Chapter 3: Dangerous Women, Continental Drift, and Other Dreams

Sam awoke to the sound of Dean working on the car in his shirt sleeves. Smearing brake oil on his jeans, Dean drank most of a water bottle and poured the rest over his hair, his wet dog shake framed against a sky choked with color. The hood slammed shut. The trunk opened and Dean knelt behind Sam with a first-aid kit. "Roll over sunshine, you ain't getting infected on my watch."

Groggily, Sam rolled onto his stomach, and Dean’s hands were warm in the cool morning air when he brushed Sam’s hair out of the way.

“Hey, Dean, did you dream last night?” Sam asked. Sam had; it had been as if it had picked up where the vision left off, with the two of them driving out of Las Vegas and the city being obliterated in their rear-view. They’d had to drive north, going by the map that the Army had given them showing routes around broken roads and bridges, and had been picked up in Utah by a helicopter that flew them over breathtaking views of the new mountains that had sprung up. Dean had been a silent presence beside him the whole time, gazing out to see the towering slabs of rock unfold beneath them.

He’d had other dreams too, dreams that he couldn’t even put words to. Gargantuan shapes moving out of the sea, unearthly languages being spoken in his ear. The taste of fear in his mouth.

Dean tore open an alcohol swab. "Nope." he lied.

On the edge of sleep, Dean had thought back to the Men of Letters transcript and had a herky-jerky black and white dream like a silent film reel, sailors coming home from an uncharted shore, their islander brides pale and lithe with eyes set a little too far apart to be considered beautiful. A seaside church. A woman on a bloody altar, a monster, a queen, and the longer you touched her the more your identity circled down the drain until you were only left with her name.

He’d tried saying it. It tasted like sour pennies.

He'd awoke in a cold sweat from that one, and lept to mundane tasks to scrub the woman from his mind. Sam's hair had stuck to the bloody stitches, and he cleaned it best he could. "What about you?"

Sam lay still as Dean worked on him. “The mountains. The old maps were right; the western U.S. was flat before. The bomb changed everything. The roads, the bridges, so many towns were destroyed. I think we flew over the Rockies when they were brand-new.”

"The Rockies..." Dean said to himself, humming the snatch end of 'Big Rock Candy Mountain' as he cracked open another water bottle and wet a clean rag and daubed at the stitches. In his dreams, the President turned a map toward them on an antique desk, pinching the center of America as if he’d caught a spider underneath. A spider so big you had to crush the world around it.

The sun rose, pencil-thin shadows stretching from the stones, the kind of cowboy backdrop Dean had spent his childhood memorizing. What else had been substituted? He tossed the bloody bandages in a plastic bag and slapped Sam’s shoulder, happy for something solid. “Let’s grab some road food. There’s a stop fifty miles out, they got a special on waffles and trucker showers.”

“A shower sounds good,” Sam said, climbing to his knees and brushing the worst of the grit off his front. He helped Dean gather up their supplies from the night before, and he shook out the blanket before folding it up.

The air was warm by the time they got on the road, and Sam rolled down the windows and let it blow through his hair. Dean sang along to one of his tapes beside him. This was so familiar that it grounded Sam, made the strangeness of last night feel faint and far away, left in the dirt where they’d slept.

Later, clean and full with a plastic bag of junk food in the seat between them, Sam said, “Fort Cloud. Do you remember anything about it? I don’t.”

Dean turned down the volume, left elbow stretched over the open window. “Honestly all I can remember for sure is the way in, this corrugated steel storm drain that had no business being in a desert.”

The opening chords of ‘Go Go Godzilla’ started playing, and Dean ejected the tape. “I never liked their later stuff.”

The landscape went from cattle fields to salt flats, thorn trees bending in dust devils ten stories high until the air was so white Dean had to slow the car and roll up the window. Flipping through the box for an Eric Clapton mix, Dean asked, “You dream about that church at all? The one of us in the drawing?”

