Ruins of Our Own Construction - Chapter 4
Continued from Chapter 3 - Master post can be found here.
January 17th, 2008
Lincoln, Nebraska
There weren’t many sensations as familiar to Dean as the sway of a vehicle. The rocking movements and enveloping darkness kept his exhausted mind lulled into sleep until the jostling became more abrupt and his ears aware enough to hear the sputtering rumble and creaking of metal that weren’t the sounds of home.
He jerked up when his aching skull bounced against exposed sheet metal. The throbbing of a yet another head impact was also a sensation that was more familiar than he’d like. Being crammed in like a sardine didn’t help any.
His hand pulled free from whatever was squished against him and reached up to rub the tender lump at the back of his head. He shook off the last of what he was beginning to realize hadn’t been sleep, but unconsciousness.
Opening his eyes brought only more darkness. Blindly, his hand felt the cold steel frame of what had to be a cargo van. His hand didn’t have to venture much further before his fingers pressed against something soft enough to be a body.
At his touch, a surprised gasp came from the body and as he tuned his ears, Dean heard the sounds of breathing beneath the hollow clanking of the van speeding down open road. It was people piled in around him.
When his hand felt to the other side it was instantly knocked away with a stinging slap. “Touch me again and I start breaking fingers,” a familiar voice warned.
“That wasn’t me,” a nervous man replied.
“Gordon?” Dean asked.
“About damn time you came to. By the downshifting, I’d say we’re here and I’m through hauling your ass all over creation.”
Dean’s foggy mind struggled to remember what had happened before he’d been knocked out. He came up drawing a blank. “Where’s here?”
“Damned if I know.”
A woman sitting beside Dean whispered, her tone thick with barely concealed panic. “They’re going to kill us all!”
“If you’re lucky.” Gordon’s disinterested words drew another gasp from the woman and hushed sounds from several others.
“Hey, enough,” Dean cut in. “Nobody’s dying and you shut the hell up.” He dealt a slap to what he guessed was Gordon’s chest.
Dean grunted as a fist was haphazardly thrown into his gut. He twisted to retaliate but there wasn’t enough room to really move and his head swam at the quick movement. With the disorientation, something far more important than Gordon being a bastard tickled at his memory.
“Sam...”
“Sorry, Dean.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d heard those simple, emotionless words slip from Gordon’s lips and not the first time they related to Sam. Dean’s breaths became short and quick, his heart pounding. His mind flashed to the sight of Sam splattered with blood, but he remembered Sam getting up, remembered his little brother pulling him up.
“What did you do?” Despite Dean wanting the words to sound fierce, the dread came through far clearer. A sick feeling twisted the pit of his gut as another bloody visual pushed at the back of his mind.
When no answer came, Dean’s hand felt out to grab some part of Gordon’s shirt. He gave it a jerk and tightened his fist around the fabric. “Gordon! Where’s my brother?”
“Now don’t go starting a fight you can’t finish.” Gordon twisted Dean's wrist until he had to release his grip on the shirt. “You and I both know what he would’ve become. It was better this way. He got to die a hunter.”
Dean clenched his jaw and tilted his head back to stare up into the blackness. With Gordon’s words everything came rushing back. Sam had tried to save him and those sons of bitches had shot him. Dean hadn’t gotten close enough to see where the bullet had hit. He’d only seen the blood. Too much blood.
“Look, man,” Gordon continued. “I get that this is gutting you, I do, but you gotta swallow it. We got people to deal with here and now.”
“You deal with them.”
Dean barely choked out the words before he lapsed into silence. He screwed his eyes closed and was thankful for the loud clatter of the van to disguise his uneven breathing. After he’d fought back to more controlled breaths, he turned his head in Gordon’s general direction.
“This is all your damn fault.” It wasn’t an accusation, just a fact and one Gordon was going to die for. “You wanted him dead.”
“Sure, I would’ve killed him myself when the time came. Just like you should’ve and just like I plan on killing everyone in this van who turns up infected.”
The words were said low enough for only Dean’s ears and brought with them the realization that if Dean didn’t take command of this situation, Gordon would. If Sam was really gone, Dean didn’t give a crap what these guys planned on doing to him, but he couldn’t sit back and watch the innocent people around him be killed.
He wiped his cheeks dry and realized for the first time that his ankle had stopped throbbing. His heart again jumped in his chest when he tried to wiggle his toes and couldn’t feel them at all. His hands traced down his leg to find someone else’s thigh pinned heavily on top of it.
“Super,” he muttered beneath his breath. “Hey, how many people do we got here?” His only answer from the other passengers was panicked whispers as the van rolled to a stop. “Crap.”
Outside the van, there was the grinding of a gate or bay door sliding open. The van lurched forward once more before the engine went silent and whatever had been opened to admit the vehicle again closed. The hushed voices around him grew more uneasy and a few started to call out for help.
“Everybody just keep cool,” Dean said as he heard the driver’s door open.
There was some talking outside before the backdoor of the van lifted. Everyone fell silent as a harsh brightness spilled in the open door. Dean’s brow creased at the sight of artificial lights. This place had electricity.
