AN: I totally deserve a lynching for taking so long with this. If I have any reviewers left it'll be a goddamned miracle.

Nine: The Wreckage

He pulled over without thinking about it, neatly sliding the Impala into the space left between a shiny older model Bentley and some hybrid monstrosity he couldn't remember the name of.

The girl behind the counter looked up as he entered the shop, and he could feel her cat-eyed gaze taking in the scuffed boots and battered leather jacket, the holes in both knees of his jeans and the already re-emerging stubble on his jaw. Still, her professionalism held out and she smiled at him.

He smiled back, and asked what they had in the way of horror films. Her look of blinking surprise was so very worth it.

He added, "Scream is just such a classic, y'know?"

The sound of familiar footsteps brought his head up. Sam put down the dog-eared copy of Pet Sematary (probably not the wisest thing to be reading right now, but it was either that or something called Rosie Meadows Regrets) and watched his brother approach.

Dean had an oddly thoughtful look on his face. Even as he walked he appeared to fidget, taking something out of his jacket pocket to glance at briefly before putting it away when Sam called softly, "Hey."

Dean returned in kind. "What're you doing out here?" he asked, peering past Sam through the open door of the ward.

Sam followed his gaze, making out the shape of Evie where she lay sprawled on her bed, half hidden by the privacy curtain and the gloom of the ward as evening fell.

"She's sleeping," Sam told him. "I figured I'd read out here. The light's better, but I can still see her." He paused, took another careful look at his brother. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Dean settled himself against the doorway, hands still jammed in his pockets. "Bobby called."

Sam's eyebrows made their way up his forehead. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Figured we'd gotten into trouble again, you know, since we hadn't called."

Sam shrugged. "And he's right, of course. So're you by the way."

Dean gave him a faintly perplexed look from under his brows.

"We have to get these things, Dean," Sam explained. "Evie's been asking questions about the ghouls, and I've put off telling her what they are." He swallowed, looking away, feeling his throat and jaw work. "I don't want to explain to her that some skulking supernatural scavenger murdered and ate her mother's corpse."

"We'll get it done, Sam. Bobby's coming over as soon as he can. An extra set of hands means someone to watch Evie and two hunters out giving these things a run for their money."

Sam nodded. He got to his feet and switched places with Dean, taking the Impala's keys and striding down the corridor, weary feet heading gladly towards the prospect of rest.

Just before he turned the corner, he looked back.

Dean was standing by the ward doorway, gazing at something in his palm. For a second, Sam thought he saw a glint of silver. Then Dean sighed, put it back in his pocket, and settled in the chair to read.

Sam turned back and headed for the visitor's car-park.

The night passed quietly, for the most part. Evie suffered a few nightmares around one AM, whimpering her parents' names as she shivered. Dean held her hand and stroked the hair back from her forehead, wondering all the while how it had come to this and thinking helplessly, I only met you the day before yesterday. How is it possible to care this hard?

The object in his pocket seemed to be burning a hole there…

He subsisted quietly on cafeteria sandwiches and coffee, occasionally flirting with the nurse at the nearest station to break the tedium as he passed. In the stiller moments, he pulled out maps of the local graveyards and searched for nesting sites, marking them with red sharpie and making whispered phone calls to the custodian about the layouts and particulars of each site.

Only three met the criteria for a ghoul's nest, each having an upper crypt, a basement level and being in close proximity to an underground sewer line big enough for a man to fit through. Ghouls would go anywhere there was room to wriggle, so the line didn't have to be very big.

Still, there weren't many families willing to have their dead that close to sewage piping. Just the Kingsland, the McGill and the Patterson tombs where Dean had found the spilt formaldehyde. Right now the resting place of these unfortunate dead guys was the top of that very short list. Even so, it would pay to check out the Kingsland and McGill places too. Wouldn't it just suck to storm one nest and discover that the squirrelly assholes had gotten clever and built themselves an escape route to nest number two?

Evie shuffled a little in her sleep. Overhead, her IV bag swung gently. Dean watched her, waiting for the signs of distress that could mean pain or a nightmare. But she woke up on her own this time, green eyes peeling slowly open, blinking at him blearily.

"Hey sweetheart, can't sleep?"

