Spoilers: The Second Death includes references to events, characters, and themes that occur in Supernatural through episode 07x23 "Survival of the Fittest" and in Walking Dead through episode 06x09 "No Way Out."

Chapter Summary: Castiel leads the team to his efforts.

The Second Death
Chapter Eight: Into the Future

Castiel was not in the mood for incredulous facial expressions or tedious inquiry. He was already staring down the former, and the fact that none of his companions had moved - or even responded - to his declaration indicated that the latter was soon to follow.

Sure enough, Dean began, "Cas - "

"Follow me," he interjected before turning on his heel and walking away.

Dean was at his side in an instant, and - much to Castiel's surprise - Daryl and Carol joined them after only a few moments of angry whispering. So the angel kept his eyes forward and his pace quick, not affording any opportunity to ask questions. They'd be answered soon enough.

He'd already cleared the way, but the animated undead were legion, shuffling in from the depths of the forest. They weren't close enough to be a threat, yet he felt an overwhelming desire to annihilate each and every one of them.

He couldn't explain why, but these mindless drones set him on edge. Their futile attacks, their constant growls and groans, their haphazard ambulation... it was all irritating, but it wasn't what made him want to lash out. This resentment ran deep, far deeper than recoiling at how they filled their rot stomachs with living flesh that could do nothing but putrefy.

The dead should never be hungry; it was an affront to nature.

But that was hardly important now.

He turned his attention to where it could be of use: their immediate surroundings. They were at a dense thicket of trees that were covered in blood, guts, and flesh.

"The hell happened here," Daryl mumbled.

Cas kept going until he reached the next clearing. He'd made his initial attack here. In keeping his promise to Dean, he'd opted for an attack any human could pull off. And as a result, the innards of the recently living as well as the walking dead had splattered in every direction, covering the area in a layer of remains.

"Sonova bitch," Dean said quietly.

Cas looked at Carol and saw that, though she had said nothing, she was just as shocked as the others. Perhaps he would've been affected by the scene had he not been the cause of it.

"There were a dozen of them," he explained. "Heavily armed."

"With bombs?" Carol asked.

"No, that was me," Cas replied.

"We don't have the supplies for bombs," Dean said, though it was clear from the look on his face that he regretted saying it immediately.

"I used the Drano we found at the garage," he explained.

"Last I checked, Drano don't explode," Daryl said harshly.

"It does if it's mixed with aluminum foil and water," Carol said. "Teenagers in my old neighborhood used to make bottle bombs for pranks."

"You gonna explain why you did this?" Dean asked.

"Yes," Cas said. "I saw their group from the garage, but they all went in different directions. I wanted to see what they had in there."

He pointed to a medium-sized box truck outfitted with perches on all sides.

"Supplies, a lot of them," the angel continued as Daryl broke away to check it out himself. "I hadn't planned on confronting them until I heard their radio communicaitons."

"Communicating what?"

"They were hunting people to exploit and kill," the angel replied harshly. "And I wasn't going to let them."

"Do you remember what they said?" Carol asked, her voice suddenly urgent.

"Every word," he said. "I stole supplies and hid so I could make 'bottle bombs' as you called them. I put a few in the clearing, then planted a few on the undead. As soon as the first wave of those men came back, their motorcycles attracted them, and - "

"Boom," Dean concluded.

Cas nodded his head in agreement.

"And that killed them?" Carol asked.

"No," he replied. "But all of them seemed to think that anyone who was cut or stabbed by zombie shrapnel was 'contaminated' and had to die."

"Makes sense," she said. "Being bitten or scratched by a walker can infect you, being impaled on a rib would also. They put their own people down? Right away?"

Cas nodded his head, yes.

"The few who turned up after the explosions had to deal with more undead then they had bullets for," he added. "I... helped from on top of the truck."

"However you did it, it's a good thing you did," Carol said. "The woman we saved back there - Barbara - her people have run into them before."

"Come see this!" Daryl yelled from the truck.

Carol went immediately, but Cas held his arm out to stop Dean. "We could leave," he suggested.

"What?"

