Zombie, Interrupted - Chapter Four

It was cold and he was terrified, so he didn't know which was making him shake more. Nah, it's just the adrenaline, George reassured himself in a vain attempt to bolster his morale. Regardless of the cause, he had been trembling for such a long time that it now seemed like it was his new natural state. Certainly Dean had grown increasingly dour and uncommunicative as they made their slow way ever deeper into the cemetery.

George was used to death; it was a part and parcel of his daily routine. Somehow he'd become so inured to it that it had become unremarkable. He knew intellectually that there had come a time when he'd stopped looking at the bodies as human. Maybe, then, this was his punishment. Because that kind of detachment was difficult to carry off when those bodies were insistent on getting up and moving around.

He had never really appreciated before how many dead there really were. It almost seemed like there were more graves than living souls. He wondered how much more that ratio might have changed by the morning. He'd had a number of close scrapes and if it wasn't for Dean's quick wits and quicker guiding hand he suspected he'd be numbering among the deceased himself by now.

Dean stopped without warning and George almost collided with him. "What is it?" George hissed.

Dean held his hand up for a second, indicating that he needed silence and a rare moment to think. "Is it just me, or are they getting crappier?"

George's brain kicked in before the immediate, sarcastic comment he had prepared could leave his lips. "They're longer dead, that's all too clear from the state of decomposition." He considered for a moment. "But it seems like there are more of them too, although they're moving slower. It's like they're stronger or more determined somehow."

When they'd first entered the cemetery there had been a couple of newly dead corpses lurching off in the direction of town. A single bullet to the head from Dean's revolver had soon left them barely twitching by the side of the road. As they got deeper into the cemetery they'd started to avoid the dead when the same effect started to take two or three bullets at a time. Now, some seemed almost unstoppable; there had been at least a couple that had no legs and were still grimly dragging themselves along. George had even seen a single forearm scuttling along on its own like some nightmarish spider. That had put paid to any chance that he might ever be able to sleep again.

"Something's doing this," George said, realization hitting him. He waved his hand at the "duh" look Dean was giving him. "No, I mean, something's powering this, and it's getting stronger, building up at the source..."

Dean looked at him in understanding. "I've been walking us in a big circle... and it's like they're all walking outwards, away from a central point. Whatever it is, I think it's in there somewhere," he said, pointing to a series of large mausoleums.

They crept closer, wary of the ground that seemed to almost ripple with the near constant stream of dead crawling from it.

George's heart pounded fit to burst as Dean froze mid-step and swore a long and colorful curse.

"It's that one," Dean groaned, gesturing at a particularly gaudy mausoleum.

George read the name carved into the stone and laughed. "I. P. Freely?" He looked at the tense expression on Dean's face in confusion. "Is this some kind of joke?"

"Yeah, just not a funny one."

~#~

Barbra locked and double-bolted the door, then watched as Sam stumbled off into the distance. Her heart clenched with the feeling that her future had abandoned her. Despite the noise from the front of the house, she allowed herself a moment to herself to mourn the romance that had never been. Grandfather had always spoken so highly of her parents; of how they'd met and immediately known that they'd found 'the one'. She didn't have that certainty, but she'd been keen to find out herself, given the time.

Earlier that evening, in an uncharacteristic move, Grandfather had kept his comments to himself; not that he'd needed to voice them. At the time she'd been so grateful that he hadn't acknowledged the truth that even the greenest hunter knew: the Winchesters were a curse at the best of times and there was no better way of bringing that death sentence down to bear than to place yourself at the mercy of those two brothers.

The noise from the front of the house grew louder as she slipped the key from the lock and hid it within one of the many drawers within the kitchen. She turned in triumph to face the vigilantes. Her heart froze when instead she found herself opposite a shuffling man with half his face missing.

She grabbed a heavy saucepan from the sink draining board and swung it with all her might in the revenant's direction. She could have almost cheered when, despite barely managing to make it connect with his temple, she sent him stumbling back half a step.

Her grin of triumph faded as she spotted two more walking corpses appearing in the doorway.

"Barbra?" came the querulous call from the other room.

She managed to bring down three more of the creatures before she realized that they were still more coming, but they had just got stuck trying to squeeze through the hall as a massed group. Whatever she meant to yell in response to her grandfather was lost as the corpses overpowered her and she was buried beneath their weight.

