Dead Silence, for tabaqui
Title: Dead Silence
Author: kogsy21
Recipient: tabaqui
Rating: Mature (for language and show level violence/gore)
Wordcount: ~2,700
Warnings: None.
Author's Notes: Crossover with the Walking Dead, as requested! This is a peek into the world I imagine when these two shows collide. The only things you need to know about the Walking Dead are that a zombie bite/scratch is infectious and Daryl is a survivor from the show. Set mid-season 8 of Supernatural, and after Season 3 of Walking Dead. Sprinkled with OC’s. Special thanks to indiachick for the encouragement and beta work.
Summary: Sam and Dean thought zombie rumors were nothing to worry about. Until the whole world went crazy and their supernatural enemies fell silent. They have to keep moving and adjusting if they’re going to survive this new landscape.
In real life, when the bad guy is about to get you, there is no scary music to give you the hint that it's coming. No tense bass notes to increase the pulse of the participants in the scene. It's just cold, brutal, and indiscriminate violence from one person - one being - to another. The lack of a soundtrack in real life annoys the hell out of Dean Winchester.
He hates it when walkers come up quiet enough to get him by surprise. Thank God the walker’s typical grunting and rasping will usually tip him off. All he needs is two seconds of that tell-tale wheeze and his skin is on fire -muscles twitching so fast that his heart feels like it will explode. About two seconds is enough to ensure the walker is on losing end of the skirmish. It all ends fairly quiet, too. Just some terrible squishing (he wishes there was a more manly word), heavy breathing and a mess to clean up. No soundtrack with heroic trumpet fanfare. Not even a lingering violin to send him off to a commercial break where skin and clothes magically change and become clean.
On this particular evening, Dean wishes he could put bells on every fucking walker in a 100-mile radius. He's taking too long to come down from the rush. The knife he carries seems like a permanent extension of his hand. He can’t remember the last time he put it down. The walkers never seem to end. Dean is starting to wish for the old days of demons and ghosts and cases with a mysterious beginnings and fiery endings. But this, this shitty existence their group is eking out? This reminds him too much of something he’s desperate to forget.
"Dean, where the hell are you, man?”
Sam's voice cuts through his thoughts with a welcome razor-sharp clarity. Dean hones in on the noise of Sam's panting and efforts at pushing through the brush and coming out into the clearing where he stands. "Shit, that's a mess," Sam comments on the two walkers at Dean’s feet. They no longer have much shape. "We need to go, Nelly and Gregg aren't looking so good. I think I saw a cabin or shed out of the corner of my eye when we were running just now. It's worth checking out. We’re losing light too fast."
Dean focuses on Sam instead of the tingle in his skin. "All right, let's move."
Together they push back into the dense foliage. Dean keeps his eyes on Sam and his ears tuned to the surrounding darkness.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Sam and Dean reach their group. A quick glance shows him that all are still standing, though it’s clear it won’t be for much longer. They all look to him for the next move. He meets each person’s eyes and wishes they could read his thoughts and know how much he wants them to survive, and how sorry he is that eventually one by one they will fall.
“We should head back south. Sam thought he saw something.”
"Stop right there, young man." Nelly Jones’ commanding voice seems more strained than normal. "What do you think you’re doing?”
He stops in his tracks, rolls his eyes, and turns back to Nelly. "I'm trying to get us to safety for the night, Nelly, before your expiration date. You got something to say before we continue? Should we sit and break out the knitting needles and gossip a while first?
Nelly smirks at the ribbing. "I may be well past 60, but for the love of God, you'd never catch me knitting."
He allows himself to smile for a second, thankful for the gift of Nelly. Her no-nonsense grit keeps him on his toes and pushes his buttons. Dean has marveled more than once at her uncanny ability of keeping him from slipping too deep into his own head.
"Now, quilting," Nelly continues, "that's where the skill and talent comes in."
"Oh for fuck’s sake, Nelly, can we just-"
"Dean." Sam's voice reels him back in, again. "You're bleeding. Nelly just wants to patch you up before we go on." The concern and fear in Sam's eyes is unmasked, even as he keeps his voice steady.