“Everyone out of the van,” a man barked. It was more gun-toting, hazmat-suit wearing bastards like the ones from the entrance to the evacuation site, if not the same ones.
Dean tried to keep his cool by switching his attention to the civilians stuffed in around him. The middle-age woman beside him was unwinding a heavy knitted scarf from her neck as she broke out in a nervous sweat. Her nearly waist length hair flopped into his face and she shot him a nervous, apologetic look.
He did his best to give her a reassuring smile. "You're gonna be okay."
While the uncertainty remained, she gave his arm a gentle squeeze and fought for a smile of her own as she nodded her silent gratitude. Dean could only hope that he wasn't about to make a liar out of himself and looked to the guy sitting on his leg. It was potbellied man with graying sideburns and a tattered business suit. When he met Dean's eyes he then suddenly looked down and mumbled an apology while he tried to shift his weight off of Dean.
"Dude, you're fine," Dean gritted as the man's movement only put pressure against his splint. "Just stay put."
An elderly couple clung to each other in the corner, but most of the people were on the younger side and the majority were men. Dean ached to have a gun in his hand when the sound of crying drew him to a toddler gripped in her mother’s arms at the far end of the van. Whatever these bastards had planned, they weren't going to get away with it.
Searching for a way to get these people out, Dean looked past the officers at the van’s opening to see that their van was one of several parked inside of some kind of loading dock. It was a large area mostly grey and empty, but with armed military guards at anything that looked like a potential exit.
The place was swarming with hazmat suits directing people around. In the light, Dean realized that he and Gordon were two of the only people in the van not wearing one of those stupid face masks. He was starting to get a bad feeling that everyone knew something he didn’t.
Dean's eyes narrowed on the man who had ordered them out of the van. “How about telling us where we are?”
“No talking. Everyone remain calm and exit slowly. Keep your hands visible.”
No one else hesitated to get out, though Dean didn’t have a choice but to stay sitting. The heavy tingle of pins and needles raged in the deadweight of his foot along with the echo of the pain that he could do without the return of. There was nothing in the cargo area of the van he could use as leverage to pull himself up with and nowhere to go even if he did manage to stand.
At least if he sat here and played the disabled card he could get one of the officers to come to him. With the element of surprise, he might have half a chance to wrestle a gun free. It wouldn’t get him out of here, but at least he could take a few of them down with him and just maybe one of them would be the son of a bitch that had shot his brother.
“You coming or not?”
Dean’s lost eyes looked up to see Gordon standing impatiently over him. He’d just assumed that Gordon had jumped out with the rest. The fact that he was still here left Dean staring dumbfounded at the offered hand.
“Really, Dean, don’t look so damned shocked.”
Gordon didn’t wait for a verbal response before bending forward and wrapping his arms around Dean. Every instinct in Dean’s head screamed to fight like hell against Gordon’s embrace, but he forced himself to relax and slipped his arm around Gordon’s shoulders for support.
They slowly moved down the unloading ramp until a couple of the officers pointed their rifles towards Dean. “What’s wrong with him?”
“You shot his brother, the guy’s a little pissed,” Gordon flippantly replied. “His busted up ankle might also have something to do with it.”
Dean tensed his arm around Gordon, not entirely sure who here he wanted to punch first. Gordon lost his first place standing when one of the CEDA agents stepped towards him.
“You try laying your latex gloves on me again and I’ll break your wrist,” Dean told the agent. If the man didn’t believe him, he was welcomed to try. Dean’s blood screamed for a fight, to just be able to do something.
The agent exchanged a look with the others and nodded. Dean didn’t know what was being communicated. He didn’t really care. While the officers conferred his attention drifted to the assorted group of families, sleazebags and everything in between that had walked out of the van and were now getting a lecture from one of the CEDA agents.
“What’re you gonna do with these people?” Dean asked.
Gordon gave him a jerk that was nearly enough to throw him off balance before smacking the palm of his hand against the back of Dean’s aching head. “Keep talking and you’re gonna get to be more trouble than you’re worth,” Gordon hissed.
“Bite me.”
“You get in the group on the right,” the man told Gordon before motioning to Dean. “You go left."
Dean followed the man’s eyes to where armed officers stood around the elderly couple from the van. Unlike the direction they had pointed Gordon in, there was no one resembling a doctor waiting for him.
When the officer raised his gun, Dean nodded to Gordon. “You go on.”
“Dean…”
Dean gave Gordon the best shove he could without pushing himself onto his ass. “Just leave me already!”
After a glance towards the officers, Gordon held his hands up in defeat. “It’s your funeral, Winchester.”
With Gordon’s support gone, Dean sagged back against the van’s ramp. He stared down at the ground and tried to force a stable thought into his scrambled head.
“This is the third one in the batch,” the CEDA agent said. “You said you cleaned out the infected ones already.”
“The other two weren’t sick when we picked them up and this one’s friend says he’s immune.”
The agent shot a distasteful look towards Gordon. “And his medical credentials are what exactly?”
“The guy said this one was in Pennsylvania at the start of the outbreak.”
“Is that true? Hey!” A hand slapped the side of Dean’s face and his head shot up, fists ready. “Were you in Pennsylvania?”
