Zombie, Interrupted - Chapter Two
Sam and Dean had wandered through the cemetery for several hours without really finding anything of importance. "Well, this has just been one epic pain in my ass," groused Dean.
Lucifer quirked an eyebrow and appeared to be on the verge of speaking, only to release the breath in a long drawn-out sigh. "Nah, it's too easy," he said at last, with a smirk.
Sam stared off into the distance, too distracted to really listen to what his brother was saying. It was like his head knew there was nothing there, but his gut was telling him something else. It was nothing specific, just a feeling of anxiety... a strong feeling of anxiety.
He gave a small gasp as he saw a figure approach in the rapidly fading light, but breathed easier when it turned out to be an old woman passing by with a small wreath clutched in one hand. On seeing them, she pursed her lips as she tightened her coat around herself and walked a little faster.
Dean blew out a sarcastic chuckle. "I don't know what's worse, you being scared of the old people, or us accidentally terrorizing them. I've had enough. I'm sure you don't want to upset Barbra, so I say we head back."
Lucifer frowned, the growing sense of wrongness about the place, which he now seemed to share with Sam, made him feel twitchy and ill-at-ease. For once, he chose to disappear without having to be driven off first.
Sam gave one more look around and shivered, but seeing nothing he turned back to his brother. "Okay, let's go."
~#~
Judy had promised herself that she wouldn't do it, but at the last minute she'd decided she ought to pay a visit to Tom's grave. He'd always been a bit of a bully in life, but damn it if some misguided part of her didn't miss the mean old son-of-a-bitch. She threw down the wreath. "Happy anniversary," she spat out, unsure if she was celebrating or commiserating.
The question was answered a moment later, when she noticed the loose earth around the grave start to move. She stood frozen in terror as a mottled hand reached out from the ground.
When Tom crawled from what was meant to be his final resting place, Judy's throat unlocked enough to start screaming.
You bastard, I always knew you'd be the death of me, she thought.
She didn't scream for long.
~#~
"Did you hear that?" Sam asked.
"Hmm?" queried a distracted Dean, looking up from a map of the cemetery.
"Never mind, it's nearly seven. We really should go."
They arrived back at the house to find Barbra hard at work in the kitchen. She waved off Sam's shy offer of help, instead asking them for an update on their progress. The brothers were spared any further embarrassment as her cellphone rang and she held up a finger to silence their stuttered explanations. "Oh, it's George. Looks like he's been trying to get hold of me, I better get this."
"Ah! Barbra... I need help!" The panicky cry from the phone was so loud that the brothers could hear it clear across the room.
"George, what's wrong, where are you?"
"I'm in the office. The body you were looking at earlier? Seems like he doesn't want to lie down any more!"
"What? Are you for real? This isn't some kinda joke is it?" asked Barbra suspiciously. A thought occurred to her, making her forehead crease up into a fierce frown. "You're not angling for a white knight, are you? Cause I gotta say, he might seem to be overcompensating, but I'm not sure he actually swings that way."
Dean looked puzzled by her conversation, but Sam covered a snigger behind one hand.
"No, no, this is real... Oh God, is this real! I know you're into this stuff, I was hoping you could bring your two tough guys and kinda save my ass? Please?"
"Okay, George, we're on our way," she said, worried by the edge of hysteria in his voice as she beckoned for the brothers to follow her.
Dean looked at the waiting, freshly baked pie with longing. "Not even a slice for the road?" he grumbled half-joking as they ran out to the car.
~#~
When they arrived at the morgue, they could hear the sound of a slow, irregular pounding on a metal door.
They made their careful way into the office area and were soon greeted with the sight of a disheveled, naked man hurling himself against the door to the inner office.
"Hey, buddy," called Sam.
The figure stopped and turned, emitting a deep groan like a large, creaking door.
It was definitely the body they'd seen earlier that day on the mortuary slab.
Zombie? There's no such thing, thought Dean.
The only thing he'd seen that was similar hadn't even been supernatural; it had been some years back in New Orleans, a couple of poor souls poisoned with a neurotoxin by a so-called Bocor from Haiti.
Seeming to be distracted by the sound of their arrival, the figure abandoned its attack on the door and started a shambling shuffle towards them. As it approached, Sam was overwhelmed by a feeling of wrongness as his stomach churned in response to the creature's presence. He couldn't help but stare, mesmerized by the thing; it was almost as if he had some kind of connection with it.
"I really think you should move," said Lucifer, being careful to maintain his distance while raising a hand to cover his nose and mouth.
"Sam, step back," shouted Dean, the tension clear in his voice.
Sam realized he'd been standing frozen in his brother's line of fire and hastily stepped out of range.
Dean fired his shotgun at the creature, cursing as the salt rounds failed to do more than temporarily slow its advance. Still, he considered as he reloaded with normal shells, it was probably safer what with Sam trying to do some kind of zombie-whispering gig.
