"time is its only measure"
Title: time is its only measure
Fandom: SPN / Die Hard 4
Rating: Adult
Pairing(s): Sam Winchester / Matt Farrell
Warnings: Adult themes/language
Notes: Written for apocabigbang
Word Count: 10,700
Summary: "...and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them."
They walk out of necessity, most of the arterial roads clogged with cars, trucks and bodies. They'd started out in the Impala but there were times when they'd lose hours and sometimes days trying to find a clear path and it exposed them too much to be out of the car, moving others out of their way. Plus, you never knew when a zombie would be camped out in the back of a sedan you just wanted to push off a bridge.
Link to Art by alteredloc
Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood when it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. It must have been shattering- stamped into one's memory. And yet I can't remember it. It never occurred to me at all. What does one make of that? We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the words for it, before we know that there are words, out we come, bloodied and squalling with the knowledge that for all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure. - Tom Stoppard - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Dear Dad,
Zombie Apocalypse. Wish you were here - Sam Winchester
Their deck of cards is missing the Jack of Diamonds. Every now and again when they play poker, Dean will forget and make the exact same disgruntled face when his chase for a straight or flush is thwarted with its absence. Sam suspects Dean does it on purpose these days, just to see him smile and say, every time, man.
The cards are so dog-eared and stained that Sam can tell what Dean's holding and Dean knows what Sam has. They no longer draw a second set of cards, just go with what they've been dealt first off so it's all about luck.
Sam sometimes thinks that's the way their lives have always been.
They never get to redraw their hand.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Sam's treated like the baby brother in a lot of ways still, but in some things he's an equal.
Like for instance, Sam says I want to check out this last known address for someone and Dean just nods, pointing them in the right direction. He doesn't ask why and he doesn't mention that whoever it is will be either long gone or dead. He knows that Sam's already thought of that and there must be a reason he still wants to go, even if it's just a completion, an answer to an unknown.
It's not like they have any prior pressing engagements.
He doesn't question it, just points them in the right direction and changes the subject. "We need to cut your hair, Mowgli. You're starting to look like a real jungle boy."
"You find me a decent hairdresser and I'll get it done."
"I could do it."
"You could if I were tied down and drugged because that's the only way my head, a pair of scissors and you are ever going to get close enough."
"Don't tempt me."
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Sam isn't surprised to find Matt's apartment abandoned, just disappointed.
Doesn't mean Matt's dead necessarily, but Sam hates that there are so many people they just don't know the fate of. With a pang he thinks of people like Bobby, Ellen, Jo and Missouri. They'd headed Bobby's way as soon as everything started up, thinking it would be a good defensible position and Bobby would have an arsenal to defend it but his place had been as empty as Matt's, no hint of the older man.
There'd been signs of a tussle but Sam and Dean had refused to believe that Bobby, having survived for so long in the kind of life that put you in the ground younger than older, would have been taken out at the hands of anything as cliché as goddamn zombies.
They both hate being in people's places, doing a quick in-out for supplies only if strictly necessary. The evidence of lives left behind is too morbid, even for them. Given the circumstances now though, Sam lingers, Dean leaving him to wander the living room alone. Sam touches action figures and collectibles, once so prized and now abandoned to dust and decay. Sam looks for a space in the collection, some kind of indication that Matt took something with him, actually traveled rather than just disappeared but even though he'd idly looked at this same set of shelves a dozen times, he just can't tell.
There dust is thick on figurines and surfaces alike.
"Hey, Sam?" Dean calls and Sam follows his voice to the kitchen, finding Dean standing in front of the refrigerator. It takes Sam a moment to realize what he's looking at and then it clicks. There are map coordinates spelled out on the door in novelty fridge magnets. "This guy a hunter?" Dean asks speculatively, hand rubbing at his chin.
Sam blinks at Dean for a second and then back at the message left behind. He shakes his head and reaches out, fingers touching a rolling pin magnet with Mom's kitchen written on it. It comes to him slow, that this message was meant for him and that it had two layers, Matt telling him this is where I am but also this is who I'm with.
Sam shakes his head again, but not in the negative this time and chuckles, the sound so unfamiliar now that Dean looks at him in concern. Sam ignores the look though, still smiling, liking the idea of Matt being towed out of the place by a man Sam’s only heard about, a legend made almost impossible by Matt's stories, so fantastic as to be mostly unbelievable. Sam looks at the coordinates with new eyes, knowing they might have been formed by Matt's hand but under instruction, showing a care bred from training.
Sam knows the guy is a cop but it's possible there's some military mixed in somewhere, either training or family.
"We going?" Dean asks, encompassing the decorated door and its message with a lazy sweep of his hand.
"Do you mind?" Sam asks, feeling hesitant all of a sudden. Dean trusts Sam without question but is cautious by nature, the trust without question only extends up to the point where he thinks maybe Sam is leading them off the safe road. Dean chews his lip for a second like he's considering.
"Guess it's okay," Dean finally allows. "I mean, there's nowhere else we gotta be at the moment."
On a whim, just before they leave, Sam pockets the rolling pin magnet.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Three distinct types of Zombie:
Drifter - Not dangerous. Too far gone to really be a threat. They'll bump into you if you get too close because their spatial awareness is shot but that's about as hazardous as they get.
Shambler - Traditional zombie, dangerous if you get in their way but slow, will generally ignore you though if you leave them be. Won't seek you out but will attack and stay on your ass if you're the aggressor. Can be mistaken for drifters. Found out the hard way when Dean proposed game of Tip The Zombie.
Chompers - Your modern horror movie type - that will RUN after you and these fuckers move fast. Have a low sort of cunning and sometimes work in groups like pack animals.
Even though it doesn't drop a zombie like in the movies, Dean still insists on going for the headshot first. He's a stickler for the classics.
Sam, trying to conserve ammo and their lives, tends to aim for the legs. It's a bigger target and even zombies have trouble running after you when their legs end at the knee.
A headshot does stop a zombie... eventually. The trouble is, they keep on truckin' for a few minutes after they lose ninety percent above the neck. They’re like chickens, bodies still engaged in the chase. They're strong motherfuckers too, so if the headless ones get their arms around you they aren't going to be able to bite but they can basically give it a shot at squishing you to death.
They've had this argument before what feels like a hundred times and yet...
"Ow, christ," Dean grumbles as Sam pokes and prods at his midsection, trying to gauge by touch alone whether Dean's ribs are bruised or broken. Dean had elbowed in front of Sam to take his favorite kind of zombie kill, a point-blank headshot and the zombie had kept coming, giving Dean the bad kind of cuddle. Sam's not being as gentle as he could be, mostly because he's hoping what Dean won't get through his thick skull with words, pain might reinforce, make Dean think twice.
"You gotta stop doing shit like this," Sam grumbles because apparently he can't help using his words anyway. Dean rolls his eyes and then winces and smacks at Sam's hands when his fingers press deep into the spectacular bruising that's ghosting his sternum.
"You worry too much."
"I just don't want to end up alone because you did something stupid," Sam says and the color drains from Dean's face, his bravado with it.
Dean stills under Sam's hands, his quiet acceptance of Sam’s ministrations an apology all on its own.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
They walk out of necessity, most of the arterial roads clogged with cars, trucks and sometimes bodies. They'd started out in the Impala but there were times when they'd lose hours and sometimes days trying to find a clear path and it exposed them too much to be out of the car, moving others out of their way. Plus, you never knew when a zombie would be camped out in the back of a sedan you just wanted to push off a bridge.
Sam's sort of surprised the Impala didn't have to be shooed off like an abandoned pet the way Dean was lamenting leaving her behind. Dean has the rear vision mirror in his backpack that he uses to check around corners when they're checking out buildings so in a way she's still helping them, still part of the family.
It's the reason Sam doesn't hold out much hope of finding Matt where their coordinates say because Dean figures, and he's gotten pretty good at figuring, that it would take them three days to walk to where they needed to go. A massing zombie horde keeps a person moving, no real chance of settling down or holing up. Everyone's seen the kind of movies where the zombies gather around a group of survivors who have been foolish enough to hang out in one place.
A shopping mall is still a tempting hideout whenever they pass one by.
"You think they'll start croaking, like permanently, when they run out of people to eat?" Dean asks, fingers hooked through the chain link fence surrounding a Target. When they forage they stick to smaller corner shops, gas stations and people's homes. The pickings are slimmer but there's less chance of being cornered or undead being inside already.
Still, a sprawling supermarket is something they always pause to stare at longingly.
"Probably when they get really decomposed and bits start dropping off," Sam muses. They do this often, debate the relative longevity of your average zombie, mostly to pass the time.
"How about we-?"
"No, Dean."
"You didn't even know what I was going to say," Dean complains, but only half-heartedly.
"You were going to say that maybe we could go into that place, that maybe we'd be fine."
"Yeah, alright. Dumb idea," Dean sighs.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
"Drifter or shambler?" Dean asks, eyeing the guy weaving on the road ahead of them. They haven't passed a living human in too long and its safer to assume zombie given they're both pretty sure the majority of the general population is no longer made up of breathers.
There's also the fact that the guy is walking on a broken foot, obvious by the way the appendage is cocked sideways and he's kind of dragging it behind himself while stumping gamely along on his ankle.
"Looks like a drifter," Sam says, but he puts a hand to the rifle slung over his shoulder anyway.
"Want to play-"
"No Dean."
"You're no fun, bitch," Dean says.
"Jerk," Sam answers automatically, but he's distracted. There's something hinky about the way the zombie's walking. Most drifters and shamblers don't pay attention to their surroundings but this one looks almost like his head is tilted just far enough back to keep them in his peripheral vision.
"What's wrong?" Dean asks, sensing Sam's unease.
"Probably just crazy but... is he slowing down? Almost like he wants us to catch up?" Sam asks slowly, lowering his voice which is definitely crazy because zombie but...
"Yeah, I thought that too. Just figured I was imagining things though," Dean agrees, slowing his own pace that Sam matches automatically.
The sound of running feet is what saves them. They turn as one as a group of perhaps six hits the freeway behind them at a sprint. Sam glances back at their drifter and sees it's turned too, gimping back towards them at a steady pace. "Fuck, chompers!" Sam calls, even though it's already obvious. Sam had thought the bastards sending out a scout ahead was a little beyond their current brain capacity but obviously not.
They dispatch three of them easily enough, Sam and Dean turning back to back to fire but Dean gets jerked forwards by the fourth and fifth and Sam loses sight of the sixth for a dangerous second when he turns to make sure Dean's okay. There's the sound of simultaneous gunshots, not from Dean, and Sam feels the warm spatter of what he's come to uncomfortably be able to identify just from feel alone as brain matter, on the back of his neck.
Sam spins because Dean has already got his last two down but can't see anything for a moment. Finally, two shadows appear on top of an overturned semi-trailer to his left. Sam raises his rifle instinctively but one of the shadows is holding a hand up, waving frantically and something is so familiar about the figure that Sam lowers it again.
Dean is not so trusting, nudging Sam out of his line of fire with the still-hot barrel of his gun but Sam grunts and gets a hand on his arm, pressing down. "Wait... I think..." Sam starts to say and then the madly waving figure slips and nearly takes a header off the truck, his fall only arrested by the quick reflexes of the other man he's standing with and Sam breathes out.
"Matt?"
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
"Is this last known address guy?" Dean asks out of the side of his mouth as Matt jogs towards them. Sam can't seem to pry the grin off his face because Matt is filthy, much too skinny, carrying a gun and still waving like a kid on a sugar-high.
"He did all our IDs when you were banned from that duty," Sam says, still not able to tear his eyes off Matt's rapidly approaching form even though he can feel Dean's gaze on his ear. Seeing someone familiar, someone alive makes his heart clench in a way he hasn't felt for too long.
"And you thought he'd be useful how?" Dean asks incredulously. "I mean c'mon, we don't have to worry about passing for feds at the moment. I don't think the zombies give a crap who we are."
Sam's saved from having to answer his brother as Matt finally reaches them. Matt seems to stop short and his arms drop, hands balling into fists like he'd maybe been planning to just launch himself at Sam and thought better of it. Sam twitches against the urge to just grab Matt and reel him in, hug the crap out of him because he's not sure how Dean will take it, or the guy who's following Matt at a much more sedate pace.
