Fic: The Shattered One (25/?)
See the masterpost for disclaimer, summary, and previous parts.
They made it a block before they encountered their first infected human. A man came staggering out of an alley, and he might have been a drifter or the local fry-cook for all they knew… whoever he’d been, he was feral and filthy now. He saw the group making their way down the street and started running right at them. His hands were clutching fistfuls of glass, sharp shards of broken windowpane gripped so tight that blood ran in rivulets down his wrists and forearms.
Strafe shot him in the chest before he could get close enough to slash at them.
At the report of the gun, Daniel startled against Dean’s chest.
From the hidden corners and streets and homes of the neighborhood, the screeching of rabid men and women lifted above the distant din of a city in chaos. It was the sound of predators becoming suddenly aware of prey nearby.
“Cat’s out of the bag now,” Sam quipped drolly as he took a step back, pressing arm-to-arm with Dean as they surveyed the area for attackers. Ellen and Jo were doing the same, butting up to fight together. Gerald and Strafe, accustomed to hunting alone, moved restlessly, untethered and at the ready. Cait looked like she wanted to do the same, but she kept her little sister at her back, always an elbow or heel touching the younger woman (who looked likewise uninterested in being out of arm’s length of her sibling). The police officer might have looked like one of them were it not for the fact he was in uniform, the way his weapon was out and expertly held in front of him.
“Officer Winters,” Sam turned to look at the cop, “you know the area… where can we go?”
Nathan took a moment to think. He looked at street signs, getting his bearings. Then he turned and regarded the fire that had run them out of Hannah’s house. He considered the wind direction, which was fanning the fire northward. Dean had to hand it to the guy - for a city snob, he had woodsman’s sense. But he also had to take into account the uniquely urban obstacles… like the huge pile-up of cars Dean could see at the far end of the street, stretching end to end like the Croats had been making a fence out of Fords.
Finally, Nathan pointed abstractly southwest. “About three and a half blocks that way, there’s a convenience store. It’s seen more than its share of robbers in the last few years.”
“And that’s good for us how?” Gerald asked curtly.
“It has food, water, a reinforced door, and bars on all the windows,” Nathan bit back.
“Sounds cozy,” Ellen quipped, “hell, I’m in. Lead the way, Officer.”
Nathan scanned his eyes over the group looking for resistance, and when there was none, he moved to the front of the group and headed out. The hunters and Hannah followed in his wake.
But in a city foreshadowing the year 2014, they couldn’t make it three blocks without having to fight for their lives. Gerald’s gunshot might as well have been a signal flare, drawing every wild human being with the Croatoan virus within earshot.
Jo spotted the second one. “We got company!” she warned as she unloaded a shot into a bedraggled woman’s torso. She went down with a savage scream… only to be replaced by a large man with bloodshot eyes, cuts all over his arms, and a stained knife in his hand. He led the charge, and others followed.
“Fuck,” Dean brought his weapon about and started firing. The other hunters joined the assault.
They fired bullet after bullet into the horde, mowing down humans they would have been fighting to protect only days ago. The street became strewn with corpses and the dying. Without really even intending to do it, the hunters had formed a circle, Sam, Dean, Ellen, Jo, Strafe, Gerald, Cait, and Nathan locked together with unseen shackles, facing outward, with the lone civilian, Hannah, in the center. As they beat back the crowds, they crept, side-shuffled, and stole in the direction of the elusive convenience store where the infected could be locked out.
At some point amid all the gunfire, between Dean scanning the street for Croats (he was the only one who knew to call them that) and keeping one eye on Sam beside him, Daniel had started crying. Piercing, panicked wailing that drowned out the blood-thirsty screams of the attackers. A small hand fisted in Dean’s sleeve and he glanced back quickly, just enough to see that it was Hannah who’d grabbed on to him, and from her expression she hadn’t planned it or necessarily knew she was doing it… she’d reacted on instinct, heard a baby in distress and reached out.
Then he didn’t have time to spare any attention to her, because another wave of Croats had come around the street corner and charged. They were armed with blades, gardening tools, broken dishes, anything that could slice open skin, but none of them had firearms like the infected in Rivergrove had… Dean dreaded to think how these had run through any ammunition they might have had that would make them abandon pistols and rifles.
Or maybe they were much more interested in converting than killing. That thought didn’t reassure Dean any as he took aim at the new surge of Croats.
Guns went off in quick succession. Croats fell. More came. Those fell, too, but closer to the hunters that their late comrades. More followed them, pressing even closer than those before.