She gave one of those deep, sleepy sighs and rubbed her eyes with the backs of half-curled fingers. "Just a dream," she murmured.

He gave her an enquiring look. "Clowns or midgets?"

Evie froze mid-rub and stared at him. One corner of her mouth twitched. "What?"

"Midget clowns?" Dean improvised. "Sam had that one once. Thought he was gonna pee his pants or something."

She snickered, flinging her arm over her face briefly. "You're so weird."

"Not half as weird as Sam, though, am I right? I'll take all the cackling you're doing as a yes."

It only made her laugh harder. When she let her arm fall he met her smile with a small one of his own. Evie let out another sleepy sigh.

"No clowns or midgets," she said, "or even…midget clowns. It was a good one; about the car."

"…the Impala?"

She shook her head, or rather, rolled it a bit on the pillow. "No…"

"That shitbomb you drove over here in? 'Cause the only dreams that would cause are nightmares."

"Why would I dream about my roommate's car?"

"Don't ask me to fathom the female mind…" Dean was puzzled. "Was it…uh…about your mom's hatchback?"

"You know, I'll tell you if you stop guessing."

"Oh, right." He looked at her expectantly.

She looked like she might laugh. "When I was little I used to stay with my grandpa a lot, and one of the things we used to do was to put the cover over his car and read storybooks by the light of a camping lantern."

Dean could picture it. He'd done just about the same thing with Sam when they were small and Dad had had to drive through the night to get somewhere. He remembered that feeling of safety coming from both Dad and the Impala, the solidarity…the feeling of Sam's small body tucked up close to him, his mop of hair against Dean's shoulder as he read aloud for his little brother.

He smiled, faintly wistful. "What kinda car was it?"

Evie looked wistful too. "1970 Rover P5B coupe. Midnight blue. I loved that car."

Dean noticed the past tense. "What happened to it?"

She sighed. "We couldn't keep him, after Grandpa died. We didn't know how to look after him and we couldn't afford to pay for someone to do it for us. We didn't want to sell him to someone we didn't know though, so Mom found this little vintage car museum near Madison and we donated him."

Dean's mouth was twitching with the urge to smile. "'Him'?"

"Have you seen the Rover coupes? That's not just a car, that's a gentleman."

He looked down, smiling almost to himself. Maybe the vintage-car-love-thing was genetic, a gene Sam might have missed, but still.

"One day," Evie murmured. "One day, when I've got the money, I'll drive a Rover too. Something in burgundy maybe…"

He let out a huff of a laugh. "You know, I can see that."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. It's a mental picture that works; Dr. Milligan, MD, driver of a big swanky car."

She snickered. "Yeah, big is right. You could throw a party in one of those things."

He waggled his eyebrows. "What kinda party?"

"Oh, dude, come on!" she cried, half-laughing. "Grow up!" She leant over and threw one of the paper cups on the bedside table at him.

He cackled and batted it away. "Oh, okay, so I should be all," he pulled a serious face, sticking his jaw out and scowling, "'what kind of party, young lady?'"

Evie, still smiling, rolled her eyes. "You're such a goober."

"Whatever." He let his chin rest on one curled fist. "So you're still going back to school? Once we get this all sorted out?"

Evie shrugged, quieted by the sudden change in subject. "I guess. I don't know. It's just…my world's gone sideways, Dean. It's like someone stuck a magnet next to my internal compass and I'm still trying to find true north again. There's going to be so much to do, to figure out." She looked up at him. "I know you found out…"

He raised his eyebrows at her when she trailed off. "Found out what, Evie?"

She shook her head, saying quietly, "I'm not sure I wanna know."

He could guess what she was talking about, and he knew how Sam felt; he in no way wanted to inform this girl of just what killed her mother, and therefore how it happened. It made him a little ill just thinking about it, and considering his experiences to date, that was saying something.

"I'm not sure you do, either," he told her gently. "It's not pretty, Evie."

She nodded and settled back on her bed, watching him over the edge of her pillow. "Will you wake me when Sam gets back?" she murmured.

"Yeah, sure sweetheart."

Her eyes slipped closed, and for the first time in a while, Dean burned to hunt.

"This is good," Sam was saying.

The brothers were looking over Dean's marked maps of the cemetery spread out on a coffee table in the family room while one of the nurses helped Evie bathe and changed the dressing on her leg.