The guy is familiar. Sam's only seen him in grainy newspaper photos and he usually had a hand in front of his face so it’s hard to be sure at first but finally, John McClane has almost reached them. The way he holds himself, the way he moves reminds Sam so much of his father that he feels his chest clench for the second time in as many minutes.
"Now that looks like someone who'd be useful," Dean says under his breath and Sam elbows him.
When McClane reaches Matt, he cuffs him over the back of the head and Matt, who'd been jittering from foot to foot, immediately settles. Sam's eyes narrow and he looks between Matt and McClane, trying to gauge their relationship and feeling like an idiot for the hot thrill of jealousy that spirals through him that he just can't help. Matt had never really talked about McClane to Sam, only ever mentioning him in the abstract as the reason that Matt had started to work out and why he'd survived the Fire Sale that went down.
Now Sam looks at them, at the easy camaraderie that is evident even in those first few moments, he wonders if maybe he should have asked. He and Matt had only ever been ships passing in the night and Sam ponders how awkward it would be to end up at the end of the world with the guy he'd been sleeping with and his significant other.
No one's said anything for a verging-on awkward amount of minutes when Dean, ever the icebreaker, sticks out a hand to McClane and says, "Dean Winchester. Thanks for the save."
McClane, who'd been eyeing Sam with the same speculation Sam had possibly been eyeing him switches his attention to Dean. He seems to contemplate Dean's hand for a moment like he's forgotten what to do with it before he takes it and shakes briefly. "John McClane. Guess us remaining breathers have got to stick together, eh?" McClane responds and Dean nods once.
Sam rolls his eyes because honestly.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Zombies seem to be learning pack behavior, which is worrying because they appear to be capable of enough cunning to plan an ambush. So far no signs of starvation resulting in lack of function - however maybe there aren't three distinct types of zombie? Rather a lifecycle, like they all start out as chompers and eventually end up turning into shamblers.
We can only hope.
The problem with being in amidst a zombie apocalypse is that there's no real excuse for alone time. Sam watches Matt furtively and feels Matt watch him back the same way but there's zero chance for having a talk. Dean monitors Sam like a particularly pissed off cougar with something bigger and nastier circling its fresh kill, especially now that they have company. McClane seems to be doing the same with Matt. Sam sometimes feels like cracking their skulls together just to get them to cut the overprotective bullshit out, if he thought he would survive trying it.
Dean had been right though, McClane is definitely useful. He seems to have a natural flair for kicking ass that he demonstrates spectacularly when they almost get taken out by fifteen chompers that appear out of nowhere. Sam is feeling pretty proud of the three he's managed to drop until he sees McClane surrounded by seven bodies, holding what looks like a bloodied pocketknife in hand. When Sam just gapes at him McClane looks at the knife, at Sam and then shrugs, saying, "Ran out of ammo at number four," like it's no big deal.
They also, because of their larger number, hit a medium sized supermarket when their supplies run low again. McClane displays a knack for finding the spots that zombies would jump out at you, surprising them first, which Sam didn’t even think was possible.
Sam would swear McClane scares the crap out of the zombies.
It's hard to hold a grudge though when Dean's making such gleeful noises digging into piles of pretzels and filling up a shopping cart as a result. "Necessities, Dean," Sam reminds him when he catches Dean loading boxes of Count Chocula. Dean pulls a face and dumps the cereal, looking so forlorn about it that Sam has to laugh.
"So, hi," Sam hears behind him and turns to see Matt, doing his semi-frenetic Matt-hop from foot to foot. He's got the same brown leather shoulder bag he had when Sam first met him and he's squeezing the strap across his chest with both hands. Sam realizes that even though they've pretty much been a group for going on two weeks, he and Matt haven't been able to say more than a handful of words to each other outside of watch out and duck.
Sam turns fully and grins, feeling foolish and fifteen again. He's pretty much known since he first encountered Matt that he liked him a little too much for the carefully casual relationship they were forced to maintain because of Sam's circumstances, but he'd never thought there was anything he could really do about it. Sam had resigned himself to Dean being the only constant companion he would ever have in his life and the thought hadn't exactly been terrible, but it hadn't been ideal either.
"Come here often?" Matt asks and then rolls his eyes at himself and Sam laughs for the second time in as many minutes, more than he has in the same amount of months.
Sam seizes the opportunity presenting itself because Dean, showing rare tact, has moved just out of earshot, although not out of sightline. "So... you and McClane?" Sam prompts and watches Matt look puzzled for a moment before his face does a bizarre dance through a range of emotions including perplexed, horrified and amused.
"He's a great guy and he's saved my life more times than I can count but if the macho, straight male ever had a poster-boy," Matt says, waving a hand in the direction Sam supposes McClane is lurking in, possibly also not out of sightline. Matt then bites his lip for a moment, looking past Sam's shoulder at Dean who is making a big production of deciding between Twinkies and chocolate. "How about you and... um...?"
Sam stares at Matt for a moment, not really understanding what Matt's asking. He looks behind himself as well, just in time to catch Dean simultaneously scratch himself and snuffle something wet and solid-sounding in the back of his throat. "Me and Dean?"
"Yeah. I kinda was wondering if you guys were... brothers like you're an FBI agent named Richard Sambora?" Matt prompts, reddening as he asks, raising his hands and curling his fingers into air quotes when he says brothers. Sam would be surprised if he hadn't had people make this same mistaken assumption more times than he can count. He knows he and Dean are close, painfully, recklessly, sometimes harmfully close so he understands in a way.
It still doesn't stop him snorting. "Me and Dean are brothers in the he pantsed me at my junior prom way," Sam assures. "We have the same mom and dad. At least, I think we do but I've always suspected that he might be related to a wild pig of some kind."
"Oh, right. That's good," Matt says, sounding so relieved that it makes Sam feel glee down to his toes. Then Matt looks at him quickly and there's something else on his face, something wistful. "Wow, that's good," he repeats. "Man that must be something, that's like... your family survived right there."
"Yeah," Sam agrees readily but then sobers. They'd run across a few stragglers in their travels in the days immediately after everything went down, mostly people alone or in groups of strangers. Sam hadn't encountered many that were with people they'd known prior which was the kind of heartbreaking shame that there were just no words for. When they found out Sam and Dean were brothers they all got the same kind of rueful, hungry look Matt wears now.
Most had been on their way to search for loved ones and Sam knew, as they all probably did, that it would be mostly futile.
Sam realizes with a pang that he doesn't even know if Matt had a family before. Sam had mentioned Dean, of course he had because Matt was making identification for the both of them but they'd mostly talked around the important stuff, Matt sensing Sam's hesitation to divulge anything more personal and possibly holding himself back as a consequence. "So, what about you?" Sam asks, knowing it's probably a dumb question because Matt is either not going to know where his family is, not have one or know they're dead, all three not ideal topics people would be thrilled to talk about.
"It was just me and my dad," Matt answers, scrubbing a hand back through his hair. They'd been trying different variations of dry shampoos whenever they found some but it was never the same as a good wash with running water and a lather and Sam was starting to become sorely tempted to give in to Dean's harassment about just lopping his hair off. Considering how annoyed Matt looks whenever he pushes his own hair out of his face he's probably thinking the same. "He lives in Wyoming."
"I'm sure he's-"
Matt's lips thin out and his voice is flat when he says, "Don't do that."
Sam grunts in apology. The last thing you need when the world is ending is empty platitudes. "How about McClane?" Sam asks instead, finally spotting the guy emerging from what looks like an office with a backpack held loosely in his hand.
"He has a wife, well, an ex-wife, and two kids," Matt says. "I'm not sure about Holly and Jack but his daughter Lucy was on the coast staying with her grandmother while she took some time off school." Matt smiles for a moment, something secret and fond in his expression and Sam tries to not let his jealousy swing from father to daughter. "But man, if anyone could survive something like this, it would be Lucy. That's where we were heading... are heading I guess, still."
Sam watches McClane approach, digging something out of the backpack he's got and he's strongly reminded of his father again. Sam doubts very much his dad liked him most of the time but he never doubted he was loved. John Winchester would move heaven and earth for his children and he gets the impression that John McClane is the same.
When McClane reaches them, Dean edging closer when he does, McClane finally digs two sawn-off shotguns out of the bag and hands one over to Dean without hesitation. "I don't even want to know why the manager of this store thought he needed these," McClane says. "But I'm damn glad he did. Had a crapload of shells too so we should be good for a little while."
Dean nods and they move off together, leaving Sam and Matt relatively alone again. "You get the feeling that we've become a family of four and neither one of us is mom or dad?" Matt asks with his eyes narrowed at McClane and Dean who are loading the shotguns and looking very serious and determined.
Sam sighs heavily and thinks about Gordon Walker and how Dean had shifted Sam's role from partner to kid brother, albeit very briefly, when the older hunter had joined them. "If Dean tries to ground me I'm going to kick his ass," Sam grumbles.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Sam isn't really sure how everything with Matt started. Scratch that, of course he knows, insert tab A into slot B and repeat until completion, but he wasn't exactly looking for anything at the time. Sam found Matt when he grew tired of Dean getting him unusable fake IDs, wasting money just to amuse himself and get Sam's bitchface to surface.
Sam took over the ID part of their very illegal dealings because he also felt bad about Dean doing the lion's share of the dodgy stuff. He didn't really feel right bilking truckers out of their hard-earned cash and the credit card scams always didn't sit right with him. Jess had had a brush with identity theft that had taken months and a lot of pain to sort out and it was too uncomfortably close to that for Sam to even so much as hold one of the cards unless it was an emergency or they were separated.
Bobby had known a guy, who'd known a guy who'd known Matt. What was so cool and different about Matt's work was that there would be evidence online to back up the forged identification. Sam even once found a Facebook page for one of his more colorful identities. Matt was a perfectionist when it came to anything he did and he'd even offered to wipe Sam and Dean's records after everything went down at the bank. Sam had to decline, although he'd been sorely tempted but it was also after Matt became semi-famous and Matt's fingerprints had been a little too well known for something so high profile.
Matt was in many ways your average computer geek including the monitor tan he'd been sporting when Sam and he first met. He'd reminded Sam so strongly of some kids he'd played dungeons and dragons with in junior high, outcasts locked in the library during lunchtimes that had readily included the new kid with the wrong clothes, that he couldn't help but like him. They'd formed an easy friendship that had led to more without either of them really planning it. Sam was sure that in some other life it would have led to something permanent but...
But Sam always had to leave.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
No survivors for a while now. Torn between being relieved that the zombie food supply is dwindling and sad because... well, eventually you just start to miss people.
"So, you guys knew about this stuff before, right?" Matt asks out of the blue as Sam's feeding a small fire. They're out in the open, fields surrounding them and good visibility. Sam misses a bed and a roof, never one to really look forward to when they were forced to camp out, but the chances of being cornered are too great.
Sam opens his mouth to deny any prior knowledge of the supernatural but then closes it again with a snap. The instinct to lie is so ingrained that he makes to do it without any real reason. Sam feels a great weight lift off his chest that he can speak freely. One thing he'd really hated with Jess was the lying, the avoidance of discussing anything real for fear of scaring her, making her discover just what a freak she was with.
"Yeah we... yeah," Sam nods, breaking a larger length of wood with his knee before feeding it into the fire. He hunkers down next to Matt, watching Dean and McClane circle their makeshift campsite, sharing a probably by now stale cigarette between them on each pass. Matt and Sam had had first watch, Dean insisting he and McClane take the more dangerous morning hours. "It's kind of what me and Dean did for a living."
"Did you get danger pay?" Matt asks and Sam laughs, shaking his head. He shuffles the sleeping bag warmed by Dean's body heat sideways until he can lie across it, folding the top over his legs but not zipping it up. That is another zombie no-no. You don’t want to help the zombies by making yourself into a burrito. "So what was with the salt?"
"You noticed that?" Sam asks idly, shifting around until whatever is stabbing him in the kidneys is gone.
"The thick line of salt in my doorway and window ledges left after you stayed over? Yes Sam, I noticed," Matt says and Sam doesn't need to look at him to hear the eye roll in his voice. "I'm guessing it wasn't some kind of weird OCD ritual?"
"Nah," Sam says, propping himself up on one hand so he can see Matt in the firelight. He knows he should be getting some shut eye, will probably have Dean order him to sleep pretty soon if he doesn't but it's pleasant being able to chat casually about the life with someone other than hardened hunters. "A lot of the really bad stuff can't cross salt lines. Demons and the like."
"Huh," Matt says, making a contemplative face. "Why does that work exactly?"
