Dean has a gun, and a knife, and matches and a crossbow with bolts soaked in a dead man's blood (the soaking from a week before, and dead blood hardly in short supply). He also has a shitload of attitude.
Cas left him everything -- the weapons, the food, the car -- everything but one old knife, and that tells Dean all he needs to know about exactly how far Cas expected to get, and why, but Dean keeps his swearing inside his head and the headlights of the Impala turned off as he eases down the ruin of the road. He has the window rolled down, to hear. His hands are tight on the steering wheel, and his pulse is beating staccato in his throat.
He spots a figure staggering at the side of the road, and his heart leaps and his stomach drops and he thinks it might be -- but no, it isn't. It's a Croat zombie, a lone straggler that turns and lurches toward the car with its yellowed teeth pale in the night.
Dean puts a bullet in its head and drives on in the dark. He doesn't look at that sodden, shadowed heap, retreating in the mirror. He's got other things to watch for.
Cas can't have gotten much farther, he thinks, just around the time he hears the laughter.
Dean stops the car. He debates, briefly, leaving the keys in the ignition, then he pulls them silently from the ignition and folds them carefully into his pocket. Only then does he open the door, setting booted feet on cracked pavement.
"Don't kill him! Don't kill him, don't you fucking -- oh he is delicious, oh I want this again and again."
"I'm hungry now."
"I'm telling you --" There is a sudden, violent motion in the shadows beyond the trees. Dean hears gurgling, a wet and meaty sound, and then that first voice giggles. "Oh, that'll teach him. Now," and the voice darkens, "try that on me..."
Dean hears a thud, and then a hoarse whisper he would recognize even in pitch black. "Pater noster," breathes Cas, "qui es in coelis," and then something garbled, something in not-quite-random syllables that Dean has heard before.
Also
Cas left him everything -- the weapons, the food, the car -- everything but one old knife, and that tells Dean all he needs to know about exactly how far Cas expected to get, and why, but Dean keeps his swearing inside his head and the headlights of the Impala turned off as he eases down the ruin of the road. He has the window rolled down, to hear. His hands are tight on the steering wheel, and his pulse is beating staccato in his throat.
He spots a figure staggering at the side of the road, and his heart leaps and his stomach drops and he thinks it might be -- but no, it isn't. It's a Croat zombie, a lone straggler that turns and lurches toward the car with its yellowed teeth pale in the night.
Dean puts a bullet in its head and drives on in the dark. He doesn't look at that sodden, shadowed heap, retreating in the mirror. He's got other things to watch for.
Cas can't have gotten much farther, he thinks, just around the time he hears the laughter.
Dean stops the car. He debates, briefly, leaving the keys in the ignition, then he pulls them silently from the ignition and folds them carefully into his pocket. Only then does he open the door, setting booted feet on cracked pavement.
"Don't kill him! Don't kill him, don't you fucking -- oh he is delicious, oh I want this again and again."
"I'm hungry now."
"I'm telling you --" There is a sudden, violent motion in the shadows beyond the trees. Dean hears gurgling, a wet and meaty sound, and then that first voice giggles. "Oh, that'll teach him. Now," and the voice darkens, "try that on me..."
Dean hears a thud, and then a hoarse whisper he would recognize even in pitch black. "Pater noster," breathes Cas, "qui es in coelis," and then something garbled, something in not-quite-random syllables that Dean has heard before.