Looking down, Dean sees red rolling down and off of his hand. Bright red, only now showing up under the brackish layers of grime he’s clothed in. Looking up, he can see that everyone is frozen, staring at him. Like he’s a dead man.
Nelly keeps her eyes locked with his, unwavering. Sam’s hands are moving, trying to find the source. Gregg moves to stand with Nelly, reaching down to take her hand.
“Don’t worry about it. We need to move.” He tries to shrug Sam off. Doesn’t want the attention. He doesn’t want to know the answer.
Nelly’s eyes go wide. A snarl and a raspy wheeze has Dean turning and slashing and stabbing on autopilot. He can hear Sam struggle beside him. Stab. Squish. He adds another layer of goo to his own clothes before he turns to jump into the fray of bodies he calls his group. His family.
Before he can reach them, a cold hand clamps down on his neck. The clumsy walker has all the forward momentum and Dean stumbles and falls under the weight of a particularly large and hungry flesh eater, his knife trapped and useless between him and the walker.
This is it, he thinks. He’s going to die without much fanfare. No demons or angels interfering either way. He’s got his free arm up trying to keep the walker’s jaw from doing its damage but the former human is huge and he’s losing his battle.
A new sound breaks through the chaos. A high-pitched whoosh comes through the air a split second before an arrow obliterates the head of the walker, narrowly missing Dean’s hands. He’s able to roll out from under the now re-dead body and find the source of his rescue.
A man clad in grey and black and holding a kick-ass cross bow walks into view, obviously taking in the scene and weighing his options. Dean holds his breath, silently pleading with the stranger to have some fucking mercy and let his arrows fly. Dean can see the shift on the man’s face when he decides to commit to whatever he’s just walked into.
It’s over in two minutes. That’s all it took to go from snarking about knitting with Nelly to standing over her body with Gregg’s sobs echoing through the woods. The other members of their group huddle around, in shock. Dean keeps his eyes on the man with cross bow, trying to decide whether to thank him, or tell him to turn away. He’s out of place at this particular scene. This funeral.
Dean clears his throat and catches the man’s eye. “Thanks.”
A small nod is all Dean gets. The man is done evaluating.
“You all need to move. There’s a herd heading this way.”
Dean only nods back. There’s no time for the luxury of grieving. If they want to survive, they have to move.
Sam must have heard the exchange between Dean and the stranger. Dean can hear him start to speak to their remaining group. Gentle words but insistent hands, pulling them away. The twins, the dentist, the angsty teen, the teacher, and the banker. And Gregg, who has just lost his wife of 40 years. After all they’ve survived, this doesn’t make sense.
Dean keeps his eye on his savior. “We’re heading to a possible cabin south of here, is that enough out of the way of the herd?”
“Yeah. That should work. But you have to move. Now.”
Dean finally breaks his connection, and moves to help Sam.
They have to pull Gregg away and stuff a rag in his mouth to keep him quiet enough from drawing attention. It feels cruel, but no one questions it. They start moving, Sam and Dean in the lead, with the stranger keeping his cross bow up and ready. It doesn’t take long to find a dilapidated single-room cabin. A couple of chairs, a cot, a table and a few years’ worth of dust is not much, but enough. It’s not until they finish clearing the area for threats and get inside that Dean remembers his bleeding arm. Shit.
Sam, however, never forgot for one second, and before Dean knows what’s happening, his jacket and shirt have been removed. Sam doesn’t hide his relieved sigh when it turns out to be a puncture from a tree limb and not a bite. Dean turns to their unexpected ally.
“I’m Dean. This is Sam.”
The man hesitates. “Daryl.”
“We’re grateful you showed up. Thank you,” Sam says, offering his hand to Daryl. Daryl lets the hand hang in the air until Sam drops it.
“I can stay the night with you while you regroup. The herd should pass and I’ll be on my way at dawn.”
Dean nods. “Understood.” Daryl moves to take a dusty chair by the only window.
