SPN Fic: From This Broken Hill
Title: From This Broken Hill (pdf)
Author: kajikia
Fandom: Supernatural/War of the Worlds fusion
Pairing/Rating: Sam/Dean, PG
Length: ~5,000 words
Summary: Sam and Dean fight to survive during the invasion of "The War of the Worlds."
Written for the Post-Apocalyptic Multifandom Ficathon, for amothea.
Dean has contingency plans for a number of apocalypses, from a Hellmouth opening to a full on Book of Revelations, four horsemen and the angel with the sword deal. He even has one for a bird flu epidemic (although in that case the plan is to grab Sam, hole up in a Canadian shack, and eat a lot of beef, but it is still a plan).
Dean is completely unprepared for an alien invasion.
***
"The Pacific Northwest is supposed to have weird weather, but I don't think that's normal," Sam says.
They're standing in the street outside a diner in some little one-horse town in Washington, staring up at the sky, at the charcoal-colored clouds that ripple low and heavy above their heads. A cold, gritty wind sweeps by them, rushing towards the center of the storm that hangs like the eye of a hurricane over the far end of town. The sudden flash of lightning makes them both jump, and the lights in the diner, the single stoplight, the neon Coors sign in the bar across the street go out.
The radio had said there were electrical storms in Europe that morning.
"You haven't been having any, uh, visions or anything lately?" Dean asks.
"No," Sam says.
A second bolt of lightning flashes downwards, following the same path as the first. A few other people are in the street now, or leaning out their windows.
"Come on," Dean says, and tugs Sam towards the alley next to the restaurant.
Sam uses his freakishly long arms to snag the ladder on the fire escape, and they climb up to the roof. From the southeast corner they can see where the lightning was striking, in a scrubby vacant lot maybe a quarter mile away. Dean had grabbed a pair of binoculars from the Impala and they pass them back and forth.
"It's hitting in the same place," Sam says, after the fourth or fifth one. "Maybe some kind of storm spirit?"
"Maybe..." Dean says. The air smells of ozone, and all the hair on his arms is standing up straight. He has a bad feeling about this; it seems strange and wrong that this is happening in the middle of the afternoon, with cars stopped in the street and people watching.
The lightning stops after awhile, and people started to edge in closer to the scorched patch of earth. They all jump back when the ground shudders and subsides a bit. Dean starts running through possible earth demons in his head, and then something heaves itself out of the ground.
The crowd doesn't quite scream, doesn't quite panic, not yet, but they fall back quickly. The thing rises up, impossibly huge on three sinuous legs. Dean's heart is suddenly pounding. This could not possibly be good. Despite its ponderous grace, the thing looks mechanical.
"Maybe a golem?" Dean says, struggling to sound cool and unimpressed.
"Yeah, I don't--"
And then the thing takes notice of the crowd at its feet.
"Oh, shit," Sam says. "Maybe we should..."
"Run away?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
Dean's boots only touch every third step on the way down the fire escape.
He can hear the crowd screaming now, and the sudden groaning rumble of crashing masonry. He slams the Impala's door shut.
"So, probably not a golem," Sam says from the passenger seat, a little breathless.
"Yeah, the death-rays were kind of a big clue," Dean says, and he fumbles the keys as he flashes on the image of people bursting into dust or ash at the touch of those beams of light.
He gets the key in the ignition, but when he turns it nothing happens.
"C'mon, baby, don't be like that," he says, patting the steering wheel and trying again. No clicking, no grinding, the engine doesn't even try to turn over.
"Dean, nobody's driving," Sam says, and he realizes it's true. All the cars are stopped dead; there's a guy in cowboy boots cursing the hell out of his pick-up truck from under the hood.
"Shit."
They scramble out of the car. Dean hesitates for a second, almost going for the Impala's hood, but he can see the thing moving towards them, looming over the buildings like a skyscraper.
Sam already has the trunk open, grabbing the shotguns and extra ammo, the emergency duffle bags with the change of clothes and the first aid kit, the good knives. Dean has Dad's journal, and even though Sam gives him that look, he takes a moment to write down Locust St, Waterville, WA. Just in case. If they have to dig her out of a pile of rubble he's going to be so pissed.
They're not quite running, but they're walking fast. More people are in the streets now, not a mob yet, but he may have to upgrade Waterville to a two-horse town. He looks back over his shoulderstupid thing to do, but he can't help itand sees the thing picking its way across the town. It looks almost dainty, except for, you know, the death rays. For a second it looks like the thing is picking up people with its long metal tentacles, but then Sam's grabbing his elbow and bitching about him looking back.
It's just instinct, but he wants to get out of the town. The thing seems interested in the town, therefore he wants to get the hell out of Dodge. Fortunately, it's a small town. Unfortunately, it's in the middle of fields. Fields that have been harvested. Dean suppresses the urge to look back again and follows Sam into the fields where someone has left a small stand of oak trees and tall grass growing. There are already a few other people there, arguing about whether to hide in some guy's bomb shelter or not.
"It came up out of the ground, Ronald," the woman says, and Dean's with her on that.
"Cell phone's not working either," Sam says, and looks over at him.
"Much as I hate to admit it, I'm not really prepared to deal with a giant demon robot at the moment."
Sam snorts.
"Look, there's got to be a working phone somewhere out there; we find it, call Bobby and the National Guard"
"The National Guard?"
"They can bomb it or something, keep it distracted while we exorcise it or whatever you do with...a giant demon robot."
They're going to wait until sunset before they start walking, but then Sam says, "What if it can see in the dark?"
"Oh, well, that would be just perfect," Dean says, and they're both pretty glad to have the excuse to leave, so they don't have to keep watching the thing reduce Waterville ash and rubble.
They take US 2 west, because the thing is east, and Dean's hoping to run into someone with a car. But they don't, not until they're almost in the mountains, when a semi-trailer comes around the fat hairpin turn ahead of them, heading towards Waterville.
He actually stops when he sees them waving, lets Dean catch up to him.
