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Keep Walking (Nothing To See Here) [Supernatural gen, pg-13]
Might I say that I'm in love with this? Because I am. Apocalypse!fic is one of my greatest kinks (if all the stuff I rec is any indication...) And it was just awesome to finally get this on paper. I had the greatest fun writing this than anything else in months, and it also happens to be the largest fic I've ever written. o_O
Title: Keep Walking (Nothing To See Here)
Word Count: 3800
Summary: The world ends on Tuesday the thirteenth, as Dean is trying to choose between Lays and Doritos in a run-down convenience store.
Author Notes: Spoilers up to Croatoan. Betaed by the amazing![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
javajunkie13. Apocalypse!fic. Also, there are zombies. Isn't that enough of an incentive to read? XD
The world ends on Tuesday the thirteenth, as Dean is trying to choose between Lays and Doritos in a run-down convenience store.
He sometimes thinks, dryly, that someone up there must have one hell of a twisted sense of humor.
----
Dean refuses to part with the Impala, even when she’s so obviously slowing them down, and Sam can scowl and roll his eyes all he likes, Dean knows he’s just as fond of the old girl as he is. They can’t go as fast with so many gallons of gas in the backseat, stored in what used to be milk cartons.
The car stinks constantly no matter what they do, so Dean rolls his window down, sings to Black Sabbath at the top of his lungs just to annoy Sam and ignores the smell, the same way he tries to keep ignoring the fact that five billion people suddenly dropped dead.
He’s always been good at denial.
----
Sam wants to go west. Dean wants to go east, because west means California means being alone. (He doesn’t say it aloud, though.)
They go north, when they realize that no matter what direction they choose, things will remain the same.
----
They keep to the roads as much as they can, sleeping in the car and hunting their own food, as if civilization had expired with the world. Sam says he’s sick of canned beans and half-raw meat, and Dean says Suck it up, princess, and it almost feels like everything’s normal again, like there aren’t corpses rotting all along the interstate, still seated in their blood-stained cars.
They don’t go into small towns unless they have to.
It feels too much like Rivergrove, the shrouding, unnatural silence, not even broken by insects. Pinedale, Wyoming is just the same as every other town they’ve been in since the Apocalypse. Someone must have burnt the bodies, and there’s a thin layer of ash covering every surface, crunching under Dean’s boots. No one’s bothered to clean the blood, though, and there are dark splatters everywhere, marking the place where someone died. The air reeks with the stench of burnt flesh.
Dean feels like gagging, but he covers his face with his hands and trips Sam, not sure which one of them he wants to distract more.
They work fast. Sam gets the water and the food, Dean steals everything else they can use from empty houses. So far, they haven’t found a living soul in these towns. People are running to the cities, to find security in numbers.
Dean breaks into a house through a window, only to find himself in a nursery, mobile turning slightly with the wind and baby pink sheets still stained with blood.
They get out of Pinedale as fast as they can, digging into the food Sam found in silence.
----
They never listen to the radio anymore.
The only station still working keeps on repeating the death toll over and over again.
----
This is how it happens.
Sam yells Hurry up, will you, from the door of the store, chewing on a candy bar. Dean holds the Doritos in one hand and the Lays in the other, moves them up and down like scales in Sam’s direction, eyebrows raised. Sam frowns in concentration for a moment, but the moment he raises his hand to point at his choice, the lights go out.
Then there’s a furious screeching in his ears, a scream and a moan and a yell all at once, going into his brain like a knife. He falls to his knees. There’s someone screaming, and it’s not until later that Dean realizes he’s screaming as well, hands covering his ears.
He can see Sam at the edge of his vision, crawling on the floor, trying to reach him. There’s an old lady crying by his side, spilt milk dampening her purple dress and Dean’s jeans, the glass from the broken milk bottle cutting into his hand. His ears are bleeding, red dots trickling onto the gray linoleum.
Sam extends his arm towards him and does something, and the world shifts and suddenly, he can breathe again. He lets himself fall all the way to the ground, sighing in relief. Everyone else is still screaming in pain, and, if he’s hearing correctly, so is everyone outside.
And then the world as he knows it ends when the heads of three quarters of the worldwide population burst open, leaving a gory mess behind.
They drag themselves out of the store, slipping on M&Ms and blood.
----
They draw on each other’s back every night, Sam trying not to laugh from where the brush tickles, Dean rolling his eyes and trying to keep his hand from shaking. The curved symbols are the only thing that has kept them alive so far, after ghosts and monsters and demons realized the rules no longer applied.
They would have it tattooed, but it’s not like there’s a wide range of artists available.
