Really seriously omg I could not be later… HAPPY BIRTHDAY TERRANEANBLUES!! I suck for taking so long but better late than never is a GOOD philosophy:D

Disclaimer: The Winchesters aren't mine and they never will be :)

Dean’s been dared to spend the night in a haunted house by some kids at school who don’t like him. Only the house isn’t haunted and what’s actually lurking in the halls is a lot worse.

Monsters and Movie Sets

So, in retrospect, Dean realized that allowing a group of overgrown bullies to push him into bad decisions (uh, like spending the whole night in a gigantic haunted farmhouse, that kind of bad decision?) was… well, exactly that – a bad decision.

Dean’s school in small-town Wyoming (and wasn’t that a surprise, a small town in Wyoming) was full of self-righteous idiots who didn’t appreciate the new kid. And when they decided he was the new bait for all the school’s bullies (and in a school of only two hundred students, there was a crazy number of bullies), the whole damn school seemed to decide his trial by fire with a single-mindedness bordering on the supernatural…

…Or worthy of the Borg…

“Damnit Sammy. Freakin’ Star Trek…”

They’d challenged him to spend the night in the most haunted abandoned farmhouse around. And, like an idiot, he’d said yes, because he wanted to get through the rest of the school year without all the crap he’d put up with for the first half.

It turned out that this craptastic town wasn’t just one of Dad’s random stops to earn money before returning to the road. No, Dad had found a surprisingly nice house with an amazingly good rental price and a job in garage that gave him just the right number of hours so he could work and hunt all in one perfect package. Sam was especially happy because it looked like he would start and finish the year in the same school. It was good to see Sam happy, because at the age of thirteen he was starting to show some worrying teenage behavior.

Dean wondered if his Dad would let them stay in town once he found out about this little supernatural escapade.

But alas, the allegedly haunted house had absolutely no ghosts creeping around its vast halls. Dean had come prepared to deal with ghosts – carrying rock salt rounds for the shotgun and lighter fuel to deal with any bodies. He’d also brought his dad’s Glock, figuring it never hurt to be prepared for anything. And now Dean wished he’d known about the lack of ghosts so he could’ve left the salt-loaded shotgun at home in favor of more bullets for the Glock, because this place had a problem far worse than ghosts.

The zombified kind of worse.

“Zombies,” Dean muttered. “Gets funnier every time I hear it.”

Yes, he had been thrust into a massive house brimming with zombies, actual zombies that shuffled, moaned, drooled and tried to bite him. He’d been in the old place for hours and he was still finding members of the undead moseying around.

Dean’s hand rested on the Glock, mentally reviewing how many bullets were still left inside it (ten) and how many spare clips he had (two, both with seventeen rounds). Once he was out of bullets, he only had rock salt left and that would do fuck all against zombies, unless one happened to have an allergy to the stuff… which was unlikely. The bastards didn’t die easily. Took between three and five bullets to the head to take them down, and they had been crawling out the woodwork ever since he’d discovered the first one.

And there was worse to come, when Dean made his way back home and found one very pissed off father waiting for him at the kitchen table. He knew John hadn’t really believed the story I’ve gotta go work on a project with some guys from school. I’ll be back tomorrow, and the missing weapons would definitely give Dean away. That, and the stench of his clothes would set off all of his dad’s alarms. Yeah, Dean was pretty much screwed. He could see the future clearly. It would go like this:

“Why don’t you tell me the truth about where you were last night son?” John would then take a sip of coffee, arm stiff with all the emotions of a displeased parent and eyes never once leaving Dean’s.

And then Dean, knowing there was no more room for lies, would give up the truth: “Yeah, so, um, I didn’t come home last night ‘cause I was actually fighting off hordes of zombies. See, a bunch of kids in my class thought freaking out the new kid would be funny but unfortunately for all of us, what they didn’t know…”

And then, before he could finish, Dean would receive:

One: the worst beating of his life (for being stupid enough try and prove himself to a group of teenagers and for not knowing when to get out of dodge and call for back up).