Dean is trying on his best good ol' boy grin when the driver sticks his head out the window.
"Hey," Dean says, "this is gonna sound kind of crazy"
The trucker's face seems to crumple at little. "Aw, hell," he says, "they're here too?"
***
The trucker's name is Manny Elphsbach. He gets the semi turned back around and they head into the mountains.
"They're walkers, I hear. Maybe they won't like that."
"There's others?"
"All over the countryall over the world, is what I hear."
It feels like being sucker punched.
"You hear?" Sam asks.
Manny pats his CB radio. "Started this afternoon. You'd get dead spots, people talking on the radio and then nothing. Silence. Word starting going around, you know how it does, and after a few hours, the refugees started showing up. Or someone would see something. Half of what I hear is complete horseshit, but the other half...the other half scares me to death."
"What are they?"
"Aliens," Manny says, like it's completely obvious, and just like that, every dumbass thing a civilian had ever said to Dean on a hunt is on his tongue. That's crazy that's impossible there's no such thing as what the hell's wrong with you?
He's smart enough not to say any of it. He'd really prefer a giant demon robot, but he's smart enough not to say that either.
After a little bit, Manny gets on the radio, talking about Waterville. He tries a bunch of different frequencies. One guy says, "Welcome to the party," kind of sarcastically but not really mean, but nobody else responds.
They stop about an hour later at a nearly deserted rest stop. Manny goes to talk to the other driver, Sam heads to the bathroom, and Dean digs through their duffle bags for spare change for the pay phones.
A pleasant recorded voice tells him that all circuits are busy when he calls Bobby, that his call cannot be completed as dialed when he tries the Roadhouse. Missouri's line just rings and rings, and he stands there at the pay phone listening to it, leaning his forehead against the plastic partition.
"Hey," Sam says softly. "No luck?"
Dean shrugs. "Technical difficulties, blah blah blah." Like that's all it is.
They're almost out the door into the parking lot when Sam says, "Ooo, hey, vending machines," and has to stop. That's the only reason they're not out in the open when the thingthe aliensteps out of the darkness. It seems to come out of nowhere, like it was part of the mountain or the forest. Manny and the other driver are sitting in the cab of the other truck, out of the wind, and Dean can practically see the moment when the other guy panics, slamming on the gas, just trying to flat-out run. The alien pauses then reaches out and picks up the truck. It shakes it back and forth, pulls the cab apart from the trailer, then seems to lose interest and tosses the pieces off the side of the mountain. It strides off, casually stepping on one half of the rest stop building.
It takes less than two minutes. He thinks he and Sam stand there longer than that before they even believe what happened.
After that, they start walking, because there's nothing else to do. Dean has some vague idea of taking Manny's truck, but Sam folds his arms across his chest and suggests that if Dean thinks he's competent enough to drive a semi truck through the mountains at night he should perhaps think again. Or at least that's the basic gist of his argument.
Sam does stop to break open the vending machine before they go.
"This is how fast we resort to looting?" Dean says. "It's been like four hours!"
Sam makes an obscene gesture in his general direction, and makes Dean carry the corn chips.
It's mostly downhill, which is the only good thing about the trip. It's cold as ass, there's no light so he's convinced he's going to walk off a cliffif the aliens don't get him firstand corn chips and Snickers bars will only take you so far. They walk in silence, and Dean finally starts getting into the rhythm of it, letting his mind zone out.
He stumbles a little when Sam finally asks, "Where are we going?"
And Dean's the good, prepared older brother because he actually has an answer. "Dad knowsknew," goddamn, goddamn, goddamn, "some people in Vancouver. I figured we could head up there, try to hook up with them."
"You think this hasn't happened up there?" Sam asks after a minute.
"Nah, man, why would the aliens want to conquer Canada?" he says, deadpan, which gets a snort and an almost-smile from Sam. It's enough to carry him the rest of the way down the mountain.
***
In the morning, when they reach civilization, or at least Monroe, they run into the Seattle refugees, a mass of humanity that seems to have gone east until it hit the foothills and turned, taking the path of least resistance northward. They look like Dean feels, like they've been walking for fifteen hours in cold, damp weather, only most look like they didn't have the benefit of an unguarded vending machine before they started. They all have kind of a dull, flat look about them, exhausted and shocky but too afraid to stop.
Dean's been missing the Impala since Waterville. Thirty minutes after they join the herd, someone shoots a guy for his bicycle, and Dean is willing to reconsider his position.
They don't see it happen, just hear the gunshot, and the girlfriend start screaming. The shooter is some skinny punk, still waving the gun around, already slipping off the road with his prize. Everyone else is standing around like sheep, shocked and wide-eyed and completely at a loss. A couple of people are eyeballing the girlfriend's bike, eyeballing the girl herself, and for a moment, Dean thinks it's going to go from bad to worse. But the press of people behind them on the road starts to break it up instead.
Sam's digging out the first aid kit, over with the girlfriend, who at least has the sense to apply pressure to the wound. Dean doesn't try to help, just stands over them and watches the crowd.
The wound is pretty high up on the guy's chest. If there were an ER handy, Dean would give him decent odds on pulling through. But here, today...Sam meets his eyes, and shrugs a little. Yeah.
The girlfriend seems to know it, too. All the fight's gone out of her, and she's just sitting there, one hand still pressing his chest, like she's planning on staying there til he dies or gets better.
A couple of minute later, though, someone is passing back word that there's some doctors up ahead who are treating people, and someone else shows them how to rig up kind of a sling between the two bikes, and soon everyone is moving forward, because that's what you do. That, or lie down and wait to die.
The doctors are a young dark-haired guy, still hanging onto some shreds of a cocky attitude, and a small, pushy black woman who is clearly in charge. They have kind of taken over someone's yard and front porch, and there's a sad-looking Red Cross flag out front. It's not until he gets closer that he realizes it's a t-shirt with a red cross Sharpied onto it.
"Shouldn't, I don't know, the actual Red Cross be doing this?" Dean asks as she pokes at the bandage.
