Chapter 4 – Something Bad
The river branch was wilder than expected. When Sam tossed a branch in, it swirled wildly and sank.
"See," Charlie crossed her arms. "This is what Elphaba warned us about. We're never going to be able to cross the river."
Dean shook his head. "I think we can. The horses are stronger than us, we could walk next to them and position them upstream, we can sort of shelter behind them."
He waded knee-deep into the river and peered at the water. "I think that it won't go deeper than our chest. Saddle the horses and put the supplies on their back."
"Do you really think this is a good idea?" Sam asked.
Dean nodded. "Yes. You're gonna go first, because you're the tallest one. Then Charlie, then me."
"Why am I in the middle?" Charlie handed him the black horse's reins.
"Because you are smaller than me. If you don't drown, neither will I." Dean grinned.
"Everyone ready for a bath?" Sam, as always, was busy with the serious stuff.
He swallowed nervously and waded in, with Dean and Charlie in his wake.
It went quite well. Sam had trouble finding his footing, but reached the bank fairly quickly. Charlie had also climbed onto the bank when they suddenly heard a yell.
Sam turned to see Dean loose his footing and submerge. His wild waving scared the black mare, who jumped towards the riverbank with wild shrieks.
Sam pushed the horse's reins into Charlie's hands and waded back into the river, looking for his brother.
Dean was, under water, still kicking, desperate to resurface. He felt two hands pulling him back onto his feet and gasped for air.
"Watch your step you idiot!" Sam's voice was drenched in fear. "Man, I thought I'd lost you for a second."
Carefully, step by step, they shuffled back to the bank and crawled onto the cool grass.
They were still catching their breath when they saw Charlie's head pop into their vision.
"Is it too easy to say; 'I told you so'?" She smiled cockily.
"Empathy, Charlie, empathy," Dean heaved. "I just, like, almost near drowned."
"Almost near drowned?" Charlie smiled. "If you don't hurry, you're gonna have to almost near walk. Your horse is taking a run for it."
Dean sat up and saw his horse standing at the edge of the forest, heaving heavily. Dean slowly got up to catch the animal, cooing softly.
"C'mere baby, don't be afraid."
The horse lent forward to sniff Dean's hand and he snatched the reins.
"Let's get moving." Sam said. "It's not cold, so we can dry our clothes when we make camp for the night."
They did decide to eat something, because Dean insisted that a near-death experience was only to be cured by food.
After half an hour of rest, they got back on their horses. Following the river wasn't the hardest job in the world, so they didn't have to pay much attention to where they were headed.
The sun was shining and their clothes dried quickly.
They chatted and joked, more relaxed than they had been in months, years even.
Riding down the riverbanks, Sam's mare suddenly jumped at a falling branch.
Sam, who was startled too, cursed.
"Sam!" Charlie reprimanded him. "You need to be nice to your horse. Otherwise she won't listen to you."
Sam chuckled. "Won't it?"
"Sam, you are sitting on a 1000lbs animal. Of course she obeys you now, but if you disrespect her she might buck you off." Charlie said, wisely.
"Okay," Sam smiled. "Then how do I respect it?"
"Well, you could stop calling her 'it', for starters." Charlie slowed her horse down from a trot back a slow walk.
Dean sighed relieved. The trot hurt his butt.
"Then what do I call her?" Sam smiled amused.
"I don't know! You make it up yourself." She petted her brown colt. "Mine's called Shadowfax."
Dean sighed. "Okay kiddo, hold up. A; those horses aren't ours. We have to give them up at the Emerald City. If you start giving them names, you'll get attached. B; Shadowfax is white, dude."
"Then what do you propose?" Charlie smiled.
"You shouldn't copycat." Dean said. "You can pick a fandom name, but don't pick one off an actual horse. Like, uhm, like Skywalker! It's from Star Wars and it's just a really cool name."
"I actually quite like that." She petted the horse again. "What do you think?"
The horse shook his head, either to get rid of flies or because he agreed with Charlie.
"Skywalker it is." Charlie said proudly. "What about yours, Dean?"
Dean sighed. Charlie was having too much fun. "Baby."
"Baby?"
"Yeah," Dean nodded. "Like my car. She's kind off my car in here, so I'm naming her after my car."
"You can't name a horse 'Baby'," Charlie frowned.
"I am a Winchester. Of course I can." He petted Baby. "Right, Baby?"
Baby whinnied.
Charlie grumbled.
"You should call yours 'Salad', Sammy," Dean laughed. "That way we all named our horses after the thing we love the most."
Sam huffed. "Answer me honestly Dean, no more sex or no more car?"
Dean opened his mouth, took a deep breath and then closed it.
"That's cruel." He said after a while.
Charlie frowned. "You're having serious trouble deciding?"
"It's cruel." He said again. "What would you pick then?"
He knew the answer before he completed the sentence.
"Sex." Charlie said.
"Sex." Sam nodded. "And I think, in your heart, you would go for sex too, Dean."
Dean shrugged. "I'm really glad that I don't have to make that decision."
"I'll make it easier." Sam smiled. "No more sex or no more pie."
Charlie started laughing.
"I hate you." Dean spurred Baby into a gallop and rode ahead his two companions.
They quickly caught up with him and continued their laid-back trip through the beautiful land of Oz.
After a long discussion, Charlie decided Sam's horse was named Rosie because she really wanted a Lord of the Rings reference and Sam decided his horse was named Pie because he was set out on the annoying goal to piss off both Charlie and Dean simultaneously.
He succeeded quite well, by the way.
