FIC: "Three Eastward From Helena" 1/1 [R]
Title: Three Eastward From Helena 1/ 1
Author:
caramel_maddy @
maddys_slash
Pairing / Characters: Jared / Jensen; Alona Tal / Kristin Bell; Gabriel Tigerman / Katherine Isabelle, Garrett Hedlund, Sophia Bush & Chad Michael Murray
Word Count: 7,922
Summary: AU The only safe place left in Texas is the tiny ghost town of Helena. The last thing the Jared thought he'd find there of all places was the man who left a hole in his heart a decade earlier.
Warning: Zombies / Historical.
Betas: Profound gratitude to
coffeewordangel ,
windmiran &
nikibee for the in depth critiques and grammar tweaking.
AN: I offered to write
woodstarling a story for her birthday last week and she requested a J2 western. NOT a crack!fic.
Three Eastward From Helena
Day 1
When the sun rises high into the sky on a Sunday they wake to find that all of the cattle have taken sick. The scleras of their eyes has turned a murky grayish-brown and their fur is falling out in clusters. The horses are sick too, but Jared’s more concerned with the livestock. He gets them water, shovels bales of hay and grass into the pasture in which they graze. They don’t eat. They stand huddled together as if the swell of a hundred degree heat is as good as an arctic blast. Jared knows it’s of no use trying to save them so he gives up and goes to round up the men. The calves die first. It’s quick, over before it actually begins. It takes all little longer for their mama’s innards to drop out, but when the cows stop breathing Jared already has his shotgun cocked and ready. He’s confident, even though he’s not much of a gunslinger.
“Make sure you get ‘em in the head,” he drawls. “We gotta burn the carcasses too. Light ‘em up and let ‘em cook until ain’t nothing left but ash. Don’t know if they’re gonna get back up so it’s better to be safe than gone.”
* * *
Day 2
Food supply is running low. There’s a ration given out to every man, woman and child, but even the children understand that they barely have enough food to last the rest of the week. Only God in all of his mighty glory knows for certain how much longer they’re gonna be stuck in this nowhere town. When Jared and his group had found Helena, Texas they were heading down from the Chinati Mountains where they‘d been hiding for the last month. The goal was to keep heading east. They heard that Louisiana was the best place to go because whatever sickness was killing everyone hadn’t yet reached the bayou and from there they could board a steamboat. They were chasing a pipedream, but that’s all they had. The journey down from the mountains to Helena had been long and hard. Six good men had given their lives in Rocksprings when some of those sick Things rose up from the earth. Those Things weren’t fast, but they were strong and once they got their fingers into you, you were as good as gone. The lucky ones got ripped apart til there wasn’t much left except skin, bone and cartilage. The unlucky ones with too much meat came back. Those Things always came back.
* * *
Day 3
Jared thinks of six years ago, thinks about the pretty girl back home in San Antonio. The one with the long dark hair and the slanted brown eyes whose mama came from a place he had never heard of. He asked the pretty girl to marry him and he remembers how she cried with a laugh, promised to provide him with a gaggle of babies. Then he remembers how the eve before their wedding she ran off down to Mexico. Sandy left a note saying that she was sorry, but her dreams were far bigger and better than Texas and wider and grander than being a lowly rancher’s wife. Sandra wanted to be a singer. She was going to be famous.
In the cantina the barmaid pours Jared a glass full of whiskey until it overflows. Food may be scarce, but there’s an abundance of alcohol that whoever lived in this place before them has left behind. There’s a general store and a hotel, even the ruins of a bank and an old schoolhouse line through the town. Maybe at one time the city of Helena had been a prosperous kind of place, but now it ain’t such, nothing but a ramshackle stretch of dry land, reduced to a ghost town like every other city had become. The sickness started going around in early February and today marks the beginning of June.
“How’re we gonna get outta here?” Sophia asks. “Ain’t no horses to ride.” She’s a slender girl underneath the bustle and petticoat. She has wild, dark hair, deep brown eyes and kind of reminds Jared of Sandy, except Sophia’s a whore by profession, not a singer. Maybe there ain’t much difference between singing and whoring, Jared thinks. He’s not really sure what he should think anymore.
“Don’t know.” Jared sips. Back in his real life he was never much of a drinker, but this isn’t his real life; this is only his life for now and he drinks with skill.
“You made us come here to this jerkwater burg with a lick and a promise you big, dumb bastard and now you’re telling me you don’t know how we’re gonna head east?”
“Sophia-”
“Don’t,” she sighs slamming the palms of her hands flat down on the bar. “I just…I’m scared.”
“You should be.”
* * *
Day 4
Felix and Ruben are fighting over the last bag of flour. They speak Spanish and Jared doesn’t understand them. He makes a move to step in, break them apart before they rip each other’s heads off, but Garrett stops him.
“Let ‘em be,” he says. Garrett’s not from Texas, he’s from up north, but came down south to pan for gold leaving his wife and son back home in Nebraska to starve. Those were his own words. Jared can‘t stand him, but Garrett’s as strong as an ox and with the world seemingly ending and all, it’s good to keep that kind of muscle around.
“You crazy? They’re gonna kill themselves!”
“So be it then.” Garrett chews on chap, runs a dirty, firm hand through long, stringy disheveled dishwater blonde hair. “Lord knows I haven’t had no entertainment in months.”
“You’re a sick son of a bitch! We gotta stick together-” Jared starts.
“Stick together?” Garrett laughs. “No we don’t! It’s every man for himself! I think you done forgot that rule, rancher.”
“No, I think you done forgot whose horse you rode to safety on when those Things almost got yer’ass.”
“And I thanked you for that, but make no mistake, if I could be anywhere else than this backwards place with all you backwards people, then I would be. If given the chance, I’d be gone quicker than a puff of smoke.”
* * *
Day 5
Through the mist of twilight, the stranger in black appears. The sun is preparing to rise into a clear, iceless sky. The earth is damp and the air smells of blood, urine and charred cow parts. It’s been two hours since Jared’s taken a drink and four months since he’s slept properly. He’s anxious, on the edge of something far and off. It’s been four days since the cattle have died and there are only a few jars of peaches left to be split between: three women -one of whom is with child, two men who don’t know more than a handful of English phrases, a no-good miner, a quiet farmer, a boisterous gambler and himself. Jared reaches for his holster, wraps his hand firmly around cool metal. He cradles the revolver in his palm pressing his index finger around the trigger.
“You just stay right there friend!” He yells pointing, aiming. The man in black freezes.
“I mean you no harm,” he yells. “I come here from Dallas!” He can talk, that makes him a real person and not one of those Things. Jared puts the gun away and waits.
The spurs on the man in black’s boots jangle as he approaches, black cowboy hat tipped and head bowed. He walks with an ease that Jared doesn’t quite understand, like how someone can walk with no fear of what the world was turning into. Hell on earth is what the bible said this kind of thing was. Hell On Earth.
“Do you,” the man coughs keeping his head down, “have water?” Jared nods and leads him into the saloon. It’s way too early for most of anyone else to be awake so Jared goes about fixing the stranger a drink himself.
“Corn whiskey.” He says pushing the glass to the stranger. The stranger downs the contents of the glass in one, long guzzle.
“Thanks. Now how bout’ some water?” The stranger looks up, meets Jared’s gaze for the first time. Their eyes lock and something familiar flickers between them. Jared knows him from some place only he can’t quite figure out where.
“Jared…” the stranger drawls slow, careful, eyes narrowed and jaw set. “ Jared Padalecki?”
Jared stares, tries to imagine what the stranger may look like with his black cowboy hat off, bushel of dirty, dark brown beard and mustache shaven. He sees smooth, soft freckled cheeks and a messy mop of light brown locks that the sun used to bleach almost honey back when they were young‘ns. He sees vibrant, green eyes that used to smile at the world, but seem a little darker, unfamiliar now. The stranger’s face is rougher than Jared remembers it being, weathered down. Time had been unforgiving and it takes Jared a moment to fully recognize him, but when he does he balls up his fists and grits his teeth.
“You no good bastard!”
He crashes his fist into the man’s cheeks sending Jensen Ackles flying into a purple painted emptiness.
+ + +
Jared thinks it’s the smell of barley and whiskey that makes Jensen’s lashes flutter after a handful of minutes have passed. He imagines that Jensen can probably hear all the voices chattering around him like wind through sand weed.
“Why is he bleeding like that? Jared, he’s not one of those things, is he?” Gabriel asks. Gabe’s a small kind of guy with shaggy, dark hair and the kind of fawn like brown eyes that give him an otherworldly innocence. He's quiet, timid, meek even and, out of everyone else, Gabriel Tigerman's the one that Jared likes the best. He respects him. You have to respect a man who gets a whore pregnant and then decides to make her into a proper ‘Lady’ by marrying and starting a family with her. Their two boys Luke and Paul are six and seven, and Katherine prays every night that the baby she’s carrying now is finally gonna be that girl she‘s always wanted.
“No, he ain’t one. He’s normal.” Jared grunts taking a sip of whiskey directly from the bottle. The alcohol burns as it goes down, stinging his throat and lighting his insides up with fire.
The saloon door opens. Alona and Kristin walk in. If you glance at them, you might take them for twins, two pale skinned, flaxen haired twin sisters. They’re cousins by marriage so no real blood flows between them, but they’re as close as two women can naturally be, bonded at the knee and attached at the hip. They even sleep in the same bed. Jared found them in Galveston by accident when he had stopped to fix the wheel on his carriage. He had thought for sure that Galveston was just another ghost town, those Things having devoured and, or infected everything they touched.
“No! No! No!” Alona grunts putting her slender hands on her hips. She’s taken to wearing men’s pants, which Jared finds a little unsettling. He’s never seen a woman wear pants before, but sometimes he forgets that Alona is a woman. She doesn’t talk like a lady or walk like a lady and if it weren‘t for that pretty ladylike face, he‘d think she was a man, a very tiny man.
“Calm down now darling,” Kristin says softly putting her hand on Alona’s shoulder. Unlike Alona, Kristin prides herself on being a feminine kind of woman. Jared can tell that back in her real life Kristin was the type of girl who kept her hair curled and swept up and her dresses clean and pressed.
