“Wait,” Daniels said. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve got an idea.”
“You can’t leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Dean said. “But my left arm is shot. You’re gonna have to help me steer.”
THIRTY-TWO
Six-fifteen a.m.
While the rest of the Eastern seaboard was just waking up, pouring its first cup of coffee, switching on the news and getting the first online updates of what would soon be called the strangest attack in recent history, other events were beginning to unfold.
Less than two hours had passed since Tommy McClane had cut the noose open, unleashing his armies of the night upon the town of Mission’s Ridge. But in this age of modern marvels, with the country’s threat level parked semipermanently on orange, two hours was plenty of time.
Word had gone out.
Alarms had sounded. Officials had been shaken from their beds and briefed. And certain federal agencies had responded with the appropriate degree of vigor and enthusiasm.
Since 9/11, the federal Department of Homeland Security had authorized the existence of several regional top-secret domestic taskforces—standing armies with state-of-the-art weapons and ground and air support. Unlike the National Guard, these soldiers trained for the single eventuality of a fullblown terrorist attack on U.S. soil. When the map turned red over Mission’s Ridge, Georgia, that morning at six a.m., they were on the ground and mobilized immediately.
Sam and Sarah were running across the battlefield as fast as they could, with a stretcher pole in each hand, when the first black helicopter buzzed overhead. Sam paid it no attention. At the moment he was far too busy to care.
The height discrepancy between him and Sarah made carrying the stretcher difficult enough; the weight made it nearly impossible. Balanced on the stretcher were two of the wounded re-enactors from the tent, one of whom didn’t look as though he’d survive the trip. Ashgrove and the other re-enactor, a young man named Bendis, were running behind them, carrying two more on their stretcher.
The rest, they were going to have to come back for—if they even got that chance.
“This way!” Sarah shouted. “Watch out for the rails!” Crab-walking, she and Sam scrambled over the railroad tracks, stepping over heavy wooden cross-ties, behind the steam engine, the coal car and flatcar of the old nineteenth-century train. Beyond it, the railway shed stood along the western edge of the thick second-growth forest that marked the outer perimeter of the battlefield.
The helicopter circled back over the woods, completing a circuit of the perimeter.
Backing up to the railway shed, Sam swung his foot and kicked the heavy wooden door wide open, then he and Sarah ducked inside. The shadows smelled like coal and oil and ancient iron.
“The roof’s re-enforced steel,” Sarah said. “The C.S.A. did it to protect their trains. I thought we might be safer in here.”
“Good.” Sam nodded, wincing as they put the stretcher down.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“My ankle... I’ll be okay.”
Ashgrove and Bendis were already coming through the doorway with their wounded, laying the stretcher down as gently as possible.
“What about the others?” Bendis asked.
“I can try to go back,” Sam said, and overhead he heard the low-flying helicopter making another pass, the roar of its rotors temporarily blotting out everything else.
“Did you guys see that thing?” Bendis asked. “Who was that?”
“Whoever it is,” Sarah said, “they’re not here to help us.”
“Maybe it’s FEMA,” Ashgrove said.
Bendis shot him a look.
“Bite your tongue.”
“Come on, man.” Ashgrove shook his head. “It could be medevac. If we can get up on the roof—”
A thunderous explosion shook the railway shed, rattling the walls like the inside of a steel drum, dropping a thin rain of dust and debris from the rafters. Sam dropped into a defensive crouch. When the aftershock passed, he made his way back over to the doorway and looked across the battlefield, still crouching low.
His heart sank.
“It’s too late.”
Sarah joined him and gazed across the battlefield. The tent that they’d left behind just minutes before was in flames. The last four re-enactors had never made it out, and now they never would. The demons that had set fire to it were riding horses around the blaze, firing into it at random.
Overhead, the chopper roared by again.