"I don't really know. I think a big part of it might be belief," Sam muses.
"I... that's good, about the supernatural stuff being real I mean," Matt says and Sam sits up a little to get a better look at him.
"About us hunting?" Sam asks and Matt shakes his head.
"No, I mean... for a while, with McClane, I started worrying that all these people might just be sick or something, like this is a virus. Like they could possibly get better eventually if we didn't shoot them in the head," Matt explains, rubbing over the bridge of his nose.
"Nope. These are you garden variety, walking dead," Sam reassures, lying back down so he can see the stars above. One thing he never gets tired of, crossing the country, is looking up and feeling small.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Someone grabs him when Sam rounds a corner just outside a corner drug store. Relief dumps through Sam's body when he sees Matt but he doesn't even have time to yell at Matt for scaring the hell out of him when Matt presses his whole body against Sam's.
"Wow, this is not a good idea," Sam says even though it kills him to do it.
Matt grunts in consternation and steps back for a moment, biting his lip. His face clears after a few seconds and he steps forward again, yanking the small hand gun out of the back of his jeans that they found he could handle much better than a rifle or shotgun. He slaps it into Sam's left hand and Sam holds it automatically. Matt then gets hands around Sam's back and digs Sam's own gun out and Sam gets that in his right. Matt then pushes Sam's arms up and out and eyes him. "You're as good with the left as the right," Matt doesn't so much as ask as state.
"Yeah, I-" Sam starts to say but Matt just nods and presses forward again, tugging Sam's belt loose and his jeans open and then doing the same to himself. Sam gets with the program then, managing to tear his eyes away from Matt taking them both out so he can keep an eye on their surroundings, his head whipping side to side, constant as a metronome.
He loses the rhythm for a second when Matt presses them together and starts stroking, just lets his head fall back and his eyes close but then Matt bites him on the shoulder and Sam returns to his senses.
Sam doesn't think his dad's drills to be able to be alert and shoot no matter what the distraction were ever meant to be used this way but he's damn glad for them as he hears Matt groan low in his throat and he does the same.
It's fast and messy out of necessity and Sam comes so quickly that in any other circumstance it would be embarrassing but instead he just feels Matt go almost right after and they both slump, breathing hard, Sam still with his guns up.
Matt rolls sideways so they're both leaning against the bricks and he eyes Sam. "Wow, that's... I mean you held those guns up the entire time," he says with a little bit of awe and something darker in his voice.
"I thought you were the one holding our guns," Sam says with a waggle of his eyebrows and Matt snorts and thumps Sam on the shoulder with the heel of his hand, right where he bit down which makes Sam jolt and groan. Matt digs what would have to be carefully hoarded tissue out of his back pocket and cleans his belly off and zips up, then does the same for Sam with a wry grin. Sam passes a hand over his stomach and grumbles, "Man, I miss having showers."
"I miss being able to get completely undressed," Matt counters.
At that moment Dean appears at the corner, looking thunderous. "Where the... do I have to put a bell on you or something?" he grouches.
"We were just-" Matt starts to explain but Dean holds up a hand.
"Don't finish whatever you were going to say, for my sanity's sake," Dean snaps. He then waves the hand held up at them impatiently. "Well, c'mon. We're making tracks."
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
“Is there any lore on whether it’s just the bite that infects you?” Matt asks in this funny way that makes Sam’s heart turn over.
“Not really,” he answers slowly, watching as Matt pulls a thread free from the bottom of his shirt and winds it around his finger till the tip turns almost purple. Sam had heard about a girl that had taken her fingernail off doing the same thing back in high school. “Why?”
“Just…two hours ago your brother made that head shot from across the parking lot and the guy was right in front of me.” Matt is still studying his finger, at the thread digging into his flesh and cutting off the circulation. “It hit me in the face.”
“What did?” Sam prompts.
“The…blood. His blood. Some of it got in my mouth and I spat it out but you never know, right? I probably swallowed some of it.”
Sam wants to reassure Matt, tell him he’ll be fine, nothin’ to worry about but he doesn’t know that for sure. Without that knowledge the words stick in his throat. His doubt must show plainly on his features because when Matt finally raises his eyes he goes paler than he already was.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Matt says and grins gamely. He stands, brushes the seat of his jeans off and lopes over to where Dean and McClane stand with their heads together. McClane breaks off immediately and guides Matt away with one hand on the small of Matt’s back and one on the handgun at his hip.
Dean crosses the small park they’d finally paused in after their latest round of the Don’t Die game and hunkers next to Sam, knees popping so loud Sam winces in sympathy.
“You two have your first little spat?” Dean asks and Sam eyes him, knowing Dean’s not really trying to be a jerk, sometimes he just sounds like it.
“Can you get infected by getting blood in your mouth?” Sam asks plainly, staring at the stand of trees McClane and Matt have disappeared through. Like he can see them by sheer force of will.
“Oh,” Dean says, pops his lips and stands, his back cracking this time. He nudges Sam with his foot when Sam continues to stare at the trees and Sam finally tears his gaze away and looks up at him. “Look, it’s not like some regular virus,” Dean says, holding out a hand that Sam eventually takes and is hoisted to his feet. “Maybe the bite’s the… catalyst or whatever.”
“The bite thing is from the movies,” Sam snaps. “What do we know about it really? I mean, Jesus, maybe we should have asked, huh?”
“Who?”
“How about that group out of Kentucky?” Sam says, rubbing a hand over his head and pushing his hair back. He’s pretty close to letting Dean hack it all off at this point, butcher-job be damned. “We ran into them twice. The first time they had fifteen people and the second time there was just three of them left. We should’ve asked them. They would’ve known.”
Dean just looks at Sam, the kind of elder brother haughty brand of patience on his face that Sam has always hated. “Yeah, probably,” he allows and Sam wants to punch him, just haul off with a good right hook to Dean’s nose just to feel the crunch under his fingers. It’s completely irrational and Sam knows it won’t fix anything but it might make him feel better for a few precious seconds.
Less like he can’t control anything anymore.
They’d criss-crossed the countryside while they still had the car, no real goal in mind after they’d exhausted their known contact list and before Sam got up the nerve to propose that they try and find out what happened to Matt. Those first few weeks when everything had really gone to shit they’d crossed paths with a group lead by a man in his late forties called Buck. Sam remembered him clearly because Dean had had a hard time believing anyone outside a John Candy movie was named Buck for real.
Buck had an eclectic looking group gathered, most of the fifteen he’d had familiar enough neighbors to each other to have nodded hello on occasion. All from a cluster of three or four streets that had been strangely sheltered long enough for the people to realize what was going on and band together.
Buck had wanted them to join his group but Dean had said no, practical as ever. It would be hard to hide, feed and clothe a group so large and Dean had even said as much to Buck, told him they should break off into more manageable groups.
When they saw Buck again, he had two hollow-eyed teenagers left and a story about how three of his number had gotten infected during a fight but had been too terrified to tell anyone. A day later they went crazy inside the group’s makeshift camp and Buck, whose group had actually been up to twenty one at that point lost twelve in one hit, the people with the most useful weapons walking a perimeter.
“You try to save everyone and you don’t save anyone,” Buck had said before they’d parted ways again.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
He’s walking.
He can’t remember how long for but it’s been long enough that he’s walked right through the soles of his shoes, the remnants hanging ragged around his ankles. He’s leaving bloody footprints in his wake, a trail that’s easy to follow.
And he is being followed.
He can’t see them all the time but he catches glimpses. He knows they’re there, everyone he’s ever met. Bobby’s still got his trucker cap perched on his head and Missouri’s beads tinkle as she moves. Jo and Ellen walk with linked arms and even Jess is there, grave dirt still clinging to her white dress and half her face eaten away by time and the elements.
Matt stumps along at the back of this ragged group of pursuers and he’s holding something in his hands that he brings to his mouth every few steps. Sam can’t see what it is but he’s pretty sure he knows by the juicy smacking sounds Matt makes as he tears off pieces with his teeth.
Just as he thinks he can’t walk anymore, Dean is suddenly in front of him, grinning and with gore streaking his chin and chest. As Sam finally stops, Dean reaches for him and says, “I’ll always be here for you little brother.”
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Starting to feel a little bad that these could be the last written words of the human race. Maybe a million zombies sitting at a million typewriters will write the collected works of Shakespeare someday… but I kinda doubt it.
Sam jerks awake to Dean shaking his shoulder. “Man, you could always sleep anywhere,” Dean muses, indicating the fact that Sam is sitting upright, propped against a tree.
“Hey,” Sam says, wiping over his face with a dirty sleeve and casting about for a second. When he sees they’re still alone he frowns. “They not back yet?”
Depending on how long Sam had been asleep, McClane and Matt have been gone almost an entire day. Sam had made to go after them in the direction they’d disappeared a couple of times but Dean had stopped him each time with a gentle, “Let’s give it just a little longer, eh?”
Sam felt like a bigger coward every time he let Dean put him off. The truth was, he didn’t want to see it, see McClane holding a gun on Matt, watch Matt deteriorate until he was barely recognizable and finally pass, only to wake up again ravenous and changed.
Sam could understand Dean’s wish to keep him from seeing it to. He had never forgiven himself for letting Sam take care of Madison, for not doing it himself despite Madison’s wishes. Sam had wanted to let Dean do it, desperately.
The waiting is killing Sam though, tearing whatever he has left of himself free. He knows without a shadow of a doubt that if McClane has to shoot Matt they won’t ever see him again which is why, when there’s a rustle in the undergrowth an hour later, Sam feels a thrill of hope instead of dread. Matt emerges with McClane right behind him, both looking pale and weary.
Sam lets out the breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding and feels Dean squeeze the back of his neck.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Sam knows he’s lucky.
Not just for the fact that he’s alive when most of the population isn’t but sometimes he thinks about how all of this could’ve happened earlier, maybe when he was still at Stanford. He looks at his brother across the firelight and tries to imagine what it would’ve been like to have not known what had happened to him.
Dean’s cleaning guns, tongue poking out of the side of his mouth as he works when he notices Sam’s stare. “What?”
“Nothing. Just thinking,” Sam says.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Dean remarks and goes back to what he was doing.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Sam hates zombies.
That probably goes without saying but it’s especially true when there’s one that’s got him pinned, he’s holding the gnashing teeth off by a rifle to its throat, he’s dying for a piss and the fucker is kneeling on his kidney.
A boot appears from nowhere and the zombie topples sideways off him, side of its head caved in. Sam blinks up at Matt who’s grinning down at him. Matt holds out a hand to help him up and that’s when a shadow falls over Matt’s unprotected back. Sam kicks out automatically, managing to catch Matt behind the knee and sending him into the dirt as he gets his rifle around and shoots the shambler with half a head still intact.
Sam twists to check on Matt. He’s managed to pull himself into a seated position and is grinning wryly as he shakes grit out of his hair.
“I was about to say that I was getting better at this,” Matt admits sheepishly.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Matt has one of those digital watches that has the date, time, pulse monitor and chronometer. Considering he was never really sporty, Sam never got what he needed a pulse monitor and chronometer for but the date thing comes in handy when Matt leans into him and says, “Hey, it’s Christmas.”
“Really? Huh,” Sam says, leaning back.
“I just wish I had mistletoe,” Matt muses, looking up at the stars.
Sam grabs his chin and tilts Matt’s face towards him. They both need a shave, they both smell and Sam’s pretty sure neither of them have seen a toothbrush in too long but the kiss is the nicest one Sam ever remembers.
“Who needs mistletoe?” Sam asks and then tilts his head when Matt scrunches up his nose. “What?”
“Man, that was cheesy,” Matt laughs and after a moment Sam’s laughing too.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
“What do you think?” Dean asks. The four of them are standing outside a gas station that’s the only building they’ve seen for miles. The pickings for food had been slim the last few towns and a gas station is always good for long-life road fair. Sam thinks it’s pretty unfair that he always hated this kind of food and now the thought of jerky is making him almost cramp in anticipation.
“Looks okay,” McClane says.
“Famous last words,” Dean remarks and they all chuckle for a moment.
“Yeah, isn’t this the part in the zombie movie where the audience is saying don’t go in there?” Matt adds and waggles his eyebrows.
They move inside as a unit, having become familiar enough to work as a team over the past couple of weeks that Sam thinks any hunters would’ve been proud. Sam feels Dean at his back and smiles as they move to the storage area, leaving McClane and Matt out front to dig through the debris and see if they can come up with anything edible.
