"Dear Sam,
It is my unfortunate duty to inform you that your name has been selected for the Barkley Marathons...It is anticipated that this enterprise will amount to nothing more than an extended period of unspeakable suffering, at the end of which you will ultimately find only failure and humiliation. At best, you might escape without incurring permanent physical damage and psychological scarring, which will torment you for the remainder of your life."
"Well, that's not ominous at all." Sam was still staring at the email, trying to convince himself that it was real, that he'd somehow managed to actually and legitimately place himself on this path. It was a shocking moment of clarity, breaking free from all the hazy, adrenaline and endorphin-fueled hours leading up to it, similar to the terrifying flashes when he'd realized I'm facing down an ancient evil creature with just a glorified hunk of metal.
"'Psychological scarring.' Pfft," Dean snorted. "He has no idea, does he?"
"Well, I'd hope not."
"So you got another month, and then…" Dean made a vague gesture with his hand that could have meant anything from "you'll run the race" to "aliens are coming for us." Sam nodded; both scenarios seemed equally possible and frightening just now.
"You ready?"
Sam barked a laugh. "I think I'm as ready as I can get at this point. Other than making sure I have everything ready and packed up, I mean. I still need some stuff for the campsite."
"Campsite? Dude, you're supposed to be running, not napping."
"Yeah, about that. One of the 'quirks' of the race is that they don't tell us when it's supposed to start. We're supposed to camp out at the start line until the director blows on a conch shell -"
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
"- and that means we start in an hour."
Dean levelled a flat stare at Sam, compressing his lips. Sam shrugged, smiling weakly. Rolling his eyes, Dean sighed loudly. "Okay, but you at least know about when it starts? Like, we don't have to hang around for a week waiting for Ralph to summon Piggy and the other boys?" Sam quirked an eyebrow, and Dean frowned. "C'mon, everybody's read that one, Sam."
Shaking his head, Sam replied, "It's the last weekend of March, but that's as specific as they get. Might start at noon, might be at three in the morning."
"I don't ever want to hear you call me crazy for anything I do, ever again, in my entire life." Grimacing, Dean stood up from his chair and headed for the kitchen and a beer. Calling backward over his shoulder, he added, "We can throw some extra blankets in the Impala. We've slept in her often enough."
Frozen Head State Park was, well, frozen. It was colder this year than it had been the year before, and the brothers' breaths were visible puffs in front of their faces when they climbed out of the car. Lean and rugged looking people were milling around a picnic table, waiting for their turns to study a large map taped to the surface. Others were standing in a line, chatting happily while the man at the front of the line took down their names.
"Guess I have to go sign in," Sam said. He looked slightly nervous, eyeing the competition, many of whom apparently had known each other for years.
"Go on, then," Dean said. Part of him wanted to give some encouraging words, say something to wipe away the hesitant expression on his brother's face, but it didn't seem like the time or place for feelings. The twin vibes of adrenaline and friendly aggression felt thick around the campsite, reminding Dean somewhat of the macho posturing that arose when hunters gathered. Don't show weakness, he tried to communicate with his eyes and body language. He punched Sam in the shoulder and waved toward the table. Sam grinned, apparently getting the message, and visibly relaxed his neck and shoulders before sauntering off.
Dean leaned back against the trunk of the Impala, glancing at the activity happening around him. Some folks were setting up tents and folding chairs, while others unrolled awnings from campers. It felt like a tailgating scene - or at least, what Dean presumed tailgating was like, based on televised football games. He grinned when he saw a man next to him pull out a small grill.
"Party now, triage scene later," a female voice said from behind him. Dean turned and saw a pink-cheeked young woman, sprawled in a camp chair beside her own camper trailer. She had a mug of coffee steaming in her hand, and she gestured in offering toward the pot plugged into an outlet on the side of her trailer. Dean nodded and gratefully accepted the plastic mug she filled for him. "The coffee pot is one of the first things we pack for this," she said, smiling. "The runners won't get much rest, and so we won't either, since there's no way to tell when they'll stumble back in here and need help."
