Supernatural: The Unholy Cause (17 page)

“It’s getting marshy again,” Dean said, cutting through another puddle of water. “We’re not walking in circles, are we?”

“I don’t know.”

“Great.” With a groan, Dean reached into his back pocket and pulled out his cell phone, poking listlessly at the buttons. “Thing’s ruined. I knew it would be. You got yours?”

“Nope. It’s a dud, too.”

Dean frowned.

“Wait a second, what the hell’s
that
?”

Sam squinted across the clearing up ahead where the last vines and branches gave way to a parking lot.

“Is that...” Dean shielded his eyes, “...a Walmart?”

They waded up out of the water, past an upended shopping cart and stood there, dripping and filthy, in the late afternoon heat. For a moment neither of them spoke.

From where they stood, alongside the outer border of the swamp, the store gleamed in the distance, city-sized,
planet
-sized. Out here in the hinterlands of its parking lot, most of the spaces were empty except for a couple of RVs and eighteen-wheelers that looked as if they’d come to rest months ago. The closest one was a Winnebago the size of a city bus with a satellite dish and an airbrushed mural of wild horses running across a desert. It could have belonged to a pair of 401K-savvy retirees, or Kid Rock’s backup band.

“I guess we probably can’t just go up and ask for a ride,” Sam offered.

“No,” Dean said, then brightened. “But I bet there’s a pay phone in the store.”

Sam looked at his brother in the torn hazmat suit, tattered and covered with mud, and said nothing.

It was nearing dusk when the black Ford Ranger swung up in front of the Walmart tire and automotive center and flashed its headlights.

Dean and Sam ran over and jumped into the cargo bed. Climbing in, Dean was vaguely reassured to see that the pickup was equipped with a fully supplied gun-rack. There was a modern pump-action shotgun resting on top, and below it, a perfectly tooled Civil War musket that looked just as lethal. Underneath that, behind the seat, was a canister of road salt.

“Rufus wouldn’t let me leave home without it,” Tommy McClane said, peering into the back and noticing Dean’s eyes on the weapon.

“Good for him.”

“I’d offer you a ride up front, but you two look like you’ve been mud-wrestling with a catfish.” He blinked in genuine amazement. “Are those hazmat suits?”

“Something like that,” Dean said.

“Should I even ask?”

“We’ll tell you everything when we get the chance. Right now I just want to get out of here.”

“Just lay low, stay under the tarp. Sheriff’s got roadblocks up, but it’s getting dark. I think I can get you through ‘em.”

Dean pulled the roll of canvas over them and felt the pickup pull forward and curve around the lot. Soon the country highway was humming along underneath them. Dean shut his eyes. He was exhausted and wanted a shower, a burger, and a beer.

Huddled next to him, Sam wasn’t saying anything, and that was fine with him. He had more than enough on his mind already.

Those pliers, for example, back at the camp.

He hadn’t seen those since Hell.

And in Hell, he’d used them every day.

Stop. You’re not up for this now.

He straightened up a little, and then tensed. The truck was slowing down, and then stopped. He heard voices and footsteps outside. A cop’s flashlight moved over the outside of the tarp.

“What do you have underneath there?” the cop’s voice asked.

“Table and chairs,” Tommy replied. He sounded slow and laconic, almost bored. “Promised my ex that I’d refinish ‘em for her. Amazing what a man’ll do for a six-pack and a little nostalgia sex, you know what I mean?” The truck door swung open as Tommy stepped down. “Here, I’ll show you.”

Come on, man
, Dean thought, too tired even to worry about it.
We aren’t the droids you’re looking for.

“Yeah, show a little consideration, and she gets all misty eyed,” Tommy continued. “Last time I did some chores for her, she just stripped down, right there in the living room, and—”

“Now hold on a second,” the cop said. He sounded upset.

“Yes, officer?”

“Do I look like someone who cares about your sex life? That’s entirely too much information. Why don’t you just haul your ass outta here, and stop wasting my time.”

