Alright, so I'm not particularly happy with this chapter. I had guests in all weekend, and tried to pound this out in between entertaining. It's not all that exciting; more of a transition chapter. But I promise more action in the next one. We're nearing the end here, but knowing my long-windedness, end still probably means four or five more chapters. Thanks for sticking with me through the lack of alerts - I appreciate you all looking for the story anyway.
Note: So, when I started writing this way back when, I never really estimated the distance between Algonquin and Kansas. Apparently, they're car's can turn into airplanes, because they literally flew back home when they returned to Kansas. It turns out it's a 16 hour drive between the two, which I'm trying to convey this time. Please excuse the discremancy. If I ever go back and tweak the story that is one thing I will fix, but for now I'm going to leave it at this.
Enjoy...
It took all he had to keep himself occupied during the drive to Canada, but Dean forced himself to avoid thinking about what Sam and his supposed friends had said about him by maintaining a continuous stream of thoughts concerning the hunt running through his head. Currently, he was back on the inventory check list, running down the cache of weapons and other necessities he would certainly be needing for the hunt, and after.
With the exception of his hunting knife, they had never removed the weapons from the trunk, so he had the whole selection at his fingertips. And he had been smart enough to grab the knife before he left, so he would have that, too. From what Dean could remember of their previous encounter with the spirit, Dean knew most of their weapons would be virtually useless to the hunts' enhanced speed and uncanny ability to read their intentions and get out of the way before being hit. Salt was just a joke, and any of the normal bullets they possessed would only prove to piss the thing off more. But he planned to bring the shotgun anyway, loaded to the hilt with rounds of consecrated iron. And with any luck he would be long gone before night fell and the thing decided to reappear, but there was no guarantee. Nor was there a guarantee that the spirit would stick to its current habit of only appearing when darkness fell. Dean couldn't be certain that it wouldn't stray from the man norm and attack with a vengeance in the daylight once it realized its final lifeline was being threatened. So yes, he would definitely be packing when he entered the woods.
In the rearview mirror, Dean could make out several other items he would be bringing with him. A box of salt sat innocently on the back seat, next to a small flask of gasoline. It was just one little pouch, and he figured it was far from worth it to lug an entire gallon of gasoline into the woods. No need to set the entire forest on fire, now was there?
He could also see the map that Sam had marked on the seat, at the very least narrowing his search down to a smaller radius. There was still far too much ground to cover on that map, but Dean figured he had a decent hike to think about how to narrow down the search time.
Alongside the map were several bottles of water and some power bars that he would stuff in the pack to tide him over during the day. It always surprised him just how much less hungry he became when he was right in the middle of this big hunt, and the few bars along with lots of water would more than cover him. Of course, once the hunt was over all bets were off, and Dean normally made up for his hunger strikes three times over.
The two prosthetic legs were the last items Dean could see, and it still gave him an uneasy feeling to know that he'd had to think so much about them. His biggest fear on this solo hunt was that the carbon leg he would wear in with him would fail to hold up to its guarantee and that he would be crawling out of the forest on one leg again. When he'd left Missouri's house hours earlier, he hadn't yet figured out why the niggling feeling in the back of his mind was telling him to sneak the second leg out with him, and he was stupefied at how easy it had been to get it past Sam and the others without question. But now he was grateful for his foresight, glad to know there would be a second leg waiting for him if the first one got mangled. And if nothing else, it would make a slightly more discreet addition to his ensemble if he decided to go out and do a little celebrating after the spirit was finally dead. Despite the eventual success he'd had on his outing, Dean was far from eager to replay certain events. The more his leg looked like a leg in the future, the less uneasy he would feel.
Dean sighed loudly, trying his best to ignore the feelings of regret and fear he had at attempting this hunt solo. He was determined to prove himself once and for all, but it didn't mean he didn't feel some apprehension at the hunt he'd chosen to prove himself on. Oh well, nothing he could do about it now. What's done was done. Pressing the gas pedal down just a little harder, Dean pulled out from the line of cars he'd been following and sped past them, eager to make it to his destination.
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By the time Sam finally realized where Dean had gone, and why, Dean was already halfway to Algonquin. And it was another forty-five minutes before Sam managed to get everything packed and ready to take off after him. He hated to lose all that time, but Bobby had very rationally pointed out that it would do Dean no good at all for them to drive all the way to Canada to help him with no weapons and nothing to protect themselves with. And since Dean had taken off with the Impala with all of his and Sam's weapons in the trunk, they had to be extra certain that they collected their own complete cache of backup weapons.
Sam had tried calling Dean's cell phone multiple times by the time he, Bobby, and Missouri all piled into Bobby's truck and started their mad dash across the country. For Bobby, it felt like deja vu, as he pushed his old Chevy far beyond its capabilities, climbing over one hundred miles an hour in his desperation to close the gap in time. Leaning up against the window of the passenger seat, Sam continued to try Dean, placing calls in ten minute intervals and cursing louder and longer every time Dean failed to answer.
