Chapter 1 When The Lights Went Out
May 8, 2010. Fort Wayne, Indiana
"Gotta delivery here for Dr Michaela Phillips? Vaccine for the influenza outbreak?" The delivery man tapped the counter of the hospital's reception area impatiently.
"Yes, one moment," the receptionist said, picking up the phone beside her. "Dr Phillips? The vaccine has arrived, could you come down, please?"
She put down the phone and smiled at the man. "She'll be right down."
"No problemo," he said, turning to lean against the counter as he gazed around the full waiting room. He grinned at a kid on the other side of the room, the grin getting wider as the kid's eyes widened in shock.
"From this point, we got all the time in the world," the delivery man murmured, his eyes flicking to black, from corner to corner.
May 24, 2010. London, Great Britain
"You 'ear this bleeding rubbish?"
The woman peeling vegetables turned around at her husband's outburst, her gaze shifting to the old-fashioned telly in the corner of the flat's small living room.
"Good evening. The unknown virus, that is spreading faster than authorities can contain it, has now been reported in Paris, Milan, Berlin, Moscow and St Petersburg, Barcelona, Madrid, Casablanca, Istanbul and Tel Aviv. Further reports have confirmed growing vectors in Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo and Kyoto, New Delhi, Santiago, Panama, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town and Cairo."
The baby started to wail and the man picked him up from the blanket on the floor, holding him in the crook of his arm.
"Nah then, none of that," he said, his voice low and gravelly as he looked back at the news anchor. "Got a world-wide disaster we have here, matey."
"Nationally, we have reports just in of infections in Birmingham, Edinburgh and Dublin. Cornwall has been quarantined as has Lincolnshire and the border counties. There are as yet unconfirmed instances being reported in Exeter, Kent, Wiltshire and Wales."
"Mum's in Wiltshire," the woman said worriedly, her hand smoothing over the pronounced curve of her belly as she glanced at the man. "I'll give her a ring after tea."
"The Queen has closed Parliament and the government have declared martial law to protect the citizenry. The police have advised that a curfew has been enforced and request that all citizens stay in your homes."
"Curfew," the man said disparagingly to the child in his arm. "Like that'll bloody well help."
He turned the telly off and stood, walking around the cheap table that divided the small kitchen from the rest of the flat's living area. "What's for tea then, luv?"
May 30, 2010. Kansas City, Missouri.
Dean swore as the next pile up appeared in front of him. He'd just gotten done moving two cars out of the way. At this rate it was going to take days to get out of the fucking city.
Beside him, Castiel watched the streets for more of the virus victims, the shotgun uncomfortable in his hand. He'd found Dean more by luck than anything else, the hunter still hidden from angelic view by the warding sigils engraved on his ribs, and his schedule erratic, to say the least, over the past week.
He looked through the windshield at the cars and trucks blocking the next intersection.
"I think you could probably get through on this side without moving anything, if you don't mind losing a little paint," he pointed out.
Dean's face screwed up in annoyance. Losing a little paint, like it was some minor consideration for fuck's sake. He eased the car over the kerb and looked at the gap. And naturally, the angel was right. He thought he could squeeze through the gap. The post box on the kerbside would give way, and he'd have some deep scratches up the side of the car. But better than sitting in this ever-growing graveyard and waiting to die.
He moved the car forward, face twisting into a grimace as the shriek of metal on metal filled his ears, his jaw muscle jumping and knuckles showing white through the skin, then they were through and there was a clear stretch of road.
"Where are we going?" Cas turned to look at him.
Dean rubbed his hand over his mouth and chin. "Bobby's."
"We should probably take the smallest roads, they're not likely to have so many obstructions."
"You think?" Dean asked sarcastically, turning away from the highway and digging through his memories for all the possible ways out of the city.
He didn't know what to do or where to go. He didn't know where his brother was, although given the current situation, he could field a pretty good guess at what Sam was doing. Or rather what Lucifer was doing with his brother's body. Shunting that thought aside, he concentrated on doing what he could do. Which was to go and get Bobby and see if the old man had any good ideas on what to do about the end of the world.
