Bright White Light - Supernatural/X-Files fic: Chapter 7
Warnings, rating and summary are in the Master Post.
They drove on into the creeping dawn light, staying as close to due east as they could, which wasn't too hard on the largely straight county roads. They were well north of the military quarantine zone, and the sparse traffic was beat-up farm cars and milk trucks, rather than Air Force jeeps. Sam wanted to duck every time a car or truck approached, but no-one looked twice at a teenager and a kid in a dusty SUV with blistered paint on the hood. Sam thought that the trajectory of the light would take the ludverc down near the lakeshore, not in Lake Michigan itself, but that was something of a guess, based on the arc and the ludverc being a creature of light and fire - surely it would try to avoid the water.
By the time they reached the lakeshore, dawn had arrived and the ludverc was nowhere in sight. The small town to which it had led them seemed to have very little apart from rusting warehouses made of corrugated tin, a few decrepit boats moored to its jetties, and a small collection of ramshackle houses going up the hill away from the harbor. The town looked out on Green Bay - road signs let them know that they were about 30 miles north of the city of the same name - and the wind that blew off the lake was icy. Most of the warehouses looked to be empty and abandoned, though a few were still in action. Few people were around, and security was so minimal that the gates of the cyclone-wire fence were rusted open - they could drive right in from the main road.
Dean parked the car near the waterfront and leaned on the steering wheel. "You think it's in there?"
Sam squinted, the weak sun in his eyes. "It could be. If it needs to be undisturbed when it's not feeding, I guess that's a good spot. But I don't know why it went so far away from Townsend. We're maybe 20 miles away?"
"Yeah, but a lot of stuff has happened around Townsend in the last few days. Maybe it doesn't have anywhere left to go there? Hey, Sam! Maybe one of these warehouses belongs to Darryl Kovacs, or one of the boats? He liked fishing! And he'd know it was a safe place, now that he's turned into a ludverc." Dean grinned at his own brilliance.
"Okay, yeah! Then we can to get to it in the daytime and trap it. The guy who was Mr Kovacs' fishing buddy, Mr Farmer - we could use his name?" Sam pointed at the only open store in town, a combination bait shop and gas station which didn't look like it had been re-painted in decades. "Let's ask them."
Stuffing a few birch twigs in their pockets and taking the salt, though not the shotgun, Dean and Sam climbed out of the car and headed for the gas station. Dean had transferred some of the cash from the duffel bag to his pocket, so when they were inside - it wasn't the worst-smelling store they'd ever been in, but it was close - he grabbed a few chocolate bars and took them to the cracked laminate counter. A sour-faced woman rang them up without a word.
"Ah, excuse me, ma'am?" Dean broke out his most charming smile.
The woman looked at him, but didn't reply.
"Our uncle, Rick Farmer from Townsend, passed away a few weeks ago, and our dad sent us to pick up his fishing gear. Would you know where he kept that, ma'am? Or his friend, Mr Kovacs? It might be with his things."
The woman glared at him for a moment, but it seemed to be routine hostility rather than anything personal, because she thought for a moment and answered, "Yeah, sure. I heard they died. Try over near the boat ramp. It says 'Kovacs' on the door."
"Thank you, ma'am." Dean kept smiling, but she'd stopped looking at him, so he took Sam by the elbow and hurried out the door.
"Cool!" Sam cheered, once they were safely away, and grabbed a chocolate bar from Dean.
"Yeah, eat your breakfast, then we'll drive over there. Better to have all the birch sticks with us, I think."
"Okay!" Sam ate the rest of his Snickers, and Dean followed suit, both wiping their hands on their pants before climbing back into their borrowed SUV. Sam still had half an ear out for sirens - police, fire, maybe even the Air Force - but there was nothing but the wind and water, and the occasional rumble of a truck passing through on the road to Green Bay. Dean flicked on the radio in the car for the news.
"It's eight o'clock, Sam, they should have some news about all the stuff that happened last night!"
Townsend was the very first news item - six Air Force personnel had been hospitalized with severe burns, and there were unconfirmed reports of deaths. A local house fire was thought to be unrelated, but had also resulted in minor injuries to two firefighters. The house was thought to be unoccupied but investigations were continuing. The quarantine still had not been lifted, and Air Force personnel had made official comment that it was likely to last at least another 48 hours.
"At least they're not looking for a pair of arsonists in a getaway vehicle." Dean shrugged, but his voice was relieved rather than sarcastic.
Sam shifted nervously. "When we find this warehouse, we're not going in, are we? I mean, you said you'd wait for Bobby, but I can't see any payphones to call him."
"No way we're going in, don't worry. We can lock the ludverc in with the birch branches and the salt. Dad wouldn't want us running on in there without being sure of how to kill it."
Sam nodded, glad that Dean was sticking to the plan rather than getting overwhelmed with some grandiose idea about taking it out by himself. "Okay. Bobby wouldn't, either."
