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Sam dreamed that he was in a park, sipping cool beer with his brother underneath rows of pine trees. He dreamed that he crashed on the couch at Bobby's house after a particularly difficult hunt. He dreamed he quit hunting and went surfing off the coast of Hawaii. He dreamed that Gordon danced around his room wearing a pink tutu and gaudy paste jewelry while Aqua's Barbie Girl played in the background.

That was what finally woke him up.

As his mind resurfaced from the deep he realized that something was hurting him. Pain shot through his body, throbbing with each heartbeat. Trying to move only made things worse. He stilled, fists clenched at his sides, and drew another breath. Something was jammed down his throat. The notion threw his already confused mind into a panic and he tried to sit up.

There was a bang like something hit the floor. Footsteps. Ah hell. Don't. Lay back...breathing tube…

Sam heard but didn't register the voice. Sitting up was a desolate failure that only succeeded in intensifying the pain. One arm wouldn't move at all, just flopped around like a worm, and something was grabbing at the other as he tried to pull at whatever was lodged in his throat.

Something pricked his neck and the little consciousness he had acquired snapped off.

When he drifted awake for the second time, the first thing he noticed was that the tube was gone. Breathing hurt his chest so he tried to take shallow breaths as he fought to get his eyes open. The room smelled like a cinnamon candle was burning nearby, so he wasn't in a hospital. That by itself shot up all kinds of warning flags coupled with a very small shred of relief that he was lying on a bed instead of stuffed in some hidden basement. However, cotton sheets and candles didn't explain where Dean was.

Dean. Where was…? Sam finally managed to crack one eye open.

A young man sat at the edge of his bed, watching Sam's inner struggle with dark circles under his eyes. "Sam?"

The warning bells screeched. Sam tried to sit up, but this was coupled with the same pain and failure that accompanied the previous attempt. Sam managed to get his head propped against the headboard so that he was better able to stare down the Not Dean that was invading his space.

Not Dean gestured haphazardly to the bedside table. "Uh…you want some water?"

Sam gazed stonily back while his muddled mind tried to figure out how to form words.

He stood and smoothed the sheet back down. "Listen…you're hurt pretty bad so you might not want to move right now—"

"Dean," Sam croaked out, fist clenched under the blanket, "Where?"

Not Dean scratched at his cheek. "He's…probably still alive," he said. He took in the deepening anger on Sam's face and realized that he hadn't made the best choice of words, "Not that I took him or hurt him or anything."

"Where?" Sam demanded.

"Nick has him," he said, throwing his hands up when Sam's expression didn't change, "Look, I didn't do anything to him, alright? Nick snatched him up before I got there, left you for dead in that car. I saved you…well…my brother's a doctor so he did most of the work, but I found you."

Sam felt helpless and groggy. His body didn't want to move, his mind wanted to go back to sleep, and his brother was missing. The first two problems prevented him from getting out of bed to solve the third problem, which made him want to punch something, which brought him back to the helpless and groggy problem that prevented him from getting out of bed.

"Sam?"

Sam blinked and reality snapped back. He was spacing out. He tried to focus on the pain to keep himself alert. "How do you know my name?"

The guy's face crumpled. "Uh…" he said, shuffling his feet, "Well…I kind of had a vision. At least, I think they're visions…they kind of match that power one girl in Charmed had when I used to watch…" he trailed off when he ran out of breath and started over, "Anyway, I had one about you."

Sam's thought process stopped swirling and fell back into familiar territory. He almost relaxed. Visions. That was familiar territory. He shifted in the bed and winced when the movement pulled something.

"Do you want more morphine?"

"No," Sam snapped, "I'm already so high I can barely follow you."

"Sorry," he said, and sat back down on the bed.

Sam pushed the pain back down. "Where's my brother?"

"Um…don't freak out…"

Sam's eyes hardened. Damn it. "Tell me. Now."

"Because you'll probably only hurt yourself more…"

"Tell me before I smash your face in with the stupid water jug that I can't reach."

He raised his hands in surrender. "I'm not a hundred percent sure, but if I had to guess I'd say that Nick probably has Dean locked up in a cage, so—"

That got through. "What?" Sam exploded. "Son of a bitch."

"Yeah."

"Where?"

"His house," he said, shrugging, "If Dean's infected it makes sense that he'd take him there so that he can…you know…become a zombie. You two found out about the zombies, right? Well Nick's the guy that's responsible for everything. He's some kind of voodoo guy on a power trip, but I'm not exactly sure what he wants."

Sam inwardly cursed how weak he was. He needed to get to Dean. Dean wasn't in any shape to be locked up right now, and there was no way in hell he was letting him die out there.