It’s not hunting anymore, what they do, with ghosts watching them through the trees, waiting for them, sitting on the pumps in empty gas stations. They grow used to sleeping on the ground with their duffel bags as pillows, bodies stiff so a brush of a leg won’t disturb the salt circle surrounding them and the Impala, holding a knife close to the body, the blade doused in holy water.
Something has been haunting them for miles now, a young girl, probably fifteen. She doesn’t do anything much, just follows them around like a lost puppy, flickering every once in a while, and neither of the brothers has the energy to retrace their steps until they find a body to burn. They don’t even know her name.
She stands outside the salt barrier at night, dancing around them with her white skirt turning blurry at the hem, looking dreamy and unearthly, whispering “Come out, pretty boys, come out,” just at the edge of sleep, all sweetness and charm. “Come play with me.” Dean has been dreaming about her for days. It’s probably what she intended all along.
She always says the same words, and in the morning, after Dean finds her watching him just a foot away from his face, he says, “Yeah, because we look like morons,” and she smiles and rides in the backseat of the Impala, throwing pieces of stolen Cheetos at their heads.
There are always things after them now. Werewolves, banshees, ghouls; you name it, they’ve fought it. They live in a continued state of exhaustion, their hands getting blisters from spending too much time with a weapon held tightly. The number of scars on their bodies has doubled. At the end of the day, they fall to the ground, bleeding, only managing to protect themselves with the same salt they pick up from last night’s circle.
They hardly ever solve a case now. If the thing in turn needs more than a bullet to the heart or a blade through the neck to die, then they just fend them off and move on.
It’s not like there’s a lot of people left to save, anyway.
The ghost girl gets tired of them after a month. She says, “You’re no fun at all,” and then she’s gone, leaving only burnt ozone in the place she used to be.
“Hallelujah,” says Dean, and Sam smiles for the first time in what feels like forever.
----
They’ve performed forty-seven exorcisms since the Apocalypse. Only ten of the possessed people have survived.
Each and every one of them told them, grinning, that they sure had enjoyed tearing John Winchester’s soul apart in Hell.
----
Salt has become more valuable than gold.
Sam prefers to keep out of the big cities, but after a few weeks, Dean craves human contact enough to risk going off the road. He sweet-talks Sam all the way there, promising decent food and maybe, possibly, a bed; using the fact that they’ve been using the same salt box for the last two months as an excuse, and in the end, when they’re just at the edge of a city and Sam is sitting as far away as possible, shoulders hunched up, he ends up saying, “Jesus, Sam don’t be such a pain in the ass, a guy just has to get laid sometimes, okay?”
New York is only inhabited by about two hundred people now, all of them staying in uptown Manhattan, close to Central Park. They’ve formed some sort of commune, which sounds like bullshit to Dean, but has been working pretty much okay for its inhabitants.
The city is decaying, looking far too big and far too empty without the constant crowds walking down its avenues. Leaves and garbage have piled up on the streets with no one there to clean them, the skyscraper’s windows covered with a thick layer of dust. The city is nearly impossible to drive through, the traffic jams remaining just the same as they had been during the morning the Apocalypse hit.
Dean hates cities as much as Sam does, the fact that the dead were just too many, and that there are still corpses rotting in the cars, in the restaurants, but he thinks he’ll go crazy if he doesn’t talk to another human being that isn’t Sam. They’ve come to New York a few times since the fat lady sang, and while the people at the survivor’s commune know them, it doesn’t mean they trust them.
“Hey, children, what’s up,” says Dean cheerily as soon as he gets out of the car, only to be met with serious faces and a few shotguns pointed at him. “O-kay, then,” he adds, lowering the cheery tone a few notches.
“What you want now, kid?” asks the commune’s leader, a gaunt-looking ex-cop in his mid-fifties.
“Not the joyful company, that’s for sure,” Dean says. He can see Sam shaking his head from the corner of his eyes. They’re outside one of the apartment buildings the commune uses as residence, Central Park just crossing the street. Dean had to admit, the folks here have class, at least – if you’re going to be living in a city full of dead people, at least you’re going to live well, in the former homes of the stars. They were just a few blocks away from where John Lennon died.
Then it’s all business. “Salt. And we wouldn’t say no to a hot shower.” The group of men look at each other, at their leader, and then they nod.
“What you got for us?”
They trade salt and supplies for information.
These guys are ignorant, naïve, terrified to death of this new world without rules and romping demons. Sam blesses a whole tank of water, mouth going over the Latin as easily as if it was English after a year of continuous practice. Dean checks that the protection symbols he carved on the walls their last time in town haven’t lost their power, and then he carves some new ones, checks the walls with the EMF to make sure no spirits have gone through. He writes down directions for the commune’s leader, how to kill this and how to kill that and make sure to lock your children up at night, there are things waiting out there to suck the life out of them.
