Supernatural Forces

A long, strange trip

Crops wilt and wither for miles in every direction. A lone scarecrow slumps against its post; the once proud sentry reduced to empty, tattered rags that twitch out their death throes in the lifeless breeze.

In the distance an engine roars...

“You're sick of hangin’ around and you’d like to travel; get tired of travelin’ and you want to settle down. I guess they can’t revoke your soul for tryin’...”

Dean taps his fingers against the wheel half heartedly while he sings along out of key, the lyrics hitting a bit too close to home of late to evoke any real sense of pleasure within him, but he gives a grim smile anyway - he’s got a cure for that.

The sleek black ‘67 Chevy Impala fishtails as he reaches around the driver’s seat, fingers searching the cooler in the back for the coldest bottle. Satisfied, he rights the Impala’s course, twists off the cap and cranks the stereo volume all the way up.

Sometimes the light’s all shinin' on me; other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been.

“Sure got that right,” he mutters to no one in particular. The last few bars of the song play out the Grateful Dead’s dirge as it trickles out of the speakers like centuries old grave-dirt, coating everything it touches with the gray patina of death.

Dean chokes back a laugh at the irony and pushes down on the gas. The dead are never grateful, they’re a pain in the ass plain and simple.

Back to the radio and the DJ is announcing the next song; "...and we continue our morning of Rock with the classic track ‘Here I Go Again’ by the legendary Whitesnake." He sounds so damn happy it’d be no great surprise if he pissed rainbows and unicorns after his morning coffee.

Normally Dean would piss a few rainbows of his own at the promise of Whitesnake turned up to eleven but today all it does is remind him of everything he’s lost and everything he can never be. Everything he can never have. He drains his beer and angrily pitches the bottle through the open window where it shatters against a pockmarked and weather-worn Route 35 sign.

“Sam.” He nudges his sleeping brother in the passenger seat. Nothing, nada, zilch, no response. He doesn’t even twitch.

“Sammy!” This time the nudge isn’t a nudge at all, it’s a shove. Sam’s head bounces off of the quarter-light with a dull ‘thunk’, rolling his brain around inside his skull like jello in a jar.

“What the fuck, Dean?” Sam jolts upright with a start and glares at his brother before taking in the vast expanse of dead cornfields which pen them in on both sides. He’s been asleep since they left Des Moines - it wasn’t like he got much rest there, what with Dean going at it like a rabbit on crack with a waitress in the next room.

‘Asshole’ he thinks. They’ve been on the road way too long, trailing news reports of grave robbers across the state line into Iowa, bouncing from one place to the next. And now? Now they’re in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere. Drifting. Just following the road.

Dean ignores his brother’s outburst - it was rhetorical anyway - and continues staring blankly at the road ahead. Bugs splatter against the windshield; winged suicide bombers shedding their intestinal payload across the glass in a rancid display of pus colored goo.

“Beer?” Sam asks. That was rhetorical too - he’s already retrieved a cold one from the back and twisted off the cap by the time Dean grunts his approval and flicks on the wipers to rid the Chevy of the insectoid terrorists.

“Why are we here Sammy? Why are we driving into America’s asshole over a bunch of damn grave robbers?”

Well Dean, while I was awake all night listening to you pound that bottle-blond waitress into a cockroach ridden motel mattress, I noodled about on the internet for several hours on account of the lack of complimentary ear-plugs...

“Because there’s something going on Dean. I traced all the reports from every town back to a Military database.”

“And?” Dean barks. “What did you find?”

Sam chokes down the urge to strangle his brother. “Nothing,” he says calmly. “I found nothing. It’s Military. Encrypted. They’ve locked it up and thrown away the key - it stinks worse than shit in July.” He pauses. “Oh, I actually like this song.”

Truckin’ got my chips cashed in, keep truckin', like the do-dah man. Together, more or less in line, just keep truckin’ on...

It’s the same song. ‘Truckin’’ by the Grateful Dead. Dean pokes and swivels the controls on the stereo, but the song doesn’t change.

Well that's pretty damn weird.

“So you think it’s a cover-up. All these towns, all these stories leading back to the same source.”

“Exactly,” Sam replies and pulls a map from underneath his seat. He thumbs through the dog-eared booklet and taps the page. “Take a left here.”

“Fuck.” Dean spins the wheel and hauls up on the handbrake while his feet do a cat on a hot tin roof tap-dance over the Impala’s pedals. Tires churn and spit gravel into the hairpin bend, violating at least a half-dozen road laws in the process. The lyrics repeat.

The DJ is gone now, it’s just music. ‘In my time of Dying’ is followed by ‘Spirit in the Sky’ and ‘Don’t fear the Reaper’. Dean most certainly does fear the Reaper, he's got no desire to be Lucifer's bitch again anytime soon, but he swallows the unease resting like a tab of acid on the tip of his tongue; feels it slide into the back of his throat and slither down his gullet.

He can feel it in his chest like a giant mouthful of mashed potato, clogging his esophagus, his airways, his stomach.

It’s been more than three hours of endless landscape flying by on either side. The lump of metaphorical mash is still stuck in Dean’s innards between one internal junction and the next. The cooler’s been empty for a while now but even good old beer hasn’t been able to wash the sinking feeling away.