For a time, fear gripped Sam as he wondered if maybe Dean had already managed to make it to the Canadian park, worried that he would have risked hunting at night just for spite. But even Dean wouldn't have been that stupid - would he? And there was no possible way he could have made it all the way to Canada in the amount of time that had passed so far - he would have had to be going three times the speed limit to even be close.
Soon, though, fear turned to anger the longer Sam worried and stewed about Dean's half-cooked scheme, realizing just how contrived the whole thing was. The fifth message Sam left on Dean's phone was mostly shouted, his voice shaky with irritation and fury as he placed demands on the older hunter to call him back immediately. Hanging up the phone yet again, Sam knew Dean would be ignoring him - again.
"Any luck?" Bobby asked, more for conversations sake than anything else. His eyes left the road for just a second to glance over at the fuming boy on the other side of his truck, then went back to watching where he was going as he waiting on an answer.
Gripping the phone tightly in one hand, Sam shook his head. "Bastard's purposely ignoring my calls," Sam spat out. He eyed the road himself, mentally urging Bobby to drive faster, despite the fact that the older hunter was currently doing thirty over the speed limit already. Thank god for radar detector, Sam thought to himself as he looked at the little black box on the windshield, watching the lights flutter.
"You couldn't have expected any less from him right now," Missouri reasoned. "He's a stubborn, pig-headed man. Just like your father...just like you."
Sam flinched, hearing her unspoken words. He had gotten exactly what he'd been asking for by trying to bar Dean from this hunt. He should have expected something like this to happen. The old cliche didn't even work properly for his brother, because you could no more take the hunt out of Dean Winchester than you could take Dean Winchester out of the hunt. And now, his stupid brother had taken off to do something dumb and reckless, and would more than likely get him killed, just because Sam had tried to remove Dean from the hunting equation.
"I swear, if he gets himself killed out there, I'm going to bring him back to life just so that I can kill him again."
Bobby chuckled to himself, but went silent immediately when Sam shot him a withering look. The man had no doubt that Sam would do exactly as he said, but he also knew Sam would then bring his brother back a third time and keep him around for good. Such was the way with the Winchester's; they could fume with the best of them, but there was no greater love than that of the two boys.
"With any luck, we'll make it there before Dean has a chance to do anything stupid. You have to remember, Sam, at this point that leg is just going to slow him down. We'll catch up sooner or later."
"I'm just afraid it's going to be later. He had nearly half a day's jump on us; even if he's doing the speed limit, there's no way we'll catch up to him before he makes it to the park. He'll still have a few hours on us in there."
"So we run when we get there," Bobby stated matter-of-factly.
And then Missouri had an idea. "Give me your cell phone, Sam."
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Grabbing his phone from the seat beside him, Dean flipped it open and played the newest voicemail, deleting it without ever actually listening. He could well imagine the message Sam had left him without needing to actually hear the details. And a part of him worried that guilt would somehow manage to overtake him if he actually heard Sam's worried voice coming through the amplifier.
Sam was worried, freaked out, scared out of his mind; of that, Dean could be certain because it was the exact same emotions Dean himself would be feeling on the reverse. But right now, that just didn't matter to him. He was too pissed off to be compassionate, too determined to think clearly. The only way he could prove himself and get Sam and the others to stop looking at him as though he was some cripple that needed to be coddled was to go out and take care of this damn spirit himself. His only regret was that he hadn't managed to gather more information from Sam before the day's events had taken place. It would have been nice to know exactly what he was searching for and where.
As of now, all he had were skimmed details. One pouch left, buried anywhere in a five mile radius of the southernmost porting of the park. But Sam had never shown him what the pouches had looked like, and he'd never given him any indication of where not to look within the area. He knew Sam and Bobby had covered a portion of the ground already, but Sam had kept mum about where exactly.
Looking down at the clock, Dean realized he'd been on the road for well over nine hours already. But with the exception of a couple quick stops for gas and to use the bathroom, Dean hadn't paused in his efforts to put as much distance between himself and Sam in as little time as possible. Now, his stomach growled greedily, reminding him that he had to stop soon to eat. He couldn't ignore its complaints anymore.
The next exit boasted several fast food joints, places he could just zip right in and back out easily, and he veered onto the exit ramp. Choosing the first one he came across, Dean pulled into the drive-thru lane and placed his order, tapping nervously on the steering wheel. It hadn't escaped his thoughts that, despite his almost nine hour head-start, Sam would fast be gaining on him. Driving fast and reckless wasn't a good idea for a wanted man, so until he hit the Canadian border he had to abide by the speed limit; Sam didn't. And then there was the pesky little matter of timing - if he arrive in Algonquin too late, he would have to wait until the next day to set out, and Sam and the others would surely catch up to him by then. No, he had to make it by early morning, and that meant no more stops than were absolutely necessary.