June 12, 2010. Lake Solitude, Michigan
Alexandra Tennyson tightened the last bolt on the big drive belt of the generator and set down the socket wrench, wiping her hands absently on the legs of her jeans. The genset had been a bargain, and now she knew why … it had taken her three weeks to get the parts it had needed to run properly, and three days to get them installed. She looked over at the big diesel tank beside the shed and got to her feet, walking to it and turning on the fuel valve. There was plenty of fuel for the machine, she thought as she walked back to the genset, enough for more than a couple of months in the gravity-fed tank. Bleeding the lines carefully to release any air bubbles that might have been present, she cranked it over. The motor stuttered for a few moments, and she closed her eyes, sending a plea to whatever gods were in charge of machinery that she'd fixed everything properly. The engine roared into life and settled down to a steady, deep chug and she smiled, opening her eyes and looking down at it with a gleeful satisfaction.
Might not have all the mod-cons here, she thought, picking up her tools and turning away to walk back to the workshop, but at least she'd have lights and enough power to run the fridges and freezers.
She looked around the dilapidated camp, pushing down her feelings of misgiving. The place had been really cheap, essential since the inheritance from her aunt had been small, but it had so much potential. The main building stood in a small clearing, between the mixed woods that covered the property from the road to the lake and past it down to the shores of Lake Huron, a sprawling two-storey timber and stone house with twelve bedrooms, four bathrooms, a commercial-sized kitchen, three living areas, dining room, offices and store rooms. The foundations went down to the bedrock and under the house a maze of root cellars and basement rooms took up almost the same square footage as the house above.
To either side of the building were the cabins, a dozen in total. Simple, two room buildings, strongly constructed of local logs and built on foundations of local stone, they'd been built eighty years ago as additional accommodation to what had then been a fashionable hunting lodge. Over the years, the property had been turned into a children's summer camp, a commune for a group of hippies in the '60s and '70s, had remained empty for a while before a local community organisation had bought it to rehabilitate juvenile delinquents. That project had apparently run out of funding, a little over ten years ago, and Camp Chitaqua had gone back on the market, unsaleable in a depressed economy, left to itself until she'd found it.
It needed a lot of work, she knew. But she had no expenses to speak of other than fuel for the generator and food for herself, and as much time as she needed, and she had a plan to bring the place back to its former glory as a summer camp for disadvantaged children; a chance to camp in the woods, fish and swim and canoe in the lakes, learn something different in lives that were perpetually bound to the tenement housing and violence of the streets in the cities of Chicago and Detroit.
Yeah, well don't get too far ahead of yourself, she told herself dryly. Still got a load of work to do before you get to that point. She closed the workshop doors behind her and walked up to the house, climbing the flight of steps to the broad wrap-around porch and going inside.
It'd taken her four weeks of solid cleaning to get the main house liveable, but looking around it now, she felt her heart lift with the difference. The main living area, to the right of the front hall, was clean and bright, the warm timber floors gleaming with polish, rugs scattered over them, a collection of second-hand club sofas and armchairs arranged loosely around the huge open hearth in the centre of the northern exterior wall. Clean windows let in the sunshine and reflected from the freshly painted white ceilings, and half of the built-in bookshelves that lined two of the walls were filled with her books, giving the room a homey, lived-in look.
She turned away from the room and walked down the short hall to the kitchen, another area of the big house that was finally clean and unpacked. It was daunting room to someone who'd spent most of her life living in small apartment or houses, holding two long cast-iron wood ranges as well as a commercial gas stove with six burners and two big ovens. Walking to the double stainless steel sinks, she turned on the tap and lathered her hands with the industrial de-greasing soap that sat on the windowsill, washing the grease and oil from her hands and looking out over the uninterrupted view down the slope to the shore of Lake Solitude. Even if it took her another year to get the cabins and the grounds cleaned up and ready, she thought, she wouldn't mind. Living here was worth it, the peace and tranquillity of the woods and lake reminding her of her childhood, of fishing and exploring the lakeshores with her father.
And she needed some peace and tranquillity after everything that had happened in the last year, she thought. Needed a time of quiet and rest to get her head back together, give herself time to heal.
Turning off the tap, she dried her hands, heading out of the kitchen and back to the hall, climbing the broad staircase to the upper level.