Then Sam had to stop and reload. After him, Jo. Cait was cursing a jammed slide on her semi-automatic.
The small break in their defense let a Croat push past his falling comrades and lash out within actual striking distance of the ring of fighters. A hand clutching the rotted end of a plank of wood with a rusty nail sticking out slashed in Dean’s direction. It arched directly toward the baby strapped to the front of his chest.
“Whoa!” Dean jumped back, wrapping his arms around Daniel and turning to shield his son. While Dean surged back, colliding into Hannah, Sam was rushing forward to fill the hole and protect his family. He landed a clock-cleaning punch to the Croat’s jaw… the momentum of a large and powerful guy like Sam was enough to drop the attacker to the ground.
A normal human would be unconscious from such a vicious blow, but the Croat was scrambling to get his feet under him.
Strafe plugged him, a shot right between the eyes, that put an end to that particular problem.
Dean straightened and for a moment found himself inside the circle with Hannah while his brother and the others closed ranks. Dean looked down at Hannah, only then realizing that she’d clutched on to his sleeve again. She was staring up at him with wide eyes while her other hand fisted in the back of her sister’s shirt.
That’s when Dean had an epiphany. He had to get back into the fight, but it put Daniel at too much risk, too easy a target plastered to Dean’s front. The only way the boy could have been in any more danger would be if Dean actually held the kid out to the Croats.
There was only one non-com among them, one person shielded behind a wall of hunters.
Without giving himself time to second-guess, Dean shrugged out of the carrier’s shoulder straps and shoved pouch, straps, and baby all into Hannah’s hands. She let go of both hunters to accept the child on reflex. When she looked up into Dean’s face, he said simply, “Take care of him.”
Something flashed in Hannah’s eyes, then, something fierce, and she slipped on the contraption with ease. Then she wrapped her arms around Daniel, holding him close.
Dean readied his weapon and shouldered his way back into the frontlines.
“How much farther?!” Strafe bellowed at Nathan over the screaming and shooting.
“A block at least!” Nathan answered, “But we’re going to have to cut through that alley up there to bypass that roadblock!” He gestured at the bumper-to-bumper line of wrecked cars in their way.
The alley Nathan was talking about was a narrow path between two brick buildings, a bottleneck if they weren’t careful. Dean glanced down it once they were at the mouth and got Han Solo-type bad feelings about it. There were upturned dumpsters, bodies sprawled on the smelly concrete, but most troubling of all, back doors to the alley from both buildings. It reeked of danger. Not that they had much choice. Croats were rushing toward them, overwhelming in number.
Nathan went into the alley first, leading the way. Jo and Ellen went next. Dean reached over and grabbed Hannah roughly by the shoulder of her shirt. Cait snarled something at him, then pressed in closer after her sister as Dean hauled Hannah into the alleyway after him. Sam and Gerald slipped into the alley after that. Strafe backed up as he brought up the rear, firing on the Croats trying to crowd in after them.
Ahead, Nathan and the Harvelles were looking into open doors before moving past them. Sam and Gerald had lagged behind to help Strafe with the press of infected biting at their heels.
It was going pretty well until Strafe ran out of ammo. He reached down to snatch up his spare clip from his belt, but his cast interfered. It cost him only a few seconds, but they proved to be fatal. A Croat lashed out and snagged a hold of his arm. With a yelp, Strafe was yanked into the waiting hands of the horde. Sam and Gerald made an abortive grab for him, but almost the moment the infected had him they were cutting him, clawing his skin open, smearing his blood with their own gaping wounds.
“He’s done!” Sam barked and pulled Gerald back, who was still trying to rescue their fellow hunter.
Dean threw a glance over his shoulder.
“Dean!” Cait yelled in warning.
Dean was lifted off his feet and thrown into the brick wall by a Croat who’d rushed from the darkness of one of the ominous open doorways. He lost his grip on Hannah and his gun at the same time, his duffel bag flying from his shoulder and landing several feet away.
“Shit!” Cait snarled.
Hannah screamed.
Dean grabbed at the wrists of the Croat who had his hands wrapped around Dean’s throat. Dean started kicking frantically to keep the Croat at a distance, because with his hands occupied with keeping Dean trapped against the wall, the Croat didn’t have any weapon to use to break the hunter’s skin except his teeth. And apparently Croats weren’t opposed to improvising.
Dean fought off the jaw-snapping advance, all the while his mind racing, worrying ‘where’s Daniel? where’s Sam? where’s Cas?’ Dean’s own personal mantra.
