Breathing In - Chapter Four
Chapter Four
Instant, total awareness. From the moment the sirens go off to when they're rolling out of camp five minutes later, Dean doesn't think, just snaps orders to his unit and shoves himself towards combat readiness. Sam's a second behind him every step of the way.
The freaks come out of the fields from the southwest and make straight for the nearest sprawling residential neighborhoods. They always come on foot. There's something primal about a mass of figures running you down, a throwback to early human warfare that still sparks something in the animal brain.
A couple buildings are on fire, which is just as likely a civilian's doing than not -- sometimes people panic. And fire's basic, elemental. Holds a certain fascination and power even amidst technological wonders and supernatural terrors. When in doubt, light the fucker on fire.
Their jeeps skid up to the attack zone, hunters taking shots out the open windows before they even come to a stop. About one hundred figures are struggling in the street, some already jerking erratically around like they're in the middle of a drug fit. Screams fill the air.
In the dark milling chaos, it's impossible to be completely sure which you're shooting at, the freak or the victim, but if someone's out there on the street, the awful truth is that they just might be better off with a stray bullet to the brain than being awake and torn apart limb from limb.
...That's the other side of the coin people discover quickly about the USHC, the coin that gets flipped once and stays flipped forever; their primary mission is not to save the residents of a ruptured area, but to contain the rupture.
They likely won't be getting any more free drinks after tonight.
The unit's got two new people, a man and a woman who Dean hasn't properly met yet, but that doesn't stop him from signaling them into position when they get on the ground. They spread out in an evenly spaced formation and begin moving forward.
They need to make a strong line, an impenetrable barrier between the freaks and the rest of the town at their backs.
Dean hefts his gun, aims, shoots and then watches. If luck's on their side, they'll get away using the silver plated bullets. If it's not -
"Fangs!" The woman yells from the far left, just as Dean sees the thing he shot shake it off and start forward at him.
Dean curses. They all reclip their P-90s and reach for the machetes on their belt.
"Sam,” Dean calls over, “go back to the jeep, there should be a line of dead man's blood darts next to the gun."
But Sam's already got his blade out. He swings at a fang and gets it stuck half way through the neck. He jerks it out in a spray of blood and finishes the job, then turns to Dean, eyes blazing.
"You are not storing me up there for safe-keeping while you're down here, Dean - "
Dean doesn't have time for this shit.
He grabs his brother by the shoulder and hauls him in close so he say definitively: "That's an order - you follow it or you're out. Simple as that." When Sam doesn't say anything, just stands there, chest heaving under the flickering orange of the raging fires, Dean prods, "You got that? Get. To. The gun."
With one final furious look, Sam goes.
It's as good as having a sniper, neatly measured shots offering up weakened fangs in a steady stream for their machetes. The remaining civilians on the ground have all run off - which will be a whole other headache when it comes to finding those who've turned. For the moment, the hunters get the full attention of the freaks. Dean loses himself in the closeness of it, the physicality of the dodge and swing, a near miss here and there when one too many come at him at once - but Sam's always there above, never letting him get overwhelmed for longer than a second.
All told, they finish up in just under an hour, when the sun's a watery glint on the horizon. Dean radios for a disposal unit, and they begin stacking the bodies without comment. There are some civilians mixed with the vampires. which is the second reason they won't be warmly regarded from here on out; people don't take too kindly to you burning the bodies of their neighbors and friends alongside those of godless monsters. But violent deaths create spooks, and there ain't no death more violent than a freak attack.
Dean's in a weirdly good mood, despite that they're all exhausted but wired, a strange combination that leaves you useless for pretty much everything. Sam's had his first mission and it went well, no injuries, no clusterfuck disasters. He counts that a win.
"I just don't get it. What do they want?" Kite asks on the way back, face dripping in sweat and hands shaking as he reaches up to wipe at it. He's got a bloody gash down his face but doesn't seem to realize it yet.