Standing up, Sam took a brief inventory of their new surroundings. The railroad shed was perhaps two hundred feet by thirty. Like the town’s Historical Society, it had been refurbished with small exhibits illustrating the battle that had taken place. Display cases containing railway tools, newspapers, and other relics adorned the walls.
On the floor in front of him, Bendis and Ashgrove hunched over the wounded, performing triage to gauge the severity of their casualties.
“Man,” Bendis said, “this is worse than Fallujah.”
Sarah glanced at him.
“You were there?”
“Two tours. That’s where I met this douchebag.” He glanced over at Ashgrove. “Eighteen months and not a scratch. Then last year he calls me up and asks if I want to have some fun over the weekend.” Bendis shook his head sourly. “Some fun.”
Ashgrove gave him a cold look.
“You saying you want to quit, Marine?”
Bendis stood up. His cheeks were flushed.
“Negative. Whatever’s out there, whatever the hell it is, is trying to take us out. Two of those guys that died out there are men that you and I served with.”
“Good,” Ashgrove said. “I was starting to worry about you for a second.”
Either these guys are really brave, Sam thought to himself, or really stupid. Then he joined them in tending to the wounded.
Another explosion rocked the earth. The railway shed shivered around them. More rust-colored debris sifted down.
Sam bent down over one of the wounded men. The re-enactor’s leg had been almost completely severed just below the knee, and was hanging by the barest shreds of integument, and Sam’s hands were gloved in blood. He lifted the red-soaked rags from the leg, tossing them aside in a sloppy, dripping pile.
“Hey!” he suddenly shouted.
“What is it?” Sarah asked.
“Tourniquet.” Sam glanced at Ashgrove and Bendis. “Which one of you guys tied this on?”
“I did,” Bendis said. “What’s it matter?”
“Where did you find it?”
“Out there somewhere. It was a piece of rope and I grabbed it. His femoral artery was severed and I needed something to hold the bandage on, stop the bleeding. What’s the difference?”
Using strips of gauze to hold it, Sam studied the thick loop of rope pulled tight around the man’s leg.
It was the last coil of the noose.
Sarah leaned closer to look.
“What is that?”
The man sat up and grabbed her. His eyes were open and pitch black.
He grinned.
Sarah screamed.
THIRTY-THREE
Staggering across the battlefield, McClane heard a scream.
He was weak, blind in one eye, his meat-suit wracked with pain, but none of that mattered. The chaos he’d unleashed here was reaching its boiling point, and soon the goal would be in sight. The cannons that had been blaring from the hillside had finally fallen silent, perhaps temporarily, maybe for good. It didn’t matter. The objective was now within reach.
Sam Winchester’s true purpose would be fulfilled.
Grinning through cracked lips, McClane heard another scream—this one louder.
It came from the railway shed.
He glanced at the parking lot, saw both flanks of his demonic army riding back around to surround the police cars and military vehicles that now filled the lot.
Soldiers in camo
uflage were piling out of the newly-arrived personnel carriers, carrying automatic rifles, opening fire on the Confederate and Union-garbed figures. The demons charged them, cutting through their ranks, blasting and slashing with high good humor. Their antique muskets, breechloaders and carbines had become supernaturally powerful, spraying flame that enveloped whole vehicles in great, leaping gulps.
A soldier jumped out of a blazing Humvee and bolted across the parking lot. The man was on fire and screaming. As the recon helicopter blared back overhead, a cavalry demon went charging up behind the burning man and decapitated him with a swift slash of his bayonet. In one fluid movement the demon caught the severed head in midair, its face and hair burning like a Roman candle, spun around in the saddle and flung it upward at the helicopter.
The burning missile smashed into the chopper’s glass canopy, shattering it, and a moment later, the cockpit was filled with orange flame and smoke, the helicopter pitching and yawing erratically in the air. McClane paused to watch as the chopper canted hard to the left and fell out of the sky, exploding on the ground in a fireball that unleashed heat he could feel from where he stood. Good times.
