Don't Feed After Midnight
Chapter 14
Lebanon Kansas, a blink and you'll miss it place; whose only public claim to fame was that it had once been the geographic center, of the entire United States. Heart of America's Heartland.
Sammy told him how they'd worked it out, back in 1918, in a scientific survey (which actually meant they made a cardboard cutout of a map of the country and stuck a pin in it, shifting it about 'til they got the thing to balance and spin properly.) The geographic center of the 48 contiguous US states was about 3 miles northwest of Lebanon, Kansas.
They'd erected a monument and everything, out on the other side of town; but not exactly where the pin was, 'cause the farmer who owned the land didn't want a monument and a bunch of tourists in the middle of his field, but hey, the site was close enough for government work.
Tourists still came, stood by the monument, took their photos and moved on.
Back when the Men of Letters were looking to build their bunker, as a top-secret storehouse for all that lore and arcane crap, the population had been three times what it was now. The whole thing must have appealed to that bunch of fez wearing, book club dudes. To build there in the geographic center of the 48 contiguous US states.
Then, times changed, Hawaii and Alaska joined the union and the actual center moved away.
Dean trudged along the empty ribbon of blacktop,
through the vast flat expanse of wheat fields and farms, thinking on what Sam had read to him. Politicians dubbed Kansas the breadbasket of America.
He wiped sweat from his brow and stared out at a waving sea of wheat, clocking the sun's progress in the sky. It was hard to gage things out here, the undulating flatness of the land, how the scenery seemed to consist of an endless repeation of more of the same. It made you lose track, feel like you were walking on a treadmill.
That article had talked about how high intensity farming and mechanisation were killing little burgs like Lebanon.
Farms got bigger, required less people to work 'em, the young folk left to find work in the cities, attrition happened.
There used to be a motel, middle school, sit down restaurant and movie theater in Lebanon, one playing flicks made in the same actual decade.
But they were long gone before he and Sammy came trolling through town in the impala, looking for a lock to fit Henry's key. Four months ago, now.
Nowadays, Lebanon Kansas boasted a population of just 250 odd souls, and not a single one of them was out and about.
Which left him stuck, hoofing it, walking down empty black top, following a series of roads that noone cared enough about to bother naming. They'd given all the roads round this part a series of numbers or letters depending if they went north-south or east-west, and said, 'good enough.'
The only decent one of the lot being four down the list, Dd road, 'double D's Sammy!'
The centre of town, and the post office on Main, was a good two hours walk from the bunker and Dean had given up any hope of seeing one of the good ol' boy, local farmers or one of their too young to flee yokel kids, trolling along in a ubiquitous pickup truck or tractor.
Harvest was more than a month away, now was a waiting period, the calm before the chaos of harvest.
By the time he finally caught sight of the Midway co-op grain elevator, Dean was feeling decidedly worse for wear. He was parched, starving and his feet hurt. He'd been sweaty and covered in dust from clearing out the loading dock before, not to mention the lingering smell of Eau de incinerated rodent corpse. But, adding two hours of walking into the mix really hadn't increased his street appeal any.
The sight of Main Street's small cluster of red brick buildings had never looked so good.
Without sparing a glance for the Post office, closed for the day, hours ago, (barring the P.O Boxes in the lobby.) Dean made a bee line for LaDow's Market.
LaDow's was a kind of one stop shop, there was a section of kitchy souvineres and for the centre tourists, grocery items, fresh produce, basic hardware, and round midday, week days, the owner's wife and daughter served a basic lunch menu.
Dean strode inside, making the bell over the doorway jingle and headed straight for the back.
Pulled open the cooler and grabbed up the first cold thing he saw, cracked the top and quaffed half of it standing there.
"Looks like you needed that." Randall LaDow, (who everyone called Lori for some reason) observed from behind the register.
"You have no idea." Dean grunted in response.
Lori was the owner-opperator of LaDow's Market, a hale man in his late fifties, with receding iron grey hair, a paunch and wire rimmed glasses.
According to Gladys Kennedy, the towns unofficial historian, Lori's family had run the Market for generations.
Dean eyed the empty lunch counter and its attendant brown vinyl booths regretfully, his gut clenching.
"Man, I missed lunch."