While Sam finishes tending to Dean’s arm, he leans in and lowers his voice. “We should be careful, we don’t know this guy. He saved our asses, but he’s obviously not interested in becoming friends.”
“If he meant any harm he would have just left us to the walkers.” He sighs, tired. “But, you’re right, we should be careful. I’ll keep watch tonight. “
“Dean, you should rest, you’ve been amped up for days. When’s the last time you’ve actually slept?”
“I’ll be fine for one more night, Sam. I need you to look after Gregg and the others tonight.” Dean looks over at Gregg, crumpled on the cot. The others holding vigil.
Sam doesn’t argue with him. They have to weather this blow if they want to survive and it means holding each other up in these moments of respite.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Dark has fallen, and the sound of muffled crying is all that can be heard coming from the cabin. Dean and Daryl sit outside the door, having decided to keep watch together. Neither man trusting enough to allow the other to do it alone.
“Are you out here alone?” Dean asks.
“In a way.” Daryl gives Dean a long look. “How did you all end up together?”
Dean smiles before he can catch himself. “You’d never believe me.”
“Try me. We’ve got all night.”
Twenty minutes later Daryl is doubled over, silently laughing as Dean finishes his story in a whisper.
“And I’ll tell you what, Nelly couldn’t have cared less what we all thought, standing there stark naked. You should have seen the look on Sam’s face. It was priceless, man.” He gives a final sigh as his grin fades. The sound of crying and sniffling is still coming through the door behind him. “Damn, I’m going to miss her.”
The men exchange a long look. Daryl says nothing, but Dean understands. There’s nothing he can say to make anything better.
“What about you and Sam?”
“What about us?
“You started the story with the two of you already together. You seem like you’ve seen some action. Did you serve together?
Dean waits a minute before answering.
“Brothers, actually. But, yeah, we served, so to speak. Saw quite a bit of action. I was-” He stops, gives the man across from him a measured look. “This is a bit more unbelievable than the story about how we met the others.”
Daryl scans the trees around them and shrugs. “Can’t be any more unbelievable than walkers.”
“You might be surprised.”
“I doubt it.”
“We were hunters.”
“What’s special about that?
“A different kind of hunters. Ghosts, demons, evil spirits, the forces of hell. Shit like that.”
They sit in silence for a minute before Dean continues. “You name it, we’ve fought it. Any nasty monster in legends or movies -it’s all real. We were in the middle of a big showdown with the king of hell himself when the first rumors of zombies started. I thought we had seen it all. But this is something different. It’s not voodoo, or necromancy. This disease or whatever it is doesn’t play by the same supernatural rules. It’s more… organic. We thought maybe this was a hybrid of a weird virus that some demons experimented with a while back. Or a new evolution of ghouls. But, nada. Nothing about this fits our wide and vast knowledge about a whole lot of crazy shit.”
An animal in the woods lets out a cry and both men are up with weapons ready before the cry fades. As silence falls and no other movement or sound is evident, they both slowly sit again. Dean looks to Daryl and tries to read his face.
“Think I’m nuts?”
“It doesn’t really matter what I think. Got no reason to doubt you so far, I guess. You’re saying there’s no connection between walkers and your, your monsters or whatever you hunt?
“We reached out to every supernatural connection we had. But everyone was running scared. Everything fell to the wayside as the epidemic spread. It wasn’t long before our world stopped being about demons and started being about walkers and survivors.”
“You think all that ghost stuff is over now?”
“God, I hope so. But probably not. I think the world has changed, and just like us the bad guys need to regroup or adapt or figure out how they survive too. When I’m out there, when we’re moving, I’m not just looking out for walkers. I’m expecting anything and everything to be out to get me. Nothing’s safe. It’s a matter of time before things get worse. We thought hell was the lowest you could go. Turns out, it can always get worse.”
The night passes with hushed conversation about wendigos and demons. Daryl doesn’t want to be caught by surprise if it does turn out that walkers aren’t the worst things out there. Sometime while they were talking a silence finally fell inside the cabin- grief giving way to exhaustion. Daryl and Dean walk the perimeter of the cabin as the light of dawn breaks through the trees.