Gunfire echoed painfully loud in the close space. Cait was yelling, cursing. Sam was calling out to his brother. Dean was just trying to not get bitten.
It felt like twenty minutes, but was probably closer to twenty seconds, when the Croat doing his best to strangle the life out of Dean suddenly had a revolver pressed to his temple. Dean barely had time to close his eyes before Ellen blew the Croat’s brains out. The hands locked around Dean’s throat fell away as the body dropped, and Dean coughed and sucked in air.
Then he looked up and felt sick.
Hannah and Cait were nowhere in sight. Sam just reached him, grabbing Dean’s arm and asking if he was okay.
“Daniel,” Dean croaked, looking wildly around.
All the while, the horde was pressing them onward, forcing them up the alley. Gerald was shooting one crazed human after another, but they just kept swarming forward.
Dean grabbed hold of Sam’s arm in panic and looked desperately for any indication of where his son had disappeared to. There were alley-access doors on either side, but some were already inaccessible due to the advancing Croats.
“Move it, guys!” Gerald bellowed as he was practically pushed in between the brothers in his fighting retreat.
“Daniel,” Dean growled, trying to throw himself at the infected. He’d climb over them if he had to.
It was Sam’s vice-like grip on his arm that held him back. “Dean, don’t!”
“We can’t leave him, Sammy!”
“You can’t stay here,” Gerald snarled, shoving at both brothers. A Croat reached frantically toward Sam, catching the back of his shirt and pulling. Sam might have tipped over into their waiting hands if he hadn’t already been latched to Dean, who hauled him forward and broke the Croat’s grip. Dean couldn’t get to his gun - not the one he’d dropped, anyway - but he reached down and snagged the shoulder strap of his duffel and pulled it out from under the feet of the Croats. He fished out another gun and made to plow his way into the mass of infected humans to find his son.
Sam yanked him back again. “Dean, we have to go!”
“I have to find Daniel, damnit!” Dean snapped.
“We will! We’ll find him! But if we stay here, we’re dead.” Then Sam was physically forcing him down the alley. Dean fought, but Sam was stronger.
“Sam, we gotta get Daniel!” Dean protested.
“We will, Dean… we’ll get these people clear and we’ll find a way to get him back.”
If Dean had to, he felt like he could tear down all of Detroit with his bare hands to find his son.
Next
They made it a block before they encountered their first infected human. A man came staggering out of an alley, and he might have been a drifter or the local fry-cook for all they knew… whoever he’d been, he was feral and filthy now. He saw the group making their way down the street and started running right at them. His hands were clutching fistfuls of glass, sharp shards of broken windowpane gripped so tight that blood ran in rivulets down his wrists and forearms.
Strafe shot him in the chest before he could get close enough to slash at them.
At the report of the gun, Daniel startled against Dean’s chest.
From the hidden corners and streets and homes of the neighborhood, the screeching of rabid men and women lifted above the distant din of a city in chaos. It was the sound of predators becoming suddenly aware of prey nearby.
“Cat’s out of the bag now,” Sam quipped drolly as he took a step back, pressing arm-to-arm with Dean as they surveyed the area for attackers. Ellen and Jo were doing the same, butting up to fight together. Gerald and Strafe, accustomed to hunting alone, moved restlessly, untethered and at the ready. Cait looked like she wanted to do the same, but she kept her little sister at her back, always an elbow or heel touching the younger woman (who looked likewise uninterested in being out of arm’s length of her sibling). The police officer might have looked like one of them were it not for the fact he was in uniform, the way his weapon was out and expertly held in front of him.
“Officer Winters,” Sam turned to look at the cop, “you know the area… where can we go?”
Nathan took a moment to think. He looked at street signs, getting his bearings. Then he turned and regarded the fire that had run them out of Hannah’s house. He considered the wind direction, which was fanning the fire northward. Dean had to hand it to the guy - for a city snob, he had woodsman’s sense. But he also had to take into account the uniquely urban obstacles… like the huge pile-up of cars Dean could see at the far end of the street, stretching end to end like the Croats had been making a fence out of Fords.
Finally, Nathan pointed abstractly southwest. “About three and a half blocks that way, there’s a convenience store. It’s seen more than its share of robbers in the last few years.”
“And that’s good for us how?” Gerald asked curtly.
“It has food, water, a reinforced door, and bars on all the windows,” Nathan bit back.
“Sounds cozy,” Ellen quipped, “hell, I’m in. Lead the way, Officer.”