“Yeah.” Dean tilted his head and looked between the assembled officers that were all standing around staring at him like he was the freak. “Why does everyone think me and my brother were the only two people there?”
“Sir, we’re going to need you to undress.”
A startled look flashed over his eyes as Dean processed the command. He looked around the corner of the van to see that everyone who had been brought in and sent to Gordon’s group had already stripped. His eyes immediately jerked away when he noticed Gordon among them.
“Did you bring us all here to film orgy porno flicks?”
“Everyone needs to be decontaminated for processing and you need to be examined.”
“I don’t undress for just anyone, and you’re not my type." He stared through the hazmat hood’s shield into the agent’s eyes. “So go screw yourself.”
One of the officers nudged him with a rifle. “Clothes off or they’ll be removed postmortem.”
Dean’s jaw tightened at the voice. “Did you shoot my brother with that gun?” He pushed himself off the ramp, barely registering the pain that surged through his foot. “Did you shoot my brother?” Dean leaned forward until the gun’s barrel pressed tight against his chest. “I’m warning you now, you damn well better pull that trigger. Do it!”
The officer tightened his finger on the trigger just before the CEDA agent put his hand up to push the barrel towards the ground. “We need him alive.”
Dean wasn’t going to wait around for these guys to decide what to do with him, but he didn’t make it even half a hobbled step before one of the officers pulled him around and smashed him face first into the side of the van. His cheek smeared against the dirty metal and his chest heaved in frustration as he futilely bucked against the man’s weight.
“Give me a hand here,” the officer called to the others.
While Dean managed to throw an elbow back into one of the men, all his twisting didn’t do a damn bit of good once a third officer helped to pin him in place. A string of obscenities flowed from Dean’s lips as one of the men cut through the denim of his jeans, which were too tight to be pulled down over his splint - the splint his brother had put in place.
All the ways he was going to kill these bastards rushed through Dean’s mind as the others nearly dislocated his shoulder jerking his arms back to slide off his flannel before shifting their grip so they could strip off his t-shirt. Instead of pulling the shirt all the way off, they yanked his arms free, but left the black cotton pulled inside out over his head so he couldn’t see what they were doing.
Rubber covered hands gripped his biceps hard as they held him in place against the van. He shivered against the coldness of the metal touching his bare skin and tried to catch his breath through the shirt wrapped over his head.
Dean’s eyelashes tangled against the fabric as he blinked in a useless attempt to make out the vague shapes he could see through it. He winced as one of the men probed his fingers over the skin of his abdomen, which was already bruised to hell from too many close calls.
He twisted in the hands that pinned him as someone unwound the tape from his splint only to fasten it back on again. With his burst of adrenaline subsiding, Dean bit back a moan at the fire coursing through the nerves of his ankle.
“No apparent physiological changes,” he heard one of the agents say. “Get him into the showers then straight to the lab.”
“You,” another officer called out to someone. “Help this man.”
Dean gasped as the shirt was finally pulled off his head, though he wished it hadn’t been when he caught another millisecond glimpse too long of Gordon heading towards him in his birthday suit.
“Oh hell no,” Dean growled.
Ignoring him, Gordon came up to Dean’s side and replaced the support of the officers. “You’d rather they shot you full of sedatives?”
“Than take a shower with your naked ass? I’d rather they shot me in the head.”
“Too bad.”
Gordon looped his arm around Dean, whose skin crawled at the sensation of Gordon’s naked body pressing firmly against his. While Dean made a futile effort to squirm free, Gordon tightened his grip so that his rough hand dug painfully hard into the tender skin of Dean’s hip.
While Gordon half guided, half hauled him, Dean’s eyes scanned the area once more. Most of the people had gone through the doors that Dean and Gordon were being directed towards, but the couple that had been separated out were struggling to get down on their knees. It took Dean’s dazed mind a second too long to register the guns pointed at the back of their heads.
“No!” Dean lunged, but didn’t have enough leverage to tear free of Gordon’s hold.
As the shots echoed through the warehouse and the bodies slumped to the ground, Gordon shoved an elbow into Dean’s ribs. “You know, I’m embarrassed for you, Dean, I really am,” Gordon said as he pulled Dean forward. “These toddler tantrums of yours, they gotta stop. It’s damn unprofessional.”
“I’m gonna kill everyone here,” Dean huffed. “Starting with you. How’s that for professionalism?”
A smile touched Gordon’s lips as he patted Dean’s back. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
~~~
Affutt Air Force Base, Nebraska
Rufus Turner readjusted the weight of the rifle slung over his shoulder and took one last stroll around the abandoned airfield. It wasn’t like another look would make any difference. He was too late to stop the pick up. Again.
It just happened to be a nice day. There was a crisp chill in the late afternoon air, but the sun was shining and he was trying to figure out why he had wasted this lovely day stepping over corpses of the Infected. He’d like to blame Bobby, though really he only had himself to blame.
When the outbreak had hit, he should have stocked up on a couple of years worth of the finest scotch and found himself a nice secluded cabin in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. The Infected were everywhere, but they were too stupid to so much as open a door. It would have been a safe, cozy, way to spend his well-deserved retirement.
