The fourth day (since the world ended)
Jo expected the apocalypse to be a lot noisier. Flashier. Not just those purplish clouds in the distance and the feeling of electricity dancing over her skin, crackling over everything. Ash tells her how it isn't so. The end of the world must be quiet.
"That so?" she asks. They have broken the most expensive bottles they could find, even the whisky her dad bought when she had been born, saving it for her wedding day. She takes a breath in. It's bitter. Her dad hasn't been around for years, his memory the only thing to haunt her every step.
They've moved two mattresses from the bedrooms into the main roadhouse, just in front of the bar, one next to the other. Plenty of pillows to prop themselves against.
Roadhouse barricaded as best as they could, though both know that they're going down. The world is going down. Has gone down already.
And if they're going down, they might as well go down in style.
"That exactly so," Ash says. He is lying lazily against their makeshift beds, dusting chip crumbs off his bare chest, business cum party hair tussled carelessly against the pillow. And Jo's thinking that if there is one person she'd like to have by her side when all falls down, it's him. Him and her mother.
First tears start to well up, but she's Bill's and Ellen's daughter, and has gone through shit. And can bite it down. She lets her hand trail to the shotguns by her side, ready and loaded, seeks strength in them. But can't stop thinking of her mother.
The Winchesters had called, Ash said. Then Bobby had called. The shit had hit the fan, and Ellen, with as many hunters she could summon, had left to help against Armaggedon. Ash had wanted to join.
Ellen had refused. Told him she needed someone to stay behind in case Jo came back. Told him she needed someone she could depend upon to keep Jo safe, keep Jo in, never tell Jo where or how to find them. Not let her join them. Ash had sworn he'd do that. Ellen had hugged him, held him close for a long, long time, told him she loved him. Told him that family isn't always about blood. Told him that if he were her boy, she'd be proud. Was proud. Sniffled a bit, let him go. Caressed his hair. Business up front, party in the back.
"If I'm not back in two days…" she didn't finish. He didn't either. Ash is too smart, too honest for white lies.
"Tell Joanna I love her. Tell her it's all for her. Everything. It always has been," Ellen said and walked through the door. She hadn't said goodbye. It'd be redundant.
Ellen knew her daughter. Jo kept her ear to the ground and set foot at the roadhouse hours after Ellen's departure. No force in the world would ever stop her from joining her mother and the fight. But Ash did.
And now here they are. Watching part of the world from a window. The purple sky. Some sort of angry silence carried by the wind. Dry, crackling atmosphere. Electricity buzzing. The storm coming, to catch them too.
"Why's that?" she asks. Her voice comes slurry. She hasn't had that much to drink, but she feels exhaustion deep in her bones.
"Why's what?"
"Why must the end of the world be quiet?"
"Ah." Ash looks at the ceiling. His eyes are red rimmed and hazy, but damned if that could ever fool Joanna Beth Harvelle. There are razors, sharp razors and intricate little machines whirring so fast behind those watered eyes, that the world would have a hard time catching up. If it wasn't falling apart already, that is.
"I guess," Ash says, "cuz this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper."
"Wow," she says after a beat that stretched twice as much as it should have. "That was deep. Really deep."
"You're duly impressed now, aren't ya?"
"Oh yeah," she says. There's a bite to her voice, but her fingers are crossing the line of her mattress to his, seeking out his hand. Ash' fingers wrap around hers willingly with a small crackle, and Jo is given strength the guns never could.
"I'm as impressed as I could ever be."
There's the sound of hair on fabric as Ash turns his head to her.
"Enough to have some quality time together?"
Jo gives him a blank stare.
"Huh?"
Ash shrugs.
"Oh come on, Jo. It's the end of the world. We got booze, we got food, we got guns. All that's missing for the perfect end-of-the-world party is one good lay. Lots of good lays."
She laughs. Slowly at first, then louder, till everything hurts in her ribs and chest, but when she turns to look at him, Ash isn't laughing. Just a tiny lazy smile on his face and a twinkle in his eyes that wasn't there before.