Despite the pain, she could barely scream as they tore at her flesh, but when the shotgun rang out, she could have shouted with joy to see her grandfather, despite the agony of his coming to her aid.

"Oh, my Barbra," he sobbed, as he pulled the still moving, but now aimless, corpses off of her.

Barbra couldn't speak through the ravaged mess that was her throat, but her shocked eyes must have given her thoughts away,

Her grandfather turned to see the vigilantes bearing down on them, his motions made jerky by the severe arthritis that had so plagued his twilight years.

Their would-be rescuers came to a running, skidding halt. "There's another one of them," one of them screamed, before being cut-off as his colleagues let loose with an indiscriminate spray of bullets.

Barbra felt her grandfather's hand close around her own just before her vision went dark.

~#~

It was difficult to make out the details of the tomb in the ever-darkening twilight. Dean squinted in the gloom, there was no damn way he needed eyeglasses, no matter how much Sam teased him. His heart lurched. Not now, focus, Dean.

A number of sigils were painted on the interior walls of the mausoleum in what appeared, from the color and appearance, to be dried blood. Dean recognized it as a more complex variation of the set Bobby had painted on his house - in what the older hunter had always claimed was an attempt to keep Castiel out during his "dark side" phase. Dean's heart clenched again at the thought of his long-lost friend.

There was a dark movement in the air, and a blond, familiar-looking man flickered into sight like a bad TV signal.

"You! It's all your fault!" the ghost-like angel screamed in rage at Dean. With just a motion of his hands, both Dean and George were lifted by an invisible force and flung out through the door.

Although his thought processes were blocked through shock at the sight of Balthazar, Dean's long trained instincts took over. As his father always used to say, only a fool went into a cemetery without a salt-loaded shot gun. Dean had nursed many a whiskey cataloging his faults, but he was no fool. Lying on his back where he had fallen, he raised the gun and fired.

The salt shot exploded through the ghost of the dead angel, temporarily banishing him, as well as obliterating a sizeable portion of the blood-written sigils. Dean had learned enough about Enochian magic from his close watching of Castiel in the past to know that the damage to the angelic symbols, whatever their purpose, would prevent the spell from working.

They were in no shape to be dealing with the wrathful spirit of a dead angel - he'd never even imagined that they even could come back as ghosts - so they would just have to hope that they'd done enough to stop the march of the dead. He sat for a moment, catching his breath and, despite himself, lost in own thoughts.

Watching Castiel die in the reservoir had been horrendous, a kick in the teeth made so much worse as he'd really thought he'd saved the angel from his souled-up power trip. For a while he'd lived in hope, but, after the following weeks led only to fruitless months, he'd soon come to the conclusion that Cas had blown it by trying to take the Boss's job – and that this meant there was not going to be another resurrection on the cards. Following that realization he'd felt numb at the thought that Castiel was gone from his life forever. He really missed that stupid, nerdy angel.

So, to then discover that there was something of Balthazar that had survived death, yet in such pain, was... disturbing.

As if on cue, the tortured spirit re-appeared and threw himself towards Dean in a frenzied motion, his face twisted in fury. Dean fumbled the reload, but at the last minute managed to empty both rounds into Balthazar before the ghost was able to reach him.

There was an anguished wail as the spirit once more dissipated into the dank air of the tomb.

Dean's satisfied relief was crushed by the remembrance that this was just another in a long line of allies that he'd got killed on his watch.

"Let's get outta here," he muttered, climbing to his feet and stumbling for balance, all the time feeling like the metaphorical rug had been pulled out from under him.

~#~

Sam staggered through the cemetery. There were fleeting moments of lucidity where his stomach churned and roiled with some kind of primal revulsion, as though something deep within him was urging him to flee.

Only for something infinitely older and colder to guide him to move at its own direction.

He'd been possessed before. He knew the horror of total awareness while your body moved under another's command. This was different. This was like a slow drifting descent into a strange dream, where everything is muffled and nothing quite seems to make sense, yet still manages to follow its own tortured, internal logic.

Lucifer flickered into sight beside one of the graves, his arms wrapped tight around his body as if trying to literally hold himself together.

"I thought you'd... gone for good. I should've known... too good to be true," Sam groaned.