“Suit yourself.” The pickup lurched a little again, the door slamming shut, the flashlight waving.

“Move along,” the cop said, “and drive safely.”

Back at the McClanes’ house, Sam and Dean found almost everything they wanted—hydrocortisone cream for Sam’s mosquito bites and, best of all, fresh hot cheeseburgers from Tommy’s kitchen stove.

They washed them down with cold beer while Nate brought a pair of bolt-cutters from the garage and cut the cuffs off, after which they spent twenty minutes rubbing the raw-red bruises encircling their wrists.

Sam finished eating and then used Tommy’s land-line to call Sarah Rafferty’s cell phone. She answered on the second ring, sounding glad to hear from them.

“After what happened out on the battlefield today,” she said, “I was worried about you both.”

“It would have been a lot worse if it weren’t for you,” Sam told her. “That was quick thinking.”

“I just remembered what you said about the sheriff. How she was more hindrance than help. But Sam...” Sarah’s voice hesitated a little, “are you really with the FBI?”

“No,” he said. “It’s something else.”

“What is it? Another government agency?”

“Not exactly. I don’t think it would make much sense if I tried to explain it.”

“You might be surprised,” she said. “But I won’t press you. Not if you’re really trying to figure out what happened with Dave.

“That is what you’re doing, isn’t it?” she added.

“Yes. That hasn’t changed.”

“Then I’m glad I helped you.” She sighed, and it was a shaky, restless sound. “At least I think so.”

“Where are you, Sarah?”

“I’m still out by the battleground. A lot of us are, actually—the re-enactors, I mean. The police have stopped trying to drive us off, for now anyway. They haven’t even had a chance to get those howitzers off the cliffside yet. We told them we’re not going anywhere until we get a reasonable explanation of what happened out there today, and so far, the authorities haven’t even acknowledged that anything out of the ordinary happened at all. It’s like Sheriff Daniels sneezed, and they all caught the misinformation flu.”

The misinformation flu.
Sam found it an oddly apt turn of phrase. “Just be careful,” he said. “Take care of yourself. We’ll talk to you soon.”

“And you’ll explain more?”

“I’ll try,” he said. It was the closest he could come to the truth, and hoped for now it would be enough.

When Dean finished his beer, he pushed back his plate and stood up, turning to face Tommy.

“I don’t suppose there’s any way we could clean up a little.”

“I was wondering when we’d get around to that.” Tommy eyed the tattered hazmat suits that the Winchesters were still wearing. “I’d offer some of my gear, but you’re both taller than me and I don’t have clean clothes either one of you could fit into.”

“Our stuff is back at the motel,” Sam said. “At this point we can’t very well go back and get it ourselves.”

“Yeah, the cops’ll be watching it,” Tommy agreed. He glanced around, one eyebrow cocked. “There’s a general store in town where I could go pick up some clean clothes for you—jeans and t-shirts, at least. Y’all could just hang out here with Nate.”

“Much appreciated,” Sam said. He opened his wallet and handed Tommy some cash for the clothes. “I’ll even finish the dishes.”

“That’s a deal.”

Tommy paused as if to consider something.

“Oh, and Sam?”

“What?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m on your side—you’re hunters, after all. But when I get back, and you are all showered and clean—” He looked straight at Sam, his expression grim. “I’d appreciate an explanation of just what the hell is going on here.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll get it.”

Tommy turned and left, and Sam took his place at the sink and began washing the plates and cutlery. A moment later Nate came up alongside him and began wiping them dry before placing them carefully on the drying rack. The boy worked quickly, with easy efficiency. Glancing over at him, Sam noticed the automatic Whirlpool unit installed alongside the kitchen sink.

“You’ve got a dishwasher,” Sam said. “Don’t you use it?”

Nate shrugged.

“It’s just the two of us here. Dad says it’s not worth running.”

“Right.” Sam handed him another dish, and the boy dried it, front and back, with a couple deft swipes of the hand-towel.

