A/N: The George Clooney movie Dean refers to is Wolfgang Peterson's "The Perfect Storm."
Chapter 8 – sink or swim
I had a plan. Put some distance between us and Soulless. Regroup and rethink. There had to be some countermeasure against that witchy stuff he was working now.
Easy enough. Simple. My family doesn't do easy, right, Chuck?
I held Sam's bag against my chest, and the hell of it was, he was calm. I didn't know how much he knew what was going on, he didn't say anything, but I could feel how calm he was. Soulless was after us, we were sinking like the fishing boat in that George Clooney movie, and the Sasquatch with a Soul was calm. After we met Max Miller I told Sam that nothing bad was gonna happen to him as long as I was around, and apparently he still believed that, despite everything that had happened so far. I didn't need to be reminded that was an epic fail, otherwise he wouldn't be a round white soul orb in a canvas bag.
The cold and wet at my back spread over me, and the hole I made closed up overhead. We were through and sinking fast. I took a breath just before we hit, and I didn't let it out. I mean, I'm 'posed to be immortal now, right? I'd never heard of a vamp dying from drowning. Beheading was the way to solve that pesky little problem. Be just my luck if drowning was just another way to gank vamps hunters didn't know about.
Huh. Holding my breath like that wasn't a problem. Damn. I could probably do that the entire way, until I got out of the river. I never liked jobs in or near water. Water's just one more thing than can work against a hunter if things go south. Sometimes it's a help, most of the time it's not.
All I could hear was rushing water. Keeping my eyes wide open like that felt kinda weird, but I could see just fine. The moon looked like this big searchlight that was wavy around the edges. The water was bright, and the moonlight was even brighter. I can see in the dark, remember? Vamp vision.
I looked over my shoulder at the river bottom. Going down that far wasn;t part of the plan. I couldn't risk getting hung up in something down there. People don't realize how much junk gets tossed into a river. I saw trees. Big ones. Tires, metal shipping containers. Busted up tvs. Refrigerators. I saw cars down there too. One of them was this rusty red pick-up truck. The two people inside were having a worse day than we were having. The man sat behind the wheel, and the woman was slumped over against the passenger side window. They were both grinning. There wasn't much left of them but bones and clothes A car accident didn't put them down there. Those bullet holes in their skulls was my first clue.
A few more feet down, and I could start swimming. I didn't like the idea of turning my back on the building that close to the surface.
Everything went white all around us.
For a moment it was deja friggin' vu all over again, and I was back in the smoke and tear gas cloud in the park. I heard this loud hissing noise, and it took me a couple seconds to realize that was coming from me. The white fog was steam coming out of my clothes and skin. I couldn't see a damn thing. The cold sank into me, right down to the burn at my core. Whatever mojo Soulless zapped me with didn't get any better, but it didn't get any worse, either.
I thought we were in the clear.
I thought wrong.
Should have known better. Put a red hot piece of metal in cold water, and the metal will throw off steam. And sometimes, superheated metal will crack.
Every muscle in my body seized up in a full-on muscle cramp. It hurt like hell. My back arched, and my fingers hooked into claws around Sam's bag. I groaned out loud, and all that came out was a long, drawn out gurgle.
Couldn't hold my breath anymore. The water burned going down, and damn, it was nasty. The roof of my mouth went numb, my tongue swelled up and I tasted gasoline, rubber, metal, everything slick and green and nasty. I felt like hurling and I couldn't. I wanted to scream loud and long, and instead I swallowed more water.
(…Dean…what…)
I couldn't answer Sam. I couldn't say or do anything, not even blink. The steam faded away, but the pain didn't. I was locked inside my own body. All I could do was stare up at the sky and the water above us.
The moon disappeared. I saw that witchy orange glow in the sky, and above that streaks of orange and yellow. Looked like fireworks. Somehow I knew it wasn't.
Incoming. Hundreds of 'em. Bricks and concrete blocks.
Sonofabitch. He's throwing the building at us.
The water hissed and steamed as they hit and then dropped past us.
I heard Soulless' heart, and it boomed like thunder. I smelled his blood. He wasn't letting up, wasn't backing down, either. The shockwave rolled through a moment later. It pushed me up, right where I sure in the hell didn't want to go.
My head and shoulders broke the surface and I saw him. The wall of the building was blown out, and Soulless stood on the edge. He glowed like some damn firefly, and the inside of the place was lit up with that freaky orange light. His eyes were the same color, and he was looking right at us. Blood from his nose ran down his mouth and chin. His shirt and jacket collar was soaked with blood from his ears.
Debris hit the water all around us. A chunk of concrete caught me on my right hip. I got tagged again on my chest, legs and shoulders, but I was hurting so bad I couldn't feel it. I tried to shield Sam as best as I could.