Lucifer snarled at him, only for it to descend into dry heaving. "You said 'Yes' to me, Sammy," he sneered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "There're no take backs with an angel. Once you let us in, we're with you forever."

"Well, that might... not be such a long time now. Looks like you're gonna get your wish."

Lucifer pulled a face in response. "Just because I refuse to bow down to your kind, doesn't mean I want an end to all life on earth."

Sam blinked at him blankly. "I can feel it... calling me."

Lucifer shook his head. "It wants me. To power the awakening of more of these abominations."

Sam still had the wherewithal to snort at that remark.

"It's incompatibility with the natural order," Lucifer scowled. "You need to get out of here. Now."

Sam swayed.

"Sam," Lucifer shouted; he wasn't used to being ignored.

Sam looked up in confusion. "I have to... find..."

Always with the brother, Lucifer sighed.

~#~

George's head was reeling from the events of the last twenty-four hours. He still wasn't sure what they'd achieved - especially given Dean's furious ranting about the lack of any actual remains in the crypt - but he didn't need to be told twice to leave.

As they made their way out, they seemed to see ever-increasing numbers of the dead crawling from their graves. George had a fleeting moment of wondering what seemed to make one corpse rise but not another. The numbers seemed to be growing and he worried if all they had done was to make things worse. The tight, stressed expression on Dean's face made George decide not to share that particular thought.

Dean had fallen into a brooding silence and George missed the earlier tirade. He watched as Dean looked at his phone again, his brow furrowed at the apparent lack of messages.

George had a moment of epiphany as he realized that it was concern for Sam. It must be nice to be so close to your brother. He couldn't quite imagine it himself, especially when he realized it had been at least six months since he had last spoken to his siblings at a family dinner, and even then they had only exchanged the very briefest of polite pleasantries. He could only pray they were home and safe from this madness.

He was so distracted by his own thoughts that he didn't notice the hulking figure until a moment too late and he had collided bodily with the man. He really hoped that his high pitched shriek wasn't going to be his last words on earth, when he realized that it was Sam.

In a split second, Dean had rushed over and grabbed his brother by the arm, pulling him close. "Sam! Sammy, are you okay?"

George felt his stomach drop. "Where's Barbra?" he asked, his mouth now so dry that the words came out as little more than a cracked rasp.

Sam looked around in confusion. George backed off in a wary expectation of being attacked as he noted Sam's pale and gaunt appearance with his skin an unpleasant bluish-grey color and seemingly stretched too tight across his skull.

George glanced at Dean in concern at the way the man was hovering around Sam. Doesn't he realize the danger he's in? He'd seen Dean put a bullet through the head of more alive-looking walking corpses.

"Back... at house..." Sam sighed, his voice sounding like the wind rustling through fallen leaves.

Wondering how long they had left, George followed keeping a close eye on Dean, but his distance from the brother.

~#~

George felt his skin prickle and the hair stand up on his arms and the back of his neck.

The windows of the Jones' residence were shattered, the front door reduced to kindling, while the drive was spattered with blood.

George looked at Dean nervously. The hunter had his arm wrapped around his brother and, from the look of exertion, was doing most of the work of supporting him.

Sam raised his head and stared at the house for a moment until a look of understanding crossed his features and he wailed a blood-curdling scream that only by the longest stretch of the imagination could have sounded like a name.

Dean tried to hush Sam, but it was too late. The sound had drawn the attention of the occupants of the building.

Ice water passed through George's veins at the sight of the shuffling figure that stepped from the house. Dean struggled to restrain Sam, so was unable to stop George from pulling the shotgun from his grasp.

Shivering, George walked up to the figure until the barrel of the gun was pressed against the head. With no chance of missing, George pulled the trigger and watched the still-twitching body fall to the ground.

As he turned back to the Winchesters, through floods of tears, he could almost see the last light of humanity drain from Sam's eyes.

~#~

No longer hidden by Balthazar's sigils, Bran's Cauldron announced its presence to the Host of Heaven. One of their number, the least and most expendable of that vastly reduced throng, was dispatched to deal with the abhorrent item.

Castiel shivered at the powerful pull the ancient Celtic artefact exerted over his grace. He'd heard of the item before, but never had the misfortune to be in its presence. It was one of many such weapons that had been locked down by Heaven, only to go missing in the mad scramble for power during the early years of the angel civil wars. He should have realized that someone as wily as Balthazar would have several such caches and countless fallback plans.