Balanced on the shelf in front of them was a photo in a simple wooden frame, Tommy McClane and a pretty twenty-something redhead in a pale pink scoop-neck blouse and jade earrings, holding a toddler. The toddler—obviously a one year-old Nate—was wearing a giant, crooked grin and a t-shirt reading: I DO ALL MY OWN STUNTS.

“My brother and I grew up without a mom, too,” Sam said. He passed Nate another dish, and the boy took it without comment, rinsed and wiped and racked it. “It wasn’t always easy.” That was the last of the plates, and he turned the water off and wiped his hands on a towel. “Not everybody gets that.”

The boy still didn’t say anything, or even look up, and for a second Sam thought he’d overstepped his boundaries, become too personal. But then Nate did look up, his face uncertain, almost puzzled.

“Did you like your dad?” he asked.

“My dad...” Sam started, unsure how to proceed, “taught me a lot. He tried.”

“Mine too,” Nate said. “The stuff he talks about, it freaks me out sometimes, you know? I think he wants me to be like him when I grow up, take over the Historical Society and... everything else. But sometimes...” He shrugged.

“What?”

“My mom was an artist. I mean, what if I decide to do that instead?”

“Then you should,” Sam told him. “If that’s what you want to do, you should follow it.”

Nate frowned again.

“I still dream about her sometimes, you know? Even though I was so young when she... when it happened.” He blinked at Sam. “Weird, huh?”

“Are they good dreams?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it’s good. That’s your way of remembering her.”

Not long after, the front door opened and Tommy came back with new clothes. Sam and Dean went upstairs to take turns showering and getting changed.

As he washed off the dirt and grime of the day, Sam made a mental note to ask the boy more about his mother.

After Dean and Sam got cleaned up, they all sat back down in the big old-fashioned plantation kitchen, gathered around McClane’s pine table. The windows were open and the night-sounds of crickets and cicadas rippled in through the screens. Far off in the distance, lightning pulsed and flickered in the darkness, followed by the distant rumble of thunder.

Tommy had the Braves game playing softly on the radio and the reception blurred into static as the storm moved closer.

“All right,” he said finally. “I’ve waited long enough. You gonna tell me what happened to you out there?”

Dean cracked a fresh beer while Sam told Tommy and Nate about what they’d seen on the road, the floating black substance that had come oozing from Beauchamp’s remains, and how Dean had seen the same thing coming out of Dave Wolverton’s corpse.

When Sam finished, Tommy nodded slowly.

“So the thing about the Moa’ah,” he began, “is it’s the animating force behind the noose, but its presence doesn’t always mean the noose is still nearby. Hell, it can hover around the infected, sometimes for decades, even centuries, until it gets a chance to air out.”

“I guess nobody told the demons that,” Sam said.

“Or they’re just that desperate.” Tommy ran one hand thoughtfully over the wood-grain of the table. “If the demons were torturing civilians for information, like you said, that sounds pretty desperate.”

“What about Sheriff Daniels?” Dean asked. “For that matter, what about my car? And our knife?”

Tommy nodded.

“The knife and the car, I can probably help you with,” he said. “But Jacqueline Daniels isn’t a woman you want to mess with.”

“We saw her Santeria tattoo.”

“That’s the least of it. Her family goes back to the original battle of Mission’s Ridge.” Tommy’s voice darkened a little, and he glanced over at Nate, who had been sitting in silence at the end of the table, listening intently. “Why don’t you run upstairs and get ready for bed.”

“Do I have to?”

Tommy shot him a stern look.

“You heard me.”

The boy sulked off, mumbling under his breath, and when his footsteps faded up the stairs, Tommy sat back and opened a little drawer in the table, taking out a pack of American Spirits and a lighter.

He glanced up at the Winchesters a little sheepishly.

“You mind? I’ve cut down to one a day, but if I’m going to tell you this story, I think I’m gonna need it.”

He shook out a cigarette and lit it, inhaled, then sat back and blew a stream of smoke toward the window.