quigonejinn

Twenty-eight miles into Pennsylvania, Dean hit three whitetail deer.

As a rule, they tried to take smaller state or county roads. Partially, this was because the places they worked ended to be isolated; interstates moved from city to city, not from forgoten industrial town to agricultural county seat. Ghosts liked space. Empty buildings. Solid decades of quiet. There was plenty of misery in cities, but time moved too quickly for a good haunting to take root and entrench itself. Additionally, ever since Anderville, there were two state warrants out for Dean's arrest and one for Sam. Well-funded state troopers on interstate highways were more likely to be diligent about their work than local sheriffs who doubled as game wardens. Twenty-eight miles past the western border of Pennsylvania, Dean plowed into the middle of a herd crossing State 522.

Two died on impact and lay on the road. A third crawled onto the shoulder by the side of the road, and when Dean got out of the car, he could see that it was still alive, thrashing weakly. The next trucker -- an eighteen-wheeler with extended cab -- stopped, sympathized with Dean over the dents in the grill and bumper, and then helped them drag the bodies off the yellow line and onto the shoulder.

The trucker then looked at the one that was still alive and trying to rise on a badly fractured leg, and said, "You should take care of that one, too. Put her out of her misery."

"How do we do that?" Sam said, and he looked over at Dean. They were standing by the one that was still alive, and Sam's expression said, Do we shoot it? I don't think rock salt will kill deer, and Dad will kill us if he hears we used silver for this.

Dean did not have an expression on his face. He seemed pale, and he had actually quieted once they realized that the third deer was still alive. There was a moment of silence, and finally, the trucker said, "I've got a shotgun in my truck."

And he went back up the hill to get it. While he was gone, Dean out that this deer did not have horns -- Sam corrected him and pointed out that they were called antlers, not horns. They had a brief exchange of references to movies featuring deer, and once he returned, the trucker confirmed. Antlers, not horns, and it was, indeed, a doe. He pointed out the teats in the back.

"Shame, really," he said. "It's got fawns. Maybe one, more likely two. I think I heard them bleating on the way up to the truck. It's early enough so that they're probably still depending on milk."

He raised the gun to his shoulder; the doe had been struggling to stand, but one of the hind legs was fractured badly enough for bone to protrude from the skin, and there was blood on her nose and in rings under her eyes, as well as strange shapes in her stomach.

She had, strangely enough, been silent until that point; it had all been remarkably quiet until that point.

As a rule, Dean and Sam tried to take smaller state or county roads, but for a week after Pennsylvania, by silent, mutal consent, they confined themselves to the interstate. For days, Dean thought that he saw fawns in the woods, and Sam thought he heard deer crying over the car speakers -- in his mind, the gun and the doe had broken the silence simultaneously, and despite the actual facts of the situation, the fact that shotguns roared and injured whitetails made a noise like a trucker's air horn, to him, the doe had sounded remarkably like a crying woman.

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