Soulless grinned that weird, twitchy grin of his, all dark and bloody, and his eyes flicked up, above us.
I looked up.
Remember I said that factory was abandoned, right? Well, they didn't take everything, and right then I wished they had. I saw black metal filing cabinets turning around and around in mid-air twenty feet over my head. Office chairs. That long wooden table I ran across was up there too, turning end over end, along with what looked like a huge cloud of thousands of bricks. I heard metal crunch as several of the filing cabinets crumpled into long, thick slabs with sharp edges.
I knew what he was doing. If I got hit with something like that, and I'd lose my head for sure. Soulless' mojo made that Stephen King chick Carrie look like a weakling.
I felt his heart jerk inside his chest. Blood poured out of his nose, and he dropped to his knees.
The stuff in the sky fell.
I rolled over on my right side. Still don't know how I managed that. Tried to put myself between all that and Sam.
(Dean?)
It wasn't enough. I knew it wasn't, but my body wasn't working right, and that was all I could do. I wanted to tell Sam to close his eyes, but I lied instead, just as the night came crashing down on top of us.
It's okay, Sam. It'll be all ri-
I woke up on my hands and knees, breathing in fish shit and dirt and who knows what else. The cold water sliding in and out of my nose, throat, and lungs smelled and tasted foul. No more fire inside. I felt cold. Busted up inside.
The fact that I woke up in the first place with my head still attached surprised the hell out of me.
I hurt like a bitch all over, I mean every square inch of me. Everything was blurry. I blinked a couple of times, and that didn't do jack. I probably had the mother of all concussions, and that was best case scenario. I was looking at worst case. Definitely worst case. Every bone in my body shifted inside my skin.
I didn't have anything to compare this to. I just knew how my body felt before.
My forehead was pressed against the sand. I couldn't lift my head up. The back of that damn table pressed down on the back of my head and neck, and probably half a ton of brick and cement was on top of that. I couldn't move forward or sideways. My arms were still folded underneath me, and my fingertips were numb. I thought I felt Sam's bag, but I wasn't sure.
Something didn't feel right. The bag, I mean. Sam's soul was an orb, and even though the bag was filled with water, I should have been able to feel it against my chest.
That panicky voice inside my head started up again: What if…what if Sam's soul couldn't take water? What if it started falling apart?
What if I smashed it by landing on top of it like that?
That thought freaked me out more than anything else.
I straightened out both arms. My fingers were numb. I thought I felt the bag but the way my head and neck were angled down I couldn't see. I moved by touch, slowly pulled my elbows back until my palms were down flat against the river bottom. By all rights I had a death grip on Sam's bag when we fell. He should have been underneath me.
He had to be.
I pushed upwards. All I could think about was Sam, I had to get the hell out of here, had to get this crap off me right friggin NOW. Vamps are stronger than humans; Boris tossed me around like a paper cup that night he turned me. I made it this far. I can get us out of this. I know I can-
No joy. Nothing happened, so I stopped. My neck, shoulders and back really started bitching about the way I was moving. The rest of me started singing soprano.
The pile above and around me shifted. I breathed in and out, too quick, too fast. That was no good. I had to settle myself.
We read all of your books about us, Chuck. Credit cards were golden that week, so Sam and me bought the whole damn set. We spent the next three days eating take-out and reading. That was très creepy.
And then we tracked your sorry ass down, made a few calls. Your publisher even gave us your address. Hey, don't look at me like that. You're in the public eye. Deal with it.
The stuff Dad taught us? You got some of it right. And you got the rest all ass backwards. One thing you never mentioned that Dad taught us was combat Lamaze.
I steadied myself. Metal creaked and groaned above me. Didn't seem like it at first, but I'd started something by pushing like that. If I didn't follow through we were going to end up in worse shape than we already were.
I closed my eyes. Breathed in four counts.
That scraping sound got louder. I ignored it.
I held my breath four counts.
More sounds above me. The load tilted forward. I felt the added pressure on my back and shoulders.
I exhaled four counts.
By the time I got to the second set I was calm. I kept breathing, kept up the four count. I ignored that nasty ass water I was breathing, ignored the sounds all around me. Last time I heard underwater noise like that was in that movie Titanic, and we all know that didn't end well.
The weight on my back and neck didn't bother me anymore. I steadied myself, pressed my palms against the river bottom.
And then I pushed upward, as hard as I could. The pile moved again, and every muscle and bone in my body screamed out as I straightened up. I was on my knees, pushing backwards, I wasn't trying to be Superman, I just wanted to make a hole big enough so we could get the hell out of there.
My sight came back, crystal clear. Extreme pain will definitely help a person focus. I was right in the middle of the debris field. Office chairs, bookcases, filing cabinets and bricks piled up all around me.