With some reluctance, he prodded at the cauldron with his mind in an attempt to better understand it, wincing at the wrongness of even that tenuous contact. An affront to the natural order at the best of times, its ability to resurrect the dead as silent warriors had been corrupted by the interaction of the very angelic blood that had been used to hide it. Such formidable magic from such different pantheons should never have been allowed to interact.

To have an object with such powerful dominion over the dead, constrained with the blood of a dead angel – well, the pressure of those opposing, but overlapping, forces must have been immense. It was, perhaps, hardly surprising that Balthazar had been brought back and - given the overwhelming repugnance and urge to flee the cauldron invoked in him - no wonder it had rendered the trapped spirit insane. Given the nature of the powers involved, perhaps they should be relieved that it had only animated the dead.

Castiel faced his old friend. Only Balthazar could have managed to fall so far so as to come back as a spirit without losing his grace. I'm so sorry, Balthazar. He wished he could say more, something worthy, but how do you properly apologize to someone that you murdered in cold blood?

With a single gesture from Castiel, the remaining blood on the wall flared into flame and burned into ash. The ghost of Balthazar wailed as he too was consumed in a spiritual flame. Castiel sent a small prayer of his own after him.

No one knew where, if anywhere, angels went when they died.

He walked over to the unassuming, battered black cauldron sitting in the corner of the room that had been kept hidden from angels and devils both. Using his trench coat, and taking great care to avoid any actual skin contact, he picked up the lid that had been left discarded to one side and placed it back on the cauldron, deactivating it.

It was a longshot, but he hoped that once cut off from the source of their reanimating power the dead would start to drop. As he looked outside, judging from the sight of the figures still moving in the gloom it would seem that life was full of disappointment. He watched for a little longer and it soon became clear there were no new additions from the few surrounding graves that had so far remained undisturbed. That's something, at least.

Castiel wondered where the Winchesters were; he had sought them everywhere, but he suspected that anti-angel warding meant they were too well hidden, especially given his lesser power following his most recent resurrection. He had tried making use of his bond with Dean, but the man had either not been sleeping, or his dreams were so disturbed that it had proved impossible to get through to him clearly.

He'd even looked for Bobby in all the usual places, but the elder hunter was nowhere to be found.

At least they weren't dead. Well, they've not arrived in Heaven. He could only hope that they were safe...

What was he thinking? If there was anything that could be counted on, it was that they would be anything but...

~#~

George pushed open the heavy, reinforced front door, long months of recent experience having instructed him to check the coast was clear before he blocked off his exit route. Satisfied that all was well, he locked and double bolted the door behind him.

"Dean?" he called, shaking himself like a dog as he peeled off his protective gear and laid it over the nearest kitchen chair. His shoulders slumped at the sight of the pile of dishes still soaking in the sink from the night before. He guessed he should have expected it, since the man was now a fading shadow of his former self who rarely stepped foot outside of the basement.

He made his careful way down the narrow tread of the cellar steps, his nose wrinkling as he reached the bottom. He wondered how long it would be before one of the few remaining neighbors complained about the smell. He suspected they'd lynch him if they discovered the truth of what he was harboring.

"You know, they think that birds might be spreading the infection now," he called as spied the waiting man. "Do you think we're gonna have to have netting overhead as well?"

When there was no answer he just paused and sighed, trying to let the tension go. "When I was a child we used to have a cat that was always killing birds. It used to drive us crazy at the time... I really miss cats," he added wistfully.

Dean finally turned to him. "I never thought I'd say this, but I actually miss dogs..." Dean replied in a husk of a voice. "Sammy loved dogs."

George had no answer for that, so instead finished applying a CDC-approved brand of anti-infection cleanser to his hands. He winced; it always stung like a bitch if you had even the slightest scratch, but it was a million times better than the alternative that was even now doing its damnedest to sweep away civilization.

It was only then that he noticed that Dean was matching him with the motion; except that Dean was rubbing his hand over and over an angry-looking, red bite mark on his wrist.

They both seemed to simultaneously stop and catch eye-contact.

"Sam?" the question was out of George's mouth before he could think about it, because the answer was obvious. As ever, he kept his gaze studiously averted from the large, shambling creature chained to the rear wall of the basement.

