Night 49: Callahan's - Town

[boyking]

[from here]

The noise of the rain grew suddenly again, but at least they hadn't landed in the rain. In fact, scanning the room with his flashlight, Sam realized he actually knew where they were this time. It was kind of hard to forget the place where Dean had picked a fight with some guy (some guy who had looked suspiciously familiar, except Sam hadn't had the chance to look more carefully) and Sam had lifted a couple of lighters.

Lighters, of which there might be more of. They'd gotten lucky, for once. Sort of. He wasn't keen on staying too long just in case another zombie showed up, but he was okay with sticking around for a bit. If there was ever any place that was useful, a grocery store might be it.

He eyed the front counter, spotted the little row of plastic lighters, and reached behind him to pocket a couple as he peered out the front window. It was hard to see outside with the way the light kept reflecting back on him, though. He couldn't hear anything, at least. These zombies could be stealthy, but they weren't graceful enough to be completely so. He'd discovered that night that it wasn't difficult to hear them shuffling up if you knew what to listen for. Or if, you know. You weren't surrounded by sheer chaos.

He glanced at Peter. "You wanna head in deeper and see what's there or should we leave before something bites us?" He didn't need to take a look, though it'd be nice, so he figured he'd leave it up to Peter. His roommate had already spent part of the night being choked by a demon so Sam wasn't about to make him risk attack by zombie (part two) without asking him about it.

A part of him kept half-expecting Peter to start up the questions again, too. But maybe Peter was saving them for later.

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[human-sponge.livejournal.com]

Just getting out of that closet was a relief, although Peter wasn't as thrilled to see that they were back in town. He had just been in this store earlier that day, though with the storm raging outside and the lack of people or any lights other than their own, it seemed like it was a completely different place. That was emphasized by the fact that a lot of the food had been thrown to the floors, which Peter noticed when he warily pointed his flashlight down some of the aisles.

How did it switch back and forth between night and day, just like that? It had to be some sort of illusion power, most likely for the daytime portion, but if that was the case then it was still pretty impressive. To make an illusion that detailed, that could be interacted with as if it was real -- Peter wasn't sure what amount of power that would take.

As he turned back to Sam, he couldn't help noticing the way he pocketed a lighter. "You smoke?" he asked without thinking, and it was only after the words were out of his mouth that he considered the other uses fire might have. If their flashlights died, for instance. Still, it was better to just leave the question as it was instead of backpedaling on it, and so Peter just focused on changing the subject.

"This place wasn't this messed up earlier today," he remarked out loud. He moved down one of the aisles carefully, keeping both an eye and an ear out for a stray zombie. He nudged some broken glass from a jar of pickles that had been knocked over, and let out a sigh as he tried to decide if it was worth sticking around in this place. He couldn't think of much he'd need to grab from here, but he wasn't all that intent on rushing through more doors when it seemed unlikely that they'd ever reach the file room or pharmacy.

[boyking]

Sam had snagged the lighter without thinking much about it, so the question made him blink as he took a split second to understand what Peter was asking.

"What? Oh. No, I just." He shrugged a little. He'd tried smoking once as one of the many moments of bitter teenage rebellion that had peppered his life between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. He couldn't remember what'd spurred on the decision, but it'd no doubt had to do with his dad. "You never know when you might need a flame."

They did have the one, but while lighters lasted a good length of time, that was only if you could hold manage to hold onto it in the first place. Sam couldn't remember the number of lighters they'd lost, and he wasn't counting the times they simply chucked it into a grave because there was no time to do anything else. Personally, he'd always thought Bic should've been selling to them in bulk.

Anyway, he knew there wasn't much salting and burning to do around here, but it still didn't mean setting something on fire wasn't a good distraction.

"Looks like someone threw a party in here." The cash register, when he leaned over the counter to take a look, was neatly shut and locked. He didn't have to pop it open to know that the cash was probably still inside. No petty burglar who went after grocery stores re-locked what they broke into.

He wondered if something had actually happened or not. It was possible somebody in the town had done the vandalizing. There'd been signs of it this morning and Sam hadn't ever been in the town during the night except with the zombies, which was hardly a good frame of reference for how the town looked on a regular day.

Were the townspeople around, even? Or had they all turned into the undead like that night? That would make sense, except there weren't as many around. Even with a town this size, there should've been a lot more than they were seeing.

"I wish there was some way we could actually walk around outside," he admitted as he took a careful step over a puddle of...it looked like beer. Smelled like cheap beer, at least. A walk through the streets would've been helpful. Take a stroll through where the homes were, maybe. If something existed to answer their questions, he had a feeling it'd be there.

[human-sponge.livejournal.com]

While Peter couldn't say he'd often found himself needing a flame during his daily life, he could tell by now that Sam didn't live a very normal life. Neither did he -- not anymore -- and yet he was still grasping for when a lighter would be handy to have around. It seemed like a silly thing to nitpick about, though. If Sam wanted it, then that was fine, though Peter was starting to suspect that his roommate and his brother had a thing for grabbing anything remotely useful. Dean's duffel bag seemed to indicate as much.

It did make him wonder if there was anything else here that might be useful, but he kind of doubted it. Food was the one thing they never had to worry about, and there really wasn't much else to choose from. Batteries, maybe, but he already had some. He realized that there was no such thing as too many, though, and so he moved back toward the register and found a small display of them. Grabbing a packet of the right size, he stuffed them into the pocket of his sweatpants, which were thankfully mostly dry by that point.

Peter wasn't so sure about the party analogy; it seemed to him more like a hurricane had blown through. Or a bunch of looters had stopped by, which was probably the real explanation. All he knew was that there had been a switch between when he'd been there that afternoon and now, and he doubted that the man who owned the store had decided to go on a rampage of his own volition.

All bets were off if he'd turned into something, though.

When Sam spoke up again, Peter glanced over with both eyebrows slightly raised. "Why?" he asked. "You want to check out the damage from there or something?" Honestly, Peter was content with being inside, having dealt with enough (living) rotting flesh the week before. Still, this sort of stuff almost seemed to be routine for Sam, and that certainly explained why the other man had jumped to action so easily during his first night.

The question now was if they bothered to keep moving. Peter decided that they would do so the second they heard that guttural moaning he'd quickly learned to identify. For now, he was fine with staying here, even if he could distinctly smell the spilled pickles.