"You're in the Central Valley," Sam says. Dean glances at him; he's running his fingers over his gun in quick, sure movements, post-mission check like he hasn't been away from guns for a couple years. "It's one of the main agricultural hubs in the country. You do the math."
Dean doesn't think he's wrong, exactly, but since he's not vegetable-obsessed like his brother, he also thinks there's more to it than that. Has his own theory, been thinking it over since he first heard about California.
They hit the oldest parts of the country first, and the first major losses in the war were all on the eastern seaboard - Florida to Virginia, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. The Mid-Atlantic states were still mostly hanging in there - highly concentrated urban areas don't go down easy - but, yeah, they lost a lot of the coast.
Dean sees it for what it is, broad view - humanity's being squeezed, pushed in from the coasts to the dark interior of the continent where their population and control can be riddled through like swiss cheese.
Well, Dean says bring it. The Midwest's always been his main hunting ground, belongs to him just as much as it does to the freaks.
-
When they get back to camp, stretching and groaning and blinking into the sun, Dean stows his gear and hits the showers. He's standing under a spout, head bent and wishing for something stronger than the pissy water pressure every USHC camp somehow get stuck with, when Sam comes to find him.
Dean glances to the side and then rolls his eyes. “Jesus, now? Really?”
Sam slaps his own shower on but then stands there ignoring it, too busy glaring. “You can't bench me like that again, Dean.”
Dean gathers water in his palms and sluices it back over his hair. He can practically feel Sam vibrating with irritation a few feet away. “Actually, you'll find I can do whatever the fuck I want. My unit, my decision. And you weren't benched, Christ. You helped us take 'em out, would've been a hell of lot messier without you on the gun.” He eyes Sam. “If you'd just pinch off that lit fuse under your ass, you'd see I was right.” He shakes his head. “What is up with you, man?”
Sam looks away. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean this Rambo attitude, this isn't like you.”
“I signed up because I wanted to fight - not play back-up like a kid.”
And just like that, Dean's done. He turns fully to Sam, sets his stance like it's a fight and cocks his head as if Sam's still the short one. “You lost your girlfriend less than a week ago. No way your head or body's in the game for a full mission. There's revenge and then there's suicide, okay?” Sam glances down, so he ducks to meet his eyes. “Listen. Sam. I'm not benching you. I'm just giving you some time to get into fighting shape.” He shrugs, “Call it a perk of being the boss's brother.”
Sam exhales hard through his nose in what might have been a laugh. “You're not the boss. You don't even have a commission.”
“Noncom and proud, bitch. You okay?” Dean looks him over, glancing for bruises or scrapes down his body. Sam's long, tan, and lean, and has apparently been hiding some surprisingly serious muscles under his college-boy hoodies.
Sam nods. Grits his teeth and grabs his soap, agitation in every movement of his arms. He rips off the bandage on his chest.
“Hey, fuck's sake - ” Dean reaches out and stills his hand.
Sam freezes and blinks at him from under wet bangs, startled into silence. Dean takes advantage of the surprise to brush over the new tattoo on Sam's chest with the pads of his fingers. “You should be careful washing the tat, man. It's an open wound, you gotta treat it like one.”
Sam shrugs him roughly off and turns his whole body away like he can't stand being near Dean. “I know that. I'm not an idiot.”
“No, just reckless.” When Sam doesn't say anything, Dean slaps his shower off and reaches for his towel. Almost leaves it at that, but he can't resist telling Sam to sleep after he's done in the shower and making it an order.
He gets a finger in response and grins all the way back to his bunk.
-
The next couple days are a little more quiet, routine patrols around the city perimeters and in the more vulnerable neighborhoods. Dean tries to adjust to the new way of things and the new members of his team.
He holds on tight to Sam, needles at him to eat and sleep, prods him into socializing with the others because hunters and grunts alike are nothing if not suspicious of college-educated punks who use words like corporeal and omophagous to describe the freaks they hunt and kill.
