On The Wings of Fury, part 1
It was hot, in the absurd way that made Sam’s skin too thin, like it was going to peel off if he scratched too hard. Which would suck, and probably hurt a lot, so.
“So, hey, Dean,” Sam started, in a completely reasonable and friendly tone. His bottle of water was warmer than the hand that held it. The shade of the Impala’s wing was hardly shelter, but it was better than nothing.
Dean kicked a pile of sand with his boot and growled, “Swear to God, Sammy. Swear to God. If your mouth is open for the sole purpose of bitching at me about the fucking heat, again, I’m gonna hogtie you and hide you in one of the crates. Let you ride with the cargo, all the way back to the base.”
Sam’s eyes crinkled, but he didn’t smile, and he didn’t talk for a while. Then, still very cheerful, he observed, “’S hot out here.”
Dean grunted, agreement and suppressed laugh and annoyance, and stared down at the tin cup the cargo had given him, half-full of what he probably wished was whiskey, instead of more water; Sam never let him drink before flying, and Dean never really tried too hard to get around him. Dean took a sip, lower lip rasping on the underside of the tin, and he merrily shot back, “Asshole.”
Ellen, the weathered major that they’d mostly been dealing with the whole time, hiked up to them, sand kicking up before her boots and dribbling out of folds and crevices in her BDUs. Her desert-camo uniform jacket was tied around her waist, and a dark sweat stain ran down from her neck, under her dogtags, and out over her breasts, which Sam wasn’t staring at but Dean was.
They were okay, but Ellen was old enough to be their bitchy, hardass aunt or something.
She planted her feet in front of them, and set her fists on her hips. “Hey. Winchesters, right? We’re nearly done here.” Her lips pressed together. “Might cut thirty minutes down to twenty, with you two helping.”
Dean laughed again, that single, you-made-a-joke cough. “Yeah, bet it would.” He made no move to actually help.
Ellen was not amused.
Sam cleared his throat and elbowed his brother’s arm, making the water in the cup slosh around. Dean glared as Sam stood up. “We can help, sure. Didn’t want to break anything, that’s all. We don’t know what’s supposed to go where.”
“Well, we got the tech and the hardware packed up already,” she said, about-facing and leading the way out into the sun. “Just the cots and tents left.”
As they loaded up the gear, Ellen chatted with the rest of her unit. Sam tried to guess which they were on the passenger list the army commissioned them with - Robert Singer? Ava Wilson? He didn’t know them all, just their ranks, sort of.
They all just looked ragged at the edges, left out here in the emptiest piece of Iraq the army could find. It was a tiny group, seven soldiers plus one civilian, and (if Sam remembered his list right) the ranking commissioned officer was a young, female lieutenant. She wasn’t out here trying to pack up with them, that was for sure. Sam couldn’t pick out the civilian, either, and after living with Dad the ex-marine for eighteen years he liked to think he’d be able to.
It was hard work, and hot, and harder to work with people he wasn’t even on a last-name basis with, so Sam just drilled himself on the take-off and landing sequences he could do backwards and forwards. He could always relax once they were in the air and leave most of the flying to Dean, but the technical details were the best part.
Once they wrapped up this commission, Sam planned to talk to Dean about taking private contracts from the armed services. Just because they didn’t have enough aircraft to move their troops around didn’t mean Sam Winchester had to carry a hundred pounds of meals-ready-to-eat. He’d had enough MREs to last a lifetime, thanks.
- - -
Sam took the last gulp of water from his canteen and took a moment to himself to reflect and appreciate the magic of refrigeration. He tossed it in their shared lockbox for clothes, bolted to the floor and the wall in one corner.
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Sam heaved himself down into the copilot’s seat, careful not to break his kneecaps against the low slope of the underside of the console.
Dean was flipping through the warm-up sequence, reaching above his head and over the sea of dials. The Impala’s engines were rumbling to life, two rocking revolutions in perfect synchronous, one on each wing.
“Hear her purr,” Dean hummed, in what he probably thought was harmony.