A shower, clean clothes and an evening of reading would round out the day perfectly, she decided, turning into the bedroom she'd chosen and slowing as she caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror next to the window. She stopped, staring at her reflection critically.
Five foot five inches in her bare feet, still pudgy from the seven months she'd spent in the hospital, her face rounded and pale. Her hair was slowly growing out. It'd been all shaved off, but it reached her jaw now, a soft tangle of maple-coloured curls that wouldn't take a style no matter what she'd tried. She pushed a hand through it, watching it settle back into the same tangle and sighed.
Her eyes still held shadows, she thought, memories too close too often. The irises were a soft grey-green in colour, flecked with blue and hazel close to the pupil and rimmed with a darker grey around the edges. Her brows and lashes had grown back, a huge relief. She hadn't been able to look at herself for months, not recognising the face in the mirror without them. They were a few shades darker than her hair and the lashes were thick again, casting a shadow against her cheeks.
Turning away from the mirror with an impatient exhale, she walked into the bathroom. Nothing to write home about, she thought, but then it didn't matter here anyway, since there was no one around to see her.
June 30, 2010. Cicero, Indiana
Rufus was out of the pale blue Chevy Nova as soon as it stopped at the kerb, the shotgun in his hands and his gaze scanning the quiet street. In the driver's seat, Chuck looked around nervously.
Dean pulled up in front of the Nova, getting out of the Impala and leaving the door open as he crossed the sidewalk and ran up the short flight of steps to the front door, rapping hard against it with the stock of the pump action he held.
"Come on, be here," he muttered, peering through the dirty glass at what he could see of the interior. "Be here."
He took a step back as he saw the shadow move inside, heard the lock being undone. Lisa opened the door a crack, staring at him through the gap, a livid bruise on one cheek and tears filling her eyes.
Lowering the gun barrel, he stepped toward her, pushing the door wider as his arm curled around her shoulders and pulled her close.
"What's happening?" she whispered against his shirt and he shook his head, not sure where to start, his senses prickling.
"There've been these … people … they're attacking everyone."
"Where's Ben?" He looked over her head into the house, relief filling him as he saw the boy's head emerge from behind the door to the dining room. "Come on, we've got to get out here, now."
Lisa pulled back from him. "Wait, we need our –"
"Whatever you need, we'll get on the way," he cut her off, gesturing to Ben. "This place isn't safe. We have to get out of here."
"What –?"
"Later, Lise, get in the car." Pushing her out, Dean grabbed Ben's arm, dragging him out of the house and down the steps. "I'll explain it later, okay? Just – we have to go, now!"
They got into the back seat, Bobby turning to nod at them from the front. Rufus gave the street a final look before he slid into the passenger seat of the Nova, Chuck following the black car as closely as possible as Dean pulled out ahead of him.
Bobby leaned forward as he saw movement from an alley further up.
"Dean – croaties," he warned. Dean nodded.
"I see 'em."
"Look out!" Lisa cried as a group of people spread out across the street in front of the accelerating Impala.
"Close your eyes, Ben," Dean said tightly, putting his foot down. The car surged ahead, the engine roaring. It hit the people in the centre of the group, leaving after-images of grey skin, matted and filthy hair, red-rimmed eyes and the rust-coloured stains of old blood with the passengers as the car bumped and lurched over the bodies.
"Oh!"
"They were infected," Bobby said. "Not human any more."
"But –"
The old hunter turned in the front seat, looking at Lisa and Ben, his face drawn and his eyes narrowed. "They weren't people, not any more. The virus has spread across the country, and probably the world by now. If we're going to make it, then it's us or them," he ground out, his gaze boring into hers, then flicking to the boy. "You want to see your boy infected? Or eaten?"
Lisa cowered back in the seat, her arms wrapping around Ben as she met Dean's gaze in the mirror. He shrugged, his eyes cutting back to the road.
"It's true, Lise. We got here as soon as we could, but we can't stay here. We have to find someplace safe, not populated so heavily. Someplace we can defend."
He shot a sideways look at Bobby. "We had any word from Boze or Emmett?"
The old man shook his head. "Nothing."
Turning around in the seat to look at the woman and her son sitting beside him, Bobby asked, "It's Lisa, isn't it?"
