The Unholy Cause E-Book

Joe Schreiber

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

A Supernatural novel that reveals a previously unseen adventure for the Winchester brothers, from the hit TV series! Twenty-seven years ago, Sam and Dean Winchester lost their mother to a mysterious and demonic supernatural force. In the years after, their father, John, taught them about the paranormal evil that lives in the dark corners and on the back roads of America...and he taught them how to kill it. Way back in April 1862, Confederate Captain Jubal Beauchamp leads a charge across a Georgia battleground... Fast forward to 2009 and a civil war re-enactment becomes all too real. When Sam and Dean head down south to investigate they find that history has got somewhat out of hand...

Leseprobe

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by Rebecca Dessertine & David Reed

SUPERNATURAL

THE UNHOLY CAUSE

JOE SCHREIBER

Based on the hit CW series SUPERNATURAL created by Eric Kripke

TITAN BOOKS

Supernatural: The Unholy Cause

ISBN: 9781848569249

Published by

Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St

London

SE1 0UP

First edition April 2010

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

SUPERNATURAL ™ & © 2010 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Cover imagery: Front cover image courtesy of Warner Bros.; grunge flag © Shutterstock.

Visit our website: www.titanbooks.com

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States.

For my brother Dan

ON FAME’S ETERNAL CAMPING GROUND THEIR SILENT TENTS ARE SPREAD AND GLORY GUARDS WITH SOLEMN ROUND THE BIVOUACS OF THE DEAD.

- Plaque at Gettysburg

CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY-FOUR

THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SEVEN

THIRTY-EIGHT

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ONE

Beauchamp was ready to die.

He stood at the top of the hill, staring down the wide green slope to the creek, silent in the midday heat. The birds had fallen quiet in the live oaks, and even the breeze had gone still, creating a deep, expectant hush that enveloped the entire field below. The world seemed to be holding its breath.

Then he saw them—soldiers in blue lining up along the rocky rampart on the other side of the creek. Even from this distance Beauchamp could see their muskets and the buttons on their uniforms glinting in the sun.

A moment later, they attacked.

Beauchamp didn’t think. He charged full-tilt down the hill toward the high grass along the creek. His vision jostled, jerking up and down and side-to-side with the force of his own velocity. He could see the muddy creek water now, glinting through the reeds like broken glass. Grasshoppers and tiny insects flew out of the path of his boots. His legs felt as if they had detached from him, pinioning forward hard and fast, gobbling up swathes of the uneven field in long, hungry strides.

Behind him, there was a roar as his men launched themselves over the hilltop and followed him in his headlong charge.

Down below, Union riflemen rose up and fired from the other side of the embankment, the cracks of their guns sounding like heavy books being dropped on a library floor.

Then he was in the middle of it.

Beauchamp’s own soldiers began firing back, running while they were shooting, stopping only to reload or when minie balls found them and pitched them permanently to the ground with unuttered cries of pain still lodged in their throats. Men were screaming now, letting out the Rebel yell or shrieks of agony.

Often it was hard to tell one from the other.

He sprinted the final few feet to the bottom of the hill. Breathing hard, staggering a little, he slowed his step until he was trotting, and then came to a complete halt in the middle of the clearing. All around him, his men were skirmishing hard and close, engaging the enemy on either side, filling his peripheral vision with the blurring, grunting work of hand-to-hand combat. A soldier flew past him and hit the ground, clutching his chest.

Beauchamp flicked the sweat from his eyes, focusing all his attention on one of the Union sharpshooters who stood behind the ridge, not twenty yards away.

He felt himself going absolutely still. Time seemed to freeze in its traces. He could smell the dust and gunpowder now, the cypress trees and the slow muddy odor of the creek, the smoke, sweat, and horses and coppery fresh blood, everything heightened to an almost agonizing degree. Everything else—the orders he’d been given, the town below that they were sworn to defend, the lives of the men around him—disappeared.

Even the sounds of battle dropped away until all he could hear was the pounding of his own heart.