Hawthorne's five foot five inches of mean with scars and a crew cut. Old school hunter who grew up not in the life but adjacent to it, family ties going back a couple generations. She keeps a record of all the cities she's fought in on the back of her flak jacket, some sick litany of places saved and (mostly) lost: Toledo, Saginaw, Columbia, Jackson, Fayetteville, Valdosta.
Dean can't even look at the name Valdosta without feeling like he's just walked over a grave, bad vibes every time. Valdosta was a real shit storm, a 3-month siege that eventually hammered down to a hundred and fifty holed up in a school. The freaks killed nearly every man, woman, and child in the whole county, just total fucking slaughter. Hawthorne barely made it out, nearly spilled her guts between her fingers in the back seat of one of the few lucky escape vehicles, a yellow VW beetle. She's got a tattoo of the damn thing right above her elbow, contorts and kisses it for luck before every patrol.
Gene the Marine's a psych discharge from Afghanistan, but the USHC takes all kinds. They're warm and inclusive like that. He scowls a lot, doesn't like all the little ways USHC's different than the Corps, looser than the Corps, but he gets to shoot and kill things almost every day, so he puts up with it. Now, Dean's dad was a Marine, so he's got a healthy amount of respect, but Gene brushes up against one of his mental tripwires. That ability to sense when something's off that has saved his life more than once, so he doesn't ignore it. Stays professional when he has to give a command and keeps a weather eye out.
Sam, Hawthorne, and Gene the Marine puts them at seven, the full complement for a patrol unit. (Command's real heavy into numerology these days.) Dean has them all run a few drills until he satisfied they can function as a unit in the field.
-
Now Sam, he's a completely different person from when he was a kid and yet exactly the same. He'll still throw down for the same bickering fights they've had all their lives, wrinkles his nose at the food and asks for second helpings of whatever canned vegetable they're being served that meal. He sticks close to Dean even when he won't speak to him, moments when he is too caught up in depthless grief or grinding fury to get words past the muscle jump in his jaw.
And Dean, he feels haunted, like he's the only thing keeping Sam anchored to this world. Kill him off and he fears Sam would just flame out like a spook.
Instant, total awareness. From the moment the sirens go off to when they're rolling out of camp five minutes later, Dean doesn't think, just snaps orders to his unit and shoves himself towards combat readiness. Sam's a second behind him every step of the way.
The freaks come out of the fields from the southwest and make straight for the nearest sprawling residential neighborhoods. They always come on foot. There's something primal about a mass of figures running you down, a throwback to early human warfare that still sparks something in the animal brain.
A couple buildings are on fire, which is just as likely a civilian's doing than not -- sometimes people panic. And fire's basic, elemental. Holds a certain fascination and power even amidst technological wonders and supernatural terrors. When in doubt, light the fucker on fire.
Their jeeps skid up to the attack zone, hunters taking shots out the open windows before they even come to a stop. About one hundred figures are struggling in the street, some already jerking erratically around like they're in the middle of a drug fit. Screams fill the air.
In the dark milling chaos, it's impossible to be completely sure which you're shooting at, the freak or the victim, but if someone's out there on the street, the awful truth is that they just might be better off with a stray bullet to the brain than being awake and torn apart limb from limb.
...That's the other side of the coin people discover quickly about the USHC, the coin that gets flipped once and stays flipped forever; their primary mission is not to save the residents of a ruptured area, but to contain the rupture.
They likely won't be getting any more free drinks after tonight.
The unit's got two new people, a man and a woman who Dean hasn't properly met yet, but that doesn't stop him from signaling them into position when they get on the ground. They spread out in an evenly spaced formation and begin moving forward.
They need to make a strong line, an impenetrable barrier between the freaks and the rest of the town at their backs.
Dean hefts his gun, aims, shoots and then watches. If luck's on their side, they'll get away using the silver plated bullets. If it's not -
"Fangs!" The woman yells from the far left, just as Dean sees the thing he shot shake it off and start forward at him.
Dean curses. They all reclip their P-90s and reach for the machetes on their belt.