"Yeah," choked Dean through a fake laugh. "I always said that kid would be the death of me."

"I'm sorry."

They stood in long silence. Dean reached to one side and produced a pearl-handled gun, which he held out, butt-first to George with a pleading expression.

Too stunned to answer, George just backed away, shaking his head.

Dean placed the gun in George's hand, then lifted his arm until the barrel was pointing at his own head.

"Please," whispered Dean. "I'm too weak to be able to leave him, but I can't stay like... this."

"It's not weak to love someone," George croaked, still convulsively shaking his head, "otherwise we'd all be no better than those things out there."

Tears flooded down his face. He couldn't. He just couldn't. He still hadn't got over the loss of his family, let alone the agonizing guilt he felt about Barbra. "I can't. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, there's just been too much death."

"I thought we were friends," growled Dean.

"I like you too much already," said George, his voice clipped in anger, "but maybe not enough to make me want to put myself through this again." He tried not to look back as he made his weary way up the stairs. Before he closed the cellar door he heard Dean speak in a voice bright with false bravado.

"I guess it's back to just you and me, Sammy. Same as always."

George stumbled to the front door; despite the inherent danger he needed fresh air.

He stepped out into the heavily-fenced yard and raised his eyes to the heavens. Falling to his knees in a combination of shock and exhaustion, he prayed for salvation for the Winchesters.

He never even noticed the fluttering sound behind him, like a flock of birds coming home to roost.

~#~

Castiel glanced around the fenced enclosure, not recognizing the location, nor the identity of the young man lost in the depths of grief. The man's impassioned prayer, while fractured and confused, had been enough to alert Heaven. Castiel hesitated, unsure of how to proceed. In the end his impatience won out; he might be several millennia old, but he burned with a keen urgency to find the Winchesters again.

"George?"

The young man jolted, and a look of terror flashed across his face, as Castiel called him gently by name again.

"I heard your call. Sam and Dean are here?"

George nodded, his eyes widening. Sometimes, Castiel noted, people seemed to have an innate sense that there was something otherworldly about him. With a trembling finger, George pointed to the house. "The basement," he added, his voice cracking. Wiping his eyes with the crook of his arm, George turned away.

Castiel set off for the house.

~#~

As he made his way down the narrow, creaking steps into the bowels of the house, Castiel realized that his relief at finding the Winchesters was going to be all too short-lived. Even from a distance he could tell there was something wrong with them.

They looked up at him, cocking their heads in a vile parody of his own mannerism. With their gaunt faces and rotting flesh there was really very little left of the men he knew. But, when he looked into their clouded eyes, he was sure there was still a small spark of the Sam and Dean he used to know in there somewhere. Somehow, that just made him want to weep all the more.

They started to shuffle towards him and Castiel knew he didn't have long. Sam looked too far gone to understand words, so he concentrated his attention on Dean.

"Dean," he called softly. "Dean, I can try to bring you and Sam back to all this... chaos. Or... or I can set you free and maybe one day we'll be allowed to meet again... on the other side. What do you want me to do?"

His concern was that he was pulling the brothers back into a life that brought them nothing but hardship and pain of a world rapidly, inexorably, sliding into destruction. But he knew that together they were an unstoppable force. His worry was that he might only have enough power to resurrect one of them. If he was restoring anyone there was no way he'd contemplate it not being Dean, but Dean without Sam wasn't Dean at all. He'd already made a mess of retrieving a soulless Sam in the past, what if he was just repeating the same mistake?

He gazed at the friend he adored more than any other of his Father's creations. Maybe even as much as he worshiped his Father Himself, he realized with a prickle of fear down his spine at the blasphemous thought. I want to be where you are, he thought. What if they won't let me be with you? If I make the wrong decision, you might not let me be with you.

He almost whined aloud in his despair, I'm a soldier of the Lord, point me in the right direction and I'll rain down the wrath of God. But I'm not made for this. What would Dean do?

As if in answer to the unspoken question, Dean shuffled forward, placing himself just ahead of, and in front of, Sam. Castiel laughed humorlessly that even as one of the walking dead the man instinctively protected his younger brother.

Castiel rolled his shoulders, stretched out his wings to their fullest extent, and made his decision...

THE END

"Only the dead have seen the end of war" - George Santayana

(;,;)