"You did, by all of four hours. Dana made a blueberry-apple pie."
"Seriously? Man! You're killin' me here."
Lori laughed, "I'm guessing you'd be interested in that last slice I had set aside."
"Nahh," Dean held up a hand. "Guessin' you set that aside for yourself. Couldn't steal another man's pie." His stomach chose that moment to let out a loud grumbling growl of complaint.
Lori huffed a chuckle and pulled the white takeout container out from under the counter.
"You'd be doing me a favour Mr Campbell, Dana's been on at me about my cholesterol again."
"I feel for you, man. Daughters and brothers, they're a raging pain in the ass. Sammy keeps tryin' to slip me these tofu hippy monstrosities, same reason.
Like I can't tell the difference between grass fed kansas beef and that godawful rubberised crap.
A man needs his meat, you don't mess with a man's meat." He muttered darkly, grabbing a second soda and a pack of jerky, to join the white takeout container by the register.
"You have car trouble?" The old man asked ringing up his purchases, "didn't hear that Chevy of yours."
"Yeah," Dean laughed sourly, "but not in the way you think, my brothers got the car."
Lori eyed him up and down, taking in his appearance speculatively and nodded without saying a word, took off his wirerimmed glasses polishing them slowly on his shop apron.
Dean dropped a twenty to the counter.
"You two have some kind of spat, that brother of yours hasn't had a relapse, has he?" The old man asked finally, as he made change and bagged everything.
There was something in the way the old man said it, that hinted at judgemental speculation and raised Dean's hackles.
Did he think Sam was some kind of recovering addict?
Well, Dean guessed with an internal shrug, he kinda was… but still…
"Sam's doin' fine." He growled.
"Good to hear." Lori nodded serenely and gave him a pitying smile.
Dean grabbed up the takeout container and plastic fork from the bag.
Forked up a large mouthful of pie, to end the conversation and take the sour taste out of his mouth.
The taste of the fruit and buttery pastry exploded over his tastebuds, driving every other thought from his mind. It dragged a low groan of appreciation from his throat and another loud gurgle from his midsection.
"Damn that's good. Tell Dana the marriage offer's still open."
Lori chuckled and shook his head.
"Think her husband might have something to say, 'bout that."
…
By the time Dean had extracted himself from Lori LaDow and made his way back down Main Street, his brain was ticking over, and a feeling of urgency had gathered in his sated guts.
It had suddenly occurred to him, that maybe, the random unlocked door in the bunker, finding the loading dock, and the bunkers lock down ~ all of it, mightn't have been so random, so external.
That, maybe, he'd been wrong about Crowley being neutered and rendered harmless by the dungeon and its shackles.
The bunker contained everything the Men of Letters had wanted to keep out of the hands of the evil sonofabitches of the world.
Larry Ganem told them to toss the key in and walk away, that it was better to lose access to all of it, rather than have any of it fall into Abbadon's hands. Abbadon had seen the coordinates of the bunker and was out there doing god knew what.
But who said Abbadon was the only demon they needed to worry about? Crowley was the King of Hell! He'd gotten to Kevin on Garth's boat, despite all the warding.
If there was one thing they knew about Crowley, it was that he was always looking for more power.
All that lore, the angel and demon tablets, a prophet, and Sam … they were all locked in the bunker together with that slimy sonofabitch.
Dean needed to get back, get inside. For that, he needed to get that key.
The key to the P.O. Box where the last accessible bunker key lay, was on his keyring. Hanging from the Impala's trunk, inside the bunker, behind a butt load of iron and concrete.
If Lebanon hadn't been such a backwater, the post office would've still been open, he would have charmed Martha into opening the box for him, 2 minutes straight, no issues.
But Martha locked up shop at midday.
He had his lock picks, but there was a wrinkle, in that the Lebanon P.O. Box lobby had a couple of cameras.
They were going to be a problem.
Like everything else in Lebanon, the camera system was ancient, hadnt been updated since the 1980's. The footage wasn't online or even digital. There'd be no hacking or wiping it later.
The system consisted of cameras, a recorder, a bunch of VCR tapes and a grainy monitor. It was the sort of survalence that only captured picture a couple of times a second, but that would be enough for someone to realise he wasn't using a key.