“I had a brother, too.”
The confession startles Dean. And the past tense tells him enough.
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well. It’s good you and Sam still have each other.”
Hanging his head, Dean releases a sigh and feels some of his pent up tension give a little ground. “Yeah, it is.”
Daryl stops and gives Dean a considering look one more time. “Stay safe,” he mutters as he turns and disappears into the woods.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
“You told him everything?” Sam seems surprised.
“Yeah, why not? Might do him some good in the future.”
Their group is on the move again. Movement is life. Sitting and crying is a sure fire way to die.
“Thanks for last night, Sam. You’re good with them.”
Sam doesn’t respond and Dean can sense the worry from his brother.
“We’re going to be fine, Sam, just gotta keep moving for now. We’ll find a place soon where we can stop for a while.”
“Did Daryl know anyone? Did he have any leads?” Hopeful. Sam sounds hopeful.
“Nothing he was willing to share.”
A breaking twig and a soft ‘ho’ stops their march forward. No rasp, no wheeze. Dean gets the sense their luck is about to change. Daryl steps out into their path.
“I might have lied earlier.”
“Oh, really?” Dean smirks.
“I might know some people. Good people.”
“These people happen to be willing to make new friends?”
Daryl gives a hint of a smile. “Depends.”
“On what?” Sam questions, demands, eager to know what the hell is going on.
Daryl turns to address Sam. “How well did your brother score in grade school on ‘plays nice with others’?”
“I guess we’re shit out of luck then. Dean, I told your grades in school were going to come back and bite you some day.”
“Shut up, Sam.” Dean can’t help but grin. Maybe he’s feeling hopeful for once, too. Turning back to Daryl, “Considering we don’t know how well you or your friends scored in that area, how about we agree to make some introductions and then see where this leads us?”
“Good enough. Let’s move.”
Sam and Dean turn and walk towards what they hope is a new chapter in their current shitty existence. They know it could very well end up being a disaster.
Or it could be just what they need.
Author: kogsy21
Recipient: tabaqui
Rating: Mature (for language and show level violence/gore)
Wordcount: ~2,700
Warnings: None.
Author's Notes: Crossover with the Walking Dead, as requested! This is a peek into the world I imagine when these two shows collide. The only things you need to know about the Walking Dead are that a zombie bite/scratch is infectious and Daryl is a survivor from the show. Set mid-season 8 of Supernatural, and after Season 3 of Walking Dead. Sprinkled with OC’s. Special thanks to indiachick for the encouragement and beta work.
Summary: Sam and Dean thought zombie rumors were nothing to worry about. Until the whole world went crazy and their supernatural enemies fell silent. They have to keep moving and adjusting if they’re going to survive this new landscape.
In real life, when the bad guy is about to get you, there is no scary music to give you the hint that it's coming. No tense bass notes to increase the pulse of the participants in the scene. It's just cold, brutal, and indiscriminate violence from one person - one being - to another. The lack of a soundtrack in real life annoys the hell out of Dean Winchester.
He hates it when walkers come up quiet enough to get him by surprise. Thank God the walker’s typical grunting and rasping will usually tip him off. All he needs is two seconds of that tell-tale wheeze and his skin is on fire -muscles twitching so fast that his heart feels like it will explode. About two seconds is enough to ensure the walker is on losing end of the skirmish. It all ends fairly quiet, too. Just some terrible squishing (he wishes there was a more manly word), heavy breathing and a mess to clean up. No soundtrack with heroic trumpet fanfare. Not even a lingering violin to send him off to a commercial break where skin and clothes magically change and become clean.
On this particular evening, Dean wishes he could put bells on every fucking walker in a 100-mile radius. He's taking too long to come down from the rush. The knife he carries seems like a permanent extension of his hand. He can’t remember the last time he put it down. The walkers never seem to end. Dean is starting to wish for the old days of demons and ghosts and cases with a mysterious beginnings and fiery endings. But this, this shitty existence their group is eking out? This reminds him too much of something he’s desperate to forget.