Sam shuffled through the hazy images of his dreams, looking for a church. After a moment, he shook his head. “No.” Then he added, “Not yet.” This wasn’t over, he knew. The floodgates had opened last night, and he had no doubt that there would be more where that came from. He shuddered, even as he looked forward to piecing together the puzzle.

“You know, I think I almost understood the language, back then. Maybe because of the psychic thing,” Sam said, gesturing toward his head. “In my dreams, I heard them speaking, and it was like... like it was right on the tip of my tongue. And it was like they were talking to me, not just talking. Trying to communicate with me.”

He concentrated, sifting through the dregs of the dream, and a thought occurred to him. “I wonder if… I wonder if they wanted me, too? Like Azazel did, to lead an army?”

Dean watched his reflection, the dust storm filling the windshield like a dead TV channel. If the perfect woman existed she was a cold one. A dark one. Black eyes with a touch of cinder and a hunger that would eat the whole world if it could.

Dean laughed and shook the dream away. “And what would the Devil say if you brought Little Mermaid to prom? ”

Sam barked a laugh. “I think he’d say I belonged to him. Would have said.” If he’d allied with the other side, he wondered who would have won. If the end of the world came and went, would Lucifer have ever had the chance to break free, or would he be stuck in the Cage for eternity? “It hurts my head sometimes, seeing double like this.”

Dean’s mouth twisted a little at belonged, but he swiped his face before Sam could catch it.

Chapter 4: Fort Cloud

They passed through Gerlach and drove another thirty miles to a state route that wound toward the mountains and turned at a cattle gate that hadn’t seen cattle in a hundred years. Stone quarries dipped along one side, then the black skeletons of cranes and train tracks reclaimed by the local flora. A company store sat at the end of the town’s one paved road, and parking the car Dean stepped out and pulled on his jacket and tapped the hood wondering if he ought to pack a gun. The worm stuck to the inside of the jar like a question mark.

“It’s just through there,” said Dean, pointing to the thicket behind the store.

Sam went to the trunk to tuck a gun away in his jacket and a sheathed knife at his belt, then walked up to stand shoulder to shoulder with Dean.

“So this is it, huh?” Sam asked. Something about it tugged at him, telling him yes, this was it. And something about it repelled him, maybe some as-yet-unsurfaced memory, maybe some instinct, and he knew he’d rather stay outside with Dean and say hollow, pointless things than pass by the store and into the thicket.

It was just as Dean had said, corrugated steel half-buried in mud and curving downward with a ladder running inside. Flashlights clamped between their teeth, they descended and arrived at a rough-hewn entrance with miner caps and lockers lining the wall, the door unlocked. Dean pushed it open and threw up his hands.

"Awesome."

Their lights shown on black water. Had it flooded over years of neglect or was this a security measure? Dean had a vague recollection of a U-shaped corridor dug far below with the other end opening into a staging area, but how to get there...

Dean snapped his fingers. "The lockers."

He opened the one nearest here, inside of which hung scuba gear with oxygen tanks. Not a lot of oxygen.

"How long you think we could stay underwater with these things Sammy?"

Sam crowded in close to get a look at the levels. “Fifteen, twenty minutes? It’ll give us a little time, anyway.”

Sam dropped his backpack on a bench and began peeling off his jacket, quietly mourning the loss of his gun.

"Wait, I got something in the trunk," said Dean back and returning with two plastic trash bags, "No way am I walking around some haunted missile silo in wet jeans, I will frikkin chafe."

They stripped down to boxers, boots tied around their belts that cinched the bags. Dean dipped his hand in the water, yanked it back. "Ugh it's cold, frikkin hate the cold."

“We’ve been through worse,” Sam said before he fitted his mask over his face. He grabbed one of the waterproof flashlights that were mounted to the side of the lockers and waded into the water. After a few steps there was a steep drop-off, and Sam took a deep breath of oxygen and dropped in.

His whole body shuddered at the immersion in cold water. His flashlight made a ghostly greenish cone of light in front of him, and after a second, Dean’s joined his, searching.

