Supernatural: Night Terror (13 page)

“Sam! The rope!” Dean shouted.

With the sound of screeching metal behind him, Dean reached up and caught the end of the clothesline. Sam was about to secure the other end to a bollard, but noticed the one leaning dangerously forward and backed up to loop the line through one of the store’s door handles. Meanwhile, Dean had looped the other end around Hunter’s body, snugging it up under his arms and making a few quick knots.

He checked it was secure, then called, “Ready!”

Sam stepped out to the edge of the sidewalk and pulled the line up end over end, lifting Hunter out of the pit. He caught the boy in his arms and the mother cried out in relief. Rather than fussing with the knots, Sam took a folding knife from his pocket and cut the rope behind the boy’s back and handed him to his mother.

“Oh, thank God,” she said, squeezing her son against her chest and kissing him repeatedly on his cheeks. “Thank you. Thank you, both!”

“Anson, take her and the boy out through the back,” Sam instructed.

Dean looked over his shoulder, wincing at the protesting squeals of metal. The Firebird slipped inexorably backward, tilting up like a breaching whale captured in slow motion video. Sparks showered across the blacktop, reminding Dean of the gasoline leaking somewhere in the pit beneath him.

“Gonna get hot down here, Sam!”

The loose bollard broke free, arcing down toward Dean’s head. He jumped to the side, sprawling in the dirt as the cement post crashed through the side window of the Mini Cooper. The small car and the Camry beneath it settled deeper into the pit.

The joker in the Firebird opened the door of the car and jumped out. The door slammed shut, clipping him on the shoulder as he fell and sent him sprawling toward the back of the car. The treacherous ground gave way beneath him. He shouted in alarm as he toppled head first into the pit in what amounted to a half somersault. Landing with a thud on the passenger door of a half-submerged black minivan, he stared up into the night sky moaning.

Sam looked from the teetering Firebird to its owner twenty feet below.

“Oh, no.”

“Hey, Ass-hat!” Dean shouted. “Move!”

The man rubbed the back of his head. Then it suddenly dawned on him.

“My car...”

The Firebird dropped straight down like a hammer on an anvil. And the owner had the misfortune of lying between the two.

The crunch of shattered bones was almost completely masked by the collision of steel driving into steel. Almost. Slick gobs of burst flesh and an arterial spray of blood splattered over the black minivan. The Firebird toppled over with another crash, revealing a red pulpy mess barely identifiable as human remains.

Grimacing, Dean looked away and not simply because the Firebird had taken its name all too literally. Active tongues of flame roamed along the undercarriage, hungrily seeking a more plentiful fuel source.

With renewed urgency, Dean wrapped the clothesline around his waist several times and tied it off. He climbed hand over hand, scrambling up the loose earth to keep from losing ground. Sam pulled on his end, taking some of Dean’s weight away.

Red and blue lights flashed across the expanse of the sinkhole, accompanied by the brief
whoop-whoop
of a police siren. Dean recognized Chief Quinn’s voice over the police cruiser’s loudspeaker. “Everyone clear the area! Stand clear! Now!”

Dean spared a quick glance over his shoulder and saw the police chief exiting his cruiser and waving everyone back, across the street.

“Agents,” he called. “Fire truck’s on the way.”

“Sinkhole’s clear,” Dean yelled. “Everyone’s out.”

“Good,” Quinn said. “Now you’d better get the hell out of there.”

“Working on it,” Dean said.

He heard a woman call out to Quinn. “That man saved a little boy.”

Dean was halfway out of the pit when he noticed the crumbling dirt was gradually revealing the underside of the sidewalk. Cracks formed in the cement and sections started to break away and slide past him on the steep slope. Utility pipes, possibly cable, water and gas lines, ran under the sidewalk. To his right, a second bollard pitched into the hole.

In the distance, Dean heard the wail of police sirens.