She nodded.
"I'm Bobby Singer. In the car behind, we got Rufus and Chuck and Cas." He waved a hand at the Nova following them. "I know this seems like a crappy situation, but you're going to have to trust us on this one. The cities, they're too dangerous to stay in now, too many places to hide … hell, too many bodies that are cooking up their own diseases. The power's gone, the sanitation systems have shut down, there's no food left," he said bluntly, raising a brow at her. "I'm guessing you know all that stuff already."
She nodded again, her eyes darting to the mirror.
"Everything that was," Bobby said, gesturing at the devastation they were driving through. "That's gone. You gotta get your head around that. No one's gonna come clean it all up."
"But the government –" she started to say and Bobby shook his head.
"Government, or what's left, they're holed up in the places they could defend," he told her, his voice sour. "Places where they got stocks of food and clean water. They won't be coming out to get us, to rescue us. We're it. We have to find somewhere defensible as well."
Lisa's mouth compressed as she stared at the rearview mirror, at Dean's eyes reflected there. "Where's Sam?"
Dean's expression became stony. "Sam's gone."
"I'm sorry," she said, after a moment, her voice soft in the silence that filled the car.
July 1, 2010. North Webster, Indiana
"Do you know where we're going?" Lisa asked, leaning on the side of the car as Dean filled the tank, the siphon hose sucking fuel from the underground reservoir into the car.
"Bobby said there's an old hunting camp, somewhere north, upstate Michigan, that's probably still abandoned. We'll head there, fortify it, use it as a base."
"A base for what?" she asked.
"For getting rid of the zombies and dealing with Lucifer," he said tersely, pulling out the hose as the fuel spilled over and holding it up.
"Can you – can you do that?"
"I hope so. I'm not planning on spending the rest of my life hiding in the woods, growing potatoes."
He coiled up the plastic hose, and dropped in the trunk, slamming the lid down. Looking over his shoulder at the store, he nodded slightly to himself as Rufus came out with Ben, both of them carrying bags of food and bottles of water.
"Get in, we're going," he said to Lisa, going around to the driver's side. She looked at her son and opened the rear door, sliding in next to Bobby and taking the bags from Ben as he got in after her.
Dean pulled out, driving slowly out of the small town. Behind them, Rufus was driving the Nova, Chuck and Cas watching for him.
A few vehicles lay along the road, overturned or nose-in the shopfronts. But with a small population, the damage here had been minimal. Trying to get out of Kansas City had taken him and the angel three days, the freeways choked with stopped vehicles, fires burning across much of the city, the stench of the bodies cooking in the early season heat filling the air so thickly he felt as if he'd never stop throwing up.
Going to Bobby's had been an exercise in finding the most backward roads he could. The interstates were graveyards and traps, even the federal and state highways had been bumper-to-bumper in many places, vehicles abandoned or containing their owner's rotting bodies; people unable to think of escaping on their feet, so used to the mobility of their cars.
Now, he turned down a small gravelled road, increasing his speed as the houses thinned out, a big lake sparkling in the morning sunshine to their right.
The woman who leapt out in front of the car ahead of him tested his reflexes severely. He saw her clearly only in the last twenty feet and yanked the wheel to one side, the car sliding out under its own weight and spinning in a half-circle as he hit the brakes.
"What the hell –" Bobby sputtered, rubbing the side of his head.
"Not infected," Dean said shortly, grabbing the carbine rifle from the seat beside him and opening his door.
"You alright?" he called to the woman as she got slowly to her feet from the side of the road. He could see the long line of gravel rash along her arm where she'd hit the shoulder when she'd flung herself out of the car's path.
"I didn't think you were going to stop," she said shakily, looking from the gun to his face. "No one has come through here in over a week."
Dean's gaze swept over her carefully. She was tall, maybe five eight or nine, but thin; her short, blonde hair inexpertly hacked off, uneven and standing out around her face. Dark brown eyes were too big for her features, the sockets shadowed as if she hadn't slept in a while.
"What happened here?"
She made a strangled noise in her throat, lifting her hands helplessly. "You tell me! I woke up one morning and looked out the window and Toby, my mailman was … he was … eating … my neighbour, Mrs Ottoman, on the sidewalk. Just … there was blood everywhere and people walked by and no one even stopped." She shook her head, her hands balling into fists and her gaze dropping as she struggled to hold back the hysteria that was clearly ready to escape.
