Standing Outside the Fire

36

[The Girl With the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo]

Sam was on his cell phone. The wall behind him, which Francesca was looking at, was covered with research. "Yeah, I hear you. All right. Well, thanks for looking. Yep. Bye."

Sam hung up and turned to the hunters. "So, Nora didn't see any pattern to the dig sites either." Sam sat on the sofa next to Saoirse.

Dean frowned. "Yeah, 'cause they got nothing in common." He sat on the arm of the sofa. "And I got nothing from local lore 50 miles in every direction of all of them. I mean, it's like they're just... old dirt. What's Dick looking for?"

Dean took a drink from his flask and the light flickered. The brothers stood and took their guns from their jeans. Bobby appeared and they pointed their guns at him.

"Hey, hey, go easy, you idjits. Sorry for the jump scare," Bobby said.

Dean frowned. "So how does this work? I leave the cap off and you genie your way out?"

"I wish it were that easy. The thing-" Bobby flickered and vanished.

"Bobby?" Sam asked.

Bobby reappeared. "Damnit. It's hard to stay focused. I'm still kind of worn out."

Dean shrugged. "You've been pretty busy for a dead guy."

"All right. Listen. I-I don't know how long before my next ghost nap, so let's just skip to the skinny -- those numbers I gave you."

"The empty lot in Cheeseville?" Dean asked.

Bobby nodded. "Yeah, well, it ain't gonna be empty for long. I got a gander at Dick's big plan, right before he Lincolned me. They're breaking ground -- what month is this?"

"It's, uh, April," Francesca replied.

Bobby sighed. "Ground's broke."

Dean recalled what Frank had said. "They're surveying. They're getting ready to build something."

"Build what?" Dean asked.

"Exactly. What?"

"They're building as we're yammering," Bobby informed. "Check it out yourself. It's all right. I mean, you guys missed it because you've been kind of busy-" Sam opened the laptop, "-killing ghosts the past few days. But Dick is about to get into the Soylent Green business. That site'll show you they're building a biotech lab, right?"

Sam's laptop showed Geothrive's 'Standard plans for an efficient slaughterhouse'.

Bobby scoffed. "Biotech my ass. That sucker is a state-of-the-art slaughterhouse. And we're the beef."

Dean frowned. "Don't you think that's a little bold, even for Dick?"

"I bet you no one will even notice... 'cause first, he's gonna dumb us all down with Turducken-style munchies. Make us docile."

"It's in the meat," Francesca repeated. "We haven't been to Biggerson's since that entire fiasco."

Bobby turned to her. "Biggerson's? He's bought a list of joints ten pages long."

"Oh."

"Next, he's gonna cure us."

"Cure us of what?"

"All the biggies -- cancer, AIDS, heart disease. Let's just say they got an affinity for stem-cell research."

Dean took a quick moment to think. "The, uh, Leviathan real-estate mooks building that research center."