Part 1, Chapter 6
Chapter 6
Carthage, Missouri
They'd secured and salted all the entrances. Dean had found an old radio, and had managed to get through to Bobby.
Ellen stayed with her daughter, trying to keep the bleeding under control and desperately holding back panic. It was bad. Even under the best of circumstances, with the right supplies and someone who knew how to deal with wounds this deep...
It's okay, baby, I'll get you through this, I'll figure something out, I promise.
"May I?"
Ellen looked up at Judas. She hadn't even noticed him joining them.
"This isn't my first war."
She nodded, and removed her hands.
He slid in to kneel next to Jo, studying the slashes in her side. "This may feel a little strange, I'm sorry," he warned her, then settled in with his hands hovering about a half-inch over her side. Almost absentmindedly, he started humming, a soft, lilting tune that sounded as old as the hills. A warm, gentle white light spread from his hands over her side, and the wounds sealed over, seamlessly, as if she had never been mauled.
"Oh, my God," Ellen whispered.
He stopped humming and sat back on his heels, shaking his head as if to clear it. "You should retreat," he warned Jo, slightly out of breath. "I sealed everything, but I couldn't restore the blood you lost."
Jo nodded. "How did...? You're not..."
"Yeshua gave us gifts," he said, with a faint, bitter smile. "I never lost them."
Without waiting for a response--or maybe hoping to avoid further questions--he pushed himself up and went to check the salt lines on the windows.
"He's right," Ellen told Jo. "You and I are getting out of here."
For once, her daughter didn't argue. "We still need to get past the hellhounds," she said.
"We'll figure it out," Ellen said.
"We can't fight our way through them," Sam said. "Judas, how many did you say you saw?"
"At least a dozen," he answered. "Including the ones we wounded earlier, but that won't slow them for long."
Dean swore.
"What if we trapped them all in here, like that time with Henriksen?" Sam suggested. "No one's gonna be sticking around if they circle back, so it'll probably work this time..."
"We're in kind of tight quarters for that, unless--hey, Judas, you know an exorcism or something that works on hellhounds?" Dean asked.
He shook his head. "No, I'm sorry. Nothing fast, not for a whole pack."
They were quiet for a minute, trying to come up with some other plan. Jo scanned the shelves, then said, "What if we built a bomb?"
"A bomb?" Dean asked.
"Yeah. We've got salt, propane, iron nails...we might be able to slow 'em down long enough for you guys to get to that farm, and for me and Mom to get back to our car."
"Maybe," he said. "But we'd have to trap them in here, and I don't think we can rig a remote with enough range for us to get clear."
"And they'd probably follow us outside anyways," Ellen said. "They've got our scents now, and they'll never give up."
"Unless someone stays as bait," Judas said, quietly.
"Don't be stupid," Dean said. "We'll figure something else out. Something that doesn't involve blowing one of us up."
"I could do it," he offered.
"No way."
"That'll kill you," Sam added, hard on Dean's heels.
Judas smiled slightly. "I can't die."
"Seriously?"
He nodded. "My coins are still out there, and while they endure, I endure."
"Even if that's true," Dean said, "you'll still explode. People don't typically bounce back from that."
"Don't worry about that part." Judas' eyes flared silver, like they had earlier out in the street. "I was sired by an angel." He took a breath, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they had returned to normal. "I won't be able to get completely clear, not if I want to lure enough of them in to buy you the space you need, but I'm fast enough that I won't be completely deconstructed."
"...I don't like this," Dean said.
"I don't, either," he admitted. "I don't like pain. But it could work, and unless you have a better plan..."
"He's right, Dean," Ellen said, reluctantly. She didn't like having to support Judas volunteering to blow himself up, especially not after he'd saved her daughter's life. But he seemed pretty sure he'd be okay in the long run, and they didn't exactly have any other options.
"If we're gonna do this, we need to get started," Jo said. "The salt lines won't hold them for long."
"...fine," Dean said.
The five of them got to work right away. Sam, Dean, Ellen and Judas grabbed everything that might be even remotely useful off the shelves, and Jo started on the wiring as soon as they handed it to her.
"You know, you're not at all what I expected," Ellen said, after making sure she and Judas were relatively alone in a corner, dumping nails into buckets.
He smiled slightly at her. "Which part?"
She smiled back. "Most of it, to be honest. From what the boys said, you don't even want to be here."
Judas shook his head. "It's...more complicated than that." He poured salt into the bucket, then dragged another over to start filling. "Besides, I learned a long time ago that I never get what I want. Not really."