Dean put the car in gear and drove into the maze of warehouses, scanning for a boat ramp. It wasn't hard to spot, near the southern end of the complex, as it was one of the few things in good repair. They could park the car right near it - unlike most of the concrete paths around the waterfront, the road to the boat ramp was clean of scrap metal and assorted junk. Sam looked out over the water to see if he could spot any fishermen out in boats, but the morning fog was still hanging low over the water, and all he could see was the blurry green of an island in the distance.
"No-one's out there, Sam." Dean handed Sam the shotgun and started collecting birch branches from the back seat. "No other cars. We're clear to work."
Darryl Kovacs' fishing shed was easy to find - it was a small corrugated-tin annex on the side of a larger, dilapidated warehouse, with his name painted on the door. A long, sooty streak, just like the one that was on the chimneys at the homes of the Kovacs family and his friend Rick Farmer, marked the side of the taller warehouse down to where it connected to the roof of the shed. Dean and Sam quickly surrounded the shed with birch sticks, and it was easy enough for Dean to pull up an already-bent corner of sheet of tin siding to let Sam into the warehouse. Sam quickly poured salt in front of not just the door from the shed into the main warehouse, but across the whole wall, just to make sure. The door was already barred and locked with a rusty padlock, but that was apparently no bar to a ludverc. Sam ducked back out through the gap Dean had made for him, to find Dean looking up at the roof with a speculative look on his face.
"Do you think we have to cover the roof, too?"
Sam frowned. Both of them were good climbers, but the tin was rusty and holed, and it didn't look very safe up there. He sighed. Dean was right. "Yeah, I think so. It's got holes in it so maybe it's like a chimney for the ludverc?"
Dean nodded. "It's all rusted out, though - I don't want to go up there and fall right onto the ludverc."
"Or get your legs sliced off and bleed to death," Sam added, gruesomely. "Or your head."
Dean laughed. "Good point, Sammy. Let's grab some crates and stack them, instead. At least we can test if they're rotten before we put any weight on them."
There were wooden crates of all shapes and sizes lying around, not all of them rotted, and they soon had a slightly wobbly stack of crates ready to climb.
"I'll go up, you pass me branches," Dean told Sam, sizing up the climb.
"No, I'm smaller, I'll go up." Sam was feeling quite light of heart - their plan was working, and Dean wasn't trying to run in there and fight the ludverc, birch branches or not.
"Sure, okay. Don't fall through." Dean put out his hand, and boosted Sam up the pile of boxes. It shifted a little, but held firm, and Sam scampered easily to the top, his thick woolly gloves protecting him from splinters. The roof did indeed have several noticeable holes, rusted and sharp at the edges. Sam tried to look in the nearest one, but he couldn't spot anything in the darkness of the shed below. At least the ludverc, if it was here, wasn't active. He pulled the salt canister from his pocket and shook it in long, loopy arcs, getting good coverage of the roof, and Dean, his body still wedged against the boxes for stability, passed him up the largest of the branches to strew over the roof. The rusted portions of the tin creaked and split as the birch sticks hit, and Sam was extremely glad they didn't have to walk on that roof. From his vantage point, he looked out over the water, then back towards the main road.
"Dean! Air Force jeeps! They're coming here!"
Dean passed him up one more branch. "Will that cover the roof?"
Sam flung it to the far corner. "Yeah, done." He slid backwards down the pile, his feet feeling their way until Dean got his hands in place to give Sam a steady foothold. Sam slithered the rest of the way, Dean guiding him, and landed neatly on his feet. "Should we get back in the car?"
"No way, they might be looking for it. Grab your stuff out of it and we'll head back through the warehouses, where they haven't cleared the roads. Even if they leave the jeeps, we'll hear them long before they hear us. We can always come back for the car if it's not us they're after."
They grabbed their backpack and duffel bag from the car, Dean taking off his gloves for a better grip on the shotgun and a faster trigger finger. They hurried away from the cleared road, picking their way through abandoned crates and rusted metal strewn across the ground. The Air Force jeeps had come right to the warehouses, but they seemed to be heading slowly for the waterfront, along the same path that Dean and Sam had driven. The other roads, while too cluttered for cars, were not a problem for two boys on foot, and they quickly moved back through the warehouses towards the small township.
A man's voice muttered something, not far from their position, and Sam and Dean quickly took cover behind a large pile of rotting wooden boxes. The man must not have been speaking to them, however, because in return came a crisp, military voice.
"Sir, we've apprehended the target. It's just a civilian." A jeep came to a halt, and men jumped out of it, their boots thudding on the concrete.