Two: the worst lecture of his life (see above reasons as to why said lecture would burn his ears ruby red).

Three: the worst grounding of his life, which would mean more chores, training and hell…

When John Winchester doled out punishment, he didn’t go for half measures.

Dean headed deeper into the old farmhouse, once again grateful that the place still had electricity. When his classmates had tossed him in here, one of the girls (Diane, was that her name?) had disappeared briefly with a flashlight and moments later all the lights in the entire house flickered on. She returned and gave him the flashlight. He didn’t need it – he had one in his backpack – but he took it anyway.

“You’ll need it more than we will,” she had told him, sweeping a hand through her dark blond hair and giving him an appraising stare. “Still think you’ll make it through the whole night? We’re being pretty kind, giving you the lights and all.”

He hadn’t responded and had turned to leave, but another of the girls, Nancy, had told him to leave his cell phone. He’d handed it over, knowing just how much crap his father would give him for losing it, turned away and disappeared through the first door he could find, which had quickly revealed another of the farmhouse’s surprises. Whoever had owned this place apparently thought eclectic was the coolest game in town because damn was this place random. It was as though every member of the family had been given free license to do whatever they wanted to the various wings and floors, and none of it matched. The place had been added on to so many times it was impossible to tell what was original and what wasn’t. There were rooms that belonged in a school, others that were so ultra modern the whiteness made Dean’s head hurt, more rooms that looked refreshingly homely and normal, a couple that were dusty hospital rooms and one that could only be described as futuristic, but it was the 1960s answer to futuristic and Dean was having to stifle all urges to burn the whole place down.

And oh how he wanted to cause some major destruction but therein was the other problem: he was locked in, therefore meaning burning the place down would probably involve burning himself down too. And the whole being locked in thing was what made his current situation a really big huge dumbass mistake on his part.

The kids who’d locked him in here were the reason for the zombies. Apparently boredom and too many X-Files episodes equalled experimentation with African necromancy, because that kind of information was all the rage on the forums of ilovedeadthings dot com. And what better way to see if your undead creations did what they did in the movies than to test them out on the new guy at school who didn’t fit in?

Howhad Dad not known about all the desecrated graves? There had to be tons of the damn things! He’d taken out five zombies already and seen at least three who had rotted into piles of useless flesh that uttered desperate moans of hunger. Who knew how many more he’d have to waste before he either escaped or made it through until morning when his classmates would let him out…

…at which point he’d probably lock them all in their funhouse and see how they liked it.

What was it they’d said to him?

Oh, yeah.

“We bet that you can’t take one night in the old house. You look like a coward. I bet the ghosts would scare you shitless.”

Dean had bet he’d scare the ghosts shitless and… well, suffice to say the conversation with the little gang of high school evildoers had ended up with him locked in here.

At least he’d thought to bring weapons other than the shotgun, because if he hadn’t…

Shaking off the grim thoughts of the could-have-beens, Dean stepped out of a library that screamed medieval castle (right down to the torch-holding sconces that showed evidence of use) and into a hallway covered in graffiti. It was impossible to tell if it was vandalism or the owner’s version of good home décor. The zombie shuffling towards him, complete with the pitiful groaning and horrific odor, got Dean’s mind back in the game.

Unfortunately for Dean, this zombie had obviously been in its grave for quite some time before its sort-of resurrection and its clothes were gone. Dean wished more than anything that he hadn’t seen this undead dude’s once proud family jewels hanging by threads, but soon the poor bastard was properly dead again, thankfully falling face down.

Dean followed the hallway as it turned to the right and revealed a door. It opened onto a massive dining room, complete with a huge chandelier and a table that could seat twenty people. He saw the massive windows and hit on the idea of smashing them open, getting outside and torching the whole place. But a quick inspection told him that the windows weren’t real – they were frames without glass set against black backdrops.