"Dean, where the hell are you, man?”
Sam's voice cuts through his thoughts with a welcome razor-sharp clarity. Dean hones in on the noise of Sam's panting and efforts at pushing through the brush and coming out into the clearing where he stands. "Shit, that's a mess," Sam comments on the two walkers at Dean’s feet. They no longer have much shape. "We need to go, Nelly and Gregg aren't looking so good. I think I saw a cabin or shed out of the corner of my eye when we were running just now. It's worth checking out. We’re losing light too fast."
Dean focuses on Sam instead of the tingle in his skin. "All right, let's move."
Together they push back into the dense foliage. Dean keeps his eyes on Sam and his ears tuned to the surrounding darkness.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Sam and Dean reach their group. A quick glance shows him that all are still standing, though it’s clear it won’t be for much longer. They all look to him for the next move. He meets each person’s eyes and wishes they could read his thoughts and know how much he wants them to survive, and how sorry he is that eventually one by one they will fall.
“We should head back south. Sam thought he saw something.”
"Stop right there, young man." Nelly Jones’ commanding voice seems more strained than normal. "What do you think you’re doing?”
He stops in his tracks, rolls his eyes, and turns back to Nelly. "I'm trying to get us to safety for the night, Nelly, before your expiration date. You got something to say before we continue? Should we sit and break out the knitting needles and gossip a while first?
Nelly smirks at the ribbing. "I may be well past 60, but for the love of God, you'd never catch me knitting."
He allows himself to smile for a second, thankful for the gift of Nelly. Her no-nonsense grit keeps him on his toes and pushes his buttons. Dean has marveled more than once at her uncanny ability of keeping him from slipping too deep into his own head.
"Now, quilting," Nelly continues, "that's where the skill and talent comes in."
"Oh for fuck’s sake, Nelly, can we just-"
"Dean." Sam's voice reels him back in, again. "You're bleeding. Nelly just wants to patch you up before we go on." The concern and fear in Sam's eyes is unmasked, even as he keeps his voice steady.
Looking down, Dean sees red rolling down and off of his hand. Bright red, only now showing up under the brackish layers of grime he’s clothed in. Looking up, he can see that everyone is frozen, staring at him. Like he’s a dead man.
Nelly keeps her eyes locked with his, unwavering. Sam’s hands are moving, trying to find the source. Gregg moves to stand with Nelly, reaching down to take her hand.
“Don’t worry about it. We need to move.” He tries to shrug Sam off. Doesn’t want the attention. He doesn’t want to know the answer.
Nelly’s eyes go wide. A snarl and a raspy wheeze has Dean turning and slashing and stabbing on autopilot. He can hear Sam struggle beside him. Stab. Squish. He adds another layer of goo to his own clothes before he turns to jump into the fray of bodies he calls his group. His family.
Before he can reach them, a cold hand clamps down on his neck. The clumsy walker has all the forward momentum and Dean stumbles and falls under the weight of a particularly large and hungry flesh eater, his knife trapped and useless between him and the walker.
This is it, he thinks. He’s going to die without much fanfare. No demons or angels interfering either way. He’s got his free arm up trying to keep the walker’s jaw from doing its damage but the former human is huge and he’s losing his battle.
A new sound breaks through the chaos. A high-pitched whoosh comes through the air a split second before an arrow obliterates the head of the walker, narrowly missing Dean’s hands. He’s able to roll out from under the now re-dead body and find the source of his rescue.
A man clad in grey and black and holding a kick-ass cross bow walks into view, obviously taking in the scene and weighing his options. Dean holds his breath, silently pleading with the stranger to have some fucking mercy and let his arrows fly. Dean can see the shift on the man’s face when he decides to commit to whatever he’s just walked into.
It’s over in two minutes. That’s all it took to go from snarking about knitting with Nelly to standing over her body with Gregg’s sobs echoing through the woods. The other members of their group huddle around, in shock. Dean keeps his eyes on the man with cross bow, trying to decide whether to thank him, or tell him to turn away. He’s out of place at this particular scene. This funeral.