Sam shook his head and grinned to himself. Dean’s inappropriate, illicit affair with his plane was always more exaggerated when Dean was in the damn thing, which was a joke so old that Sam didn’t even bother anymore. He still thought it at Dean very loudly, though.
“Shut up, bitch.”
“Jerk.”
Dean smiled, crow’s feet etching a sunburst around each eye. The Impala also made him smile more often.
“Here we go again,” Dean said, and they started to taxi over the same long nearly-runway that they’d come in on. He gave Sam room to run through a secondary check and the monitoring record.
And then they were speeding up, tilting back, lifting off, and Sam looked at the wide smile on Dean’s face and hoped his wings wouldn’t melt under the ponderous weight of the heat.
- - -
For four hours, everything was quiet, with routine radio flags from the destination base.
There were five hours left when they received a radio burst from another plane. A woman’s voice said, “Be advi - sudden - elec - sand.”
Dean and Sam glanced at each other, and then Sam opened the channel and Dean said, “We don’t copy. Who is this?”
When Sam let the channel close, there was static. For fifteen straight seconds, there was nothing but static, and then, “-Danger-”
And then really nothing. The other aircraft’s channel was closed.
“What the hell?” Dean said, and Sam opened their channel to call for the control at the base just barely before the Impala dropped, stomach-twisting lurch, and heaved back up in heavy turbulence.
Sam grabbed the wheel to help try to control her, because where did this come from, and Dean said, “Holy mother of God.”
There was a section of the desert ahead of them floating up, bleeding darker red and flashing white with lightening.
Sam had never seen a sandstorm kick up so quickly - it was a tall column, at least one thousand feet above their altitude, and so wide that they weren’t near it yet and it was swallowing the horizon already.
“Should we go around?” Sam ventured, hauling on the wheel again as they dipped and jerked with another roll of clashing high and low pressure fronts.
Dean stared at the storm, and said, “We can’t be near it for that long. It would take too much time to circumnavigate, and it would overtake us before we cleared the edge anyway.”
“We can’t go through.”
“We don’t have a lot of options, here, Sam,” Dean said, yelling into the microphone headset because the windspeed outside was picking up too fast.
Sam stared out the windshield, already orange-brown-silt and nothing else, zero percent visibility. Oh, shit.
“Ohshit,” he said out loud. “Dean.”
“It’ll be okay, Sammy,” Dean said, and his hand landed wide and heavy on Sam’s knee, and squeezed once as the turbulence threw them around.
They made it five minutes into the storm - jerking queasily, limp like ragdolls to keep the seatbelts from choking them to death - before the world screamed and metal crunched and there were alerts and Dean wrestling with the controls but Sam couldn’t think, couldn’t think through the headache, and his chair away from the console, and he couldn’t think.
And then blackness for the blink of an eye, and -
---
Sand grit under Sam’s teeth, and lay thick under his tongue. When he coughed, it went up his nose, and when he moved, it was in every crevice he’d ever had.
His wrist hurt, one sharp needle of pain when he rotated it too far and then nothing else. His chest hurt, but superficially, just where the skin stretched with his breathing, and oh, that was from the seatbelt.
From when they’d crashed.
The Impala.
In the middle of a dust storm in the desert.
Shit. Fuck. Oh, God.
And why was it so dark?
Sam coughed again, and said, “Dean.”
A low, pained grunt. “Ow. Fuck.”
“Wha’happen?” Sam asked, but he couldn’t take a deep breath in, because -
Because his seatbelt was still pulled too tight across him, still fastened, but the seat itself had come loose from where it was bolted to the floor, and Sam was on his side, and his head throbbed like he’d hit it against something. Like that wall, which was very very close to his face and had a spot of blood right where his temple matched up to it, and.
Sam’s fingers were slow and stupid, but he got the buckle undone and slumped down to the floor, coughing and breathing and there was even sand in his eyes, every time he blinked, it was making him tear up to get all of it out.
Dean said, “I think. I think I crashed the Impala.”
And. Yeah. Oh, shit.