Things considered, the mood in the building is incredibly cheery – a baby’s been born since the last time Sam and Dean crashed, and hope’s remarkably catching.
The few kids living in the commune have taken a shine to him, and they follow him around as he goes from room to room checking runes, giggling behind him and asking What’s that for? fifteen times every hour. They hardly ever approach Sam. Dean wonders if it’s because of his size (he can look huge to a five-year-old kid) or because a frown never leaves his face for the entire time they spend in the city.
“Dude, snap out of it, your face is gonna get stuck like that,” Dean says as he sits beside him on the steps outside the building. Sam says nothing. Dean sighs, and adds, “Seriously, man, what bugs you so much about staying in large cities?”
Sam sighs as well, and rubs his neck. “I get weird dreams while surrounded by people.”
“Like, weirder dreams than your usual?” says Dean, and even when he’s being completely serious, it comes out sounding like he’s joking.
“Yeah, weirder,” Sam says, chucking. “It’s as if I’m, dunno, attuned to them, or something, and I get their share of nightmares along with my own.”
Sam’s powers are going to give Dean an ulcer before he turns thirty-five. Ever since the Apocalypse, they’ve been acting up like crazy, making Sam tired and irritable most of the time, and worrying Dean to the point of biting his nails bloody, because there’s nothing he can do, and it’s eating him inside.
He doesn’t say that, though. He says, “Wow. That really sucks.”
Sam actually laughs, hands burying themselves in his hair. “Tell me about it.”
Dean tells stories to the children that night, sitting cross-legged on the ground with the kids forming a semi-circle in front of him, Sam by his side. He tells them stories from Before, about that time they killed the killer clown and that time Sam got stuck inside a sewer, because he guesses no one wants to hear stories about the After when most of them had lost everyone they had on that March day.
He spends the night with a red-head, Molly, who cries a bit afterwards because she still misses her fiancé so very much. At near dawn, Dean sits by his sleeping brother, sighing at the way Sam keeps on muttering No, no, every few minutes.
They’re gone two days later.
----
It’s hard to imagine now, but Dean’s pretty sure that the sky used to be blue.
He tries not to look up into the blood red sky nowadays.
----
They find Michael and his brother Asher in Chicago.
They’re only passing through, but word must spread fast, because people approach them while they’re in the middle of ransacking a store, looking for warmer winter clothes to replace their moth-eaten ones. Dean had only planned on staying for a couple of hours, but the people are insistent and he and Sam agree to perform a little cleansing ritual for a building.
The Chicago folks are doing it all wrong. Instead of getting together in one big group that’s easier to protect, they’ve divided themselves into three groups going from thirty to sixty people, and they’re constantly bickering with each other, trying to outdo the other groups. Dean thinks it’s completely idiotic, but no one listens to him. They haven’t been to Chicage since they found their father for the first time in what seems ages and ages ago, and the people don’t know them, don’t trust them.
Dean closes his father’s journal, but a boy standing on the doorway keeps him from going out of the room. The kid looks vaguely familiar as he stands there with his hands on his hips, but it’s not until he looks Dean squarely in the eye and says “You said to contact you if I needed something,” that Dean finally recognizes him.
“Michael?” The kid nods. Another, smaller boy peeks inside the room, and then latches to Michael, starting at Dean with a grave face. “And let me guess, Asher?” The little boy smiles a little, as he holds his brother’s hand.
Turns out, their mother is dead. They left Wisconsin a few months earlier; after Michael decided they would end up buried outside the motel’s office just like their mother if they stayed in the middle of nowhere. He had tried driving one of the abandoned cars, gotten pretty decent with it, but it’s still hard for him to reach the pedals, and they’d ended up walking most of the way. Dean can see the way their ribs protrude and the dullness in their eyes. They’ve only been here for a couple of weeks, and while the commune leaders usually try and make sure that no ones goes without food, no one really takes care of children anymore.
They’re not their kids, and they just remind them of the ones they’ve lost.
Dean listens to their story, hands fidgeting as he watches the kids gorge themselves with the bag of marshmallows Sam had been saving for a special occasion in the car’s trunk. Afterwards, Dean turns his head towards Sam’s, only to find him looking in his direction already. Sam does the puppy eyes, and Dean sighs, pretending to be defeated. There’s nothing else to say.
“All right, kids, pack up your stuff. I wanna see you sitting in the backseat in less than five minutes, starting now.” Asher makes some sort of excited yelp, and Michael’s smile is bright and honest.