Nathan scanned his eyes over the group looking for resistance, and when there was none, he moved to the front of the group and headed out. The hunters and Hannah followed in his wake.
But in a city foreshadowing the year 2014, they couldn’t make it three blocks without having to fight for their lives. Gerald’s gunshot might as well have been a signal flare, drawing every wild human being with the Croatoan virus within earshot.
Jo spotted the second one. “We got company!” she warned as she unloaded a shot into a bedraggled woman’s torso. She went down with a savage scream… only to be replaced by a large man with bloodshot eyes, cuts all over his arms, and a stained knife in his hand. He led the charge, and others followed.
“Fuck,” Dean brought his weapon about and started firing. The other hunters joined the assault.
They fired bullet after bullet into the horde, mowing down humans they would have been fighting to protect only days ago. The street became strewn with corpses and the dying. Without really even intending to do it, the hunters had formed a circle, Sam, Dean, Ellen, Jo, Strafe, Gerald, Cait, and Nathan locked together with unseen shackles, facing outward, with the lone civilian, Hannah, in the center. As they beat back the crowds, they crept, side-shuffled, and stole in the direction of the elusive convenience store where the infected could be locked out.
At some point amid all the gunfire, between Dean scanning the street for Croats (he was the only one who knew to call them that) and keeping one eye on Sam beside him, Daniel had started crying. Piercing, panicked wailing that drowned out the blood-thirsty screams of the attackers. A small hand fisted in Dean’s sleeve and he glanced back quickly, just enough to see that it was Hannah who’d grabbed on to him, and from her expression she hadn’t planned it or necessarily knew she was doing it… she’d reacted on instinct, heard a baby in distress and reached out.
Then he didn’t have time to spare any attention to her, because another wave of Croats had come around the street corner and charged. They were armed with blades, gardening tools, broken dishes, anything that could slice open skin, but none of them had firearms like the infected in Rivergrove had… Dean dreaded to think how these had run through any ammunition they might have had that would make them abandon pistols and rifles.
Or maybe they were much more interested in converting than killing. That thought didn’t reassure Dean any as he took aim at the new surge of Croats.
Guns went off in quick succession. Croats fell. More came. Those fell, too, but closer to the hunters that their late comrades. More followed them, pressing even closer than those before.
Then Sam had to stop and reload. After him, Jo. Cait was cursing a jammed slide on her semi-automatic.
The small break in their defense let a Croat push past his falling comrades and lash out within actual striking distance of the ring of fighters. A hand clutching the rotted end of a plank of wood with a rusty nail sticking out slashed in Dean’s direction. It arched directly toward the baby strapped to the front of his chest.
“Whoa!” Dean jumped back, wrapping his arms around Daniel and turning to shield his son. While Dean surged back, colliding into Hannah, Sam was rushing forward to fill the hole and protect his family. He landed a clock-cleaning punch to the Croat’s jaw… the momentum of a large and powerful guy like Sam was enough to drop the attacker to the ground.
A normal human would be unconscious from such a vicious blow, but the Croat was scrambling to get his feet under him.
Strafe plugged him, a shot right between the eyes, that put an end to that particular problem.
Dean straightened and for a moment found himself inside the circle with Hannah while his brother and the others closed ranks. Dean looked down at Hannah, only then realizing that she’d clutched on to his sleeve again. She was staring up at him with wide eyes while her other hand fisted in the back of her sister’s shirt.
That’s when Dean had an epiphany. He had to get back into the fight, but it put Daniel at too much risk, too easy a target plastered to Dean’s front. The only way the boy could have been in any more danger would be if Dean actually held the kid out to the Croats.
There was only one non-com among them, one person shielded behind a wall of hunters.
Without giving himself time to second-guess, Dean shrugged out of the carrier’s shoulder straps and shoved pouch, straps, and baby all into Hannah’s hands. She let go of both hunters to accept the child on reflex. When she looked up into Dean’s face, he said simply, “Take care of him.”
Something flashed in Hannah’s eyes, then, something fierce, and she slipped on the contraption with ease. Then she wrapped her arms around Daniel, holding him close.
Dean readied his weapon and shouldered his way back into the frontlines.
“How much farther?!” Strafe bellowed at Nathan over the screaming and shooting.
“A block at least!” Nathan answered, “But we’re going to have to cut through that alley up there to bypass that roadblock!” He gestured at the bumper-to-bumper line of wrecked cars in their way.