They swam through an office, papers hanging in the water, fluttering as they passed. Through a doorway, luckily open. Another office and they reached an airlock. Together they spun the wheel and floated backwards as the porthole opened into another space full of water.

Sam glanced at Dean, tilting his head in a question, and at Dean’s nod, they went through. It went deeper, the ceiling pressing down on them at an angle.

A current pulled them along a steel tunnel, lichen dripping at the seams, their flashlights shining crazily in observation windows behind which sat hulking outdated security cameras. A generator kicked in and the cameras whirred to life. Were they still hooked up to the grid?

They kicked along, Dean ignoring the pressure headache behind his eyes and listened for trouble. Listened to the hiss of oxygen. The hiss became a church by the sea, a woman on her back, hair fanned across the altar, breathing in his ear as waves gently creamed on a black sandy beach.

The current changed direction and a trunk of light appeared as Dean grabbed Sam's wrist and they were sucked upward. Breaking the surface, Dean pulled himself on a tile floor by his elbows and yanked off his mask, shaking with cold.

"He-e-re," he stammered, helping Sam up, "Th-there sh-should be..."

Dean stood and cast around the room, startled when his light fell on the machine guns bolted into the ceiling, trained on his path. He swallowed. He took another step, and when the guns followed but did not fire, he fumbled with the door of a medical storage locker and searched inside until he produced two mylar blankets.

"Here," said Dean, unfolding what appeared to be candy wrapper the size of a circus tent and wrapping Sam in it, "Keeps your body heat from leaking out."

Dean wrapped himself in one and sat toe to toe with Sam, lips blue, smiled. "Dude we look like baked potatoes."

Sam huffed out a shaky laugh but couldn’t say anything yet, not liking the way Dean looked, cold and wet and pale. The ride through the current had disoriented him, had triggered sense-memories of underwater, green and dark with ripples of light shining down through waving black hair. Running out of breath. Language he could almost understand in his head. He still felt claustrophobic from it, could still hear the disturbing echo of alien words.

He spoke just to get rid of the sound, teeth chattering. It echoed off the water and the metal walls. “After this, we get a m-motel room. Heater on full b-blast, I don’t care if I sweat. Lots of coffee, too.”

Untying the bag, Dean pulled out his flannel shirt and began drying Sam's hair. "Here, stand up."

Dean's blanket crinkled to the floor, busily toweling off first Sam's legs and then his thighs and wicking water from his arms, so intent on his brother that he almost missed the clink of glass against the tiles.

Dean shined his light. "Hello?"

Several doors led out of the room, unfinished concrete painted black with exposed pipes rising past hooded fluorescent bulbs, a few filing cabinets, hospital smocks in a laundry bin. The glass worm jar lay silent, propped against a door with large block letters over the lintel. AMNIOTIC TANKS.

He rushed back. "I found something, how ya doing Sammy?"

“Better,” Sam said, pulling on his jeans, his wet boxers in a puddle on the floor. Goosebumps still pebbled his chest and arms, but he felt almost warm, would feel good once he had all his clothes on. “Thanks. Hurry and get dressed before you freeze,” he said, tossing Dean’s bag to him.

They finished dressing quickly, and their wet boots made squish squish sounds as they approached the door. “Worm led you here, huh?” Sam tried the knob, found it unlocked.

The door opened to an unbelievably large room filled with rows upon rows of upright glass and chrome tanks full of bodies floating in glowing blue fluid, countless tubes and wires running in tangles along the floor. That sight alone was enough to leave Sam breathless. Then he took in the sheer size of the room, ten times, twenty times as big as the basement of the bombed-out Vegas hotel, a hundred times. The light from their flashlights couldn’t penetrate the darkness far enough to reach the ceiling.

Heart beating hard from the sheer shock of it, Sam asked, “What the hell is this place?”

Dean ran his hand along the wall until he found a breaker box and start flipping switches. No lights came on, but the clank of machinery echoed at the far end, followed by an ominous 'BEEP oooooo BEEP oooooo'.

