Supernatural The Unholy Cause

by Joe Schreiber

  “We have some people we can call,” Dean said.

  The sheriff didn’t reply. As she turned the microphone around and put it back, her sleeve rose up slightly, and Dean noticed something he’d never seen before—a small symbolic tattoo spread over her right wrist. It was a ring of numbers, surrounded by a tiny ring of stars. Inside the smaller circle, two overlapping pentagrams formed an oddly asymmetrical design, like a kind of web.

  He snapped a glance at Sam, who nodded back at him. He’d seen it, too.

  “Nice ink,” Dean said.

  Daniels stiffened. Without looking back, she tugged the shirt-cuff down again over the design, covering it up.

  “I’m taking you back to the station,” she said. “My deputy’s waiting here for backup.”

  “That’s a Santeria charm, isn’t it?” Sam asked.

  The sheriff started the engine and swung the car around. She gunned it, the cruiser’s big V-8 roaring as the landscape around them became an afterthought.

  “How much do you really know about that noose?” Sam asked. “What are you using it for?”

  Daniels’ face flashed from the rearview mirror.

  “If I were you, I’d keep quiet until I had counsel present.”

  “You’ve got bigger problems than us, lady,” Dean said. “You saw the driver. You think we did that to him?” He shook his head. “There’s stuff walking around in those woods out there that you don’t even have names for.”

  The sheriff glanced back.

  “You’d be surprised—” she began, and in front of them, fifty yards ahead, something burst out of the woods and went streaking into the road. At first, out of sheer surprise, Dean thought it was an animal, maybe a deer. Then he realized it was a man standing on the broken yellow line staring back at them with a kind of distant intensity that Dean associated with just one individual in his life.

  “Look out!” he shouted.

  Up ahead, Castiel didn’t budge. Daniels jerked her head forward, saw him standing there and slammed on the brakes. The cruiser slung around sideways, skidding and fishtailing across both lanes and over the shoulder, rolling onto its side and down into the gully.

  Second crash of the day, Dean thought through the haze. Good deal.

  In the front seat, Daniels was bent over sideways, still conscious, struggling to get out of her seatbelt.

  Outside, Castiel sprang past the driver’s side door and jerked open the back, grabbing Dean and hauling him out, then reaching in for Sam.

  The sheriff squirmed around.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Run.” Castiel looked winded, as if what he’d just done had taxed him to the limit. “Go.”

  Sam and Dean scrambled over the shoulder and down the embankment, crashing into the woods with their hands still cuffed behind them. The sun blazed down, flashing through the leaves. Every direction looked the same. They ran deeper into the woods, already lost and disoriented, until Dean realized there was no chance of finding their way back out again.

  They kept going, moving forward for half an hour. Incredibly, the foliage around them grew thicker still. Branches clutched and grabbed at their clothing, as if the landscape itself had turned against them. Neither of them spoke.

  The uneven terrain was marred by fallen branches, tangled brambles, and holes in the ground, and Sam knew that if he or Dean stepped into one and twisted an ankle, they’d be done for. There was no way one of them could carry the other with their hands cuffed behind them.

  What happens if it’s you, Sam? a voice asked. It was the voice from his dream. Would you leave your brother behind?

  No, of course not, Sam replied silently.

  Oh really? Thirty silver pieces say otherwise.

  Sam pushed the thought out of his head. It wasn’t difficult. He forced himself to concentrate on moving forward, forward, forward.

  Then they hit the swamp.

  “Stop,” Dean gasped. “You hear that?”

  Sam shook his head. They’d been running hard and the only thing he could hear was his own heart pounding and his breath tea-kettling in and out of his lungs. His chest was on fire, the flames shooting up his throat into his head.

  “Listen.”

  “Dean...”

  “Shh!”

  Sam staggered around sideways, sweat dripping from his face. They were standing in a thicket of vines and root systems, amid swarms of buzzing mosquitoes that hovered over his face in clouds, filling his ears with their constant whine. His damp wrists squirmed in the cuffs, his hands begging illogically to wave the bugs away. Mossy fungus smells rose up from the ground. His legs were soaked to the knees with thick black muck that seemed to suck and clutch at the fabric of his pants with every laborious step.