“What the hell?”

Dean turned back to the room, his eyes taking in the discarded cutlery, chairs and the silent grandfather clock. A thin layer of dust clung to everything but Dean could see where people had traced their names onto the table. Diane, Theo, Nancy, Jack, Taylor, Carter… Dean knew each and every one of them.

And they were going to regret putting him in here.

There was a staircase on the opposite end of the dining hall and it led to a balcony that wrapped around the entire room. It was up there that Dean finally discovered why the house was in such a random state of decoration.

It was a movie set. There were old cameras, lights, scripts and even a director’s chair or two lining the wooden floor of the balcony. Dean looked at the titles on the scripts but nothing was familiar to him. Nevertheless, he could definitely appreciate how cool a place like this would be to a bunch of teenagers looking for something to do outside of school. He may have been taught that abandoned homes were havens of the supernatural, but who wouldn’t want to explore a place like this?

Something sounded out in the distance, causing Dean to look up. Listening intently he could hear footsteps, steady and determined, pacing towards him from not too far away. He gripped the gun tighter, suspecting it wasn’t a zombie that was coming his way but not willing to be entirely unprepared.

But the footsteps stopped and when they did, Dean could tell there was a hushed argument being held between at least three people. He couldn’t hear the words but he felt his lips curve into a grin as the distant voices overran each other. Sounded like they’d found their bullet-ridden zombies.

Dean began moving again. He’d spotted another door, this one directly above the one he’d used to enter the dining room. Just as his hand landed on the handle, the awful sound of screeching electrical feedback blasted out across the room. Dean tried to find the speakers but he couldn’t see any. What the hell was going on now?

The noise died as suddenly as it had screamed out and a voice began to speak. It was Theo, the ringleader of the little gang that had locked him in here.

“You bastard! What the hell did you do to our zombies?”

Dean nearly called out a response, but then he realized that they probably couldn’t hear him. PA systems didn’t work two ways after all.

“You weren’t supposed to kill them! It’s supposed to be the other way around!”

And wasn’t that a comforting thought, Dean mused with a raised eyebrow. Had they done this to other people before him?

“You’re gonna pay. You’re gonna beg and plead for your life before we’re done with you.”

The lights died.

Dean grabbed the flashlight Diane had given him, thumbing it on. The strong beam cut through the darkness, catching the chandelier and making it sparkle.

“You think you can actually kill them all? You don’t even know how many we have. And we can make more. It’s a lot easier than you think.”

The next voice to speak was female. It was Diane, the girl who’d given him the flashlight. “By the way, in case you thought we were going to let you out in the morning, we won’t. We lied. You can stay here and you can just die. You don’t belong in our school or our town.”

“You won’t find your way out,” a third voice added. This was Carter, the smallest member of the little group and probably the brains behind it too, if his straight A status at school was anything to go by. “But if you do,” he laughed, the high-pitched noise of a kid late to hit puberty. “We’ve got guns too.”

Dean wasted no more time. He opened the door and went through into another hallway. This part of the house had been converted into the deck on an ocean liner, complete with portholes, life preservers and cabin doors. But none of it was real. Frustrating, yes. Real, not so much. The doors were just shapes carved into solid wood and the windows, like those in the dining hall, were set against fake daytime skies.

But there had to be another way out of this place. It couldn’t have only one entrance. He decided that the only way was up. Maybe he could get onto the roof, climb down to the ground and get away. He’d have to take their van of course (even though the damn thing screamed soccer mom loud and clear), but he knew how to hotwire just about anything and he really didn’t have any qualms about stealing from these bastards.

The boat set’s exit was the door to the captain’s office. Dean threw the white door open and found himself another two zombies to deal with. These two were much more recently dead than the naked one he’d had to deal with. Both female and both old, they were dressed in the simple clothing of those waiting burial or cremation. Neither showed any signs of decomposition and both took a lot of killing, emptying the clip Dean had in his gun and taking half of the bullets in his second. So, the group were getting their dead from graves and funeral homes.