“No, I damn well ain’t! We hardly got no food left! We can’t take in no strangers!”
“What, you think we should just push him out? Leave him to fend for himself?” Gabe asks.
“Look farmer, why don’t you go and check up on that pregnant wife of yours and just leave me be?” Alona gives Gabriel a leering, false smile before turning her attention back to Jared. “We don’t have any food for him!”
“I don’t,” Jensen groans from the floor coming to. He curls his legs up to his chest and thrashes about, pushing up dust and debris from the rickety wooden planks. “I don’t plan on staying. You shouldn‘t either…gotta keep moving.”
Gabe helps Jensen stand to his feet. Jared glares coldly at the man he once considered giving up his life for, but says nothing.
“What’s your name mister?” Kristin smiles softly as Jensen sits down at the bar hesitantly looking up at Jared.
“Jensen, Jensen Ackles. I’m just passing through looking for a horse to ride.”
“Our horses are dead,” Alona laughs almost cruelly. “We’re as good as dead too.”
“Hush now! Quit talking like that!” Kristin warns fixing Jensen a drink.
“I’d really like some water if you got any madam.” Jensen drinks the tepid glass of water as if it’s sweet sap. It tastes faintly of dust and something chalky, but he hurriedly downs the contents before asking for a refill.
“Where’d you come from?” Gabe repeats waiting for Jensen to collect his bearings.
“Dallas,” he pauses to sip. “I was coming down from there.”
“Is it bad? As bad as Austin?”
“Well, I ain’t been to Austin so I don’t know how you’re measuring ‘bad’, but Dallas…I’ve never seen nothing like that in my life. Those...people…they weren’t people no more. I saw my mama and my papa just walking around like it wasn’t nothing…like they ain’t been dead for two years.” Jensen’s voice cracks and he motions for a drink of something a lot stronger than water. “…and the smell…I ain’t never smell nothing like that before. Like shit, and rotted insides and gutted animals…”
“How’d you make it out?”
“There was a good lot of us who managed to hide in the church, but even church couldn’t keep us safe. Those people came in, started attacking…” Jensen’s voice breaks. “They were eat’n people. Can you imagine that: people eat’n people like it wasn’t nothing! I grabbed my kid sister’s hand and we hopped on a horse and got outta there...”
Jared doesn’t ask what happened to Jensen’s sister and why she isn‘t with him now. He already knows.
* * *
Day 6
Despite the rumbling, knotted pull inside of his stomach Jared gives his last ration of food to Katherine. She thanks him and eats the small jar of preserved peaches and hunk of smoked jerky gratefully. It’s not a matter of wanting to leave anymore; now it‘s a matter of having to leave in order to survive. All the horses and cows are dead and not so much as a hare ever comes in sight. It’s eerie how the only signs of life sit in the cantina listening to Sophia fiddle around with the phonograph trying to get the fangled thing to work. Every day she tries to fix that damn thing and everyday it stays broken. Jared doesn’t understand why she keeps on trying.
Felix and Ruben sit in the corner talking in that language that Jared grew up hearing all around San Antonio, but had always been too busy to learn. Now he wishes he would have made the time to. There are so many things Jared wishes he would have done, back when he had a real life. He would have gotten that education his mother always said he should have gotten. He would have laughed at all of his father’s jokes instead of only some. He would have brushed the hair of his little sister’s doll baby instead of yelling at Megan to get out of his face. He wouldn’t have hated his brother for running off and marrying the banker’s daughter. So many things he would have done or done differently had he known that this was how it was gonna end.
“Pour me a drink, will ya?” He raises his head looks up at Chad expectantly.
“If I pour you this glass, you gotta play me a hand.” Chad grins, blue eyes squinted, blonde hair dirty and dingy, falling into his handsome face.
“I’d be a fool to play cards with you! Besides, what we gonna play for? Neither one of us got no money.” Jared laughs and Chad pours.
“When’d you start drinking like that?” The voice comes cool above Jared, washes across him like warmth from the sun.
“You were always bad at that.” Jared sips leisurely.
“At what?” Jensen sits beside him.
“Small talk.”
“Yeah, well you’ve always been bad at that.”
“What?” Jared throws him a sideways glance and Jensen smiles the corners of his impish green eyes crinkling.
“Nothing,” he mumbles. “I gotta say outta all this craziness going round’, bumping into you is the craziest.”
“Crazier than the dead walking?” Jared grins. The alcohol is making him forget about things like grudges and undying hatred.
“Almost. Figured hell would freeze before I’d ever see you again.” Jensen drawls, the words coming out honey-poured slow.
“Well Jensen,” Jared pauses taking a swig from his glass. “I reckon with the world ending and all, hell must’a frozen over too.”
* * *
Day 7
They wind up. They make a plan to leave. They go around the town collecting anything they deem useful that’s not too heavy to carry. Helena is of no use to them anymore; all the food is gone and it’s time to head east again. They look like a pack of wayward vagabonds as they walk. Gabe holds onto Katherine tightly making sure she doesn’t fall as she walks across a rough terrain full of rocks and uneven earth. Their two little boys Luke and Paul are weak from hunger, but feel excited about a ‘new adventure’ and they trail behind their parents, both as quiet as field mice.
“ ¡La mirada, la mirada!” Ruben yells flailing his arms wildly. “¡El renuevo, el renuevo!” He screams.
“What? I don’t understand?” Jared asks following Ruben’s eyes to a clearing in the woods where one of those Things stands. The Thing has no eyes, only sockets where eyes used to be. Blistered, rotted, blackened flesh slips from its face. It has the keen sense of smell like a dog and it lifts its head in their direction. It begins wobbling toward them, clothes nothing more than scraps against a decayed, emaciated frame. Jared wastes no time. He raises the shotgun and shoots the damn Thing clear in the middle of its forehead. It goes down. It doesn’t move.
“Shit, if there’s one, there’s probably a hundred more!” Alona swears. “There’s a hundred of them and only four guns!”
“Calm down, people we hafta make a decision and we gotta make it now! We can either keep going and lord knows how many of those Things are walking through the woods or we can head back up to Helena and hide out there.”
“Hide out?” Garrett laughs kicking up dust with a dirty boot. “And what? We go back up there and wait for those Things to come?”
“Well what else can we do?” Chad grunts.
“We keep going!”
“Keep going?” Gabe grunts. “That’s your answer? Keep going? I got my wife and my little boys to think about. What if there’s more of ‘em out there than what we can handle?”
“But what if there ain’t?” Sophia argues taking a step toward Garret.
“Alona, I don’t wanna go through those woods! Don’t make me, please don’t make me!” Kristin pleads, fingers clasping around Alona’s slender, pale wrist.
“Okay baby, okay now hush.” Alona says brushing her hand tenderly through Kristin’s hair. The moment between them is shockingly intimate. It makes Jared feel uncomfortable and he glances over to Jensen, knowingly. Their eyes hold and that time so long ago, when the rancher’s son and the preacher’s son were as close as two boys could be doesn‘t really feel like another life. Jared looks away.
* * *
Day 8
The old hotel above the saloon has twelve rooms, half of which are on the second floor. They break chairs and take the doors off abandoned homes to seal up all the windows and entrances so no one can get in or out. It’s a fortress. Chad, Sophia, Garrett, Ruben and Felix decided that they weren’t gonna go back to Helena. Sophia said she’d rather die fighting those Things than go out hiding like a coward cuz her daddy ain‘t raised no coward; a whore: yes, but a coward: no. Jared thinks they’re probably all dead by now. Or maybe they’re not. Maybe they made the right decision and Jared and the rest of them are the ones waiting on death. Who knows.
“You doing alright there?” Jensen asks standing with his shoulder leaning against the doorframe of the meeting room. Jared briefly looks up from the book he’s found underneath the bed.
“Are you?” He asks and the words come out a little meaner than he intends for them to be.
“Shit,” Jensen sighs. “Don’t think anybody is. I think everybody’s going crazy.”
“What we need to do is all stay close, look out for each other. Safety and numbers.”
“You ain‘t never change.” Jensen pensively smiles and stares at Jared wistfully.
“I don’t catch you.”
“Even when we were young’ns you always was good. Always wanted things to be right and fair.”
Jared closes his book.
“Don’t do that.” He stands. “Don’t be bringing up things that ain’t to be brought up.”
He pushes past Jensen and heads downstairs to the saloon in search of drink.
* * *
Day 9
Kristin cries. Every hour, every minute, every second she cries. At first Jared is sympathetic. He can understand her fears because they are his own, but after the third hour he can’t take it anymore. Katherine’s the one with child and if she’s not crying, then no one else should be. Paul and Luke don’t cry either so surely if a pregnant woman and two, small children aren’t crying than what right does Kristin have to?
“Would you quit that?” He grunts peering out of the window. No sign of life, or…something like living in sight. He breathes easy.
“I,” Kristin cries, “can’t help it.”
“Yes you can!” Jensen groans sitting down on the edge of the bed.
“She’s scared, leave er’ alone!” Alona grunts. She’s wearing the same pants she’s worn for almost a month. At one time Jared imagines they were a smooth, cream color, but the wear and tear has turned them dingy gray. As the days past she’s starting to look more and more like a man, or at least Jared’s starting to forget that she’s a woman. Alona’s not really a woman in the literal sense; she’s just someone else trying to survive.
“Look,” Jensen pauses raking a hand through the rough threads of his spotted, patchy beard. “You gotta stay calm, okay? Just breathe or something -anything, just quit crying. Please?”
“I can’t…I’m trying and I can’t.”
* * *
Day 10
In hindsight Jared realizes that the idea he had for them all to share one room was a silly one, despite the knowledge that there really is safety in numbers. People need space too and when they don’t get it, they start to become wild. There’s six bedrooms on the top floor. Alona and Kristin take one just like they had been doing since that first night. Gabriel, Katherine and their two sons take another just like they had been doing since that first night. There’s four rooms left and Jared doesn’t want to sleep alone like he‘s been doing, not with the chance of those Things coming around. Now his fear runs as wide and strong as a rippling tide. He looks at Jensen nervously, expectant, like Jensen’s supposed to automatically know what he’s thinking without him having to actually speak.
