They were entering the outskirts of Red River when Dean saw it. The devastation was far worse than anything he'd have thought possible. Mud caked every building and every car in sight. It was like the town had been buried in an avalanche of dirt and debris. Some of the smaller structures like garages and sheds and some of the older barns had been levelled, and as they drove past a flattened farm house, Dean could see large muddy lumps dotting the adjacent field. One of the lumps moved a bit, and he realised that the lumps were cows, all but one of them dead – smothered to death by a blanket of earth. With a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, Dean now grasped the true horror of what his brother and the townsfolk had been up against. The mud creatures attacked by encasing their victims, slowly suffocating them in an inescapable shroud or earth. It would be like being buried alive – something with which Dean had personal experience and wouldn't wish on his worst enemy.
As he kept driving through town, it became clear that the army had cut a swath of destruction right through the heart of the community towards the Red Barn Tavern where most of the townsfolk had taken refuge. Dean tried not to think about what might have become of anyone unlucky enough to get in their way. With any luck, the muck-men didn't bother snacking before reaching the all-you-can-eat buffet at the far end of town.
The Red Barn Tavern was almost unrecognisable. Dean knew by the general shape of the building and the outrageous number of cars still parked around it that it was the same place he'd left only one night before, but it looked like it had been caught in a mudslide. The walls were caked so thick with dirt that you couldn't even tell where the door was. The roof was nearly buckling under the weight of all the mud on top of it. It was a blessing that the stuffy bar had no windows, or the people trapped inside would never have survived the night.
Dean drove another block and a half before parking the car. He'd seen the mess that had become of the vehicles in the bar's parking lot, and he'd be damned if he was going to subject the Impala to that kind of abuse. Dean turned in his seat, planning on nudging Castiel awake, but the look of utter peace on the angel's face made him pause. He lost track of how long he sat there, simply looking at him, but he was certain it was far longer than was appropriate. As soon as he realised his eyes were glued to Cas' lips – studying the soft curves and the way they were slightly parted – Dean knew he was losing his mind.
He cleared his throat. Loudly. When that failed to wake up Castiel, he rolled his eyes and gave the angel's shoulder a soft shake. "Hey, dude, wake up."
Castiel's eyelids fluttered open and a pair of sleep-baffled blue eyes blinked back at him. "Are we there yet?" Cas asked.
Dean couldn't help but smile. Castiel had been around since the dawn of time – probably literally – and yet he still managed to pull off a child-like innocence when it came to everyday stuff like car trips. It stirred something in Dean that should have been parental, but wasn't. Not by a long shot.
Dean cleared his throat again, rubbing his neck to cover the blush he felt creeping up to his face. "Yeah, we're here, sleepy-head. Think you can manage to walk a block or two?"
"I will be fine, Dean," Castiel replied, glaring and pursing his lips as if daring him to suggest otherwise.
"Okey-dokey, then," Dean said, tearing his gaze away from Castiel.
It took all his willpower to stand back and allow Cas to drag himself out of the Impala and take his first faltering steps on his own. As soon as Dean was convinced the angel wasn't going to topple over, he walked on ahead. He was not going to give in to the impulse to take Castiel by the arm and guide him to the Red Barn like some kind of weird-assed prom date.
Castiel was still half a block from the bar by the time Dean reached the front entrance – or where the front entrance would be if he could find it through all the dirt. He remembered Sammy telling him that they were sweeping the mud out of the bar, but they definitely weren't sweeping it out through this door. It stood to reason, then, that there must be a back or side entrance. A quick peek around the side of the building revealed a heavy, metal door next to a large dumpster. It was propped open with a sturdy wooden chair, and as he watched, a burly-looking man in a filthy wife-beater appeared in the entrance, bearing a bulging garbage bag. The man had pale, beady eyes and a buzz cut, and the look he gave Dean was pure malice.
Dean gave the man his best 'hey, let's be friends' smile. "Hey, there. You wouldn't happen to know if there's a guy named Sam inside? He's tall; like, Sasquatch tall, and he really needs a haircut."