"We could leave," he repeated. "I can put Daryl and Carol to sleep, leave them in their car with some supplies. We take the rest and leave."

"You know something I don't?" Dean asked.

"This isn't where we belong," he replied. "We're taking sides in a war we know nothing about."

"If you feel that way, then why all this," the hunter replied, waving his arms. "You could've zapped back to the garage with no one the wiser. But you didn't because you found out what they were doing and knew that they were on the wrong side of things."

"And what about them?" Cas asked, tipping his head towards the truck with their traveling companions. "How do we know that they're on the right side of things?"

Dean shrugged as he said, "Only time will tell."

He didn't wait for another question or a reply, and as he walked over to the truck, the angel felt a gnawing sense of dread that they were making an alliance they could never take back, regardless of what time revealed.

It was just one more thing that Castiel couldn't explain, and at the moment, he didn't have the luxury of introspection.

Carol's jaw dropped of its own accord when she got into the back of the truck. Somebody had welded shelving and seating into the interior as well as a vertical ladder that led to a homemade hatch to the roof.

A dozen people could easily fit back here with months of supplies. It would be easy enough to set up sleeping bags with shifts for keeping watch. As long as they had gas, they could be a completely mobile unit.

"Got it rigged for snipers up there," Daryl said as he descended from the hatch. "Harnesses and everything."

"And a working radio/walkie talkie system," she added. "Who are these people?"

Daryl palmed through what was laying around. It looked like mostly hitching equipment and mechanic's toolkits.

"They blocked the ramp," she said, the conclusion falling out of her mouth before she even realized she'd thought of it.

"You think?" Daryl asked, clearly not convinced.

"Barbara told me they tried to clear the ramp before they decided to take another route," she replied. "I doubt these people are the kind to sit around and wait for other people's traps to work."

"You trust her?" he asked.

"Enough to believe her about this."

It wasn't an answer. She knew that. But she doubted Barbara and Randy had enough wits between them to fake an argument like the one she witnessed.

"We agreed on a rendezvous point," Carol continued. "Two weeks from now, to share information about this other group."

Daryl's hair bounced limply as he shook his head, obviously not happy with the arrangement.

"I only said I'd take it to our group," she added. "No promises."

"Yeah, well, you know my vote," he replied as he moved into the cab.

She gave herself a minute to collect herself. Without distraction, her thoughts drifted to the man she'd killed less than an hour ago, and she let them. Now she knew who he worked with and what his people were doing, and the doubt that nearly drowned her this morning evaporated.

That time, at least, she'd done the right thing. It wasn't an answer, but it was enough for now.

Clanging metal drew her to the cab, where Daryl sat, perplexed. "The hell they doing out there?"

Dean and Cas were chaining something metal to the front of the truck, and while she couldn't figure out why, she did know they didn't have time. The walkers they passed earlier were here.

"We've got to leave," Carol said out the window as she started the truck. "Now."

"We will make little progress without this," Cas replied. "The undead are blocking the road."

"I'll see what they got," Daryl said before he disappeared into the back.

At least she could count on one person to have some sense.

She adjusted the seat so she could reach the pedals better; whoever had been driving this thing must've been six and a half feet tall.

They'd gotten one side tied down before the walkers got too close. Dean broke away and took them down with his machete as Cas began to chain the passenger's side.

"Just leave it and get it!" she yelled. "There's plenty of ammo in this thing."

Cas kept working, though, until he'd finished whatever he'd been doing. Then he climbed into the passenger side and went straight to the back without another word.

"Clean up while you're back there," she called after him.

It wasn't like he needed to. Hell, she'd looked worse than him before, but, for whatever reason, she didn't want to turn up at Alexandria with him looking like that.

"Let's go," Dean said as he climbed in. "Cowcatcher should work for long enough to get us out to the main road."

If she hadn't been driving, Carol would've given him a look for that comment. She turned around and got them pointed toward the small service road, but it was no good.

"Too many walkers," she said. "Grab a weapon and get up there with Daryl and Cas. We need to clear them."

"Just drive."