"You've done this before?" Dean asked.
"Third try," she nodded. "There were a few years between the first two attempts, once he saw what it was really like out there. But he finally tried again last year, and he did well enough that he hopes the third time's the charm. Came this close to finishing the Fun Run before the cut-off time." She held up her fingers about an inch apart, grimacing.
"What's the Fun Run?"
"Three loops, sixty miles." The woman gave him an odd look. "You're crewing, right? You don't know the race details?"
"My brother's running, but I'm just sort of...here," Dean said, feeling strangely defensive. "I'm not a runner."
"Hope you're a medic," she said with a small smirk. "You don't have to be a runner, but your brother's going to need help. Blisters, bandages, taping."
Dean tried not to laugh. "Yeah, I think I can handle that. Got some experience putting him back together after...stuff. No problems there."
"And you'll need to make sure he stays fed and hydrated. If he falls behind on nutrition and fluids, there's no real good way to recover. All downhill from there. That's what took Mike out the first year; he was hallucinating garden gnomes all over the place, for some reason. I still don't know how he made it back out of the woods in one piece."
While Dean tried to process that (garden gnomes?), a man walked up to the two of them, grinning wickedly. "Found the 'fresh meat,'" he said, dropping into the chair next to the woman. Looking up at Dean, he nodded politely. "Hey, I'm Mike. You?"
Introductions were hastily made; Amy, Mike's wife, apologized for not getting Dean's name before "diving right into business," but Dean waved it off. "Anyway, who is it?" Amy said to her husband. "Nobody looks obvious to me yet."
"Tall guy, over there," Mike said. Dean frowned when he saw that Mike was pointing toward Sam. "Laz must be feeling sadistic this year, letting him in. Guy said he's only been doing ultra training for a year! He must have written one hell of an entry essay, or else they're hoping he's going to be the most entertaining crash and burn ever." He guffawed, shaking his head.
"Red jacket?" Dean confirmed, tight-lipped. "That's my little brother, man."
Mike stopped laughing abruptly. Amy jabbed a fist in his ribs, chastising. "Sorry, Dean. Didn't mean to...well. We all started sometime, right?" He smiled weakly; Dean twitched his lips into a smile that didn't come close to looking sincere. "But honestly, dude, what made him decide that this was a good starting place? No offense, but...it's probably going to eat him alive."
Dean was feeling outraged on his brother's behalf. At the same time, the unease he'd been pushing down, from the memories of the broken-looking runners he'd seen that first year, now combined with Amy's suggestions that failure on his own part could lead to a barely mobile Sam wandering the woods seeing things that weren't there - well, he was feeling less on-board with this idea by the minute. Pride won out, though.
"Sam and I have faced down situations that could have 'eaten us alive' before, and, obviously, we're still standing. My brother's tough. He says he can do this, he can do it."
"That's the spirit," Amy murmured, as Dean turned and walked back to the car. He opened the back door and threw himself down upon the seat, trying hard to shove down his worries. Mike had seen garden gnome herds when he ran low on water. Sam had way worse images from which to draw, and suddenly all Dean could see in his head was his little brother, back against a tree, shouting at visions of Lucifer.
"What, did too many people make it through last year, Laz? Two whole finishers, and now we got a new hill in the middle?" The man with the scraggly beard standing next to Sam glared mockingly at the race director, who smiled lazily.
"It's a lovely view at the top, though," he said. "Worth all the saw briars to get up there." The runner cursed amiably as he wandered away, leaving Sam to stare at the map alone. He was trying not to feel out of his depths, though it was a losing battle. Laz reached across the table and clapped him on the forearm.
"You're the guy who wrote the poem about fighting with the devil," he said, still with the smug smile across his face. He'd been basking in the participant's dire predictions and complaints all morning, and Sam was beginning to think that he and Crowley would make good drinking buddies. "Liked the metaphors. Real vivid."