Yanking the wires on the cameras before breaking into their box would only incriminate him, add property damage to his wrap sheet.
Be better to go in there, pick the lock on the postbox and hope no one walked in on him, or checked the camera footage until it got over written.
He could do his thing, break into the office out back and nab the tapes.
If this were a case that's exactly what he'd do.
But Lebanon was their back yard, people knew them here, and as Bobby used to say, "you gotta keep your nose clean in your own hometown, boy." It didn't matter if they did skeivy things on a case, they were Rolling Stones, rarely visiting the same town twice.
The answer to his conundrum came in the shape of an ancient fuse box, attached to the outside of the little brick and clapboard post office.
Knock out the power to the building and you'd knock out the cameras and VCR recorder inside.
Dean rolled his eyes, little backwater towns like Lebanon weren't set up to combat career criminals, the people here just weren't psychologically equipped for it. Not that any career criminal would bother robbing post office boxes in a dead-end town like Lebanon. None excepting a certain individual by the name of Dean Winchester.
Looking around to check no one was watching, Dean ambled down the alleyway beside the post office and flipped open the fuse box.
Just as he was working out which fuse to pop there was a sound behind him.
Guiltily, he spun, ready to face one of the good ol' Kansas boys, who'd be demanding to know exactly what he thought he was doing.
Instead, a mangy looking ginger cat came streaking down the alleyway, stepping hastily out of the path of the ginger allergy factory, Dean caught his boot heel on a clump of straggly weeds.
"Sonofabitch!"
He fell on his ass, in the dirt.
Scrambling hastily to his feet, Dean glanced around, mortified, glad Sammy hadn't been there, to laugh his ass off.
Heart thumping with cat induced adrenalin, he turned back to the fuse box and popped out the necessary fuses.
Flipping the panel closed he did his best to saunter nonchalantly back towards the P.O. Box lobby.
Sammy was way better at picking locks! not that Dean would admit it, but he gave Sam the job on cases for a reason.
Now, he found he was out of practice. It felt like it took him hours to jimmy the lock.
When finally, the little door popped open Dean pumped his fist, spinning on his heel in a victory lap of sorts, only to see the door behind him, into the post office, swing open.
Eyes wide, Dean stared at Gladys Kennedy and Martha Gilbert like a deer in the headlights, for one long moment.
Shoving the lockpicks belatedly into his jacket pocket Dean fixed a smile on his face that felt like a grimace.
"Ladies," he greeted cordially, grabbing up the little plastic key container from the roof of the mailbox, held by magnets, and a fistful if mail.
"Oh, Mr Campbell, apologies if we startled you." Martha fluttered, "we seem to be experiencing a power outage,"
"LaDows still has electricity." Gladys Kennedy noted, peering out of the glassed in streetdoor of the lobby and down the street.
"Oh," Martha cooed looking uncertain, "I suppose I should call an electrician to look at it then."
Gladys lifted a bony wrist to peer at her watch. "If you call Stewart at this hour he'll not answer. That man will be down at Donny's bar swilling away his wages. I'm afraid that it will have to wait until the morning, dear."
"Ohh!" Martha looked stricken, perhaps worried over what the town council would say, should the post office not open on time next morning.
"Maybe I can be of service," Dean suggested, "I may not be an electrician, but I can certainly check the basics."
"Oh! would you?" Martha breathed eying him with excessive gratitude.
"It would be my pleasure." He bowed, slightly favouring both ladies with a bright smile.
After a 'search' for the fuse box, (that allowed Dean to reassure himself the video survalience equipment didn't have a battery backup) they 'found' it, located on the outer wall.
Dean then made a show, and short work of popping the fuses back into place.
Both ladies hailed him as a hero and a Good Samaritan, pledging their undying gratitude. Something that might have been more appealing if Gladys weren't in her eighties and Martha in her mid forties and married.
It was after that, as Dean was readying himself for the trek back to the bunker when both ladies noticed his lack of wheels, and insisted upon dropping him back to the forclosed, abandoned property (only a few miles from the access road to the bunker) that he claimed to have been surveying for a client, before a disagreement with little brother, ending with him carless and walking into Lebanon to calm down.
It wasn't his best work, but the story would give the old dears something to titter and speculate over during their monthly quilting session in the Centennial Hall.