  He waited, listening.

  And then he heard it.

  Barking. Yelping.

  Baying.

  “Are those bloodhounds?”

  Dean didn’t answer. He was facing in the opposite direction. When Sam finally caught a look at his brother’s face, he saw that Dean’s cheeks and forehead had gone absolutely white, as if every drop of blood had been sucked away, leaving his complexion frightened and hollow. The result made his eyes burn so feverishly green that they were almost incandescent.

  “Dean—”

  “We gotta run.” Dean was trembling so hard that his voice was shaking. His eyes were twitching everywhere at once. “We gotta outrun them, Sammy.”

  “They’re not hellhounds, Dean. They’re just dogs.”

  “They’re on our trail!”

  “Okay, look,” Sam stalked a few steps forward, felt the muck growing steadily softer under his boots, “it’s swampy through here. Which means we’re near a creek. If we can get through it, they’ll lose our scent. Right?”

  Dean didn’t answer. He was still listening to the barking and howling noises coming closer, crashing through the undergrowth. He seemed paralyzed by the sounds.

  No more time. If we’re going to do something, do it now.

  Sam threw his shoulder against his brother and knocked him forward, forcing Dean to go stomping along next to him. The smell of the swamp filled his nose, a rich, fungal scent of dead logs and stagnant water, coming from straight ahead of them. Deep puddles splashed around them, reeds and cattails rustling up ahead in strange whispering sighs. Frogs croaked. He felt the water, sun-warmed at the surface but cold and viscous below, surging up to his knees, and then, abruptly, his waist.

  After a momentary pause, Sam just grunted and kept going, glancing over at his brother from time to time. But Dean was moving on his own now.

  It was getting more difficult to drag his boots up from the bottom. The hounds sounded very close, near enough that if he turned around, he thought he might actually see the foliage moving behind them. Exhaustion had taken hold of his muscles and wrung them out.

  They made their way through lily pads and pond scum, heads tilted back as the water went up to their necks.

  “Sam?” Dean’s whisper sounded uneven and high. “Not getting any shallower here.”

  Sam nodded and took another step. Suddenly the muddy bottom was gone and he went under. His feet hit something on the bottom, and he pushed upward. Shooting back to the surface with a gasp, spluttering and spitting out dirty water, he felt something slide past his calf. A water moccasin curved its way across the surface and slashed into the high grass.

  He let out a sharp breath, a switchblade of panic flipping open in his stomach. He lunged forward, and found purchase for his feet again, thrashing along blindly with no regard for speed, direction or the noise he was making, unaware even of how much time had passed until Dean hissed his name from somewhere behind him.

  “Wait,” Dean said. “Don’t move.”

  Sam fell still. The veil of flying insect bites tightened around his scalp and neck. Every inch of his skin seemed to crawl. He was aware of his own breath rippling over the water in front of his face.

  “They’re going the
other way.”

  It was true—the howling, hooting noises of the dogs were dopplering away from them now, receding into the distance, deeper into the woods.

  “Lost ‘em,” Dean breathed, then he sniffed the air, his voice different now. “Wait a minute. Do you smell smoke?”

  “Yeah.” Sam looked and caught a glimpse of orange flame flickering through the trees. “It’s coming from over there.”

  Moving cautiously, they pulled themselves out of the water. Then they made their way into a small clearing.

  A campfire burned unattended.

  Two Civil War tents, neither of them any more sophisticated than the makeshift canvas-and-rope contraptions they’d seen back on the battlefield, leaned against a copse of scrub oak on the far edge of the swamp. In the fire-pit, the flames were burning down, and the last embers smoldered, keeping the bugs at bay. Scraps of wool uniforms, abandoned breeches, knapsacks and boots, all lay scattered on the periphery, where their wearers seemed to have cast them off without regard to where they’d fallen.

  Some of them appeared to have been ripped off.

  “Dean?”

  Dean sniffed.

  “Yeah, that’s sulfur.”