A radio crackled, its words unclear, but in response, men readied their weapons. There was a faint, bizarre roaring noise, almost like the sound inside a seashell, and suddenly Sam found himself face-down on the ground, his chin striking the concrete, with Dean on top of him shoving him flat. Before Sam could protest, the white light flashed, filling their ears with a strange absence of noise, like it had pulled all the sound from the air. Momentarily blinded, the sound came rushing back with several brief, cut-off screams, then nothing, not even the idling engine of the jeep. Sam pushed up at Dean, angry and frightened, but Dean rolled off him and across the concrete. Sam didn't understand for a moment, then he realized that Dean's jacket was on fire.
"Sam!" Dean struggled free of his burning jacket and Sam raced over to stamp the flames out. Dean's hair was all burned off at the back of his head, his scalp bright red and angry, blisters forming on the exposed skin at the nape of his neck and the backs of his hands. "Sam!"
Sam couldn't work out for a second why Dean was so worried about him when it was Dean who was hurt, but then his chin started to sting and he touched it, his hand coming away bright with blood. Shameful tears sprung to his eyes, but he blinked them away firmly.
"No, Dean, I'm okay, really." Sam's mouth felt swollen and deformed; when he touched his lower lip it was split and swelling. "You're burned, we have to go to a doctor."
Dean opened his mouth to speak, then just pointed behind Sam.
Sam turned, and Max was there, stumbling slowly towards them, his clothes askew and his face twisted in pain.
"Max? Are you okay?" Sam could hardly understand his own words, but Max looked at him blearily. Max was clutching at his right ear, gasping for air, and blood was leaking between his fingers.
"Don't stop me, don't do this," he panted, and both Sam and Dean pressed back against the walls of the warehouse, out of his path.
"We won't stop you," Dean replied, looking slightly glazed himself, and Max shuffled past, paying them no further attention. His face had the same faint grey tinge as Heather Kovacs, his eyes unfocused and pained.
Dean picked up the shotgun, small blisters starting to form on the backs of his hands where he had covered his and Sam's heads. They followed Max, first at a distance, then closer as Max paid no attention.
"Has it got him in thrall?" Sam hissed to Dean. "Dean?"
"Yeah, look, he's heading right to it. You still got the salt?
Sam made sure of the salt canister and remaining birch twigs in his pockets and stuck close to Dean, though Sam was still bleeding down his chin and all over his sweater, and looking at the blisters on the back of Dean's head where the hair was gone made him feel faintly sick. He felt a lot worse when they rounded the corner and Sam glanced back. He saw what had happened to the Air Force men in the jeep, the men who hadn't had time to take cover like the Winchesters. They were lying in smoking piles of dead, burnt flesh, their uniforms in shreds, their bodies contorted in what looked like rage. Sam looked away quickly, his mind imposing faces on the blackened bodies: Deputy Wright, his dad, even Dean.
"It can shed fire when it flies." Sam repeated Bobby's words like a mantra, but it didn't help, and the terrible smell of burned flesh was mingling with the thick taste of the blood in his mouth.
"Come on, Sammy." Dean shook him slightly and tugged him away from the corpses around the scorched jeep. "We've got to try to help Max."
Sam thought that if he replied he was going to throw up, so he followed Dean without a word, wiping bloody saliva from the corners of his mouth, trying to pretend he hadn't seen the burned flesh and bone, that no-one was there but them and Max.
Max's path traced the one the Winchesters had just taken - he was going straight for the warehouse where Dean and Sam had just laid down protections. Dean and Sam tailed him quietly, though Max didn't seem to be paying any attention to anything that wasn't directly in his way.
"He's going straight to it! Can we stop him?" Sam whispered to Dean.
"No, don't get in his way. I don't know if it's in him or just letting him use its powers, but we can't stop him."
"Why did it get him, Dean? He doesn't know Darrell Kovacs." Blood flecks flew from Sam's mouth as he spoke, and he wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
Sadness pulled at Dean's mouth, much to Sam's surprise. "Because he wants it so much. Because he's searching so hard that he doesn't care what answers he finds. We could give him all the protection in the world, and he'd throw it away."
Sam kept his hand on Dean's arm, careful not to restrict his ability to aim. "The salt isn't stopping it talking to him, is it?"
"I guess not. But he's going there physically, so it must have a need for him. Maybe if we can't stop him going to the ludverc, we can stop it coming out to him. Keep that salt ready, Sammy." Dean's face was more intensely focused than sad, now, but Sam wasn't sure how much of that focus was on keeping walking, ignoring his burns, and how much of it was actually on Max. Sam bit his lip, and immediately regretted it. But Dean was right - no-one else could help Max now, and Sam couldn't bear the thought of silly, innocent Max seeking his own death just because he wanted to unravel the mysteries of the world, just because he'd seen something he shouldn't.
Max walked right into the warehouse that backed onto Darryl Kovacs' fishing shed, and the door slammed shut behind him, with no direct contact from Max. Sam pulled at it, hanging his whole body weight from the handle, but it didn't budge. Before they could move around to the side of the warehouse, they heard another car pull up - Sam peered around the corner and spotted the two FBI agents in their rented sedan.