"Once Bobby gets here we'll be able to go out and get these bastards," his brother continued.

Dean nodded, rubbing a hand over his stubble.

Sam looked up at him. "Dude. You okay?"

"Hmm? Yeah, just…" He gave Sam a small rueful smile. "Just looking forward to grabbing some shuteye, y'know?"

"Yeah, I know." Sam tossed him the keys. "Get going, you really do look like crap."

"Such brotherly affection."

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

Looking back, Dean was never sure why he did it. Exhaustion, perhaps; non-stop hours of running on high alert and the kind of anxiety he had previously only felt when Sam was at some kind of risk.

But when he got into the car and the road back to the motel took him past the graveyard…

"Fuck it."

He swung the wheel round and pulled over, grabbing the iron rounds and his sawn-off from the cache and headed into the dark. His torch beam swung in short yellow arcs as he walked, though the moon was just about full and gave nearly enough pallid blue light to see by.

It didn't take him long to find the Kingsland and McGill crypts, or to confirm they were currently ghoul-free. Bodies had been taken, yes, and there was more in the way of spilt embalming fluid, but the basements were empty apart from the usual dead or rodently residents, and there was no sign of tunneling either.

The Patterson crypt for sure then.

He paused on the threshold, reexamining the spilt formaldehyde and wondering how to go about things. The place had an underground section, but it had been sealed and paved over once its shelves were filled…so when the ghouls set up here they would have had to make their own tunnels down from the surface as well as from the sewer system.

Sam was right, he thought, half an hour later, finding and tracking these bastards was a fucking mission. Wherever they'd put their tunnel, they'd hidden it well…

He was just turning to go and check the grounds immediately outside when he felt the draft.

It was just a frisson of cold against one leg, but it came from the wrong direction and carried and familiar and awful smell with it; carrion.

He turned back, following the faint breeze to a crack in the tiling of the back wall. Prying the heavy granite panel back revealed a narrow passageway, lined with hard-packed dirt and the occasional stringy tree root.

Dean cast his torch beam around it, measuring the steep incline and irregular dimensions. He was going to have to cant his shoulders to get into the damn thing same as he had in the vent back at the Milligan's.

"Oh, great," he muttered, before sitting back and discarding his jacket.

The shotgun had to stay behind, tucked in a corner with said jacket and hopefully out of sight. The 1911 that had been sitting at the small of his back would have to do, though it only had standard rounds at the moment.

"Any more of this bullshit and I really will be claustrophobic –"

– And he wriggled his way into the hole. As predicted, it was awful, and Dean shuffled along as quickly as possible. Once it leveled out, he could make out a faint…well, not light, but at least less darkness.

The less dark part turned out – again, as predicted – to be the underground level of the crypt.

It was a mess.

The shelves had come down at some point, breaking open the stone caskets and scattering their occupants across the floor. Earth had spilled from the ruptured walls to cover the pavers and gather in tall heaps in the room's corners.

Dean hand only to take two steps from the spot where he fell (the tunnel had entered the room at hip height) before he came across what was left of Joe Barton, some of whom crunched unpleasantly underfoot while the rest of him seeped into the dirt or smeared across the floor and Dean's shoes. The only recognizable part of him was his blood-spattered glasses.

"Sloppy Joe," he said quietly, taking what refuge he could in gallows' humor. It wasn't much.

A quick inspection of a pair of unbroken caskets revealed a nest of cranky, squeaking rats and…oh God…

The rest of Kate Milligan.

Dean's brain registered that she ended midway down her ribcage then started again at her knees, that there was a piece of her skull missing at the back which made her head lie oddly, and that she didn't have one of her hands…but it was the look on her face (her fully intact face) that made him sit back on his heels and swallow.

The terror there was hard to miss. It was made worse by the fact that he could see Evie in her face, no matter how much his little sister's features favoured their father. He now knew that mother and daughter looked nearly identical when terrified. This was something he could have lived without knowing.

Taking a breath and gathering himself, he explored the rest of the lower crypt. It didn't take him long to find the emergency exit they'd put in; a spot in the ceiling that thinned to a small hole showing the night sky, but from the loose feel of the earth could easily be widened in a hurry to allow something as big as a person. If he didn't was to give the game away though, he'd have to get out the same way he came in.