"Listen," the man said, drawing him out of his reverie. "I'm going to help you get him back. We just have to wait till you can focus on things. And move well enough to handle weapons. And get some color back. And, you know, be able to stand for a few seconds without falling."

"I'll stay here two more hours," Sam said. "That's it. Dean doesn't have much time. I need to be there."

He hesitated and then nodded, obviously scared. "Okay. I'm with you."

Sam breathed out slowly and leaned back on the bed. Two hours wasn't going to be enough time…but it had to be. For Dean. He focused his attention solely on the guy for the first time. His hair was a curly brown mess atop of an expression that screamed terror to him but would have gone unnoticed to some John Doe on the street. He wore a white button down shirt, black jeans and converse shoes. "Who are you?"

He swallowed. "I'm Brandon Device," he said, giving him a miniscule fake smile, "I'm…I'm an accountant."

"And you have visions?"

He shrugged, eyes darting around like he was confessing to his mom about a box of porn magazines in his room. "Sometimes," he said, picking at the blanket at the end of the bed, "Not often. Usually just once a year, and they always have to do with something local."

"So this town's a hot spot?"

His forehead creased. "What…oh. No. I move around a lot. Usually I end up freaking people out and have to leave town after each episode. I've only been here half a year," he said, and paused.

"Oh," Sam said, "Okay."

Brandon wasn't done. Not by a long shot. He continued, becoming louder and more frantic with each sentence. "Two months ago I started having a vision at least once a day, and every time I had a vision someone in this town or somewhere nearby went missing or got killed. I wanted to help, but…but there are fucking zombies, man. Real life zombies out of the movies, eating people and turning them into other zombies that go out and eat other people. I mean…I'm not cut out for this. I can deal with saving one person a year from some monstrositythat looks like a decaying Michael Jackson with fur or something. But not every day. Not this many. I can't even talk to my…" he stopped, winced, "I can't talk to anyone about it. No one knows. And then I saw you and Nick and Dean, and Nick said your name before he shot you, so I researched you and found out that you deal with this shit too, and I thought you could—"

"Stop," Sam interjected finally.

He blinked. "But I—"

"I have a headache," Sam said, shifting his weight, "Your words are muddling together. How much morphine did you give me?"

"But you got what I said, right?" he asked, and then plowed on before Sam could reply, "Good. Anyway, I figured that you could help me. And—"

"Shut-up," Sam growled.

Brandon clamped his mouth shut.

"You want to talk? Tell me everything you know about Nick, what he's planning, and the zombies. Tell me about the cages. Everything. Because I want to know, and I want to be ready. And when you're done telling me, we're going to go save Dean and burn the bastard's house to the ground."

SNSNSN

Dean wouldn't sleep.

Wouldn't, not couldn't. It wasn't that he didn't want to. His head ached, he couldn't stop shivering from sitting in the liquid, and his body had gone numb hours ago from being cramped in the cage. There was nothing he wanted to do more than just let himself sleep and escape everything for a few hours.

No, he could sleep. But he knew that if he fell asleep, he might not wake up the same. He might not wake up at all. And Sam was coming—he was, damn it—and he was going to remember his little brother when he got there.

It was cold. There were large holes in the roof, and cool wind blew through the cages with an eerie cry. Thunder boomed, and the storm that Dean had been anticipating for a while arrived. Rain began dripping through the holes in the roof, and then it poured. Dean looked up, letting the rain run off his face. It felt awful; he hunched his shoulders and tried to burrow his head further into his foul smelling jeans. The drops pinged off his head, neck, back. Every inch of feverish exposed skin was assaulted, and the patches of his jeans that had been drying off were quickly soaked again. Even worse, he could feel the water dripping down through his wound. There was nothing he could do about it.

Dean slammed his fist against the heavy bars and screamed. His voice didn't sound right; it was strained and off pitch. It was getting harder and harder to think clearly, and he wasn't sure he could form a full sentence if he tried. He hadn't tried. He was scared to try. He was even more terrified about his vision. He could barely see anymore, and could only make out blurry shapes and hints of color.

He was changing.

SNSNSN

Sam put his feet on the wooden floor and paused, readying himself to stand.

Brandon stood a few feet away. "This is too soon."

"I'm not letting Dean die," Sam said, and stood up. His vision spun, legs protested, but he stayed up. "There," he said, voice strained, "See? Easy."

"When you fall, try to fall back on the bed," Brandon said matter-of-factly.

"I'm not falling."

"You were shot four times," he said, "A little over a day ago. Most people wouldn't even be conscious yet, let alone walking around."

"I'm not most people."

"Yeah, I get that vibe," Brandon muttered, watching him take slow steps to the adjacent wall and then back.

The doorbell rang.

Brandon glanced over, arms crossed. He didn't move.