The man's scowl dialled down a notch, having decided that Dean wasn't a threat, and he went about dumping his trash. "Yeah, I know the guy. Saved our asses in there, last night. YouDean?" he asked.
Dean's smile broadened, thinking that Sam had paved the way for him, but Mr. Burly cut him off before he could answer.
"'Cause if you're Dean, you might want to rethink coming any closer. There's a few folks in there that are some pissed at you." Mr. Burly folded his thickly muscled arms over his thickly muscled chest and squinted menacingly at him.
Luckily for Dean, that was the moment Castiel chose to round the corner looking for him. Even though Dean knew a strong wind could knock the angel flat on his ass, he still somehow managed to look intimidating. Sure, he was bruised and messed up, but the 'tude screamed 'you should see the other guy'.
"Dean, is there a problem?" Castiel rumbled, his steady glare locked onto the Charles Atlas wannabe.
Mr. Burly's eyes widened slightly and he actually backed up a step. "I ain't got a problem," he said. "Could have used you last night, is all I'm sayin'."
"Yeah, well, something important came up," Dean retorted, feeling a bit cockier now that he had backup.
Burly's eyes darted from Dean to Castiel and back again before he dropped his arms and stepped to the side, leaving them room to get through the door. "Better come on in, then. We got a lot to do before nightfall."
The sudden contrast between bright sunlight outside and the darkness inside was enough to make Dean essentially blind when he entered the Red Barn Tavern. When his eyes adjusted, he found himself facing a bar full of frightened and filthy people, all of them looking at him as if he was their saviour. Only a handful of people ignored him and continued working to secure the building, using whatever they could to seal the chinks in the walls.
"Dean!" Sam squeezed his way through the crowd to get to him, and Dean was thankful that he didn't look as pissed as he was expecting he would. "I was starting to worry," he said, rubbing demon mud from his hands and onto the stained apron he was wearing. "Where's Castiel?"
As if on cue, Castiel stumbled in through the open doorway, catching his foot on the lip of the door frame and colliding gracelessly into Dean's back with a painful grunt.
"Dean, is that you?" Castiel asked with a hint of panic. "I believe I may have gone blind!"
"Relax, Cas. It's just dark in here; you're eyes will adjust in a minute," Dean replied, not quite reluctantly wrapping an arm around Castiel's waist to keep the angel from doing any more damage to himself. He could feel his brother's eyes grilling him.
"What the hell happened to Castiel?" Sam asked bluntly.
"Zachariah, that's what," Dean growled in response and hefted Cas closer as if by doing so he could protect his friend from any future attack by that dick of an angel. "He and his pals have decided to play dirty."
Sam came around the other side of Castiel and helped Dean haul the angel into a chair at one of the little bar tables. Castiel slumped forward onto his folded arms with a grateful little smile and in a few short seconds he was dead to the world.
"So I take it he won't be working his mojo on the mud men tonight?" Sam asked in a lowered voice, so only Dean could hear.
Dean shook his head. "And if what Bobby told us about these guys is true, their numbers will keep multiplying as they march. We gotta try and keep them here: keep their numbers down until Cas recovers enough to fight."
Sam's eyes swept the room, taking in all the survivors and he frowned. "You can't ask these people to stay. Dean, we barely made it through one night. They're exhausted and scared, and they're starting to get restless. Now the rest of the town has already cleared out, as far as I could tell when I did a supply run earlier, and rumour has already spread that they can outrun these things. I don't think we can hold them here much longer."
Dean eyed the bar patrons. Sam was right; their faces were filled with worry and doubt, and if Dean told them something they didn't want to hear, he might have a revolt on his hands. But if they all left, there wouldn't be any reason for the mud army to stay. They would pick up roots, literally, and march on to the next town, gathering more soldiers with every field they passed. If the army got too big, Castiel wouldn't be able to work his magic on them, even at full strength. Both Sam and Dean, thinking along the same lines, cast their gaze towards Castiel, sleeping awkwardly at the tiny wooden table.