He ducked back, quickly. "It's the FBI, Dean! We have to stay out of the way!"
Dean gestured to a rusty metal ladder attached to the side of the warehouse. "They're going to go in if they can. Let's go up. We should be able to see from there, and blast the ludverc when it shows." Dean was compulsively touching the back of his head and neck, flinching every time.
Sam knew the feeling - he kept pressing his hand to his bloody chin, even though the wool of his gloves stuck to the wound painfully. At least his lip seemed to have stopped bleeding into his mouth. "No, Dean, let's stay down here. The FBI can shoot it!"
"Not with salt." Dean set his chin, and Sam knew he was right - the FBI agents had no chance if Max was under the ludverc's control and let it flash-fry them in the blinding light. The FBI obviously didn't know what was going on - not if Agent Mulder was a plant to get information from Max and maybe their dad - and it was just going to get them killed. Sam frowned. He had been ready to save Max, but the FBI's appearance just meant more people in the line of fire, more people they had to save. He was starting to see that the dangers in hunting weren't limited to the creatures of his nightmares, but lurked in every passer-by, cop, foolish civilian and rotting wooden foothold. The world was huge and chaotic and dangerous and Sam's eyes were dry and sore from holding back tears.
Dean held the shotgun one-handed, and swung up onto the ladder, his climbing steady and fast. With no idea how to stop the inevitable, Sam followed him, and they ascended to the edge of the roof. More Air Force jeeps were streaming into the area, and men were running everywhere, setting up a perimeter and training their guns on the warehouse where Max had gone. Sam quickly looked around, but, as Dean had spotted before they climbed up, they had good cover behind the ridge of the next rooftop - unless the Air Force took up position on the water, they were well hidden from view.
The main warehouse roof was in just as bad condition as the annex, rusted holes all over the corrugated tin roof, and Dean used the butt of the gun to make a hole big enough for them to peer through. Jammed together on the ladder, they peered through the gap, and saw Agent Mulder, holding Max, sitting on the floor. Sam stood on his tiptoes to see if Mulder was hurting Max, but in fact Max seemed to be clinging to the FBI agent.
"Don't let them take me," Max sobbed, his face transformed from blankness to terror.
"I won't let them take you. Come on, Max, come with me." The agent's voice was encouraging, but Max cringed back in terror, trying to somehow climb over Mulder to safety.
"No!"
Before the Winchesters had time to act, Max screamed in terror and something struck him and Agent Mulder. Mulder was thrown into a pile of damp cardboard boxes; Max went skidding across the floor to an empty space near the doorway to the annex where the ludverc was supposed to be contained. Sam couldn't see clearly - only in the patches of sunlight let through by the holes in the roof - but it looked like Max had been shoved straight into the line of protective birch twigs and salt lines that Sam had laid down earlier.
"Max! Run!" Dean shouted down through the roof, but it was too late. Max's body started to rise into the air, twitching and spinning, as if he was being hung by the shoulders from an invisible coat-hanger, his feet dangling helplessly. His hair was floating, crackling with electricity, and his body spasmed in an epileptic fit.
"He doesn't want to be taken by the ludverc, Dean, not anymore! Stop it hurting him!" Sam yelled, and Dean pointed the shotgun directly at Max, taking careful aim.
Just as Dean started to squeeze the trigger, light thundered down on Max from above, dazzlingly bright. Dean and Sam cringed back, covering their heads as best they could without falling off the ladder, but the deadly flash that killed the airmen did not follow.
"Is that the ludverc? I thought it only came out at night?" Sam gasped in Dean's ear. It was intensely quiet on the roof, almost like being underwater.
"It had to be! Maybe it's got the life energy of all those men it burned? And Max? Bobby said that was what it wanted." Dean's whisper was hoarse and he held the shotgun close.
Sam hung onto Dean and pulled himself upright to peer through the hole, futilely shading his eyes from the column of light. Max was still there, his body turning and twitching, but the light was so bright that Sam couldn't see anything else, not even where Agent Mulder had gone, though Sam could hear distantly hear his shouts though the heavy silence, as if he was miles away.
"I think it's got out, Dean, I think Max let it out."
"Okay. Okay." Dean stood up on the ladder, his legs wobbly, and pointed the shotgun through the hole at Max's floating body, then wavered and pulled the gun back, watching the pillar of light extending down from the low clouds. Dean looked from one to the other, his face looking like it was turning inside out in the bright light but he didn't pick a target. Sam looked at Dean's burn-reddened hands shaking on the grip of the shotgun and leaned into his brother to hold him in place on the ladder.
"Just shoot!" Sam yelled, and Dean fired the salt round directly at the bright column, both Winchesters ducking back below roof level as fast as possible. When they looked back up, the light was gone; when they looked down, so was Max.
