Chapter 8: Awe and Sum
"That is not good." R said, his brow furrowing slightly as he stood to look out the windows opposite his desk. "And you're absolutely certain that Lucifer's Army were the demons behind this?"
"Not entirely certain…" Sam said hesitantly fiddling with the top button on his coat, "…but given the required strength for a demon to possess a body while on hallowed ground and be able to zap elsewhere, it is unlikely that it is any other group."
"The numbers make sense, given the disappearances and the fact that a battalion-1,000 soldiers-match pretty closely." Dean added as R continued his gaze out the window.
He continued staring out onto the cursed landscape and spoke without turning toward the two, though his eye shifted to be looking directly at them, "If it is Lucifer's Army we are in a bad state. Do either of you know about their legacy?"
Dean shook his head and Sam likewise frowned.
"That is fair enough. Most modern bibles lack direct reference to them. The number of the mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard their number. The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur.A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths." R paused. "These are described as servants of angels in most versions of Revelation, but they are not. They are Lucifer's Army. A wretched collection of every damned soul and demon he has corrupted." He turned to face Dean. "If this is in fact a battalion from his army it is a sign of the end nearing."
The brothers were silent as they processed the gravity of the situation, "Wait, did you just say that there's supposed to be 200 million of these things-and that they're going to kill a third of all humanity?!" Dean blurted.
"In the end, yes." R turned back toward the two, a crease visible at either corner of his mouth. "In the past we have suspected that one or two of these demons may have escaped-finding a hole to crawl out of the sulfurous chasm they normally reside in, but this magnitude is unprecedented." He opened his desk drawer and handed Sam a manila folder, "For now I want you two on this case, the board and I need to discuss this recent change and decide a course of action."
**SPN**
Jacob's Creek, Virginia was precisely the kind of place that seemed perfect. Neat rows of brick and clapboard houses lined tidy streets on the edge of the small municipality. White picket fences and boxwood shrubs sat next to the sidewalks where children played in the fall air. While it was still too early for Halloween decorations, there was an appropriately festive feel in the air as a banner hung on wires across the main street proclaimed an upcoming fall festival. As the Impala rolled past the sparkling plate glass windows Dean glanced around to check that they were, in fact, in the correct place.
"Sammy you sure we got the right town? This place looks like Leave it to Beaver, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and Father Knows Best had the most wholesome three-way in existence." Dean said as he watched a little girl in a white dress and curly blonde pigtails skip across the crosswalk in front of them.
Sam rolled his eyes, "I'm pretty sure. The report here says that the Saint Gerard Majella Church has had issues with their graveyard being continually disturbed, with multiple graves in the past month disturbed and the coffins found empty."
"Really? So, what, some Hugh Beaumont decided to suddenly go and make himself a Frankenstein?"
"Frankenstein was the name of the scientist, the monster isn't named in the story-usually it's just called 'the monster'." Sam corrected.
Dean sighed, "Smart-ass. Let's just look at this graveyard and figure out what's going on."
**SPN**
Father Steward was thankfully easy enough to convince after showing their badges, which meant that while Sam gained as much information as he could from the man Dean was able to investigate the graves. The graveyard was behind the church and surrounded on all sides by a tall brick fence with large iron spikes on top. The barrier was easily ten feet tall, and given how sharp the spikes looked it would take someone incredibly foolish or stupid to try scaling it. Curiously there wasn't a gate either, the church itself made most of the front barrier, while part of it backed against the old clergy house-it's green shutters pulled tight over the windows-that sat slightly off to the east. Between the two structures the wall continued unimpeded. Someone would have to be pretty desperate to try and rob these graves… Dean mused as he walked to the wall to make sure he wasn't missing anything. Given that it was solid all the way through he shrugged and instead went to investigate the graves, stepping over the patchy yellowed grass. There looked to be six either fresh dirt re-filling the holes and in the case of one set off to the far left of the graveyard, an open casket that was likely still under investigation by the local authorities.
Dean pulled out his pencil and a pad and copied down the names and dates off of the graves-information the papers had neglected to publish.
Norma Lowell: January 9th, 1887-July 18th, 1958
Theodore Scott: March 2nd, 1891-June 5th, 1958
Paul Barrows: July 1st, 1880-April 19th, 1958
Elizabeth Gardner: September 23rd, 1874-March 6th, 1958
Lois Hankins: June 19th, 1921-February 5th, 1958
Maxwell Shepherd: October 21st, 1912-January 18th, 1958
Dean paused as he read the last grave-the only one not yet filled in.
Mary-Ann Lucille Ashbury
April 5th, 1951-January 12th, 1958
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."Matthew 5:8
While we only had you in our life for a few years, you truly were a blessing.
There is another angel in heaven today.
**SPN**
"What did the father say?" Dean asked as he and Sam pulled away from the church and headed back toward the center of town.
"Not much aside from how he's disturbed that something like this is happening here." Sam said as he flipped back through his notes, "That and he said he thinks that someone's doing this as some sort of cruel joke."
"Why'd he say that?" Dean asked as he turned onto a side-street leading toward their motel.
"Apparently a bunch of teens found out that the lock on the former clergy house isn't good and he had to chase them out when he found a bunch of them hanging out in there."
"Wait, he doesn't live there? I thought that's the whole point of having a clergy house." Dean tilted his head slightly.
"No, the building was unsafe-apparently the foundation's on a sinkhole. It doesn't look like it, but it could fall over any minute-the church has him staying in a boarding house for the time being until they can demolish the old one and figure something out." Sam said as he tried to read his own handwriting.