His Dad had to have known about this. Missing bodies were always a sign of something bad. Why hadn’t his dad picked up on this before? But Dean didn’t let his imagination get too carried away with images of John Winchester riding in to save the day, Sammy in tow.

The re-dead corpses continued to reek as Dean explored the prop room he had found himself in. Rows upon rows of costumes lined the long, narrow room. On the right and left were massive shelves, filled with everything from books to fake weapons and telephones. Dean couldn’t see a door in the darkness but he knew going back the way he came wasn’t an option. He pushed his way through the clothes, amazed at the weight of them. He couldn’t help but wonder why everything had been left here. Didn’t studios usually sell off props to make more money? What had made them abandon this place so quickly?

The dust was making him sneeze, his saliva tasting like he’d been chewing on dust bunnies. He pushed onwards, the arms and legs of the empty clothing brushing the skin of his forearms, draping themselves over his shoulders and catching under his feet. He couldn’t see far enough in front of him to tell if there was going to be another door. He coughed as he swallowed a lungful of dust and before he could recover, the clothes came at him and a zombie fell forwards. Dean held out his hands, the response an instinct rather than any kind of good defence. He fell backwards, crashing hard onto the ground. His mouth and nose were assaulted by death and he had to hold his breath to stop himself from up chucking. This zombie was another graveyard relic, thankfully less naked than some of the others featured in tonight’s creature feature, but its gender was lost to rot.

Dean’s hands were full with zombie shoulders, his gun on the ground to his right side. The zombie was trying to lean in and take a bite out of his neck but Dean kept it back, grossed out as the damn thing began to drool over him.

“Get off, get off, get off!”

Pulling his legs up, Dean managed to plant his feet on the zombie’s chest and push it back. Off balance and unsteady in its undeath, the zombie collapsed backwards. Dean sat up, spotted his gun and grabbed it. Two shots between the eyes later, the zombie was returned to the dead again. Dean ejected the clip. Six rounds left until he had to reload with the last of his bullets. Pretty soon he was going to have to start dodging zombies and just hope he found his way out before he got himself trapped and killed.

Dean finally escaped the costumes and found what he had been looking for: a door. This one was already open, a bathroom beyond.

A bathroom, and a girl.

Redheaded and wide-eyed with shock, Nancy didn’t know what to do when Dean aimed the gun at her. She tried to grab her flashlight off of the sink, but Dean fired a warning shot and her hand snapped back with her shocked yelp.

Their eyes met and Dean kept the gun aimed at Nancy’s chest. “You’re going to tell me how to get out. And then you’re gonna help me burn this place down.”

“Wh-what? N-no! I can’t. I won’t.”

Dean walked right up to her and placed the gun against her head. “You will.” He was amazed at how steady his voice and hand were. He’d never held a gun at a person before, let alone a teenaged girl. “You and your friends aren’t gonna feed me to your pets.” He grabbed her shoulder and shoved her towards the bathroom’s other door. “You’re idiots, all of you. Do you even know what you’re messing with?”

“Of course we do! We created them, didn’t we? We made sure they were just like the ones in videogames and movies. That way we know what they’ll do and…”

Videogames and movies? Dean rolled his eyes. “I really, really hate it when people are this stupid.”

Nancy laughed, despite the gun still touching the back of her head. “You’re the stupid one. You walked right in here, didn’t even think that maybe there was more to this than us trying to prove what a coward you are.”

“Hey, at least I brought guns.”

“Yeah, and what kind of freak does that?”

“I’m the freak?” Arguing with this girl was more annoying than arguing with Sam. “Take a look in the mirror bitch. Maybe you’ll surprise yourself.”