“What?” Jensen sighs tiredly. Jared closes his eyes and shakes his head in resignation. The world is going to hell, what else is there left to lose? Maybe he can gain something or at least live in the memory of a time not too long ago.
“Do you wanna bunk up?”
“Oh…maybe we -what the hell.”
* * *
Day 11
It’s been four days since they’ve eaten. Katherine’s near-sick. Her skin burns with fever and she has a cough that makes the boys afraid to touch her.
“My wife and boys are starving,” Gabe states, shoulders sagged and head bowed in a shame he shouldn’t feel. “I gotta go out and get them something to eat.”
“We’re all hungry.” Alona grunts loading her shotgun. “Look out there! It’s been days and we ain’t see not one of those Things! Maybe it was just the one. We can go down to the woods try to catch a rabbit or something and make a nice stew.”
“It ain’t smart to leave.” Jensen states eyes firm on her.
“And it ain’t smart to starve to death! I’m gonna go out there and catch me and my lady some dinner and if you wanna eat, you bests be coming too!”
“Sit down!” Jared’s voice bellows. He rises from the chair. “I’ll go. Tomorrow morning, I‘ll go and try to catch something.”
“What? No, no!” Jensen grunts with alarm.
“She’s right, if we don’t find something to eat we’ll be dead in a few weeks, that is if those Things don’t get us first and we’d be giving ‘em and easy job seeing as how we’ d be too weak to put up much of a fight. I’ll head out at dawn.”
“I’m coming with you.” Alona states firmly.
“No, I’ll go.” Jensen offers. “You stay here and look out for everyone.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Gabriel asks, eyes wide with panic.
“Stay here and try not to die.”
“Tomorrow, then?” Jared asks and Jensen looks at him and grins.
“Dawn.”
+ + +
Nighttime is always the worse. It’s when it’s quiet, too quiet and Jared tosses and turns. He never sleeps well. He can feel the warmth of Jensen’s body stretched out long and sleeplessly beside him. For a moment Jared remembers being fourteen-years-old and hopelessly infatuated with the older boy up the road; the preacher’s son who had a string wrapped around his heart.
“Can I ask you sumthin?” He asks through the darkness.
“Go on.” Jensen muffles keeping his back to Jared.
“Arizona…why?” His voice is strangled.
Jensen doesn’t answer. Instead he turns on his side and gingerly splays his fingers across Jared’s warm, flat stomach.
“I wrote you...”
“I know,” Jared sighs. He holds his breath.
“You never wrote back.” Jensen voice strangles like the sound a hurt dog makes when it’s crying in the rain.
“You left. You didn‘t even tell me you were leaving. It was like one day you were just gone.”
“I didn’t mean to. My daddy wanted me to go and study, be a preacher just like he was.”
“Yeah,” Jared shifts away.
“Hey, come on. I was a kid then. I was eighteen and scared. I thought that everybody knew, I thought they could look at us and tell. They would’a killed us if they knew…killed us. I had to get away from ya, I had to.”
“No, you didn’t,” Jared whispers. “No one knew nothing and no one would’a ever knew nothing!”
“I was a coward, okay?” Jensen clutches the waistband of Jared’s pants. “A no good coward.”
“Ten years Jensen,” Jared drawls slinging his leg across Jensen’s body, an arm pulling him closer. “Ten long years...”
In the hushed, shadowy stillness of night sharp breaths and guttural sighs fracture the silence. And a desperate comfort is found.
* * *
Day 12
As the yellowed-fire sun begins to blaze down on the earth Jared and Jensen set out on foot toward the hills of Helena, shotguns by their sides and revolvers in the waistbands of their pants. There’s an equitable silence that breathes between the two men like stilled water. They don’t talk about the night before, but the knowledge that something was beginning again provided them with an easy reassurance, like there was light at the end of the dismal tunnel that for so long looked too dark to travel through.
The city of Helena becomes a blur of as they break distance. The blackland woods are dense with the kind of green only summer can bring. The trees stand tall and proud, providing shade from an unforgiving sun. Broken off pine needles carpet the baked, brown earth like a sheepskin rug. They walk for close to an hour it seems, but it could be longer, could be shorter. It’s unnatural for the woods to be so empty. Not a fawn or a hare insight. It just ain’t right. Something must’a scared them all off.
“Think we wasting time?” Jared asks stopping to rest against a tree.
“Shh,” Jensen ushers Jared to keep quiet. He mouths ‘look’ as he lifts his gun quietly. A small gray and white badger rests near a bush.
“Use the revolver.” Jared whispers knowing a shotgun blast wouldn’t leave much meat.
Jensen’s a good marksman, catches the game with the first bullet.
* * *
Day 13
It’s raining outside. Fresh water tumbles from the sky and Jared hasn‘t felt this close to happy in a very long time. The well near the ruins of the general store fills to capacity. For the first time in months Jared can say that he’s not hungry. Alona Tal can make one fine badger stew.
“Mama, can we go and play in the rain?” Luke asks, big brown eyes staring pleadingly into his mother’s face. He’s the spitting image of his daddy.
Katherine coughs. Her fever has broken, but she still has that awful, hacking cough that reminds Jensen of the cough his cousin Mary had that turned into tuberculosis.
“No, it ain’t safe.”
“Come on mama, please! We don’t never get to do nothing no more!”
“Yeah mama, please can me and Luke go?” Paul pleads. He’s the spitting image of Katherine’s mama with his big, green eyes and crazy white-blonde hair.
“Now boys, I said no! You know it ain’t safe out there!”
“Mama we-”
“Now hush it! I don’t wanna hear another word about it!”
Not to be deterred, Luke and Paul go out into the hall. They sit with their backs against the wall playing the ‘listening’ game. It’s when you get real quiet and just ‘listen’ to the sounds. Down at the far end of the hall they can hear Kristin crying, again. Luke really likes her, thinks she’s pretty, but Paul likes Alona better. Says Alona’s tough and he likes tough girls and can‘t stand all the crying Kristin does. In the next room they can hear Jared and Jensen laughing. Then the old mattress starts to groan, and Jared and Jensen make funny, hurt sounds that make Luke and Paul decide they should play a different game.
+ + +
Jared’s lying in the bed, eyes lazed shut and head dizzy from Jensen’s mouth when the pounding on the door starts. Jensen rolls off of him just in time before the door opens and Gabriel comes running inside.
“The boys,” he gasps, “they’re missing!”
“What do you mean missing?” Jared stands stepping into his boots.
“They, they, they’re gone!”
They search the hotel high and low, from the cellar to the attic. All the boards are still up on the windows and across the doors and Jared thinks there’s no way Luke and Paul could have gone outside.
“No, No!” Jensen yells thundering down the stairs to the saloon, spurs jangling. “They’re outside and one of those Things is heading straight for ‘em!”
“What?” Gabe shrieks.
“From upstairs, I saw ‘em from the window!”
Jared’s frantic as he pulls the boards away from the door. They can hear Luke and Paul screaming and fear the worst.
“Papa’s coming boys, I’m coming!”
By the time they get outside Luke is screaming his head off. One of those Things has its jaw clamped down into the small boy’s shoulder and it doesn’t seem to wanna let go.
“Get offa mah’boy!!!!!!”
“Wait!!!” Jensen yells, but it’s of no use. Gabriel charges at the Thing pulling and yanking until it draws off of Luke with a sickening crunch taking a chunk of the boy‘s shoulder with him. The rain washes the blood out of its mouth as it chews pale, white flesh. This one is almost fresh. The skin is still intact, but the eyes are yellowed over and completely lifeless. It’s a man and it moans as it struggles to stand like its forgotten how to, his pug of a nose sniffing the air turning its head in their direction.
Jared raises the shotgun.
* * *
Day 14
The rain comes down hard and violently, lightening cracks through the sky like a whip, cutting through the earth electrically charged. Through one of the upstairs bedroom window’s Jared can see two of those Things dragging their feet down the road going nowhere in particular, particularly slow. The body of the Thing Jensen shot the day before lays dead -real dead, a mangled pile of skin and rotting matter where a head used to be. The bad thing about a rainstorm is it’s impossible to get a fire going and those Things are like cockroaches; one attracts many.
“Sweet Jesus,” Jared hisses. Jensen stops cleaning the shotgun and steps beside him, peering out the window into a grim, dismally wet gray afternoon.
“Are they… are they eating it?” Jensen asks, revulsion dripping from his tone as he watches a woman with half of a face bite into the corpse‘s stomach, digging its fingers into the remains of an abdomen, scratching and biting until it pulls the innards out. The other Thing chomps and chews the intestines while the first just plays around with the insides as if mesmerized by the pink tissue before greedily devouring the meat.
“Gimmie mah’ rifle.” Jared drawls and he opens the window.
“I got this.” Jensen cocks, shoots, reloads and shoots again.
+ + +
Jared goes to check on Luke. Katherine refuses to let the him out of her sight and keeps him laying in the bed, pulled close to her as if the heat inside the hotel isn‘t hot enough to suffocate. The boy looks bad. He has a fever, but he keeps complaining about how cold he feels and his skin‘s a lot paler than normal. The wound in his arm’s getting infected and oozes something putrid, oily and brown. He curls up against his mama, tiny hand pressing flat down on her round belly and his shoulders begin to shake and tremble as if the world‘s trying to squeeze the life out of him.
“Cold mama,” he whispers, “so cold.”
“It’s okay baby hush now. No need to be fretting.” Katherine tries to soothe him. She rubs her delicate, fine hand through Luke’s soft dark curls. She kisses to top of his forehead wrapping him up in her arms tightly. Gabriel stands beside the bed and looks on.
Paul’s nowhere in sight.
* * *
Day 15
Jared awakes to the horrid sound of a woman screaming. Jensen jumps out of the bed with a start reaching for the shotgun before his clothes and quietly opens the door. The smell in the hallway makes Jared’s insides churn. Bile rushes up and hits the back of his throat splashing across his tongue like acid. He knows this smell, it’s the smell of something dead, or not quite dead or a little bit of both.