“Hey, you know that eventually even canned food is going to pass its used by date right?” Sam says as Dean nudges the door at the back open with his shot gun and then angels the mirror he’d taped to it inside so he can see around the darkened corner.
Zombies love darkened corners.
“If we survive the next couple of months,” Dean says out of the corner of his mouth and with a sideways glance at Sam. “And that’s a big if, then maybe we can worry about that.”
“We’d need to find farming land somewhere. Maybe round up chickens, pigs and cows that have gone feral.”
“Feral cows?” Dean snorts.
“Didn’t Pastor Jim have a farm upstate? Lots of land and no real population nearby? Dad told us about it, right?”
“You been thinking about this a lot?” Dean asks although it’s not really a question, more an observation.
“Might’ve thought about settling down somewhere… before this,” Sam admits, shrugging a little and following Dean through the doorway. “I know unless you’re saving them you’re not that keen on people and you’d probably prefer somewhere you had to use your hands.”
“This is all sounding a little too Susie Homemaker for me,” Dean says and then motions Sam forward. Sam tries the light switch by habit but isn’t surprised when it doesn’t work. He switches on his flashlight and shines it into the stock room and then grimaces when a load of boxes is revealed with obvious rat holes punched through most of them. As he scans the boxes a rat pokes its head out of one of the boxes and then disappears again, startled by the light.
A gunshot has them both backing out of the room fast and heading out to the front of the station again. Matt is standing in the middle of two rows of freestanding shelves, arms still buried elbow deep in a tumble of cans and staring towards the grime-covered front window with wide, horrified eyes. Sam’s look swings and he sees McClane with his gun up, a zombie sprawled on the floor in front of him that looks to be covered in a pile of blankets.
There’s blood running down McClane’s arm.
“Are you bit?” Dean asks immediately. McClane looks down at his arm and frowns at it like he’s never seen it before, like it’s betrayed him somehow. Matt pulls his arms free and cans go scattering across the floor with a tremendous noise that all of them ignore, too busy not being able to tear their eyes off the large and very obvious bite mark just above McClane’s elbow.
“Son of a bitch,” McClane breathes out then, kicks the pile of rags at his feet. “Son of a bitch!” he lets out more lustily.
“I… looked behind the counter. I just thought it was just a lump of rags,” Matt says, voice quiet and upset.
“Not your fault, kid,” McClane immediately reassures and then his eyes skip to Dean who tightens his grip on his shotgun.
“No… no, wait,” Matt suddenly scrambles to life, almost tripping over the cans still rolling around on the floor in front of him. “Wait, we don’t know that that’s it,” he says frantically.
Sam swallows hard, watching Matt’s face collapse into horror and grief, his hands reaching out and pushing at the air like he can stop the inevitable. “That might just be damn movies!”
“You gotta find Lucy, so start walking,” McClane says, his voice resigned, eyes still locked on his arm. “I’ll catch up.”
“We’re not leaving-”
“Matty,” McClane says gently. “I’ll catch up.”
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Matt walks in front of them, weaving listlessly on the road from side to side. Sam would offer for them to stop and rest but he’d tried that already and Matt had merely shaken his head and kept going.
“You remember that town?” Dean asks, breaking a silence that has lasted a little over six hours. Sam had been almost asleep walking and he jerks his head up, looks at his brother. “The one with Croatoan on the phone pole?”
“You think this is some kind of demon virus?” Sam asks incredulously.
“Nah, this is zombies alright. Night of the living dead and everything,” Dean dismisses with a wave of his hand. The hand lands on Sam’s shoulder and pats briefly before flitting away. “I was just remembering when we thought you had the virus.”
“Yeah, and you locked us in a room together like a suicidal dumbass,” Sam says, trying to make light of something that has plagued him ever since it happened. He remembers the way Dean sat, gun cradled in his lap and said, I’m tired Sammy. What he was really saying was clear.
If you don’t get out of this, neither do I.
“We’re not driving off a cliff together at the end of this movie, okay?” Sam snaps, suddenly and irrationally pissed off. He doesn’t want to hear it if Dean’s about to declare something as insane as perhaps following if anything fatal happens to him. It scared him badly the last time, made him reevaluate how he saw his brother, what Dean was capable of, what he would sacrifice.
Matt stumbles ahead of them and goes to his knees. Sam spares Dean one final look and then jogs up to him, getting hands under Matt’s arms and hauling him back upright. Matt tries to walk forward again but Sam steers him off the road and basically pushes him down on a bleached white tree trunk. He then plants hands on Matt’s shoulders and holds him down when Matt attempts to get up again. Matt’s eyes finally focus and he scowls.
“Gotta keep going,” he says.
“McClane didn’t want you to walk your feet off,” Sam says, uncomfortably aware of how close what Matt is doing is to his dreams. He’d have to lift Matt’s feet to check but he’s pretty sure the way Matt’s been dragging his shoes that most of the soles will be worn through. Matt has surprisingly big feet for his frame and they hadn’t been able to find boots that fit so he’d worn out three pairs of sneakers already.
“He’s the guy that survives,” Matt says, slumping forward, his forehead coming to rest just above Sam’s collarbone. “You know just how much shit McClane’s survived?”
Sam looks back at Dean who has automatically taken up sentry duty, his back a tense line against the dying sunlight. Sam sighs and drops to his knees in front of Matt, curling hands around Matt’s calves. “McClane was someone that put others in front of himself. It would’ve destroyed him if the situation was reversed.” Sam spares another glance to Dean. “Believe me when I say that you’re the one who survives.”
Matt brings up a hand and traces Sam’s jaw, his finger rasping against the grain of Sam’s stubble. “You look exhausted,” he says with a tired smile.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
They smell the ocean before they see it.
Sam takes in a large lungful and then lets it out slowly. He hadn't realized just how much he'd gotten used to the underlying tang of decay until he’s able to take in clean air. The breeze lifts his sweaty hair from his scalp, ruffles his collar and Sam feels like laughing.
He's paused and Dean and Matt have done the same, all poised on a hill overlooking the coastal town that is hopefully not the final resting place of McClane's daughter, Lucy. Like a spell broken, Matt starts forward at a jog, made impatient by proximity. Dean and Sam start after at a more sedate pace, Sam saying, "I wish Dad was here."
Dean makes a grunt of agreement, not having to ask Sam why. They both remember whenever they were close enough their father detouring them towards the sea. John Winchester was a sullen and closed-off man for the most part but one of Sam's more precious and closely held memories is of his father walking the shore with his boots off and his jeans rolled up. Just want to dip my toes in, he'd always say as Sam and Dean went screaming off down the beach together, thrilled with the brief respite.
It was always too cold for it, they never managed to make it to the beach when it was actually summer and their father probably wouldn't have brought them in amongst the seasonal crowds anyway. Sam would always edge up, just enough that the water was lapping right at his feet and then run away, dodging Dean who would always threatened to toss him in but never did. Their dad was oblivious, up to his ankles in water even when it was freezing.
Sam's gaze now passes over the houses bleached white by their nearness to the salt air, once cheery patio furniture abused by the elements to the point where it is all crumbling to rusted nothing. The sound of gulls makes his skin break out in gooseflesh, the peace of the place almost jarring.
"Don't get too far ahead," Dean calls to Matt like Matt's an errant child. Matt waves a hand backwards, speeding up if anything. They haven't reached the town limits yet and there's nothing on either side of the road except flat grass giving way to transported sand in some places so Sam isn't too worried.
Dean points at the sheltered dock further down and the handful of boats bobbling about on the water. Some have obviously come free and drifted out, debris littering the water in places where the errant boats have possibly collided hard enough to sink one or both.
"Didn't one of those zombie movies have people getting away on a boat?" Sam asks. He'd never really liked horror movies much, their life enough of an adrenalin rush for him. Dean had always been a freak for them though, trying to drag Sam to every slice 'em up blood fest there was.
"Yeah, but after the credits they landed on this island and it was still full of zombies," Dean says with a derisive snort and Sam glances at him, seeing the way his face is still speculative, still on the water.
Matt has stopped ahead, hand shading his eyes and looking towards a distant cliff with a single house set apart from the rest of the town. "I think that's it," Matt says when they're close enough to hear him. "It was on a postcard McClane showed me once."
Dean nods, hitching his backpack higher and pumping his shotgun. "Okay," he says.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Sam's worst nightmare was that they would reach the place they were looking for and it would be surrounded by clamoring undead, as unreachable as if it were on another continent. Scratch that, Sam's worst nightmare would be that they would find yet another empty home, another person to add to the mental list of missing souls but the zombie horde ran a close second.
It's obvious from the road as they approach that something has tried to get in. There are horrific smears marring the front and sides of the house like something overripe had been run up against the walls repeatedly. The windows have thick-looking and more importantly unbroken storm shutters covering them though, and the front door has a sturdy security grill.
There's no sign of anyone about and Sam's glad that one of the more popular zombie tropes has proven untrue, that zombies wouldn't cluster like carrion waiting a victim out but instead they would lose interest and wander off, given enough time.
You gotta love undead with short attention spans.
As they approach, the door behind the security grill opens and a dark haired figure appears, fingers looped loosely around the bars. There's a clang and a shudder and the security grill is pushed out, hinges protesting after probably a long period of disuse.
At first Sam thinks he's looking at a girl of maybe fourteen or fifteen and he feels a thrill of disappointment, knowing Lucy was closer to Matt's age. Closer up though, it's clear she’s older, a probably already slender frame rendered almost childlike without sustenance. The girl has a faded floral print dress on that hangs off one shoulder.
"Lucy," Matt breathes, confirming her identity. Lucy's arms raise, hands drifting into the air like startled birds for a moment before coming to rest again on her mouth, large eyes blinking over her fingers.
When Matt's close enough to touch, he pauses, wary. Lucy releases her death-grip on her mouth with one hand and it clunks against Matt's shoulder. From the way the fingers were curled into a loose fist, Sam figures it was probably meant to be a punch in the arm. "Took you long enough," she finally rasps out.
Sam unclips his canteen from his belt and holds it out, noting the way Lucy's lips are cracked and her skin looks like dry paper. She only has eyes for Matt though, her other hand finally drifting to his face and passing over it like she thinks maybe she's hallucinating his presence, needs to touch him to make him real. Matt takes the hand that's still resting at his shoulder and holds it against his chest for a moment and they both breathe like that.
After a few minutes, Dean and Sam both shifting awkwardly feeling like they're intruding on something private, a kind of determination floods Lucy's face and she straightens her spine with a visible effort. Her eyes flick from Sam to Dean and Sam can see McClane in her, sheer bloody-minded will that would keep her going when others would have given up. She notices the canteen Sam is still holding out and takes it, waggles it in the air for a second to hear the slosh of water inside before taking a drink.
“Where’s my dad?”
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
They tell her they aren’t really sure what happened to John McClane, and technically that’s true. Lucy nods like she knows exactly what they’re omitting while she nibbles on jerky Dean had dug out of his pack. She describes how it had been her and her grandmother for a little while but a try for the town proper had ended in disaster and Lucy had used the rest of her ammunition getting her grandmother buried well enough that she wouldn’t be disturbed.
Sam pauses for a second as he makes a run for the water pump out behind the house and shields his eyes against the glare of the morning to see the little mound of rocks and the makeshift cross Lucy risked her life for. He gets moving again when he hears Dean make an impatient noise from the house’s back porch.
Sam fills the four canteens he has slung around his neck in a jumble and then a bucket Lucy provided. He takes the trip back to the house more slowly, seeing Dean edgily hop from foot to foot the longer Sam is exposed with no weapon to hand. Dean backs up and props the door open when Sam reaches him, another security grill with a wooden door behind it, and manages to land a kick to Sam’s butt when he darts inside.
Sam sluices water from the bucket over his arms and face and immediately feels about three hundred percent more human just with that tiny patch of clean skin. Lucy is sitting at the kitchen table with Matt, her hands folded together. Matt looks around at Sam and smiles briefly and Sam returns it.
“How hard could sailing be anyway?” Dean asks, nudging Sam aside so he can get to the bucket of water.
“I thought they all died in that movie. Remember, zombies on the island?”
Dean shrugs, making a blissed-out face when he rubs water over the back of his neck. “I hate that after the credits thing,” he says.
“Movie would’ve been better if it just faded to black on the people getting away in the boat.”