Barbra stepped forward and fired a single bullet to the creature's head. It collapsed to the floor.
"Good thing this was a Romero zombie, and not a 28 Days Later one," she quipped. Dean chuckled in relieved embarrassment, but Sam just looked blank.
"Don't worry Sammy, just a bit of low-brow culture; nothing you'd be interested in," Dean laughed at his brother's confused expression, surreptitiously giving Sam a quick visual check-over to make sure he was uninjured.
Barbra had already called for George through the door, and after a moment it unlocked and opened, and a cautious head emerged. "Oh, thank God," George cried, before giving Barbra a quick hug, but not so traumatized that he didn't still manage to cast a small, shy smile in Dean's direction.
They looked down at the body which was still just barely moving, only now it seemed uncoordinated. "Man, I'm looking at it and I still can't believe what I'm seeing," moaned George.
"What do you think it is?" asked Barbra.
"I've never seen anything like this before," Sam admitted.
Dean just shrugged, but gave his brother a concerned look, they'd been through a lot together, but he'd never seen his brother freeze in the midst of a hunt before.
Sam knew what his brother was thinking, Hell, he was thinking it himself. "There's something about it that makes me feel sick," he tried to explain.
Dean glanced down at the mindlessly moving flesh and pulled a face. "I don't think you'll get any arguments from anyone about that."
"No, I mean it's like I can sense its wrongness. It's almost like a... vision," Sam said, struggling to explain the weird feeling he was getting.
Dean blanched and looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Sammy," he whispered, barely audible. Both brothers knew there was an unvoiced "No please, not that."
"So, what happened?" Dean asked George, suddenly all business again.
George blinked. "I don't really know. One minute I was filling in some paperwork, the next I look up and he's just standing there. I freaked out and ran into the other office. Lucky I had my phone on me, I guess." He turned to Barbra. "Thanks for picking up, eventually."
Barbra rolled her eyes. "Just be grateful we weren't eating; grandfather always makes me switch it off," she added with a false smile.
"He doesn't seem to show any signs of giving up either," noted Sam, nudging the still moving corpse with his boot.
George pulled on a pair of latex gloves with a snap, and started lifting the zombie up by its wrists, being careful to avoid the snapping jaws. "Okay, we need to dump him in the incinerator. Who's gonna help me?"
"You know, you're really quite bad ass, aren't you?" smiled Dean, with a new respect for the mortuary assistant, while grabbing hold of the zombie's ankles to help lift it.
Together they managed to stuff the creature into the incinerator. George threw in his gloves after it, slammed the door shut and set the temperature to maximum. After a moment, the sound of movement died away.
"Handy thing you got there," said Dean.
"Yeah, it's to dispose of crap," answered George distractedly, rubbing his chin and staring off into space. "Interesting that its behavior changed after the shot to the head. It was obviously capable of simple thought, but destroying the brain still didn't kill it," he pondered.
"So what does that mean?"
"I have no idea!" George laughed. "Oh, I just thought..." George said, turning suddenly serious. "The funeral of the girlfriend is tomorrow, the body's already at the funeral home. Do you think...?"
"You're giving directions," Dean said, dragging George along behind him, as he ran to find Sam and Barbra.
~#~
They dashed from the cramped car that barely held the four of them. Sam pulled a face as they drew nearer to the door. "Urgh, I feel sick again."
"Okay," said Dean, trying to keep his voice calm and even. "Can you tell whereabouts it is?" He was worried about Sam's sudden new ability, but he was also not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
"It's not that exact," Sam grumbled. "But there's definitely something here."
"Okay, let's go in then."
"Er, can I have a gun too?" asked George hesitantly.
"Why, you know how to shoot one?"
"No."
"Then we're all safer if you don't. Just stay near to me and I'll keep you safe," Dean said, clapping George on the arm. George nodded nervously, but from his grin it was also clear that on one level he was having the time of his life.
Together they crept into the building, where all the lights were on in the first couple of rooms they passed, but no one seemed to answer their call.
"We should split up, it'd be quicker," said Dean reluctantly.
"Again with the splitting up," complained Sam.
"Don't worry, I'll hold your hand if you're scared," teased Barbra.
Dean chuckled. "Okay, you two check upstairs, and George and I'll take the rest of the back rooms," he ordered. "Be careful, okay?" he fussed, not happy to be letting Sam out of his sight, but he'd seemed to have picked up a civilian and he couldn't in good conscience leave him to fend for himself.
"All right George, you're with me. Keep behind me and your eyes peeled, okay?"
George nodded and followed, coloring a little as he'd already had his eyes on Dean's behind.
They made their way down a long hall, Dean training his gun on each of the open doorways as they went past.
"So, how long have you been doing this kinda thing?" asked George nervously.
Dean flicked him a quick look of irritation. "Just about my whole freakin' life," he muttered.