Instead of quiet days beside a private lake, he had to be a moron and pick up the phone to let Bobby talk him into this no win mess. Forget one step forward and two steps back, they were perpetually a hundred steps behind everyone. They couldn’t keep up with hunting the Infected or the demons that were opting to take advantage of the situation or even the humans that were worse than all the rest of them.
And the joke that was the CEDA? They were collecting survivors with promises of fun in the sun vacations until this all blew over. Rufus himself had almost bought a ticket until the real story had come through the unofficial airwaves. They were purposefully infecting survivors in the name of finding a cure.
Rufus did his best to avoid humans when at all possible, but when they were taking innocent civilians just to make more monsters, even he had to grudgingly come out of the woodwork to state his objection. He had no qualms about using the rifle at his side to do his talking. The problem was that there were too few of them fighting, too many working with the CEDA and too many miles between sites for them to make any real difference. It was the story of his life.
He was trudging back towards his rust bucket of a truck when he couldn’t help but spare another glance towards the shiny, black beauty parked outside of the pickup site’s gate. Like himself, his truck didn’t have enough left in it to keep up with all these miles and the tank didn’t have enough fuel to make it back to Bobby’s place.
Assuming that the car beckoning him had any fuel in the tanks, it looked like the better choice for getting him back. He continued to his truck and grabbed his bag and radio out of it before heading over to the car. With a bit of a snicker, he imagined just how jealous this thing would make Bobby. The man couldn’t keep a decent car around to save his life.
Suddenly Rufus threw down the bag he carried and went for his gun. He raised the rifle before taking another step forward, keeping a careful eye on the giant of a kid propped up against the side of the car. Blood soaked the boy’s shirt and from where he stood, Rufus couldn’t make out if he was breathing or if he was even still human.
Usually he was the shoot first sort, but there was something about the kid’s posture that left his finger only loosely hovering over the trigger. “Hey!” he called to the kid while keeping a healthy distance. “You human?”
There was no verbal response, but the boy turned his head towards Rufus. The kid was pale enough to be dead though there was no sign of rabid aggression, only a silent plea in the boy’s hurt eyes.
“Okay, I’m coming over, but try any funny business and I’m emptying shells, you hear?”
He almost thought he saw a nod, either way he was convinced enough to risk it. While it was a sorry haul compared to what he had wanted to find, at least rescuing one survivor was better than a completely wasted trip.
As he moved in, the kid tracked him with his head and slowly pulled a hand away from his blood seeping shoulder to motion Rufus to stop. “Stay back.” The boy’s voice was rough, barely clear enough to make out. “I’m infected.”
Rufus scrunched his face and stared at the kid. That was the first he’d heard that one. He’d come across hordes of Infected in all shapes and sizes and seen plenty of good hunters lost to the Green Flu. Not a one of them had the foresight to know the shift was coming.
“That so?” Rufus asked. “You don’t look too squirrely. Is that their blood?”
“It’s just mine...but I’ve been sick for days.”
When he really took in the boy’s voice, Rufus realized it wasn’t only the blood loss making the boy sound weak. The kid was plenty sick all right.
“You got a fever and muscle aches? Maybe some chills and something nasty going on in the respiratory system?” When the kid nodded, Rufus sighed and released the hold on his gun to let it hang loosely from the chest strap. “Kid, you ain’t infected. You just got the regular ol' flu. Damn media,” he grumbled. “You kids these days watch too much television, that’s your problem.”
“What?” The kid’s brow wrinkled in confusion as Rufus again picked up his bag. “The Green Flu...”
“Is a load of CEDA propaganda bull. It’s just a name. The infection, it’s no actual flu, but it is actually flu season. Convenient, huh?” Rufus stiffly knelt down beside the kid and moved his hand aside. “I’m getting too damn old for this. Now let me see this shoulder. You get bit or something?”
“Shot.” The kid’s eyes wandered as Rufus looked him over. “So it really is Croatoan,” the kid mumbled to himself.
Rufus stopped his work and rocked back a bit. “Say that again.” When the kid just waved him off, Rufus shook his head. “Oh, no you don’t. I’m the one saving your sorry ass. I’m the one that gets to decide what’s worth sharing. Did you say Croatoan?” With a flash of surprise, the kid nodded. “You a hunter?”
“Yeah, me and my brother. They took him. I gotta...”
“You gotta sit your ass down,” Rufus interrupted as he stopped the half delirious kid from climbing to his feet. He glanced back to the car and it clicked. “That's a ’67 Impala ain't it?” At the boy’s affirmative, Rufus let out another heavy sigh. “Ah, hell, which one are ya?”
“Huh?”
Rufus started digging through his first aid kit then raised a brow to the kid. “Are you Sam or Dean?”
“Sam. How did you...?”
“Bobby’s has had everyone that’s left tearing apart all of creation searching for you two jokers. Here, drink this,” Rufus said as he pushed a bottle of the cheap stuff to the kid’s lips. “He’s gonna be damned pissed they grabbed the other one. You get to tell him.”
“What? We have to get him back,” Sam replied after Rufus pulled the bottle away.
“Dean? Nah, sorry kid. If they took him, there ain’t no getting him back.”