The bathroom was connected to yet another hallway. Dean had given up trying to map this place in his mind because had he mentioned that the layout didn’t make a lick of sense? He just gave Nancy another shove and told her to keep moving.

“The others will come looking for me, you know. They’re already patrolling the house anyway, making sure you get what’s coming to you. When they find us, they’ll make you pay.”

Blah, blah, blah. “Stop talking.”

And Nancy did stop talking. She stopped talking and instead opened her mouth and let out a scream worthy of a banshee. Dean was shocked to stillness, but only for a single moment. Then he was acting as his father had taught him: take out the threat before it takes out you.

He cracked Nancy round the back of the head and she dropped like the dead. Remembering that she was the one who had taken his phone, he patted down her pockets until he found it. The screen read Searching for Signal. Looked like he definitely wouldn’t be calling for backup any time soon. He briefly wondered if that excuse would fly with Dad. Shoving the phone into his back pocket, Dean left Nancy flat out in the middle of the hallway and sprinted away. He had to get lost before she was found.

The hallway turned an abrupt left and Dean skidded around, coming face to face with another of the undead. Actually it was more belly to face, because the group had created a zombie from a dead child and that was just taking it way too far. It wailed at him, out of hunger and need, but to Dean it didn’t sound like a monster. It sounded like a lost child who wanted his mother and as Dean put two bullets through the dead child’s head, he fought to keep his emotions in check. He’d taken out a monster, not murdered a child.

The door just led onto yet another hallway, this one a blank canvass strewn with further evidence of the movie business. Alongside the piles upon piles of scripts, meters of cable that didn’t seem to connect to anything other than the walls and more stage lights pushed into dusty corners, there were discarded food wrappers and glass soda bottles that looked antique. Dean snagged a few, figuring maybe Dad could sell them for good money.

This area of the farmhouse had been converted into a couple of offices that still looked as though their owners would come waltzing in out of the 1950s and resume typewriting at their cluttered desks. There was still paper wound into one and Dean read the half-finished document. It was a letter to the head of a studio in Hollywood, dated 1955.

Dueto many of us being added to the infamous Hollywood Black List, the studio and all related productions have been closed immediately, with no possibility of a return to usage. We would hasten to ensure you that not a single person working here is a member of the Communist Party, neither do we have any such sympathies, but we have been listed nonetheless and must now face…

Dean found it easy to imagine the kind of paranoia that had once swept the nation. After all, he lived in a constant state of paranoia, waiting for the time when there would be an unexpected attack. He left the unfinished letter and the offices behind, taking the winding hallway along until it opened up onto another set of stairs. This stairwell came complete with a directory listing the all of the sets and what floors they could be found on. Upstairs there were only more storage and dressing rooms but it was the top floor and from there Dean was sure he would find roof access and escape.

He headed up, treading lightly and keeping his ears tuned for all other sounds. He could hear people on the lower floors, their echoing voices still at a distance. Dean knew it was the other kids and not zombies, but the knowledge didn’t make him feel any safer.

He reached the top of the stairs just as a light shone out from the first floor. Dean flicked off his own flashlight and pressed himself back against the wall as Theo, Diane and a new voice (it had to be Taylor) argued about Nancy.

“Look, just split up and find her,” Theo said. “She could be in trouble.”

“Or she could have turned on us,” Taylor replied, her voice tempered with simmering anger. “Maybe she went soft. She was always the one saying shit like…”

“She wouldn’t do that and you know it,” Diane snapped, “So shut it and find her.”

“How many zombies have we got left?” Theo asked.

“Carter said only two and they’re the oldest.” Taylor let out an annoyed grunt. “Shouldn’t have brought the sonuvabitch here.”

“How were we to know he’d do something like this?” Diane shot back, tone full of exasperation. “It’s not like we knew he’d come in here and shoot them all. No one else we brought here did that.”

“Yeah well, we’ll make sure we’re better prepared next time,” Theo muttered. “Can’t have something like this happen again.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right, side with her.”