Dean waited. For a civilian, she wasn't doing too badly, given what he knew she'd been seeing over the past couple of months.
"I stayed in my house and a couple of days later, these … people … they came around and broke in. I hid in the attic for three days," she said, lifting her head. Her eyes were bright, the memory too recent, he thought as her gaze cut away.
"Do you know? Do you know what's happened?"
"There's a virus," Dean said, glancing down the street. "Turns people into killers. Spreads fast." He looked back over his shoulder at the Nova, parked behind the black car, jerking his head at Rufus and turning back to her as the older hunter got out and walked over.
"What's your name?" Dean asked the woman.
"Renee," she said, looking from him to Rufus. "Uh, Renee Taylor."
"Okay, Renee, I'm Dean," he said, as Rufus stopped beside him. "This is Rufus. We're going somewhere else, somewhere we can stay safe, but we can't afford to take anyone with us unless we're sure they're not infected."
"Mommy?"
All three turned to look at the doorway of the house behind the woman. Two children stood there; a girl of perhaps five, and a little boy a couple of years younger. Both were quite clean, and looked as if they had food in the last few days. Perhaps that was the reason their mother didn't, Dean considered briefly.
"Those yours?" he asked. Renee nodded nervously, her eyes on his gun.
"We're – there's nothing wrong with us," she said in a low voice. "We're just starving. There's no more food in the house, and I –" She looked back at the children. "I can't risk going out to look for more, in case those people come back, or something – something happens."
Rufus nodded understandingly. "Alright, ma'am, this is how we're going to do it. We've got a simple test here; it'll tell us if you're okay or not. You take it, and you and your kids can come with us. You don't want to take it and you'll have to stay here."
Renee looked at him. "What is it?"
He pulled out a half-gallon bottle of water and offered it to her. "Drink."
Dean watched her doubts and suspicions flick across her face. Behind him, he heard the car door open again, and he swung around to see Lisa get out of the car with Ben.
"Lise, back in the car."
"No, she's scared you're going to harm her," Lisa said, walking around the trunk, her arm around Ben's shoulders.
"It's okay," she said to the woman. "They're good men. They won't hurt you or your children."
Renee stared at her, her gaze dropping to Ben for a long moment, then shifting back to Lisa's face. Stretching out her hand abruptly, she took the bottle from Rufus, opening the lid and tipping the water into her mouth. She swallowed nearly a quarter of the bottle in gulping mouthfuls then let it drop, screwing the lid back on and handing it back to the hunter.
"Did I pass?"
Dean's mouth quirked up on one side as he nodded. "Yeah, get your kids."
He turned to Rufus as she left. "Not going to fit in the Impala or the Nova with the extra supplies we'll need. We need another set of wheels."
"That'll do until we can somewhere with a dealership," Rufus said, looking at the SUV parked in the driveway of the house two doors up. "I'll take Renee and her children, still leaves Chuck and Cas together."
Dean nodded and walked over to Lisa as Rufus headed up the street. "That was a really stupid thing to do," he said to her.
"Two guys with guns standing in front of her telling her she has to drink something? Come on, of course she was scared. I would've been having second thoughts about going with you too."
"Maybe, but it still put you at risk," he said. "And Ben."
"She looked healthy, and her children look fine, she's obviously been giving them all the food she had," Lisa argued, turning to look up the road as the SUV rumbled into life.
Dean looked at her and drew in a breath, wondering if there was anything to be gained from pointing out to her that in the early stages, people could look and behave rationally.
"How did you think of using holy water to test people?" she asked, and he decided against raising it now. When they got somewhere they could be sleep for the night, he'd give the speech to all of them. Only Sam had been with him in Oregon.
"It's a demon virus," he said, turning to watch Rufus drive slowly toward them. "It leaves traces of sulphur in the blood. It seemed reasonable to assume that it would react to holy water."
"And it has?" She looked up at him.
He turned back to her, a fleeting expression of a memory passing over his face. "Oh yeah, there's a pretty damned violent reaction if the person's infected."