“Sammy,” and Dean sounded a lot more panicked, “we crashed.”
Sammy pushed himself off the floor, pushed himself off the wall where he landed, staggered against the console.
All the lights above the switches were dark, the emergency red runners shone in the corners very dimly, they weren’t in the air, the windshield was black so it was either night, or.
Dean’s chair was still where it’d been yesterday, or when they were in the air, God-how-long-was-Sam-out. And there was no obvious blood, but when Sam put a hand on Dean’s forearm, he was sweating all over because the cockpit was like an oven, and he was still strapped in, and what if he was injured internally or he’d broken something?
“Dean, does anything hurt?” Sam asked. His wrist twinged again when he tried to push himself away from the console, but his legs held him.
Dean was just a shape in the mostly-dark, head moving but not, like, rolling out of control or anything. He said, “Sam. I’m okay. Just.”
Sam carefully knelt, waiting for one of his legs to decide to be broken, and searched around Dean’s chest for the buckle, buckle, Dean was warm but not fever-hot, where did they leave the first-aid kit? Then Dean was unbuckled, and Sam stood up again.
Dean grabbed Sam’s elbow, held it, firm grip, and Sam was cataloguing all the proof that neither of them were dead, but.
“Sammy, I’m okay. You okay?” Dean spoke in a low, steady voice, strong, sure, exactly what Sam needed to hear from his big brother right now.
“Yeah. Dean. I’m okay. I took a knock to the head, but I’m mostly fine.”
“Sam. This is what I need you to do.” His hand stayed hot and real. “I’m going to try to raise someone on the radio, and you’re going back there to check the cargo.”
Sam blinked, felt a wet trail on his cheek, but at least he could see without gritty sand in eyes. “Okay, I. Yeah. Okay, I’ll go and.”
He pushed off the console, fumbled his way around Dean, found the latch handle, twisted, pushed, stepped into the cabin (and noted that the Impala was resting at an angle, that was definitely uphill), figured out that it was dark in here because all the windows were covered (and, fuck, were they buried, because no, just no), pulled the emergency kit from the wall and felt around for the flashlight inside.
There were small groans, scattered all over, and the cabin was a mess of broken crates and tent stakes and clothes from torn bags. Some of the chairs were tipped over, like Sam’s, but most weren’t. The back was. Gone. And filled in with a hill of sand, tumbled forward like an avalanche, and.
And Sam just stopped thinking about it. Just stopped.
He started at the front.
Brown hair, come loose from its tight French braid. Blood crusted brown over a split lip, but her nose could have bled from the decompression and altitude drop (and the back half of the plane is missing, just fucking torn off, but Sam’s not shining his light back there anymore and not thinking about it).
It caught in his throat a second, but he said, “Private Wilson?”
She made a high, girlish noise, came to, and started breathing hard, chest pushing at her standard-issue jacket, which Sam was also not thinking about. “Aaaah? Who’re… what?”
He shushed her, trying to be as reassuring as he could without trusting himself to touch her anywhere. “Are you hurt?”
She frowned, or pouted, and the scab that had formed on her lip opened up again. “No, I don’t feel anything.”
“Anything… uh, you mean you’re numb?” He ran through all the first aid training Dad ever forced on him, because numbness might mean a broken bone somewhere higher up the this-bone-connected-to-the list.
“I don’t think so. Not numb. So.” She squinted up at him, past the flashlight. “Who are you?”
“Sam.” This seems inadequate. “Copilot.”
“Oh. I’m Ava.”
“Hey, Ava,” Sam said, and set his hand at the base of her neck and felt up the back of her head, prodding with his fingers. “Does this hurt?”
“No.” She smiled, cute, completely ignoring the stretch of old nosebleed on her lip.
“Probably no concussion.” He said it out loud, because he wasn’t sure that he didn’t have one. He swept his light out farther, and there was an older man on the other side of the aisle. “Stay here, Ava. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
Sam went to the guy, kind of uncle-looking, noncommissioned and probably close to Dad’s age and creeping up to the retirement on the horizon. “Hey, hey.” Um. “Chief Singer?”