“Get yer’ gun ready,” he whispers breathing shallow. “They’ve gotten inside.”
“Oh my god, oh my god! Stop! Stop!!!!” The screaming is coming from Alona and Kristin’s room.
Jared kicks the door in, shotgun aimed and ready. The smell hits them hard and breathing is a challenge.
“Help me…” Kristin whispers, blood spilling from her mouth like tree sap. Her blue eyes are glazed over as if she’s in the kind of pain that just can’t hurt no more, so it doesn‘t. She lays back slumped against the peeling yellow paisley papered wall. The base of the bed obscures the lower half of her body. Jared makes a move toward her, but Jensen stops him.
“Don’t,” he sighs lifting his gun. He steps around the bed. Alona buries her face into Kristin’s lap, biting and pulling at the flesh. A river of red pours from Kristin’s body and paints Alona’s face bright and ugly.
“Our father, lord in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”
“Make her stop…” Kristin cries. “She‘s killing me...”
Jensen shoots Kristin. It’s the humane thing to do and as Alona lifts her head in his direction, eyes glassy, distant, empty, Jensen splits her skull open.
+ + +
When Jared and Jensen go to Gabriel and Katherine’s room they find the sheets soaked with blood and no sign of the Tigerman family. The decision to leave is made in haste.
“Here,” Jensen says tossing Jared a satchel. “There’s ammo in there.”
“And we’re gonna need all we can get! There’s eight of them Things outside, lord knows how many more I can‘t see through the window.”
“Those Things are slow and dumb. If we can’t kill em,” Jensen pauses, steps into his boots, “then we outrun ‘em is all. It‘s just you and me, we can do it.”
“How ya think Alona turned into that?”
“I don’t know, but if she turned that means anyone of us could’a.”
“You don’t think… I mean, all of em‘, even the little boys….” Jared trails off fastening the revolver into the holster around his waist.
“I can‘t say for certain,” Jensen says softly. “But they might be.”
“We gotta try and find ‘emfore we leave.”
“Alright, we’ll do a quick scout of the hotel first, but that’s it. We gotta get outta here and gotta get out quick before more of those Things come into town.”
As they prepare to leave a soft knock comes to the door. Jared turns to look at Jensen mouthing for silence. Another knock comes, but this one sounds more like a crash, like the weight of a balled first proves to be too heavy for whoever is knocking.
“Who is it?” Jensen yells. There is silence. “You bests be speaking up!”
More silence.
Jensen looks at Jared and they nod, a silent agreement passing between them. Jared loads the shotgun as Jensen opens the door. Jared’s finger is around the trigger and he’s expecting to see something big, decaying and evil trying to stumble in, but instead he sees something small, delicate and terrified shaking in the doorway. It’s Paul and his face and neck are smeared with streaks of blood. He’s trembling like the devil himself put a curse upon his tiny little head. His round green eyes have wondered to some far off place like he’s hiding within himself, like that’s the only safe place left.
“My…my…” Paul whispers in a voice so faint you have to strain to hear him. “My mama ate my daddy.”
Jensen hatches the lock on the door and ushers him to the bed.
“What happened, young’n?” His voice is kind, soft and tender like a warm summer‘s day.
“My mama…ate my daddy.”
“Where’s your brother?” Jared asks.
“My mama ate my daddy.” Paul repeats.
“Listen little feller,” Jared stoops low, puts his hands on Paul’s legs. “I need to know where your brother is so we can all get outta here.”
“My mama ate my daddy.”
Jared looks up at Jensen, shakes his head in resign.
“Did…did mama…did mama hurt Luke?” Jensen asks.
“No.”
“Did daddy hurt Luke?”
“I hurt Luke.” Paul whispers.
“How did you hurt your brother?” Jared asks gently and Paul begins to cry.
“I didn’t mean to, honest, I swear it! He was try’n to get me and I had to, I had to, honest!”
“It’s okay young’n, ya hear?” Jensen pulls Paul into his arms and brushes his fingers through Paul’s fair curls.
“Paul, how did you hurt Luke?”
“I made daddy’s gun exploded him,” he sobs. “He was one of the monsters! He made mama into one of the monster things too!”
“Paul where’s mama now?” Jared asks, eyes focused on Jensen.
“Downstairs…with daddy.”
+ + +
The spurs on Jensen’s boots jangle as they descend the steps, Paul between he and Jared. They keep their eyes open and rifles ready. Jared feels a heavy sadness ball up inside of his chest as they pass through the saloon where the memories he has aren’t exactly happy, but they make him feel normal or as close to normal as he‘s felt in a good, long while. Together he and Jensen pull the boards off of the door. Rain breaks from the sky violently, a cool draft of air blows around them pushing pellets of rainwater into their faces, blurring their vision.
They’re here, outside, those dead Things walk slow, approaching. There’s a naked girl with a missing arm and rotting flesh. She’s dressed in a pretty, blue gown like when she was alive she came from money. Jared cocks his gun and shatters her face. Her brains look like scraps of pink cauliflower as the fly from the back of where her head used to be. The man sledging beside her lifts his head in her direction, rain washes the broken, decayed flesh from his face as he inhales the putrid scent of matter. He turns away from Jared and Jensen goes over to her carcass. He collapses to the ground and begins sifting and picking through her brains before tasting them. The urge to vomit hits Jared hard, but his stomach is empty and there’s nothing to regurgitate.
Paul snatches out of Jensen’s grasp.
“Paul, come back!” He yells as the small boy flees into the hotel. Jared and Jensen run after him, shooting off their rifles twice, taking down two more of those creatures.
Inside the saloon, Paul hides behind the bar.
“I don’t want the monsters to get me.” He screams, hands over his ears muffling the sound of Jared shooting from the doorway.
“Listen kid, they won’t, but you just gotta come out! Come on, if you stay here than they will get’cha!”
“Jensen, watch out!” Jared yells. Jensen turns around, sees Gabriel coming from out of the whiskey closet. The sclera of Gabe’s eyes have turned and ugly, murky grayish-green. Guts and innards spill from a seeping, open wound in his abdomen. He opens his mouth wide and slowly drags his feet toward Jensen. Jared raises the rifle and aims, but water’s gotten inside and won’t let him fire. He yells for Jensen to put Gabriel down, but Jensen won’t. He can’t do something like that in front of the kid.
“Daddy!” Paul cries.
“Jensen, shoot him!” Jared tosses the rifle to the ground, reaches for his revolver. Jensen gathers Paul into his arms and throws a bottle of whiskey at Gabe.
“I can’t do it in front of the kid! It’s his daddy!”
“No, that thing ain’t his daddy, just like that ain’t his mama!” Jared fires off his gun. In the corner of the room Katherine stands, lifeless, fresh bullet lodged in her chest. Her stomach is no longer round with child. Her stomach has been ripped apart, like something went inside and took it. Jensen tells Paul to close his eyes and they run out into the rain, the sound of Jared firing off his gun curdling the air like screams.
* * *
Day 16
The rain stops falling when the new sun rises. Jared, Jensen and Paul are soaked. Their bodies feel ragged as they walk the plains, heading east. The land is wet and barren, but that’s a good thing. There’s rainwater to drink and the vast, open space provides them a clear cut view to see as far as the eye can travel. There are no Things in sight. Around the forth mile, Paul begins to cry, says his feet feel like they’re gonna fall off so Jared puts him on his back, and they keep walking. Hunger rolls across their bellies, but there’s nothing to catch and even if there was, it’s still too wet to start a proper fire. So they keep trudging on. Occasionally they take breaks, sitting against broken tree stumps whenever the land becomes dense with greenery. Sometimes they stop in the middle of the road and sit right there on the ground.
When nightfall comes, Paul easily slips into something black and soundless.
“Poor little feller.” Jensen sighs taking a swig from a flask.
“Where’d you get that?” Jared laughs reaching for it.
“You didn’t think bullets were the only thing I thought to bring, did ya?” The sound of his laughter is rough and broken. He leans over, lays his head in Jared’s lap. “Oh God Jared, just…sweet Jesus almighty.”
“We’re gonna be fine.” Jared assures him running his fingers through Jensen’s long, dirty locks. He takes another swig from the bottle and doesn’t say another word.
* * *
Day 17
They walk for close to three miles before they come across a horse ranch. The owner is an old man with no eyes, arms or legs. He rolls across the dusty earth, flesh rotted black and when Jensen shoots him in the head, he doesn’t make a sound. Three out of the five horses are emaciated. Lord only knows how long their owner has been dead and how long they’ve been without food. Jared and Jensen scout the ranch making sure it’s free from anymore of those Things before they go into the barn and get horse feed. Inside the kitchen of the main house Jensen laughs a hearty kind of laugh as he finds the cabinets stocked with jars of fruits and preserves. He could really go for a thick, juicy medium-rare steak, but right now those jarred plums have never looked sweeter.
They decide to board up the rancher’s house like a fort, burrowing themselves inside. They’re gonna stay for a few days until they can get the horses stronger. Right now those mares couldn’t even make it up the road and Louisiana’s another good hundred miles away.
Paul falls asleep on the couch and Jared carries him into bedroom all the way in the back of the house before joining Jensen back in the kitchen. Jensen has an oaken bucket full of water warmed from a tintype, wood burning stove ready and fills an iron washtub. A gaslight lamp on the countertop gives the room a warm, comforting golden glow. They take their time and peel off the dirty, blood and semen covered clothes that have been worn for too many weeks to count. Jared is gentle as he wipes the dirt and filth away from Jensen’s neck. He runs the rag full of warm, soapy water down the firm muscles of Jensen’s back and he leans over, kisses his shoulder blade.
“We’re gonna be alright,” he whispers against clean, warm skin. “We’re gonna be just fine.”
/FIN
AN: Feedback is always lovely and appreciated. Thank you so much
coffeewordangel for encouraging me to finish this story when I was ready to quit halfway through and for holding my hand as I flailed over writing a genre I've never written before. I consider you the queen of zombie and apocalyptic fiction so thank you Heather for not only being a major inspiration, but a cheerleader too!