Fandom: SPN / Die Hard 4
Rating: Adult
Pairing(s): Sam Winchester / Matt Farrell
Warnings: Adult themes/language
Notes: Written for apocabigbang
Word Count: 10,700
Summary: "...and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them."
They walk out of necessity, most of the arterial roads clogged with cars, trucks and bodies. They'd started out in the Impala but there were times when they'd lose hours and sometimes days trying to find a clear path and it exposed them too much to be out of the car, moving others out of their way. Plus, you never knew when a zombie would be camped out in the back of a sedan you just wanted to push off a bridge.
Link to Art by alteredloc
Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood when it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. It must have been shattering- stamped into one's memory. And yet I can't remember it. It never occurred to me at all. What does one make of that? We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the words for it, before we know that there are words, out we come, bloodied and squalling with the knowledge that for all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure. - Tom Stoppard - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Dear Dad,
Zombie Apocalypse. Wish you were here - Sam Winchester
Their deck of cards is missing the Jack of Diamonds. Every now and again when they play poker, Dean will forget and make the exact same disgruntled face when his chase for a straight or flush is thwarted with its absence. Sam suspects Dean does it on purpose these days, just to see him smile and say, every time, man.
The cards are so dog-eared and stained that Sam can tell what Dean's holding and Dean knows what Sam has. They no longer draw a second set of cards, just go with what they've been dealt first off so it's all about luck.
Sam sometimes thinks that's the way their lives have always been.
They never get to redraw their hand.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Sam's treated like the baby brother in a lot of ways still, but in some things he's an equal.
Like for instance, Sam says I want to check out this last known address for someone and Dean just nods, pointing them in the right direction. He doesn't ask why and he doesn't mention that whoever it is will be either long gone or dead. He knows that Sam's already thought of that and there must be a reason he still wants to go, even if it's just a completion, an answer to an unknown.
It's not like they have any prior pressing engagements.
He doesn't question it, just points them in the right direction and changes the subject. "We need to cut your hair, Mowgli. You're starting to look like a real jungle boy."
"You find me a decent hairdresser and I'll get it done."
"I could do it."
"You could if I were tied down and drugged because that's the only way my head, a pair of scissors and you are ever going to get close enough."
"Don't tempt me."
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Sam isn't surprised to find Matt's apartment abandoned, just disappointed.
Doesn't mean Matt's dead necessarily, but Sam hates that there are so many people they just don't know the fate of. With a pang he thinks of people like Bobby, Ellen, Jo and Missouri. They'd headed Bobby's way as soon as everything started up, thinking it would be a good defensible position and Bobby would have an arsenal to defend it but his place had been as empty as Matt's, no hint of the older man.
There'd been signs of a tussle but Sam and Dean had refused to believe that Bobby, having survived for so long in the kind of life that put you in the ground younger than older, would have been taken out at the hands of anything as cliché as goddamn zombies.
They both hate being in people's places, doing a quick in-out for supplies only if strictly necessary. The evidence of lives left behind is too morbid, even for them. Given the circumstances now though, Sam lingers, Dean leaving him to wander the living room alone. Sam touches action figures and collectibles, once so prized and now abandoned to dust and decay. Sam looks for a space in the collection, some kind of indication that Matt took something with him, actually traveled rather than just disappeared but even though he'd idly looked at this same set of shelves a dozen times, he just can't tell.
There dust is thick on figurines and surfaces alike.
"Hey, Sam?" Dean calls and Sam follows his voice to the kitchen, finding Dean standing in front of the refrigerator. It takes Sam a moment to realize what he's looking at and then it clicks. There are map coordinates spelled out on the door in novelty fridge magnets. "This guy a hunter?" Dean asks speculatively, hand rubbing at his chin.
Sam blinks at Dean for a second and then back at the message left behind. He shakes his head and reaches out, fingers touching a rolling pin magnet with Mom's kitchen written on it. It comes to him slow, that this message was meant for him and that it had two layers, Matt telling him this is where I am but also this is who I'm with.
Sam shakes his head again, but not in the negative this time and chuckles, the sound so unfamiliar now that Dean looks at him in concern. Sam ignores the look though, still smiling, liking the idea of Matt being towed out of the place by a man Sam’s only heard about, a legend made almost impossible by Matt's stories, so fantastic as to be mostly unbelievable. Sam looks at the coordinates with new eyes, knowing they might have been formed by Matt's hand but under instruction, showing a care bred from training.
Sam knows the guy is a cop but it's possible there's some military mixed in somewhere, either training or family.
"We going?" Dean asks, encompassing the decorated door and its message with a lazy sweep of his hand.
"Do you mind?" Sam asks, feeling hesitant all of a sudden. Dean trusts Sam without question but is cautious by nature, the trust without question only extends up to the point where he thinks maybe Sam is leading them off the safe road. Dean chews his lip for a second like he's considering.
"Guess it's okay," Dean finally allows. "I mean, there's nowhere else we gotta be at the moment."
On a whim, just before they leave, Sam pockets the rolling pin magnet.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Three distinct types of Zombie:
Drifter - Not dangerous. Too far gone to really be a threat. They'll bump into you if you get too close because their spatial awareness is shot but that's about as hazardous as they get.
Shambler - Traditional zombie, dangerous if you get in their way but slow, will generally ignore you though if you leave them be. Won't seek you out but will attack and stay on your ass if you're the aggressor. Can be mistaken for drifters. Found out the hard way when Dean proposed game of Tip The Zombie.
Chompers - Your modern horror movie type - that will RUN after you and these fuckers move fast. Have a low sort of cunning and sometimes work in groups like pack animals.
Even though it doesn't drop a zombie like in the movies, Dean still insists on going for the headshot first. He's a stickler for the classics.
Sam, trying to conserve ammo and their lives, tends to aim for the legs. It's a bigger target and even zombies have trouble running after you when their legs end at the knee.
A headshot does stop a zombie... eventually. The trouble is, they keep on truckin' for a few minutes after they lose ninety percent above the neck. They’re like chickens, bodies still engaged in the chase. They're strong motherfuckers too, so if the headless ones get their arms around you they aren't going to be able to bite but they can basically give it a shot at squishing you to death.
They've had this argument before what feels like a hundred times and yet...
"Ow, christ," Dean grumbles as Sam pokes and prods at his midsection, trying to gauge by touch alone whether Dean's ribs are bruised or broken. Dean had elbowed in front of Sam to take his favorite kind of zombie kill, a point-blank headshot and the zombie had kept coming, giving Dean the bad kind of cuddle. Sam's not being as gentle as he could be, mostly because he's hoping what Dean won't get through his thick skull with words, pain might reinforce, make Dean think twice.
"You gotta stop doing shit like this," Sam grumbles because apparently he can't help using his words anyway. Dean rolls his eyes and then winces and smacks at Sam's hands when his fingers press deep into the spectacular bruising that's ghosting his sternum.
"You worry too much."
"I just don't want to end up alone because you did something stupid," Sam says and the color drains from Dean's face, his bravado with it.
Dean stills under Sam's hands, his quiet acceptance of Sam’s ministrations an apology all on its own.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
They walk out of necessity, most of the arterial roads clogged with cars, trucks and sometimes bodies. They'd started out in the Impala but there were times when they'd lose hours and sometimes days trying to find a clear path and it exposed them too much to be out of the car, moving others out of their way. Plus, you never knew when a zombie would be camped out in the back of a sedan you just wanted to push off a bridge.
Sam's sort of surprised the Impala didn't have to be shooed off like an abandoned pet the way Dean was lamenting leaving her behind. Dean has the rear vision mirror in his backpack that he uses to check around corners when they're checking out buildings so in a way she's still helping them, still part of the family.
It's the reason Sam doesn't hold out much hope of finding Matt where their coordinates say because Dean figures, and he's gotten pretty good at figuring, that it would take them three days to walk to where they needed to go. A massing zombie horde keeps a person moving, no real chance of settling down or holing up. Everyone's seen the kind of movies where the zombies gather around a group of survivors who have been foolish enough to hang out in one place.
A shopping mall is still a tempting hideout whenever they pass one by.
"You think they'll start croaking, like permanently, when they run out of people to eat?" Dean asks, fingers hooked through the chain link fence surrounding a Target. When they forage they stick to smaller corner shops, gas stations and people's homes. The pickings are slimmer but there's less chance of being cornered or undead being inside already.
Still, a sprawling supermarket is something they always pause to stare at longingly.
"Probably when they get really decomposed and bits start dropping off," Sam muses. They do this often, debate the relative longevity of your average zombie, mostly to pass the time.
"How about we-?"
"No, Dean."
"You didn't even know what I was going to say," Dean complains, but only half-heartedly.
"You were going to say that maybe we could go into that place, that maybe we'd be fine."
"Yeah, alright. Dumb idea," Dean sighs.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
"Drifter or shambler?" Dean asks, eyeing the guy weaving on the road ahead of them. They haven't passed a living human in too long and its safer to assume zombie given they're both pretty sure the majority of the general population is no longer made up of breathers.
There's also the fact that the guy is walking on a broken foot, obvious by the way the appendage is cocked sideways and he's kind of dragging it behind himself while stumping gamely along on his ankle.
"Looks like a drifter," Sam says, but he puts a hand to the rifle slung over his shoulder anyway.
"Want to play-"
"No Dean."
"You're no fun, bitch," Dean says.
"Jerk," Sam answers automatically, but he's distracted. There's something hinky about the way the zombie's walking. Most drifters and shamblers don't pay attention to their surroundings but this one looks almost like his head is tilted just far enough back to keep them in his peripheral vision.
"What's wrong?" Dean asks, sensing Sam's unease.
"Probably just crazy but... is he slowing down? Almost like he wants us to catch up?" Sam asks slowly, lowering his voice which is definitely crazy because zombie but...
"Yeah, I thought that too. Just figured I was imagining things though," Dean agrees, slowing his own pace that Sam matches automatically.
The sound of running feet is what saves them. They turn as one as a group of perhaps six hits the freeway behind them at a sprint. Sam glances back at their drifter and sees it's turned too, gimping back towards them at a steady pace. "Fuck, chompers!" Sam calls, even though it's already obvious. Sam had thought the bastards sending out a scout ahead was a little beyond their current brain capacity but obviously not.
They dispatch three of them easily enough, Sam and Dean turning back to back to fire but Dean gets jerked forwards by the fourth and fifth and Sam loses sight of the sixth for a dangerous second when he turns to make sure Dean's okay. There's the sound of simultaneous gunshots, not from Dean, and Sam feels the warm spatter of what he's come to uncomfortably be able to identify just from feel alone as brain matter, on the back of his neck.
Sam spins because Dean has already got his last two down but can't see anything for a moment. Finally, two shadows appear on top of an overturned semi-trailer to his left. Sam raises his rifle instinctively but one of the shadows is holding a hand up, waving frantically and something is so familiar about the figure that Sam lowers it again.
Dean is not so trusting, nudging Sam out of his line of fire with the still-hot barrel of his gun but Sam grunts and gets a hand on his arm, pressing down. "Wait... I think..." Sam starts to say and then the madly waving figure slips and nearly takes a header off the truck, his fall only arrested by the quick reflexes of the other man he's standing with and Sam breathes out.
"Matt?"
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
"Is this last known address guy?" Dean asks out of the side of his mouth as Matt jogs towards them. Sam can't seem to pry the grin off his face because Matt is filthy, much too skinny, carrying a gun and still waving like a kid on a sugar-high.
"He did all our IDs when you were banned from that duty," Sam says, still not able to tear his eyes off Matt's rapidly approaching form even though he can feel Dean's gaze on his ear. Seeing someone familiar, someone alive makes his heart clench in a way he hasn't felt for too long.
"And you thought he'd be useful how?" Dean asks incredulously. "I mean c'mon, we don't have to worry about passing for feds at the moment. I don't think the zombies give a crap who we are."
Sam's saved from having to answer his brother as Matt finally reaches them. Matt seems to stop short and his arms drop, hands balling into fists like he'd maybe been planning to just launch himself at Sam and thought better of it. Sam twitches against the urge to just grab Matt and reel him in, hug the crap out of him because he's not sure how Dean will take it, or the guy who's following Matt at a much more sedate pace.
The guy is familiar. Sam's only seen him in grainy newspaper photos and he usually had a hand in front of his face so it’s hard to be sure at first but finally, John McClane has almost reached them. The way he holds himself, the way he moves reminds Sam so much of his father that he feels his chest clench for the second time in as many minutes.
