Hey y'all. Sorry I haven't posted in a while; life's gettin' busy… but that's not why I'm wasting your time with this author's note. No, this author's note is to explain the timeframe I'm running with. I've been trying to keep it fairly consistent between Sam and Dean, but for this chapter it's jumping back to where I left Dean, Bobby and Anne in that mud clearing, which is roughly 24 hours before where we just finished up with Sam. So, Sam's still asleep in the stolen car in Angels Camp and hasn't yet woken up to discover Alexa there. I'm also kind of sweeping time zones under the rug and pretending they don't exist. Maybe I'll pay them some mind later, but today is not their lucky day.

That's all! Hope you like the chapter.

CHAPTER 14:

After about an hour of Dean's nothing-shall-stand-in-my-way, break-neck driving, Bobby had had quite enough. He was using ski poles, after all, and every time Dean made a sharp and unexpected turn (which happened far too often), he found himself wrestling with the damn things and muttering "Balls!" through his mustache. Damn kid. No way he hadn't seen that stop sign! Was the idiot trying to kill him? Off his damn rocker; that's what he was! So, fumbling about with the poles and the wheel and the folds of his jacket, and swearing like a peg-legged sailor, Bobby finally managed to shake his phone loose and make a call.

"You don't stop driving, I'm gonna disown you."

And apparently Dean was too tired to remember that Bobby had never officially adopted him in the first place — or maybe for once he just got it through his thick head how crazy stupid he was being — but, either way, he grunted an assent and rolled off to the shoulder, Bobby following with a relieved sigh that he tried to hide under a growled, "Idjit."

They slept until just before dawn, at which point the fingers of blue that tinged the horizon managed to poke Dean out of his less-than-restful naptime. Mumbling incoherently at Anne, Dean went to grouch Bobby awake, and then, coaxing their cold and grumbling engines back to life, they hit the road. It was still a damn long way to California.

As the mile-markers ticked by, a lopsided silence crept up through the Impala's vents and settled into a solid lurk between driver and shotgun, a bit like a self-satisfied cat. On Dean's part, it was a stewing silence. Brain still clogged with sleep-goo, he kept misidentifying the knot of long, dark hair to his right for another, equally dark, although not quite as long, mat. After all, his gourd thought it had long ago sorted out exactly what kind of bitch always occupied that seat, and it wasn't switching gears with the ease Dean would've liked. Every time his peripheral vision flicked to the side, it triggered the wrong domino chain of neurons firing up to his skull and flung him into a violent double take. And, every time, it was only a split second before the rational parts of his mental process crossed their arms at the rest of his brain and grumbled, "That's a woman, you dumbass. Taken you this long to work out your brother's a dude?" Dean, grumbling silently back at his gray matter, would then attempt to shut down his peripheral vision by focusing his glare firmly on the scenery ahead. Each passing cornfield — each barbed-wire fence, farmhouse, cow, car, grease-spot, you name it — became the object of his directed hatred, the devil's spawn. Suckers thought they could stop him from getting to Sam and giving that son-of-a-bitch the serious beat down he deserved? Well… they were wrong.

Anne's quietness was much less intense: equal parts curiosity and awkwardness. She could feel the sizzle of Dean's silence like pricks of static electricity across her arms. It was exciting the little hairs there to stand on end as if they were radio towers, desperately trying to boost the signal. A tweak here, a fidget there, and perhaps she could tune in to Radio Glen and get a good hard look at his innermost thoughts.

Since that was impossible — and even someone as loopdy-doopdy as Anne knew it — her skin was itching for the second best thing, which was to jump into a hands-down, all-out interrogation. She knew beyond a doubt that Glen — or Dean, or whatever his name was — and that other guy, Bobby, and Glen's brother, too, all had some deliciously complex drama/plot thingamajig going down here, and she wanted to splay it all out in neat, printed letters on flat-ironed, white pages for the world to see. However, the sour-apple, I-want-to-strangle-the-pavement look that Glen — Dean… whatever — was shooting the road reined in her urges and sent her sniffing for a more subtle approach.