Continue to Chapter 5
January 17th, 2008
Lincoln, Nebraska
There weren’t many sensations as familiar to Dean as the sway of a vehicle. The rocking movements and enveloping darkness kept his exhausted mind lulled into sleep until the jostling became more abrupt and his ears aware enough to hear the sputtering rumble and creaking of metal that weren’t the sounds of home.
He jerked up when his aching skull bounced against exposed sheet metal. The throbbing of a yet another head impact was also a sensation that was more familiar than he’d like. Being crammed in like a sardine didn’t help any.
His hand pulled free from whatever was squished against him and reached up to rub the tender lump at the back of his head. He shook off the last of what he was beginning to realize hadn’t been sleep, but unconsciousness.
Opening his eyes brought only more darkness. Blindly, his hand felt the cold steel frame of what had to be a cargo van. His hand didn’t have to venture much further before his fingers pressed against something soft enough to be a body.
At his touch, a surprised gasp came from the body and as he tuned his ears, Dean heard the sounds of breathing beneath the hollow clanking of the van speeding down open road. It was people piled in around him.
When his hand felt to the other side it was instantly knocked away with a stinging slap. “Touch me again and I start breaking fingers,” a familiar voice warned.
“That wasn’t me,” a nervous man replied.
“Gordon?” Dean asked.
“About damn time you came to. By the downshifting, I’d say we’re here and I’m through hauling your ass all over creation.”
Dean’s foggy mind struggled to remember what had happened before he’d been knocked out. He came up drawing a blank. “Where’s here?”
“Damned if I know.”
A woman sitting beside Dean whispered, her tone thick with barely concealed panic. “They’re going to kill us all!”
“If you’re lucky.” Gordon’s disinterested words drew another gasp from the woman and hushed sounds from several others.
“Hey, enough,” Dean cut in. “Nobody’s dying and you shut the hell up.” He dealt a slap to what he guessed was Gordon’s chest.
Dean grunted as a fist was haphazardly thrown into his gut. He twisted to retaliate but there wasn’t enough room to really move and his head swam at the quick movement. With the disorientation, something far more important than Gordon being a bastard tickled at his memory.
“Sam...”
“Sorry, Dean.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d heard those simple, emotionless words slip from Gordon’s lips and not the first time they related to Sam. Dean’s breaths became short and quick, his heart pounding. His mind flashed to the sight of Sam splattered with blood, but he remembered Sam getting up, remembered his little brother pulling him up.
“What did you do?” Despite Dean wanting the words to sound fierce, the dread came through far clearer. A sick feeling twisted the pit of his gut as another bloody visual pushed at the back of his mind.
When no answer came, Dean’s hand felt out to grab some part of Gordon’s shirt. He gave it a jerk and tightened his fist around the fabric. “Gordon! Where’s my brother?”
“Now don’t go starting a fight you can’t finish.” Gordon twisted Dean's wrist until he had to release his grip on the shirt. “You and I both know what he would’ve become. It was better this way. He got to die a hunter.”
Dean clenched his jaw and tilted his head back to stare up into the blackness. With Gordon’s words everything came rushing back. Sam had tried to save him and those sons of bitches had shot him. Dean hadn’t gotten close enough to see where the bullet had hit. He’d only seen the blood. Too much blood.
“Look, man,” Gordon continued. “I get that this is gutting you, I do, but you gotta swallow it. We got people to deal with here and now.”
“You deal with them.”
Dean barely choked out the words before he lapsed into silence. He screwed his eyes closed and was thankful for the loud clatter of the van to disguise his uneven breathing. After he’d fought back to more controlled breaths, he turned his head in Gordon’s general direction.
“This is all your damn fault.” It wasn’t an accusation, just a fact and one Gordon was going to die for. “You wanted him dead.”
“Sure, I would’ve killed him myself when the time came. Just like you should’ve and just like I plan on killing everyone in this van who turns up infected.”
The words were said low enough for only Dean’s ears and brought with them the realization that if Dean didn’t take command of this situation, Gordon would. If Sam was really gone, Dean didn’t give a crap what these guys planned on doing to him, but he couldn’t sit back and watch the innocent people around him be killed.
He wiped his cheeks dry and realized for the first time that his ankle had stopped throbbing. His heart again jumped in his chest when he tried to wiggle his toes and couldn’t feel them at all. His hands traced down his leg to find someone else’s thigh pinned heavily on top of it.
“Super,” he muttered beneath his breath. “Hey, how many people do we got here?” His only answer from the other passengers was panicked whispers as the van rolled to a stop. “Crap.”
Outside the van, there was the grinding of a gate or bay door sliding open. The van lurched forward once more before the engine went silent and whatever had been opened to admit the vehicle again closed. The hushed voices around him grew more uneasy and a few started to call out for help.
“Everybody just keep cool,” Dean said as he heard the driver’s door open.
There was some talking outside before the backdoor of the van lifted. Everyone fell silent as a harsh brightness spilled in the open door. Dean’s brow creased at the sight of artificial lights. This place had electricity.
“Everyone out of the van,” a man barked. It was more gun-toting, hazmat-suit wearing bastards like the ones from the entrance to the evacuation site, if not the same ones.