The sharpshooter was a farm kid not much older than Beauchamp himself. He could see the Yankee’s musket, a .58 caliber Springfield like his own, pointing right at him. He saw the rifleman relax a little, confidence easing into the kid’s face as he drew a bead on his target. From this distance it would be almost impossible to miss.

Crack!

That was the Yankee’s musket, accompanied by the muzzle flash bright in the midday heat. Beauchamp saw the little puff of smoke drifting upward.

Smiling, he waited for it...

And felt nothing.

The Union soldier blinked, waiting for him to fall. Still smiling, Beauchamp reached down to pull out his bayonet. It was sharp enough that he could see the honed bevel, and he admired the way it caught the light.

Do it. Do it now.

Working carefully, he drew the tip across his own wrist, cutting through the skin so that the blood dripped directly onto his musket, running down its barrel. Then he pointed it at the Union soldier, drew in a breath, letting it out and squeezing the trigger at the same time.

The musket kicked hard against his shoulder, and the bluecoat’s head disappeared in a cloud of blood and skull fragments, his entire body blown backward by the force of the shot.

Beauchamp breathed.

Time broke and began to flow forward again. The sounds of the day returned. All around him, men were screaming—his men, the enemy’s men, all the men in this insane, blood-choked world. It made Beauchamp feel dizzy and ecstatic and drunk at the same time, as the 32nd surged past him to overwhelm the Yankee rampart.

Beauchamp raised one hand and visored his eyes against the glaring sun. Up ahead, in the direction of Mission’s Ridge, the Confederate flag was still flying high. Glimpsing it there, unfurled across the wide blue sky, he felt the walls of his throat tighten with emotion. He raised his musket again, but didn’t reload.

Instead, he aimed the barrel outward. Somewhere to his left, one of his fellow soldiers, a private named Gamble, was staring at him, mouth half-open.

“What—” Gamble was struggling to breathe, “what happened?”

Beauchamp just grinned at him. He could feel the air around his face vibrating a little, almost as if it was coming alive against his skin. The enigmatic majesty of the day was booming through him, like a shot of adrenaline straight to his neural plexus.

“I shot him.”

“You killed him?”

Beauchamp’s grin didn’t falter.

“That’s right,” he answered.

“But how?”

“Easy as pie,” Beauchamp said, and he turned the bloody musket around so that the bayonet was pointed straight at the private’s disbelieving face. With a thrust, he shoved the blade straight into Gamble’s right eye.

The private screamed, but it didn’t sound like a Rebel yell anymore—it was a yodeling squeal of pain and terror.

Like the noise a suckling pig makes beneath the butcher’s cleaver, Beauchamp mused.

Gamble collapsed, cupping his eyes, blood pouring through his fingers, and rolled onto his side. Beauchamp rammed the bayonet between his ribs, rolled him over, and stabbed him in the heart.

Silence.

Beauchamp looked up.

A hush had swept across the open field again. There wasn’t even so much as a whisper of breeze. All around him, on both sides of the barricade, men had lowered their weapons and were staring at him with expressions of sheer disbelief. It was as if God—or some other deity—had pulled the plug on the entire enterprise.

From where he stood, alone in the open field, Beauchamp looked past the rampart to the sawhorses that divided the field from the parking lot where rows of cars and RVs and motorcycles glinted in the sun. Spectators—men and women and kids—were all gaping at him. Some of them turned away, covering their children’s eyes.

A radio played tinny music. He could hear a woman’s voice, very clearly.

“That’s real blood, ain’t it?”

“Dave...?”

Another man in a Confederate uniform and slouch cap came jogging toward him, haversack slapping against his left hip. He stopped when he saw Beauchamp standing over the bleeding corpse of Gamble at his feet. His face looked pale, and for a second he couldn’t even speak.

“Dave. Jesus. Dude... what did you do?”

Beauchamp twisted his head around. He grinned again, placing the tip of the bayonet under his own chin, feeling the sharp tip against the soft part of the flesh.

“War is hell,” he said, and he shoved the blade upward.

TWO

Sam Winchester was dreaming.

He dreamt he was standing in front of a picture window in a high-roller’s suite at the Bellagio, with all the gaudy lights of Vegas spilled out below him like a handful of cheap jewelry.