“You do know they’re not pets, right,” Dean says as soon as they’re out of earshot, and Sam chuckles.
“You tell yourself that. I know for a fact that you were a step away from bursting into tears while Michael was talking,” Sam says with a small smile. Dean swats him in the head.
No one in the commune cares enough for the boys to bid them farewell. Dean can’t help but notice the way Michael visibly relaxes the minute he enters the Impala, sitting close to his brother because they hardly fit with all of the gas Sam and Dean carry around. It makes him angry, the way the commune looks as if they are relieved to say goodbye to the brothers, holding his and Sam’s hand over and over again as if they are doing them a favor. One look at Sam tells him that he, too, seems to be restraining himself from punching someone in the face.
Dean knows not one of them will ever come to Chicago ever again.
There are just too many bad memories in the city between the four of them.
----
Asher sets a tree on fire three days later, just by staring at it, and Dean suddenly knows why the entire commune had been so eager to get rid of the boys.
He just sighs, pats a scared and wide-eyed Asher on the head and figures at least now he won’t need to eat practically raw meat all the time.
----
They pass zombie hordes along the road, walking slowly and steadily in the other direction, mindless.
Their brains can be seen through the places where their heads exploded on Apocalypse Day. Their eyes are milky white, decomposing flesh grey and starting to get loose from the yellow bones. Some of them are missing limbs. It’s every single zombie Hollywood cliché rolled into one.
“It kinda makes you miss Angela and her psycho necromancer boyfriend, doesn’t it?” says Sam as he rolls his window up, making a face at the smell.
Dean snorts. “They’re not chasing us around, that’s good enough for me.”
“Yeah, but where are they going?” asks Michael from the backseat, nose pressed against the glass. He turns around to look briefly at Dean, staring at him as if he has all of the answers in the world. Dean swallows hard. He doesn’t think he’s ready for that kind of responsibility.
He ends up shrugging, after a few moments. “Nowhere, I guess. It’s not like there’s anywhere left to go.”
Dean has no choice but to run over a few of the zombies, and he bitches all the way to Nebraska about how hard it is to clean zombie guts from his precious baby. It gets Asher to smile a bit, so Dean guesses it’s worth it.
----
Three hundred miles away, no one in the car even looks sideways at the zombies walking on both sides of the road, leaving bits of them behind, covering the too-green grass with fingers and ears and bloody hair.
For Dean, it’s hard to think that only a year ago this would have sent chills down his spine.
----
There’s no purpose left, no place left to go, so two sets of brothers drive across a dying country, trying to outrun the things that still want the Winchesters dead, muttering Christo to every single person they meet.
Dean knows that Michael sometimes wonders if it’d been a good idea to go along for the ride – Sam’s abilities make him a beacon to the supernatural, every single paranormal thing around them wanting to claim a piece for themselves. Then again, Asher’s own powers have earned them quite a bit of unwanted attention in the last few months.
Sam’s visions are stronger than ever.
It’s usually two per week, but they’re still unpredictable, sometimes with a two or three day gap between them, sometimes both in the same night. They always leave Sam drained, bags dark under his eyes and eyebrows together in that haunted expression Dean hates so much. Following the visions to go save people is a thing from the past.
Sam sees people getting possessed; getting forced to cheat, to lie, to kill, to be killed. People with mothers that burned up on ceilings.
The demon is getting them all, one by one, face after face, and Dean never feels as helpless as when he tries to get his brother to snap out of a vision, when all he can do is hold Sam’s hair as he throws up in the dirt, half-dried tears on his face. It’s a message, he knows. You’re next.
Dean jokes, makes an ass out of himself trying to get Sam to stop looking like the living dead after a vision. Asher puts one of his tiny hands in between Sam’s, trying to comfort him in the only way he knows. Michael gives him an extra portion when he divides the food.
Sam always says he’s okay, but Dean’s heard those words enough times to know when they’re a lie.
“We won’t let it win, Sammy,” Dean says as he puts another blanket over Sam’s shaking form, staring right into his eyes. “You hear me? We won’t.”
Sam nods, eyes wide. Just as he falls asleep from exhaustion, Dean paints runes over his eyelids, softly, as to keep from waking him. If they work, they’ll keep Sam from dreaming. Dean sold a clip of silver bullets to a witch in exchange for the spell. Sam sighs in his sleep, visibly relaxing. Dean keeps watch all night. Michael and Asher each sleep at one of Sam’s sides, holding on like the kids they are, orphans just like Sam and Dean.
They must remain together if they want to survive. It’s the one thing Dean has always been sure about.