She nodded, hesitated, then said, "I have to ask."
"About Jerusalem?" He looked away. "I was wondering when one of you would."
"I know it's probably not something you like to remember, but..." Someone had to, if only to reconcile what he'd done with everything they'd seen from him today. And Ellen figured she'd be the least unpleasant person to do it.
"It's not like it's something I can forget," he said. He shifted uneasily, watching the salt pour out of the bag. "I just..." He trailed off, and she waited. If she pushed him now, he'd close off again. And this was likely to be the only chance they'd have to learn his side of the story. She wanted to know that, wanted to know how one of history's most notorious traitors had become the man who saved her daughter's life and volunteered to blow himself up to make sure it stuck.
Finally, he took a deep breath, and tied off the salt bag, reaching for the nails. Without looking up again, he said, "I suppose I do owe you some answers."
"You don't owe us anything," Ellen said.
He blinked up at her, clearly surprised.
She smiled at him, but didn't elaborate.
For a long moment, he was silent, then softly asked, "Would you believe me if I told you I didn't mean it?"
"You saved my daughter," she reminded him. "Hell, I'll believe just about anything you say."
Judas smiled briefly, then sighed and looked away again. "I was...please understand, I make no excuses for what I did."
She nodded. "What happened?"
"Before I'd ever even heard of...of Yeshua, I was a rebel, against Roman authority," he said. "Mostly I translated and decoded intercepted dispatches, identified targets, that sort of thing. But I did, from time to time, fight as well. And when we got to Jerusalem..." He trailed off, staring down at his hands, which had stopped moving. "I understand mobs, Ellen. I even manipulated a few, when the situation called for it. Our freedom, our national identity, was so important to me, until...until I found something else that was even more valuable. And, by the time we got there..." He took a deep breath. "Well, new doctrines often cause unrest. Between us, and Rome, and..."
"Jerusalem was a powder keg," she finished for him.
He nodded. "Exactly. And I knew...I knew that he could all too easily become a target. So I started trying to work out how to get him out of sight, until things calmed a little. The rest of us, we could disappear without help--well, without overt help, it wouldn't be easy, we were visible, to a point--but Yeshua...Yeshua would need someone to shelter him."
"And that's why you went to the priests?"
He didn't answer for a while, staring determinedly down at the bag of nails and forcing himself to start moving again. "I was a faithful man. Faith, and nationality, and freedom, and Yeshua...it was all tied up in my head. They were supposed to be...I thought they would feel the same. I thought I could trust them," he finally said. "They...they assured me that they wanted to contain the fallout as much as I did. For the good of everyone."
"And the money?" Which was the one thing that didn't add up, with the story he told.
"For the rest of us, or so they led me to believe," he said. "To hide." He laughed a little. "I should have known better. I'm not...I'm not stupid, or I don't think I am. I mean, I'm usually not that naive, I just..." He sighed. "I thought I could trust them." He shook his head. "When I realized..." His hand drifted up to his neck. "Well, you know what happened next."
"But you didn't die," she said.
"No," he replied. "My daughter, Miriam...she found me, she cut me down. And I...when I woke up, and I couldn't fix it, and I couldn't even make restitution...I couldn't face it, or my old friends, or...or what I'd forced my daughter to see. So I ran. I ran, and I ran, and I kept running. I never wanted to stop running."
She touched his arm lightly. "I'm sorry."
He just shook his head.
"What was your daughter like?" Ellen asked.
Some of the tension left his shoulders, just like she'd hoped it would, once he started talking about Miriam. "Very smart," Judas answered. "Pretty. Brave, and reckless. She ran away to find me, after I left to follow Yeshua. I was...it was good to see her, but I was so angry with her for leaving home."
Ellen laughed. "I hear that."
"She wanted to make sure I was all right. Like I said, brave and reckless. She was actually a lot like..." He trailed off, then shook his head. "A lot like your daughter, come to think of it."
"Is that why you were singing, before?" It had sounded like a lullabye, and if Miriam was anything like Jo--well, it explained a lot.
He flushed. "I'm sorry, it was...I didn't realize I was doing it."
"It's all right." She smiled at him again.
"It was," he admitted. "Why I was singing, I mean. I used to sing to Miriam, sometimes, when she was little. I wish...I miss that, sometimes."
Ellen nodded. "They grow up fast."
"They do."
"How old was she, when...?"