  “Okay, demons.” Sam poked the fire with his toe. There were cans of lighter fluid next to it. “Meaning what?”

  “We shouldn’t stay and roast marshmallows?”

  “We should check the tents.”

  Dean gave him a look.

  “Really?”

  “Maybe there’re some tools we can use to get these cuffs off.”

  “Yeah. Meanwhile, if there’s anything bigger than a bumblebee in there, it’s going to kick our ass.”

  “There’s nobody here.”

  Dean walked over and kicked open the flap in front of him, leaning down.

  “You’re right,” he said. “Just a few candy wrappers. Man, these demons are total slobs. Yours?”

  Sam squatted down and looked into his tent. At first he thought the lump in the shadows was just a dirty bedroll with more torn clothing strewn over it. Then he heard the flies droning around it with their meaningless little fly noises. Sliding one foot in, he kicked off the stained Confederate flag draped over the pile.

  It wasn’t a bedroll.

  The bloated corpse of the man under the flag seemed to grin up at him. He was stripped to the waist with his arms and legs tied down with ropes and staked directly into the ground. Hooks pierced his lips, cheeks and eyelids, and wires pulled them back. The flesh of his chest and belly had been peeled away, layer by layer, exposing red muscle and tissue beneath it, a life-sized anatomy lesson.

  In the center of his chest, a larger iron hook on a heavier chain plunged through the open rib cage, impaling his heart.

  “Holy crap,” Dean said, peering over Sam’s shoulder. “It’s Winston.”

  “Who?”

  “The coroner, Todd Winston. The sheriff’s brother-in-law.”

  “They tortured him.”

  “Demons don’t normally do this. They torture souls in Hell, but...” Dean shook his head, stepping into the tent. “They must have really wanted to get some information from him, and badly.”

  He leaned forward, toeing a rag-wrapped bundle next to Winston’s head, and Sam heard metal instruments clinking together.

  “Sounds like some medieval stuff in here.”

  “Like what?”

  Dean didn’t answer. He was gazing down at what he’d uncovered. The tool at his feet looked like an oversized pair of pliers combined with the blades of a bone saw, their serrated edges caked with untold decades of dried blood, clots of hair and human grease.

  “You know how to use those?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah,” Dean said evenly. “I do.”

  Backing up next to Winston’s staked-out corpse, he sank down to his knees, clutching the tool behind his back. For a moment he maneuvered his shoulders and elbows around and then Sam heard the chain break open with a sharp, brittle clank.

  Dean’s hands appeared in front of him again, a steel bracelet on each wrist.

  “Got it,” he said. “Now you.”

  He lifted the sharpened pliers again and snapped the chain on Sam’s cuffs.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Dean emerged from the tent and looked down at the campfire. He bent down and picked up a can of lighter fluid in both hands, then started spraying it over the ground as he moved back toward the tent.

  “Stand back.”

  “Hang on. I’m going to take another look at Winston’s corpse first.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I think I saw something on his wrist.” Drawing aside the flap, Sam ducked back into the tent and bent down beside the corpse, inspecting its arm.

  “Hey, Dean?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Check this out.” Sam pointed to Winston’s left wrist. The skin was blistered and scorched black, as if someone had endeavored to burn it off, but he could still make out the tattoo imprinted there. “That’s another Santeria sigil, isn’t it?”

  “Like the one Sheriff Daniels had, yeah,” Dean said. “What’s it mean?”

  “Demons wanted it off.”

  “Or somebody did.” Dean held up the lighter fluid. “We finished here?”

  Sam nodded, and Dean tossed him a can of his own. They sprayed the tent along with the demons’ clothes and supplies, and when they were finished, Dean picked up a glowing log from the fire and tossed it.

  “Good riddance,” he muttered as they turned and walked away.

  They picked a direction and started walking, slashing their way back through the brush and undergrowth. It was easier going with their hands free—or at least easier to wave away the mosquitoes—but Sam still had no real sense of direction. The demon camp had sent his inner compass-needle spinning recklessly out of control, as if they’d stumbled across some disorienting magnetic field.

  “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.

  NINETEEN

  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.