"Shit, sidearms out Sammy."

They aimed at the shadows, flashlights over their guns, bodies angled sideways, tensed as the noise grew closer. It sounded like an electric drill...or a bulldozer. Just as it closed the gap, a low sputter buzzed in the ceiling and hummed to life and straightened out into...Christmas music?

"Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, / Ring-ting-tingling too, / Come on, it's lovely weather / For a sleigh ride together with you."

A bot the size of a horse rolled into the light. Sam and Dean craned their necks. It had two eyes, one white and one red, tractor treads, shoulder-mounted laser cannons, and a nametag that read, ‘Hello! My Name is BOWIE’. Several more bots like it watched, clinging to the tanks like crabs, but they were smaller and seemed preoccupied with scanning barcodes and dropping dipsticks into the water.

Bowie's face-plate rotated toward Sam, a steel lobster claw pinning his wrist and pressing a sensor to his hand. He gasped at the jab of a needle, but the robot made a soft 'ding' and greeted him in a high chipmunk voice. "Hello...Mister Winchester...It has been...3,293 days since your last check-in...I was getting worried about you...Would you care...for some salad?"

The Christmas music abruptly switched to Fleetwood Mac, and Dean raised an eyebrow. "Seriously Sam? 'Rumors'?"

His question was punctuated by a 'sonuvabitch!' as the bot identified him and the music switched yet again.

" Why do stars fall down from the sky, every time you walk by?

Just like me, they long to be close to you."

Sam coughed behind his hand, barely hiding the laugh as Dean frowned so hard the lines of his mouth hit his chin.

The absurdity of it had snapped Sam out of his shock, but now he couldn’t even process it. “Dean, this is seriously weirding me out,” he said under his breath, finger still on his trigger though he knew it wouldn’t do much against this tank of a robot.

However, it might have some of the answers they sought.

“What are you?” he asked it. “How do you know us?”

"I am head of hospitality and information services...Mister Winchester...I know all the personnel...Would you like to ask a question?"

"Did we have a job here?"

BEEP oooooo BEEP oooooo "Dean Winchester, level 5 enforcer, specialized in search and rescue. Sam Winchester, level 5 enforcer, specialized in occult combat."

"Enforcers huh," said Dean, tapping the nearest water tank, a woman suspended by tubes inside a thick white caul, "So why are you growing people?"

BEEP oooooo BEEP oooooo "Uterine replicators are a necessary addition to Class Object Impala."

The boys looked at each other. "What's Class Object Impala?"

BEEP oooooo BEEP oooooo "Classified."

Dean attempted to move around the bot. "Well take us to your file rooms and---"

Bowie moved impressively fast, hind quarters unfolding like a grasshopper and suddenly doubling in height, laser cannons training red dots on Dean's forehead as it continued in that little girl voice. "I would not recommend that...Mister Winchester... Any unauthorized personnel found in the classified cell blocks will be disciplined. Any unauthorized personnel found hacking into classified files will be tracked, located, and detained. Any unauthorized personnel found with classified materials will be terminated. If you wish to research Class Object Impala, please submit your request to base command and wait upon security clearance approval." said Bowie, making a tinkly bell sound, "Ah your quarters are ready...Mister Winchesters...This way please."

The brothers watched Bowie return to its previous form, and they shared a tense look before turning to follow him. The wall was on their right, the glowing amniotic tanks on their left, and Sam studied them as he followed the metallic sounds of Bowie’s treads on the concrete floor and the seemingly random songs he kept cycling through. The tanks were filled with all shapes and sizes of people, from infants to the elderly, men and women of all races and colors.

After a few hundred yards, they reached a large set of doors which slid open with a quiet whoosh. Bowie made a series of beeps, and the dark corridor they faced flickered to light as fluorescents powered up overhead and wall fans spun into life, showing concrete walls painted institutional gray and dozens of doors lining the walls on either side.

“Your quarters,” Bowie said in its unnaturally high voice, pausing outside of one door.