Behind him, a smooth voice on the flat-screen plasma TV was giving him instructions for blackjack, an in-room tutorial that played twenty-four-seven on this particular channel.

Sam wasn’t listening.

Somehow, in the dream he understood that he’d come here to gamble and that he’d won—won big. Turning around, he saw piles of chips and cash heaped on the unmade bed next to an empty champagne bottle that nestled in a chrome bucket full of half-melted ice.

The voice on the TV droned on in the easy, mellifluous manner of a lounge magician’s patter.

“When the player chooses to double-down, it always behooves him to look at the dealer’s card first, and then his own.”

The voice changed, brightening a little.

“How about you, Sam? Do you know what the dealer’s holding?”

Sam glanced up at the screen. The face he saw there was familiar, from other dreams and nightmares through which he’d been suffering every night.

Lucifer.

“Sam?”

“Go away,” Sam said. His voice was pinched tight. A feeling of tension was gathering around his throat, hot friction taut against his skin, constricting his vocal cords. “Leave me alone.”

“Afraid I can’t do that, Sam,” Lucifer replied. “Not now. Not ever.”

Sam tried to respond, but this time nothing came out. He couldn’t even breathe.

“Look at yourself,” Lucifer said, and then he was standing next to Sam. “Take a good long look in the mirror and tell me what you see.”

Look at himself? That was easy. There was no shortage of mirrors in the suite.

He turned to the nearest one, fingers already clutching for whatever was tightening around his neck. But all he could detect in the mirror was a faint rippling of the skin around his throat.

Behind him, Lucifer started laughing.

“You won’t remember most of this when you wake up,” he said, almost sympathetically. “But you’ll know that I’m coming for you.”

Sam still couldn’t speak. Deep bruise-colored marks were appearing like a collar around his neck. He saw them darkening, forming like the imprints of invisible hands.

Fear—panic—sprung up in his belly like a cold spike.

He wanted to scream.

Somehow he understood that if he could just manage to make a noise, it would stop. The marks would vanish and he’d be able to breathe again.

But he couldn’t.

And he couldn’t.

And he—

“Hey! Hey, Sam. Drooler.” There was a hand, shaking him, and none too gently. “Yo! Wake up.”

Sam grunted, jerked backward and opened his eyes, lifting his head away from the window. Behind the wheel of the Impala, Dean regarded him with a look of brotherly amusement.

“Wipe your face off, man, you look like a freakin’ glazed donut.”

Without saying a word, Sam grabbed the rearview mirror and tilted it down, lifting his chin to look at his neck. It was unblemished, the skin normal. He let out a breath and sank back into his seat, feeling more wrung-out than relieved.

Dean glanced over at him again, his expression carefully neutral.

“Bad dream?”

“You could say that.” Sam could feel Dean waiting for more, but the imagery was already starting to fade, leaving only a nebulous sense of dread. Trying to articulate it now would only make his brother more suspicious. “Anyway, I’m fine.”

“Yeah?” Dean didn’t sound convinced.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” That was that.

Dean reached down to turn up the radio, where Lynyrd Skynyrd was trucking through one of the final iterations of ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’ The song had played twice in the last half-hour, but Dean dialed it up anyway, filling the silence with guitars and drums.

Sam found a fairly clean fast food napkin on the floor and wiped the corner of his mouth, then balled it up and peered out of the window at the scenery. Georgia pines and scrub oak flashed by—heavy forest. Beyond it lay miles of swampland interrupted only by the occasional plantation house, creeks, and hills—the same terrain that had challenged the soldiers of the North and South almost a hundred and fifty years earlier.

“How much further?” he asked.

“Shush, I love this part.” Dean turned the guitar solo up, lost in the moment, then came out of it. “Sorry, what’d you say?”

“You do realize we’re not in Alabama, right?”

“None of Skynyrd was from there, either.” Dean shrugged. “But you know where they recorded the song?”

“Let me guess—Georgia?”

Twenty minutes later they arrived at the cemetery.

