Near Denton, Texas
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
The dark stains spreading down the insides of Dean’s pants made Sam’s breath catch in his throat, and he dropped his flashlight. Even when he realized that it wasn’t blood “ not yet “ he stood still for several seconds, unable to move, not unwilling. Dean started to sink further to the ground, and Sam broke out of his paralysis to catch him.
“How far apart are the contractions?” Sam asked.
“Nine, ten minutes,” Dean said weakly. He took a a few rapid breaths. “That was the first bad one, though.”
“When the hell did you get the first not-so-bad one?”
“While we were driving from the hotel,” Dean admitted. “It’s gone now. I can walk.”
“Fuck that, Dean. You stay put and I’m driving over to you.”
Sam raced down to the Impala, almost a quarter of a mile away, and drove it to the end of the dirt road and past, along bumpy ground. Shit. What are we going to do? We can’t leave the circle. We can’t fucking leave the circle. And we sure can’t stay in it!
He parked the car and threw open the trunk. Guns, an extra bag of salt and herbs, the crib, two canisters of formula, their suitcase. Sam pulled a stolen hotel towel out of the suitcase and laid it across the passenger seat of the Impala.
Dean slowly took off his soaked pants and shorts, then put on a dry pair of undershorts from their suitcase and sat on the towel. “Oh, wait, hold on,” he said. “She can’t get in, and we can’t get out.”
“That’s what I was going to tell you,” said Sam. “Laura can’t touch us right now - well, not very easily - but if we go past the salt ring, then we’re in serious danger. I’ll call Dad and get that doctor’s number. I’ll call him at home, or have Dad call, and he can come out here.”
Dean rolled his head against the back of the headrest to face Sam. “You think he’s going to get here alive?”
“Uh, maybe Laura is still chasing Amanda?” We’re trapped, and she knows it. We drove right into it! Sam pulled out his phone. “I’m going to call Dad anyway. He’d know what we need to do.”
Sam quickly pulled up the preset number, but nothing happened. He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the lighted display. No signal from carrier. “I “ I “ Dean, I’m not getting a signal. I’ll have to just find him myself. Are you going to be all right if I leave? I won’t be long. Maybe ten minutes, at the most.”
“Sure.” Dean nodded and closed his eyes.
“I won’t be long. I promise.” Sam squeezed Dean’s hand and kissed his cheek.
*
He could have sworn he heard a car, and that it wasn’t very far away. He’d warned his sons about that “ they could cover more ground in a vehicle than they could on foot, but they’d have to go slow or risk passing over the target location. Laura’s presence would light up their meters, but all that they had to go on here was the residual energy of her remains, and that would be only a faint trace.
“Dad! Dad! Where are you!”
John turned around and held out his flashlight. Sam was running towards him, all urgency and speed and frantic strides. “Sam! Did you find something? Where’s Dean?”
“No, no, we didn’t find anything.” Sam stopped running only when he caught up to John, and he struggled to catch his breath. “It’s Dean. He’s in labor and we have to call your friend up in Sherman, get him to meet us here. I tried to call you but my phone can’t find the carrier.”
“He still has time,” said John. “If this progresses anything like when you and your brother were born, it’s going to be ten or twelve hours before the baby comes. Maybe longer.”
“Minus four. He said the contractions are about nine minutes apart, and his water just broke. We have to get help.”
John swallowed hard and looked at his own phone. “Wish he’d have said something sooner... and I can’t find the carrier, either. Damn it. Sam, we’re going to have to do this ourselves. Let him rest, and you and I will work faster out here.”
“Oh, hell no. I’m not leaving Dean alone.”
“Samuel Winchester, you listen to me. We have to find this girl’s bones and we have to do it now, before something happens to your brother. Together we can search twice as fast as I can alone. Dean will be fine without you.”
“You don’t know that!”
“I do know that there isn’t much you can do for him, and there is a lot that you can do to get rid of the danger that’s facing both of you. Do you have any idea what is going to happen to you if we fail? Any idea?”
“My soul... I know, you told me!”
“You will be tortured by things that you can’t even imagine yet, until you break, until you are a pawn in the hands of the one who made you that way. Who is a pawn in the hands of a demon. Is that what you want, Sam?”
“Of course I don’t!” Sam fidgeted and rocked, afraid for Dean, afraid for himself, for their son, for everything.
“Get ahold of yourself, and don’t shout at me. I’ll say this one more time. We have to find where Laura’s bones were moved to. I hope we find them fast, and it will be faster with you looking through the south half of the field. Now go.”
