pulled the wrapping to one side to reveal sodden bandages. "I'm not sure these are helping that much" and pulled off the first one. Dean heard her hiss.

"Infected?" Dean leaned back and closed his eyes, only to sneeze.

"I think so. The thing did this too?"

"The first one did the leg. I, ah, was dealing with that one when number two showed up. That's the one that got my chest."

She dabbed some antibiotic cream on the slash and put a new bandage carefully over it. She looked up. "My arms don't look anything like this. We'll hope your chest doesn't look like this in a couple of hours. But these need stitches and so do the lacerations on your chest and stomach". She bent down again and quickly replaced the rest of the bandages and wrapped his leg. "What were they?"

"Skunk Apes, it's a kind of sasquatch. Only in Florida. Travel by water. Eat people."

"Oh come on, a sasquatch – you mean a big foot?" She started to rewrap his leg as Adam paced back counting out loud. "That's just a hoax, a guy in a fur suit. You can see the zipper in that picture."

"I don't know about what's in the picture you saw, but that doesn't mean the two here were fake. I know what I saw. What did you see when it grabbed you and Adam?" She frowned. "Was it seven foot tall, covered in fur, and walked on two feet?" He sighed, and twitched as another bandage was removed and replaced. They could both hear Adam coming back. He looked around him carefully. "Where's my gun?"

"In the pack. So that's why you aren't the Park Service. They wouldn't look here even if you told them, would they? Are they, the apes … dead?"

"Yeah, dead."

"How did you know what to do? How did you know where we were?"

"I kind of do this full time. I knew what to look for." He put his leg back down. "Hey, Adam, so what did you see – was the string OK? Anybody eat it?"

"No, the string's fine. See" – he held up his hand, striped with red dye from the twine. "It goes out from here then turns right. I could see it keep going as far as the flashlight went." He looked at his mom again then back at Dean. "Can we go now?"

"I'm raring to go, Bat Boy. Would you hand me my coat?"

Adam barked a laugh. "That's nicer than Weasleface!" but he held the coat up for Dean.

Jill wrapped up the used supplies as neatly as she could and folded them into the ruined T-shirt. She put that and the kit back in his duffle and closed it, but not before Dean snagged his Colt. She handed him a pill and a half bottle of water. He raised his eyebrows.

"That's not ibuprofen or Tylenol and that's all I'm going to take at this point." She continued to hold it out.

"You are in the middle of a severe allergic reaction to something in the cave, you have an infection in your leg, a fever, you've lost a lot of blood, and from what you said, you don't like enclosed spaces. Any one of those can cause reduced blood pressure, increased heart rate, and loss of consciousness. And your heart rate is already high and your breathing is strained. If you lose more blood, or even hyperventilate because you have claustrophobia, you could have a heart attack and die before we get 100 yards.

"And I'm worried about your allergic reaction, which you say is your first, right? If you have a more severe reaction to the allergen, which I'm afraid", she pulled some fur off of his shirt, "is Skunk Ape, it might be this bad because it scratched you. Maybe there's something toxic on its claws, like a bee sting." He still didn't reach for the pill. "Dean - it's a Tylenol 3. If I could I'd give you something much stronger. So shut up and take it, you need the sedating effects and some kind of pain management if you are going to be able to walk us out of here." She checked his expression, "What? Are you planning to operate any heavy machinery?"

"Don't argue with Mom, Dean, she's a doctor. And you can never win an argument with her. Dad says so."

He shrugged, accepted the pain killer, and drained the water. This was so not a good idea.