Chapter 23

Wednesday, May 1st, 2002

Through the back window, Dean saw the car was vacant.

He looked to the parking lot but he could see it was empty. And the street beyond, too, was naked. The specs of coolness he'd felt on his arms turned into falling rain, a sputter that, even as he stood searching began growing stronger, and the beat of his heart turned so leaden that each pulse was hurting his ears.

Dean leapt into action. From somewhere far off he recalled the time a childhood Sam thought hiding in the turnstile of coats at a Birmingham mall would be funny, and the way their dad had reacted, tearing the store apart while the employees yelled for Sam over the intercom. He remembered the animal quality he'd seen in their father's eyes. This was how Dean felt now. At the very least, this time Sam was on foot in a deserted town; he couldn't be far at all but the sprint to the corner turned up nothing but an infuriatingly barren intersection. Dean put out his arms in disbelief, looking around frantically. How could someone go missing in thirty seconds?

He needed his car. The ferocity of his movements was working against him, the tire iron springing from his grip while he tried forcing the spent tire off the rim. It wasn't until the second try that he made any progress, and his small fraction of awareness knew he was moving too slowly. Sam was disappearing farther by the second. This was going to be the end of it, he wouldn't see Sam for another year again, or more -

He forced himself to drop the tire iron, to inhale a deep, shaky breath. The rain was beginning to stick the shirt to his shoulders.

Dean was going to get Sam back, but if he was gone then he was gone, and panicking wasn't going to help anyone in the moment. His instincts took over, and with a new purpose he took up the cold tire iron again in surer hands; in true professional fashion the old rubber was peeled away from the rim like an orange he wanted for breakfast. Not until the metal rim kissed the asphalt, naked in the rain, did he let himself feel anything else. He wiped a rivulet of rain water falling down his forehead and huffed. He took up the bottle of shampoo, flipped the cap.

Dean squeezed the soap over the rim of the new tire. The rain pockmarked the shampoo where they met reminding Dean that he was up against a clock, quickening his pulse, but he quickly closed that door in his mind because it simply wasn't helpful. He took up the tire iron once more, then paused. He needed a second lever to work alongside the iron. He whipped his head around. When his eyes landed on the arm of the jack, he was up and back in a second, but his worry was for naught - he was a fish back in its water, and he made quick work of the tire once more. The soap did its job exactly by letting the rubber slide passed the rim without a machine for extra muscle. He stood and allowed himself the moment of satisfaction. If one thing after another was going to go wrong on this trip then he would celebrate the one that went right. He realized then that he has really spent more time than not worrying while they'd been on the road and here he was, feeling glad over a fixed tire; all the while, he'd been too concerned about keeping Sam in the clear to pay attention to where he was.

The warmth of satisfaction drained away with the rain that was falling from his body. He couldn't feel the cold any longer, just the sensation of the drops hitting his skin, and he was back to work. He planted the new tire back on the car and screwed it in place as he'd done hundreds of times back in Lyon and beyond, trying to keep his mind from wandering while he fed his quarters to the air compressor in the wall. The Chevron car mascots smiled at him with their large, judgmental eyes.

Sam wouldn't have a good goddamn clue where he was going in this town - and Dean knew that because he had no idea either, where anything would be, if there were any places open to begin with. Dean huffed out in frustration, sending out the thought from his brain. The compressor ate the quarters and was satisfied, winding up to the familiar scream of machinery Dean was accustomed to. He pulled the hose from the wall and sped back to the tire.

Sam had enough sense, Dean hoped, to find shelter in a storm, but that was betrayed by the fact that he used to believe Sam also had the sense not to run away in a strange city. He wondered if there was a park nearby, if they had passed one on the road while he was busy being angry about…money. His chest seized. He reckoned when this was all over that would be one more thing to apologize over. He also wondered when he would quit giving himself things to apologize for.

He fit the hose into the tire and squeezed the trigger, felt the air rush into the tire through while he tried not to think about the dread growing on his shoulders that each passing second was another step Sam took away from him. When finally the pressure dial took notice of the air that was building in the tire, on instinct Dean released the jack and eased the tire back to the ground, though it was the same moment an awful, screaming noise split the air above his head, pulling Dean back to the world in a jolt of shock. The jack's arm twisted too quickly in his grip. The car fell from its height too quickly, the tire letting go of the compressor hose. It hissed like a hundred cats in Dean's grip while he tried to get his wits. A siren was playing from the tops of every telephone pole in town. The tornado siren.

The franticness Dean was keeping in its cage broke away to take up place in his throat, almost enough to make him gag, stealing his breath. In the next moments that passed the sirens traveled the range of deep bass back into the shrill, screaming heights. Dean had of course heard the bizarreness of storm sirens before but this had been the first time - and would be the last - that anyone he cared about was out in it. Sam must be…terrified, and that thought punched him in the stomach harder than anything had in a while. He pounded the side of the car again and again with the side of his fist, a third and fourth time, cursing himself and everything else, and the storm, and their father, and the life they had to live. He came to rest, finally. The monstrous sound of the sirens came back to his ears while he planted his head against the car to rest in the newly made dent of his anger. Rain slid down his scalp and fell off his chin. His shirt, his pants, too, might as well have been a second skin by that point, plastered to his skin from the rain. He opened his eyes.

Something was under their car. It was round in shape but seemed cinched in the middle. A moment of thought passed and Dean wondered if he'd ran something over, but no, he would have seen it before when he was working on the tire. Had it…fallen, from underneath? His brow furrowed, and he reached.

It was solid in his hand, something that resembled a hobo's sack, a piece of fabric wrapped around something and tied off with a piece of rope, and, he noticed, dry. The shape of it was similar to River's charm but smaller. This one fit snuggly in the palm of his hand, the brown canvas fabric stiff where it was pulled tightly over its contents. The cable tying it off was unremarkable.

Confusion blazed in his thoughts while he ran his thumb over the canvas. River had given him two charms - the red one, meant for the witches in Oklahoma, and the purple one, that had plagued him from the start. Where had this one come from? What was it doing under their car?

The compressor began sputtering in the dying way that said Dean was almost out of time, the sirens sharing nearly the same message. He swallowed and pushed a hard hand across his eyes to clear out the dripping water, though a fresh wave of rain slapped against him in the gusting wind, the lights at the pumps flashing more intensely than before. The compressor died finally and cut the air off in his hand, but he'd made it just in time, tossing the nozzle away from him to take care of the jack. He hurriedly gathered their things and chucked them in the backseat - those could be worried about later. He climbed behind the wheel, soaking the seat immediately, and turned over the engine. The radio came to life in a ghastly murmur of static and voices, distended and haunting in their sounds. Dean knew immediately that this wasn't any broadcast on the air. The light behind the dial began pulsing as though in confirmation. He shoved a finger onto the power button, the light dying amicably as the voices drained away.

The petulant Chevron cars smiled back at Dean from the side of the building. They caught his gaze for a fraction of a second.

"Fuck you," Dean spat.

He forced the transmission into Reverse, then Drive, not bothering with his belt, his blinkers, or even a glance for traffic as he sped back onto the road. A guess was only going to take him so far but a guess was all he had. Now if he could just find it.

He did notice, however, as he took a corner already a block down the road, the twin yellow headlights of a car in his rearview as it pulled into the Chevron station after him. So someone else was stupid enough to be out in the storm. He pressed harder on the gas pedal.