"They were," she says without looking up. From the way she says it, he doesn't think they stepped out for a cigarette.
"Oh."
Sam washes the blood off his hands with a garden hose. When they leave, the woman doctor is yelling at the straggling refugee train.
"People! Boil your goddamn water! If you come back with amoebic dysentery, I will tell you 'I told you so'!"
"Dysentery," Dean says. "Isn't that what we always died of when we played Oregon Trail?"
"That's all you remember from grade school, isn't it?"
"That and kicking your ass at dodgeball."
***
If you'd asked him, Dean would've said that the refugees were too tired to panic or run anymore, that if one of those alien walkers showed up they would have just stood around until they were burned to ash. As it turns out, he would have been wrong.
When the first one crests the hill behind them, Dean can practically taste the fear. The crowd bolts. It's not a herd anymore, it's a mob. It's nothing at all like running out of Waterville with a dozen other people. The hysteria is infectious, choking. Somebody in front of him stumbles and Dean catches him; if you fall here, the crowd will trample you. Dean's got his hand wrapped tight around Sam's, some leftover instinct from crowds in childhood. When Sam stumbles, it pulls them both down. Dean's got just enough control to get them out off the road, and then they're sliding down the grass of an embankment and the sidewalk is coming up pretty quick, fast enough to make them skin their palms catching themselves and stumble into a residential neighborhood.
One of the things is coming after them, or maybe it's just a coincidence, since it sure as hell doesn't seem to notice the houses it's walking through, let alone two puny humans. It crashes through a small wood frame house, and Dean has just enough time to think, Well, shit, before the wall comes down on them.
***
When he wakes up again, everything is quiet. No screaming, no crashing bricks, but no traffic or voices either. His hand is still wrapped tight around Sam's, who is curled up a few inches away. Sam's hand is warm and alive beneath his own, but he says Sam's name just to get him to open his eyes.
Sam blinks and when he sits up, he sucks in a sharp breath.
"My ankle," he says, and they look at it, already starting to swell.
"There was a hospital on, what, 180th or so, right?"
Sam gives him a tight smile. "They're probably not admitting right now."
"I think we can help ourselves," Dean says, and carefully helps Sam get levered up.
When they emerge from the remains of the house, they can see why it's been so quiet: there's nothing out there but rubble. Rubble and some kind of red fungus spreading in long thin tendrils all over what used to be buildings. It's dry to the touch, and a little spongy, like neoprene or the padding in a push-up bra.
"Making themselves right at home, aren't they?" Sam says, leaning on Dean as they hobble towards the hospital.
Dean grunts, and tries not to step on the fungus.
It looks like they tried to hold the hospital. There are burnt out husks of Jeeps and tanks, and one F-22, lying on the ground like a crumpled up paper airplane. Every time Dean thinks he understands the magnitude of this disaster, he finds some new unimaginable low. There are corpses here, the first he's seen. It looks like they were killed in the explosions, rather than by the alien weapons directly.
"They didn't take the dog-tags," he says.
"What does that mean?"
That it was a fucking rout. He just shrugs.
"When do you think they'll start nuking them?" Sam asks while Dean's splinting his ankle.
"Guess it depends on whether anyone's left who can make that decision," Dean says, without looking up from the bandage.
They even manage to find some Percocet; the hospital hasn't been looted yet. It's still perfectly intact, too, and something about that makes the back of Dean's neck itch. So when they come around a corner and find an alien, a naked alien outside its machine, Dean reacts first. He shoves Sam into one of the patient rooms, and he's got his gun out before the thing even turns all the way around. He has a kind of confused impression of gleaming, pale grey skin and a human shape before the thing draws its head back and gives one long hissing scream as it lunges towards him.
It's shockingly fast, but this is something Dean can do. He lets the familiar stillness fill him up like he has all the time in the world. Afterwards, he can worry about whether the ammo will work, whether the thing has some alien bulletproof vest, but now all that matters is the target and the gun, and the three clean shots to the center of the body. When he snaps back to himself, that split second later, the alien looks suddenly fragile, broken, slammed to the ground by the bullets' impact, blood like oil leaking out of it.
"Great job, pushing the guy with the sprained ankle," Sam says, leaning on the doorframe of the patient room. He sounds like he means it to be a joke, but he's looking pale.
Dean's got his mouth open to apologize when something rips the side of the building open.
"Oh, shit!" The alien clearly had some kind of self-destruct thing going on; the machine is trying to tear the building apart.
They scramble through the hallways, down the stairs, Sam hopping and letting gravity do most of the work, to make it to the sub-basement and the boiler room, locking themselves in behind steel doors as the building comes down around them.
"Dude, take the fucking Percocet," Dean says, looking at Sam's bent head as they sit side by side on the floor. Sam doesn't argue this time. He swallows one dry, and in about five minutes is collapsed bonelessly against Dean, like pain was the only thing keeping him awake.
***
In all honesty, Dean is a little surprised to wake up alive the next morning. Digging their way out of the partially collapsed basement is actually tolerable.
They hesitate before stepping outside, listening to the empty, unnatural silence. Not even the sound of birds or bugs, like something just wiped the town clean.
They don't go far; they've been kind of hard on Sam's ankle. Fortunately the aliens don't seem to understand the concept of a basement, and those spaces are usually intact. They find one with a sofabed and some canned food, and hooray for lowered standards, because both things feel like a luxury. They won't stay long; the fungus is already starting to creep in around the edges. Sam tried salting and burning it, since that works on so many things, but after the lighter fluid burned off, the fungus was completely intact, and even more nasty-smelling.
Sam's fiddling with the lid of a can of tinned pears. "I've been thinking," he says. "About dysentery."
"The doctor told you to boil your water."
Sam rolls his eyes. "And about other disease. Like smallpox, and how much of a disaster it was in the Americas."
"So now you're worried about the aliens giving us some kind of space smallpox?"