"Now that looks like someone who'd be useful," Dean says under his breath and Sam elbows him.
When McClane reaches Matt, he cuffs him over the back of the head and Matt, who'd been jittering from foot to foot, immediately settles. Sam's eyes narrow and he looks between Matt and McClane, trying to gauge their relationship and feeling like an idiot for the hot thrill of jealousy that spirals through him that he just can't help. Matt had never really talked about McClane to Sam, only ever mentioning him in the abstract as the reason that Matt had started to work out and why he'd survived the Fire Sale that went down.
Now Sam looks at them, at the easy camaraderie that is evident even in those first few moments, he wonders if maybe he should have asked. He and Matt had only ever been ships passing in the night and Sam ponders how awkward it would be to end up at the end of the world with the guy he'd been sleeping with and his significant other.
No one's said anything for a verging-on awkward amount of minutes when Dean, ever the icebreaker, sticks out a hand to McClane and says, "Dean Winchester. Thanks for the save."
McClane, who'd been eyeing Sam with the same speculation Sam had possibly been eyeing him switches his attention to Dean. He seems to contemplate Dean's hand for a moment like he's forgotten what to do with it before he takes it and shakes briefly. "John McClane. Guess us remaining breathers have got to stick together, eh?" McClane responds and Dean nods once.
Sam rolls his eyes because honestly.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Zombies seem to be learning pack behavior, which is worrying because they appear to be capable of enough cunning to plan an ambush. So far no signs of starvation resulting in lack of function - however maybe there aren't three distinct types of zombie? Rather a lifecycle, like they all start out as chompers and eventually end up turning into shamblers.
We can only hope.
The problem with being in amidst a zombie apocalypse is that there's no real excuse for alone time. Sam watches Matt furtively and feels Matt watch him back the same way but there's zero chance for having a talk. Dean monitors Sam like a particularly pissed off cougar with something bigger and nastier circling its fresh kill, especially now that they have company. McClane seems to be doing the same with Matt. Sam sometimes feels like cracking their skulls together just to get them to cut the overprotective bullshit out, if he thought he would survive trying it.
Dean had been right though, McClane is definitely useful. He seems to have a natural flair for kicking ass that he demonstrates spectacularly when they almost get taken out by fifteen chompers that appear out of nowhere. Sam is feeling pretty proud of the three he's managed to drop until he sees McClane surrounded by seven bodies, holding what looks like a bloodied pocketknife in hand. When Sam just gapes at him McClane looks at the knife, at Sam and then shrugs, saying, "Ran out of ammo at number four," like it's no big deal.
They also, because of their larger number, hit a medium sized supermarket when their supplies run low again. McClane displays a knack for finding the spots that zombies would jump out at you, surprising them first, which Sam didn’t even think was possible.
Sam would swear McClane scares the crap out of the zombies.
It's hard to hold a grudge though when Dean's making such gleeful noises digging into piles of pretzels and filling up a shopping cart as a result. "Necessities, Dean," Sam reminds him when he catches Dean loading boxes of Count Chocula. Dean pulls a face and dumps the cereal, looking so forlorn about it that Sam has to laugh.
"So, hi," Sam hears behind him and turns to see Matt, doing his semi-frenetic Matt-hop from foot to foot. He's got the same brown leather shoulder bag he had when Sam first met him and he's squeezing the strap across his chest with both hands. Sam realizes that even though they've pretty much been a group for going on two weeks, he and Matt haven't been able to say more than a handful of words to each other outside of watch out and duck.
Sam turns fully and grins, feeling foolish and fifteen again. He's pretty much known since he first encountered Matt that he liked him a little too much for the carefully casual relationship they were forced to maintain because of Sam's circumstances, but he'd never thought there was anything he could really do about it. Sam had resigned himself to Dean being the only constant companion he would ever have in his life and the thought hadn't exactly been terrible, but it hadn't been ideal either.
"Come here often?" Matt asks and then rolls his eyes at himself and Sam laughs for the second time in as many minutes, more than he has in the same amount of months.
Sam seizes the opportunity presenting itself because Dean, showing rare tact, has moved just out of earshot, although not out of sightline. "So... you and McClane?" Sam prompts and watches Matt look puzzled for a moment before his face does a bizarre dance through a range of emotions including perplexed, horrified and amused.
"He's a great guy and he's saved my life more times than I can count but if the macho, straight male ever had a poster-boy," Matt says, waving a hand in the direction Sam supposes McClane is lurking in, possibly also not out of sightline. Matt then bites his lip for a moment, looking past Sam's shoulder at Dean who is making a big production of deciding between Twinkies and chocolate. "How about you and... um...?"
Sam stares at Matt for a moment, not really understanding what Matt's asking. He looks behind himself as well, just in time to catch Dean simultaneously scratch himself and snuffle something wet and solid-sounding in the back of his throat. "Me and Dean?"
"Yeah. I kinda was wondering if you guys were... brothers like you're an FBI agent named Richard Sambora?" Matt prompts, reddening as he asks, raising his hands and curling his fingers into air quotes when he says brothers. Sam would be surprised if he hadn't had people make this same mistaken assumption more times than he can count. He knows he and Dean are close, painfully, recklessly, sometimes harmfully close so he understands in a way.
It still doesn't stop him snorting. "Me and Dean are brothers in the he pantsed me at my junior prom way," Sam assures. "We have the same mom and dad. At least, I think we do but I've always suspected that he might be related to a wild pig of some kind."
"Oh, right. That's good," Matt says, sounding so relieved that it makes Sam feel glee down to his toes. Then Matt looks at him quickly and there's something else on his face, something wistful. "Wow, that's good," he repeats. "Man that must be something, that's like... your family survived right there."
"Yeah," Sam agrees readily but then sobers. They'd run across a few stragglers in their travels in the days immediately after everything went down, mostly people alone or in groups of strangers. Sam hadn't encountered many that were with people they'd known prior which was the kind of heartbreaking shame that there were just no words for. When they found out Sam and Dean were brothers they all got the same kind of rueful, hungry look Matt wears now.
Most had been on their way to search for loved ones and Sam knew, as they all probably did, that it would be mostly futile.
Sam realizes with a pang that he doesn't even know if Matt had a family before. Sam had mentioned Dean, of course he had because Matt was making identification for the both of them but they'd mostly talked around the important stuff, Matt sensing Sam's hesitation to divulge anything more personal and possibly holding himself back as a consequence. "So, what about you?" Sam asks, knowing it's probably a dumb question because Matt is either not going to know where his family is, not have one or know they're dead, all three not ideal topics people would be thrilled to talk about.
"It was just me and my dad," Matt answers, scrubbing a hand back through his hair. They'd been trying different variations of dry shampoos whenever they found some but it was never the same as a good wash with running water and a lather and Sam was starting to become sorely tempted to give in to Dean's harassment about just lopping his hair off. Considering how annoyed Matt looks whenever he pushes his own hair out of his face he's probably thinking the same. "He lives in Wyoming."
"I'm sure he's-"
Matt's lips thin out and his voice is flat when he says, "Don't do that."
Sam grunts in apology. The last thing you need when the world is ending is empty platitudes. "How about McClane?" Sam asks instead, finally spotting the guy emerging from what looks like an office with a backpack held loosely in his hand.
"He has a wife, well, an ex-wife, and two kids," Matt says. "I'm not sure about Holly and Jack but his daughter Lucy was on the coast staying with her grandmother while she took some time off school." Matt smiles for a moment, something secret and fond in his expression and Sam tries to not let his jealousy swing from father to daughter. "But man, if anyone could survive something like this, it would be Lucy. That's where we were heading... are heading I guess, still."
Sam watches McClane approach, digging something out of the backpack he's got and he's strongly reminded of his father again. Sam doubts very much his dad liked him most of the time but he never doubted he was loved. John Winchester would move heaven and earth for his children and he gets the impression that John McClane is the same.
When McClane reaches them, Dean edging closer when he does, McClane finally digs two sawn-off shotguns out of the bag and hands one over to Dean without hesitation. "I don't even want to know why the manager of this store thought he needed these," McClane says. "But I'm damn glad he did. Had a crapload of shells too so we should be good for a little while."
Dean nods and they move off together, leaving Sam and Matt relatively alone again. "You get the feeling that we've become a family of four and neither one of us is mom or dad?" Matt asks with his eyes narrowed at McClane and Dean who are loading the shotguns and looking very serious and determined.
Sam sighs heavily and thinks about Gordon Walker and how Dean had shifted Sam's role from partner to kid brother, albeit very briefly, when the older hunter had joined them. "If Dean tries to ground me I'm going to kick his ass," Sam grumbles.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Sam isn't really sure how everything with Matt started. Scratch that, of course he knows, insert tab A into slot B and repeat until completion, but he wasn't exactly looking for anything at the time. Sam found Matt when he grew tired of Dean getting him unusable fake IDs, wasting money just to amuse himself and get Sam's bitchface to surface.
Sam took over the ID part of their very illegal dealings because he also felt bad about Dean doing the lion's share of the dodgy stuff. He didn't really feel right bilking truckers out of their hard-earned cash and the credit card scams always didn't sit right with him. Jess had had a brush with identity theft that had taken months and a lot of pain to sort out and it was too uncomfortably close to that for Sam to even so much as hold one of the cards unless it was an emergency or they were separated.
Bobby had known a guy, who'd known a guy who'd known Matt. What was so cool and different about Matt's work was that there would be evidence online to back up the forged identification. Sam even once found a Facebook page for one of his more colorful identities. Matt was a perfectionist when it came to anything he did and he'd even offered to wipe Sam and Dean's records after everything went down at the bank. Sam had to decline, although he'd been sorely tempted but it was also after Matt became semi-famous and Matt's fingerprints had been a little too well known for something so high profile.
Matt was in many ways your average computer geek including the monitor tan he'd been sporting when Sam and he first met. He'd reminded Sam so strongly of some kids he'd played dungeons and dragons with in junior high, outcasts locked in the library during lunchtimes that had readily included the new kid with the wrong clothes, that he couldn't help but like him. They'd formed an easy friendship that had led to more without either of them really planning it. Sam was sure that in some other life it would have led to something permanent but...
But Sam always had to leave.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
No survivors for a while now. Torn between being relieved that the zombie food supply is dwindling and sad because... well, eventually you just start to miss people.
"So, you guys knew about this stuff before, right?" Matt asks out of the blue as Sam's feeding a small fire. They're out in the open, fields surrounding them and good visibility. Sam misses a bed and a roof, never one to really look forward to when they were forced to camp out, but the chances of being cornered are too great.
Sam opens his mouth to deny any prior knowledge of the supernatural but then closes it again with a snap. The instinct to lie is so ingrained that he makes to do it without any real reason. Sam feels a great weight lift off his chest that he can speak freely. One thing he'd really hated with Jess was the lying, the avoidance of discussing anything real for fear of scaring her, making her discover just what a freak she was with.
"Yeah we... yeah," Sam nods, breaking a larger length of wood with his knee before feeding it into the fire. He hunkers down next to Matt, watching Dean and McClane circle their makeshift campsite, sharing a probably by now stale cigarette between them on each pass. Matt and Sam had had first watch, Dean insisting he and McClane take the more dangerous morning hours. "It's kind of what me and Dean did for a living."
"Did you get danger pay?" Matt asks and Sam laughs, shaking his head. He shuffles the sleeping bag warmed by Dean's body heat sideways until he can lie across it, folding the top over his legs but not zipping it up. That is another zombie no-no. You don’t want to help the zombies by making yourself into a burrito. "So what was with the salt?"
"You noticed that?" Sam asks idly, shifting around until whatever is stabbing him in the kidneys is gone.
"The thick line of salt in my doorway and window ledges left after you stayed over? Yes Sam, I noticed," Matt says and Sam doesn't need to look at him to hear the eye roll in his voice. "I'm guessing it wasn't some kind of weird OCD ritual?"
"Nah," Sam says, propping himself up on one hand so he can see Matt in the firelight. He knows he should be getting some shut eye, will probably have Dean order him to sleep pretty soon if he doesn't but it's pleasant being able to chat casually about the life with someone other than hardened hunters. "A lot of the really bad stuff can't cross salt lines. Demons and the like."
"Huh," Matt says, making a contemplative face. "Why does that work exactly?"