A hole opened up on my right.
I looked down and saw Sam's duffel. I put both feet underneath me, and pushed backwards, harder. The bones in my knees cracked, and so did my spine. I kept right on pushing. The veins in my neck stood out, and I roared like the Hulk. I was pissed.
We weren't dying. Not down there. Not that night.
Bubbles in the water all around me, and the pain didn't seem to matter so much.
The weight around us loosened up.
Something jerked behind me, and the table slid backwards. I glanced up and I could see tons of debris above my head. It all hung suspended in the water for a moment, then it started to drop, honey-slow at first, then faster.
I reached down, grabbed the straps of Sam's duffel, and shagged ass towards the hole. Sam's bag went over my left shoulder, and I pulled myself forward, scrambled over the tops of filing cabinets, pushed aside chairs. I cut myself up pretty badly, but I didn't notice.
A basketball sized chunk of concrete hit the back of my left leg. A black metal file cabinet clipped my right heel. I was hit again on my upper back, just below my right shoulder, by the top half of an office chair. I could still see, but it was getting darker. The pressure wave was right on top of me. I pulled and I kicked, despite the hurt and pain roaring in my body. Not making it out of there just wasn't an option. It couldn't be.
The space ahead of me was brighter. I saw moonlight. Open water. I gave one more kick and I was out, just as the whole damn dogpile behind me collapsed in on itself. Dust floated up in a thick lazy cloud.
I stood there for a moment, looking around. I was so pumped up I didn't feel anything just yet. I felt pretty damn good, actually. I kept Sam's bag balanced on my back in case we had to shag ass again, and I looked around for Soulless. I glanced up at the surface. No more freaky glow above the water. Soulless was on his knees the last time I saw him, but he was dedicated to ganking our asses. I wouldn't put anything past him.
After what I saw upstairs seeing him down there wouldn't have surprised me one damn bit.
Don't know how long I waited like that. It was just Sam and me and the fish, all the junk people threw into the water, and those dead people in the pick-up truck.
I stood there for another minute or two. Maybe three. Nothing happened.
All the adrenaline went out of me then. My legs shook, and the next thing I knew I was on my knees. It hurt to breathe. Busted ribs, probably all of 'em. My legs felt funny, my bones were like crumpled soda cans. I couldn't stop shaking all over, and my spine felt like it was gonna snap in two.
I shrugged off the duffel and laid it down in front of me. Had a hard time with the zipper because my fingers were shaking, and that wasn't because I was hurt, either. I had to see. I couldn't tell if Sam's soul had already dissolved inside the bag. Maybe…maybe when I pulled the bag open all the way I'd see nothing but a cloud of soft white bits like fireflies, floating up out of the bag into the water.
The bag opened, and I saw the light.
Sam huffed. (…'m…still…here…jerk...)
Bitch. I laughed out loud, and that sounded really weird underwater, like I was gurgling. Sam was just as round, bright and solid as he was before.
(…uh, hi…)
Sam? I thought to myself, who the hell are you talking to?
Samuel.
I wish I could say that I didn't jump when I heard that voice, but I'd be lying about that.
Hello, Dean.
Death was dressed in his usual black suit. He had on a long black raincoat too. The Old Dude looked bone dry. He cocked his head to one side as he looked at Sam's bag, and then he looked me right in the eyes, sharp and intense.
I got it. Soulless killed us after all, and we were too stubborn to just lay down and die. The Old Dude was here to collect. Usually there's one reaper for each human, but I guess the big guy had enough juice for me and Sam both.
For a second I felt even worse than I did before. All the energy went right out of me. It's always fucking something, you know? I'm not bawling like a bitch, I play the hand I'm dealt, but would it kill the universe to throw me and mine a break sometimes?
Maybe thinking like that wasn't too good. I looked up at Death's pale mug and I got pissed off all over again.
I didn't run when Sue Ann Le Grange's pet reaper came at me years before. I'd cheated Death. People died in my place, and it was time to pay up. I stood there quietly and let that reaper touch my face.
Not this time.
(Dean…what are you-)
I zipped the bag closed again
Dude. I got this.
I staggered a little when I got to my feet. Well, yeah, I staggered a lot, okay? That played hell with the badass vibe I tried to give off, but right at that moment I just didn't give a damn. I put Sam's duffel on my back and somehow, even though my spine felt like broken pieces of sidewalk chalk, I stood up straight and tall. My right hand balled up into a fist. I ignored the bright red ache in my fingers and the way my tendons and muscles creaked like a rusty old door hinge.
Sam needed his body back. And I wasn't leaving this life until I helped him get it back.
If Death wanted us, I was gonna make him work for it.
TBC this week