"Twenty," he answered. "I don't..." He sighed. "I lost track of a lot of things, after Jerusalem. I never did find out what kind of life she had."
"I'm sorry," Ellen said. "You must miss her."
He smiled faintly. "Every day."
"Okay, I think we're set, if you are," Sam said.
"Right," Judas said, visibly grateful for the interruption. He stood up and dragged the last of the buckets in line.
Dean helped Jo stand and find her balance. "You good?" he asked, softly.
She nodded, and smiled briefly at him. "Yeah."
"I'll give you a count of sixty," Judas said, taking the detonator from Sam and turning it over in his hands. "You'll need to get clear by then. And don't waste time looking for me, you can't afford it."
"What changed your mind, about helping us?" Sam asked.
Judas shrugged. "This is something that hurts no one but me, and it's something that I know will help you. Not like what you asked me before."
"We need to go," Ellen said. "They won't keep circling forever."
He gave her a sad little half-smile. "It's been...quite a day. I wish we could have met under better circumstances."
"When this is over, come find me," she said, offering her hand. "I owe you a beer, and then some."
He clasped her hand briefly in acknowledgement, then let go and nodded to the rest of them. "Be careful. All of you."
She nodded, hoping he'd heard the hidden message there--if you ever need anything, anything at all, find me and I'll help--and started picking her way over to the roof hatch, knowing the others were following close behind.
"Sam?" Judas said.
He stopped, and half-turned back.
"You asked me, earlier, about redemption," Judas said, quietly. "This is where I find it, or what little I can. Not as a Weapon--as a shield."
Sam blinked. "Why are you--"
Judas shook his head. "You should go. Luck to you."
"Yeah. Thanks. Um. Same to you."
"Remember. Sixty seconds."
"Sixty seconds."
Dean went up first, then, with Sam and Ellen boosting from below, hauled Jo up behind him. The four of them scrambled across to the next roof, as fast as Jo could move.
"You can get her to your car?" Dean asked.
Ellen nodded. "Yeah. Just help us get to the ground, I can take it from there. Good luck."
"Yeah, you too."
The four of them found the fire escape and started make their way down--Dean first, then Jo, with Ellen's help, and Sam bringing up the rear.
Right on time, just as Sam hit the ground, the hardware store exploded.
Previous: Part 1, Chapter 5 Next: Part 1, Chapter 7
Carthage, Missouri
They'd secured and salted all the entrances. Dean had found an old radio, and had managed to get through to Bobby.
Ellen stayed with her daughter, trying to keep the bleeding under control and desperately holding back panic. It was bad. Even under the best of circumstances, with the right supplies and someone who knew how to deal with wounds this deep...
It's okay, baby, I'll get you through this, I'll figure something out, I promise.
"May I?"
Ellen looked up at Judas. She hadn't even noticed him joining them.
"This isn't my first war."
She nodded, and removed her hands.
He slid in to kneel next to Jo, studying the slashes in her side. "This may feel a little strange, I'm sorry," he warned her, then settled in with his hands hovering about a half-inch over her side. Almost absentmindedly, he started humming, a soft, lilting tune that sounded as old as the hills. A warm, gentle white light spread from his hands over her side, and the wounds sealed over, seamlessly, as if she had never been mauled.
"Oh, my God," Ellen whispered.
He stopped humming and sat back on his heels, shaking his head as if to clear it. "You should retreat," he warned Jo, slightly out of breath. "I sealed everything, but I couldn't restore the blood you lost."
Jo nodded. "How did...? You're not..."
"Yeshua gave us gifts," he said, with a faint, bitter smile. "I never lost them."
Without waiting for a response--or maybe hoping to avoid further questions--he pushed himself up and went to check the salt lines on the windows.
"He's right," Ellen told Jo. "You and I are getting out of here."
For once, her daughter didn't argue. "We still need to get past the hellhounds," she said.
"We'll figure it out," Ellen said.
"We can't fight our way through them," Sam said. "Judas, how many did you say you saw?"
"At least a dozen," he answered. "Including the ones we wounded earlier, but that won't slow them for long."
Dean swore.
"What if we trapped them all in here, like that time with Henriksen?" Sam suggested. "No one's gonna be sticking around if they circle back, so it'll probably work this time..."
"We're in kind of tight quarters for that, unless--hey, Judas, you know an exorcism or something that works on hellhounds?" Dean asked.
He shook his head. "No, I'm sorry. Nothing fast, not for a whole pack."
