Chapter 13: Wayfarer's Prayer
Carl picked up a meat carving knife from the weapon stash. It was nice and sturdy and about as long as his forearm. He took the time to use a sharpening rod on it, one more useful thing they've picked up in the ship's kitchens.
"I'll add sheaths to the list," said Mikey, handing Carl a length of fabric for a makeshift weapon holder. True to his word, he pulled out a small notepad from the back pocket of his oversized jeans.
"Careful, you're turning into Olivia." He meant it as a joke, but Mikey just shrugged without looking up from the notepad. Grimacing, Carl quickly wrapped the knife in the fabric and tied it to his belt, then picked up a second, smaller one to put in his boot, just in case.
On the other side of the navigation bridge, Castiel was waving away Claire's attempts to hand him a long, silver blade. "You keep it, it suits you." He flicked his wrist and another knife, identical to the one Claire was holding, dropped down from his sleeve to his hand. "I've made another one this morning."
That's useful, thought Carl, patting his makeshift knife-tie to make sure it was still holding.
"I thought you didn't like me handling weapons." Claire crossed her arms over her chest.
"I don't," Castiel said simply, the blade disappearing with a second flick of his wrist. "But now you need one."
They didn't waste much time before heading out. Getting down from the ship proved to be a small challenge: the mechanical gangways didn't work when the ship was out of power (having run out its emergency juice earlier that morning). Luckily, they discovered a failsafe in the form of rolled up ladders attached to the ship's rails.
Castiel went down the ladder first. He took care of five walkers before Carl's feet even hit the pier. He handled the remaining ones in the few seconds Carl needed to draw his knife. It would have been pretty cool, Carl admitted to himself, if Enid didn't happen to be watching from the upper deck. He heard the rest of the group cheering.
"Bring us back something nice!" Jake called down. Carl gave him the finger.
The pier was solid concrete beneath their feet. It was wider than Carl had thought when he'd been standing on the ship's deck. Along the pier, Carl could see that a few of the lurkers were stirring, turning dead eyes in their direction. Most of them were still pretty far, the sound of the waves drowning out their moans. Carl kept the knife in his hand. It would be pretty embarrassing if he came back with it still sparkling clean, he thought.
Castiel looked at the approaching walkers with narrowed eyes. "Stay behind me."
"Yeah, sure, I'll watch your six," Carl said under his breath, falling into step behind the angel.
"My six what?" Castiel glanced over his shoulder.
"...Nothing."
There was a warehouse at the end of the docking area, its rolling gate sealed shut with a rusting padlock. Castiel drove his blade through the skulls of two approaching walkers, then knocked twice on the warehouse gate, cocking his head as if to listen for an answering moan.
Castiel gave Carl a brisk nod. "There's only one inside. Be ready."
The padlock came apart easily in Castiel's hand. The warehouse had an open sea access on its other side and a bunch of loading equipment, but not much else besides. They found the walker at the back of the warehouse, a frail-looking thing in a ratty jumpsuit. It was handcuffed to something that looked a bit like a large radiator. Whoever the guy used to be, his death hadn't been easy - there were fingernail-shaped gouges on the ground, ending a couple of feet away from a set of discarded keys.
"D'you think he got bit?" Carl wondered.
The walker gave a rasping cry when it saw them, making grasping motions with its free hand. There was a sickening creak of breaking bones and then the walker lurched forward, suddenly free. It let out a long groan as it made its way to them, the palm of one hand hanging limply from its wrist.
In stark contrast to his earlier behavior, Castiel didn't make a move on the walker. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest, weirdly looking a bit like Claire did when she had done the same earlier. He raised an expectant eyebrow at Carl.
Carl took one step toward the walker, sidestepped it before it could touch him, then drove his large knife through its fragile skull. It dropped lifelessly to Carl's feet. Carl turned to Castiel with what he hoped was blank expression, strutting his chin.
"Good," Castiel said with a nod. Then he asked, "do you smell gasoline?"
They found two gas jerrycans not far away from where the walker had been. Apparently, whoever left it behind managed to forget their fuel as well. Castiel sniffed at the jerrycans' contents, declaring that the gas was still good. They left the containers by the warehouse entrance, to be collected on the return trip.
"It's weird, though," Carl said a short time later as they made their way down to the shore. "I've got this friend, Eugene, he's the smartest guy I know. I mean, book smart." Carl tripped an approaching walker, then quickly stabbed it in the back of the head. "He told me that all the gas should've gone bad in, like, a year. But it's been what, four already?"
"It's a miracle," Castiel said.
"Right?" Carl gestured with his knife. "It's the weirdest thing."
"No, I mean that it is, quite literally, a miracle."
"Wait, what?"
Castiel said matter-of-factly. "It happened before. Well, not exactly like this, and not on this scale, of course." Castiel seemed surprised at Carl's befuddled expression. "You didn't realize? I thought Hanukkah was one of the more well-known Jewish holidays."
"Um, that's the one with the candles, right?"
Castiel brutally beheaded two walkers as he explained. "Well, the Israelites used oil. They were very upset to nearly run out of it, actually. Really, they were quite sad." He flickered his blade, which gleamed clean again, like the gore couldn't stick to it. "My brothers and I were very surprised when the little can of oil lasted for a full eight days. By then, God rarely answered any more prayers."
"So the gas lasts because of God?"
Castiel looked away. "I'd hoped…" he started to say, then shook his head. "Perhaps. It doesn't matter. Come on, we're nearly at the shore."