When the sun had set, Dean wanted to make camp.
Charlie had a different proposal. "If we keep going for a couple hours, we're already at the next side-branch in the river and we could cross that in the morning."
"Because that went so well this morning." Sam snorted.
"It's gonna have to happen anyway," Dean shrugged.
"We could also ride North-West, it would add a day or three to our journey and we'd have to enter the Emerald City from the North, but that doesn't really matter. It's also easier to get lost, but as long as the tablet battery doesn't die, we should be fine."
"That sounds like that's totally going to happen." Sam sighed. "How long will it last?"
Charlie sucked in a sharp breath. "This battery? Five more hours. I have one external charger in my bag which is fully charged so it should give me twelve to fifteen more hours of battery life."
"Is that gonna be enough?" Dean asked.
"No." Charlie shook her head. "But I think I can navigate on the sun."
"You think." Sam laughed.
"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it." Charlie said. "Or, we, you know, avoid crossing it."
"I say we go around," Dean nodded. He didn't feel like getting wet again.
"That's two to one, West we go." Charlie turned Skywalker away from the river and spurred him into a gallop, with the reins in her left hand and her tablet in her right.
When they found a good place to make camp, they dismounted their horses and all went to do their tasks. Dean set out for wood, Sam made something to eat and Charlie unsaddled the horses and rubbed them dry.
From his place in the bushes, Dean saw a movement in the corner of his eye. Out of reflex, he froze immediately.
He slowly turned his head and saw a buck sniffing the sky.
Dean too sniffed the air. He was lucky, finding himself standing downwind of the buck.
"You're dinner, Prongs," Softly, Dean dropped the already gathered wood and pulled his colt out of his waistband.
The buck sniffed the grass and started eating soundly, proud of his little, serene zone of safety.
But not for long.
Dean softly cocked the gun and raised is, gritting his teeth and aiming for the head. He couldn't get a clean shot.
A soft step to the right. Leaves creaked under his boots.
The buck lifted his head and, still chewing, looked him in the eyes.
"Sorry," Dean lifted the gun again.
The deer tilted his head, as if he didn't understand what was going on.
Dean pulled the trigger and the animal was dead before he hit the ground.
The bang vibrated through the woods. Dean was bundling up the firewood when he heard Sam's panicked voice: "DEAN!?"
"I'M OKAY, SAMMY!" Dean yelled back. "GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE AND GIVE ME A HAND."
Sam came running through the woods, gun cocked. "Dean?"
"Calm down, Samantha," Dean laughed. "I caught us food."
He handed the wood to Sam and lifted the buck on his shoulders. "Man, this is heavy."
He dragged the buck bag to camp and started cleaning it. "Good choice going inland, Charlie," He said when she came back.
She frowned. "It might be a little hypocrite of me, but I'm gonna sit with my back to you until the buck doesn't look like a buck anymore, okay?"
Dean chuckled. "Don't worry, kiddo."
He quickly cleaned the buck, while Sam built a fire.
"I found the perfect slab to bake the heart and liver." Sam was already drooling.
John wasn't the kind of father to spent quality time with his boys, but hunting was the perfect target practice and they never left the deer lying around to rot. The crackling firewood and the smell of dead deer reminded him of the happier part of his childhood.
He'd already built a skewer and was waiting for Dean to hand him the cleaned ribcage, dripping with fat.
They cleaned and roasted the entire deer, including most of the entrails. They didn't have spices, but the meat was fat and Sam devoured the liver in one swallow. Dean ate his a little slower (Sam burned his palate) and they shared the heart, since Charlie politely declined.
They buried the other remains to prevent attracting predators and set up a watch scheme. Since they hadn't woken Charlie the previous day, she insisted on taking the first watch.
Sam was asleep in a couple of minutes, but Dean was awake for much longer. He was worried about getting into the Emerald City, and about getting the other witch out.
Glinda the Good, he thought her name was. Glinda.
The name sounded hot.
He fantasized some more about a good-looking blonde witch in a dress that left little to his imagination, until he lulled himself to sleep.
…
There was a panicked shriek that pulled Dean out of his slumber.
"Sam! Dean!" Charlie sounded frightened.
Dean shot up and cocked his colt, shaking sleep from his eyes while trying to see what was going on.
Charlie was lying on the ground, about ten feet away, trying to chase away a wild boar with a stick.
Dean gritted his teeth as the boar charged for Charlie. He pulled the trigger, and he heard gunfire to his right too. It settled the panic in his breath a little, knowing that Sam was up, awake and aiding them.
The bullets didn't seem to bother the boar all that much as he slammed Charlie into a tree. She went limp on the ground.
"CHARLIE!" Dean yelled.
Then the boar turned toward the boys.
"SHOOT IT IN THE HEART!" Sam yelled. He aimed and shot, three or four times, the echo of Dean's gunfire drowned in that of Sam's.
The boar slowed, and eventually crashed through the ground, but not after they hit him multiple times.
Sam put his gun back in his waistband and ran to Charlie.
"Charlie? Charlie?" He called. There was panic in his voice, and Dean knew his was rather unstable too.
"Can't…" Charlie gulped up some blood. "Can't… really, like… feel my legs."
"We're gonna patch you up, okay?" Dean made her drink some water, but it spilled out of her mouth. Her body was limp and all color had left her cheeks. Her neck was in a weird angle.
"Charlie?" Sam said. "CHARLIE!?"
He shook her shoulders, tearing up.
"It's no good Sammy, there's no way…" Dean said, and he looked him in the eyes.