Standing Outside the Fire

26

[How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters]

EXT. WHARTON STATE FOREST - THE PINE BARRENS, NEW JERSEY - NIGHT

Something was running through the forest towards an SUV and a large tent. A generator was supplying power to the tent. Inside the tent, a man and woman in sleeping bags on a double bed were watching television. The woman used the remote to turn the television off.

"Good night, sweetie," the man said, turning off his bedside lamp and turned on his iPod.

The recording on the iPod said, "This is Nature Sounds' "Sounds of Nature," Volume 4, "Soothing Seas.""

The man, still asleep in his sleeping bag, was hanging upside down high up in a tree.

"What the hell? Leanne!" the man called.

The man saw something moving in the tree above him and said, "No. No. Stay away. Leanne!"

The man screamed as something began eating him alive. Bits of flesh, clothing and his iPod dropped to the ground.

"This is Nature Sounds' "The Sounds of Nature.""

INT. OLD HOUSE - HAMMONTON, NEW JERSEY - NIGHT

Sam came down the stairs. Dean was standing at a fuse box.

"Did you strip enough wire?" Sam asked.

"Yes, I stripped enough wire," Dean said.

"No, I believe you," Sam replied. "All right." He attached the cables to the stripped wires. Electricity crackled and the lights came on.

"See? Told you," Dean said.

Bobby and Francesca entered the house. Sam and Francesca took a seat at a table, Dean and Bobby stood around it.

"Well, isn't this cozy?" Bobby commented.

"Yeah," Sam answered. "Well, Motel 6 just ain't leaving the light on anymore."

"Well, I'm taking a page out of Frank Devereaux's Bible on this. Everybody's out to get you -- paranoia is just plain common sense."

"Weeks, guys," Dean said. "Weeks. We've been living with cold showers, cold Hot Pockets, cold freaking everything. I mean, this is the bottom that we're living in. You guys get that, right?"

Bobby looked at him. "How many big mouths are out there, running card traces, like Chet, or hunting us down God knows what ways? No, now's not the time to be laying our bed rolls out on the grid. Not if we can help it."

The lights went off and Sam turned on a battery-powered lamp.

"That's just great," Dean muttered. "This is stupid. Our quality of life is crap. We got Purgatory's least wanted everywhere, and we're on our third "The World's Screwed" issue in, what, three years? We've steered the bus away from the cliff twice already."

"Someone's got to do it," Sam reasoned.

"What if the bus wants to go over the cliff?"

"You think the world wants to end?"

"I think that if we didn't take its belt and all its pens away each year that, yeah, the whole enchilada woulda offed itself already."

"Stop trying to wrestle with the big picture, son. You're gonna hurt your head," Bobby told him.

Dean took a beer out of a cooler and laid on a sofa.

"So, what's the guff?" Bobby asked, sitting at the table with Sam and Francesca.