Between the walkers and the warehouse visit, it took them nearly an hour to clear the pier. They found a checkpoint of some sort, close to the end. A little Honda had been left there to rust. From the look of it, its tires had blown when someone tried to back it over the security rods on the ground.
"I don't think we can fix it up," Carl said after giving it a quick once-over under the hood. Newer car models were next to impossible to salvage.
"I want to try something. Shut your eyes," Castiel said and put a hand on Carl's arm, physically steering him away. Castiel placed two fingers on the car's battery, then glanced over his shoulder in order to repeat, "shut your eyes."
There was a flashbang behind Carl's closed eyelid. He heard a cry of pain from Castiel, and a loud crash. He opened his eye to find the car had been shoved with such force that it flew over the edge of the pier. It had crushed straight through the metal railings to land upside down in wet sand.
"What was that?" Carl turned to look at Castiel. The angel had fallen on his butt.
"That," said Castiel as he picked himself up, wearing a remarkably human expression of annoyed embarrassment, "stays between you and me."
A few walkers came shambling out of the woods, but not as many as they'd feared. The road that led away from the pier was mostly clear. They found the remains of another warehouse farther inland. Its roof had caved in, leaving a half raised structure behind.
"Hey, check it out," Carl said, pointing to a large white van.
The warehouse's parking lot was halfway full of old, rusting trucks. The white van stood apart. It had all the signs of a recently abandoned vehicle; its windshield hadn't yet collected enough dust to completely hide its interior. Carl wondered if whoever left it tried to look for supplies inside the warehouse and never made it back out.
There were no walkers beyond the warehouse's fences, and none came crawling out of the ruins, so they made a beeline to the vehicle. It was a large courier van. An old one, he noticed, suddenly hopeful. Carl tried the driver's door, finding it empty and with the key still in the ignition. He tried it, and of course, it didn't work, but the gas gauge showed it was halfway full and there were no obvious blood stains on the upholstery, which he considered a good sign. He pulled on the lever to pop open the hood.
Castiel let out a huff. "It's… different," he admitted.
Carl grinned. "Okay, move over a bit."
They got lucky. The battery hadn't been completely dead. They managed to give the van a jump start, with Castiel pushing it around the large lot and Carl at the driver's seat, his foot pressed to the clutch.
"Yes!" Carl drummed both hands on the wheel when the van finally started.
They let it run while they poked around the rest of the warehouse's grounds, not finding anything more useful. The sun was setting down by the time they made their way back to the ship, Castiel in the driver's seat (he did know how to drive, it turned out). They didn't forget to collect the gas cans on the way. They heard their group's cheers as they parked.
"Just in time," grinned Enid when Carl made his way up the ladder, thrusting a smelly toddler into his arms. "Judith needs a diaper change. Again."
"Would've been great if we actually had any," Carl grumbled. He accepted the pieces of cloth Enid handed him instead.
"It's on the list," Mikey told him cheerfully.
To their great pleasure, the ship still had hot water. They knew it might be a long while before they'd enjoy a hot shower again. After, they made sure they had everything prepared for the journey. Mikey ended up being the one to help Castiel count the canned food, which they'd packed into two very large duffel bags.
"Hey Cas," Carl heard Claire say just before they were ready to clonk out. She was holding a trench coat in her hands, holding it up for Castiel to look at. It was dark blue, nearly black, and about knee length. "Found it with the captain's stuff. What do you think?"
Castiel, who had changed into clean clothes but was still wearing the torn-up tan trench coat he'd been wearing all day, seemed touched. He accepted the new coat, holding it up very carefully.
"You don't have to keep wearing dad's old coat, you know," Claire said. "Mom always hated that thing."
Castiel didn't seem to know what to say. He looked at Claire with a soft expression.
She waved him away. "Go! Put it on." She turned to Carl next, or actually, to Judith, who was sitting in his lap, cuddling up to him like she always did when she was sleepy. "And this is for you," she said and put a captain's cap on top of Judith's head. "Aww."
Judith, of course, pulled it off a second later. She kept holding on to it, though, even as she fell asleep, which earned her another heartfelt "aww" from Claire.
That night they carried blankets and pillows to the navigation bridge, settling down in one space like they did in Heaven. Castiel, they found, didn't need to sleep.
They loaded their supplies into the van early the next morning, managing to clear up more space for themselves in the back by securing the two large and canned-food-heavy duffel bags to the roof. It still wouldn't be the most comfortable of journeys: the backspace didn't have any seats or windows. They made up for it by loading it with blankets and pillows. Luckily, there was no partition between the front and the back of the van.
"I'm in charge of the maps," Jake explained from the passenger seat. "Also, I called shotgun."
"You did not," Scott grumbled, settling down at the back between the gas cans and a squirming Oliver. "Kiddo, settle down, we didn't even take off yet."
"Called it earlier, not my fault you weren't listening," Jake replied. He poked his head out of the window to ask, "hey, where's Cas?"
Carl, who was standing by the passenger door (he didn't manage to beat Jake's dash to the shotgun position), saw that Castiel was standing at the edge of the pier, eyes closed. He didn't have his hands clasped together or anything but Carl still had the impression that he was praying. A moment later, Castiel opened his eyes and walked back to the van, his new coat billowing behind him.
"Have a safe journey," Castiel said as he sat down in the driver's seat.
And then they were on their way.