They were quiet for a minute, trying to come up with some other plan. Jo scanned the shelves, then said, "What if we built a bomb?"
"A bomb?" Dean asked.
"Yeah. We've got salt, propane, iron nails...we might be able to slow 'em down long enough for you guys to get to that farm, and for me and Mom to get back to our car."
"Maybe," he said. "But we'd have to trap them in here, and I don't think we can rig a remote with enough range for us to get clear."
"And they'd probably follow us outside anyways," Ellen said. "They've got our scents now, and they'll never give up."
"Unless someone stays as bait," Judas said, quietly.
"Don't be stupid," Dean said. "We'll figure something else out. Something that doesn't involve blowing one of us up."
"I could do it," he offered.
"No way."
"That'll kill you," Sam added, hard on Dean's heels.
Judas smiled slightly. "I can't die."
"Seriously?"
He nodded. "My coins are still out there, and while they endure, I endure."
"Even if that's true," Dean said, "you'll still explode. People don't typically bounce back from that."
"Don't worry about that part." Judas' eyes flared silver, like they had earlier out in the street. "I was sired by an angel." He took a breath, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they had returned to normal. "I won't be able to get completely clear, not if I want to lure enough of them in to buy you the space you need, but I'm fast enough that I won't be completely deconstructed."
"...I don't like this," Dean said.
"I don't, either," he admitted. "I don't like pain. But it could work, and unless you have a better plan..."
"He's right, Dean," Ellen said, reluctantly. She didn't like having to support Judas volunteering to blow himself up, especially not after he'd saved her daughter's life. But he seemed pretty sure he'd be okay in the long run, and they didn't exactly have any other options.
"If we're gonna do this, we need to get started," Jo said. "The salt lines won't hold them for long."
"...fine," Dean said.
The five of them got to work right away. Sam, Dean, Ellen and Judas grabbed everything that might be even remotely useful off the shelves, and Jo started on the wiring as soon as they handed it to her.
"You know, you're not at all what I expected," Ellen said, after making sure she and Judas were relatively alone in a corner, dumping nails into buckets.
He smiled slightly at her. "Which part?"
She smiled back. "Most of it, to be honest. From what the boys said, you don't even want to be here."
Judas shook his head. "It's...more complicated than that." He poured salt into the bucket, then dragged another over to start filling. "Besides, I learned a long time ago that I never get what I want. Not really."
She nodded, hesitated, then said, "I have to ask."
"About Jerusalem?" He looked away. "I was wondering when one of you would."
"I know it's probably not something you like to remember, but..." Someone had to, if only to reconcile what he'd done with everything they'd seen from him today. And Ellen figured she'd be the least unpleasant person to do it.
"It's not like it's something I can forget," he said. He shifted uneasily, watching the salt pour out of the bag. "I just..." He trailed off, and she waited. If she pushed him now, he'd close off again. And this was likely to be the only chance they'd have to learn his side of the story. She wanted to know that, wanted to know how one of history's most notorious traitors had become the man who saved her daughter's life and volunteered to blow himself up to make sure it stuck.
Finally, he took a deep breath, and tied off the salt bag, reaching for the nails. Without looking up again, he said, "I suppose I do owe you some answers."
"You don't owe us anything," Ellen said.
He blinked up at her, clearly surprised.
She smiled at him, but didn't elaborate.
For a long moment, he was silent, then softly asked, "Would you believe me if I told you I didn't mean it?"
"You saved my daughter," she reminded him. "Hell, I'll believe just about anything you say."
Judas smiled briefly, then sighed and looked away again. "I was...please understand, I make no excuses for what I did."
She nodded. "What happened?"
"Before I'd ever even heard of...of Yeshua, I was a rebel, against Roman authority," he said. "Mostly I translated and decoded intercepted dispatches, identified targets, that sort of thing. But I did, from time to time, fight as well. And when we got to Jerusalem..." He trailed off, staring down at his hands, which had stopped moving. "I understand mobs, Ellen. I even manipulated a few, when the situation called for it. Our freedom, our national identity, was so important to me, until...until I found something else that was even more valuable. And, by the time we got there..." He took a deep breath. "Well, new doctrines often cause unrest. Between us, and Rome, and..."
"Jerusalem was a powder keg," she finished for him.
He nodded. "Exactly. And I knew...I knew that he could all too easily become a target. So I started trying to work out how to get him out of sight, until things calmed a little. The rest of us, we could disappear without help--well, without overt help, it wouldn't be easy, we were visible, to a point--but Yeshua...Yeshua would need someone to shelter him."