"Oh," replied George, at a loss as to what else to say. "Shall I get that?" he asked, gesturing to the closed metal door they'd reached at the end of the corridor.
"Yeah, that'd be great," answered Dean, trying to remind himself to try to go easy on the guy, it wasn't as if the man would be used to dealing with this kind of thing. Plus he seemed like a good guy, if a little nerdy, and at least he was trying.
"Ah, Dean?" George said softly, letting go of the door handle and holding out his hand. "It's blood, pretty fresh too."
Dean released a deep sigh. "Okay, let's do this. Ready?"
George gave Dean a nod of confirmation before throwing open the door. There was another relieved sigh when the open doorway didn't reveal anything untoward. "Oh thank God! I can't tell you how scared I was that something was gonna jump out and..."
"Duck!" shouted Dean with a tinge of hysteria to his voice, as he raised his shotgun to point directly at George's head. With a shrill shriek, George did as he was told and dived for the floor, deafened, mere moments later, by two roars from the shotgun in quick succession.
George looked up in time to see the ravaged body of the funeral home owner fall to the ground. He wiped the blood splatter from his face and gave Dean a shaky smile of thanks. "That was Mr. Addams, he's the owner," George said in a small voice, before suddenly darting forward to vomit in a nearby trashcan. "I'm sorry," he muttered in embarrassed contrition. "I don't know what came over me."
Dean waved aside the apology with one hand, while scanning the rest of the room for any other signs of threat. "Don't worry about it, man. It's different when it's not work, isn't it," he said in an understanding voice.
"Thanks," George answered, meaning it in the broadest possible sense. He paused and frowned, then turned to a Dean. "His son would have been here too."
With impeccable timing, the sound of a shotgun being fired echoed from somewhere in the distance.
~#~
Sam started at the twin sounds of gunfire, snagging his sleeve on the door. As he turned to free himself, he was overwhelmed by a wave of nausea that made him stumble over his own feet.
"Sam," Barbra screamed in pure horror at the sight of the blood-soaked figure of a young man lumbering towards them.
Still off balance, Sam put up a hand to fend off his attacker, only to yell in pain as the thing bit down on his already wounded hand.
"Down," yelled Barbra and years of practice meant Sam complied immediately, allowing her to blast off the thing's head with her shotgun. The animated body continued to move in an uncoordinated way, but as before in the morgue, no longer seemed a direct threat.
"Are you, okay?" Barbra asked in concern, rushing over to Sam. She helped him to his feet and led him by the arm away from the threat.
He made an effort to stand a little straighter and gave her a rueful look, shaking his hand as if he could discard the pain. "It smarts, but I think it's really my pride that might've been mortally wounded. Caught in a door... really. Please don't mention this to Dean; he'll never let me live it down."
Barbra gave a low, throaty chuckle that did strange things to Sam's stomach. "Don't worry, you're still my great, white hunter," she teased and gave him a small kiss on the cheek.
Sam's thunderstruck expression made her chuckle again. "Come on, we should find the others, they must've heard the shots, and we need to get rid of... this," she said, motioning to the still twitching body that was slowly inching its way across the floor towards them.
~#~
There had been no sign of the dead girl, although they searched the funeral home from top to bottom, as well as the immediate area. In the end, defeated, they disposed of the moving remains of the zombies in the incinerator as before, then retreated back to the Jones house. In the absence of any decent information the urge to return to warm and familiar surroundings was difficult to ignore.
Ben listened to the description of the evening's events with interest. "This is unlike anything I've ever heard of," he muttered to himself.
Sam still felt a little light-headed and collapsed into one of the chairs with relief. He felt completely drained, but despite this, Lucifer had been thankfully absent for some time. It was unusual, but he certainly wasn't complaining.
Ben noted the look of concern Dean sent in his brother's direction. "Everything else all right?" he asked. Dean looked shifty and Sam's complexion paled even further, Winchesters and their secrets, Ben snorted to himself.
When Barbra offered to re-bandage Sam's hand again, Ben struggled to hide his smile when he noticed the looks passing between the pair. Ah, no wonder the young man's sweating so much!
He noticed how exhausted everyone looked. "I think we should all get some rest, and start out refreshed in the morning."
"Are you sure that's a good idea? There could be more of those things out there," Dean argued.
"Maybe, but in my experience tiredness just breeds mistakes, and we may need to keep our wits about us tomorrow," Ben said, his tone making it quite clear that he was giving an order. He was surprised when Dean didn't try to argue further, but instead just sagged and looked relieved to not be the one in charge for a change. There's one who's teetering on the edge, thought Ben sadly, recognizing the signs of burnout in a hunter when he saw it.
"Oh, and don't worry, I'm a very light sleeper and a crack shot to boot," Ben added mischievously with a significant look in Sam's direction."
(;,;)