* * *

The state police had cordoned off the front gates to keep the TV reporters out, along with what looked like at least a hundred curious onlookers. Some held homemade signs: “Cemetery Boy, We Love You” and “Come Home, Toby.” Driving through the crowd, Dean reached out of the window and flashed an FBI badge, and a trooper waved them through with the tired expression of an official long since exhausted with his duties.

Sam didn’t blame him. It was a zoo out there.

The graveyard itself was a sprawling old stretch of moss-covered swampland, dotted with ancient gray headstones, many of which sloped sideways or had fallen over, disappearing into the soft earth. The names had disappeared completely off many of the stones, leaving only smooth amnesiac marble.

Dean parked the Impala under a tall oak tree and he and Sam climbed out, wearing ill-fitting suits that clung to them in the heat. They walked toward the police cruisers and blue uniforms clustered a hundred yards ahead.

“So,” Dean said, “this kid, Cemetery Boy...”

“Toby Gamble,” Sam said.

“Four days ago he disappears from the house.”

“Right.”

“Nobody sees a thing.”

“As far as I know.”

“And then, yesterday morning...”

They stopped in front of the mausoleum where a few of the cops were gathered, drinking coffee. Most were staring at the words that had been scrawled directly on the stone in childish, dark reddish-brown letters.

HALP ME

“Kid isn’t much of a speller,” Dean commented.

“He’s only five.”

“Probably a product of home-schooling.”

“So are we.” Sam checked the pages he’d printed out earlier. “His mom confirmed that it’s his handwriting.”

“And the blood?”

“Sample’s still at the lab.”

“So that’s all we got?”

“That,” Sam said, “and this.”

He pointed over the hill. Dean looked at the headstones that stood on the western edge of the cemetery.

“Oh.”

The stones, dozens of them, were all splattered and streaked with the same crooked, spidery childish handwriting.

HALP ME HALP ME HALP ME HALP ME HALP ME

Dean nodded.

“At least he’s consistent.”

“His mother says she heard voices in his room the night before he disappeared.”

“What kind of voices exactly?”

“We can ask.” Sam turned and glanced back at a blonde woman who was standing next to the police. She was in her early twenties, but thin and tired in a way that made her look at least two decades older. It was easy to imagine her waiting tables on a Saturday night, bussing trays of empty bottles and getting pinched by drunken patrons while the jukebox yodeled out this month’s country anthem.

Moving closer, Sam could see that she was holding what looked like a pale blue rag, wringing it in her hands and clutching it to her chest. After a moment he realized it was a child’s t-shirt.

“I just want him back,” she was saying, her voice thick with barely-contained emotion. “I just want my boy back.”

“Ma’am?” Dean asked, stepping up next to her.

She jerked her head up, startled and red-eyed. The cop she had been talking to eyed them warily.

“Yes?”

“I’m Agent Townes, this is Agent Van Zandt, FBI. We were wondering if we could ask you a few questions about your son.”

“I’ve already talked to the police.”

“This will only take a minute.”

“I don’t... I’m sorry... I just don’t know if I can...”

“The voices you heard in your son’s bedroom,” Dean persisted, “what were they saying?”

“It was... words, some language I didn’t understand. Then they just kept saying his name. At first...” new tears began to well up in her eyes, “I just thought it was the TV. Then I heard him scream. I ran inside, but he was already gone.”

She shook her head, pale blue eyes flashing out over the cemetery, and held the t-shirt closer to her chest.

“When I heard about all of this, I thought...”

There was a sudden shriek from across the graveyard, and Sam and Dean spun around, searching for the source of the noise.

An African-American man was walking from between the tombstones, and he was carrying a young boy in his arms. The child’s entire upper body was splashed and splattered with scarlet, but he was alive, squirming in the man’s grip.

“You!” one of the cops shouted. “Freeze! Drop the boy, now!” He pulled his pistol and aimed it at the newcomer.

Sam scowled.

“Is that...?”

“Rufus?” Dean blinked. “What the hell...?”

Dean and Sam stepped toward their fellow hunter. The jittery policeman lowered his gun, puzzled by their familiarity with the apparently blood-soaked stranger.

Rufus Turner stopped and released the boy, who immediately ran over to his mother.