"I don't really know. I think a big part of it might be belief," Sam muses.
"I... that's good, about the supernatural stuff being real I mean," Matt says and Sam sits up a little to get a better look at him.
"About us hunting?" Sam asks and Matt shakes his head.
"No, I mean... for a while, with McClane, I started worrying that all these people might just be sick or something, like this is a virus. Like they could possibly get better eventually if we didn't shoot them in the head," Matt explains, rubbing over the bridge of his nose.
"Nope. These are you garden variety, walking dead," Sam reassures, lying back down so he can see the stars above. One thing he never gets tired of, crossing the country, is looking up and feeling small.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Someone grabs him when Sam rounds a corner just outside a corner drug store. Relief dumps through Sam's body when he sees Matt but he doesn't even have time to yell at Matt for scaring the hell out of him when Matt presses his whole body against Sam's.
"Wow, this is not a good idea," Sam says even though it kills him to do it.
Matt grunts in consternation and steps back for a moment, biting his lip. His face clears after a few seconds and he steps forward again, yanking the small hand gun out of the back of his jeans that they found he could handle much better than a rifle or shotgun. He slaps it into Sam's left hand and Sam holds it automatically. Matt then gets hands around Sam's back and digs Sam's own gun out and Sam gets that in his right. Matt then pushes Sam's arms up and out and eyes him. "You're as good with the left as the right," Matt doesn't so much as ask as state.
"Yeah, I-" Sam starts to say but Matt just nods and presses forward again, tugging Sam's belt loose and his jeans open and then doing the same to himself. Sam gets with the program then, managing to tear his eyes away from Matt taking them both out so he can keep an eye on their surroundings, his head whipping side to side, constant as a metronome.
He loses the rhythm for a second when Matt presses them together and starts stroking, just lets his head fall back and his eyes close but then Matt bites him on the shoulder and Sam returns to his senses.
Sam doesn't think his dad's drills to be able to be alert and shoot no matter what the distraction were ever meant to be used this way but he's damn glad for them as he hears Matt groan low in his throat and he does the same.
It's fast and messy out of necessity and Sam comes so quickly that in any other circumstance it would be embarrassing but instead he just feels Matt go almost right after and they both slump, breathing hard, Sam still with his guns up.
Matt rolls sideways so they're both leaning against the bricks and he eyes Sam. "Wow, that's... I mean you held those guns up the entire time," he says with a little bit of awe and something darker in his voice.
"I thought you were the one holding our guns," Sam says with a waggle of his eyebrows and Matt snorts and thumps Sam on the shoulder with the heel of his hand, right where he bit down which makes Sam jolt and groan. Matt digs what would have to be carefully hoarded tissue out of his back pocket and cleans his belly off and zips up, then does the same for Sam with a wry grin. Sam passes a hand over his stomach and grumbles, "Man, I miss having showers."
"I miss being able to get completely undressed," Matt counters.
At that moment Dean appears at the corner, looking thunderous. "Where the... do I have to put a bell on you or something?" he grouches.
"We were just-" Matt starts to explain but Dean holds up a hand.
"Don't finish whatever you were going to say, for my sanity's sake," Dean snaps. He then waves the hand held up at them impatiently. "Well, c'mon. We're making tracks."
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
“Is there any lore on whether it’s just the bite that infects you?” Matt asks in this funny way that makes Sam’s heart turn over.
“Not really,” he answers slowly, watching as Matt pulls a thread free from the bottom of his shirt and winds it around his finger till the tip turns almost purple. Sam had heard about a girl that had taken her fingernail off doing the same thing back in high school. “Why?”
“Just…two hours ago your brother made that head shot from across the parking lot and the guy was right in front of me.” Matt is still studying his finger, at the thread digging into his flesh and cutting off the circulation. “It hit me in the face.”
“What did?” Sam prompts.
“The…blood. His blood. Some of it got in my mouth and I spat it out but you never know, right? I probably swallowed some of it.”
Sam wants to reassure Matt, tell him he’ll be fine, nothin’ to worry about but he doesn’t know that for sure. Without that knowledge the words stick in his throat. His doubt must show plainly on his features because when Matt finally raises his eyes he goes paler than he already was.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Matt says and grins gamely. He stands, brushes the seat of his jeans off and lopes over to where Dean and McClane stand with their heads together. McClane breaks off immediately and guides Matt away with one hand on the small of Matt’s back and one on the handgun at his hip.
Dean crosses the small park they’d finally paused in after their latest round of the Don’t Die game and hunkers next to Sam, knees popping so loud Sam winces in sympathy.
“You two have your first little spat?” Dean asks and Sam eyes him, knowing Dean’s not really trying to be a jerk, sometimes he just sounds like it.
“Can you get infected by getting blood in your mouth?” Sam asks plainly, staring at the stand of trees McClane and Matt have disappeared through. Like he can see them by sheer force of will.
“Oh,” Dean says, pops his lips and stands, his back cracking this time. He nudges Sam with his foot when Sam continues to stare at the trees and Sam finally tears his gaze away and looks up at him. “Look, it’s not like some regular virus,” Dean says, holding out a hand that Sam eventually takes and is hoisted to his feet. “Maybe the bite’s the… catalyst or whatever.”
“The bite thing is from the movies,” Sam snaps. “What do we know about it really? I mean, Jesus, maybe we should have asked, huh?”
“Who?”
“How about that group out of Kentucky?” Sam says, rubbing a hand over his head and pushing his hair back. He’s pretty close to letting Dean hack it all off at this point, butcher-job be damned. “We ran into them twice. The first time they had fifteen people and the second time there was just three of them left. We should’ve asked them. They would’ve known.”
Dean just looks at Sam, the kind of elder brother haughty brand of patience on his face that Sam has always hated. “Yeah, probably,” he allows and Sam wants to punch him, just haul off with a good right hook to Dean’s nose just to feel the crunch under his fingers. It’s completely irrational and Sam knows it won’t fix anything but it might make him feel better for a few precious seconds.
Less like he can’t control anything anymore.
They’d criss-crossed the countryside while they still had the car, no real goal in mind after they’d exhausted their known contact list and before Sam got up the nerve to propose that they try and find out what happened to Matt. Those first few weeks when everything had really gone to shit they’d crossed paths with a group lead by a man in his late forties called Buck. Sam remembered him clearly because Dean had had a hard time believing anyone outside a John Candy movie was named Buck for real.
Buck had an eclectic looking group gathered, most of the fifteen he’d had familiar enough neighbors to each other to have nodded hello on occasion. All from a cluster of three or four streets that had been strangely sheltered long enough for the people to realize what was going on and band together.
Buck had wanted them to join his group but Dean had said no, practical as ever. It would be hard to hide, feed and clothe a group so large and Dean had even said as much to Buck, told him they should break off into more manageable groups.
When they saw Buck again, he had two hollow-eyed teenagers left and a story about how three of his number had gotten infected during a fight but had been too terrified to tell anyone. A day later they went crazy inside the group’s makeshift camp and Buck, whose group had actually been up to twenty one at that point lost twelve in one hit, the people with the most useful weapons walking a perimeter.
“You try to save everyone and you don’t save anyone,” Buck had said before they’d parted ways again.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
He’s walking.
He can’t remember how long for but it’s been long enough that he’s walked right through the soles of his shoes, the remnants hanging ragged around his ankles. He’s leaving bloody footprints in his wake, a trail that’s easy to follow.
And he is being followed.
He can’t see them all the time but he catches glimpses. He knows they’re there, everyone he’s ever met. Bobby’s still got his trucker cap perched on his head and Missouri’s beads tinkle as she moves. Jo and Ellen walk with linked arms and even Jess is there, grave dirt still clinging to her white dress and half her face eaten away by time and the elements.
Matt stumps along at the back of this ragged group of pursuers and he’s holding something in his hands that he brings to his mouth every few steps. Sam can’t see what it is but he’s pretty sure he knows by the juicy smacking sounds Matt makes as he tears off pieces with his teeth.
Just as he thinks he can’t walk anymore, Dean is suddenly in front of him, grinning and with gore streaking his chin and chest. As Sam finally stops, Dean reaches for him and says, “I’ll always be here for you little brother.”
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Starting to feel a little bad that these could be the last written words of the human race. Maybe a million zombies sitting at a million typewriters will write the collected works of Shakespeare someday… but I kinda doubt it.
Sam jerks awake to Dean shaking his shoulder. “Man, you could always sleep anywhere,” Dean muses, indicating the fact that Sam is sitting upright, propped against a tree.
“Hey,” Sam says, wiping over his face with a dirty sleeve and casting about for a second. When he sees they’re still alone he frowns. “They not back yet?”
Depending on how long Sam had been asleep, McClane and Matt have been gone almost an entire day. Sam had made to go after them in the direction they’d disappeared a couple of times but Dean had stopped him each time with a gentle, “Let’s give it just a little longer, eh?”
Sam felt like a bigger coward every time he let Dean put him off. The truth was, he didn’t want to see it, see McClane holding a gun on Matt, watch Matt deteriorate until he was barely recognizable and finally pass, only to wake up again ravenous and changed.
Sam could understand Dean’s wish to keep him from seeing it to. He had never forgiven himself for letting Sam take care of Madison, for not doing it himself despite Madison’s wishes. Sam had wanted to let Dean do it, desperately.
The waiting is killing Sam though, tearing whatever he has left of himself free. He knows without a shadow of a doubt that if McClane has to shoot Matt they won’t ever see him again which is why, when there’s a rustle in the undergrowth an hour later, Sam feels a thrill of hope instead of dread. Matt emerges with McClane right behind him, both looking pale and weary.
Sam lets out the breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding and feels Dean squeeze the back of his neck.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Sam knows he’s lucky.
Not just for the fact that he’s alive when most of the population isn’t but sometimes he thinks about how all of this could’ve happened earlier, maybe when he was still at Stanford. He looks at his brother across the firelight and tries to imagine what it would’ve been like to have not known what had happened to him.
Dean’s cleaning guns, tongue poking out of the side of his mouth as he works when he notices Sam’s stare. “What?”
“Nothing. Just thinking,” Sam says.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Dean remarks and goes back to what he was doing.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Sam hates zombies.
That probably goes without saying but it’s especially true when there’s one that’s got him pinned, he’s holding the gnashing teeth off by a rifle to its throat, he’s dying for a piss and the fucker is kneeling on his kidney.
A boot appears from nowhere and the zombie topples sideways off him, side of its head caved in. Sam blinks up at Matt who’s grinning down at him. Matt holds out a hand to help him up and that’s when a shadow falls over Matt’s unprotected back. Sam kicks out automatically, managing to catch Matt behind the knee and sending him into the dirt as he gets his rifle around and shoots the shambler with half a head still intact.
Sam twists to check on Matt. He’s managed to pull himself into a seated position and is grinning wryly as he shakes grit out of his hair.
“I was about to say that I was getting better at this,” Matt admits sheepishly.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Matt has one of those digital watches that has the date, time, pulse monitor and chronometer. Considering he was never really sporty, Sam never got what he needed a pulse monitor and chronometer for but the date thing comes in handy when Matt leans into him and says, “Hey, it’s Christmas.”
“Really? Huh,” Sam says, leaning back.
“I just wish I had mistletoe,” Matt muses, looking up at the stars.
Sam grabs his chin and tilts Matt’s face towards him. They both need a shave, they both smell and Sam’s pretty sure neither of them have seen a toothbrush in too long but the kiss is the nicest one Sam ever remembers.
“Who needs mistletoe?” Sam asks and then tilts his head when Matt scrunches up his nose. “What?”
“Man, that was cheesy,” Matt laughs and after a moment Sam’s laughing too.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
“What do you think?” Dean asks. The four of them are standing outside a gas station that’s the only building they’ve seen for miles. The pickings for food had been slim the last few towns and a gas station is always good for long-life road fair. Sam thinks it’s pretty unfair that he always hated this kind of food and now the thought of jerky is making him almost cramp in anticipation.
“Looks okay,” McClane says.
“Famous last words,” Dean remarks and they all chuckle for a moment.
“Yeah, isn’t this the part in the zombie movie where the audience is saying don’t go in there?” Matt adds and waggles his eyebrows.
They move inside as a unit, having become familiar enough to work as a team over the past couple of weeks that Sam thinks any hunters would’ve been proud. Sam feels Dean at his back and smiles as they move to the storage area, leaving McClane and Matt out front to dig through the debris and see if they can come up with anything edible.