[Complete Fiction List ] new updates found / friend @
maddys_slash
Author:
caramel_maddy @
maddys_slash
Pairing / Characters: Jared / Jensen; Alona Tal / Kristin Bell; Gabriel Tigerman / Katherine Isabelle, Garrett Hedlund, Sophia Bush & Chad Michael Murray
Word Count: 7,922
Summary: AU The only safe place left in Texas is the tiny ghost town of Helena. The last thing the Jared thought he'd find there of all places was the man who left a hole in his heart a decade earlier.
Warning: Zombies / Historical.
Betas: Profound gratitude to
coffeewordangel ,
windmiran &
nikibee for the in depth critiques and grammar tweaking.
AN: I offered to write
woodstarling a story for her birthday last week and she requested a J2 western. NOT a crack!fic.
Three Eastward From Helena
Day 1
When the sun rises high into the sky on a Sunday they wake to find that all of the cattle have taken sick. The scleras of their eyes has turned a murky grayish-brown and their fur is falling out in clusters. The horses are sick too, but Jared’s more concerned with the livestock. He gets them water, shovels bales of hay and grass into the pasture in which they graze. They don’t eat. They stand huddled together as if the swell of a hundred degree heat is as good as an arctic blast. Jared knows it’s of no use trying to save them so he gives up and goes to round up the men. The calves die first. It’s quick, over before it actually begins. It takes all little longer for their mama’s innards to drop out, but when the cows stop breathing Jared already has his shotgun cocked and ready. He’s confident, even though he’s not much of a gunslinger.
“Make sure you get ‘em in the head,” he drawls. “We gotta burn the carcasses too. Light ‘em up and let ‘em cook until ain’t nothing left but ash. Don’t know if they’re gonna get back up so it’s better to be safe than gone.”
* * *
Day 2
Food supply is running low. There’s a ration given out to every man, woman and child, but even the children understand that they barely have enough food to last the rest of the week. Only God in all of his mighty glory knows for certain how much longer they’re gonna be stuck in this nowhere town. When Jared and his group had found Helena, Texas they were heading down from the Chinati Mountains where they‘d been hiding for the last month. The goal was to keep heading east. They heard that Louisiana was the best place to go because whatever sickness was killing everyone hadn’t yet reached the bayou and from there they could board a steamboat. They were chasing a pipedream, but that’s all they had. The journey down from the mountains to Helena had been long and hard. Six good men had given their lives in Rocksprings when some of those sick Things rose up from the earth. Those Things weren’t fast, but they were strong and once they got their fingers into you, you were as good as gone. The lucky ones got ripped apart til there wasn’t much left except skin, bone and cartilage. The unlucky ones with too much meat came back. Those Things always came back.
* * *
Day 3
Jared thinks of six years ago, thinks about the pretty girl back home in San Antonio. The one with the long dark hair and the slanted brown eyes whose mama came from a place he had never heard of. He asked the pretty girl to marry him and he remembers how she cried with a laugh, promised to provide him with a gaggle of babies. Then he remembers how the eve before their wedding she ran off down to Mexico. Sandy left a note saying that she was sorry, but her dreams were far bigger and better than Texas and wider and grander than being a lowly rancher’s wife. Sandra wanted to be a singer. She was going to be famous.
In the cantina the barmaid pours Jared a glass full of whiskey until it overflows. Food may be scarce, but there’s an abundance of alcohol that whoever lived in this place before them has left behind. There’s a general store and a hotel, even the ruins of a bank and an old schoolhouse line through the town. Maybe at one time the city of Helena had been a prosperous kind of place, but now it ain’t such, nothing but a ramshackle stretch of dry land, reduced to a ghost town like every other city had become. The sickness started going around in early February and today marks the beginning of June.
“How’re we gonna get outta here?” Sophia asks. “Ain’t no horses to ride.” She’s a slender girl underneath the bustle and petticoat. She has wild, dark hair, deep brown eyes and kind of reminds Jared of Sandy, except Sophia’s a whore by profession, not a singer. Maybe there ain’t much difference between singing and whoring, Jared thinks. He’s not really sure what he should think anymore.
“Don’t know.” Jared sips. Back in his real life he was never much of a drinker, but this isn’t his real life; this is only his life for now and he drinks with skill.
“You made us come here to this jerkwater burg with a lick and a promise you big, dumb bastard and now you’re telling me you don’t know how we’re gonna head east?”
“Sophia-”
“Don’t,” she sighs slamming the palms of her hands flat down on the bar. “I just…I’m scared.”
“You should be.”
* * *
Day 4
Felix and Ruben are fighting over the last bag of flour. They speak Spanish and Jared doesn’t understand them. He makes a move to step in, break them apart before they rip each other’s heads off, but Garrett stops him.
“Let ‘em be,” he says. Garrett’s not from Texas, he’s from up north, but came down south to pan for gold leaving his wife and son back home in Nebraska to starve. Those were his own words. Jared can‘t stand him, but Garrett’s as strong as an ox and with the world seemingly ending and all, it’s good to keep that kind of muscle around.
“You crazy? They’re gonna kill themselves!”
“So be it then.” Garrett chews on chap, runs a dirty, firm hand through long, stringy disheveled dishwater blonde hair. “Lord knows I haven’t had no entertainment in months.”
“You’re a sick son of a bitch! We gotta stick together-” Jared starts.
“Stick together?” Garrett laughs. “No we don’t! It’s every man for himself! I think you done forgot that rule, rancher.”
“No, I think you done forgot whose horse you rode to safety on when those Things almost got yer’ass.”
“And I thanked you for that, but make no mistake, if I could be anywhere else than this backwards place with all you backwards people, then I would be. If given the chance, I’d be gone quicker than a puff of smoke.”
* * *
Day 5
Through the mist of twilight, the stranger in black appears. The sun is preparing to rise into a clear, iceless sky. The earth is damp and the air smells of blood, urine and charred cow parts. It’s been two hours since Jared’s taken a drink and four months since he’s slept properly. He’s anxious, on the edge of something far and off. It’s been four days since the cattle have died and there are only a few jars of peaches left to be split between: three women -one of whom is with child, two men who don’t know more than a handful of English phrases, a no-good miner, a quiet farmer, a boisterous gambler and himself. Jared reaches for his holster, wraps his hand firmly around cool metal. He cradles the revolver in his palm pressing his index finger around the trigger.
“You just stay right there friend!” He yells pointing, aiming. The man in black freezes.
“I mean you no harm,” he yells. “I come here from Dallas!” He can talk, that makes him a real person and not one of those Things. Jared puts the gun away and waits.
The spurs on the man in black’s boots jangle as he approaches, black cowboy hat tipped and head bowed. He walks with an ease that Jared doesn’t quite understand, like how someone can walk with no fear of what the world was turning into. Hell on earth is what the bible said this kind of thing was. Hell On Earth.
“Do you,” the man coughs keeping his head down, “have water?” Jared nods and leads him into the saloon. It’s way too early for most of anyone else to be awake so Jared goes about fixing the stranger a drink himself.
“Corn whiskey.” He says pushing the glass to the stranger. The stranger downs the contents of the glass in one, long guzzle.
“Thanks. Now how bout’ some water?” The stranger looks up, meets Jared’s gaze for the first time. Their eyes lock and something familiar flickers between them. Jared knows him from some place only he can’t quite figure out where.
“Jared…” the stranger drawls slow, careful, eyes narrowed and jaw set. “ Jared Padalecki?”
Jared stares, tries to imagine what the stranger may look like with his black cowboy hat off, bushel of dirty, dark brown beard and mustache shaven. He sees smooth, soft freckled cheeks and a messy mop of light brown locks that the sun used to bleach almost honey back when they were young‘ns. He sees vibrant, green eyes that used to smile at the world, but seem a little darker, unfamiliar now. The stranger’s face is rougher than Jared remembers it being, weathered down. Time had been unforgiving and it takes Jared a moment to fully recognize him, but when he does he balls up his fists and grits his teeth.
“You no good bastard!”
He crashes his fist into the man’s cheeks sending Jensen Ackles flying into a purple painted emptiness.
+ + +
Jared thinks it’s the smell of barley and whiskey that makes Jensen’s lashes flutter after a handful of minutes have passed. He imagines that Jensen can probably hear all the voices chattering around him like wind through sand weed.
“Why is he bleeding like that? Jared, he’s not one of those things, is he?” Gabriel asks. Gabe’s a small kind of guy with shaggy, dark hair and the kind of fawn like brown eyes that give him an otherworldly innocence. He's quiet, timid, meek even and, out of everyone else, Gabriel Tigerman's the one that Jared likes the best. He respects him. You have to respect a man who gets a whore pregnant and then decides to make her into a proper ‘Lady’ by marrying and starting a family with her. Their two boys Luke and Paul are six and seven, and Katherine prays every night that the baby she’s carrying now is finally gonna be that girl she‘s always wanted.
“No, he ain’t one. He’s normal.” Jared grunts taking a sip of whiskey directly from the bottle. The alcohol burns as it goes down, stinging his throat and lighting his insides up with fire.
The saloon door opens. Alona and Kristin walk in. If you glance at them, you might take them for twins, two pale skinned, flaxen haired twin sisters. They’re cousins by marriage so no real blood flows between them, but they’re as close as two women can naturally be, bonded at the knee and attached at the hip. They even sleep in the same bed. Jared found them in Galveston by accident when he had stopped to fix the wheel on his carriage. He had thought for sure that Galveston was just another ghost town, those Things having devoured and, or infected everything they touched.
“No! No! No!” Alona grunts putting her slender hands on her hips. She’s taken to wearing men’s pants, which Jared finds a little unsettling. He’s never seen a woman wear pants before, but sometimes he forgets that Alona is a woman. She doesn’t talk like a lady or walk like a lady and if it weren‘t for that pretty ladylike face, he‘d think she was a man, a very tiny man.
“Calm down now darling,” Kristin says softly putting her hand on Alona’s shoulder. Unlike Alona, Kristin prides herself on being a feminine kind of woman. Jared can tell that back in her real life Kristin was the type of girl who kept her hair curled and swept up and her dresses clean and pressed.
