The Wheels On The Bus Chapter 20

It’s hard to take away the bodies of the casualties from the ghost attack and cover up the windows of the school so nobody can see the ghosts still standing frozen outside, so after a long while of dodging questions from concerned citizens and a couple of people already preparing to rebel against Sam and Dean’s rules if they weren’t going to give them straight answers for yet another day, they let all the civilians pile into the gym again to tell them the truth. 

It’s like the world’s weirdest assembly, with Sam trying to explain the supernatural and the end of the world, frequently interrupted by a chorus of questions and shouts of outrage. 

The kids take to it easily, at least, due to them already waiting for something batshit to happen in their lifetimes, one way or another. The adults, unfortunately, are a whole hornet nest to wrangle with, as some of them go as far as attempting to leave the school entirely the second the reality of their situation sinks in. Thankfully, there’s an equal amount of adults willing to hear Sam out, helping to get the others to sit down and listen. 

It takes a few hours, and there’s a lot of crying from the crowd by the end of it - this is their first time being smack dab in the middle of an honest to goodness apocalypse, after all - but the elephant in the room has been addressed. Everything clicks in the crowd’s collective head, as to why they had to be evacuated, why they had to be in the gym, and what the gunshots were all about. 

Adam overhears some of the younger teens talking about seeing people taking bodies away, understanding dawning on them that some of the hunters had died trying to protect them. One of them, already crying, buries their face in their hands.

These poor fucking kids. 

They let everyone rest, after, but emphasize that they are to stay in the school in the meantime. The apocalypse is still going on, and just because they know about it doesn’t mean they can be lax about precautions. The only change that happens is that the crowd knows what hunters are, who the hunters in the room are, and that there’s a few members of the team who aren’t exactly human. 

Which means Adam, Jack and Belphegor (and Rowena, but she’s more feral about it than scared) have to tiptoe around the more skittish civilians, but hopefully they’re going to get through this with a minimal amount of interaction with anyone who isn’t a hunter. 

“At least that’s finally out of the way,” Adam says, after they’ve finally cleaned up the gym and he, Jack and Belphegor have found time to get to the rooftop and just sit and breathe. “See, I told them more civilians were gonna start organizing rebel factions the longer it took them to admit shit.”

“They can organize rebel factions and be correctly informed this time,” Belphegor, laying down on his back, jokes. 

“At that point, we’ve done all we can, haven’t we?” Adam says. “That’d just be stupidity talking.”

“A lot of them are reasonable,” Jack says, leaning over the edge of the roof to look down at the school grounds. There’s a lot of volunteers there, helping clean up the mess of bullets and torn clothes and limbs and blood, along with some hunters. The ghosts have been made to move back and away from the school, courtesy of Belphegor. “I think they can keep each other in check.”

“I hope so, we don’t have enough hunters to watch everybody,” Adam says. “Hey, Bel, can you get ghosts to watch people?”

Belphegor draws out a groan as he rolls over. “My headache still hasn’t gone away,” he says. He doesn’t need to sleep but he looks like he could use a nap, just to get a short break. “And I...probably can, but like, I’m already trying to wrangle everything I can feel into something manageable. They’re all so loud.”

“You can feel all of Hell, right?”

“And I wish I didn’t.”

Jack and Adam laugh, good-naturedly, although Jack reaches out and gives his doppelganger a comforting squeeze on the shoulder. Belphegor cracks a smile. 

They all finally climb down when it starts to get dark, not keen on getting into accidents due to being unable to see properly in the dimness of the evening. They head for the cafeteria for dinner - people have started volunteering to shoulder the work for the kitchen too, so their usual volunteers can now take breaks, which is nice; hopefully they’ll find a way around the huge deficit of salt in the cupboards  - and come to a stop at the main hall, when they see a colorful arrangement of post-its, photos, flowers and candles propped by a wall. 

A closer look shows them that there’s a few scribbles in paint here and there, a few splatters of melted crayon and scraps of paper taped or stapled into the wall. There’s photos too, very few, and a lot of them grainy and old and folded, but they’re at the very top, clearly given up by the hunters who’d had pictures of their fallen friends. 

“A memorial,” Jack says.

Adam stares down at the flowers and candles on the floor. A little higher, and he reads the post-its that read little thank yous and wishes for well resting. 

“You do this for funerals, right?” Belphegor asks.

“To pay respect, yeah,” Adam says. “Obviously, we can’t have a grave for them. Hunters burn their dead.”

Belphegor nods. “Guess some of them really are a reasonable bunch, then.”

“Yeah,” Adam says. He laughs lightly, his eyes tearing up a little. “Yeah, they’re a reasonable bunch. Thankfully.”

All three of them stare at the memorial for a while, silent.

“We’re not gonna write Michael’s name here,” Jack says, after a few minutes. “We’re not.”

“No,” Adam says. “He’s gonna be fine.”

“Of course he is,” Belphegor says. “He’s a stubborn son of a bitch, he’s probably already thought of something in case our dumb asses drop the ball.”

Adam laughs. After one more moment of silence to pay their respects to the dead, all three of them head for the cafeteria. 