“Hey, you know that eventually even canned food is going to pass its used by date right?” Sam says as Dean nudges the door at the back open with his shot gun and then angels the mirror he’d taped to it inside so he can see around the darkened corner.
Zombies love darkened corners.
“If we survive the next couple of months,” Dean says out of the corner of his mouth and with a sideways glance at Sam. “And that’s a big if, then maybe we can worry about that.”
“We’d need to find farming land somewhere. Maybe round up chickens, pigs and cows that have gone feral.”
“Feral cows?” Dean snorts.
“Didn’t Pastor Jim have a farm upstate? Lots of land and no real population nearby? Dad told us about it, right?”
“You been thinking about this a lot?” Dean asks although it’s not really a question, more an observation.
“Might’ve thought about settling down somewhere… before this,” Sam admits, shrugging a little and following Dean through the doorway. “I know unless you’re saving them you’re not that keen on people and you’d probably prefer somewhere you had to use your hands.”
“This is all sounding a little too Susie Homemaker for me,” Dean says and then motions Sam forward. Sam tries the light switch by habit but isn’t surprised when it doesn’t work. He switches on his flashlight and shines it into the stock room and then grimaces when a load of boxes is revealed with obvious rat holes punched through most of them. As he scans the boxes a rat pokes its head out of one of the boxes and then disappears again, startled by the light.
A gunshot has them both backing out of the room fast and heading out to the front of the station again. Matt is standing in the middle of two rows of freestanding shelves, arms still buried elbow deep in a tumble of cans and staring towards the grime-covered front window with wide, horrified eyes. Sam’s look swings and he sees McClane with his gun up, a zombie sprawled on the floor in front of him that looks to be covered in a pile of blankets.
There’s blood running down McClane’s arm.
“Are you bit?” Dean asks immediately. McClane looks down at his arm and frowns at it like he’s never seen it before, like it’s betrayed him somehow. Matt pulls his arms free and cans go scattering across the floor with a tremendous noise that all of them ignore, too busy not being able to tear their eyes off the large and very obvious bite mark just above McClane’s elbow.
“Son of a bitch,” McClane breathes out then, kicks the pile of rags at his feet. “Son of a bitch!” he lets out more lustily.
“I… looked behind the counter. I just thought it was just a lump of rags,” Matt says, voice quiet and upset.
“Not your fault, kid,” McClane immediately reassures and then his eyes skip to Dean who tightens his grip on his shotgun.
“No… no, wait,” Matt suddenly scrambles to life, almost tripping over the cans still rolling around on the floor in front of him. “Wait, we don’t know that that’s it,” he says frantically.
Sam swallows hard, watching Matt’s face collapse into horror and grief, his hands reaching out and pushing at the air like he can stop the inevitable. “That might just be damn movies!”
“You gotta find Lucy, so start walking,” McClane says, his voice resigned, eyes still locked on his arm. “I’ll catch up.”
“We’re not leaving-”
“Matty,” McClane says gently. “I’ll catch up.”
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Matt walks in front of them, weaving listlessly on the road from side to side. Sam would offer for them to stop and rest but he’d tried that already and Matt had merely shaken his head and kept going.
“You remember that town?” Dean asks, breaking a silence that has lasted a little over six hours. Sam had been almost asleep walking and he jerks his head up, looks at his brother. “The one with Croatoan on the phone pole?”
“You think this is some kind of demon virus?” Sam asks incredulously.
“Nah, this is zombies alright. Night of the living dead and everything,” Dean dismisses with a wave of his hand. The hand lands on Sam’s shoulder and pats briefly before flitting away. “I was just remembering when we thought you had the virus.”
“Yeah, and you locked us in a room together like a suicidal dumbass,” Sam says, trying to make light of something that has plagued him ever since it happened. He remembers the way Dean sat, gun cradled in his lap and said, I’m tired Sammy. What he was really saying was clear.
If you don’t get out of this, neither do I.
“We’re not driving off a cliff together at the end of this movie, okay?” Sam snaps, suddenly and irrationally pissed off. He doesn’t want to hear it if Dean’s about to declare something as insane as perhaps following if anything fatal happens to him. It scared him badly the last time, made him reevaluate how he saw his brother, what Dean was capable of, what he would sacrifice.
Matt stumbles ahead of them and goes to his knees. Sam spares Dean one final look and then jogs up to him, getting hands under Matt’s arms and hauling him back upright. Matt tries to walk forward again but Sam steers him off the road and basically pushes him down on a bleached white tree trunk. He then plants hands on Matt’s shoulders and holds him down when Matt attempts to get up again. Matt’s eyes finally focus and he scowls.
“Gotta keep going,” he says.
“McClane didn’t want you to walk your feet off,” Sam says, uncomfortably aware of how close what Matt is doing is to his dreams. He’d have to lift Matt’s feet to check but he’s pretty sure the way Matt’s been dragging his shoes that most of the soles will be worn through. Matt has surprisingly big feet for his frame and they hadn’t been able to find boots that fit so he’d worn out three pairs of sneakers already.
“He’s the guy that survives,” Matt says, slumping forward, his forehead coming to rest just above Sam’s collarbone. “You know just how much shit McClane’s survived?”
Sam looks back at Dean who has automatically taken up sentry duty, his back a tense line against the dying sunlight. Sam sighs and drops to his knees in front of Matt, curling hands around Matt’s calves. “McClane was someone that put others in front of himself. It would’ve destroyed him if the situation was reversed.” Sam spares another glance to Dean. “Believe me when I say that you’re the one who survives.”
Matt brings up a hand and traces Sam’s jaw, his finger rasping against the grain of Sam’s stubble. “You look exhausted,” he says with a tired smile.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
They smell the ocean before they see it.
Sam takes in a large lungful and then lets it out slowly. He hadn't realized just how much he'd gotten used to the underlying tang of decay until he’s able to take in clean air. The breeze lifts his sweaty hair from his scalp, ruffles his collar and Sam feels like laughing.
He's paused and Dean and Matt have done the same, all poised on a hill overlooking the coastal town that is hopefully not the final resting place of McClane's daughter, Lucy. Like a spell broken, Matt starts forward at a jog, made impatient by proximity. Dean and Sam start after at a more sedate pace, Sam saying, "I wish Dad was here."
Dean makes a grunt of agreement, not having to ask Sam why. They both remember whenever they were close enough their father detouring them towards the sea. John Winchester was a sullen and closed-off man for the most part but one of Sam's more precious and closely held memories is of his father walking the shore with his boots off and his jeans rolled up. Just want to dip my toes in, he'd always say as Sam and Dean went screaming off down the beach together, thrilled with the brief respite.
It was always too cold for it, they never managed to make it to the beach when it was actually summer and their father probably wouldn't have brought them in amongst the seasonal crowds anyway. Sam would always edge up, just enough that the water was lapping right at his feet and then run away, dodging Dean who would always threatened to toss him in but never did. Their dad was oblivious, up to his ankles in water even when it was freezing.
Sam's gaze now passes over the houses bleached white by their nearness to the salt air, once cheery patio furniture abused by the elements to the point where it is all crumbling to rusted nothing. The sound of gulls makes his skin break out in gooseflesh, the peace of the place almost jarring.
"Don't get too far ahead," Dean calls to Matt like Matt's an errant child. Matt waves a hand backwards, speeding up if anything. They haven't reached the town limits yet and there's nothing on either side of the road except flat grass giving way to transported sand in some places so Sam isn't too worried.
Dean points at the sheltered dock further down and the handful of boats bobbling about on the water. Some have obviously come free and drifted out, debris littering the water in places where the errant boats have possibly collided hard enough to sink one or both.
"Didn't one of those zombie movies have people getting away on a boat?" Sam asks. He'd never really liked horror movies much, their life enough of an adrenalin rush for him. Dean had always been a freak for them though, trying to drag Sam to every slice 'em up blood fest there was.
"Yeah, but after the credits they landed on this island and it was still full of zombies," Dean says with a derisive snort and Sam glances at him, seeing the way his face is still speculative, still on the water.
Matt has stopped ahead, hand shading his eyes and looking towards a distant cliff with a single house set apart from the rest of the town. "I think that's it," Matt says when they're close enough to hear him. "It was on a postcard McClane showed me once."
Dean nods, hitching his backpack higher and pumping his shotgun. "Okay," he says.
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
Sam's worst nightmare was that they would reach the place they were looking for and it would be surrounded by clamoring undead, as unreachable as if it were on another continent. Scratch that, Sam's worst nightmare would be that they would find yet another empty home, another person to add to the mental list of missing souls but the zombie horde ran a close second.
It's obvious from the road as they approach that something has tried to get in. There are horrific smears marring the front and sides of the house like something overripe had been run up against the walls repeatedly. The windows have thick-looking and more importantly unbroken storm shutters covering them though, and the front door has a sturdy security grill.
There's no sign of anyone about and Sam's glad that one of the more popular zombie tropes has proven untrue, that zombies wouldn't cluster like carrion waiting a victim out but instead they would lose interest and wander off, given enough time.
You gotta love undead with short attention spans.
As they approach, the door behind the security grill opens and a dark haired figure appears, fingers looped loosely around the bars. There's a clang and a shudder and the security grill is pushed out, hinges protesting after probably a long period of disuse.
At first Sam thinks he's looking at a girl of maybe fourteen or fifteen and he feels a thrill of disappointment, knowing Lucy was closer to Matt's age. Closer up though, it's clear she’s older, a probably already slender frame rendered almost childlike without sustenance. The girl has a faded floral print dress on that hangs off one shoulder.
"Lucy," Matt breathes, confirming her identity. Lucy's arms raise, hands drifting into the air like startled birds for a moment before coming to rest again on her mouth, large eyes blinking over her fingers.
When Matt's close enough to touch, he pauses, wary. Lucy releases her death-grip on her mouth with one hand and it clunks against Matt's shoulder. From the way the fingers were curled into a loose fist, Sam figures it was probably meant to be a punch in the arm. "Took you long enough," she finally rasps out.
Sam unclips his canteen from his belt and holds it out, noting the way Lucy's lips are cracked and her skin looks like dry paper. She only has eyes for Matt though, her other hand finally drifting to his face and passing over it like she thinks maybe she's hallucinating his presence, needs to touch him to make him real. Matt takes the hand that's still resting at his shoulder and holds it against his chest for a moment and they both breathe like that.
After a few minutes, Dean and Sam both shifting awkwardly feeling like they're intruding on something private, a kind of determination floods Lucy's face and she straightens her spine with a visible effort. Her eyes flick from Sam to Dean and Sam can see McClane in her, sheer bloody-minded will that would keep her going when others would have given up. She notices the canteen Sam is still holding out and takes it, waggles it in the air for a second to hear the slosh of water inside before taking a drink.
“Where’s my dad?”
*chomp~chomp~chomp*
They tell her they aren’t really sure what happened to John McClane, and technically that’s true. Lucy nods like she knows exactly what they’re omitting while she nibbles on jerky Dean had dug out of his pack. She describes how it had been her and her grandmother for a little while but a try for the town proper had ended in disaster and Lucy had used the rest of her ammunition getting her grandmother buried well enough that she wouldn’t be disturbed.
Sam pauses for a second as he makes a run for the water pump out behind the house and shields his eyes against the glare of the morning to see the little mound of rocks and the makeshift cross Lucy risked her life for. He gets moving again when he hears Dean make an impatient noise from the house’s back porch.
Sam fills the four canteens he has slung around his neck in a jumble and then a bucket Lucy provided. He takes the trip back to the house more slowly, seeing Dean edgily hop from foot to foot the longer Sam is exposed with no weapon to hand. Dean backs up and props the door open when Sam reaches him, another security grill with a wooden door behind it, and manages to land a kick to Sam’s butt when he darts inside.
Sam sluices water from the bucket over his arms and face and immediately feels about three hundred percent more human just with that tiny patch of clean skin. Lucy is sitting at the kitchen table with Matt, her hands folded together. Matt looks around at Sam and smiles briefly and Sam returns it.
“How hard could sailing be anyway?” Dean asks, nudging Sam aside so he can get to the bucket of water.
“I thought they all died in that movie. Remember, zombies on the island?”
Dean shrugs, making a blissed-out face when he rubs water over the back of his neck. “I hate that after the credits thing,” he says.
“Movie would’ve been better if it just faded to black on the people getting away in the boat.”