On to the Epilogue
Back to Chapter 6
Master Post
They drove on into the creeping dawn light, staying as close to due east as they could, which wasn't too hard on the largely straight county roads. They were well north of the military quarantine zone, and the sparse traffic was beat-up farm cars and milk trucks, rather than Air Force jeeps. Sam wanted to duck every time a car or truck approached, but no-one looked twice at a teenager and a kid in a dusty SUV with blistered paint on the hood. Sam thought that the trajectory of the light would take the ludverc down near the lakeshore, not in Lake Michigan itself, but that was something of a guess, based on the arc and the ludverc being a creature of light and fire - surely it would try to avoid the water.
By the time they reached the lakeshore, dawn had arrived and the ludverc was nowhere in sight. The small town to which it had led them seemed to have very little apart from rusting warehouses made of corrugated tin, a few decrepit boats moored to its jetties, and a small collection of ramshackle houses going up the hill away from the harbor. The town looked out on Green Bay - road signs let them know that they were about 30 miles north of the city of the same name - and the wind that blew off the lake was icy. Most of the warehouses looked to be empty and abandoned, though a few were still in action. Few people were around, and security was so minimal that the gates of the cyclone-wire fence were rusted open - they could drive right in from the main road.
Dean parked the car near the waterfront and leaned on the steering wheel. "You think it's in there?"
Sam squinted, the weak sun in his eyes. "It could be. If it needs to be undisturbed when it's not feeding, I guess that's a good spot. But I don't know why it went so far away from Townsend. We're maybe 20 miles away?"
"Yeah, but a lot of stuff has happened around Townsend in the last few days. Maybe it doesn't have anywhere left to go there? Hey, Sam! Maybe one of these warehouses belongs to Darryl Kovacs, or one of the boats? He liked fishing! And he'd know it was a safe place, now that he's turned into a ludverc." Dean grinned at his own brilliance.
"Okay, yeah! Then we can to get to it in the daytime and trap it. The guy who was Mr Kovacs' fishing buddy, Mr Farmer - we could use his name?" Sam pointed at the only open store in town, a combination bait shop and gas station which didn't look like it had been re-painted in decades. "Let's ask them."
Stuffing a few birch twigs in their pockets and taking the salt, though not the shotgun, Dean and Sam climbed out of the car and headed for the gas station. Dean had transferred some of the cash from the duffel bag to his pocket, so when they were inside - it wasn't the worst-smelling store they'd ever been in, but it was close - he grabbed a few chocolate bars and took them to the cracked laminate counter. A sour-faced woman rang them up without a word.
"Ah, excuse me, ma'am?" Dean broke out his most charming smile.
The woman looked at him, but didn't reply.
"Our uncle, Rick Farmer from Townsend, passed away a few weeks ago, and our dad sent us to pick up his fishing gear. Would you know where he kept that, ma'am? Or his friend, Mr Kovacs? It might be with his things."
The woman glared at him for a moment, but it seemed to be routine hostility rather than anything personal, because she thought for a moment and answered, "Yeah, sure. I heard they died. Try over near the boat ramp. It says 'Kovacs' on the door."
"Thank you, ma'am." Dean kept smiling, but she'd stopped looking at him, so he took Sam by the elbow and hurried out the door.
"Cool!" Sam cheered, once they were safely away, and grabbed a chocolate bar from Dean.
"Yeah, eat your breakfast, then we'll drive over there. Better to have all the birch sticks with us, I think."
"Okay!" Sam ate the rest of his Snickers, and Dean followed suit, both wiping their hands on their pants before climbing back into their borrowed SUV. Sam still had half an ear out for sirens - police, fire, maybe even the Air Force - but there was nothing but the wind and water, and the occasional rumble of a truck passing through on the road to Green Bay. Dean flicked on the radio in the car for the news.
"It's eight o'clock, Sam, they should have some news about all the stuff that happened last night!"
Townsend was the very first news item - six Air Force personnel had been hospitalized with severe burns, and there were unconfirmed reports of deaths. A local house fire was thought to be unrelated, but had also resulted in minor injuries to two firefighters. The house was thought to be unoccupied but investigations were continuing. The quarantine still had not been lifted, and Air Force personnel had made official comment that it was likely to last at least another 48 hours.
"At least they're not looking for a pair of arsonists in a getaway vehicle." Dean shrugged, but his voice was relieved rather than sarcastic.
Sam shifted nervously. "When we find this warehouse, we're not going in, are we? I mean, you said you'd wait for Bobby, but I can't see any payphones to call him."
"No way we're going in, don't worry. We can lock the ludverc in with the birch branches and the salt. Dad wouldn't want us running on in there without being sure of how to kill it."
Sam nodded, glad that Dean was sticking to the plan rather than getting overwhelmed with some grandiose idea about taking it out by himself. "Okay. Bobby wouldn't, either."
