Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Author's Note: It's short. But it's here.
"Nothing," he says, leaning back heavily into the chair.
Sam and Dean exchange a quick glance before turning back to the man. "What do you mean 'nothing'?"
Ash simply shrugs. "Nobody saw nothing, reported nothing, noted nothing. Nothing."
"That's not possible," Sam says, shaking his head. "Somebody must have seen something. Bodies don't just disappear, or get switched, with no one there to see."
"Sure they do. I saw this movie once…Lifetime, I think…and these kids were switched. At birth, not, you know, death. And nobody saw nothing."
Dean scoffs. "Sure are fond of your double negatives there aren't ya, genius?"
"Matter of fact, I am," he responds with a flip of his hair.
"Okay, okay," Sam begins, obviously unsure of where he's headed. "Then…what? It's a dead end?"
"No pun intended," Ash snickers. And both the brothers toss him a glare. The three then sit in thick silence, staring at one another.
They sit and stare even while hearing Jo approach. Even as she begins to speak. Their locked eyes only unmesh after fully processing her words. "So someone put a whammy on the hospital staff before turning your dad into a zombie."
Casual, but crass, her words ached of passive aggression. But Dean didn't care about that, didn't really care about Jo or her petulant antics. It was just what she said, that one word. Zombie. That one word that had not occurred to him before. Because it carried too much weight, meant something too horrible to be possible. "Don't call him that," he growls, causing the smirk to fall from her face.
"I'm sorry," she says quietly. "I didn't mean…" And for a moment Dean's the one who's sorry, thinking he overreacted. But then she sits down across from him, takes on a serious expression and says, "It is a possibility though. He was dead. So if he's out there now, doing whatever it is that he's doing, then there are only two ways that's possible. Either he's somehow, miraculously alive. Again. Or he's…undead."
And there it is. The truth. From the mouths of babes, as they say.
"She's right," Sam says. But Dean doesn't so much as flash him a glance. He's too busy watching Jo. Watching her lean over the table and peruse what few possible leads they'd written down. Watching her forehead crinkle, brow wrinkle, in concentration. Watching her play make believe with the big boys.
"It's none of her fucking business," he spits out, knowing as soon as he does that it's farther than he wants to go.
Jo blanches briefly, taking his words like a slap to the face, before recovering enough to set her mouth in an angry grimace and say, "I was only trying to help."
"We know," Sam starts in that same old conciliatory way of his. But Dean quickly interrupts.
"We don't need your help. We didn't come here for your help."
She rises from her chair and color blotches her cheeks. "Then what the hell did you come here for?!"
"Not this," he says, jaw set, twitching.
"Then what?!" she bellows.
"What the hell is going on?" Ellen yells as she clomps into the room. Her eyes jump from person to person, prying for information in that scary way that only mothers seem to have. That, tell me now or there'll be hell to pay, way.
"Nothing," Dean says, avoiding her stare and looking instead just past her, at Jo. "I just don't want Nancy Drew over there bringing her amateur skills to the party."
"Amateur?" She stands upright so as to be seen from behind her mother. "You're the one who said I did good on that last hunt."
"You got yourself caught and almost killed."
"I got the guy, didn't I?"
"No. Sam and I got the guy."
"Using me as bait. You never would have –"
"Enough!" All eyes fall to Ellen as she stands, hands on hips, above them all. "Jo," she says, turning to her daughter, "go make sure we have enough stocked behind the bar for tonight. And you," she says, narrowing her eyes at Dean, "get your shit under control or get out of my home." He responds only with a tight and reluctant nod, watching from the corner of his eye as Jo sulks away.
But just sitting in staunch silence isn't necessarily indicative of control. Inside he simmers, close, too close, to boiling over. It's a felling he's come to know all too well over the last few months, one he actually feels wrong without. But this is different. Whereas before, even just days ago, he was haunted by the image, the realization, of his father being dead, now he has something else to contend with. The idea that he might actually be undead.
He knows, could swear, that all of this…stuff used to mean something to him. Salt and brick dust and whatever that black powder she kept in a jar by the sink and lines at the doors and windows was. The pictures and amulets and odd little trinkets that littered her small house, especially the room that had become his. The scent of her, left to linger long after she'd moved far, far out of sight.
But like with most things that fleeting sense of familiarity was all he had.
"John," she'd said to him just hours earlier, when he returned from Macon, "you did a good thing." He sat on her couch and stared blankly down at the hand she used to pat his. "He was a bad boy, that one. You know that?"
He nodded his head, though unsure why.
"And he would only get worse. A great threat. But I don't have to tell you that, do I John?" she uttered, rising from the couch. "After all, you were the one who warned me about the children in the first place." She turned, almost out the door, and looked longingly back at him, muttered under her breath, "Not that you'd know it now, mon petit."
She had actually packed them sandwiches. She owned a bar, and she had sent them on the road with sandwiches. Not beer, or liquor, like they really needed. At a time like this. Nope. Sandwiches.
Dean, for his part, had refused to participate in the conversation that led to this little expedition. The one that took place shortly after Jo was ushered from their earlier brainstorming session. Because his father being some kind of zombie was simply not something to be discussed. It wasn't possible. Just like it wasn't possible that he had died. Wasn't possible he'd somehow overcome that and become magically alive once more. None of it was possible, so he simply sat back and let the others talk crazy all on their own.
They had decided, Sam and Ellen and Ash, and maybe even Jo – he wasn't sure if she came back after he got up and walked off – that every possible 'undead' lead should be investigated. So they, this 'they' being Sam and a still silent, still sulking Dean, were headed to Louisiana, some tiny town near the bayou that for all they knew wasn't even there anymore what with Katrina and all.
They had the name of woman, some sort of Voodoo, Hoodoo priestess or something. It wasn't real clear. It was from their father's journal after all. But Sam had insisted that it could be something. Because apparently, Sammy had no problem at all thinking his dad might have been turned into a zombie.
An actual undead, Voodoo, fucking zombie. Who may or may not be a murderer. A murderer of someone just like him.