He expects Sam to roll his eyes again, but Sam is oddly intent. "No, it works the other way, too. Sometimes natives are more resistant to diseases than invaders are. Like with Yellow Fever."
"So you want to summon up Bronze John and sic him on the aliens?"
"I was thinking, the Rokka, the Scandinavian plague spirit, but yeah, basically."
And because Dean has quite literally nothing better to do with his time, he agrees.
They chalk the circle on the floor and use some more of the basement's emergency candles.
When they say the final words of the summoning, the space inside the circle fills with a pale blue fog that coalesces into an old woman leaning on a broom.
She looks at them with interest. "I don't get many calls nowadays. What do you want?"
"Um," Sam says, "the aliens."
She frowns. "I thought you humans were becoming cleverer about things like this. There is no plague on this planet that can touch them, for they are not of this planet. My diseases cannot survive in their bodies, and if they cannot survive, they cannot sicken them."
Sam kind of slumps over on the couch; Dean didn't realize he was so invested in this scheme.
"But," Dean says, "can't you, I don't know, genetically engineer some ones that do work?"
She turns to look at him, smiling a bright, sharp smile, like he's a particularly intelligent student. "There is science, and then there is magic. And what you cannot do with one..."
Dean is already flipping through Dad's journal. Dad marked it out once, on the back of a cocktail napkin. Dean has no idea whether Dad was actually going to use it, or if he'd copied it for research, but it's there, along with the ritual, all the instructions you need to not just summon a disease spirit but to compel it to magically sicken someone with some unknown, incurable, and most often fatal disease.
Sam's leaning over his shoulder to follow along. "We need blood."
"It does not have to be fresh, or even pure, but I need a biological sample to tailor the disease to."
"It's probably still there," Dean says. "The one I killed."
***
Sam comes along to watch his back, despite the ankle.
The body is gone when they returnscavengers, maybe, or the aliens themselvesbut the blood is there, congealing on the tile floor. They soak it up with paper towels, and he realizes that it's not black, but a deep, rich purple.
Dean's been thinking ahead about all this, which is why he didn't fight Sam too hard about coming along. Sam's pale and sweaty when they get back, and when Dean tells him to take another Percocet, he does. He's out like a light.
Dean makes a little poppet out of the blood-soaked paper towelsmight as well go whole hog with the Western European witchcrafttying it into shape with bits of twine. He makes sure he gets the backwards knees right; it seems like an important detail. Outside, in a little corner of wall that's still standing, he draws the circle. He puts the poppet on a piece of the fungus inside the circle, and recites the incantation.
The old woman appears out of the fog again, and gives the poppet an approving nod. "Where's your brother?"
Dean takes a deep breath. "In the stories, there's always a carrier. A ferryman or a merchant that takes the plague across the boundaries it cannot cross on its own."
She nods, pleased with him. "And you will be my ferryman for this trip."
"Yes."
"And I always reward my ferrymen."
"Yeah, with a quick death. That's part of the stories, too."
She cackles a little. "Oh, there are stories, and then there are stories."
She crouches down next to the poppet and holds her hand out over it, lets the hand dissolve into mist. "Yes, yes..." she says, eyes closed in thought. "There. It is done. Are you ready?"
It's faster than he was expecting, but he's not going to get more ready for this.
"They're all over the world," he says. "Do I need to go infect them all?"
"No, no. The carrier merely opens the door. Neither time nor distance can stop me once I am invited in."
She starts to dissolve into the blue cloud form.
Dean licks his lips and takes the last step into the circle.
It's like standing in a cool, dry fog, not painful or eerie, but he still has to force himself to take a deep breath. When he does, he can feel something settle like an invisible coat around him. He breaks the circle and steps out.
He starts following the fungus back to its source. It grows thicker and denser where the aliens have established themselves, and it does not take long for the tendrils to turn into a lacy carpet. He hesitates at the edge. He can smell it, that harsh metallic tang that makes his skin crawl, and under it, thick and meaty, the smell of rotted blood. He's nerving himself up to start walking on it when someone behind him shouts, "Hey, asshole!"
It's Sam, and he looks pissed. "What the hell are you doing?" he asks, limping closer. He appears to be using a garden rake as a cane.
"I'm just taking a walk around," Dean says.
"I saw the circle."
Yeah, he should have erased that.
"I"
"Do you think you're the only one that knows the stories?"
"I"
Sam drops the rake, catches Dean's face between his palms, and kisses his open mouth. He is slow and careful and thorough, like he's trying to climb inside Dean through his mouth.
When he finally breaks the kiss, Dean can only gape at him. It takes a special effort not to raise his hand to touch his own lips, because that would be a terribly, terribly girly thing to do.
Sam looks him straight in the eye. "Now I'm a carrier, too," he says, and something inside Dean curls up cold and hard and tight.
"Sammy..."
"Jesus, Dean, I thought you were smarter than Dad. What makes you think I want to be the one that's left behind?"
Sam slides his hands down the side of Dean's neck and rests them on Dean's chest, leaning into him to take the weight off his ankle.
"I'm sorry," Dean says.
Sam eyes him suspiciously, like he's not sure Dean's sorry for the right thing. "Just as long as you realize we're doing this together, even if you have to carry me across miles of alien fungus."
Dean just nods, and the tight thing in his chest starts to loosen up a little. He doesn't want Sam to die, not when they only need one carrier, but he really, really didn't want to do this by himself, either.
"So. You're going to have to pick up my rake, by the way."
Dean rolls his eyes, and steps on the rake tines, bringing the handle up. Sam doesn't let go of him, though, just slides an arm around his shoulders.
"You know, not all the carriers die."
Dean snorts and wraps his arm around Sam's waist. "Yes, of course, it's just not in the stories because that's such a bummer of an ending."
"What, you've never heard of Typhoid Mary?"
They limp off together across the fungus, leaning on each other, in search of an alien to spit on (or, worse case scenario, to kissthe Rokka's instructions hadn't been very clear on that).
They don't see it, because it doesn't happen immediately, but slowly, where they've walked, the blood-red fungus turns black and crumbles into dust.