The room was cramped, big enough for two beds reminiscent of the cot in Bobby’s panic room, a small table with two chairs, and a pair of closets. Sam opened one closet door to see several uniforms hanging. He tugged on a pair of dark, stained coveralls, noted that it was his size, and that S. Winchester had been stitched onto a patch at the chest. He didn’t doubt Dean’s closet would be any different. He glanced at the cup-rings stained on the table, the scuff-marks on the floor.

“How long did we live here?” Sam asked.

But he turned to find Dean gone, his clothes---boots, jeans, flannel, undershirt---dropped onto the floor in descending order on the way to the shower. A yelp sounded from within the open door, and the top half of Dean's head peered around the frame. "The, uh, the hot water works."

The bathroom was utilitarian but clean, a mirror cabinet full of soap and shaving cream and half-empty boxes of sleeping pills and pain meds, with a second door connecting it to the neighboring bedroom. No personal effects. No graffiti on the walls. On a hunch, Sam lifted one of the mattresses and found a copy of Busty Asian Beauties still in the cellophane. Okay, almost no personal effects.

A few minutes later Dean emerged pink and clean with a towel around his waist. He stepped on a bed, lightly bouncing the springs as he plucked the magazine from Sam's fingers. "Hey Sammy, I think I got something stuck to my shoe."

Sam's brow knit, then he followed Dean's eyes as they flicked to an air vent in the corner. Bugs.

Sam looked away casually in case there was visual feed as well as audio. If anyone was monitoring the feeds, they’d realize that their secret, the full extent of which Sam still didn’t know, had been found out. If anyone was manning the feeds, they might be on their way. If they weren’t already there in the building.

As quietly as he could, he whispered, “Dean, we gotta get out of here.”

The Carpenters played on in the hallway, and zipping up his bluejeans Dean turned to Sam and said, "Boy I do love me some Leon Russell don't you?"

Tearing little strips from the towel, he rolled the world's tiniest earplugs and handed them to Sam. "But you can't appreciate the piano solo..." he said, putting in his own earplugs and screaming in the hallway, "...UNLESS YOU REALLY CRANK IT."

Suddenly the music changed, so loud they could feel the bass through their feet, and the first little microphone exploded in a puff of smoke like someone had tucked a lit cigarette in the air vent.

"Yeah, the colonel said that women are for loving, not fighting,

But that didn't clear the air

'Cause Junior's still living in the blackboard jungle

With his Elvis Presley hair."

Let's go. Dean mouthed, and together they ran to the bathroom where the second door stood unlocked. All of the rooms were connected thus, the doors opening easily until they arrived at one with a meat locker smell inside and a plaque reading HIGH COMMAND. It was a cheap lock in a rotting wooden frame, but Dean had no luck. Can you get this? he mouthed.

Heart beating overtime with adrenaline, Sam slammed his foot into the door, which burst inward with a satisfying crash and a shower of splinters. They rushed inside, and Sam quickly took in two dessicated bodies slumped in chairs, their upper halves draped across panels covered in dials and keypads. There was a large, heavy metal locker to his left, and with Dean’s help he shoved it in front of the door with a squeal of metal on concrete. The doorway was small enough that it could keep out Bowie, but Sam didn’t know what other devices might be prowling the complex.

Leon Russell was still thumping through the floor, and he could hear a small, tinny version of it playing through a speaker in the command center. It was a large room, the walls a lighter shade of gray than the corridors, and there were banks of file cabinets along one wall, half a dozen neatly squared-off desks, a row of lockers, and the panels of electronics which the corpses were slumped against. Above these were a dozen monitors cycling through various rooms in the facility.

Breathing hard, Sam’s eyes flicked from one monitor to another. He saw himself and Dean standing wide-legged in the command center, shoulder-to-shoulder, their stances those of men ready to fight. He saw Bowie in the corridor, nearing their end. Movement caught his eye on another screen, and displayed there was a bot half the size of Bowie treading between rows of amniotic tanks, blue light glistening on the steel of its four arms.

Part 4