Marines, even ex-Marines, never let their fear show. It was bad for morale, especially when morale was this low to begin with. John walked faster as Sam took off south; when Sam was out of sight, his walk turned into a run. His sons were in trouble, and he didn’t know how to help them, except to keep on doing what they were doing, and hope and pray that they didn’t lose the gamble.
*
“Dean, we can’t call anybody. Dad’s phone isn’t working, either. We can’t drive anywhere until we find the bones, either. I’m sorry for all of this. I’m so sorry. It’s my fault, if I hadn’t...” Sam leaned over and put his arms around Dean.
“If we can’t drive, then what are you doing here? Go on and look for Little Miss Bitchcakes.”
“What are you talking about? I can’t leave you.”
“Yes, you can.” Dean made a quick glance at his watch, which showed 3:43. He had a contraction at 3:37 and knew the next would come over him soon. He didn’t want Sam to be there for it; he didn’t want to scare his brother any more than he already had, and it was important that Sam focus on the task at hand. He wished he’d just walked back to the car by himself, and he chided himself for his weakness. Being the likely only man in the world who was going to have a baby “ and very soon “ wasn’t a good enough excuse. Not for Dean Winchester.
“Damn it all, Dean! No, I’m not going anywhere!”
“Dad told you to go and keep searching. He gave you a fucking order, Sam!”
“What if everything happens fast? What if you need me?”
“We have some road flares in the trunk. I’ll light one up if I need to call you back.”
Dean leaned back, hard, against the seat. He was already feeling his muscles tighten, and tensing up and holding his breath would only make it worse. Sam jumped out of the car and slammed the door, leaving Dean by himself. He forced himself to breathe, as evenly as he could. 3:44. Ride it out, it’s not as bad as getting hit with pellets of rock salt. Yet. It’ll be over in a minute. A very long minute.
The door opened again and Sam placed something on the driver’s seat. “Here are three flares. If I see one I’ll come running right over. I swear. Dean, do you hear me? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Dean reached over and closed his hand over the small sticks. He had been expecting the pattern of pain this time, and was better able to hide it. “You’d better get going.”
Sam knelt over the seat for a few moments, as though he wanted to say something, but then he pulled himself back out of the Impala and ran in the direction that they had been headed before Sam stopped and sent Dean back. So long ago... it was only about thirty minutes, but it felt like longer. The pain faded away and Dean did his best to stay still on the seat, willing his body into stillness. He pulled up his shirt and looked down at his belly, skin stretched tight. “Do you mind slowing down a little?” he asked. “Because you really picked a bad time to join us, kid.”
This time there was only a short warning of tension before he felt what seemed like every fiber inside him constrict and squeeze. Hurry, Sam. He vaguely remembered seeing Sherman on a map, about an hour’s drive away, if they drove quickly. Did he even have an hour left? Probably. But if they didn’t make it…
The sensation of tissues stretching inside his body was uncomfortable, but not quite yet to a level that hurt. It was more like pressure… followed by a sharp constriction just to the left. Dean hissed his breath in and out through clenched teeth. To that moment, he thought there was no way for the baby to come out except through incisions. Out the same way his seed went in, he thought, and silently wished his son would stop, stay put, wait, your dad and grandpa won’t be much longer, don’t, don’t, please.
*
4:19. No Sam, no John, and now the time between contractions was the about the same as the time they lasted. Dean was sure he had been stretched inside as much as his body could take before starting to tear, and every time pain ripped through him and the pressure blossomed into burning blunt force, he squeezed one of the flares in his left hand and the inside door handle with his right, waiting for the rending that would send him crawling out of the car and fumbling to send up the light that would call Sam back.
It didn’t come, but the handle broke in Dean’s hand. He dropped it, and when he felt he could move again, for maybe a minute or two, he touched his thin shorts. They were damp at back of the crotch area; he brought his hand back up and saw smears on his fingers, red darkened near to black in the moonlight.
Can’t call Sam. Can’t make him stop what he’s doing. They have to find Laura. Dean inched over to the driver’s side door and let himself out. The trunk, with more towels and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, wasn’t far away. He was halfway to it, moving slowly on his hands and knees, before he remembered that he didn’t have the keys. Sam dropped them on the driver’s seat.