The next day, no one says anything about the fact that they have to hold things down to the ground to keep them from hovering in mid-air.
----
This is how it ends. Or how it starts. Dean’s not sure which one it is anymore.
Title: Keep Walking (Nothing To See Here)
Word Count: 3800
Summary: The world ends on Tuesday the thirteenth, as Dean is trying to choose between Lays and Doritos in a run-down convenience store.
Author Notes: Spoilers up to Croatoan. Betaed by the amazing
javajunkie13. Apocalypse!fic. Also, there are zombies. Isn't that enough of an incentive to read? XDThe world ends on Tuesday the thirteenth, as Dean is trying to choose between Lays and Doritos in a run-down convenience store.
He sometimes thinks, dryly, that someone up there must have one hell of a twisted sense of humor.
----
Dean refuses to part with the Impala, even when she’s so obviously slowing them down, and Sam can scowl and roll his eyes all he likes, Dean knows he’s just as fond of the old girl as he is. They can’t go as fast with so many gallons of gas in the backseat, stored in what used to be milk cartons.
The car stinks constantly no matter what they do, so Dean rolls his window down, sings to Black Sabbath at the top of his lungs just to annoy Sam and ignores the smell, the same way he tries to keep ignoring the fact that five billion people suddenly dropped dead.
He’s always been good at denial.
----
Sam wants to go west. Dean wants to go east, because west means California means being alone. (He doesn’t say it aloud, though.)
They go north, when they realize that no matter what direction they choose, things will remain the same.
----
They keep to the roads as much as they can, sleeping in the car and hunting their own food, as if civilization had expired with the world. Sam says he’s sick of canned beans and half-raw meat, and Dean says Suck it up, princess, and it almost feels like everything’s normal again, like there aren’t corpses rotting all along the interstate, still seated in their blood-stained cars.
They don’t go into small towns unless they have to.
It feels too much like Rivergrove, the shrouding, unnatural silence, not even broken by insects. Pinedale, Wyoming is just the same as every other town they’ve been in since the Apocalypse. Someone must have burnt the bodies, and there’s a thin layer of ash covering every surface, crunching under Dean’s boots. No one’s bothered to clean the blood, though, and there are dark splatters everywhere, marking the place where someone died. The air reeks with the stench of burnt flesh.
Dean feels like gagging, but he covers his face with his hands and trips Sam, not sure which one of them he wants to distract more.
They work fast. Sam gets the water and the food, Dean steals everything else they can use from empty houses. So far, they haven’t found a living soul in these towns. People are running to the cities, to find security in numbers.
Dean breaks into a house through a window, only to find himself in a nursery, mobile turning slightly with the wind and baby pink sheets still stained with blood.
They get out of Pinedale as fast as they can, digging into the food Sam found in silence.
----
They never listen to the radio anymore.
The only station still working keeps on repeating the death toll over and over again.
----
This is how it happens.
Sam yells Hurry up, will you, from the door of the store, chewing on a candy bar. Dean holds the Doritos in one hand and the Lays in the other, moves them up and down like scales in Sam’s direction, eyebrows raised. Sam frowns in concentration for a moment, but the moment he raises his hand to point at his choice, the lights go out.
Then there’s a furious screeching in his ears, a scream and a moan and a yell all at once, going into his brain like a knife. He falls to his knees. There’s someone screaming, and it’s not until later that Dean realizes he’s screaming as well, hands covering his ears.
He can see Sam at the edge of his vision, crawling on the floor, trying to reach him. There’s an old lady crying by his side, spilt milk dampening her purple dress and Dean’s jeans, the glass from the broken milk bottle cutting into his hand. His ears are bleeding, red dots trickling onto the gray linoleum.
Sam extends his arm towards him and does something, and the world shifts and suddenly, he can breathe again. He lets himself fall all the way to the ground, sighing in relief. Everyone else is still screaming in pain, and, if he’s hearing correctly, so is everyone outside.
And then the world as he knows it ends when the heads of three quarters of the worldwide population burst open, leaving a gory mess behind.
They drag themselves out of the store, slipping on M&Ms and blood.
----
They draw on each other’s back every night, Sam trying not to laugh from where the brush tickles, Dean rolling his eyes and trying to keep his hand from shaking. The curved symbols are the only thing that has kept them alive so far, after ghosts and monsters and demons realized the rules no longer applied.
They would have it tattooed, but it’s not like there’s a wide range of artists available.
It’s not hunting anymore, what they do, with ghosts watching them through the trees, waiting for them, sitting on the pumps in empty gas stations. They grow used to sleeping on the ground with their duffel bags as pillows, bodies stiff so a brush of a leg won’t disturb the salt circle surrounding them and the Impala, holding a knife close to the body, the blade doused in holy water.