“Diane, shut up and get to the top floor. Taylor, you’re with me on the second. Carter and Jack have the first floor covered. Jack’s covering the front door.”

“Good,” Taylor said. “We need someone who’s prepared to shoot first, ask questions later.”

Dean pressed himself against the wall before sliding up the stairs as quickly and quietly as he could. He listened as the trio began walking upwards. He didn’t have long before Diane would be on his level. At the top of the stairs, Dean stepped into what would hopefully be his last long hallway of the night. This one was clearly a functional area rather than a set, it’s drab brown and green décor positively dull next to everything else this studio had in store.

Weapon and flashlight both held up, Dean began jogging. He had to put as much distance between himself and Diane as possible. The doors he went by opened into dressing rooms that still had their mirrors and storage rooms so full of junk that Dean couldn’t hope to see past the surface. One dressing room housed a zombie, but rather than shoot it, Dean closed the door and moved on, hearing the zombie’s pitiful escape attempts until they faded out of earshot. He sent spiders scurrying as he went, massive black things that had clearly claimed this territory as their own. At least the rats and mice he could see were dead, their carcasses as rotted as the zombies.

And right there his imagination cooked up one hell of a nightmare: zombie rats, crawling all over your body and chewing you to death slowly with their tiny teeth…

The loud noise of a floorboard creaking underfoot soon had Dean’s mind back where it should be. He let out a curse. That couldn’t have gone unheard.

“Is that you Dean? Did you really find your way up here?” It was Diane, calling from the hallway’s entrance. “There’s no way out you know, not up here.”

Dean kept moving. He continued to check every room, hoping he’d find one with a window or an access hatch to the attic. But he had no such luck.

“D’you know why we do it? D’you know why we put people in here with our zombies?”

Dean sighed. Here came the crazy.

“Because you deserve it. All of you outsiders, who come into town and think you can take our parents’ jobs and fill our whole town with the trash you people associate with. None of you are good enough, worthy enough, to walk our streets.”

Ah, it was the overblown ego kind of crazy, a fun type to deal with and there was absolutely no way to reason with them.

“You and your family are unclean and unwelcome and you will be made to leave, one way or another.”

Well, at least she wasn’t claiming God On High gave her and her friends the authority to cleanse the town. Nope, Diane was a straight up Nazi bitch who liked to dabble in necromancy with a few friends while reading Mein Kampf.

Dean reached the end of the hallway and there it was, the top prize. The window was huge, real and it was definitely the early light of dawn he could see. He looked at his watch and saw that it was nearly five in the morning. He’d been in the house since ten the previous night, felt every single one of those hours weighing on him and knew that John Winchester would not be letting his son see a bed any time soon. After all, today was a school day…

But enough of the thinking. Dean tried to open the window but that was a no go. He heard Diane picking up her pace just before he shot the window. Glass exploded outwards and Dean used the shotgun to clear a gap big enough for fit through.

“Stop!”

He turned and saw Diane, angry and tense, a gun clenched in her hand. She held it like she knew what she was doing, but the stance was too staged. She was copying someone else (videogames and movies) and Dean wondered if she really had it in her to shoot him.

“You’re not getting out of here. No way.”

“If you’re so intent on killing me, why bring me all the way out here and use zombies? Guns and bullets work just as well.”

“Guns and bullets can be traced. Bite marks? Not so much. Besides,” Diane took a step towards Dean. “You’ve met most of our other victims tonight. That’s the beauty of this spell y’see. The zombies pass on the magic that keeps them moving to anyone they bite.”

“So what, you made a few zombies and then just let them make more for you?”

“You catch on quick. Now, drop the gun.”

Dean raised it and aimed it at her instead. “Why don’t you?”

Diane took another step forwards. “Drop it or I’ll drop you.”

“That’s a pretty cheesy line,” Dean returned, settling into his stance. If he had to shoot her, he would aim to injure and not kill. But if it came to it…

“I’ll count to five. One.”