By the time he reached the edge of the sidewalk, Sam was standing with his back pressed against the glass storefront, hauling on the thin clothesline but monitoring the disintegrating walkway. Sam caught Dean’s arm and pulled him up and out. At that moment, several sections of sidewalk tilted forward, pitching them toward the sinkhole.

The door securing the line had been pulled open by Dean’s weight.

“Go!” Dean said. “I got the line.”

Sam threw himself backward, through the open door and into the Qwik Mart. Dean’s feet started to slip out from beneath him, but he continued to support his weight with the clothesline until Sam caught his arm and tugged him inside. A glance back showed black smoke curling up from the pit, but the flames were beneath his line of sight.

An explosion blasted up from the sinkhole, followed by another, and a third—a chain reaction of automobiles exploding. The noise was deafening and debris sprayed everywhere. Chief Quinn took cover behind his cruiser.

Bystanders were shouting and screaming, racing to the far side of the highway. No doubt they’d witnessed the Firebird owner get himself killed. If nothing else, the man had helped by serving as a cautionary tale for others.

“That was close,” Dean said.

“Too close.”

Another explosion roared outside, this one rocking the convenience store. Overhead, the fluorescent lights flickered. Snack bags and aluminum cans crashed to the linoleum floor.

“Not good,” Dean said.

The vibration was only the beginning. The store itself was shifting, creaking, groaning. Dean recalled the utility lines running under the sidewalk out front. Natural gas. Maybe a propane tank out back.
Crap.

“We’re not out of the woods yet, Sammy,” he observed.

They sprinted to the back of the store, kicking the fallen shop goods out of the way, past metal racks of chips and bread and boxes of doughnuts and assorted candy, and ducked through a door marked “Employees Only” into a cluttered stock room, and out through the rear exit.

Another explosion sounded, seeming even closer and with a bigger wallop. The back wall of the store shook and the ground beneath their feet shuddered. They couldn’t underestimate the instability caused by the sinkhole. For all Dean knew, the whole convenience store might drop onto the crushed cars at any moment.

“There,” Sam said, pointing to an eight-foot ladder propped against the cinderblock wall behind the store.

A few moments later, they had climbed over the wall and dropped down to the grass on the other side. They were shielded from the blast zone, but how far the sinkhole would spread was an open question. Anson, the store clerk, stood there awkwardly with his hands stuffed in his pockets, but Hunter and his mom were nowhere to be seen.

“Kid and his mom?” Dean asked.

“Gone,” Anson said, a clear tremor in his voice. “She wanted to hang around to thank you again, but after the first explosion...”

“Good parenting,” Sam said. “No place for a kid.”

“You okay?” Dean asked Anson.

“Yeah, fine,” the clerk said, nodding a bit frantically. “Called my manager. Told him I’d wait for him. Don’t think he believes me, how bad it is.”

“Picture’s worth a thousand words, right?” Dean said.

“If I were you, Anson, I’d wait a block or two away,” Sam said.

Then his cell phone rang. He glanced at the display and showed it to Dean. It said: “Clayton Falls Police.”

Sam answered and listened. He mouthed the name “Jeffries” to Dean.

“Yes. Yes, we did. Yes, I would classify that as weird. That too.” He listened for a few moments. “I’ll need addresses.” After a few moments, he said, “We found something weird as well.” Sam described the sinkhole, the subsequent explosions and one death. “Your chief ’s here. Got his hands full with crowd control.” A short time later, he pulled the phone away from his ear.

“Well?” Dean asked.

“Walk with me,” Sam said, with a discreet nod in Anson’s direction.

They cut through someone’s backyard and circled around to the street, heading towards the Impala.

“Short version?”

Dean nodded.

“Giant tarantula. Killer trees. And the phantom Charger returned. Killed Tony Lacosta. And other reports are coming in, attempted home invasions, masked gunmen.”

“Busy night,” Dean said grimly.

“I’ll say. Police are spread thin,” Sam said. “But some of these... apparitions disappear in front of the witnesses or are gone by the time patrols arrive at the scene.”