Something has been haunting them for miles now, a young girl, probably fifteen. She doesn’t do anything much, just follows them around like a lost puppy, flickering every once in a while, and neither of the brothers has the energy to retrace their steps until they find a body to burn. They don’t even know her name.
She stands outside the salt barrier at night, dancing around them with her white skirt turning blurry at the hem, looking dreamy and unearthly, whispering “Come out, pretty boys, come out,” just at the edge of sleep, all sweetness and charm. “Come play with me.” Dean has been dreaming about her for days. It’s probably what she intended all along.
She always says the same words, and in the morning, after Dean finds her watching him just a foot away from his face, he says, “Yeah, because we look like morons,” and she smiles and rides in the backseat of the Impala, throwing pieces of stolen Cheetos at their heads.
There are always things after them now. Werewolves, banshees, ghouls; you name it, they’ve fought it. They live in a continued state of exhaustion, their hands getting blisters from spending too much time with a weapon held tightly. The number of scars on their bodies has doubled. At the end of the day, they fall to the ground, bleeding, only managing to protect themselves with the same salt they pick up from last night’s circle.
They hardly ever solve a case now. If the thing in turn needs more than a bullet to the heart or a blade through the neck to die, then they just fend them off and move on.
It’s not like there’s a lot of people left to save, anyway.
The ghost girl gets tired of them after a month. She says, “You’re no fun at all,” and then she’s gone, leaving only burnt ozone in the place she used to be.
“Hallelujah,” says Dean, and Sam smiles for the first time in what feels like forever.
----
They’ve performed forty-seven exorcisms since the Apocalypse. Only ten of the possessed people have survived.
Each and every one of them told them, grinning, that they sure had enjoyed tearing John Winchester’s soul apart in Hell.
----
Salt has become more valuable than gold.
Sam prefers to keep out of the big cities, but after a few weeks, Dean craves human contact enough to risk going off the road. He sweet-talks Sam all the way there, promising decent food and maybe, possibly, a bed; using the fact that they’ve been using the same salt box for the last two months as an excuse, and in the end, when they’re just at the edge of a city and Sam is sitting as far away as possible, shoulders hunched up, he ends up saying, “Jesus, Sam don’t be such a pain in the ass, a guy just has to get laid sometimes, okay?”
New York is only inhabited by about two hundred people now, all of them staying in uptown Manhattan, close to Central Park. They’ve formed some sort of commune, which sounds like bullshit to Dean, but has been working pretty much okay for its inhabitants.
The city is decaying, looking far too big and far too empty without the constant crowds walking down its avenues. Leaves and garbage have piled up on the streets with no one there to clean them, the skyscraper’s windows covered with a thick layer of dust. The city is nearly impossible to drive through, the traffic jams remaining just the same as they had been during the morning the Apocalypse hit.
Dean hates cities as much as Sam does, the fact that the dead were just too many, and that there are still corpses rotting in the cars, in the restaurants, but he thinks he’ll go crazy if he doesn’t talk to another human being that isn’t Sam. They’ve come to New York a few times since the fat lady sang, and while the people at the survivor’s commune know them, it doesn’t mean they trust them.
“Hey, children, what’s up,” says Dean cheerily as soon as he gets out of the car, only to be met with serious faces and a few shotguns pointed at him. “O-kay, then,” he adds, lowering the cheery tone a few notches.
“What you want now, kid?” asks the commune’s leader, a gaunt-looking ex-cop in his mid-fifties.
“Not the joyful company, that’s for sure,” Dean says. He can see Sam shaking his head from the corner of his eyes. They’re outside one of the apartment buildings the commune uses as residence, Central Park just crossing the street. Dean had to admit, the folks here have class, at least – if you’re going to be living in a city full of dead people, at least you’re going to live well, in the former homes of the stars. They were just a few blocks away from where John Lennon died.
Then it’s all business. “Salt. And we wouldn’t say no to a hot shower.” The group of men look at each other, at their leader, and then they nod.
“What you got for us?”
They trade salt and supplies for information.
These guys are ignorant, naïve, terrified to death of this new world without rules and romping demons. Sam blesses a whole tank of water, mouth going over the Latin as easily as if it was English after a year of continuous practice. Dean checks that the protection symbols he carved on the walls their last time in town haven’t lost their power, and then he carves some new ones, checks the walls with the EMF to make sure no spirits have gone through. He writes down directions for the commune’s leader, how to kill this and how to kill that and make sure to lock your children up at night, there are things waiting out there to suck the life out of them.