So she said, "Um… Glen," and then coughed as she realized just how horrible her morning voice sounded. "Uh," she began again, testing to make sure her vocal chords were behaving at least reasonably predictably before continuing, "Once we get to Angels Camp… how do you intend to actually find your brother?"

Dean didn't turn to look at her, but his mouth twitched, which she took to be a good sign… maybe. "He stands out in a crowd," he growled at last. "Somebody will've seen him."

Behind her glasses, Anne's eyelids crinkled together in skepticism. "That's your plan?"

"Lady," Dean began, and then, not quite believing he was actually saying it, corrected himself, "Anne… I can't stop you from doing your little writing thing or whatever, but stay out of my job, okay? I know what I'm doing."

Anne, never one to take words at face value, let her narrowed peepers zip from his static-fired eyes, to nose-tip, to spiky chin stubble, and back. Hmmm… More than a dash of pessimism, she decided. Definitely a good bit of anger. Determination. Traces of worry? Fear? She'd like to think so; it made for a more complex character. She'd write it in either way. Glen had to be—

"Is your name really Glen?"

Dean was getting used to these abrupt interruptions, so he maintained his barbed-wire-prickly eye-lock on the asphalt as he snorted, "To you, yeah."

"What does that mean?"

"Means I don't want my name in another friggin' book."

Anne's eyes narrowed to teensy-tinsy crescents of baby-boy blue. "But you admit that it's not the name your mother gave you?"

Dean's gaze sighed up to the roof. Please, God, make this woman a mute! "No. Okay. Not mom-given."

Anne rolled her pen with relish. Dean then. She tucked her lips in to ward off the encroaching smile as she swooshed the inky point down to her notepad. It was a better fit than Glen anyway. Gruffer, romantic… a bit old-fashioned. Like James Dean. More people would want to read about a Dean than a Glen.

But she still needed more. She glanced up at her protagonist's stone-faced profile and pushed out an awkward little cough. "So then," she started up once more, "who's that other man… Bobby? Why's he involved in your family drama?"

Dean opened his mouth to protest the bit about family drama, but quickly closed it and resigned himself to shooting a dirty look her way. "Family friend," he grumbled at last.

"What happened to him?"

"Can we cut the NCIS crap? Please? If you have to ask your damn questions, at least try to not be so creepy about it. You're making me feel like I'm on camera."

"Just paper," she assured him.

"Great," Dean huffed, raising a hand in exasperation before slamming it back onto the wheel. "And that's so much better."

"Well," Anne began, knowing he hadn't really wanted a response but unable to help herself, "It's less set-in-stone, classier… and there's lower circulation."

Dean grunted.

Anne took this as her cue to continue. "So," she pressed. "Bobby. Um…Is he fond of reckless outdoor activities?"

Despite himself, Dean snorted. "You're really bad at this."

Anne's cheeks went a bit pink. "There's a reason I write and don't talk," she mumbled.

Dean was about to agree with another very articulate snort when he was pulled up short by a spark of white hot light zapping across the windshield. He almost slammed on the breaks, but jerked his foot back just before it made contact with the pedal. The brightness was gone as soon as it had begun, leaving only a streaked after-image carved into his retinas.

"The fuck was that?" he huffed, half-squinting, half-glaring up through the windshield at the graying sky.

"I… I think it was a shooting star," Anne stuttered, eyes blown wide as she too stared upwards through the window.

Huh. Dean hunched back into his seat. "Bright-ass son-of-a-bitch," he grumbled under his breath.

He'd just managed to blink away the line the star'd left across his vision and release the last of his pent-up tension when a sudden blast of noise blew his brain from zero to sixty in one millisecond flat. The hell!

It was the blare of a horn, the horn of a sports car that was painted the obnoxiously eye-popping color of an artificial cherry. "Son-of-a-bitch," Dean muttered darkly as the car snapped over the double yellow lines into the other lane and revved its engine to kick its speed up to ninety. It passed in a hot thunderclap of wind and then tore down the road ahead, missing Dean's expressive hand gesture in the snarling cloud of dust it left behind.

"Bitch," Dean growled again once the dust had finally cleared to reveal an empty road, the sports car having raced far out of eyeshot.

"Complete assholes," Anne agreed.