“It’s okay,” Rufus said, and he glanced down at his jacket. It too, was covered with red. “Except for the damn karo syrup all over my clothes.”

“Karo syrup?”

“Kid had a whole bottle of it stashed behind the trees over there.”

The boy was talking now. Though he was speaking in a low tone, his words were clear.

“Mommy, I don’t want to play this game anymore,” he said, hugging his mother—who suddenly looked as though she didn’t want to be anywhere near here. “I’m hungry, and my stomach feels funny.”

Then, abruptly, he threw up.

“Swell,” Dean muttered, and he cast a glance at Rufus. “I didn’t know you were on this one already.”

Rufus shrugged.

“I was in the neighborhood, headed over to the town of Mission’s Ridge. Thought I might stop in here first and see what’s what. Now my last clean shirt looks like somebody did heart surgery in it.”

“Sir, we’ve got some questions,” one of the plainclothes detectives said. “Would you mind coming with us?”

“You gonna pay my dry cleaning bill?” Rufus asked.

Sam glanced up.

“What’s the Mission’s Ridge thing?”

“Shooting during a Civil War re-enactment,” Rufus said quietly. “Couple of civilians died.”

“So?”

“The guns were replicas.” Rufus looked at them. “And they were covered in blood.”

“Real blood this time?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“That’s it?” Dean asked. “Where d’you hear about it?”

“Anonymous email tip. Source up in Maryland of all places.”

Dean scowled.

“Maryland?”

“Place called Ilchester. Why, have you heard of it?”

Dean turned to Sam, who was already staring at him.

“Who was your source?”

“I told you. Anonymous.”

“Then we’ll take that one,” Dean said. “Give us whatever you’ve got, and we’ll work it.”

“You sure? Why are you so interested?” Rufus asked.

“Forget it,” Dean said. “You go get your jacket cleaned.”

THREE

An hour later Dean took one hand off the wheel and pointed at the sign that stood on the right side of the two-lane highway.

WELCOME TO HISTORIC MISSION’S RIDGE,GEORGIA, FRIENDLIEST LITTLETOWN IN THE SOUTH“WE’RE DANG GLAD YOU’RE HERE!”

“See, I told’ya this was a good idea,” Dean said. “They’re dang glad.”

Sam glanced up from the open laptop on his knees.

“Wonder if the victims of the massacre enjoyed that famous Southern hospitality, too,” he said dryly.

“Hey. So what’s the Ilchester connection?” Dean asked.

Sam shook his head.

“Somebody wants us here.”

“Or doesn’t.”

“Either way...”

“Let’s call it what it is, Sammy,” Dean said. “St. Mary’s Convent in Ilchester, Maryland, is where you set Lucifer free. That’s not a coincidence.”

“I know.” Not wanting to dwell on it, Sam turned his attention to the outskirts. Crossing a set of train tracks, they reached the center of town.

From their vantage point, Mission’s Ridge consisted of a narrow main street with storefronts on both sides. Pedestrians milled around on the sidewalks, none of them in a hurry to get anywhere. Overhead, a banner announced the annual historical celebration and re-enactment of the Battle of Mission’s Ridge. Whole families of curiosity-seekers wandered in and out of antique shops and cheap-looking museums advertising Civil War relics, moonlight ghost tours, and historical photos of you and your family in “genuine old time costumes.”

None of them seemed particularly bothered by the recent shootings out on the battlefield.

They were driving through downtown proper now. Dean slowed down even more, finally easing the Impala to a stop. In front of them, a pair of tanned young women in denim cutoffs and halter-tops sauntered slowly by, one of them stopping and lowering her sunglasses to look in at Dean.

“On the other hand,” he shook his head, smiling, “I do love the South.”

Sam heard a wolf-whistle, and one of the women glanced up. From the other side of the street, two young Civil War soldiers in dusty Confederate uniforms and slouch caps walked in front of the Impala to meet the girls. The four of them stood in the intersection chatting, one of the girls reaching out to admire the soldiers’ muskets.

“Hey!” Dean shouted out of the side window. “Mason and Dixon! War’s over!”