“No, I damn well ain’t! We hardly got no food left! We can’t take in no strangers!”
“What, you think we should just push him out? Leave him to fend for himself?” Gabe asks.
“Look farmer, why don’t you go and check up on that pregnant wife of yours and just leave me be?” Alona gives Gabriel a leering, false smile before turning her attention back to Jared. “We don’t have any food for him!”
“I don’t,” Jensen groans from the floor coming to. He curls his legs up to his chest and thrashes about, pushing up dust and debris from the rickety wooden planks. “I don’t plan on staying. You shouldn‘t either…gotta keep moving.”
Gabe helps Jensen stand to his feet. Jared glares coldly at the man he once considered giving up his life for, but says nothing.
“What’s your name mister?” Kristin smiles softly as Jensen sits down at the bar hesitantly looking up at Jared.
“Jensen, Jensen Ackles. I’m just passing through looking for a horse to ride.”
“Our horses are dead,” Alona laughs almost cruelly. “We’re as good as dead too.”
“Hush now! Quit talking like that!” Kristin warns fixing Jensen a drink.
“I’d really like some water if you got any madam.” Jensen drinks the tepid glass of water as if it’s sweet sap. It tastes faintly of dust and something chalky, but he hurriedly downs the contents before asking for a refill.
“Where’d you come from?” Gabe repeats waiting for Jensen to collect his bearings.
“Dallas,” he pauses to sip. “I was coming down from there.”
“Is it bad? As bad as Austin?”
“Well, I ain’t been to Austin so I don’t know how you’re measuring ‘bad’, but Dallas…I’ve never seen nothing like that in my life. Those...people…they weren’t people no more. I saw my mama and my papa just walking around like it wasn’t nothing…like they ain’t been dead for two years.” Jensen’s voice cracks and he motions for a drink of something a lot stronger than water. “…and the smell…I ain’t never smell nothing like that before. Like shit, and rotted insides and gutted animals…”
“How’d you make it out?”
“There was a good lot of us who managed to hide in the church, but even church couldn’t keep us safe. Those people came in, started attacking…” Jensen’s voice breaks. “They were eat’n people. Can you imagine that: people eat’n people like it wasn’t nothing! I grabbed my kid sister’s hand and we hopped on a horse and got outta there...”
Jared doesn’t ask what happened to Jensen’s sister and why she isn‘t with him now. He already knows.
* * *
Day 6
Despite the rumbling, knotted pull inside of his stomach Jared gives his last ration of food to Katherine. She thanks him and eats the small jar of preserved peaches and hunk of smoked jerky gratefully. It’s not a matter of wanting to leave anymore; now it‘s a matter of having to leave in order to survive. All the horses and cows are dead and not so much as a hare ever comes in sight. It’s eerie how the only signs of life sit in the cantina listening to Sophia fiddle around with the phonograph trying to get the fangled thing to work. Every day she tries to fix that damn thing and everyday it stays broken. Jared doesn’t understand why she keeps on trying.
Felix and Ruben sit in the corner talking in that language that Jared grew up hearing all around San Antonio, but had always been too busy to learn. Now he wishes he would have made the time to. There are so many things Jared wishes he would have done, back when he had a real life. He would have gotten that education his mother always said he should have gotten. He would have laughed at all of his father’s jokes instead of only some. He would have brushed the hair of his little sister’s doll baby instead of yelling at Megan to get out of his face. He wouldn’t have hated his brother for running off and marrying the banker’s daughter. So many things he would have done or done differently had he known that this was how it was gonna end.
“Pour me a drink, will ya?” He raises his head looks up at Chad expectantly.
“If I pour you this glass, you gotta play me a hand.” Chad grins, blue eyes squinted, blonde hair dirty and dingy, falling into his handsome face.
“I’d be a fool to play cards with you! Besides, what we gonna play for? Neither one of us got no money.” Jared laughs and Chad pours.
“When’d you start drinking like that?” The voice comes cool above Jared, washes across him like warmth from the sun.
“You were always bad at that.” Jared sips leisurely.
“At what?” Jensen sits beside him.
“Small talk.”
“Yeah, well you’ve always been bad at that.”
“What?” Jared throws him a sideways glance and Jensen smiles the corners of his impish green eyes crinkling.
“Nothing,” he mumbles. “I gotta say outta all this craziness going round’, bumping into you is the craziest.”
“Crazier than the dead walking?” Jared grins. The alcohol is making him forget about things like grudges and undying hatred.
“Almost. Figured hell would freeze before I’d ever see you again.” Jensen drawls, the words coming out honey-poured slow.
“Well Jensen,” Jared pauses taking a swig from his glass. “I reckon with the world ending and all, hell must’a frozen over too.”
* * *
Day 7
They wind up. They make a plan to leave. They go around the town collecting anything they deem useful that’s not too heavy to carry. Helena is of no use to them anymore; all the food is gone and it’s time to head east again. They look like a pack of wayward vagabonds as they walk. Gabe holds onto Katherine tightly making sure she doesn’t fall as she walks across a rough terrain full of rocks and uneven earth. Their two little boys Luke and Paul are weak from hunger, but feel excited about a ‘new adventure’ and they trail behind their parents, both as quiet as field mice.
“ ¡La mirada, la mirada!” Ruben yells flailing his arms wildly. “¡El renuevo, el renuevo!” He screams.
“What? I don’t understand?” Jared asks following Ruben’s eyes to a clearing in the woods where one of those Things stands. The Thing has no eyes, only sockets where eyes used to be. Blistered, rotted, blackened flesh slips from its face. It has the keen sense of smell like a dog and it lifts its head in their direction. It begins wobbling toward them, clothes nothing more than scraps against a decayed, emaciated frame. Jared wastes no time. He raises the shotgun and shoots the damn Thing clear in the middle of its forehead. It goes down. It doesn’t move.
“Shit, if there’s one, there’s probably a hundred more!” Alona swears. “There’s a hundred of them and only four guns!”
“Calm down, people we hafta make a decision and we gotta make it now! We can either keep going and lord knows how many of those Things are walking through the woods or we can head back up to Helena and hide out there.”
“Hide out?” Garrett laughs kicking up dust with a dirty boot. “And what? We go back up there and wait for those Things to come?”
“Well what else can we do?” Chad grunts.
“We keep going!”
“Keep going?” Gabe grunts. “That’s your answer? Keep going? I got my wife and my little boys to think about. What if there’s more of ‘em out there than what we can handle?”
“But what if there ain’t?” Sophia argues taking a step toward Garret.
“Alona, I don’t wanna go through those woods! Don’t make me, please don’t make me!” Kristin pleads, fingers clasping around Alona’s slender, pale wrist.
“Okay baby, okay now hush.” Alona says brushing her hand tenderly through Kristin’s hair. The moment between them is shockingly intimate. It makes Jared feel uncomfortable and he glances over to Jensen, knowingly. Their eyes hold and that time so long ago, when the rancher’s son and the preacher’s son were as close as two boys could be doesn‘t really feel like another life. Jared looks away.
* * *
Day 8
The old hotel above the saloon has twelve rooms, half of which are on the second floor. They break chairs and take the doors off abandoned homes to seal up all the windows and entrances so no one can get in or out. It’s a fortress. Chad, Sophia, Garrett, Ruben and Felix decided that they weren’t gonna go back to Helena. Sophia said she’d rather die fighting those Things than go out hiding like a coward cuz her daddy ain‘t raised no coward; a whore: yes, but a coward: no. Jared thinks they’re probably all dead by now. Or maybe they’re not. Maybe they made the right decision and Jared and the rest of them are the ones waiting on death. Who knows.
“You doing alright there?” Jensen asks standing with his shoulder leaning against the doorframe of the meeting room. Jared briefly looks up from the book he’s found underneath the bed.
“Are you?” He asks and the words come out a little meaner than he intends for them to be.
“Shit,” Jensen sighs. “Don’t think anybody is. I think everybody’s going crazy.”
“What we need to do is all stay close, look out for each other. Safety and numbers.”
“You ain‘t never change.” Jensen pensively smiles and stares at Jared wistfully.
“I don’t catch you.”
“Even when we were young’ns you always was good. Always wanted things to be right and fair.”
Jared closes his book.
“Don’t do that.” He stands. “Don’t be bringing up things that ain’t to be brought up.”
He pushes past Jensen and heads downstairs to the saloon in search of drink.
* * *
Day 9
Kristin cries. Every hour, every minute, every second she cries. At first Jared is sympathetic. He can understand her fears because they are his own, but after the third hour he can’t take it anymore. Katherine’s the one with child and if she’s not crying, then no one else should be. Paul and Luke don’t cry either so surely if a pregnant woman and two, small children aren’t crying than what right does Kristin have to?
“Would you quit that?” He grunts peering out of the window. No sign of life, or…something like living in sight. He breathes easy.
“I,” Kristin cries, “can’t help it.”
“Yes you can!” Jensen groans sitting down on the edge of the bed.
“She’s scared, leave er’ alone!” Alona grunts. She’s wearing the same pants she’s worn for almost a month. At one time Jared imagines they were a smooth, cream color, but the wear and tear has turned them dingy gray. As the days past she’s starting to look more and more like a man, or at least Jared’s starting to forget that she’s a woman. Alona’s not really a woman in the literal sense; she’s just someone else trying to survive.
“Look,” Jensen pauses raking a hand through the rough threads of his spotted, patchy beard. “You gotta stay calm, okay? Just breathe or something -anything, just quit crying. Please?”
“I can’t…I’m trying and I can’t.”
* * *
Day 10
In hindsight Jared realizes that the idea he had for them all to share one room was a silly one, despite the knowledge that there really is safety in numbers. People need space too and when they don’t get it, they start to become wild. There’s six bedrooms on the top floor. Alona and Kristin take one just like they had been doing since that first night. Gabriel, Katherine and their two sons take another just like they had been doing since that first night. There’s four rooms left and Jared doesn’t want to sleep alone like he‘s been doing, not with the chance of those Things coming around. Now his fear runs as wide and strong as a rippling tide. He looks at Jensen nervously, expectant, like Jensen’s supposed to automatically know what he’s thinking without him having to actually speak.