More tunnel-going. Awesome.

He emerged on the upper level of the crypt a full fifteen minutes later and lay like a landed fish for a few seconds, groaning, "Oh, blessed air," before getting to his feet and shaking off what dirt he could.

Having retrieved both his jacket and sawn off, he made his way back to the car and was in the midst of changing when his phone decided to ring.

He raised his eyebrows at the number, pulled his shirt over his head and answered.

"Doc Fraiser. What's up?"

Half an hour after Dean left coffee sent out its siren call, wailing undeniably from the tea bay in the family room down the hall.

Sam, helpless to resist, checked Evie (dozing) before padding off to retrieve a cup, and spent the time waiting for the machine to perk checking his voice mail.

"You have – no – new messages."

"Damn it, Ruby," he muttered, and then nearly jumped a foot when his phone went off in his hand. there were a few fraught moments where Sam dropped and caught the thing like some cartoon character trying to catch a piece of soap before he got a proper hold on it and was able to answer.

"Hello?"

"Hey," Dean said, "just got a call from Doc Fraiser."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, says he's got something 'odd' for me to look at, so I'm heading back your way."

"You sure? Its –" Sam checked his watch. "– just past three, man. You don't want me to grab this one?"

"Nah, I'm good. 'Sides, I'm the one doing the whole badge thing."

There was something in his brother's voice that made Sam tense up. "That's not all you called about, it is?"

Dean sighed heavily. "No. Now, don't get pissed off, okay?"

"…why would I get pissed off?"

"I might have gone to check out those nest sites on the way back to the motel…"

"Dean! What the hell, dude? We were supposed to be waiting for Bobby's back up before we went looking for those."

"I know, alright, it was stupid and reckless and all that other stuff. I get it. But hear me out."

"Fine."

"Great. The Kingsland and McGill crypts are clean. They're holed up under the Patterson one."

"Where you found the formaldehyde the first time."

"That's the one. They've dug a tunnel down into the lower level and given themselves an escape route too…"

Dean trailed off. Sam had a pretty good idea why.

"Dean?" he asked carefully. "You're sure it's a nest?"

"Oh, yeah," Dean said firmly. "They've been…storing kills there."

Sam closed his eyes. "Crap."

"Doesn't even begin to cover it," Dean muttered. "I found what's left of Joe Barton down there. And the missing parts of Kate. Most of them. And I really don't want to think about it. I'll swing by after seeing the doc."

Dean hung up and Sam did the same. He stared at his phone for moment before shoving it back in his pocket and pouring his coffee.

One of Evie's clearest and earliest memories was the first time she bent a spoon and shown it to her mother.

The next time she'd done it, her mother had watched, and the months after that were a blur of doctors' offices and waiting rooms, and hushed arguments in familiar antiseptic scented hallways.

One of the most frightening was her first MRI.

She remembered being alone in the room with the weird, feels-like-I'm-peeing-but-not sensation of the contrast in her veins. She'd cried when they'd put the IV line in and then again when Mom said she had to stay in there by herself, on the narrow bed with the big white machine that clicked and beeped and whomped when they turned it on. Hospital lights had never seemed so strange and threatening then, or oddly twisted by the shape of the MR machine, which she'd thought looked like something out of the old Star Trek reruns that Grandpa watched on weekends.

When her mother told her she had to lie still and do what the doctors told her over the intercom thing, she'd kept right on crying and then gotten angry.

Five minutes later a light fixture had popped and gone dead.

They'd shut down the MR and her mother had come and got her, eyes very blue in her oddly white face.

Evie hadn't cared; she'd just wanted to be hugged.

To date, it was still one of her most frightening experiences…although that was quickly changing.

She woke to find Sam and Dean gone, and the room dark. The clock on the wall told her it was just past three AM. The grate missing from the vent in the ceiling told her she was in trouble.

When she turned her head the scent of formaldehyde filled her nostrils. Her mother – no, the thing wearing her face – smiled at her, its eyes freakishly blue in its white, white face.

"Hi, sweetie," it crooned, calmly pressing the needle of the syringe into her IV line. "Miss me?"

AN2: Swear to God I won't take as long with the next one (crossed heart)