Dean tried to keep his cool by switching his attention to the civilians stuffed in around him. The middle-age woman beside him was unwinding a heavy knitted scarf from her neck as she broke out in a nervous sweat. Her nearly waist length hair flopped into his face and she shot him a nervous, apologetic look.
He did his best to give her a reassuring smile. "You're gonna be okay."
While the uncertainty remained, she gave his arm a gentle squeeze and fought for a smile of her own as she nodded her silent gratitude. Dean could only hope that he wasn't about to make a liar out of himself and looked to the guy sitting on his leg. It was potbellied man with graying sideburns and a tattered business suit. When he met Dean's eyes he then suddenly looked down and mumbled an apology while he tried to shift his weight off of Dean.
"Dude, you're fine," Dean gritted as the man's movement only put pressure against his splint. "Just stay put."
An elderly couple clung to each other in the corner, but most of the people were on the younger side and the majority were men. Dean ached to have a gun in his hand when the sound of crying drew him to a toddler gripped in her mother’s arms at the far end of the van. Whatever these bastards had planned, they weren't going to get away with it.
Searching for a way to get these people out, Dean looked past the officers at the van’s opening to see that their van was one of several parked inside of some kind of loading dock. It was a large area mostly grey and empty, but with armed military guards at anything that looked like a potential exit.
The place was swarming with hazmat suits directing people around. In the light, Dean realized that he and Gordon were two of the only people in the van not wearing one of those stupid face masks. He was starting to get a bad feeling that everyone knew something he didn’t.
Dean's eyes narrowed on the man who had ordered them out of the van. “How about telling us where we are?”
“No talking. Everyone remain calm and exit slowly. Keep your hands visible.”
No one else hesitated to get out, though Dean didn’t have a choice but to stay sitting. The heavy tingle of pins and needles raged in the deadweight of his foot along with the echo of the pain that he could do without the return of. There was nothing in the cargo area of the van he could use as leverage to pull himself up with and nowhere to go even if he did manage to stand.
At least if he sat here and played the disabled card he could get one of the officers to come to him. With the element of surprise, he might have half a chance to wrestle a gun free. It wouldn’t get him out of here, but at least he could take a few of them down with him and just maybe one of them would be the son of a bitch that had shot his brother.
“You coming or not?”
Dean’s lost eyes looked up to see Gordon standing impatiently over him. He’d just assumed that Gordon had jumped out with the rest. The fact that he was still here left Dean staring dumbfounded at the offered hand.
“Really, Dean, don’t look so damned shocked.”
Gordon didn’t wait for a verbal response before bending forward and wrapping his arms around Dean. Every instinct in Dean’s head screamed to fight like hell against Gordon’s embrace, but he forced himself to relax and slipped his arm around Gordon’s shoulders for support.
They slowly moved down the unloading ramp until a couple of the officers pointed their rifles towards Dean. “What’s wrong with him?”
“You shot his brother, the guy’s a little pissed,” Gordon flippantly replied. “His busted up ankle might also have something to do with it.”
Dean tensed his arm around Gordon, not entirely sure who here he wanted to punch first. Gordon lost his first place standing when one of the CEDA agents stepped towards him.
“You try laying your latex gloves on me again and I’ll break your wrist,” Dean told the agent. If the man didn’t believe him, he was welcomed to try. Dean’s blood screamed for a fight, to just be able to do something.
The agent exchanged a look with the others and nodded. Dean didn’t know what was being communicated. He didn’t really care. While the officers conferred his attention drifted to the assorted group of families, sleazebags and everything in between that had walked out of the van and were now getting a lecture from one of the CEDA agents.
“What’re you gonna do with these people?” Dean asked.
Gordon gave him a jerk that was nearly enough to throw him off balance before smacking the palm of his hand against the back of Dean’s aching head. “Keep talking and you’re gonna get to be more trouble than you’re worth,” Gordon hissed.
“Bite me.”
“You get in the group on the right,” the man told Gordon before motioning to Dean. “You go left."
Dean followed the man’s eyes to where armed officers stood around the elderly couple from the van. Unlike the direction they had pointed Gordon in, there was no one resembling a doctor waiting for him.
When the officer raised his gun, Dean nodded to Gordon. “You go on.”
“Dean…”
Dean gave Gordon the best shove he could without pushing himself onto his ass. “Just leave me already!”
After a glance towards the officers, Gordon held his hands up in defeat. “It’s your funeral, Winchester.”
With Gordon’s support gone, Dean sagged back against the van’s ramp. He stared down at the ground and tried to force a stable thought into his scrambled head.
“This is the third one in the batch,” the CEDA agent said. “You said you cleaned out the infected ones already.”
“The other two weren’t sick when we picked them up and this one’s friend says he’s immune.”
The agent shot a distasteful look towards Gordon. “And his medical credentials are what exactly?”
“The guy said this one was in Pennsylvania at the start of the outbreak.”
“Is that true? Hey!” A hand slapped the side of Dean’s face and his head shot up, fists ready. “Were you in Pennsylvania?”