Dean nodded with a concurring snort until it hit him that it was Anne who'd just said that. Huh. He hadn't thought "asshole" was really Anne's style, definitely pegged her as more of a candy-cane, straight-laced type girl… not that he was gonna complain or nothing.

"Stabbed," he said.

Anne's eyes fixed upon his in dish-round surprise. "What?"

"Bobby," he grunted. "You wanted to know what happened to Bobby."

"He was stabbed?"

Dean nodded, pretending he didn't notice the way Anne's fingers had begun to twitch back towards the surface of her notepad.

"Why? By who?" the knobby-kneed woman pressed, voice gone genuinely shocked.

Dean gave a quiet, though drier-than-the-Mojave-desert, snort. "By himself actually. He, uh… he was possessed by a demon, and it was about to kill me, so he managed to get control back somehow and he stabbed himself. Saved my hide."

"Wow," Anne breathed. "And now he can't walk?"

"No, it was just a childhood dream of his to drive with ski poles," Dean grumbled sarcastically, feeling the early symptoms of guilt begin to nibble around the edges of his stomach. "Of course he can't walk!"

Anne looked away in vague embarrassment. "Right," she mumbled. She still wasn't sure how she felt about this whole demons and angels thing, though. On the one hand, Dean and Bobby seemed pretty sane… (and all that heaven and hell stuff would make for a real page-turner). On the other hand… demons? Anne had been raised in a nonspecific Christian household, so, some sort of higher power? Sure. But she was a longshot from burning Jesus into her toast, and even further from seeing demons in her coffee cup or tealeaves or whatever. They just — they didn't exist.

In an attempt to move away from this theological dilemma, Anne was about to dig into the meat of the matter by asking Dean how he'd ended up split from Sam, but before she could do more than open her mouth, the harsh chords of a ringtone cut her off. Dean frowned over with lowered eyebrows.

"Can you get that?" he said. "It's in the glove compartment."

Anne stared back in surprise for a half-second before shaking herself out of it and saying, "Yeah… yes," as she fumbled with the latch mechanism. "Hello?"

There was a short pause on the other end of the line. "Um… I… is — is this Dean's phone?"

"Yes. Um, he's driving."

"Who is it?" Dean hissed at her.

She shook her head to indicate her ignorance as the other person stuttered, "Oh, well, uh… this is Chuck. Can you maybe tell him to call me back?"

"Chuck," Anne told Dean, holding his gaze.

"Yes?" Chuck said, surprised.

"Put him on speaker," Dean commanded.

Anne did.

"Chuck?" Dean said.

"Dean?"

Dean rolled his eyes at the uncertainty in the prophet's tone. "Yeah, it's me, Chuck. What's up?"
"I thought you were driving."

"I am. It's this little thing called speaker phone. Maybe you've heard of it." And then, eyebrows shrugging up he added, "though I guess you're a big enough hermit that maybe you haven't."

Chuck took the jibe with only a resentful moment of silence before saying, "So, um… who's your friend?"

"Anne," Dean said. "Anne meet Chuck. Chuck meet Anne. She's an author, too."

"He's an author?" Anne said. Her eyes popped wide as they hopped back and forth between Dean and the phone, which lay face-up on her palm.

Chuck coughed. "Yep. That's right," and, after an awkward pause, "So, um… What have you written?"

A rosy shade crept under Anne's skin. "Well. I mean, I haven't actually published anything yet. I'm still getting my PhD." She too coughed. "But, um, I'm working on something right now, based around Dean and his adventures."

"What?" Chuck practically choked. "Dean!" His voice had skittered up two octaves and seized in on itself. "Dean, you're… But I'm the prophet! Those are my books; you can't just… I — I have rights! Copyrights and… and other rights!"

"Calm down, man," Dean ordered as he rubbed his right eye. "No one's ever gonna connect the two. I mean, seriously, how many people have even read your stuff?"

There was another moment of stony silence on Chuck's end. "I am not okay with this," he said at last.

"Okay with what?" Anne managed to sputter out at last. She was beyond lost. "What's going on?"

"Chuck," Dean said with a dry arch of his brows, "has his own series about me," and then raising his voice over the road noise, "What's it called again?"