-

The next few days are a flurry of activity.

With one problem down, the hunters set up a mini call center in one of the empty classrooms for the team assigned to contact other hunters. These contacted hunters are then informed to contact other people already not on the current list, and then those people are to call their own contacts - it’s essentially a speedrun in networking, and all the information is sent to Dean, who keeps tabs on the fast-growing web of allies. Ketch, the little rat, has also volunteered to expand the network to his contacts in the U.K., which is nice of him. It’ll widen their net of influence significantly.

The subject being passed around is simple: the world is ending due to universal instability, and it’s backed by the big man this time.

It goes down the hatch easily once the whole ‘tears in the universe’ thing is brought up. Everyone’s cooperative, even if there’s grumbling and wincing at hearing that it’s yet another Winchester-kickstarted apocalypse, at least technically.

It’s the probably the fact that the world is ending, on a global scale this time, not just something isolated to whatever hellhole part of the U.S. a gate of some sorts has been opened.

Adam reminds them to keep everyone updated on their other objectives: keep tabs on supernatural activity in their area, look for rifts and make sure the area is secured, and keep an eye out for a lady with long dark hair and old, old eyes. 

“That description is bullshit,” Belphegor tells them as soon as he finds out.

“Yeah, you got anything better?” Dean asks.

“Uh, an artist sketch?”

Dean blinks. “Yeah, you know what - “

They’re lucky enough to find some artists with the civilians in the school, so after a few hours, a sketch is sent in mass emails to their budding hunter network. 

The meeting room is commandeered into a research center for Sam’s team of hunters, which Adam and Jack have volunteered for. They look into news, trawl through social media posts and forums, and collect every scrap of info they can on rift location and activity. There’s a lot, and it’s very clear that the world is just starting to realize that the ‘freak earthquakes’ weren’t just in isolated parts of the globe, but moved in uncanny succession, running through the very earth like an apocalyptic shiver. 

The one advantage of the modern culture of broadcasting everything that happens in one’s backyard is that Adam finds a shitton of information in trending tags almost every hour. Which is good for when he’s info-hunting, but bad for when they want to keep people away from the rifts. Even if Belphegor’s got Hell under control, it’s going to cause a major uproar in scientific communities and frankly just fuck with people’s brains if they find out what’s in those rifts.

Which is thankfully where Rowena comes in. It takes her a bit longer to convince the other practitioners in her contact list to believe her, but the whole ‘end of the world’ thing seems to have convinced them to side with her, at least for now. Between them and a lot of biking and gas spent, they’ve taken it upon themselves to drop a few compulsion hexes everywhere they can reach, so that should anyone with no knowledge of the situation find any rift, they are to call in to a number they normally wouldn’t know, and then forget, and never have the urge to visit the rift ever again (or at least until the whole thing blows over).

Heaven’s still out of the cards in terms of contact, so Castiel has been overseeing the school’s security while everyone works. Belphegor sits with him, when he’s lucid and not trying to rest his now ever-present headache away. Other times, he’s just curled up in a cot beside the angel, frowning in his sleep. 

And every day since they’ve started their set up, on their off time, Dean tries to pray to Amara. He’s been doing that for three days now. She hasn’t responded yet. The others, meanwhile, attempt to discuss which angels to resurrect and if Jack’s idea to have everyone duke it out in the Cage is still viable.

After about an hour, they return to their work again, growing the network and hoping to fuck the world doesn’t realize exactly what’s happening. People love the idea of an apocalypse when it’s an intangible thing, after all, because they know one day, it’s inevitable. They usually just happen to realize the reality of it sucks when it’s finally right there in their faces.

But hey, that’s what Team Free Will 4.0 (Bastard Expansion Pack) is here for.

-

“You look like death warmed over,” Dean says, watching Belphegor stumble into the cafeteria. He’s got a blanket around his shoulders, his hair is sticking up everywhere, and he’s found a new pair of glasses (probably got a ghost to steal it for him) which he’s just shoved unceremoniously on his nose. 

“I feel like death warmed over,” he says, taking a seat on the far end of the table. He doesn’t have a plate. He just rests his forehead on the cool surface of the table and sighs. 

“It’s getting that bad?” Adam asks. 

Belphegor only grunts. 

“Fuck,” Adam says. “He didn’t even bother with a one-liner.”

“Fuck you, Milligan.”

“I imagine the toll of having an entire realm does that to you,” Rowena says, a bit of a pep in her step as she takes a seat, having just gotten a few more practitioners on the team. “And he’s just a regular demon.”

Castiel winces in sympathy.

“Has the sleep not been helping?” Jack asks. 

“It kinda has,” Belphegor says. “Less - “ He waves a hand haphazardly, and then motions to the rest of the cafeteria. “Everything.”

Politely, none of them tell him it makes no sense.

Jack, sitting next to him, takes pity and puts a hand on one of his temples, fingers glowing a soft blue that can barely be seen in the sunlight coming through the cafeteria’s glass walls. Belphegor lets out a sigh that sounds like he’s about to cry from sheer relief. 

“I will never give you shit again, Kline,” he says. “Ever. Ever.”