“Can you really kill me?”

“Two.”

“You really think you can end a life with your own hands?”

“Three.”

“You wanna be a murderer?”

“Four. Drop the gun Dean.”

“They’ll find you. They’ll find you all and when they do you’ll…”

“Five!”

She pulled the trigger before Dean could pull his. Nothing happened.

Dean nearly burst out in laughter. Instead, he told her coolly, “You left the safety on.”

She tried to disengage it, but Dean moved faster than she knew how to work the gun. He kicked it out of her hands before punching her square in the face. He floored her with a solid jab to the stomach. Painfully winded and choking for breath, Diane stayed down. Dean took the gun and went back to the window. He spotted the van they’d used to drive out the farmhouse, and saw that they’d left it unguarded. Dean pulled a lighter out of his pocket. He looked once at Diane and knew, despite everything she believed in, that he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t burn this place down when there were people inside, no matter how screwed in the head they were, because he’d seen someone burn to death before and he couldn’t inflict that kind of pain on anyone.

He could, however, willingly inflict John Winchester on them.

Pocketing the lighter, sliding the Glock into the back of his jeans and tossing the flashlight at Diane (it hit her on the head with satisfying bump), Dean looked out of the window again and planned his descent. There was nothing he could do except lower himself down with his arms and then freefall to the ground. Hoping he wouldn’t break any bones, Dean climbed out the window backwards, sparing one last moment to give Diane good advice.

“Don’t try calling for help because I promise, I will shoot you.”

And then he was gone, out of the window and dropping down to the ground. He landed hard, the pain so brutal he wondered if he’d sent spears through his heels and into his legs. There was no time to stand and moan though, because now he could hear Diane screaming (failing to hit Nancy’s high notes) and lights were coming on all over the house again.

Limping at first but soon settling back into a proper rhythm, Dean sprinted to the van. It was locked but the dull end of the shotgun soon fixed that little problem. Dean wasted no time hotwiring the vehicle, achieving a personal best and getting the engine going just as teenagers began spilling out of the farmhouse’s main door. But the van was moving, with no regards for any speed limits, and Dean was soon back on the old road that led to the strangely remote movie set, heading for state road and home.

Five-thirty was coming around before Dean got any signal on his phone and he knew that he had to ignore all the punishment he was going to receive and call home.

His Dad answered before the first ring ended. “Dean, you better tell me where the hell you are.”

“Yeah, hi Dad. So, don’t s’pose you’ve been looking into missing corpses lately?” It wasn’t the best way to answer an irate father but Dean was too elated and too tired to pull together any kind of disciplined response.

“Don’t tell me you were working my case on your own.”

“No Dad. Your case just got solved by me and…”

“Dean, I wouldn’t play the smartass right now.” That chilled tone was a kiss of death. Dean’s stomach clenched. He wasn’t dodging any of the punishment coming his way.

“Sorry sir.”

“Explain yourself, now.”

Dean told him everything in as condensed a version as possible.

John was silent but Dean was pretty sure he could hear his dad thinking. “All right Dean, you’re gonna come home and then you’ll take me back to this place. I’ll deal with the kids…”

And Dean was pretty sure his dad would put the fear of God in them, even if he had to lock them all in a room with a zombie to do it.

“And then we’ll come home.”

No more was needed. John Winchester had spoken.

Dean was going to be grounded until he turned twenty-one.

“Understood Dean?”

He swallowed the sigh of the condemned. “Yessir. I’ll be home soon.”

“And don’t forget…”

“Dump the van I’m in and wipe it down before I get anywhere near home. Got it.”

“Good.”

Dean moved to hang up but heard his name before he did. Pulling the phone back to his ear, Dean swallowed hard before asking: “What is it Dad?”

“Pick up some milk before you come home. Sammy’ll want some before school.”

The End.