Dean put the car in gear and drove into the maze of warehouses, scanning for a boat ramp. It wasn't hard to spot, near the southern end of the complex, as it was one of the few things in good repair. They could park the car right near it - unlike most of the concrete paths around the waterfront, the road to the boat ramp was clean of scrap metal and assorted junk. Sam looked out over the water to see if he could spot any fishermen out in boats, but the morning fog was still hanging low over the water, and all he could see was the blurry green of an island in the distance.
"No-one's out there, Sam." Dean handed Sam the shotgun and started collecting birch branches from the back seat. "No other cars. We're clear to work."
Darryl Kovacs' fishing shed was easy to find - it was a small corrugated-tin annex on the side of a larger, dilapidated warehouse, with his name painted on the door. A long, sooty streak, just like the one that was on the chimneys at the homes of the Kovacs family and his friend Rick Farmer, marked the side of the taller warehouse down to where it connected to the roof of the shed. Dean and Sam quickly surrounded the shed with birch sticks, and it was easy enough for Dean to pull up an already-bent corner of sheet of tin siding to let Sam into the warehouse. Sam quickly poured salt in front of not just the door from the shed into the main warehouse, but across the whole wall, just to make sure. The door was already barred and locked with a rusty padlock, but that was apparently no bar to a ludverc. Sam ducked back out through the gap Dean had made for him, to find Dean looking up at the roof with a speculative look on his face.
"Do you think we have to cover the roof, too?"
Sam frowned. Both of them were good climbers, but the tin was rusty and holed, and it didn't look very safe up there. He sighed. Dean was right. "Yeah, I think so. It's got holes in it so maybe it's like a chimney for the ludverc?"
Dean nodded. "It's all rusted out, though - I don't want to go up there and fall right onto the ludverc."
"Or get your legs sliced off and bleed to death," Sam added, gruesomely. "Or your head."
Dean laughed. "Good point, Sammy. Let's grab some crates and stack them, instead. At least we can test if they're rotten before we put any weight on them."
There were wooden crates of all shapes and sizes lying around, not all of them rotted, and they soon had a slightly wobbly stack of crates ready to climb.
"I'll go up, you pass me branches," Dean told Sam, sizing up the climb.
"No, I'm smaller, I'll go up." Sam was feeling quite light of heart - their plan was working, and Dean wasn't trying to run in there and fight the ludverc, birch branches or not.
"Sure, okay. Don't fall through." Dean put out his hand, and boosted Sam up the pile of boxes. It shifted a little, but held firm, and Sam scampered easily to the top, his thick woolly gloves protecting him from splinters. The roof did indeed have several noticeable holes, rusted and sharp at the edges. Sam tried to look in the nearest one, but he couldn't spot anything in the darkness of the shed below. At least the ludverc, if it was here, wasn't active. He pulled the salt canister from his pocket and shook it in long, loopy arcs, getting good coverage of the roof, and Dean, his body still wedged against the boxes for stability, passed him up the largest of the branches to strew over the roof. The rusted portions of the tin creaked and split as the birch sticks hit, and Sam was extremely glad they didn't have to walk on that roof. From his vantage point, he looked out over the water, then back towards the main road.
"Dean! Air Force jeeps! They're coming here!"
Dean passed him up one more branch. "Will that cover the roof?"
Sam flung it to the far corner. "Yeah, done." He slid backwards down the pile, his feet feeling their way until Dean got his hands in place to give Sam a steady foothold. Sam slithered the rest of the way, Dean guiding him, and landed neatly on his feet. "Should we get back in the car?"
"No way, they might be looking for it. Grab your stuff out of it and we'll head back through the warehouses, where they haven't cleared the roads. Even if they leave the jeeps, we'll hear them long before they hear us. We can always come back for the car if it's not us they're after."
They grabbed their backpack and duffel bag from the car, Dean taking off his gloves for a better grip on the shotgun and a faster trigger finger. They hurried away from the cleared road, picking their way through abandoned crates and rusted metal strewn across the ground. The Air Force jeeps had come right to the warehouses, but they seemed to be heading slowly for the waterfront, along the same path that Dean and Sam had driven. The other roads, while too cluttered for cars, were not a problem for two boys on foot, and they quickly moved back through the warehouses towards the small township.
A man's voice muttered something, not far from their position, and Sam and Dean quickly took cover behind a large pile of rotting wooden boxes. The man must not have been speaking to them, however, because in return came a crisp, military voice.
"Sir, we've apprehended the target. It's just a civilian." A jeep came to a halt, and men jumped out of it, their boots thudding on the concrete.