Eyes watering, chest heaving, thighs shaking violently, Dean retrieved the keys and went for the trunk again. He couldn’t see well enough to find the trunk’s lock. Everything was a haze, and another cramp, stronger than any of the ones before, gripped him. He felt like he was trying to pass something as big as he was, and imagined his body splitting around it. Something warm and liquid ran down his thighs, and as his back arched and a cry burst from his throat, his head hit the bumper hard enough to briefly see lights explode.
You’re a warrior. You don’t just give up. They need you, the whole world does, and your son needs you. He struggled to form his thoughts, and forgot them almost soon as they came through his mind, but he sank to the ground and laid down on his back.
His trembling legs wouldn’t move. He grabbed his shorts and sliced at them with his knife to get them off; the gash he accidentally cut into his hip registered as a scratch, a whisper against his flesh. He wanted Sam. He wanted Sam at his side, but even if he wanted to light the flare “ which he didn’t, he swore he didn’t (where’s the flare, god where is it, need it, need Sam now, fuck, I can’t, Sammy, Sammy) “ he couldn’t get to it.
*
Sam’s thoughts were flying even faster than his feet, and he almost didn’t notice when the meter in his hand started to blink. Stop! He stopped in his tracks and looked around wildly, and then he remembered that the command was to him, from himself, and the device was picking up something from the ground he was standing on.
The weeds were shorter and sparser under his feet than they were a few meters beyond. “Dad!” he screamed. “Dad! Over here!”
He ripped weeds with his hands and marked the perimeter around the space where the signal was the strongest. He heard his father echo something back, and ten minutes later the headlights of John’s rented truck blazed a few meters from Sam’s head.
John tossed a shovel to Sam and the two of them flung piles of freshly dug dirt over their shoulders. Sam’s arms and legs ached, but he kept on shoveling, one heaved clump of soil and roots after another. His lungs burned. He had to get the bones, light them up, burn them down, get back to Dean.
Clink.
John’s shovel struck something metal, and a minute later the boxlike case was liberated from the ground. It must have weighed a hundred pounds, but Sam hauled it up by himself and set it on the ground just above the shallow pit that they’d dug out.
John wiped caked dirt off the top of the case and shined his flashlight over it. It looked like an oversized metal toolbox, fastened with a thick padlock through a half-inch of iron. “Property of Amos Terrence, Nashville, Tennessee,” John panted. “This was Moser’s box.”
“Cut the lock!” cried Sam.
John jumped onto the truck’s bumper to sort through his tools and retrieve the bolt cutter.. “I’ve got it from here, Sam,” he said. “Go get Dean and as soon as you see the fire, drive! Meet me at the corner of highways 11 and 56 in Sherman. I’ll catch up.”
*
“Dean!”
Sam saw Dean writhing on the ground, right behind the Impala, about thirty seconds before he could get to his side, and every one of the thirty pumped more adrenaline into his blood until he thought that every throbbing vein was about to explode.
“Dean, we dug her up.” Sam said. “We can go now.”
Dean grabbed Sam’s arm and looked up at him, green eyes wide and bloodshot, dripping tears. “Help me up, Sam,” he gasped.
“Dad will be here in a few minutes. We’ll get him to help. Okay?”
A spasm jolted Dean’s body and twisted his back. He came up off the ground, breathing in ragged gasps, speaking only in a tortured whimper: “Sam... Sammy... aaa-aah!”
Sam saw how much blood Dean was losing, dark stains on his legs and on the grass. “Fuck,” Sam breathed. What now? He wasn’t going to lose Dean, especially not now that it was all coming to an end. They had her. Their father was probably caressing the bones of Laura Townsend with the gentle warmth of a blowtorch at that very moment. Dean and the baby, they depended on Sam, couldn't wait...
Sam opened the back passenger-side door of their car and then lifted Dean. “You’re going to be all right,” he whispered, even though he was sure that Dean could hear his pounding heart, betraying his own terror. How were they going to do this, as close to a natural birth as possible in the situation, with only Sam to assist Dean?
They'd manage. They'd have to; there wasn't any other choice. He laid his brother on the back seat and put his hands under Dean’s knees. “Try to breathe,” he said. “You’ll need it.” He knelt on the ground and pushed Dean’s thighs apart with his elbows. “Is he moving yet?”
“Uhh. Uh-huh.” Dean made a strangled sound deep in his throat and started to twist around.
“No, don’t move! Stay still, just stay there. When I get to three, push “ as hard as you can. It’s going to hurt, but you can do it. I’m here, Dean. I’m with you.” He reached forward with one hand and clasped it around one of Dean’s. “One... two... three!”