"You're serious."
"Goddamn right I am, Jo," Ash says. "Would be really poetic and all. Plus, you're really hot."
"Poetic?" Jo says unable to stifle her laughter. "Cuz I'm really hot? You're so romantic."
"That and the fact that I love you to bits. But mainly cuz I'm your first. And me being your first, should also be your last and all that stuff. Poetic. See?"
They realize the weight of his words as he speaks it and laughter dies out. Words such as last, all things final. Words the only sounds they are left with.
They tried calling, you see. Tried calling everyone they know and some they don't. They didn't get through. Then the lines fell dead. Then the radio was static buzz and the TV didn't work except for black and white grain. Then Ash's home-made computer couldn't log in anywhere. Then electricity failed. No radio, nothing. No way to know what had gone down, other than a voice mail left on Jo's phone with Ellen's voice. "It's really bad, honey. It's really bad. I lov…" Static. Jo called it over and over to hear her mother's voice, till there were no lines anymore. Then the battery died. She had cried locked in the bathroom, till Ash knocked on the door and made her come out, and rocked her back and forth till she eased. Till everything eased. Till the end of the world became a certainty, not likelihood/probability/possibility.
Denial, grief, resistance, resignation, acceptance. That sort of stuff.
It's the fourth day, you see. The fourth day since Ellen left.
"If this was your quote, I'm gonna give you the best blowjob of your life," Jo says after a while.
He hesitates. Longer than is necessary. Jo cocks her eyebrows at him.
"Not your quote," she grins. "I knew it."
Ash sighs in a heartfelt manner.
"T.S. Eliot," he mumbles. "From his Hollow Men. The guy who wrote The Waste Land."
"Apt."
"Yeah," he sighs again. "Do I get anything for aptness of quoting?"
She laughs. "No."
"Aw shit. I knew I should have lied."
Jo laughs, then slides her body alongside his, feels the electricity crackling and releasing when contact is made. Ash opens his arms, lets her nestle on his chest. She doesn't mind the chip crumbles sticking on her. Takes comfort in the steady thudding of his heart.
They stay silent.
"Hey Ash?" she asks quietly after a while. "You think they survived?"
She feels, rather than sees, his shrug.
"You think… you think maybe we are all wrong? Maybe it isn't the end?"
"Does it matter?" he says. "Does it really matter what I think?"
"Doesn't it?" She raises herself on her elbows to watch him, needs to see his eyes. They are no longer hazy. She thinks she can hear those blades working on the back of his mind. MIT mind.
"Facts are facts, Jo," Ash says palm curving around her shoulder. "It's the fourth day."
She lays back again. Light is falling softer, thinner through the windows. Dusk.
"You're taking it… easy," she says. Loves him for being her anchor.
"Yeah," Ash says. "Nothing I can do to change anything. And sooner or later we're all gonna die, so… and…y'know…I always thought that if I was to die, I'd want to spent my last hours on earth with you and your mom, here, drinking. Two out of three isn't that bad, Joanna Beth Harvelle. If this is really the end, I couldn't have asked for anything better. Now that's a fact."
She won't cry. She won't cry.
"What about the getting laid part?" Her voice breaks.
"Well…two out of four then," Ash says serenely. "Still good enough."
His hands pass through her hair absentmindedly.
"You know, Ash," Jo says, swallowing tears down. She won't spend her last days mourning. "You might get laid after all. And that's a fact too."
"Not a fact then," Ash says. "A fucked." She feels his grin on her hair.
Night falls and the silence carries through everything. Then Ash starts humming a tune.
They don't move for a long, long time.
They wait for the end of the world to catch up with them, holding on to each other like sleeping children.
-The End.
DISCLAIMER: Don't own them. Don't make money of them. That sort of stuff.
SIDENOTE: There are two more stories that form my apocafic trilogy. One is called This is the way the world ends (Trigger)featuring Sam and Dean Winchester and the YED, the other is The Conman (and the end of the world), featuring Bobby. The Conman will be uploaded soon. The rest are already up.