Author: kajikia
Fandom: Supernatural/War of the Worlds fusion
Pairing/Rating: Sam/Dean, PG
Length: ~5,000 words
Summary: Sam and Dean fight to survive during the invasion of "The War of the Worlds."
Written for the Post-Apocalyptic Multifandom Ficathon, for amothea.
Dean has contingency plans for a number of apocalypses, from a Hellmouth opening to a full on Book of Revelations, four horsemen and the angel with the sword deal. He even has one for a bird flu epidemic (although in that case the plan is to grab Sam, hole up in a Canadian shack, and eat a lot of beef, but it is still a plan).
Dean is completely unprepared for an alien invasion.
***
"The Pacific Northwest is supposed to have weird weather, but I don't think that's normal," Sam says.
They're standing in the street outside a diner in some little one-horse town in Washington, staring up at the sky, at the charcoal-colored clouds that ripple low and heavy above their heads. A cold, gritty wind sweeps by them, rushing towards the center of the storm that hangs like the eye of a hurricane over the far end of town. The sudden flash of lightning makes them both jump, and the lights in the diner, the single stoplight, the neon Coors sign in the bar across the street go out.
The radio had said there were electrical storms in Europe that morning.
"You haven't been having any, uh, visions or anything lately?" Dean asks.
"No," Sam says.
A second bolt of lightning flashes downwards, following the same path as the first. A few other people are in the street now, or leaning out their windows.
"Come on," Dean says, and tugs Sam towards the alley next to the restaurant.
Sam uses his freakishly long arms to snag the ladder on the fire escape, and they climb up to the roof. From the southeast corner they can see where the lightning was striking, in a scrubby vacant lot maybe a quarter mile away. Dean had grabbed a pair of binoculars from the Impala and they pass them back and forth.
"It's hitting in the same place," Sam says, after the fourth or fifth one. "Maybe some kind of storm spirit?"
"Maybe..." Dean says. The air smells of ozone, and all the hair on his arms is standing up straight. He has a bad feeling about this; it seems strange and wrong that this is happening in the middle of the afternoon, with cars stopped in the street and people watching.
The lightning stops after awhile, and people started to edge in closer to the scorched patch of earth. They all jump back when the ground shudders and subsides a bit. Dean starts running through possible earth demons in his head, and then something heaves itself out of the ground.
The crowd doesn't quite scream, doesn't quite panic, not yet, but they fall back quickly. The thing rises up, impossibly huge on three sinuous legs. Dean's heart is suddenly pounding. This could not possibly be good. Despite its ponderous grace, the thing looks mechanical.
"Maybe a golem?" Dean says, struggling to sound cool and unimpressed.
"Yeah, I don't--"
And then the thing takes notice of the crowd at its feet.
"Oh, shit," Sam says. "Maybe we should..."
"Run away?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
Dean's boots only touch every third step on the way down the fire escape.
He can hear the crowd screaming now, and the sudden groaning rumble of crashing masonry. He slams the Impala's door shut.
"So, probably not a golem," Sam says from the passenger seat, a little breathless.
"Yeah, the death-rays were kind of a big clue," Dean says, and he fumbles the keys as he flashes on the image of people bursting into dust or ash at the touch of those beams of light.
He gets the key in the ignition, but when he turns it nothing happens.
"C'mon, baby, don't be like that," he says, patting the steering wheel and trying again. No clicking, no grinding, the engine doesn't even try to turn over.
"Dean, nobody's driving," Sam says, and he realizes it's true. All the cars are stopped dead; there's a guy in cowboy boots cursing the hell out of his pick-up truck from under the hood.
"Shit."
They scramble out of the car. Dean hesitates for a second, almost going for the Impala's hood, but he can see the thing moving towards them, looming over the buildings like a skyscraper.
Sam already has the trunk open, grabbing the shotguns and extra ammo, the emergency duffle bags with the change of clothes and the first aid kit, the good knives. Dean has Dad's journal, and even though Sam gives him that look, he takes a moment to write down Locust St, Waterville, WA. Just in case. If they have to dig her out of a pile of rubble he's going to be so pissed.
They're not quite running, but they're walking fast. More people are in the streets now, not a mob yet, but he may have to upgrade Waterville to a two-horse town. He looks back over his shoulderstupid thing to do, but he can't help itand sees the thing picking its way across the town. It looks almost dainty, except for, you know, the death rays. For a second it looks like the thing is picking up people with its long metal tentacles, but then Sam's grabbing his elbow and bitching about him looking back.
It's just instinct, but he wants to get out of the town. The thing seems interested in the town, therefore he wants to get the hell out of Dodge. Fortunately, it's a small town. Unfortunately, it's in the middle of fields. Fields that have been harvested. Dean suppresses the urge to look back again and follows Sam into the fields where someone has left a small stand of oak trees and tall grass growing. There are already a few other people there, arguing about whether to hide in some guy's bomb shelter or not.
"It came up out of the ground, Ronald," the woman says, and Dean's with her on that.
"Cell phone's not working either," Sam says, and looks over at him.
"Much as I hate to admit it, I'm not really prepared to deal with a giant demon robot at the moment."
Sam snorts.
"Look, there's got to be a working phone somewhere out there; we find it, call Bobby and the National Guard"
"The National Guard?"
"They can bomb it or something, keep it distracted while we exorcise it or whatever you do with...a giant demon robot."
They're going to wait until sunset before they start walking, but then Sam says, "What if it can see in the dark?"
"Oh, well, that would be just perfect," Dean says, and they're both pretty glad to have the excuse to leave, so they don't have to keep watching the thing reduce Waterville ash and rubble.
They take US 2 west, because the thing is east, and Dean's hoping to run into someone with a car. But they don't, not until they're almost in the mountains, when a semi-trailer comes around the fat hairpin turn ahead of them, heading towards Waterville.
He actually stops when he sees them waving, lets Dean catch up to him.
Dean is trying on his best good ol' boy grin when the driver sticks his head out the window.