Jack snorts. “You wouldn’t be you if you did that, but sure.”

“That’s not gonna ping Chuck or anything?” Sam asks. 

“It’s just small stuff,” Jack says. “Although, you know.”

Adam sighs. “Yeah, it’d be helpful if we knew how much the guy was aware of.”

“Best to just take every precaution anyway,” Rowena says. “Although he has been rather silent, considering everything we’ve been doing.”

“Maybe Michael’s giving him something to chew on,” Jack says.

“I hope so,” Sam says. “We could use a distraction to get the attention away from us.”

“Yeah, I don’t think he’d appreciate it if he knew we were trying to get his sister on our side,” Dean says, spearing through a slice of bacon with more force than necessary.

Adam gets a thoughtful look on his face but says nothing.

“How’s that going, by the way?” Castiel asks. “Trying to contact Amara.”

“Still nothing,” Dean says. “Not even a dream visitation.”

“Does she have a phone number?” Rowena asks.

“Well, she wasn’t exactly tech-savvy, last time we met her.”

“...a twitter?”

Adam takes out his phone. “On it.”’

“It’s worth risking pissing Chuck off if we solve this,” Sam says. “Chuck’s already pissed.”

“And I can’t imagine that she’d let him just end everything if she did, as you say, come to love the world,” Rowena says. “And given that it’s been years and it’s still standing, granted a little battered from her brother, I’ll wager that stance hasn’t changed.”

“So say Amara doesn’t want to destroy the world,” Dean says. “What then?”

“Sic her on Chuck,” Belphegor mutters, still not lifting his head up from where he’s resting it on the table. The tenseness to his shoulders have gone. Jack’s still soothing his headache. 

“Ideally, we can do that with both of them in the Cage,” Sam says. “Because as much as we hate to admit it, it’s going to be explosive.”

“If Chuck is...gone, we don’t even have to worry about which angels to resurrect,” Castiel says. “After the apocalypse, of course.”

“They won’t have someone to blindly follow anymore,” Jack says.

“If they don’t start another rebellion,” Adam says. “They seem like the kind of people to, just because they’re gonna get pissed that Chuck’s dead.”

“At that point, Michael can probably keep them in line,” Rowena says. “As long as the head of the snake is cut.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get too hopeful yet, we still need Amara to actually show up,” Dean says. “We can’t keep making these plans without anything concrete.”

A thoughtful silence falls over the table.

Belphegor sits up suddenly. “Oh!”

“What?” Dean asks.

“I forgot to tell you - my head was too loud - not all of Hell is zombified right now.”

Sam chokes on his food. Adam freezes. Rowena raises an eyebrow.

“What the hell,” Dean says. “Lead with that, the next time you sit at the table - “

“They can’t do anything,” Belphegor says. Jack lowers his hand, as the demon appears to be doing much better. “But they’re conscious. A lot of them are. Didn’t I say I could feel them?”

“I thought you just meant their souls or some shit!”

“Oh, no, I can hear them,” Belphegor says. “It’s like, thousands of voices all at once, and I fucking hate it. Anyway - “

Sam is still coughing, frantically trying to grab something with water. Jack looks around, trying to see if there’s anything within reach and he spots someone at a nearby table stand and heft up a bottle of water. The man tosses it to him with the throwing arm of a quarterback. He catches it and tosses it to Sam, who immediately gets it open to drink.

“Thanks!” Jack calls out to the man, who just gives him a thumbs up and sits back down.

“I’ve been trying to listen to them, talk to them, sort of, when I could, and I just thought,” he says. “We could let the Shedim look for Amara.”

“The Shedim?” Rowena asks. 

“Yeah,” Belphegor says. “They’re the ones with the most awareness right now. Yeah, sure, they can’t attack innocent people, but they’re not immobile. I can feel them just wandering around, checking earth out. They just can’t hurt people.”

“So they’re compelled and otherwise unaffected,” Rowena says.

“Yep,” Belphegor says. “Hell on my state of mind, though. No pun intended.”

“There’s not a lot I know about them other than that they’re incredibly powerful,” Castiel says. “There’s not a lot Heaven knows about them, really. They might be able to pull it off, but be careful.”

“I can ask them,” Belphegor says. “I can probably make them tell me if we had questions anyway, but - maybe they can manage something and find Amara for us.”

“Worth a shot,” Sam says. “What have we got to lose at this point?”

Rowena snorts. “We’ve only got things to lose, at this point.”

“The better to be reckless with a few things, because it’s already a losing game,” Sam says, laughing. “Ask them, then.”

Belphegor nods. “I’ll get on it,” he says. “And then sleep, because I can feel another headache again.”

“It comes back that fast, huh?” Jack asks.

Belphegor traces a finger from one of his eyes to his chin, mimicking a tear track. Jack laughs.

“But we’re getting somewhere,” Castiel says. “It’s still all plans, but we’re getting somewhere.”

“Hopefully we can finally get moving,” Dean says. “I never want to deal with Chuck’s ugly mug again.”

Sam laughs. “I feel like we all do, Dean,” he says. “We definitely all do.”