He raised one hand in the air.
It was as if a silent alarm had sounded across the battlefield. The cavalry and infantry demons stopped what they were doing, swinging around to face him.
Hundreds of attentive black-eyed faces looked directly at him, shoulders at attention, awaiting orders.
McClane pointed at the shed.
THIRTY-FOUR
Sam landed on the demon full-force, with the idea that sheer momentum might be enough. Obligingly, it let go of Sarah’s neck. Only to turn its attention to Sam. Instantly it was on him, and it was out for blood.
He had no plan and no means of self-defense.
The demon pinned Sam to the floor. The sulfurous stink was overwhelming. It grabbed one of the bloody rags that had served as its tourniquet, jerked Sam’s mouth open and tried to cram the rag inside.
Sam choked, his gag-reflex triggering over and over, and managed to get his mouth shut. Even so, he could smell the blood. But not just any blood. It was heavy, almost intoxicatingly potent and somehow rotten at the same time—demon blood. The re-enactor had continued seeping into his bandages long after the noose had turned him.
He tried to turn his head, to keep his mouth shut, but the demon had fastened its hand over his lower jaw and kept trying to pry it open.
In the background, a million miles away, something was happening. Ashgrove and Bendis were scuffling to get the attacker off of him. The demon shrugged them away, batting them off like insects.
Sam couldn’t see much. The room was fading fast around him, sinking away in gradations of gray.
“Leave him alone,” a voice said.
The demon jerked upright, his weight rising off Sam’s chest. As his vision cleared, he saw Castiel had yanked his assailant away from him and was holding the demon by the throat, both hands clenching while the demon made gargling sounds.
“Cass,” Sam choaked. “I thought—”
The door of the railroad shed blew off its hinges, flying inward, smashing the demon backward and flinging it across the room like some unwanted toy.
Castiel vanished.
In the middle of it all, Sam felt a random verse from Scripture race through his mind: And the stone the builder rejected will become the cornerstone. Where did these thoughts come from, he wondered dazedly, and why did they arrive in his mind when they did?
The door was followed by the rest of the wall, the wood and reinforced steel of the shed itself blasting inward on a geyser of flame as wide as a semi. That gout of fire sucked the oxygen out of the building. The ceiling pulled downward in a crumpling shriek of splintering oak and tortured steel. It was like being trapped inside an enormous tin can as it was being crushed.
The roof’s coming down, Sam thought, And it—
The noise stopped. The last row of crossbeams held steady.
Sam stared up at the steel plating, partially caved in five meters above their heads.
Forcing himself up, he spat the bloody rag from his mouth. He jabbed one finger down his throat, felt his stomach tighten and squeeze, and expelled a thick spew of bloody liquid, spitting it out onto the ground.
Did I get it out?
I think so. I hope so. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Through the smoke, he saw Tommy McClane walking through the fire. McClane’s face was a mad Expressionist painting of bruises and insults. One black eye flickered with an imprinted sigil that seemed to have been burned directly onto his optic membrane. He was flanked by more demons than Sam could count, all of them armed with sabers, muskets, and bayonets, and when the back wall of the railway shed began to crumple and collapse, Sam saw that they had encircled it on all sides.
“We’ve been waiting a long time for this,” McClane said. “I think you’re ready now.”
“What do you...?”
“Your true nature. I’m aware that it requires a certain amount of carnage and a heightened degree of desperation to bring it forth.” McClane’s one working eye rolled upward, weirdly detached from the other. He nodded over at the demon that had shoved its bandages into Sam’s mouth. “He was trying to do it himself, but he didn’t really know what he was doing. And besides, I had to see it with my own... well, eyes.”
“What?” Sam asked. “What are you talking about?”
“You. You’re his vessel. Say yes. Bring him forth.”
“Lucifer?”
McClane nodded.
“That’s what this is all about?”