Things considered, the mood in the building is incredibly cheery – a baby’s been born since the last time Sam and Dean crashed, and hope’s remarkably catching.
The few kids living in the commune have taken a shine to him, and they follow him around as he goes from room to room checking runes, giggling behind him and asking What’s that for? fifteen times every hour. They hardly ever approach Sam. Dean wonders if it’s because of his size (he can look huge to a five-year-old kid) or because a frown never leaves his face for the entire time they spend in the city.
“Dude, snap out of it, your face is gonna get stuck like that,” Dean says as he sits beside him on the steps outside the building. Sam says nothing. Dean sighs, and adds, “Seriously, man, what bugs you so much about staying in large cities?”
Sam sighs as well, and rubs his neck. “I get weird dreams while surrounded by people.”
“Like, weirder dreams than your usual?” says Dean, and even when he’s being completely serious, it comes out sounding like he’s joking.
“Yeah, weirder,” Sam says, chucking. “It’s as if I’m, dunno, attuned to them, or something, and I get their share of nightmares along with my own.”
Sam’s powers are going to give Dean an ulcer before he turns thirty-five. Ever since the Apocalypse, they’ve been acting up like crazy, making Sam tired and irritable most of the time, and worrying Dean to the point of biting his nails bloody, because there’s nothing he can do, and it’s eating him inside.
He doesn’t say that, though. He says, “Wow. That really sucks.”
Sam actually laughs, hands burying themselves in his hair. “Tell me about it.”
Dean tells stories to the children that night, sitting cross-legged on the ground with the kids forming a semi-circle in front of him, Sam by his side. He tells them stories from Before, about that time they killed the killer clown and that time Sam got stuck inside a sewer, because he guesses no one wants to hear stories about the After when most of them had lost everyone they had on that March day.
He spends the night with a red-head, Molly, who cries a bit afterwards because she still misses her fiancé so very much. At near dawn, Dean sits by his sleeping brother, sighing at the way Sam keeps on muttering No, no, every few minutes.
They’re gone two days later.
----
It’s hard to imagine now, but Dean’s pretty sure that the sky used to be blue.
He tries not to look up into the blood red sky nowadays.
----
They find Michael and his brother Asher in Chicago.
They’re only passing through, but word must spread fast, because people approach them while they’re in the middle of ransacking a store, looking for warmer winter clothes to replace their moth-eaten ones. Dean had only planned on staying for a couple of hours, but the people are insistent and he and Sam agree to perform a little cleansing ritual for a building.
The Chicago folks are doing it all wrong. Instead of getting together in one big group that’s easier to protect, they’ve divided themselves into three groups going from thirty to sixty people, and they’re constantly bickering with each other, trying to outdo the other groups. Dean thinks it’s completely idiotic, but no one listens to him. They haven’t been to Chicage since they found their father for the first time in what seems ages and ages ago, and the people don’t know them, don’t trust them.
Dean closes his father’s journal, but a boy standing on the doorway keeps him from going out of the room. The kid looks vaguely familiar as he stands there with his hands on his hips, but it’s not until he looks Dean squarely in the eye and says “You said to contact you if I needed something,” that Dean finally recognizes him.
“Michael?” The kid nods. Another, smaller boy peeks inside the room, and then latches to Michael, starting at Dean with a grave face. “And let me guess, Asher?” The little boy smiles a little, as he holds his brother’s hand.
Turns out, their mother is dead. They left Wisconsin a few months earlier; after Michael decided they would end up buried outside the motel’s office just like their mother if they stayed in the middle of nowhere. He had tried driving one of the abandoned cars, gotten pretty decent with it, but it’s still hard for him to reach the pedals, and they’d ended up walking most of the way. Dean can see the way their ribs protrude and the dullness in their eyes. They’ve only been here for a couple of weeks, and while the commune leaders usually try and make sure that no ones goes without food, no one really takes care of children anymore.
They’re not their kids, and they just remind them of the ones they’ve lost.
Dean listens to their story, hands fidgeting as he watches the kids gorge themselves with the bag of marshmallows Sam had been saving for a special occasion in the car’s trunk. Afterwards, Dean turns his head towards Sam’s, only to find him looking in his direction already. Sam does the puppy eyes, and Dean sighs, pretending to be defeated. There’s nothing else to say.
“All right, kids, pack up your stuff. I wanna see you sitting in the backseat in less than five minutes, starting now.” Asher makes some sort of excited yelp, and Michael’s smile is bright and honest.
“You do know they’re not pets, right,” Dean says as soon as they’re out of earshot, and Sam chuckles.