The guy growled, “Yeah. I’m alive, I’m not injured.” A beat. “Much.”
“Jesus,” Sam’s heart tried not to stop. “Where? What’s wrong?”
Singer waved one hand down to his leg. Sam shone the flashlight down, and, oh holy fucking Christ. One of the tent stakes, an eight-inch long metal spike, stabbed through the outer edge of his right thigh, and there was blood.
Wow. Shit.
“It’s not that bad,” Singer said, which, seriously? “In one side and out the other. Didn’t even get the artery. Here.”
He grasped the bent head of the stake and yanked. It slid a ways, caught on something, and jumped out when Singer tugged again.
It clattered to the floor, and Singer was fucking Rambo, what the fuck, because he said, perfectly easy, “Y’got a first-aid kit, son?”
“By. The door. It’s on the floor, now, probably.”
Ava, small and standing at Sam’s elbow, said, “I’ll go get it for you, Chief.”
“You do that, Wilson.”
Sam just moved on, because, what the fuck.
Ellen Harvelle was picking herself up off the metal grating, and Sam nearly ran over her, because she was bent double. She rolled both her shoulders, stuck her dogtags under her shirt with a hollow clink, and stared at him with eyes like brown stones, daring him to ask if she was hurt.
Sam was pretty sure that, even if she had twenty stakes jammed in like St. Sebastian, she’d pull them all out herself and rub lemon juice in just to spite him.
He backed off and saw the ranking commissioned officer, in a chair tipped on its back. Her hair was blonde and wavy and long, spread out everywhere, over her face. Her body was limp and relaxed. Unconscious.
“Hey, Lieutenant,” he said, because he didn’t know her first or last name. Sam knelt down and shook her shoulder, set two fingers under her chin. Strong pulse.
Ellen crouched down next to him, tense and fluttering her hands like she didn’t know what to do with them. “Is she…?”
“Alive, yeah.” He shook the officer again, and her head lolled sickly to her other shoulder. “Lieutenant?”
Very gently, Ellen smoothed the Lieutenant’s hair back to see her face, which showed evidence of a nosebleed, like Ava’s. She called, “Jo?”
The girl’s eyes tried to open and managed only a little bit. Raspy (from screaming, Sam supplied, his imagination racing) and soft, she said, “Mom?”
And, uh.
“What?” Sam asked, at a loss.
“Yeah, baby,” Ellen cooed, edging closer, glaring at Sam until he scooted away. She unbuckled the lieutenant, and pulled Jo’s head into her lap. Ellen pulled her hand back from her daughter’s head, and showed Sam the shiny, wet blood, and pinched her lips together.
Sam froze up, because that was bad, and the best he could do was, “Don’t let her fall asleep again.”
He left them and kept going, towards where the back of the cabin and the cargo area would be if it weren’t torn off, ragged twisted metal edges bent in and out in no pattern at all.
More of the chairs had been ripped out of their bolts back here, but the next guy Sam found was in one that was upright.
“Hi,” Sam said, because he had absolutely no idea what this guy’s name was.
He was awake, and gave Sam a low, pained groan. With a wavering voice, he joked, “I caught less shrapnel when a grenade misfired.”
“What’s that mean? Were you hit with something?” Sam swept his flashlight down. It caught on a thin piece of metal jammed pretty resolutely in the man’s side. The light reflected off the little puddle collecting in the lowest bend, black and viscous and blood.
“I think I’ve got most of your plane lodged in my kidney.” Abruptly, his face changed; the red hair and freckles stood out against sickly-shocked greenish white. “Hey, not really, right? I’m gonna be okay.”
Sam called, “Ava?”
Over the soft murmurs of Ellen keeping Jo conscious, Ava called back, sounding steadier than the first time. “Yeah, Sam?”
“Can you bring that kit over here?” More quietly, Sam asked, “What’s your name?”
The guy was sort of gasping and trying not to hyperventilate, but then Ava showed up, and her face crumpled for just long enough to show in her voice - “Oh, Max.” - before it split in a comforting smile and she knelt down. “We’ll get you patched up, Miller, don’t worry. I’m handy with a needle.”