“Fits the MO of whatever the hell this thing is.”

Lightning flashed across the sky, followed by a prolonged rumble of thunder. A gust of wind whipped around them, shaking nearby treetops. Behind them, another explosion rocked the night.

“Sam,” Dean said. “Don’t think this night’s done yet.”

“What’s closest?” Dean asked as soon as they were back in the Impala.

“Stay on Bell Street,” Sam said. “This takes us to the office buildings on the left, where the giant tarantula attacked.”

Dean shook his head and had to smile.

“What?”

“Just the fact that you said what you just said. With a straight face.”

Sam smiled. “Yeah. See what you mean.”

“Next stop, eight-legged freak.”

Ahead, a traffic light blinked to yellow, then red. Dean slowed, ready to run the light as soon as he checked the cross street. He craned his neck over the dashboard for a quick look and hit the brake hard.

A dark blue Honda Civic raced into the intersection going in excess of seventy miles per hour. The driver, apparently unaccustomed to high speeds on city streets, took the turn too wide, tires screeching in protest, and slammed broadside into a parked Dodge Ram pickup truck. The left side of the Civic rose off the ground, and would have rolled over a lower barrier.

“What the hell?” Dean said for what seemed like the tenth time that night.

The driver looked stunned, but uninjured. Fortunately, he was alone, because the passenger side had taken the brunt of the impact.

“Dean,” Sam said, pointing down the length of the cross street. “Look!”

“Is that—? No, that’s not what it is. Is it?”

“A pack of Velociraptors.”

“Velociraptors? As in
Jurassic Park
Velociraptors?”

“Actually, they’re from the Cretaceous per...” Sam cleared his throat. “Yes.”

Four Velociraptors bounded along the street on powerful hind legs in apparent pursuit of the Civic. Their reptilian heads—predominantly jaws lined with sharp teeth—darted side to side as they neared their prey, eyes that reminded Dean of alligators scanning for other predators.

The white-faced driver stared through his side window, watching slack-jawed while the hunting pack sprinted across the intersection and surrounded his wrecked car. Not that he had many options. Safest place at the moment was inside the car. But the Civic’s engine was still running, if roughly, so the driver floored the accelerator. The car tried to move, but the wreckage of the passenger side appeared to be entangled with the Dodge Ram. He shifted into reverse and the vehicle shuddered, immobile.

Ignoring his failed attempts to flee, the first Raptor scrambled onto the roof of the small car, the large sickleshaped claw on each rear foot tapping the metal, perhaps probing for weakness. Another Raptor shoved its head at the side window, fracturing the glass. One more strike and it would break through, giving its fearsome jaws access to the interior of the car.

Dean swung the Impala onto the shoulder of Bell Street. He jumped out with Sam right behind him. In their FBI guises, they both carried handguns, but Dean thought they might need something more powerful from the arsenal they stored in the trunk.

“Time travel, Sam?” Dean said incredulously. “These things come through a friggin’ wormhole? Even Cass is gonna have trouble sending them back to the... Crustacean period.”

Sam shrugged. “So we put them down.”

Dean nodded emphatically. “Simple. I like it.”

He unlocked the trunk and raised the lid, peering inside.

“Dude—” Sam said.

Dean glanced to the left, assessing. “Where’s the fourth Raptor?”

“Vanished. It just...
winked
out.”

One of the remaining three Velociraptors jumped on the hood of the Civic, leaned toward the windshield—and vanished.

Two remained. The one prowling on the roof, and the other attempting to poke its head into the car.

With a screeching roar, the second Raptor struck at the window, shattering the glass and darting his head inside with one quick motion. The driver huddled against the passenger door, as far from the driver’s side as possible. With the passenger side pinned against the Dodge Ram, he was, for the moment, safe.

“Something’s not right,” Sam said thoughtfully.

Dean stared at his brother. “When has this
not
been wrong?”

They armed themselves swiftly.