"Sam,” Dean calls over, “go back to the jeep, there should be a line of dead man's blood darts next to the gun."
But Sam's already got his blade out. He swings at a fang and gets it stuck half way through the neck. He jerks it out in a spray of blood and finishes the job, then turns to Dean, eyes blazing.
"You are not storing me up there for safe-keeping while you're down here, Dean - "
Dean doesn't have time for this shit.
He grabs his brother by the shoulder and hauls him in close so he say definitively: "That's an order - you follow it or you're out. Simple as that." When Sam doesn't say anything, just stands there, chest heaving under the flickering orange of the raging fires, Dean prods, "You got that? Get. To. The gun."
With one final furious look, Sam goes.
It's as good as having a sniper, neatly measured shots offering up weakened fangs in a steady stream for their machetes. The remaining civilians on the ground have all run off - which will be a whole other headache when it comes to finding those who've turned. For the moment, the hunters get the full attention of the freaks. Dean loses himself in the closeness of it, the physicality of the dodge and swing, a near miss here and there when one too many come at him at once - but Sam's always there above, never letting him get overwhelmed for longer than a second.
All told, they finish up in just under an hour, when the sun's a watery glint on the horizon. Dean radios for a disposal unit, and they begin stacking the bodies without comment. There are some civilians mixed with the vampires. which is the second reason they won't be warmly regarded from here on out; people don't take too kindly to you burning the bodies of their neighbors and friends alongside those of godless monsters. But violent deaths create spooks, and there ain't no death more violent than a freak attack.
Dean's in a weirdly good mood, despite that they're all exhausted but wired, a strange combination that leaves you useless for pretty much everything. Sam's had his first mission and it went well, no injuries, no clusterfuck disasters. He counts that a win.
"I just don't get it. What do they want?" Kite asks on the way back, face dripping in sweat and hands shaking as he reaches up to wipe at it. He's got a bloody gash down his face but doesn't seem to realize it yet.
"You're in the Central Valley," Sam says. Dean glances at him; he's running his fingers over his gun in quick, sure movements, post-mission check like he hasn't been away from guns for a couple years. "It's one of the main agricultural hubs in the country. You do the math."
Dean doesn't think he's wrong, exactly, but since he's not vegetable-obsessed like his brother, he also thinks there's more to it than that. Has his own theory, been thinking it over since he first heard about California.
They hit the oldest parts of the country first, and the first major losses in the war were all on the eastern seaboard - Florida to Virginia, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. The Mid-Atlantic states were still mostly hanging in there - highly concentrated urban areas don't go down easy - but, yeah, they lost a lot of the coast.
Dean sees it for what it is, broad view - humanity's being squeezed, pushed in from the coasts to the dark interior of the continent where their population and control can be riddled through like swiss cheese.
Well, Dean says bring it. The Midwest's always been his main hunting ground, belongs to him just as much as it does to the freaks.
-
When they get back to camp, stretching and groaning and blinking into the sun, Dean stows his gear and hits the showers. He's standing under a spout, head bent and wishing for something stronger than the pissy water pressure every USHC camp somehow get stuck with, when Sam comes to find him.
Dean glances to the side and then rolls his eyes. “Jesus, now? Really?”
Sam slaps his own shower on but then stands there ignoring it, too busy glaring. “You can't bench me like that again, Dean.”
Dean gathers water in his palms and sluices it back over his hair. He can practically feel Sam vibrating with irritation a few feet away. “Actually, you'll find I can do whatever the fuck I want. My unit, my decision. And you weren't benched, Christ. You helped us take 'em out, would've been a hell of lot messier without you on the gun.” He eyes Sam. “If you'd just pinch off that lit fuse under your ass, you'd see I was right.” He shakes his head. “What is up with you, man?”
Sam looks away. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean this Rambo attitude, this isn't like you.”
“I signed up because I wanted to fight - not play back-up like a kid.”