Lisa looked at the woman as she lifted her children into the back seat of the SUV. "I thought she was – you know – when she came onto the road like that."
He saw that she was thinking of what would have happened to the children if he'd run over Renee, as he had the croaties in Cicero.
"I'm getting to be pretty good at seeing the differences," he told her, gesturing impatiently at the Impala. "Even at a distance."
"Yeah, good thing," Lisa said, with a smile.
July 3, 2010. Hastings, Michigan
"Alright, we gotta get some supplies," Bobby said as they drove slowly into the town. Like all the others they'd gotten close to over the last month and a half, it seemed empty, deserted. Trash blew along the wide streets, and a long-dead power line lay curving across the road, the light glinting from the steel wire.
Dean nodded. They needed food and they would need more ammo as well. Food was getting harder to find, and he thought that they'd probably need to start hunting for meat, if they could find any areas that were wild enough.
They'd taken a day to orient Renee to the situation and give both women some idea of what firing a gun was like, choosing a field well away from nearest towns to show them how to use the 9mm autos, the shotguns and the semis. Renee had shown a natural talent, for understanding the trajectory, understanding the weapon's recoil. Lisa could hit something if it wasn't further than about twenty feet away. There wasn't time for any more but he thought that with Bobby, Chuck and Cas, they would be able to cover the vehicles while he and Rufus scavenged.
He saw the line of stores ahead and slowed down, glancing in the rear view mirror at the SUV crawling along behind him. In the centre of the main street, the supermarket was dark, the doors and windows gone. Dean looked at it for a moment, chewing on the corner of his lip. He stopped the car, pulling on the brake and leaving the engine running.
"You two stay in the car," he said to Bobby and Lisa. "Ben, get up here."
Ben slithered over the back of the front seat. "One beep for a warning," Dean said, pointing to the horn.
"Dean, I ain't got a good feeling about this," Bobby said softly, looking up the street. "Seems a little too deserted."
Dean shrugged. "Not like we've got a lot of choice, Bobby. Make sure you cover me."
Bobby nodded as Dean got out, slinging the carbine over his shoulder by its strap, pulling the Colt .45 and thumbing off the safety as he saw Rufus getting out of the SUV. Renee had opened her window, and was sitting on the frame, an AR-15 held in both hands, supported by the roof. She was scanning the street continuously as the two men walked toward the store. Behind the larger vehicle, Chuck and Cas were waiting in the Nova.
"Gotta a bad feeling about this, Dean," Rufus muttered as they stepped through the broken glass of the doors.
"Yeah, that makes three of us," Dean said, his mouth curling down derisively. He peeled off right as Rufus headed for the aisles on the left.
The shelving was empty, for the most part. Some things, like citronella oil and shoe polish and carpet deodorisers, were still there, the non-edible reminders of a world well and truly gone now, but everything else had been thoroughly gleaned. Dean looked along the aisles irritably. Wherever it was they were heading, they were going to need to a hell of a lot more stuff than just canned and packaged goods anyway. They'd need seed and seedlings, greenhouses this far north, fishing gear and somewhere where they could get game. Or livestock, he considered, turning down the next aisle and looking at the torn packaging that littered the floor.
The sound was small, just a scrape along the floor, but he was turning instantly, the barrel of the carbine rising smoothly, his finger pressing the trigger and the harsh chatter of the gun filling the store's interior like a cannonade.
The two croaties who'd appeared at the head of his aisle were thrown to the ground by the impacts. More poured out through the reinforced steel door that led to the rear of the store, a lot more, and he backed up, hearing Rufus' pump action firing continuously several aisles over, the man's swearing audible in between blasts. The light flickered and he glanced back over his shoulder at the same time as he heard Renee's rifle let loose a volley of shots, and Bobby's shotgun blasting a counterpoint to the sharper cracks of the AK47 he'd left with Cas. There were more croaties running down the street, some heading for the vehicles, some crawling into the store through the broken windows.
Fuck!
"Rufus!" he yelled, turning and running toward the front of the store, spraying bullets in short bursts from the automatic at his hip, knocking the croaties out of the way as he saw them gathering around the two cars. "We're leaving!"