Dean continued to think as he pulled the Impala into the Creekside Inn's parking lot. Something fit together here, but I don't know what.
**SPN**
The next morning the brothers investigate the town records in the library, hoping to find more information about the missing bodies. As Dean placed another copy of the Jacobsonian newspaper onto the growing stack of useless information Sam flipped through the January 12th copy he suddenly paused.
"Dean?"
"What?" He glanced up from the already yellowing newsprint.
"Does this girl look familiar to you?" Sam held up a page folded over on itself with a picture of a young girl. She was wearing a light colored dress and smiling brightly. It was likely a school photograph, given the blank background and intentional pose. Most notable however was her light blonde hair set into two curly pigtails.
"That's the girl we saw driving into town. So what?" Dean said as he turned to look back at his page.
"Read the headline." Sam said as he sat the paper in front of Dean, briefly adjusting his glasses.
"Mary-Ann Ashbury, Age 6, Dead from Cancer, holy shit."
"That girl was alive. She looked perfectly normal." Sam whispered across the table.
"It's got to be zombies, right?" Dean replied.
"I don't see what else it could be. Ghouls wouldn't work this slowly, they'd take all the graves in one shot and be done." Sam muttered, "So why resurrect these people as zombies?"
Dean's face suddenly lit up as he pulled the pad from his jacket and flipped to the notes from the day before, "I know why. It doesn't have anything to do with them when they were alive-all the disturbed graves were of people who died recently, only a few months ago. I bet you they're coming back in reverse-death order, the freshest corpses coming back first."
"Okay, but why?" Sam asked as the two started toward the library's exit.
"I don't know why, but I do know we need to find the families of the people who are back-it's been almost two weeks since the first couple graves were disturbed, I have a feeling that they're not exactly docile anymore."
Dean's prediction was correct. Norma Lowell's daughter and son-in law, as well as Theodore Scott's wife hadn't been lucky. The three of them had died at the hands of their resurrected family members, leaving the brothers with dispatching the two feral zombies. The other zombies were still docile enough, which left the unfortunate task of dispatching them…
Most of the families refused to cooperate when the Winchesters explained the situation. It wasn't until they explained what had happened to the Lowell and Scott families that the four other groups begrudgingly allowed the natural order to be resolved. Most of them had thought it was a miracle, that somehow God had restored their loved ones to life. Watching the faint traces of hope die in their eyes wasn't something Sam or Dean ever wanted to see again, but knew that they would given their line of work.
The Ashburys lived in one of the houses at the edge of town. It was a brick ranch style home on a street of similar residences. The green Buick out front and the neatly trimmed rosebushes made it look like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The two men exchanged a silent look, knowing that this was going to easily be the hardest thing they'd have to do that day. A thin man wearing a sweater-vest answered the door, and once they showed their badges he welcomed them in. His wife soon joined them, bringing slices of pie and coffee as the two men sat on the plastic-covered couch. A large framed photograph of the couple along with their daughter was hanging above the fireplace. It was the only color photograph in the entire house, and clearly worth a great deal to the parents.
It was 10:23 when a single pop was heard. None of the neighbors thought much of it-probably just the Swanson's DeSoto backfiring again. As Sam tried to steady himself he put the gun back in his holster. He and Dean carried small white sheet to the Impala and refused to discuss that morning ever again, and especially to never talk about looking at the back fence.
**SPN**
That evening the two returned to the church graveyard and confronted the necromancer who was resurrecting the zombies. Dana Thompson had lost her husband the previous November when his car had spun out and gone over the edge of the bridge that connected Jacob's Creek to the interstate. She'd already been dabbling in witchcraft prior to that point-mostly to insure her successes and secure her vanity-but had moved firmly into the dark arts after the death. Unfortunately for her she didn't know the terms she had agreed to when she enacted her spell. What she had thought was the spirit of her husband guiding her was in fact a demon bent on raising as many dead as possible, using the ruse of working backward as an excuse to raise others before Mr. Thompson while pretending that his spirit was stuck in a different body until his corpse was resurrected.
While a moderately skilled witch, she was woefully underprepared for two hunters to bust down the door to her secret room in the attic of the former clergy house. It wasn't truly a fight, that would have required her to react with something other than a poorly executed attack that pathetically spurted from her wand and barely struck the wall before Dean was able to tackle her to the ground. As the elder Winchester had her pinned a demon stepped forward from the shadows wearing the guise of a young boy.
"Well, well, well… I'm surprised you took this long. I've been at it for almost three weeks and you finally show up. I thought you Winchesters were supposed to be good at your jobs, maybe we overestimated you." He smirked as he pinned the three humans to the wall.
"Why are you doing this? I know you love fucking with humans, but since when do demons want to raise the dead?" Dean bit as he struggled to get free of the intangible grasp.
"Tut-tut, language Deano… After all, there is a child in the room." The demon sneered as his eyes turned black and he cackled, forcing Dean's jaw to slam shut.
"Norman! What's going on? You said tonight you'd be able to finally get free from that boy…"
Before Dana could finish her question the boy flicked his wrist and she fell to the ground dead. He turned toward the brothers and acted as if he was going to flick his wrist, but simply smiled at the terror visible in the two captive's eyes.
"23 down… Only 43 to go. I'd love to stay but I have elsewhere to be. Goodbye boys, we'll be seeing you again soon." And with that the demon was gone.