A radio crackled, its words unclear, but in response, men readied their weapons. There was a faint, bizarre roaring noise, almost like the sound inside a seashell, and suddenly Sam found himself face-down on the ground, his chin striking the concrete, with Dean on top of him shoving him flat. Before Sam could protest, the white light flashed, filling their ears with a strange absence of noise, like it had pulled all the sound from the air. Momentarily blinded, the sound came rushing back with several brief, cut-off screams, then nothing, not even the idling engine of the jeep. Sam pushed up at Dean, angry and frightened, but Dean rolled off him and across the concrete. Sam didn't understand for a moment, then he realized that Dean's jacket was on fire.
"Sam!" Dean struggled free of his burning jacket and Sam raced over to stamp the flames out. Dean's hair was all burned off at the back of his head, his scalp bright red and angry, blisters forming on the exposed skin at the nape of his neck and the backs of his hands. "Sam!"
Sam couldn't work out for a second why Dean was so worried about him when it was Dean who was hurt, but then his chin started to sting and he touched it, his hand coming away bright with blood. Shameful tears sprung to his eyes, but he blinked them away firmly.
"No, Dean, I'm okay, really." Sam's mouth felt swollen and deformed; when he touched his lower lip it was split and swelling. "You're burned, we have to go to a doctor."
Dean opened his mouth to speak, then just pointed behind Sam.
Sam turned, and Max was there, stumbling slowly towards them, his clothes askew and his face twisted in pain.
"Max? Are you okay?" Sam could hardly understand his own words, but Max looked at him blearily. Max was clutching at his right ear, gasping for air, and blood was leaking between his fingers.
"Don't stop me, don't do this," he panted, and both Sam and Dean pressed back against the walls of the warehouse, out of his path.
"We won't stop you," Dean replied, looking slightly glazed himself, and Max shuffled past, paying them no further attention. His face had the same faint grey tinge as Heather Kovacs, his eyes unfocused and pained.
Dean picked up the shotgun, small blisters starting to form on the backs of his hands where he had covered his and Sam's heads. They followed Max, first at a distance, then closer as Max paid no attention.
"Has it got him in thrall?" Sam hissed to Dean. "Dean?"
"Yeah, look, he's heading right to it. You still got the salt?
Sam made sure of the salt canister and remaining birch twigs in his pockets and stuck close to Dean, though Sam was still bleeding down his chin and all over his sweater, and looking at the blisters on the back of Dean's head where the hair was gone made him feel faintly sick. He felt a lot worse when they rounded the corner and Sam glanced back. He saw what had happened to the Air Force men in the jeep, the men who hadn't had time to take cover like the Winchesters. They were lying in smoking piles of dead, burnt flesh, their uniforms in shreds, their bodies contorted in what looked like rage. Sam looked away quickly, his mind imposing faces on the blackened bodies: Deputy Wright, his dad, even Dean.
"It can shed fire when it flies." Sam repeated Bobby's words like a mantra, but it didn't help, and the terrible smell of burned flesh was mingling with the thick taste of the blood in his mouth.
"Come on, Sammy." Dean shook him slightly and tugged him away from the corpses around the scorched jeep. "We've got to try to help Max."
Sam thought that if he replied he was going to throw up, so he followed Dean without a word, wiping bloody saliva from the corners of his mouth, trying to pretend he hadn't seen the burned flesh and bone, that no-one was there but them and Max.
Max's path traced the one the Winchesters had just taken - he was going straight for the warehouse where Dean and Sam had just laid down protections. Dean and Sam tailed him quietly, though Max didn't seem to be paying any attention to anything that wasn't directly in his way.
"He's going straight to it! Can we stop him?" Sam whispered to Dean.
"No, don't get in his way. I don't know if it's in him or just letting him use its powers, but we can't stop him."
"Why did it get him, Dean? He doesn't know Darrell Kovacs." Blood flecks flew from Sam's mouth as he spoke, and he wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
Sadness pulled at Dean's mouth, much to Sam's surprise. "Because he wants it so much. Because he's searching so hard that he doesn't care what answers he finds. We could give him all the protection in the world, and he'd throw it away."
Sam kept his hand on Dean's arm, careful not to restrict his ability to aim. "The salt isn't stopping it talking to him, is it?"
"I guess not. But he's going there physically, so it must have a need for him. Maybe if we can't stop him going to the ludverc, we can stop it coming out to him. Keep that salt ready, Sammy." Dean's face was more intensely focused than sad, now, but Sam wasn't sure how much of that focus was on keeping walking, ignoring his burns, and how much of it was actually on Max. Sam bit his lip, and immediately regretted it. But Dean was right - no-one else could help Max now, and Sam couldn't bear the thought of silly, innocent Max seeking his own death just because he wanted to unravel the mysteries of the world, just because he'd seen something he shouldn't.
Max walked right into the warehouse that backed onto Darryl Kovacs' fishing shed, and the door slammed shut behind him, with no direct contact from Max. Sam pulled at it, hanging his whole body weight from the handle, but it didn't budge. Before they could move around to the side of the warehouse, they heard another car pull up - Sam peered around the corner and spotted the two FBI agents in their rented sedan.