"You expecting company?" Sam said, slowly rotating his good arm to get the blood moving.

"No," Brandon said. The doorbell rang again. And again. He still didn't move, though his face paled slightly. "Don't worry about it."

The door opened with a barely noticeable creek of old hinges.

Sam raised an eyebrow at him. "Well?"

Brandon gritted his teeth, obviously upset. "Chris?" he called.

"Who else?" a voice called back. Footsteps ambled toward them, "I thought I'd check on the guy we saved, make sure he wasn't going to die. Why didn't you answer the—what the hell?"

If Sam had been in a better mood he might have laughed at the expression on the second man's face when he saw him walking around. "Hi," he said.

Chris' jaw tightened. "Brandon…" he said dangerously.

"I can explain," Brandon said quickly.

"I'm fine," Sam said, trying to ease some of the tension in the room. It didn't work.

"No you're not. Are you kidding me? You were shot yesterday. Four times. Of course you're not fine!" he snapped, turning back to Brandon, "Why did you let him out of bed? I didn't think even you could be that stupid."

Brandon winced. "He insisted…"

"So what? The guy's a pushover right now. Wind could knock him over. Put him back in bed and give him more morphine."

Brandon paused, caught in an inner struggle. "No," he said finally. "He's fine."

"Are you on something?" Chris hissed, stepping closer, "He should stay in bed at least a week. In a hospital. If he keeps this up he'll wear himself out. He could die."

"Yeah, well, what do you know?" Brandon shot back.

Chris blinked, caught off guard. "What?"

"I've got this under control, I don't need you," Brandon said, choking a little on the words. He paused, and then added, "I don't want you here."

Sam winced. Ouch. He imagined using that on Dean. In his mind, the scenario didn't end well.

Chris' face had become a mask. "You don't?" he said flatly.

"No."

The tension peaked. For a moment Chris looked like he was going to slug his brother, but he just turned and walked away. The two heard the front door slam shut and then listened as a motorcycle sped away.

Sam glanced over at Brandon. The guy looked like his puppy had been run over by a truck right in front of him. "Sorry," he said.

"No, it's okay," Brandon said sadly, picking at a scratch on his arm, "I might die today. I'm not dragging Chris down with me. He's finally paid off his college loans and he likes his job at the hospital. He's…he's been seeing this really great woman. She an elementary school teacher. She teaches first grade kids how to spell and color in the lines and glue things together," he said, "I don't have a place with that kind of life. I'm not normal. I just screw things up."

Sam slipped on the shirt that Brandon had sat out for him. It was difficult to thread his useless arm through the sleeve, even with Brandon's help. "He doesn't hate you," Sam said finally, working on the other sleeve, "He's just mad."

"I want to tell him everything," Brandon said helplessly, "But I can't. I can't tell him about the visions and what I'm doing because then he'll be involved. And he'll have to leave everything again. I shouldn't have had him help me with anything in the first place. I messed up."

"He likes helping you," Sam said. He worked his way up the buttons, slowly.

"I'm gonna disappear after this one," Brandon said. His voice shook a little. "I'm gonna leave without telling him." He looked at Sam, waiting for a response.

"He'll hate that," Sam said.

"I know," Brandon whispered. "I'll hate it too. But that's what I'm doing," he said. He waited.

"Okay," Sam said.

Brandon nodded. Paused. His face hardened again, and he helped Sam walk to the kitchen where he poured him a tall glass of water from the tap. "So," he said, "You have guns, right?"

"In the trunk," Sam said, sipping the water. "Can you shoot?"

"Yeah," he said, "I taught myself when the visions started. It's hard to save people if you don't know how to defend yourself."

Sam drained the glass and tossed it into the sink. "Let's go," he said, and walked to the door. They went outside. It was raining. The drops formed deep puddles on the driveway and poured down through grates into the sewer.

Sam decided to let Brandon drive. He knew where Nick's house was, and he hadn't just been shot. When they rescued his brother, he'd let Dean scream at him all he wanted. Of course, with the way the Impala looked right now, he'd be upset enough anyway. Large stains of dried blood coated the front seats, dashboard, and windshield. The blood was caked down in Dean's tape collection and had splattered across the top of the back seat. Sam knew the majority of it was his. He tried not to look at all of it as he swept the broken glass off his seat before getting in.

"You were really close," Brandon said, guessing what he was thinking about, "I didn't think you were going to make it at first. You were right on the edge when I found you."

Sam nodded and closed his door. "Thanks."

"No problem," he said, using the windshield wipers and fluid to clear the rest of the blood off the windshield. "Now let's find your brother."

Will they get there in time? Will Dean still be Dean? Is Sam going to pass out before he can do anything? What will Dean say when he sees his car? So many questions! Review and let me know what you think about the story! Thanks.