"Hey," Dean says, "this is gonna sound kind of crazy"
The trucker's face seems to crumple at little. "Aw, hell," he says, "they're here too?"
***
The trucker's name is Manny Elphsbach. He gets the semi turned back around and they head into the mountains.
"They're walkers, I hear. Maybe they won't like that."
"There's others?"
"All over the countryall over the world, is what I hear."
It feels like being sucker punched.
"You hear?" Sam asks.
Manny pats his CB radio. "Started this afternoon. You'd get dead spots, people talking on the radio and then nothing. Silence. Word starting going around, you know how it does, and after a few hours, the refugees started showing up. Or someone would see something. Half of what I hear is complete horseshit, but the other half...the other half scares me to death."
"What are they?"
"Aliens," Manny says, like it's completely obvious, and just like that, every dumbass thing a civilian had ever said to Dean on a hunt is on his tongue. That's crazy that's impossible there's no such thing as what the hell's wrong with you?
He's smart enough not to say any of it. He'd really prefer a giant demon robot, but he's smart enough not to say that either.
After a little bit, Manny gets on the radio, talking about Waterville. He tries a bunch of different frequencies. One guy says, "Welcome to the party," kind of sarcastically but not really mean, but nobody else responds.
They stop about an hour later at a nearly deserted rest stop. Manny goes to talk to the other driver, Sam heads to the bathroom, and Dean digs through their duffle bags for spare change for the pay phones.
A pleasant recorded voice tells him that all circuits are busy when he calls Bobby, that his call cannot be completed as dialed when he tries the Roadhouse. Missouri's line just rings and rings, and he stands there at the pay phone listening to it, leaning his forehead against the plastic partition.
"Hey," Sam says softly. "No luck?"
Dean shrugs. "Technical difficulties, blah blah blah." Like that's all it is.
They're almost out the door into the parking lot when Sam says, "Ooo, hey, vending machines," and has to stop. That's the only reason they're not out in the open when the thingthe aliensteps out of the darkness. It seems to come out of nowhere, like it was part of the mountain or the forest. Manny and the other driver are sitting in the cab of the other truck, out of the wind, and Dean can practically see the moment when the other guy panics, slamming on the gas, just trying to flat-out run. The alien pauses then reaches out and picks up the truck. It shakes it back and forth, pulls the cab apart from the trailer, then seems to lose interest and tosses the pieces off the side of the mountain. It strides off, casually stepping on one half of the rest stop building.
It takes less than two minutes. He thinks he and Sam stand there longer than that before they even believe what happened.
After that, they start walking, because there's nothing else to do. Dean has some vague idea of taking Manny's truck, but Sam folds his arms across his chest and suggests that if Dean thinks he's competent enough to drive a semi truck through the mountains at night he should perhaps think again. Or at least that's the basic gist of his argument.
Sam does stop to break open the vending machine before they go.
"This is how fast we resort to looting?" Dean says. "It's been like four hours!"
Sam makes an obscene gesture in his general direction, and makes Dean carry the corn chips.
It's mostly downhill, which is the only good thing about the trip. It's cold as ass, there's no light so he's convinced he's going to walk off a cliffif the aliens don't get him firstand corn chips and Snickers bars will only take you so far. They walk in silence, and Dean finally starts getting into the rhythm of it, letting his mind zone out.
He stumbles a little when Sam finally asks, "Where are we going?"
And Dean's the good, prepared older brother because he actually has an answer. "Dad knowsknew," goddamn, goddamn, goddamn, "some people in Vancouver. I figured we could head up there, try to hook up with them."
"You think this hasn't happened up there?" Sam asks after a minute.
"Nah, man, why would the aliens want to conquer Canada?" he says, deadpan, which gets a snort and an almost-smile from Sam. It's enough to carry him the rest of the way down the mountain.
***
In the morning, when they reach civilization, or at least Monroe, they run into the Seattle refugees, a mass of humanity that seems to have gone east until it hit the foothills and turned, taking the path of least resistance northward. They look like Dean feels, like they've been walking for fifteen hours in cold, damp weather, only most look like they didn't have the benefit of an unguarded vending machine before they started. They all have kind of a dull, flat look about them, exhausted and shocky but too afraid to stop.
Dean's been missing the Impala since Waterville. Thirty minutes after they join the herd, someone shoots a guy for his bicycle, and Dean is willing to reconsider his position.
They don't see it happen, just hear the gunshot, and the girlfriend start screaming. The shooter is some skinny punk, still waving the gun around, already slipping off the road with his prize. Everyone else is standing around like sheep, shocked and wide-eyed and completely at a loss. A couple of people are eyeballing the girlfriend's bike, eyeballing the girl herself, and for a moment, Dean thinks it's going to go from bad to worse. But the press of people behind them on the road starts to break it up instead.
Sam's digging out the first aid kit, over with the girlfriend, who at least has the sense to apply pressure to the wound. Dean doesn't try to help, just stands over them and watches the crowd.
The wound is pretty high up on the guy's chest. If there were an ER handy, Dean would give him decent odds on pulling through. But here, today...Sam meets his eyes, and shrugs a little. Yeah.
The girlfriend seems to know it, too. All the fight's gone out of her, and she's just sitting there, one hand still pressing his chest, like she's planning on staying there til he dies or gets better.
A couple of minute later, though, someone is passing back word that there's some doctors up ahead who are treating people, and someone else shows them how to rig up kind of a sling between the two bikes, and soon everyone is moving forward, because that's what you do. That, or lie down and wait to die.
The doctors are a young dark-haired guy, still hanging onto some shreds of a cocky attitude, and a small, pushy black woman who is clearly in charge. They have kind of taken over someone's yard and front porch, and there's a sad-looking Red Cross flag out front. It's not until he gets closer that he realizes it's a t-shirt with a red cross Sharpied onto it.
"Shouldn't, I don't know, the actual Red Cross be doing this?" Dean asks as she pokes at the bandage.