“Yeah.” Dean tilted his head and looked between the assembled officers that were all standing around staring at him like he was the freak. “Why does everyone think me and my brother were the only two people there?”
“Sir, we’re going to need you to undress.”
A startled look flashed over his eyes as Dean processed the command. He looked around the corner of the van to see that everyone who had been brought in and sent to Gordon’s group had already stripped. His eyes immediately jerked away when he noticed Gordon among them.
“Did you bring us all here to film orgy porno flicks?”
“Everyone needs to be decontaminated for processing and you need to be examined.”
“I don’t undress for just anyone, and you’re not my type." He stared through the hazmat hood’s shield into the agent’s eyes. “So go screw yourself.”
One of the officers nudged him with a rifle. “Clothes off or they’ll be removed postmortem.”
Dean’s jaw tightened at the voice. “Did you shoot my brother with that gun?” He pushed himself off the ramp, barely registering the pain that surged through his foot. “Did you shoot my brother?” Dean leaned forward until the gun’s barrel pressed tight against his chest. “I’m warning you now, you damn well better pull that trigger. Do it!”
The officer tightened his finger on the trigger just before the CEDA agent put his hand up to push the barrel towards the ground. “We need him alive.”
Dean wasn’t going to wait around for these guys to decide what to do with him, but he didn’t make it even half a hobbled step before one of the officers pulled him around and smashed him face first into the side of the van. His cheek smeared against the dirty metal and his chest heaved in frustration as he futilely bucked against the man’s weight.
“Give me a hand here,” the officer called to the others.
While Dean managed to throw an elbow back into one of the men, all his twisting didn’t do a damn bit of good once a third officer helped to pin him in place. A string of obscenities flowed from Dean’s lips as one of the men cut through the denim of his jeans, which were too tight to be pulled down over his splint - the splint his brother had put in place.
All the ways he was going to kill these bastards rushed through Dean’s mind as the others nearly dislocated his shoulder jerking his arms back to slide off his flannel before shifting their grip so they could strip off his t-shirt. Instead of pulling the shirt all the way off, they yanked his arms free, but left the black cotton pulled inside out over his head so he couldn’t see what they were doing.
Rubber covered hands gripped his biceps hard as they held him in place against the van. He shivered against the coldness of the metal touching his bare skin and tried to catch his breath through the shirt wrapped over his head.
Dean’s eyelashes tangled against the fabric as he blinked in a useless attempt to make out the vague shapes he could see through it. He winced as one of the men probed his fingers over the skin of his abdomen, which was already bruised to hell from too many close calls.
He twisted in the hands that pinned him as someone unwound the tape from his splint only to fasten it back on again. With his burst of adrenaline subsiding, Dean bit back a moan at the fire coursing through the nerves of his ankle.
“No apparent physiological changes,” he heard one of the agents say. “Get him into the showers then straight to the lab.”
“You,” another officer called out to someone. “Help this man.”
Dean gasped as the shirt was finally pulled off his head, though he wished it hadn’t been when he caught another millisecond glimpse too long of Gordon heading towards him in his birthday suit.
“Oh hell no,” Dean growled.
Ignoring him, Gordon came up to Dean’s side and replaced the support of the officers. “You’d rather they shot you full of sedatives?”
“Than take a shower with your naked ass? I’d rather they shot me in the head.”
“Too bad.”
Gordon looped his arm around Dean, whose skin crawled at the sensation of Gordon’s naked body pressing firmly against his. While Dean made a futile effort to squirm free, Gordon tightened his grip so that his rough hand dug painfully hard into the tender skin of Dean’s hip.
While Gordon half guided, half hauled him, Dean’s eyes scanned the area once more. Most of the people had gone through the doors that Dean and Gordon were being directed towards, but the couple that had been separated out were struggling to get down on their knees. It took Dean’s dazed mind a second too long to register the guns pointed at the back of their heads.
“No!” Dean lunged, but didn’t have enough leverage to tear free of Gordon’s hold.
As the shots echoed through the warehouse and the bodies slumped to the ground, Gordon shoved an elbow into Dean’s ribs. “You know, I’m embarrassed for you, Dean, I really am,” Gordon said as he pulled Dean forward. “These toddler tantrums of yours, they gotta stop. It’s damn unprofessional.”
“I’m gonna kill everyone here,” Dean huffed. “Starting with you. How’s that for professionalism?”
A smile touched Gordon’s lips as he patted Dean’s back. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
~~~
Affutt Air Force Base, Nebraska
Rufus Turner readjusted the weight of the rifle slung over his shoulder and took one last stroll around the abandoned airfield. It wasn’t like another look would make any difference. He was too late to stop the pick up. Again.
It just happened to be a nice day. There was a crisp chill in the late afternoon air, but the sun was shining and he was trying to figure out why he had wasted this lovely day stepping over corpses of the Infected. He’d like to blame Bobby, though really he only had himself to blame.
When the outbreak had hit, he should have stocked up on a couple of years worth of the finest scotch and found himself a nice secluded cabin in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. The Infected were everywhere, but they were too stupid to so much as open a door. It would have been a safe, cozy, way to spend his well-deserved retirement.