"Supernatural," Chuck muttered.

"Right," Dean nodded. "Supernatural. He's a prophet; sees everything that's gonna happen to Sam and me and uses it to write his freakin' books." With a growl he stuck on, "Totally uncool by the way. I swear I'm gonna round up all the copies one of these days and have myself a nice little bonfire. Cookout maybe."

"That's not funny, Dean," Chuck mumbled.

"Eh, kinda is."

Only static came from the other end of the line. Dean rolled his eyes. "Okay, come on. Quit pouting, man. What'd you call about?"

Chuck took another second to let Dean understand the depth of his unhappiness before responding coolly, "I called to let you know that Sam will be gone by the time you get to Angels Camp."

"What! He's leaving already?"

"No. He's still there. He's going to be there all day, but, uh… you're about to get caught up with something else."

"You serious? What?"

"You'll—"

And because Dean's luck was worse than having the flu on prom night, that's when he suddenly lost service.

"Son-of-a-bitch!" he snapped as the phone began to beep. "Couldn't wait three fucking seconds to crap out on me?"

"Um… Dean?" Anne was looking out the windshield, the morning light turning the lenses of her glasses bright and opaque, so he couldn't see the open stare of her eyes.

"Yeah, what," Dean growled, grabbing the useless piece of technological shit that was supposed to be a fucking cellular phone out of her hand and flinging it into the backseat where it belonged. Let it think about its actions for a while.

Anne's only response was to shake her head and point, which eventually Dean noticed. He followed the line of her extended arm through the windshield and down the road to the small town they were approaching.

At first it looked normal. Just another no-name piece of crap in the middle of south-central Nebraska (aka: nowhere). A sign tacked to a proud picket pole announced it as Edison, one of those white-bread, washed-out pinpricks that everybody forgets to include on the map, desperately clinging to existence.

Today it was clinging a bit more desperately than usual. It had to or it else it would've been blown away by the nuclear outbreak of crazy that was sweeping through its streets. Now that they were close, Dean could see what Anne had already begun to make out. There was a powder blue Ford truck blocking the road; it was upside down, one tire rotating slowly as if in a feeble cry for help. Beyond that, the town itself seemed deserted. Storefront windows were smashed. The otherwise dry gutters were sticky with spots of splattered red.

Dean pulled the Impala up short on the shoulder, squinted eyes flashing across the brown line of the horizon. Everything around the town seemed calm… which was creepy as fuck by the way. There was just this huge expanse of dull, rolling fields, the tops of a few grain silos glinting in the distance like pale monsters, and the bitter quiet of the land. When Bobby pulled up behind Dean and parked, that silence became complete.

With a frustrated grunt, Dean shoved open the door and marched over to the driver's side of Bobby's truck. "The hell's going on here?" he demanded with a dark frown back towards the overturned Ford.

Bobby just shook his head, face plastered with a new batch of wrinkles. "Be damned if I know," he muttered. "Looks to me, though, like we've found a place where the apocalypse ain't just simmering in its juices. Something big musta happened here."

Dean snorted in agreement. "Question is: what?"

"You gonna go find out?"

"What, and leave you here alone with the stick-bug?" Dean gave him a "Seriously?" look. "Exactly what d'you plan to do if whatever caused that mess comes back this way."

Pulling his chin in as if offended, Bobby said. "I got guns. Don't forget, boy, I'm the one who taught you to shoot. Still got better aim than either you or your brother."

"What if it's not something shootable?"

"Then the time is nigh!" Bobby rolled his eyes. "Look y'idjit, it's the apocalypse, or haven't you noticed? We do what we can to stop it or we're all dead anyway, and it looks damn well likely to me that this is something apocalyptic—" He gestured towards the town with one rough hand. "—so you get your ass over there and sort it out or I'm gonna do it myself, wheelchair an' all!"

Dean scowled but gave a single jerk of his head, which Bobby decided to interpret as a nod. "Good," he said gruffly. "Then get gone."

Dean had already made it back to the Impala's trunk before Bobby remembered another thing. "Oh," he said, craning his head out the window, "and send over your stick-bug.