"They were," she says without looking up. From the way she says it, he doesn't think they stepped out for a cigarette.
"Oh."
Sam washes the blood off his hands with a garden hose. When they leave, the woman doctor is yelling at the straggling refugee train.
"People! Boil your goddamn water! If you come back with amoebic dysentery, I will tell you 'I told you so'!"
"Dysentery," Dean says. "Isn't that what we always died of when we played Oregon Trail?"
"That's all you remember from grade school, isn't it?"
"That and kicking your ass at dodgeball."
***
If you'd asked him, Dean would've said that the refugees were too tired to panic or run anymore, that if one of those alien walkers showed up they would have just stood around until they were burned to ash. As it turns out, he would have been wrong.
When the first one crests the hill behind them, Dean can practically taste the fear. The crowd bolts. It's not a herd anymore, it's a mob. It's nothing at all like running out of Waterville with a dozen other people. The hysteria is infectious, choking. Somebody in front of him stumbles and Dean catches him; if you fall here, the crowd will trample you. Dean's got his hand wrapped tight around Sam's, some leftover instinct from crowds in childhood. When Sam stumbles, it pulls them both down. Dean's got just enough control to get them out off the road, and then they're sliding down the grass of an embankment and the sidewalk is coming up pretty quick, fast enough to make them skin their palms catching themselves and stumble into a residential neighborhood.
One of the things is coming after them, or maybe it's just a coincidence, since it sure as hell doesn't seem to notice the houses it's walking through, let alone two puny humans. It crashes through a small wood frame house, and Dean has just enough time to think, Well, shit, before the wall comes down on them.
***
When he wakes up again, everything is quiet. No screaming, no crashing bricks, but no traffic or voices either. His hand is still wrapped tight around Sam's, who is curled up a few inches away. Sam's hand is warm and alive beneath his own, but he says Sam's name just to get him to open his eyes.
Sam blinks and when he sits up, he sucks in a sharp breath.
"My ankle," he says, and they look at it, already starting to swell.
"There was a hospital on, what, 180th or so, right?"
Sam gives him a tight smile. "They're probably not admitting right now."
"I think we can help ourselves," Dean says, and carefully helps Sam get levered up.
When they emerge from the remains of the house, they can see why it's been so quiet: there's nothing out there but rubble. Rubble and some kind of red fungus spreading in long thin tendrils all over what used to be buildings. It's dry to the touch, and a little spongy, like neoprene or the padding in a push-up bra.
"Making themselves right at home, aren't they?" Sam says, leaning on Dean as they hobble towards the hospital.
Dean grunts, and tries not to step on the fungus.
It looks like they tried to hold the hospital. There are burnt out husks of Jeeps and tanks, and one F-22, lying on the ground like a crumpled up paper airplane. Every time Dean thinks he understands the magnitude of this disaster, he finds some new unimaginable low. There are corpses here, the first he's seen. It looks like they were killed in the explosions, rather than by the alien weapons directly.
"They didn't take the dog-tags," he says.
"What does that mean?"
That it was a fucking rout. He just shrugs.
"When do you think they'll start nuking them?" Sam asks while Dean's splinting his ankle.
"Guess it depends on whether anyone's left who can make that decision," Dean says, without looking up from the bandage.
They even manage to find some Percocet; the hospital hasn't been looted yet. It's still perfectly intact, too, and something about that makes the back of Dean's neck itch. So when they come around a corner and find an alien, a naked alien outside its machine, Dean reacts first. He shoves Sam into one of the patient rooms, and he's got his gun out before the thing even turns all the way around. He has a kind of confused impression of gleaming, pale grey skin and a human shape before the thing draws its head back and gives one long hissing scream as it lunges towards him.
It's shockingly fast, but this is something Dean can do. He lets the familiar stillness fill him up like he has all the time in the world. Afterwards, he can worry about whether the ammo will work, whether the thing has some alien bulletproof vest, but now all that matters is the target and the gun, and the three clean shots to the center of the body. When he snaps back to himself, that split second later, the alien looks suddenly fragile, broken, slammed to the ground by the bullets' impact, blood like oil leaking out of it.
"Great job, pushing the guy with the sprained ankle," Sam says, leaning on the doorframe of the patient room. He sounds like he means it to be a joke, but he's looking pale.
Dean's got his mouth open to apologize when something rips the side of the building open.
"Oh, shit!" The alien clearly had some kind of self-destruct thing going on; the machine is trying to tear the building apart.
They scramble through the hallways, down the stairs, Sam hopping and letting gravity do most of the work, to make it to the sub-basement and the boiler room, locking themselves in behind steel doors as the building comes down around them.
"Dude, take the fucking Percocet," Dean says, looking at Sam's bent head as they sit side by side on the floor. Sam doesn't argue this time. He swallows one dry, and in about five minutes is collapsed bonelessly against Dean, like pain was the only thing keeping him awake.
***
In all honesty, Dean is a little surprised to wake up alive the next morning. Digging their way out of the partially collapsed basement is actually tolerable.
They hesitate before stepping outside, listening to the empty, unnatural silence. Not even the sound of birds or bugs, like something just wiped the town clean.
They don't go far; they've been kind of hard on Sam's ankle. Fortunately the aliens don't seem to understand the concept of a basement, and those spaces are usually intact. They find one with a sofabed and some canned food, and hooray for lowered standards, because both things feel like a luxury. They won't stay long; the fungus is already starting to creep in around the edges. Sam tried salting and burning it, since that works on so many things, but after the lighter fluid burned off, the fungus was completely intact, and even more nasty-smelling.
Sam's fiddling with the lid of a can of tinned pears. "I've been thinking," he says. "About dysentery."
"The doctor told you to boil your water."
Sam rolls his eyes. "And about other disease. Like smallpox, and how much of a disaster it was in the Americas."
"So now you're worried about the aliens giving us some kind of space smallpox?"
He expects Sam to roll his eyes again, but Sam is oddly intent. "No, it works the other way, too. Sometimes natives are more resistant to diseases than invaders are. Like with Yellow Fever."