Instead of quiet days beside a private lake, he had to be a moron and pick up the phone to let Bobby talk him into this no win mess. Forget one step forward and two steps back, they were perpetually a hundred steps behind everyone. They couldn’t keep up with hunting the Infected or the demons that were opting to take advantage of the situation or even the humans that were worse than all the rest of them.
And the joke that was the CEDA? They were collecting survivors with promises of fun in the sun vacations until this all blew over. Rufus himself had almost bought a ticket until the real story had come through the unofficial airwaves. They were purposefully infecting survivors in the name of finding a cure.
Rufus did his best to avoid humans when at all possible, but when they were taking innocent civilians just to make more monsters, even he had to grudgingly come out of the woodwork to state his objection. He had no qualms about using the rifle at his side to do his talking. The problem was that there were too few of them fighting, too many working with the CEDA and too many miles between sites for them to make any real difference. It was the story of his life.
He was trudging back towards his rust bucket of a truck when he couldn’t help but spare another glance towards the shiny, black beauty parked outside of the pickup site’s gate. Like himself, his truck didn’t have enough left in it to keep up with all these miles and the tank didn’t have enough fuel to make it back to Bobby’s place.
Assuming that the car beckoning him had any fuel in the tanks, it looked like the better choice for getting him back. He continued to his truck and grabbed his bag and radio out of it before heading over to the car. With a bit of a snicker, he imagined just how jealous this thing would make Bobby. The man couldn’t keep a decent car around to save his life.
Suddenly Rufus threw down the bag he carried and went for his gun. He raised the rifle before taking another step forward, keeping a careful eye on the giant of a kid propped up against the side of the car. Blood soaked the boy’s shirt and from where he stood, Rufus couldn’t make out if he was breathing or if he was even still human.
Usually he was the shoot first sort, but there was something about the kid’s posture that left his finger only loosely hovering over the trigger. “Hey!” he called to the kid while keeping a healthy distance. “You human?”
There was no verbal response, but the boy turned his head towards Rufus. The kid was pale enough to be dead though there was no sign of rabid aggression, only a silent plea in the boy’s hurt eyes.
“Okay, I’m coming over, but try any funny business and I’m emptying shells, you hear?”
He almost thought he saw a nod, either way he was convinced enough to risk it. While it was a sorry haul compared to what he had wanted to find, at least rescuing one survivor was better than a completely wasted trip.
As he moved in, the kid tracked him with his head and slowly pulled a hand away from his blood seeping shoulder to motion Rufus to stop. “Stay back.” The boy’s voice was rough, barely clear enough to make out. “I’m infected.”
Rufus scrunched his face and stared at the kid. That was the first he’d heard that one. He’d come across hordes of Infected in all shapes and sizes and seen plenty of good hunters lost to the Green Flu. Not a one of them had the foresight to know the shift was coming.
“That so?” Rufus asked. “You don’t look too squirrely. Is that their blood?”
“It’s just mine...but I’ve been sick for days.”
When he really took in the boy’s voice, Rufus realized it wasn’t only the blood loss making the boy sound weak. The kid was plenty sick all right.
“You got a fever and muscle aches? Maybe some chills and something nasty going on in the respiratory system?” When the kid nodded, Rufus sighed and released the hold on his gun to let it hang loosely from the chest strap. “Kid, you ain’t infected. You just got the regular ol' flu. Damn media,” he grumbled. “You kids these days watch too much television, that’s your problem.”
“What?” The kid’s brow wrinkled in confusion as Rufus again picked up his bag. “The Green Flu...”
“Is a load of CEDA propaganda bull. It’s just a name. The infection, it’s no actual flu, but it is actually flu season. Convenient, huh?” Rufus stiffly knelt down beside the kid and moved his hand aside. “I’m getting too damn old for this. Now let me see this shoulder. You get bit or something?”
“Shot.” The kid’s eyes wandered as Rufus looked him over. “So it really is Croatoan,” the kid mumbled to himself.
Rufus stopped his work and rocked back a bit. “Say that again.” When the kid just waved him off, Rufus shook his head. “Oh, no you don’t. I’m the one saving your sorry ass. I’m the one that gets to decide what’s worth sharing. Did you say Croatoan?” With a flash of surprise, the kid nodded. “You a hunter?”
“Yeah, me and my brother. They took him. I gotta...”
“You gotta sit your ass down,” Rufus interrupted as he stopped the half delirious kid from climbing to his feet. He glanced back to the car and it clicked. “That's a ’67 Impala ain't it?” At the boy’s affirmative, Rufus let out another heavy sigh. “Ah, hell, which one are ya?”
“Huh?”
Rufus started digging through his first aid kit then raised a brow to the kid. “Are you Sam or Dean?”
“Sam. How did you...?”
“Bobby’s has had everyone that’s left tearing apart all of creation searching for you two jokers. Here, drink this,” Rufus said as he pushed a bottle of the cheap stuff to the kid’s lips. “He’s gonna be damned pissed they grabbed the other one. You get to tell him.”
“What? We have to get him back,” Sam replied after Rufus pulled the bottle away.
“Dean? Nah, sorry kid. If they took him, there ain’t no getting him back.”
Continue to Chapter 5