"If I drive, the bodies will pile up against the undercarriage, get caught up in everything. We'll lose steering before we get ten feet."

"I'm telling you, that's what the cowcatcher is for," Dean repeated.

She had no idea what on earth a cowcatcher was or why anyone would think it was a term people knew. She turned her head to give him the look, and when she did, she met his eye.

"Trust me," he said. "Even if it doesn't seem like it, Cas and I know what we're doing. Mostly."

Carol couldn't tell if she trusted him or simply didn't want to waste time arguing, but she started driving anyway.

"Damn," she said to herself as the walkers bounced to either side of the truck as they came in contact with the metal.

"I bet Cas ten bucks that you could split them if you went over thirty," Dean said with a smile.

She hadn't heard anyone betting money in such a long time, it took her a second to understand what he'd said.

He continued, "But he said something about it not being a real cowcatcher so it could break if we tried to go that fast."

"A cowcatcher?" she repeated.

"Yeah... like they use on trains," he explained. "That's what we called them back home anyway. Guess it's a regional thing."

She kept their speed around twenty miles per hour in case Cas was right about it breaking.

"You boys have anything else up your sleeves?" she asked.

Dean didn't reply, pretending as if he was too busy fiddling with the radio to hear her. It didn't take him long to tune in on human voices.

"Hawk Four responding," a man said.

"Status update," another man replied.

"Got a fucking huge herd," the first man said. "Right where Hawk Three was supposed to set up their sweep."

"Run a clean up and extract whatever you can," the second voice said. "The boss does not want one of our trucks out there."

"You got it, Eagle's Nest. Hawk Four out."

Static gargled across the radio, then nothing.

"They must be using a different frequency for short-range transmissions," Dean said. "Let's see if we can't spy on these assholes."

As Carol drove through a sea of parting walkers, she could only hope they managed to put enough distance between themselves and whatever Hawk Four meant by 'clean up.'

Daryl decided to keep watch on top of the truck, hooked into a decent sniper's perch. It wasn't as good as being on a bike, but it was damn close.

Cas joined him for about an hour, helping to thin out the walkers on the road for the truck, even though it seemed to be doing fine without their help. As soon as they reached the main road, though, Cas left because Carol had ordered him to clean up.

Of course she did. The man looked like he'd just slaughtered a small village, looked worse than Rick after he'd tore a man's throat out. No way in hell Carol would turn up at Alexandria with Cas in this state, not without at least trying to rinse him off first.

That led him to how the man in the trench coat got so bloodied up to begin with.

He didn't let himself think about it at first. He knew the people who had this truck were bad news as soon as he heard the name Negan. Taking them out was self-preservation, plain and simple. He wouldn't fault Cas for seeing it faster than he did.

But then it got dark, and his mind started wandering, and he realized the story wasn't adding up.

Cas said he used Drano from the garage, but why the hell did he take Drano with him to begin with?

If his plan had always been to make a bottle bomb for a distraction or something, then he was basically carrying Drano hoping he'd find what he'd need. But if he hadn't had a plan - or if his plan hadn't involved explosives - then what did he take the Drano for?

And who the hell even thought of shit like that to begin with? It seemed like the kind of thing Eugene would think of, but as far as Daryl knew, Alexandria's resident survivor-nerd hadn't thought of it.

At some point, Cas returned to help keep watch, and Daryl wanted to ask him about it... that, and why he'd gone out without any damn backup.

But then he caught something in how Cas stared out into the dark. Something that reminded Daryl of himself.

Would he have waited for backup had he been in Cas's position? Would he have shown any kind of mercy when he saw who he was dealing with? Would he tell two new faces the ugly truth so they could see how far gone he really was?

Nah.

He decided to talk to Carol about it first chance he got, just in case, but for now, he let the silence settle in.

Author's Notes: I've been really bad at replying to comments, and I'm very sorry about that. Believe me when I say that reading your comments is the best part of my day. I plan to reply to all of them as soon as I can. Thank you for all your support and patience!

I hope you've enjoyed this latest installment. Hopefully the next update will be out in the next week or two!