“You tell yourself that. I know for a fact that you were a step away from bursting into tears while Michael was talking,” Sam says with a small smile. Dean swats him in the head.
No one in the commune cares enough for the boys to bid them farewell. Dean can’t help but notice the way Michael visibly relaxes the minute he enters the Impala, sitting close to his brother because they hardly fit with all of the gas Sam and Dean carry around. It makes him angry, the way the commune looks as if they are relieved to say goodbye to the brothers, holding his and Sam’s hand over and over again as if they are doing them a favor. One look at Sam tells him that he, too, seems to be restraining himself from punching someone in the face.
Dean knows not one of them will ever come to Chicago ever again.
There are just too many bad memories in the city between the four of them.
----
Asher sets a tree on fire three days later, just by staring at it, and Dean suddenly knows why the entire commune had been so eager to get rid of the boys.
He just sighs, pats a scared and wide-eyed Asher on the head and figures at least now he won’t need to eat practically raw meat all the time.
----
They pass zombie hordes along the road, walking slowly and steadily in the other direction, mindless.
Their brains can be seen through the places where their heads exploded on Apocalypse Day. Their eyes are milky white, decomposing flesh grey and starting to get loose from the yellow bones. Some of them are missing limbs. It’s every single zombie Hollywood cliché rolled into one.
“It kinda makes you miss Angela and her psycho necromancer boyfriend, doesn’t it?” says Sam as he rolls his window up, making a face at the smell.
Dean snorts. “They’re not chasing us around, that’s good enough for me.”
“Yeah, but where are they going?” asks Michael from the backseat, nose pressed against the glass. He turns around to look briefly at Dean, staring at him as if he has all of the answers in the world. Dean swallows hard. He doesn’t think he’s ready for that kind of responsibility.
He ends up shrugging, after a few moments. “Nowhere, I guess. It’s not like there’s anywhere left to go.”
Dean has no choice but to run over a few of the zombies, and he bitches all the way to Nebraska about how hard it is to clean zombie guts from his precious baby. It gets Asher to smile a bit, so Dean guesses it’s worth it.
----
Three hundred miles away, no one in the car even looks sideways at the zombies walking on both sides of the road, leaving bits of them behind, covering the too-green grass with fingers and ears and bloody hair.
For Dean, it’s hard to think that only a year ago this would have sent chills down his spine.
----
There’s no purpose left, no place left to go, so two sets of brothers drive across a dying country, trying to outrun the things that still want the Winchesters dead, muttering Christo to every single person they meet.
Dean knows that Michael sometimes wonders if it’d been a good idea to go along for the ride – Sam’s abilities make him a beacon to the supernatural, every single paranormal thing around them wanting to claim a piece for themselves. Then again, Asher’s own powers have earned them quite a bit of unwanted attention in the last few months.
Sam’s visions are stronger than ever.
It’s usually two per week, but they’re still unpredictable, sometimes with a two or three day gap between them, sometimes both in the same night. They always leave Sam drained, bags dark under his eyes and eyebrows together in that haunted expression Dean hates so much. Following the visions to go save people is a thing from the past.
Sam sees people getting possessed; getting forced to cheat, to lie, to kill, to be killed. People with mothers that burned up on ceilings.
The demon is getting them all, one by one, face after face, and Dean never feels as helpless as when he tries to get his brother to snap out of a vision, when all he can do is hold Sam’s hair as he throws up in the dirt, half-dried tears on his face. It’s a message, he knows. You’re next.
Dean jokes, makes an ass out of himself trying to get Sam to stop looking like the living dead after a vision. Asher puts one of his tiny hands in between Sam’s, trying to comfort him in the only way he knows. Michael gives him an extra portion when he divides the food.
Sam always says he’s okay, but Dean’s heard those words enough times to know when they’re a lie.
“We won’t let it win, Sammy,” Dean says as he puts another blanket over Sam’s shaking form, staring right into his eyes. “You hear me? We won’t.”
Sam nods, eyes wide. Just as he falls asleep from exhaustion, Dean paints runes over his eyelids, softly, as to keep from waking him. If they work, they’ll keep Sam from dreaming. Dean sold a clip of silver bullets to a witch in exchange for the spell. Sam sighs in his sleep, visibly relaxing. Dean keeps watch all night. Michael and Asher each sleep at one of Sam’s sides, holding on like the kids they are, orphans just like Sam and Dean.
They must remain together if they want to survive. It’s the one thing Dean has always been sure about.
The next day, no one says anything about the fact that they have to hold things down to the ground to keep them from hovering in mid-air.
----
This is how it ends. Or how it starts. Dean’s not sure which one it is anymore.