"And that's why you went to the priests?"
He didn't answer for a while, staring determinedly down at the bag of nails and forcing himself to start moving again. "I was a faithful man. Faith, and nationality, and freedom, and Yeshua...it was all tied up in my head. They were supposed to be...I thought they would feel the same. I thought I could trust them," he finally said. "They...they assured me that they wanted to contain the fallout as much as I did. For the good of everyone."
"And the money?" Which was the one thing that didn't add up, with the story he told.
"For the rest of us, or so they led me to believe," he said. "To hide." He laughed a little. "I should have known better. I'm not...I'm not stupid, or I don't think I am. I mean, I'm usually not that naive, I just..." He sighed. "I thought I could trust them." He shook his head. "When I realized..." His hand drifted up to his neck. "Well, you know what happened next."
"But you didn't die," she said.
"No," he replied. "My daughter, Miriam...she found me, she cut me down. And I...when I woke up, and I couldn't fix it, and I couldn't even make restitution...I couldn't face it, or my old friends, or...or what I'd forced my daughter to see. So I ran. I ran, and I ran, and I kept running. I never wanted to stop running."
She touched his arm lightly. "I'm sorry."
He just shook his head.
"What was your daughter like?" Ellen asked.
Some of the tension left his shoulders, just like she'd hoped it would, once he started talking about Miriam. "Very smart," Judas answered. "Pretty. Brave, and reckless. She ran away to find me, after I left to follow Yeshua. I was...it was good to see her, but I was so angry with her for leaving home."
Ellen laughed. "I hear that."
"She wanted to make sure I was all right. Like I said, brave and reckless. She was actually a lot like..." He trailed off, then shook his head. "A lot like your daughter, come to think of it."
"Is that why you were singing, before?" It had sounded like a lullabye, and if Miriam was anything like Jo--well, it explained a lot.
He flushed. "I'm sorry, it was...I didn't realize I was doing it."
"It's all right." She smiled at him again.
"It was," he admitted. "Why I was singing, I mean. I used to sing to Miriam, sometimes, when she was little. I wish...I miss that, sometimes."
Ellen nodded. "They grow up fast."
"They do."
"How old was she, when...?"
"Twenty," he answered. "I don't..." He sighed. "I lost track of a lot of things, after Jerusalem. I never did find out what kind of life she had."
"I'm sorry," Ellen said. "You must miss her."
He smiled faintly. "Every day."
"Okay, I think we're set, if you are," Sam said.
"Right," Judas said, visibly grateful for the interruption. He stood up and dragged the last of the buckets in line.
Dean helped Jo stand and find her balance. "You good?" he asked, softly.
She nodded, and smiled briefly at him. "Yeah."
"I'll give you a count of sixty," Judas said, taking the detonator from Sam and turning it over in his hands. "You'll need to get clear by then. And don't waste time looking for me, you can't afford it."
"What changed your mind, about helping us?" Sam asked.
Judas shrugged. "This is something that hurts no one but me, and it's something that I know will help you. Not like what you asked me before."
"We need to go," Ellen said. "They won't keep circling forever."
He gave her a sad little half-smile. "It's been...quite a day. I wish we could have met under better circumstances."
"When this is over, come find me," she said, offering her hand. "I owe you a beer, and then some."
He clasped her hand briefly in acknowledgement, then let go and nodded to the rest of them. "Be careful. All of you."
She nodded, hoping he'd heard the hidden message there--if you ever need anything, anything at all, find me and I'll help--and started picking her way over to the roof hatch, knowing the others were following close behind.
"Sam?" Judas said.
He stopped, and half-turned back.
"You asked me, earlier, about redemption," Judas said, quietly. "This is where I find it, or what little I can. Not as a Weapon--as a shield."
Sam blinked. "Why are you--"
Judas shook his head. "You should go. Luck to you."
"Yeah. Thanks. Um. Same to you."
"Remember. Sixty seconds."
"Sixty seconds."
Dean went up first, then, with Sam and Ellen boosting from below, hauled Jo up behind him. The four of them scrambled across to the next roof, as fast as Jo could move.
"You can get her to your car?" Dean asked.
Ellen nodded. "Yeah. Just help us get to the ground, I can take it from there. Good luck."
"Yeah, you too."
The four of them found the fire escape and started make their way down--Dean first, then Jo, with Ellen's help, and Sam bringing up the rear.
Right on time, just as Sam hit the ground, the hardware store exploded.
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