Dean clears his throat and catches the man’s eye. “Thanks.”
A small nod is all Dean gets. The man is done evaluating.
“You all need to move. There’s a herd heading this way.”
Dean only nods back. There’s no time for the luxury of grieving. If they want to survive, they have to move.
Sam must have heard the exchange between Dean and the stranger. Dean can hear him start to speak to their remaining group. Gentle words but insistent hands, pulling them away. The twins, the dentist, the angsty teen, the teacher, and the banker. And Gregg, who has just lost his wife of 40 years. After all they’ve survived, this doesn’t make sense.
Dean keeps his eye on his savior. “We’re heading to a possible cabin south of here, is that enough out of the way of the herd?”
“Yeah. That should work. But you have to move. Now.”
Dean finally breaks his connection, and moves to help Sam.
They have to pull Gregg away and stuff a rag in his mouth to keep him quiet enough from drawing attention. It feels cruel, but no one questions it. They start moving, Sam and Dean in the lead, with the stranger keeping his cross bow up and ready. It doesn’t take long to find a dilapidated single-room cabin. A couple of chairs, a cot, a table and a few years’ worth of dust is not much, but enough. It’s not until they finish clearing the area for threats and get inside that Dean remembers his bleeding arm. Shit.
Sam, however, never forgot for one second, and before Dean knows what’s happening, his jacket and shirt have been removed. Sam doesn’t hide his relieved sigh when it turns out to be a puncture from a tree limb and not a bite. Dean turns to their unexpected ally.
“I’m Dean. This is Sam.”
The man hesitates. “Daryl.”
“We’re grateful you showed up. Thank you,” Sam says, offering his hand to Daryl. Daryl lets the hand hang in the air until Sam drops it.
“I can stay the night with you while you regroup. The herd should pass and I’ll be on my way at dawn.”
Dean nods. “Understood.” Daryl moves to take a dusty chair by the only window.
While Sam finishes tending to Dean’s arm, he leans in and lowers his voice. “We should be careful, we don’t know this guy. He saved our asses, but he’s obviously not interested in becoming friends.”
“If he meant any harm he would have just left us to the walkers.” He sighs, tired. “But, you’re right, we should be careful. I’ll keep watch tonight. “
“Dean, you should rest, you’ve been amped up for days. When’s the last time you’ve actually slept?”
“I’ll be fine for one more night, Sam. I need you to look after Gregg and the others tonight.” Dean looks over at Gregg, crumpled on the cot. The others holding vigil.
Sam doesn’t argue with him. They have to weather this blow if they want to survive and it means holding each other up in these moments of respite.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Dark has fallen, and the sound of muffled crying is all that can be heard coming from the cabin. Dean and Daryl sit outside the door, having decided to keep watch together. Neither man trusting enough to allow the other to do it alone.
“Are you out here alone?” Dean asks.
“In a way.” Daryl gives Dean a long look. “How did you all end up together?”
Dean smiles before he can catch himself. “You’d never believe me.”
“Try me. We’ve got all night.”
Twenty minutes later Daryl is doubled over, silently laughing as Dean finishes his story in a whisper.
“And I’ll tell you what, Nelly couldn’t have cared less what we all thought, standing there stark naked. You should have seen the look on Sam’s face. It was priceless, man.” He gives a final sigh as his grin fades. The sound of crying and sniffling is still coming through the door behind him. “Damn, I’m going to miss her.”
The men exchange a long look. Daryl says nothing, but Dean understands. There’s nothing he can say to make anything better.
“What about you and Sam?”
“What about us?
“You started the story with the two of you already together. You seem like you’ve seen some action. Did you serve together?
Dean waits a minute before answering.
“Brothers, actually. But, yeah, we served, so to speak. Saw quite a bit of action. I was-” He stops, gives the man across from him a measured look. “This is a bit more unbelievable than the story about how we met the others.”
Daryl scans the trees around them and shrugs. “Can’t be any more unbelievable than walkers.”