He ducked back, quickly. "It's the FBI, Dean! We have to stay out of the way!"
Dean gestured to a rusty metal ladder attached to the side of the warehouse. "They're going to go in if they can. Let's go up. We should be able to see from there, and blast the ludverc when it shows." Dean was compulsively touching the back of his head and neck, flinching every time.
Sam knew the feeling - he kept pressing his hand to his bloody chin, even though the wool of his gloves stuck to the wound painfully. At least his lip seemed to have stopped bleeding into his mouth. "No, Dean, let's stay down here. The FBI can shoot it!"
"Not with salt." Dean set his chin, and Sam knew he was right - the FBI agents had no chance if Max was under the ludverc's control and let it flash-fry them in the blinding light. The FBI obviously didn't know what was going on - not if Agent Mulder was a plant to get information from Max and maybe their dad - and it was just going to get them killed. Sam frowned. He had been ready to save Max, but the FBI's appearance just meant more people in the line of fire, more people they had to save. He was starting to see that the dangers in hunting weren't limited to the creatures of his nightmares, but lurked in every passer-by, cop, foolish civilian and rotting wooden foothold. The world was huge and chaotic and dangerous and Sam's eyes were dry and sore from holding back tears.
Dean held the shotgun one-handed, and swung up onto the ladder, his climbing steady and fast. With no idea how to stop the inevitable, Sam followed him, and they ascended to the edge of the roof. More Air Force jeeps were streaming into the area, and men were running everywhere, setting up a perimeter and training their guns on the warehouse where Max had gone. Sam quickly looked around, but, as Dean had spotted before they climbed up, they had good cover behind the ridge of the next rooftop - unless the Air Force took up position on the water, they were well hidden from view.
The main warehouse roof was in just as bad condition as the annex, rusted holes all over the corrugated tin roof, and Dean used the butt of the gun to make a hole big enough for them to peer through. Jammed together on the ladder, they peered through the gap, and saw Agent Mulder, holding Max, sitting on the floor. Sam stood on his tiptoes to see if Mulder was hurting Max, but in fact Max seemed to be clinging to the FBI agent.
"Don't let them take me," Max sobbed, his face transformed from blankness to terror.
"I won't let them take you. Come on, Max, come with me." The agent's voice was encouraging, but Max cringed back in terror, trying to somehow climb over Mulder to safety.
"No!"
Before the Winchesters had time to act, Max screamed in terror and something struck him and Agent Mulder. Mulder was thrown into a pile of damp cardboard boxes; Max went skidding across the floor to an empty space near the doorway to the annex where the ludverc was supposed to be contained. Sam couldn't see clearly - only in the patches of sunlight let through by the holes in the roof - but it looked like Max had been shoved straight into the line of protective birch twigs and salt lines that Sam had laid down earlier.
"Max! Run!" Dean shouted down through the roof, but it was too late. Max's body started to rise into the air, twitching and spinning, as if he was being hung by the shoulders from an invisible coat-hanger, his feet dangling helplessly. His hair was floating, crackling with electricity, and his body spasmed in an epileptic fit.
"He doesn't want to be taken by the ludverc, Dean, not anymore! Stop it hurting him!" Sam yelled, and Dean pointed the shotgun directly at Max, taking careful aim.
Just as Dean started to squeeze the trigger, light thundered down on Max from above, dazzlingly bright. Dean and Sam cringed back, covering their heads as best they could without falling off the ladder, but the deadly flash that killed the airmen did not follow.
"Is that the ludverc? I thought it only came out at night?" Sam gasped in Dean's ear. It was intensely quiet on the roof, almost like being underwater.
"It had to be! Maybe it's got the life energy of all those men it burned? And Max? Bobby said that was what it wanted." Dean's whisper was hoarse and he held the shotgun close.
Sam hung onto Dean and pulled himself upright to peer through the hole, futilely shading his eyes from the column of light. Max was still there, his body turning and twitching, but the light was so bright that Sam couldn't see anything else, not even where Agent Mulder had gone, though Sam could hear distantly hear his shouts though the heavy silence, as if he was miles away.
"I think it's got out, Dean, I think Max let it out."
"Okay. Okay." Dean stood up on the ladder, his legs wobbly, and pointed the shotgun through the hole at Max's floating body, then wavered and pulled the gun back, watching the pillar of light extending down from the low clouds. Dean looked from one to the other, his face looking like it was turning inside out in the bright light but he didn't pick a target. Sam looked at Dean's burn-reddened hands shaking on the grip of the shotgun and leaned into his brother to hold him in place on the ladder.
"Just shoot!" Sam yelled, and Dean fired the salt round directly at the bright column, both Winchesters ducking back below roof level as fast as possible. When they looked back up, the light was gone; when they looked down, so was Max.
On to the Epilogue
Back to Chapter 6
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