“You told me yourself that you failed Home Ec.” Max laughed through clenched teeth, and Sam was immediately sure that he didn’t want to be near them when anything happened with a needle.
Distractedly, Ava asked, “Can you leave the light with me? I’ll need it. And if you can find Andy, he’s training to be a field medic, he’ll be better at this than me.”
She had a sealed plastic bag with suture thread inside held in her teeth, and she was examining all the teaspoon-measure ointments for, for aspirin or antibiotics, or something.
Sam ran the light over the floor, found a body thrown spread-eagled, hoped that it wasn’t Andy, and gave Ava the flashlight.
He carefully climbed through the detritus of small things, come free from the crates the soldiers had packed into the Impala. He kind of kicked the guy and tripped over him at once, and then felt around in the near-dark for his arm, and shook him like he’d done to Jo.
“Hello, hey, hey,” Sam hissed, and then fumbled for a pulse, and hey, he had a pulse, too.
It took a second, but he woke up. “What? What’s wrong?”
Sam went for broke. “Are you Andy?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Why?” He looked disoriented, which was. If Sam remembered right, it was another sign of head trauma?
Shit.
“You’re training to be a medic, right?”
“Uh.” Andy struggled to sit up. He sounded like he was giving Sam a crazy look. “Yeah. Why?”
From the light a few yards off, Ava said, “You remember any of it, Warhol?
“Braun? That you?”
“Max’s in need of your services, Andy.”
A hand arrived on Sam’s bicep. “Uh. You. Guy. Could you help me up?”
“Sam,” he supplied, and pulled the guy to his feet.
They hobbled over to Ava and Max, and Andy stepped weirdly and gingerly until he finally gripped Sam’s shoulder too hard and set his full weight on it, and it held, and he sighed. “Thought it was broken for a second,” he admitted, low so only Sam could hear, nearly covered up by Ava’s constant stream of reassurances and Ellen quizzing Jo through what sounded like most of her childhood. “But it’s not. Just a little sprained, barely. Hardly hurts.”
When he tried to take a step without Sam propping him up, it didn’t work very well.
Finally, Max lay down in an area Ava cleared, and Andy sat cross-legged over him, and Ava poked and prodded at the edge of the wound to see if she could find out how far in the metal slice went.
Andy sweated and mumbled to himself and called for things - needle, sutures, antiseptic, gloves, clamps-just-in-case - and when Ava couldn’t find something, he guessed at possible substitutes - antibiotic cream? If something starts spraying will you pinch it closed? Is there any fucking Neosporin at least? - and Sam made a break for it before anyone gave him pointed looks and demanded a reason why his first-aid kit wasn’t stocked for emergency-fucking-surgery.
He didn’t bother the women, mother and daughter curled up together and Jo’s words slowly losing the disoriented slur. He stopped next to Singer, whose pants had a tear wide enough to show off the bandage there.
He said, “Chief?”
Singer rolled his shoulders. He hadn’t tried to stand yet, apparently. “Yeah, kid?”
“Ava Wilson, Andy,” uh, he didn’t think the guy’s name was actually Andy Warhol, “Max Miller, Jo and Ellen Harvelle, and you. Is there anyone else that I should’ve found?”
Singer wasn’t any more than a shape in the dark, since the impromptu medical team had the flashlight, but Sam got the impression he was frowning at Sam like there was another storm coming. “Ya didn’t find anyone else?”
“No,” Sam said, and, “who are we missing?” because the end had torn off and things and people fell out of planes when that happened.
“Ash and Scott Carey,” Singer grumbled, sort of sadly if he wasn’t such a badass, and Sam took a few steps backwards.
“We’ll keep looking,” he promised, even though Andy had been nearly at the end, where all the sand had piled up in the hole, and there weren’t many other places a person could be unless they were deliberately hiding.
And then he opened the cockpit door and went in and shut the door and leaned against it like the hordes of hell were behind him.
- - -
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