"So you want to summon up Bronze John and sic him on the aliens?"
"I was thinking, the Rokka, the Scandinavian plague spirit, but yeah, basically."
And because Dean has quite literally nothing better to do with his time, he agrees.
They chalk the circle on the floor and use some more of the basement's emergency candles.
When they say the final words of the summoning, the space inside the circle fills with a pale blue fog that coalesces into an old woman leaning on a broom.
She looks at them with interest. "I don't get many calls nowadays. What do you want?"
"Um," Sam says, "the aliens."
She frowns. "I thought you humans were becoming cleverer about things like this. There is no plague on this planet that can touch them, for they are not of this planet. My diseases cannot survive in their bodies, and if they cannot survive, they cannot sicken them."
Sam kind of slumps over on the couch; Dean didn't realize he was so invested in this scheme.
"But," Dean says, "can't you, I don't know, genetically engineer some ones that do work?"
She turns to look at him, smiling a bright, sharp smile, like he's a particularly intelligent student. "There is science, and then there is magic. And what you cannot do with one..."
Dean is already flipping through Dad's journal. Dad marked it out once, on the back of a cocktail napkin. Dean has no idea whether Dad was actually going to use it, or if he'd copied it for research, but it's there, along with the ritual, all the instructions you need to not just summon a disease spirit but to compel it to magically sicken someone with some unknown, incurable, and most often fatal disease.
Sam's leaning over his shoulder to follow along. "We need blood."
"It does not have to be fresh, or even pure, but I need a biological sample to tailor the disease to."
"It's probably still there," Dean says. "The one I killed."
***
Sam comes along to watch his back, despite the ankle.
The body is gone when they returnscavengers, maybe, or the aliens themselvesbut the blood is there, congealing on the tile floor. They soak it up with paper towels, and he realizes that it's not black, but a deep, rich purple.
Dean's been thinking ahead about all this, which is why he didn't fight Sam too hard about coming along. Sam's pale and sweaty when they get back, and when Dean tells him to take another Percocet, he does. He's out like a light.
Dean makes a little poppet out of the blood-soaked paper towelsmight as well go whole hog with the Western European witchcrafttying it into shape with bits of twine. He makes sure he gets the backwards knees right; it seems like an important detail. Outside, in a little corner of wall that's still standing, he draws the circle. He puts the poppet on a piece of the fungus inside the circle, and recites the incantation.
The old woman appears out of the fog again, and gives the poppet an approving nod. "Where's your brother?"
Dean takes a deep breath. "In the stories, there's always a carrier. A ferryman or a merchant that takes the plague across the boundaries it cannot cross on its own."
She nods, pleased with him. "And you will be my ferryman for this trip."
"Yes."
"And I always reward my ferrymen."
"Yeah, with a quick death. That's part of the stories, too."
She cackles a little. "Oh, there are stories, and then there are stories."
She crouches down next to the poppet and holds her hand out over it, lets the hand dissolve into mist. "Yes, yes..." she says, eyes closed in thought. "There. It is done. Are you ready?"
It's faster than he was expecting, but he's not going to get more ready for this.
"They're all over the world," he says. "Do I need to go infect them all?"
"No, no. The carrier merely opens the door. Neither time nor distance can stop me once I am invited in."
She starts to dissolve into the blue cloud form.
Dean licks his lips and takes the last step into the circle.
It's like standing in a cool, dry fog, not painful or eerie, but he still has to force himself to take a deep breath. When he does, he can feel something settle like an invisible coat around him. He breaks the circle and steps out.
He starts following the fungus back to its source. It grows thicker and denser where the aliens have established themselves, and it does not take long for the tendrils to turn into a lacy carpet. He hesitates at the edge. He can smell it, that harsh metallic tang that makes his skin crawl, and under it, thick and meaty, the smell of rotted blood. He's nerving himself up to start walking on it when someone behind him shouts, "Hey, asshole!"
It's Sam, and he looks pissed. "What the hell are you doing?" he asks, limping closer. He appears to be using a garden rake as a cane.
"I'm just taking a walk around," Dean says.
"I saw the circle."
Yeah, he should have erased that.
"I"
"Do you think you're the only one that knows the stories?"
"I"
Sam drops the rake, catches Dean's face between his palms, and kisses his open mouth. He is slow and careful and thorough, like he's trying to climb inside Dean through his mouth.
When he finally breaks the kiss, Dean can only gape at him. It takes a special effort not to raise his hand to touch his own lips, because that would be a terribly, terribly girly thing to do.
Sam looks him straight in the eye. "Now I'm a carrier, too," he says, and something inside Dean curls up cold and hard and tight.
"Sammy..."
"Jesus, Dean, I thought you were smarter than Dad. What makes you think I want to be the one that's left behind?"
Sam slides his hands down the side of Dean's neck and rests them on Dean's chest, leaning into him to take the weight off his ankle.
"I'm sorry," Dean says.
Sam eyes him suspiciously, like he's not sure Dean's sorry for the right thing. "Just as long as you realize we're doing this together, even if you have to carry me across miles of alien fungus."
Dean just nods, and the tight thing in his chest starts to loosen up a little. He doesn't want Sam to die, not when they only need one carrier, but he really, really didn't want to do this by himself, either.
"So. You're going to have to pick up my rake, by the way."
Dean rolls his eyes, and steps on the rake tines, bringing the handle up. Sam doesn't let go of him, though, just slides an arm around his shoulders.
"You know, not all the carriers die."
Dean snorts and wraps his arm around Sam's waist. "Yes, of course, it's just not in the stories because that's such a bummer of an ending."
"What, you've never heard of Typhoid Mary?"
They limp off together across the fungus, leaning on each other, in search of an alien to spit on (or, worse case scenario, to kissthe Rokka's instructions hadn't been very clear on that).
They don't see it, because it doesn't happen immediately, but slowly, where they've walked, the blood-red fungus turns black and crumbles into dust.