You Found Me |Sam Winchester| [2015 Wattys Winner]

23. Carthage, Missouri

23. Carthage, Missouri

I'd forgotten just how impactful a moving car could help me sleep. I'd been woken up long enough to get moved into the backseat of the Impala before conking out again. That disturbance hadn't been fun, because Dean had been the one to do it, and he had a very disapproving look on his face the way he found Sam and me on the floor this morning. We weren't in a very compromising position, just an innocent me cuddled against his side with his long arm around me, somehow with his fingers interlocked with mine still. We'd both blushed tomato-red after Dean had skulked off.

We knew that talk would be coming in our near future once this issue in Missouri was done.

Here we were now, in the heart of the town. I was still very groggy. Dean had been the one to wake me up, telling me to look for signal on my phone. All three of us stuck our phones out the windows. I frowned.

"You getting a signal?" Sam asked.

"Nada," I reported.

"No, nothing," Dean agreed. "Nice and spooky."

The Impala rolled to a gentle halt as Dean waved the car behind us up. Ellen was the driver, with Jo in shotgun. I assumed Cas was in the back of their vehicle since he wasn't in here with us.

"Place seem a little empty to you?" Ellen said.

"We're gonna go check out the PD. You guys stay here, see if you can find anybody."

"Okay."

I tucked my phone away as Dean drove us off to the precinct. The place was eerily quiet, as though something wiped all the people out. As though this place, like the rest of the world, was void of people. I felt like we were in one of those movies where there were only a select group of people left on the planet.

Once we rolled to a halt in front of the station, we all climbed out and covered every inch. We had the bad idea of splitting up, which I hated. But it wasn't so bad once there wasn't any present threat. I'd been high-strung for no reason. Well, I knew the feeling would come back. This was only just the beginning.

We'd just gotten done the scan before our second car rolled up. Ellen and Jo were present, I didn't see Cas anywhere in the car.

"Station's empty," Dean reported.

"So's everything else," said Jo.

"Have you seen Cas?" Ellen asked us.

"What?" said Sam. "He was with you."

"Nope. He went after the reapers."

"Reapers?" I squeaked. That didn't sound good, there was an s at the end. Just how many reapers did we have hanging around here?

"He saw reapers?" Sam repeated. "Where?"

"Well, kind of everywhere," said Jo.

Yeah, that definitely didn't sound good at all.

"So, what's the plan?" I said uneasily.

"We go on foot."

Ellen parked the car, and all five of us got armed. I wondered where Cas had wandered off to. There was the high chance that something bad got to him, whether it was these reapers or even Lucifer himself. Lucifer seemed more likely.

We stuck to the middle of the streets, all huddled close together, eyes waiting to find some flicker of danger. I kept the gun low at my side. I felt better with hunters around me, I was the least experienced. But I wanted to do this. Besides, if this was the world I was going to be stuck in for years, I was going to have to gain some experience. This wasn't the best way to, but it seemed like the only way at the moment.