*
John only stayed long enough to see the salt crystals sparkle with the light of the crackling fire, burning through bone and through sixty-four years of terror. Dean and Sam... his boys. He had to protect his boys.
The Impala wasn’t moving. He feared that he was too late, that he’d been able to destroy the spirit but not in time for Dean. “Sam!” he screamed.
“Dad!”
Sam ran over to meet him, and threw himself at John. He had blood all over his arms and his shirt, and his face was streaked with tears, cutting clean streaks though dirt and more red smears.
“Sam, where’s Dean?” John asked.
“Come here.” Sam pulled away from his father and motioned for him to follow.
John looked inside the back of the Impala. Dean was lying across the seats, in a shirt but no pants, with a stained red towel wrapped around his waist. His belly was still distended, but much less than earlier that morning. Another towel was wadded up on his chest. “Dean? Son, can you hear me?” Please say something...
Dean slowly lifted his head, weak, spent. “Dad?”
John shuddered with relief and put his hand out on the frame to steady himself. “How are you feeling?” he asked. It was a stupid question. He could smell the thick copper tang and see dark blotches all over the interior seats. He didn’t want to ask the real question, are you going to live?
“I’ll make it. Could use something to drink. Sam, c’mere, show him.”
Sam reached to the towel on Dean’s chest. When he picked it up, it started to wriggle and wail. “Hold out your arms,” Sam said to John.
John took the bundle and looked at the small pink face nestled in bunched-up terry cloth. “Shh,” he said. “Don’t cry.” He bounced the infant gently until his cry softened to quiet sobs, then reached inside the towel to find the baby’s arm. John pressed his finger into a little palm, and watched tiny fingers wrap around and squeeze his fingertip. “He’s a strong boy, Sam. ”
“Born at four thirty-eight,” Sam said proudly. “He’s twelve... uh, thirteen minutes old. Just had his first bath, too, but he could use a little bit of baby shampoo. All I had was rags and the bottled water.”
John nodded and watched a pair of little eyes open in the dim light. “What’s his name?” he asked.
“Ask Dean,” Sam said. “After what he went through, he gets the privilege of the announcement.”
“He’s John Ryan Winchester,” Dean called out.
“Very nice,” John said. “And both parents agreed on this?”
Sam grinned. “Yeah, Dad, we did.”
John clapped his hand on Sam’s shoulder, still balancing the youngest Winchester on his other arm. “I’m glad to see that both of you “ all three of you “ pulled through. Do you have the car seat with you?”
“It’s in the trunk,” Sam said.
“All right. Set it up in the front seat, and leave Dean where he is.” John looked at his cell phone. “Looks like we can make outgoing calls again. I’ll call Doctor Randall and tell him to meet us at his clinic.”
John nodded at Sam as he handed his grandson back, and then he helped Dean pull his legs up onto the seat so that John could shut the door. “You’re going to be fine,” he said. “You’ve come through this far, and now it’s just a short drive. There shouldn’t even be much traffic on the roads at this hour.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Dad. For everything, especially over these past few weeks.”
He could have said something about it being their job to hunt evil, to protect the innocent. He thought that he should say it, even though none of it was anything Dean didn’t already know. But all that came out was, “We’re family. I... I’m here for you. As for everything else, you and Sam, well, it’s not important right now. We’ve got to get you patched up.”
*
A silver Dodge Ram rolled down Highway 380, with a black Chevy Impala about ten car lengths behind it, heading east. Inside the Impala, a little baby boy looked around with his bright blue-gray eyes, eyes that would turn green before his first birthday. He didn’t yet have the thoughts to wonder about why the sounds he heard and motions he felt were different than he was used to, yet somehow similar. He just knew he liked them. And that he was tired. His eyes closed and he fell asleep.
“We’ve been driving for five minutes, and he’s out already,” said Sam. “Dean? You still with me here?”
“Yeah, I’m holding on. It’s a good thing Johnny’s sleeping,” Dean grumbled.
“Why?”
“Because when he wakes up, he’s grounded. For a year. He fucking ruined the seats.”
Sam adjusted the rear-view mirror and saw Dean scowling, doing his best to look pissed off. When Sam caught his eye and smiled, though, Dean smiled back. Dad was right - he's going to be fine, Sam thought, and stepped on the accelerator to catch up with the elder John.
[Reviews - 5] [Kudos - 251]
Download story PDF format or ePUB format or MOBI format
Table of Contents
Download story PDF format or ePUB format or MOBI format
Table of Contents