“You will be the Light-bringer, Sam.” Suddenly McClane was standing directly in front of him, bare inches away. Within breathing distance. It had happened so fast, in a parody of motion, that Sam didn’t even see him move.
“Certainly you’re aware of the Gnostic gospel. If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don’t bring forth what’s inside of you, what you don’t bring forth will destroy you.” He smiled, almost gently now. “So I present you with the choice. Manifest your true self for me now, or be destroyed.”
“You make it sound so tempting.”
“Tempting or not,” McClane said, “it’s the best offer you’re going to get, and it’s not going to get that good again.”
Sam shook his head.
“Then I guess you’d better kill me.”
McClane just looked at him, a faint smile still riding the corners of his lips. He didn’t even appear to be upset. If anything, he seemed satisfied.
“First things first.” Gesturing at one of the cavalry demons to his left, he said, “Kill the girl.”
“Wait,” Sam started. “She’s not—”
The demon’s arm snapped forward, grabbing Sarah Rafferty by the hair and jerking her toward him, the edge of his bayonet resting against her throat. Sam could see the throb of her pulse just beneath her skin, reflected in the mirror-brightness of the blade.
“Care to try again?” McClane asked. “No?” Then, to the bayonet-wielding demon. “Go ahead. Take your time.”
The blade bit in to Sarah’s neck. Sam saw her mouth leap open in a startled dark oval of pain.
But the noise he heard this time wasn’t a scream.
It was his brother’s voice.
THIRTY-FIVE
“Deus, et Peter Domini nostri Jesu Christi, invoco nomen sanctum...”
The state police cruiser hit a bump, and through the shooting pain Dean gripped the microphone harder, holding it to his lips. He could hear his own voice broadcast through the loudspeaker on top of the cruiser. The volume was turned up as loud as it could go, crackling out where the whole world could hear it.
“et clementiam tuam supplex exposco: ut adversus hunc...”
“Is it working?” Daniels shouted.
Without pausing to answer, Dean pointed out at the partially collapsed railroad shed that lay straight in front of them, sixty ya
rds away. The sheriff gunned the accelerator, tearing up clumps of scorched battlefield dirt, swerving to the right and then bringing them back on course.
The demons surrounding the railroad shed were already recoiling, falling off their horses, collapsing to the ground in waves. They threw back their heads, wafts of thick vapor spewing out of mouths, wrenching their bodies into convulsions as they departed, swirling upward. The atmosphere around the shed was beginning to stain with a thick and sooty patina of airborne grime, like the polluted sky of a Midwestern factory town.
“Keep going,” Daniels said. “Don’t stop.”
Dean didn’t stop.
“et omnem immundum spiritum, qui vexat hoc plasma tuum...”
The Rituale Romanum spilled from his lips automatically, without requiring conscious thought. Seeing the bastards go down like this always got him jazzed, triggering each line of Latin so that there was no hesitation, no interruption.
The cruiser swung up in front of the shed, stopping just short of running over the bodies that now lay strewn over the grass in the entryway.
“Over there!” Sheriff Daniels said. “Look!”
Dean snapped his head to the side and saw what she was talking about. Some of the demons—whole detachments of them, it looked like—were covering their ears, running and escaping into the woods. So he kept going.
“mihi auxilium praestare digneris. Per eumdem Dominum”
The Rituale overtook some of them before they could get out of hearing distance, but others vanished into the trees.
In the meantime, something else was happening.
Some of the Civil War re-enactors—those that hadn’t been possessed and were still trying to fight their way off the battlefield—were coming face-to-face with their demon-possessed brothers-in-arms. The result was eerily similar the confusion and chaos that typified actual battles. Dean saw one of them run up to a demon dressed as a Confederate soldier, approaching the man with both hands outstretched in a “you remember me” gesture. The demon’s response was to stab the man directly in the heart, dropping him and stepping over his bloody corpse.
Supernatural The Unholy Cause Page 18