"Any ideas?" asked Sam, seemingly okay with handing the reigns over to Dean for once.
Without blinking, Dean offered the simplest solution he could think of. "We lie. We tell them I just came from the surrounding towns and they were even worse off. If they think they're safer here, they won't go anywhere. Then we stay. We fight."
Sam looked like he was planning on protesting, but he obviously couldn't think of another option, so he grudgingly nodded in agreement. "Great. So who gets to break the bad news to them?"
Dean shrugged. "Rock, paper, scissors?" he suggested. This time Sammy was going to choose paper, he just knew it.
"Okay, listen up, everybody!" Dean tapped his finger on the microphone causing it to squeal in a fingernails-on-chalkboard kind of way. He was standing on the bar's tiny stage wondering why, why, he kept choosing scissors. A moment later, he had the full attention of everyone left in the town of Red River. "You all know what's going on out there, and I know some of you are thinking of making a run for it, but I've been driving all day, and I can assure you that Red River is the place you want to be. These things are everywhere, and the only way to stay alive is to stick together; there's safety in numbers. Trust me."
A doughy, middle-aged redhead with the glazed look of the recently traumatized let out a loud moan of despair and buried her face in the shoulder of the stout man beside her. The man stroked her hair soothingly as he voiced his opinion on the whole situation. "Me and Lorraine were gonna gas up and go – just keep driving until we run outta road. These things only come out at night, right?"
Several others murmured in agreement and there was a general shift in allegiances taking place in the room.
"Oh, you can try," Dean said with a bitter sneer, "but you've only got another four or five hours until sunset. How far do you think you can go? I'm telling you, it won't be far enough, and then you'll be alone on the road when night falls and the ground comes to life all around you. You really willing to take that risk?"
Again, the room broke out into generalised murmuring, only this time, some of them were nodding at Dean and looking to him to tell them what to do next.
"We have enough time to seal this place up and get what we need to fight back before it gets dark. I can't force you to stay, but I can honestly say that we'll all be better off if we stick together," Dean said, tweaking the truth more than a little.
"For how long?" The shouted question came from a tall, skinny guy in a hunting cap at the back of the room. He was gangly and awkward-looking, and Dean had the feeling he was too young to be in a place like this. And that's when he noticed that the tall kid wasn't the only one here who was underage. As he scoped the crowd for the first time, he spotted kids peppered throughout the group, tucked in close to their parents' sides. It made sense: all those kids left with babysitters while their parents hung out at the bar had been gathered here in the aftermath. It made lying to these people all the harder, and Dean was just thankful that Cas was sleeping so he wouldn't have to witness the deceit.
"As long as it takes for help to arrive," Dean answered gravely. He knew that the only help they were likely to receive was from Castiel, and he had no idea how long it would be until the angel got enough strength back to send the dirt bastards back to the fields where they'd come from. "In the meantime, we need to hook up hoses to the water supply and finish boarding this place up." He clapped his hands when they didn't immediately jump to it, and the crowd slowly began drifting off to continue the work they'd been doing before he'd interrupted.
Sam took a long, satisfied glance around the Red Barn Tavern. The place was sealed up as best as they could manage with the materials and skills available to them. All of the holes that the mud army had ripped in the walls had been boarded up, as had the one tiny window in the kitchen. Garden hoses had been MacGyvered together with the kitchen and bathroom faucets so they could douse the bastards when they eventually broke through their defences.
As much as he hated to admit it, Sam had been grateful to hand over the reigns to Dean so he could catch an hour or two of sleep. And in that time, his brother had managed to organise the sad group of stragglers into a decently formidable force. Every spare surface was covered with bottles, jugs and containers all filled with water for easy access in battle, and he'd even managed to hunt down some super-soaker water pistols, which were being filled and distributed to people claiming to have the best aim.