As he pulled back onto the highway, burger in hand and French-fries clenched between his legs, Dean glanced down into the foot well and at the stump of his leg hanging in mid-air over the edge of the seat. He'd elected to go without the prosthesis for the majority of the drive, knowing he would be spending sun up to sundown limping on the thing. He figured it best to give his leg a nice long break before subjecting it to such torture, and then another, equally long hiatus, if it got him through this hunt in one piece.
As if on cue, the limb started to ache, and Dean reached a hand down to massage it gently, all the while cursing the timing. "Not now, damn it. Please, not now." He hadn't dealt with phantom pain in several days now, and he'd come to believe the worst was over. But that was far from the truth as the slight ache escalated into a dull throb and then finally into a full onslaught attack that could only be dealt with by pulling over to the side of the road.
He couldn't see straight as he jerked the wheel to maneuver the car onto the shoulder and put the transmission into park. As though his stupid leg had been saving up the pain for several days, the stabbing pins and needles sensation he was feeling was worse than any he'd felt before. Dean Rubbed desperately, frantically, at the taunting limb, finally resorting to actually pounding at the pain with his fist. He needed to limb to wake up, to realize that this was not the time, or the place, to be torturing him so severely. He had somewhere he needed to be. He had to get there soon, had to get there first, and this so was not helping his plan.
Shaky hands reached into the bag lying on the backseat, fumbling for the bottle of pills he'd managed to snatch from the kitchen cabinet before he'd left. He hated to take anything, knowing one of the side-effects for the strong acting medication, was drowsiness. But he figured he could counteract that problem with several strong shots of espresso. It was a much better option than sitting in this car for the next hour or more waiting for the pain to reside in his god-damn leg enough for him to be able to get back on the road.
Pulling the container from his duffle, Dean brought it to the front, and botched his first three attempts to remove the cap before he finally got it open. He dry swallowed two of the while pills, twice his normal dose. But this was an extreme case. And extreme cases called for extreme measures. He had no other choice.
Dean allowed the medication only five minutes to take effect, and gave himself that same small increment of time to close his eyes and try to get in a power nap, his food long since forgotten on the passenger seat beside him, the fries littering the floor. If he was in his right mind, he might have taken offense to his own blatant disrespect of his beloved Chevy, but he was too intent on massaging out the pain in his leg, too far gone calculating exactly how much time he would lose to this little incident.
A five minute power nap soon gave way to an hour plus, and he woke himself with a jolt to the feel of a semi barreling past him as its shook the car. "Shit!" he screamed, looking at the clock and realizing just how much time had passed. A string of more profane expletives left his mouth after that, and he quickly spun the key in the ignition and pulled out onto the road without giving himself time to fully wake up. Cars honked their horns at him as they swerved into the other lane to avoid hitting the spastic driver who hadn't even bothered to look before merging back into the oncoming traffic, but Dean barely took notice, casually giving the one fingered salute as he bared down on the gas pedal, desperate to make up the missed time.
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Sam cocked an eyebrow at the older woman, but handed her the phone without question. Watching as she punched some buttons, Sam waited somewhat impatiently to find out her ploy. From the driver's seat, Bobby couldn't hide his curiosity either but maintained his attention to the road, knowing the speed at which he was going required a careful eye and no distraction.
From Missouri's end of the conversation, both men were quickly able to deduce her idea, and Sam smiled at the simple ingenuity of the thing, smacking himself for not thinking of the idea first. She'd called information and gotten the number for Algonquin's main line, and then obtained the number for the ranger station near their entrance. From there, it was a piece of cake as Missouri explained their quandary to the person on the other end.
"His name's Dean. He's about six feet tall, good looking, dark blonde hair cut short. He'll probably be wearing jeans and a black leather jacket, and he'll walk with a limp - very likely favoring his left leg," Missouri described to the ranger, speaking slow so the man could write down the information. The wise woman purposefully left out the last name, knowing it was very likely that he would register under a false name. She just hoped he didn't decide to be totally obscure and register with a false first name, too.
After the ranger had written everything down, he must have asked a question or said something because Missouri nodded her head vigorously, as though the man could see her, and continued. "I know it's an odd request, but we need you to keep him out of the woods. Do whatever you have to do; arrest him if you need to. But if you let that young man go into the woods by himself he'll be coming out in a body bag. And I know you don't want to know what his brother will do to you if he dies. And after him, you'll have to answer to me."
Sam gaped, eyes widened at the fact that Missouri had just threatened the man on the other end of the phone. Way to go, Missouri! He knew the woman to be spunky and demanding, but he'd never expected to ever see this side of her.
There must have been some stammered acceptance of the rules laid out to him, Sam couldn't see it happening any other way, and then Missouri replied with, "I knew you would see things my way sir. Thank you very much, and you have a pleasant day." She hung up the phone, smiling smugly at the two men gawking at her.
"There now. Dean won't be entering those woods anytime soon," she promised.
If only it were truly that easy.