The two soldiers ignored him. Dean blew the horn and one of the men raised an upturned finger in what Sam didn’t think was a historically-accurate gesture. Slowly the quartet moved away.

“Come on.” Sam couldn’t help a smile. “Battlefield’s on the other side of town.”

“Right.” Still the car remained where it sat.

“Dean.”

“What?”

“Focus.”

“I am, I am.” He was still watching the girls and the soldiers in the side-view mirror. “Man, a job with travel is supposed to come with a few perks.” Then he shrugged and turned to Sam. “Here, fix your tie, it’s crooked.” He reached over to help, and Sam flinched.

Dean frowned.

“What’s going on?”

Sam hesitated.

“It’s that dream I had earlier. I don’t really remember much of it, except there was something around my throat, squeezing. And I couldn’t breathe.”

“That’s it?”

“I think so.”

Dean didn’t look convinced, and Sam couldn’t blame him. Nevertheless, he didn’t remember the details, and any attempt to describe the vague feeling of dread would just make Dean even more on edge. If he did recall more—about the voice that had spoken to him, and what it had said—he’d share it.

Until then, he’d keep his silence.

Time to change the subject.

“On the bright side,” he said, “at least we’ve got a wi-fi signal.”

Turning back to the laptop, Sam scrolled through the various links his “Mission’s Ridge” search had dredged up. There were ample references to the historic battle, and the town’s annual re-enactment. But most of it was overshadowed by the previous day’s reports of a Civil War re-enactor who had inexplicably managed to kill himself and two others with a replica musket and a bayonet no sharper than a butter knife.

The details matched what Rufus had told them back in the graveyard, with one notable exception: No mention was made of blood on the weapons.

“Looks like most of the fighting took place on a stretch of hillside along this creek, about two miles southeast of town,” Sam said, pointing to a map on the screen. “That’s where the re-enactors are camped now.”

“And that’s where the shooting took place?”

“Looks that way.”

Dean tapped the accelerator, turned the radio back up, and eased them down the main drag.

A short time later he found the Allman Brothers playing ‘Midnight Rider’—good solid Southern rock and roll—and turned it up, keeping the windows down to allow a breeze to flow through the car.

Soon they were out in the open countryside again, but the landscape was different now. The fields had been cleared, either by fire or real estate developers, and the grass was green, almost manicured. Sam could see monuments and cannons at the top of the next hill, along with rows of parked cars in a lot that seemed almost as big as the town they’d left behind. A large brown sign with bold white lettering stood on the right shoulder.

National Historic Site - No Relic Hunting.

“I’d say this is it,” Dean said, and he pulled into the lot, crawling between the rows until he found an empty spot alongside a row of Harleys. All of the bikes had Confederate flags hanging from poles off the back. “You ready for action?”

Sam nodded and got out.

“According to the news reports, the shooter’s name was Dave Wolverton. He was a waiter at a fast-food restaurant in Atlanta Airport. This was just a weekend thing for him.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean said, gesturing out beyond the parking lot, “he wasn’t the only one.”

As they reached high ground, Sam peered off to the west, and Dean saw a flicker of incredulity moving over his brother’s face. Beyond the rows of spectators stretched a hillside that seemed to travel back, not just spatially, but into the recesses of time itself. Whole armies of men in blue and gray uniforms were bivouacked along both sides of the creek that ran along the bottom of the hill. There were tents and wagons, horses, fires and cannons, flags and farm implements sprawled out for what looked like hundreds of acres, as far as the eye could see.

“What do you think?” Sam asked.

Dean shook his head.

“I don’t need this Civil War.”

They cut a path through the rows of onlookers, past a row of Porta-Johns where long lines of people—a mixture of those in shorts and Kid Rock t-shirts, and others in historic clothing—waited to use the facilities.

Beyond that, the camps themselves took over. Soldiers milled around tents, admiring each other’s weapons and uniforms. Women and children in similar attire moved through the crowds, and it seemed as if every conversation was filled with formalities the likes of which Dean hadn’t heard since he’d dragged Sam to dinner at a Medieval Times theme restaurant.

The sounds of bugles and cannon-fire boomed from above.

“You hear that?”