Now it was just a waiting game. According to Sam's watch, there was less than half an hour until nightfall and a hush had fallen over the clustered group of survivors. A few people had passed out from sheer exhaustion, but most were simply sitting quietly in safe little clutches, clinging to each other like waterlogged rats on a sinking ship.
Sam finished his rounds, checking one last time to make sure everything was ready, and then his eyes searched out Dean. Not surprisingly, he found him practically nose to nose with Castiel in one of the dimly lit booths. They were talking sotto voce so as not to alarm the others, but Sam could tell by the set of his brother's shoulders that whatever they were discussing was an urgent matter.
He slowly picked his way across the bar and squeezed into the booth next to Dean. Annoyingly, their conversation came to a dead stop as soon as he arrived, and judging from the tight-lipped frown on Castiel's face, the silence was being enforced by Dean.
"What's up, guys?" Sam asked, trying to keep it casual, despite the obvious tension. When no one answered, Sam gave his brother a warning glare. "Dean?"
Dean huffed and glowered first at Castiel and then at him. "You wanna know what's up? I'll tell you what's up; Cas lost my pendant –"
"I didn't lose it," Castiel explained wearily. "It was ripped from my neck during battle."
"-and now he says he needs to go find it," Dean finished as if he hadn't been interrupted. Dean crossed his arms and looked at Sam, clearly expecting him to take his side on this one.
Sam raised his eyebrows. "Cas, you do know that we're about to come under attack, right?"
Castiel sighed and hung his head before fixing Sam with eyes flinty with determination. "As I was saying to Dean, I would have gone out sooner to search for it, but no one woke me until it was too late. I need that pendant."
"Don't get me wrong," said Dean, "I want it back more than you do; but there's no way in hell you're leaving this bar until morning."
"While I was unconscious, I remembered where it landed. It's right outside next to the dumpster – it will only take a minute or two to find it," Castiel argued.
Sam shook his head. "I have to go with Dean on this one, Cas. Even if you know where it fell, there was a demon dirt army out there trampling all over the place. What makes you think it'll still be there?"
"I have to try. I have a theory, and I need that pendant to prove that I'm right. And if I'm right, then I may have just discovered how to restore my strength enough to defeat this army," said Castiel, his blue eyes boring into Sam's, willing him to change his mind. Sam squirmed in his seat, feeling uncomfortable under the angel's determined glare. It was no contest – Sam caved long before the angel even needed to blink.
"Fine, if you really think it'll help," Sam conceded.
"Are you kidding me, Sammy?" Dean barked, raising a few concerned heads all around the bar. Lowering his voice to a menacing growl, Dean continued, "even if he did find it, there's not enough time to do anything before the sun sets. It's too dangerous – I don't like it."
"I'll go with him; make sure we get back inside before the army wakes up, whether he's found it or not," Sam said, feeling the bristling tension starting up again.
Dean raised his hands in defeat, but the look on his face plainly stated that he was not happy about the decision. Sam knew better than to press his luck any further, and he practically yanked the angel out of the booth after him in his attempt to prove they wouldn't waste any time. Castiel glanced back over his shoulder once, worry etched into his features, before willingly trailing after him out the side door of the bar.
The security light over the entrance blinked on as they stepped out into the fading light of day. Sam watched as Castiel limped past him, heading towards the metal dumpster. From the looks of it, the angel was fighting just to stay upright, and as he doubled over to search through the mud and debris on the ground, Sam took pity on him and went over to help.
Even with the bright security light shining directly down on them, it was difficult to discern trash from potential treasure. Sam had picked up half a dozen bottle caps and an even larger number of likely-sized twigs before something faintly shiny caught his eye.
"Cas!" he called out, and trotted over to where the angel was sifting though a heap of dirt.
Castiel's eyes lit up with relief as Sam rubbed the mud off the object, revealing it to be Dean's missing amulet. They were both so caught up in the moment that neither of them noticed the sun slipping down past the line of the horizon.