“You might be surprised.”
“I doubt it.”
“We were hunters.”
“What’s special about that?
“A different kind of hunters. Ghosts, demons, evil spirits, the forces of hell. Shit like that.”
They sit in silence for a minute before Dean continues. “You name it, we’ve fought it. Any nasty monster in legends or movies -it’s all real. We were in the middle of a big showdown with the king of hell himself when the first rumors of zombies started. I thought we had seen it all. But this is something different. It’s not voodoo, or necromancy. This disease or whatever it is doesn’t play by the same supernatural rules. It’s more… organic. We thought maybe this was a hybrid of a weird virus that some demons experimented with a while back. Or a new evolution of ghouls. But, nada. Nothing about this fits our wide and vast knowledge about a whole lot of crazy shit.”
An animal in the woods lets out a cry and both men are up with weapons ready before the cry fades. As silence falls and no other movement or sound is evident, they both slowly sit again. Dean looks to Daryl and tries to read his face.
“Think I’m nuts?”
“It doesn’t really matter what I think. Got no reason to doubt you so far, I guess. You’re saying there’s no connection between walkers and your, your monsters or whatever you hunt?
“We reached out to every supernatural connection we had. But everyone was running scared. Everything fell to the wayside as the epidemic spread. It wasn’t long before our world stopped being about demons and started being about walkers and survivors.”
“You think all that ghost stuff is over now?”
“God, I hope so. But probably not. I think the world has changed, and just like us the bad guys need to regroup or adapt or figure out how they survive too. When I’m out there, when we’re moving, I’m not just looking out for walkers. I’m expecting anything and everything to be out to get me. Nothing’s safe. It’s a matter of time before things get worse. We thought hell was the lowest you could go. Turns out, it can always get worse.”
The night passes with hushed conversation about wendigos and demons. Daryl doesn’t want to be caught by surprise if it does turn out that walkers aren’t the worst things out there. Sometime while they were talking a silence finally fell inside the cabin- grief giving way to exhaustion. Daryl and Dean walk the perimeter of the cabin as the light of dawn breaks through the trees.
“I had a brother, too.”
The confession startles Dean. And the past tense tells him enough.
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well. It’s good you and Sam still have each other.”
Hanging his head, Dean releases a sigh and feels some of his pent up tension give a little ground. “Yeah, it is.”
Daryl stops and gives Dean a considering look one more time. “Stay safe,” he mutters as he turns and disappears into the woods.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
“You told him everything?” Sam seems surprised.
“Yeah, why not? Might do him some good in the future.”
Their group is on the move again. Movement is life. Sitting and crying is a sure fire way to die.
“Thanks for last night, Sam. You’re good with them.”
Sam doesn’t respond and Dean can sense the worry from his brother.
“We’re going to be fine, Sam, just gotta keep moving for now. We’ll find a place soon where we can stop for a while.”
“Did Daryl know anyone? Did he have any leads?” Hopeful. Sam sounds hopeful.
“Nothing he was willing to share.”
A breaking twig and a soft ‘ho’ stops their march forward. No rasp, no wheeze. Dean gets the sense their luck is about to change. Daryl steps out into their path.
“I might have lied earlier.”
“Oh, really?” Dean smirks.
“I might know some people. Good people.”
“These people happen to be willing to make new friends?”
Daryl gives a hint of a smile. “Depends.”
“On what?” Sam questions, demands, eager to know what the hell is going on.
Daryl turns to address Sam. “How well did your brother score in grade school on ‘plays nice with others’?”
“I guess we’re shit out of luck then. Dean, I told your grades in school were going to come back and bite you some day.”
“Shut up, Sam.” Dean can’t help but grin. Maybe he’s feeling hopeful for once, too. Turning back to Daryl, “Considering we don’t know how well you or your friends scored in that area, how about we agree to make some introductions and then see where this leads us?”
“Good enough. Let’s move.”
Sam and Dean turn and walk towards what they hope is a new chapter in their current shitty existence. They know it could very well end up being a disaster.
Or it could be just what they need.