"I've got a pretty good imagination," Sam replied, dropping his eyes and shrugging.
"Just don't make any deals with him if you start seeing him halfway up Rat Jaw climb." He laughed to himself, enjoying his own joke, and Sam laughed, too, shivers running down his spine.
He walked back to the Impala, climbing into the front seat in a mirror of Dean's position. Both brothers were quiet for long minutes before Dean spoke. "This is stupid."
"Yep."
There was more silence.
"We got enough water?"
"Yeah. And filters, for if I run out and need to drink from streams."
"You do that, then. Don't need you seeing demonic garden gnomes and losing your mind all over again."
"I...don't think I'll ask."
"Good."
They lay in silence for a while longer. Finally, Dean sat up and peered over the seat at his brother. "You're not anybody's 'fresh meat.' You go kick it in the ass, okay?" He clenched his jaw tightly against any further concerns he might say out loud.
Sam nodded solemnly. "Sure thing, Dean."
"And...if you do see anything weird up there - something that looks like our kind of weird? Make sure it's not another runner before you kill it, okay?"
"That's the plan," Sam said, snorting.
The sound of the blown conch shell rolled through the parking lot campsite at two in the morning. Sam and Dean had gotten their four hours, so they weren't all that fussed.
An hour later, Laz lit a cigarette, and at the sight of the glowing embers, forty whooping runners charged forward. Or, rather, that's what Dean expected them to do. In fact, they sort of ambled forward in a shuffling trot, while family members cheered them on. Considering that they'd all be starting off by scaling the first enormous hill, Dean didn't blame them.
"Twelve hours," Amy muttered. When Dean turned to look at her, she shook her head. "Well, that's the limit, anyway. Say at least eight hours before we see them back. Weather's pretty good, nice and dry, but they'll be slowed by the darkness. Most people who drop out do it after the first loop, so if he makes it through feeling good, he's doing great."
"You talking about Mike or Sam?"
She just winked and shrugged. "I'm going to get a few more hours in my bed. Once Laz starts playing taps, it can be hard to sleep." She walked away before Dean could ask what she meant.
Six hours later, Dean was startled out of a particularly morbid speculation with the answer to what Amy had meant. A bugle was playing a horrible performance of "Taps," and Dean climbed out of the car to see Laz puffing hard into the instrument as a sheepish-looking runner limped back from the direction he'd started. "Twisted my ankle coming down Jacque Mate Hill," he sighed. "Didn't even make it to book two." A friend came forward to help him, and they made their slow, painful way to his tent.
Several hours after that, the taps were playing with increasing frequency. A few runners had returned successful, carrying pages torn from every hidden book, but many more were beaten and dejected, bleeding and taking mincing steps on painful feet. Dean was fighting the urge to pick a fight with someone, anyone, just to take the edge off his agitation, when he finally saw Sam trotting down the hill. His face was glowing with pride.
"All thirteen pages!" he said, waving them over his head. The race director reached out to take them, and as he counted, Dean waited impatiently. When Laz nodded, Dean grabbed Sam by the arm and hauled him to the car.
"I'm good, Dean, seriously!" Sam protested. "Honestly, it's like we said. Hacking through the woods, searching for hidden things? That's probably more natural for me than just running along on a paved surface with people handing me cups of Gatorade." Only a little reassured, Dean was shoving Sam onto a seat and yanking his shoes and socks from his feet.
"No blisters yet?" he said, a little surprised.
Sam smirked. "I did research," he said. "It's good for more than identifying ghouls and ghosts."
As Sam headed out for loop two, fed and with an extra sandwich in hand, Dean was starting to feel like this was going to be okay, after all. Amy waved and gave him a thumbs up, and he winked and nodded back, breathing a little easier. It was just after 1:45 in the afternoon, and Dean figured he'd see Sam again around 11:30 or midnight. He's actually got this, he thought to himself, ignoring the sudden voice that whispered how every time he'd had that thought in the past, it had been a precursor to badness.