“What?” Jensen sighs tiredly. Jared closes his eyes and shakes his head in resignation. The world is going to hell, what else is there left to lose? Maybe he can gain something or at least live in the memory of a time not too long ago.
“Do you wanna bunk up?”
“Oh…maybe we -what the hell.”
* * *
Day 11
It’s been four days since they’ve eaten. Katherine’s near-sick. Her skin burns with fever and she has a cough that makes the boys afraid to touch her.
“My wife and boys are starving,” Gabe states, shoulders sagged and head bowed in a shame he shouldn’t feel. “I gotta go out and get them something to eat.”
“We’re all hungry.” Alona grunts loading her shotgun. “Look out there! It’s been days and we ain’t see not one of those Things! Maybe it was just the one. We can go down to the woods try to catch a rabbit or something and make a nice stew.”
“It ain’t smart to leave.” Jensen states eyes firm on her.
“And it ain’t smart to starve to death! I’m gonna go out there and catch me and my lady some dinner and if you wanna eat, you bests be coming too!”
“Sit down!” Jared’s voice bellows. He rises from the chair. “I’ll go. Tomorrow morning, I‘ll go and try to catch something.”
“What? No, no!” Jensen grunts with alarm.
“She’s right, if we don’t find something to eat we’ll be dead in a few weeks, that is if those Things don’t get us first and we’d be giving ‘em and easy job seeing as how we’ d be too weak to put up much of a fight. I’ll head out at dawn.”
“I’m coming with you.” Alona states firmly.
“No, I’ll go.” Jensen offers. “You stay here and look out for everyone.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Gabriel asks, eyes wide with panic.
“Stay here and try not to die.”
“Tomorrow, then?” Jared asks and Jensen looks at him and grins.
“Dawn.”
+ + +
Nighttime is always the worse. It’s when it’s quiet, too quiet and Jared tosses and turns. He never sleeps well. He can feel the warmth of Jensen’s body stretched out long and sleeplessly beside him. For a moment Jared remembers being fourteen-years-old and hopelessly infatuated with the older boy up the road; the preacher’s son who had a string wrapped around his heart.
“Can I ask you sumthin?” He asks through the darkness.
“Go on.” Jensen muffles keeping his back to Jared.
“Arizona…why?” His voice is strangled.
Jensen doesn’t answer. Instead he turns on his side and gingerly splays his fingers across Jared’s warm, flat stomach.
“I wrote you...”
“I know,” Jared sighs. He holds his breath.
“You never wrote back.” Jensen voice strangles like the sound a hurt dog makes when it’s crying in the rain.
“You left. You didn‘t even tell me you were leaving. It was like one day you were just gone.”
“I didn’t mean to. My daddy wanted me to go and study, be a preacher just like he was.”
“Yeah,” Jared shifts away.
“Hey, come on. I was a kid then. I was eighteen and scared. I thought that everybody knew, I thought they could look at us and tell. They would’a killed us if they knew…killed us. I had to get away from ya, I had to.”
“No, you didn’t,” Jared whispers. “No one knew nothing and no one would’a ever knew nothing!”
“I was a coward, okay?” Jensen clutches the waistband of Jared’s pants. “A no good coward.”
“Ten years Jensen,” Jared drawls slinging his leg across Jensen’s body, an arm pulling him closer. “Ten long years...”
In the hushed, shadowy stillness of night sharp breaths and guttural sighs fracture the silence. And a desperate comfort is found.
* * *
Day 12
As the yellowed-fire sun begins to blaze down on the earth Jared and Jensen set out on foot toward the hills of Helena, shotguns by their sides and revolvers in the waistbands of their pants. There’s an equitable silence that breathes between the two men like stilled water. They don’t talk about the night before, but the knowledge that something was beginning again provided them with an easy reassurance, like there was light at the end of the dismal tunnel that for so long looked too dark to travel through.
The city of Helena becomes a blur of as they break distance. The blackland woods are dense with the kind of green only summer can bring. The trees stand tall and proud, providing shade from an unforgiving sun. Broken off pine needles carpet the baked, brown earth like a sheepskin rug. They walk for close to an hour it seems, but it could be longer, could be shorter. It’s unnatural for the woods to be so empty. Not a fawn or a hare insight. It just ain’t right. Something must’a scared them all off.
“Think we wasting time?” Jared asks stopping to rest against a tree.
“Shh,” Jensen ushers Jared to keep quiet. He mouths ‘look’ as he lifts his gun quietly. A small gray and white badger rests near a bush.
“Use the revolver.” Jared whispers knowing a shotgun blast wouldn’t leave much meat.
Jensen’s a good marksman, catches the game with the first bullet.
* * *
Day 13
It’s raining outside. Fresh water tumbles from the sky and Jared hasn‘t felt this close to happy in a very long time. The well near the ruins of the general store fills to capacity. For the first time in months Jared can say that he’s not hungry. Alona Tal can make one fine badger stew.
“Mama, can we go and play in the rain?” Luke asks, big brown eyes staring pleadingly into his mother’s face. He’s the spitting image of his daddy.
Katherine coughs. Her fever has broken, but she still has that awful, hacking cough that reminds Jensen of the cough his cousin Mary had that turned into tuberculosis.
“No, it ain’t safe.”
“Come on mama, please! We don’t never get to do nothing no more!”
“Yeah mama, please can me and Luke go?” Paul pleads. He’s the spitting image of Katherine’s mama with his big, green eyes and crazy white-blonde hair.
“Now boys, I said no! You know it ain’t safe out there!”
“Mama we-”
“Now hush it! I don’t wanna hear another word about it!”
Not to be deterred, Luke and Paul go out into the hall. They sit with their backs against the wall playing the ‘listening’ game. It’s when you get real quiet and just ‘listen’ to the sounds. Down at the far end of the hall they can hear Kristin crying, again. Luke really likes her, thinks she’s pretty, but Paul likes Alona better. Says Alona’s tough and he likes tough girls and can‘t stand all the crying Kristin does. In the next room they can hear Jared and Jensen laughing. Then the old mattress starts to groan, and Jared and Jensen make funny, hurt sounds that make Luke and Paul decide they should play a different game.
+ + +
Jared’s lying in the bed, eyes lazed shut and head dizzy from Jensen’s mouth when the pounding on the door starts. Jensen rolls off of him just in time before the door opens and Gabriel comes running inside.
“The boys,” he gasps, “they’re missing!”
“What do you mean missing?” Jared stands stepping into his boots.
“They, they, they’re gone!”
They search the hotel high and low, from the cellar to the attic. All the boards are still up on the windows and across the doors and Jared thinks there’s no way Luke and Paul could have gone outside.
“No, No!” Jensen yells thundering down the stairs to the saloon, spurs jangling. “They’re outside and one of those Things is heading straight for ‘em!”
“What?” Gabe shrieks.
“From upstairs, I saw ‘em from the window!”
Jared’s frantic as he pulls the boards away from the door. They can hear Luke and Paul screaming and fear the worst.
“Papa’s coming boys, I’m coming!”
By the time they get outside Luke is screaming his head off. One of those Things has its jaw clamped down into the small boy’s shoulder and it doesn’t seem to wanna let go.
“Get offa mah’boy!!!!!!”
“Wait!!!” Jensen yells, but it’s of no use. Gabriel charges at the Thing pulling and yanking until it draws off of Luke with a sickening crunch taking a chunk of the boy‘s shoulder with him. The rain washes the blood out of its mouth as it chews pale, white flesh. This one is almost fresh. The skin is still intact, but the eyes are yellowed over and completely lifeless. It’s a man and it moans as it struggles to stand like its forgotten how to, his pug of a nose sniffing the air turning its head in their direction.
Jared raises the shotgun.
* * *
Day 14
The rain comes down hard and violently, lightening cracks through the sky like a whip, cutting through the earth electrically charged. Through one of the upstairs bedroom window’s Jared can see two of those Things dragging their feet down the road going nowhere in particular, particularly slow. The body of the Thing Jensen shot the day before lays dead -real dead, a mangled pile of skin and rotting matter where a head used to be. The bad thing about a rainstorm is it’s impossible to get a fire going and those Things are like cockroaches; one attracts many.
“Sweet Jesus,” Jared hisses. Jensen stops cleaning the shotgun and steps beside him, peering out the window into a grim, dismally wet gray afternoon.
“Are they… are they eating it?” Jensen asks, revulsion dripping from his tone as he watches a woman with half of a face bite into the corpse‘s stomach, digging its fingers into the remains of an abdomen, scratching and biting until it pulls the innards out. The other Thing chomps and chews the intestines while the first just plays around with the insides as if mesmerized by the pink tissue before greedily devouring the meat.
“Gimmie mah’ rifle.” Jared drawls and he opens the window.
“I got this.” Jensen cocks, shoots, reloads and shoots again.
+ + +
Jared goes to check on Luke. Katherine refuses to let the him out of her sight and keeps him laying in the bed, pulled close to her as if the heat inside the hotel isn‘t hot enough to suffocate. The boy looks bad. He has a fever, but he keeps complaining about how cold he feels and his skin‘s a lot paler than normal. The wound in his arm’s getting infected and oozes something putrid, oily and brown. He curls up against his mama, tiny hand pressing flat down on her round belly and his shoulders begin to shake and tremble as if the world‘s trying to squeeze the life out of him.
“Cold mama,” he whispers, “so cold.”
“It’s okay baby hush now. No need to be fretting.” Katherine tries to soothe him. She rubs her delicate, fine hand through Luke’s soft dark curls. She kisses to top of his forehead wrapping him up in her arms tightly. Gabriel stands beside the bed and looks on.
Paul’s nowhere in sight.
* * *
Day 15
Jared awakes to the horrid sound of a woman screaming. Jensen jumps out of the bed with a start reaching for the shotgun before his clothes and quietly opens the door. The smell in the hallway makes Jared’s insides churn. Bile rushes up and hits the back of his throat splashing across his tongue like acid. He knows this smell, it’s the smell of something dead, or not quite dead or a little bit of both.