And just like that, Dean's done. He turns fully to Sam, sets his stance like it's a fight and cocks his head as if Sam's still the short one. “You lost your girlfriend less than a week ago. No way your head or body's in the game for a full mission. There's revenge and then there's suicide, okay?” Sam glances down, so he ducks to meet his eyes. “Listen. Sam. I'm not benching you. I'm just giving you some time to get into fighting shape.” He shrugs, “Call it a perk of being the boss's brother.”
Sam exhales hard through his nose in what might have been a laugh. “You're not the boss. You don't even have a commission.”
“Noncom and proud, bitch. You okay?” Dean looks him over, glancing for bruises or scrapes down his body. Sam's long, tan, and lean, and has apparently been hiding some surprisingly serious muscles under his college-boy hoodies.
Sam nods. Grits his teeth and grabs his soap, agitation in every movement of his arms. He rips off the bandage on his chest.
“Hey, fuck's sake - ” Dean reaches out and stills his hand.
Sam freezes and blinks at him from under wet bangs, startled into silence. Dean takes advantage of the surprise to brush over the new tattoo on Sam's chest with the pads of his fingers. “You should be careful washing the tat, man. It's an open wound, you gotta treat it like one.”
Sam shrugs him roughly off and turns his whole body away like he can't stand being near Dean. “I know that. I'm not an idiot.”
“No, just reckless.” When Sam doesn't say anything, Dean slaps his shower off and reaches for his towel. Almost leaves it at that, but he can't resist telling Sam to sleep after he's done in the shower and making it an order.
He gets a finger in response and grins all the way back to his bunk.
-
The next couple days are a little more quiet, routine patrols around the city perimeters and in the more vulnerable neighborhoods. Dean tries to adjust to the new way of things and the new members of his team.
He holds on tight to Sam, needles at him to eat and sleep, prods him into socializing with the others because hunters and grunts alike are nothing if not suspicious of college-educated punks who use words like corporeal and omophagous to describe the freaks they hunt and kill.
Hawthorne's five foot five inches of mean with scars and a crew cut. Old school hunter who grew up not in the life but adjacent to it, family ties going back a couple generations. She keeps a record of all the cities she's fought in on the back of her flak jacket, some sick litany of places saved and (mostly) lost: Toledo, Saginaw, Columbia, Jackson, Fayetteville, Valdosta.
Dean can't even look at the name Valdosta without feeling like he's just walked over a grave, bad vibes every time. Valdosta was a real shit storm, a 3-month siege that eventually hammered down to a hundred and fifty holed up in a school. The freaks killed nearly every man, woman, and child in the whole county, just total fucking slaughter. Hawthorne barely made it out, nearly spilled her guts between her fingers in the back seat of one of the few lucky escape vehicles, a yellow VW beetle. She's got a tattoo of the damn thing right above her elbow, contorts and kisses it for luck before every patrol.
Gene the Marine's a psych discharge from Afghanistan, but the USHC takes all kinds. They're warm and inclusive like that. He scowls a lot, doesn't like all the little ways USHC's different than the Corps, looser than the Corps, but he gets to shoot and kill things almost every day, so he puts up with it. Now, Dean's dad was a Marine, so he's got a healthy amount of respect, but Gene brushes up against one of his mental tripwires. That ability to sense when something's off that has saved his life more than once, so he doesn't ignore it. Stays professional when he has to give a command and keeps a weather eye out.
Sam, Hawthorne, and Gene the Marine puts them at seven, the full complement for a patrol unit. (Command's real heavy into numerology these days.) Dean has them all run a few drills until he satisfied they can function as a unit in the field.
-
Now Sam, he's a completely different person from when he was a kid and yet exactly the same. He'll still throw down for the same bickering fights they've had all their lives, wrinkles his nose at the food and asks for second helpings of whatever canned vegetable they're being served that meal. He sticks close to Dean even when he won't speak to him, moments when he is too caught up in depthless grief or grinding fury to get words past the muscle jump in his jaw.
And Dean, he feels haunted, like he's the only thing keeping Sam anchored to this world. Kill him off and he fears Sam would just flame out like a spook.