The alley Nathan was talking about was a narrow path between two brick buildings, a bottleneck if they weren’t careful. Dean glanced down it once they were at the mouth and got Han Solo-type bad feelings about it. There were upturned dumpsters, bodies sprawled on the smelly concrete, but most troubling of all, back doors to the alley from both buildings. It reeked of danger. Not that they had much choice. Croats were rushing toward them, overwhelming in number.
Nathan went into the alley first, leading the way. Jo and Ellen went next. Dean reached over and grabbed Hannah roughly by the shoulder of her shirt. Cait snarled something at him, then pressed in closer after her sister as Dean hauled Hannah into the alleyway after him. Sam and Gerald slipped into the alley after that. Strafe backed up as he brought up the rear, firing on the Croats trying to crowd in after them.
Ahead, Nathan and the Harvelles were looking into open doors before moving past them. Sam and Gerald had lagged behind to help Strafe with the press of infected biting at their heels.
It was going pretty well until Strafe ran out of ammo. He reached down to snatch up his spare clip from his belt, but his cast interfered. It cost him only a few seconds, but they proved to be fatal. A Croat lashed out and snagged a hold of his arm. With a yelp, Strafe was yanked into the waiting hands of the horde. Sam and Gerald made an abortive grab for him, but almost the moment the infected had him they were cutting him, clawing his skin open, smearing his blood with their own gaping wounds.
“He’s done!” Sam barked and pulled Gerald back, who was still trying to rescue their fellow hunter.
Dean threw a glance over his shoulder.
“Dean!” Cait yelled in warning.
Dean was lifted off his feet and thrown into the brick wall by a Croat who’d rushed from the darkness of one of the ominous open doorways. He lost his grip on Hannah and his gun at the same time, his duffel bag flying from his shoulder and landing several feet away.
“Shit!” Cait snarled.
Hannah screamed.
Dean grabbed at the wrists of the Croat who had his hands wrapped around Dean’s throat. Dean started kicking frantically to keep the Croat at a distance, because with his hands occupied with keeping Dean trapped against the wall, the Croat didn’t have any weapon to use to break the hunter’s skin except his teeth. And apparently Croats weren’t opposed to improvising.
Dean fought off the jaw-snapping advance, all the while his mind racing, worrying ‘where’s Daniel? where’s Sam? where’s Cas?’ Dean’s own personal mantra.
Gunfire echoed painfully loud in the close space. Cait was yelling, cursing. Sam was calling out to his brother. Dean was just trying to not get bitten.
It felt like twenty minutes, but was probably closer to twenty seconds, when the Croat doing his best to strangle the life out of Dean suddenly had a revolver pressed to his temple. Dean barely had time to close his eyes before Ellen blew the Croat’s brains out. The hands locked around Dean’s throat fell away as the body dropped, and Dean coughed and sucked in air.
Then he looked up and felt sick.
Hannah and Cait were nowhere in sight. Sam just reached him, grabbing Dean’s arm and asking if he was okay.
“Daniel,” Dean croaked, looking wildly around.
All the while, the horde was pressing them onward, forcing them up the alley. Gerald was shooting one crazed human after another, but they just kept swarming forward.
Dean grabbed hold of Sam’s arm in panic and looked desperately for any indication of where his son had disappeared to. There were alley-access doors on either side, but some were already inaccessible due to the advancing Croats.
“Move it, guys!” Gerald bellowed as he was practically pushed in between the brothers in his fighting retreat.
“Daniel,” Dean growled, trying to throw himself at the infected. He’d climb over them if he had to.
It was Sam’s vice-like grip on his arm that held him back. “Dean, don’t!”
“We can’t leave him, Sammy!”
“You can’t stay here,” Gerald snarled, shoving at both brothers. A Croat reached frantically toward Sam, catching the back of his shirt and pulling. Sam might have tipped over into their waiting hands if he hadn’t already been latched to Dean, who hauled him forward and broke the Croat’s grip. Dean couldn’t get to his gun - not the one he’d dropped, anyway - but he reached down and snagged the shoulder strap of his duffel and pulled it out from under the feet of the Croats. He fished out another gun and made to plow his way into the mass of infected humans to find his son.
Sam yanked him back again. “Dean, we have to go!”
“I have to find Daniel, damnit!” Dean snapped.
“We will! We’ll find him! But if we stay here, we’re dead.” Then Sam was physically forcing him down the alley. Dean fought, but Sam was stronger.
“Sam, we gotta get Daniel!” Dean protested.
“We will, Dean… we’ll get these people clear and we’ll find a way to get him back.”
If Dean had to, he felt like he could tear down all of Detroit with his bare hands to find his son.
Next