“Get yer’ gun ready,” he whispers breathing shallow. “They’ve gotten inside.”
“Oh my god, oh my god! Stop! Stop!!!!” The screaming is coming from Alona and Kristin’s room.
Jared kicks the door in, shotgun aimed and ready. The smell hits them hard and breathing is a challenge.
“Help me…” Kristin whispers, blood spilling from her mouth like tree sap. Her blue eyes are glazed over as if she’s in the kind of pain that just can’t hurt no more, so it doesn‘t. She lays back slumped against the peeling yellow paisley papered wall. The base of the bed obscures the lower half of her body. Jared makes a move toward her, but Jensen stops him.
“Don’t,” he sighs lifting his gun. He steps around the bed. Alona buries her face into Kristin’s lap, biting and pulling at the flesh. A river of red pours from Kristin’s body and paints Alona’s face bright and ugly.
“Our father, lord in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”
“Make her stop…” Kristin cries. “She‘s killing me...”
Jensen shoots Kristin. It’s the humane thing to do and as Alona lifts her head in his direction, eyes glassy, distant, empty, Jensen splits her skull open.
+ + +
When Jared and Jensen go to Gabriel and Katherine’s room they find the sheets soaked with blood and no sign of the Tigerman family. The decision to leave is made in haste.
“Here,” Jensen says tossing Jared a satchel. “There’s ammo in there.”
“And we’re gonna need all we can get! There’s eight of them Things outside, lord knows how many more I can‘t see through the window.”
“Those Things are slow and dumb. If we can’t kill em,” Jensen pauses, steps into his boots, “then we outrun ‘em is all. It‘s just you and me, we can do it.”
“How ya think Alona turned into that?”
“I don’t know, but if she turned that means anyone of us could’a.”
“You don’t think… I mean, all of em‘, even the little boys….” Jared trails off fastening the revolver into the holster around his waist.
“I can‘t say for certain,” Jensen says softly. “But they might be.”
“We gotta try and find ‘emfore we leave.”
“Alright, we’ll do a quick scout of the hotel first, but that’s it. We gotta get outta here and gotta get out quick before more of those Things come into town.”
As they prepare to leave a soft knock comes to the door. Jared turns to look at Jensen mouthing for silence. Another knock comes, but this one sounds more like a crash, like the weight of a balled first proves to be too heavy for whoever is knocking.
“Who is it?” Jensen yells. There is silence. “You bests be speaking up!”
More silence.
Jensen looks at Jared and they nod, a silent agreement passing between them. Jared loads the shotgun as Jensen opens the door. Jared’s finger is around the trigger and he’s expecting to see something big, decaying and evil trying to stumble in, but instead he sees something small, delicate and terrified shaking in the doorway. It’s Paul and his face and neck are smeared with streaks of blood. He’s trembling like the devil himself put a curse upon his tiny little head. His round green eyes have wondered to some far off place like he’s hiding within himself, like that’s the only safe place left.
“My…my…” Paul whispers in a voice so faint you have to strain to hear him. “My mama ate my daddy.”
Jensen hatches the lock on the door and ushers him to the bed.
“What happened, young’n?” His voice is kind, soft and tender like a warm summer‘s day.
“My mama…ate my daddy.”
“Where’s your brother?” Jared asks.
“My mama ate my daddy.” Paul repeats.
“Listen little feller,” Jared stoops low, puts his hands on Paul’s legs. “I need to know where your brother is so we can all get outta here.”
“My mama ate my daddy.”
Jared looks up at Jensen, shakes his head in resign.
“Did…did mama…did mama hurt Luke?” Jensen asks.
“No.”
“Did daddy hurt Luke?”
“I hurt Luke.” Paul whispers.
“How did you hurt your brother?” Jared asks gently and Paul begins to cry.
“I didn’t mean to, honest, I swear it! He was try’n to get me and I had to, I had to, honest!”
“It’s okay young’n, ya hear?” Jensen pulls Paul into his arms and brushes his fingers through Paul’s fair curls.
“Paul, how did you hurt Luke?”
“I made daddy’s gun exploded him,” he sobs. “He was one of the monsters! He made mama into one of the monster things too!”
“Paul where’s mama now?” Jared asks, eyes focused on Jensen.
“Downstairs…with daddy.”
+ + +
The spurs on Jensen’s boots jangle as they descend the steps, Paul between he and Jared. They keep their eyes open and rifles ready. Jared feels a heavy sadness ball up inside of his chest as they pass through the saloon where the memories he has aren’t exactly happy, but they make him feel normal or as close to normal as he‘s felt in a good, long while. Together he and Jensen pull the boards off of the door. Rain breaks from the sky violently, a cool draft of air blows around them pushing pellets of rainwater into their faces, blurring their vision.
They’re here, outside, those dead Things walk slow, approaching. There’s a naked girl with a missing arm and rotting flesh. She’s dressed in a pretty, blue gown like when she was alive she came from money. Jared cocks his gun and shatters her face. Her brains look like scraps of pink cauliflower as the fly from the back of where her head used to be. The man sledging beside her lifts his head in her direction, rain washes the broken, decayed flesh from his face as he inhales the putrid scent of matter. He turns away from Jared and Jensen goes over to her carcass. He collapses to the ground and begins sifting and picking through her brains before tasting them. The urge to vomit hits Jared hard, but his stomach is empty and there’s nothing to regurgitate.
Paul snatches out of Jensen’s grasp.
“Paul, come back!” He yells as the small boy flees into the hotel. Jared and Jensen run after him, shooting off their rifles twice, taking down two more of those creatures.
Inside the saloon, Paul hides behind the bar.
“I don’t want the monsters to get me.” He screams, hands over his ears muffling the sound of Jared shooting from the doorway.
“Listen kid, they won’t, but you just gotta come out! Come on, if you stay here than they will get’cha!”
“Jensen, watch out!” Jared yells. Jensen turns around, sees Gabriel coming from out of the whiskey closet. The sclera of Gabe’s eyes have turned and ugly, murky grayish-green. Guts and innards spill from a seeping, open wound in his abdomen. He opens his mouth wide and slowly drags his feet toward Jensen. Jared raises the rifle and aims, but water’s gotten inside and won’t let him fire. He yells for Jensen to put Gabriel down, but Jensen won’t. He can’t do something like that in front of the kid.
“Daddy!” Paul cries.
“Jensen, shoot him!” Jared tosses the rifle to the ground, reaches for his revolver. Jensen gathers Paul into his arms and throws a bottle of whiskey at Gabe.
“I can’t do it in front of the kid! It’s his daddy!”
“No, that thing ain’t his daddy, just like that ain’t his mama!” Jared fires off his gun. In the corner of the room Katherine stands, lifeless, fresh bullet lodged in her chest. Her stomach is no longer round with child. Her stomach has been ripped apart, like something went inside and took it. Jensen tells Paul to close his eyes and they run out into the rain, the sound of Jared firing off his gun curdling the air like screams.
* * *
Day 16
The rain stops falling when the new sun rises. Jared, Jensen and Paul are soaked. Their bodies feel ragged as they walk the plains, heading east. The land is wet and barren, but that’s a good thing. There’s rainwater to drink and the vast, open space provides them a clear cut view to see as far as the eye can travel. There are no Things in sight. Around the forth mile, Paul begins to cry, says his feet feel like they’re gonna fall off so Jared puts him on his back, and they keep walking. Hunger rolls across their bellies, but there’s nothing to catch and even if there was, it’s still too wet to start a proper fire. So they keep trudging on. Occasionally they take breaks, sitting against broken tree stumps whenever the land becomes dense with greenery. Sometimes they stop in the middle of the road and sit right there on the ground.
When nightfall comes, Paul easily slips into something black and soundless.
“Poor little feller.” Jensen sighs taking a swig from a flask.
“Where’d you get that?” Jared laughs reaching for it.
“You didn’t think bullets were the only thing I thought to bring, did ya?” The sound of his laughter is rough and broken. He leans over, lays his head in Jared’s lap. “Oh God Jared, just…sweet Jesus almighty.”
“We’re gonna be fine.” Jared assures him running his fingers through Jensen’s long, dirty locks. He takes another swig from the bottle and doesn’t say another word.
* * *
Day 17
They walk for close to three miles before they come across a horse ranch. The owner is an old man with no eyes, arms or legs. He rolls across the dusty earth, flesh rotted black and when Jensen shoots him in the head, he doesn’t make a sound. Three out of the five horses are emaciated. Lord only knows how long their owner has been dead and how long they’ve been without food. Jared and Jensen scout the ranch making sure it’s free from anymore of those Things before they go into the barn and get horse feed. Inside the kitchen of the main house Jensen laughs a hearty kind of laugh as he finds the cabinets stocked with jars of fruits and preserves. He could really go for a thick, juicy medium-rare steak, but right now those jarred plums have never looked sweeter.
They decide to board up the rancher’s house like a fort, burrowing themselves inside. They’re gonna stay for a few days until they can get the horses stronger. Right now those mares couldn’t even make it up the road and Louisiana’s another good hundred miles away.
Paul falls asleep on the couch and Jared carries him into bedroom all the way in the back of the house before joining Jensen back in the kitchen. Jensen has an oaken bucket full of water warmed from a tintype, wood burning stove ready and fills an iron washtub. A gaslight lamp on the countertop gives the room a warm, comforting golden glow. They take their time and peel off the dirty, blood and semen covered clothes that have been worn for too many weeks to count. Jared is gentle as he wipes the dirt and filth away from Jensen’s neck. He runs the rag full of warm, soapy water down the firm muscles of Jensen’s back and he leans over, kisses his shoulder blade.
“We’re gonna be alright,” he whispers against clean, warm skin. “We’re gonna be just fine.”
/FIN
AN: Feedback is always lovely and appreciated. Thank you so much
coffeewordangel for encouraging me to finish this story when I was ready to quit halfway through and for holding my hand as I flailed over writing a genre I've never written before. I consider you the queen of zombie and apocalyptic fiction so thank you Heather for not only being a major inspiration, but a cheerleader too!
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