"Right here, boss," Rufus panted, spinning around and shooting two behind them, pulling out his handgun as he shucked the slide.
The creatures were crawling over the cars, limiting their options for killing them. Dean saw Lisa roll from the back into the front seat, and start the Impala, the black car leaping forward as she put her foot on the gas, knocking several from the sides and front; more running up to the car as it stalled. Behind her, Renee had closed the windows and locked the doors of the SUV, sliding into the driver's seat and starting the engine. She reversed over several croaties, shaking more loose from the bonnet and roof when she slammed a foot on the brakes then surged forward.
"Get them off the SUV!" Dean shouted to Rufus, running for the Impala. He could hear the engine cranking but had the feeling that Lisa had never driven a manual transmission in her life, leaving her foot on the brake while in first gear.
Reversing the rifle in his hands, he slammed the stock into the heads and backs of the not-people that had gathered around it again, pulling out his automatic and firing point blank into those that weren't pressed up against the glossy black body.
He skidded to a stop, swerving aside as Lisa got the engine going and the car proceeded in lurching leaps up the street, shooting every croatie that rolled off, hearing the SUV behind him, the engine revving as Renee reversed and drove forward, running over those in her path and Rufus' shotgun blasted anyone coming close. He couldn't see Chuck past the bigger car, but he could still hear the Kalashnikov.
"Clutch!" He shot another man in the face, barely registering the blood-and-dirt grimed face as the body fell and he reached for the door handle. "Lise, the door!"
She unlocked the driver's door and slid aside. He was about to open the door when he felt hands in his clothes, dragging him backward. Swinging his elbow back without looking he felt the mushy crack of bones breaking beneath it. The black car was trundling along in first and getting away from him and he swore, kicking out at another croatie and accelerating to a sprint to catch up to his damned getaway vehicle.
He wrenched the door open the second he reached it, throwing himself sideways into the seat, tossing the guns onto the floor and slamming the door shut, his feet finding the clutch and accelerator. Changing up fast through the gears, Dean ignored the lurching bumps and bangs as the croaties ran into the front and sides before being run over, and he let out a noisy exhale as they finally cleared the ambush, his gaze raking suspiciously over the empty road ahead.
A second's glance behind showed the SUV tight on his tail, Renee's face hard and set as she leaned over the wheel, a flash of pale blue behind her.
"Cut that a bit fine," Bobby remarked from the back seat, the old man shucking the spent shells and reloading. Dean glanced in the mirror and shrugged.
"Yeah, just a bit."
Cadillac, Michigan. One day later.
They'd parked the cars four miles out of town, in a small barn that sat off the county road, and walked in; him and Cas and Rufus. Cadillac proved to be empty, completely and utterly empty.
A look through the stores along the main street had told them why. Almost every one that'd had food or clothing had been ransacked and cleared out completely, nothing left even for the rats that were skittering around in the shadows. A fast door-to-door showed no one, not even dead bodies, in the houses of the town either.
Was it possible for the whole town to have been turned, Dean wondered, looking at the bare cupboards and pantries in home after home. Could they have left in a group to hunt in other towns, where there were still victims? Still food?
He shunted the thought aside. He didn't even know if the croaties ate, although he suspected that before too much longer, if they did, they would have only one food source left to them. The thought turned his stomach and he pushed it aside as well.
The small town did have a feed store and miraculously, it was almost untouched. Driving in just before dark, they loaded seed, and corn and oats, guns and fishing gear and camping gear, plain woollen blankets, sleeping bags, oilstones and ammunition, swapping the SUV for a pickup and moving Renee and her children into the Nova with Chuck, squeezing the supplies into the vehicles until there was barely enough room for the passengers.
While Lisa, Renee, Chuck, and the three children loaded the cars, Dean and Rufus and Bobby stood guard, rifles loaded and cocked, watching the empty, darkening streets. Dean wondered if they should stick around, for a while anyway, see if they could find a good place to hole up close by, then abandoned the idea. The longer they put off finding a permanent base, the worse their situation would become. They needed somewhere safe to sleep, to plan. To breathe.
The cars were down on their axles when they left, headlights off as the full moon lit the gravelled back roads he'd chosen. They stopped for the night forty-five miles further east, the small farmstead empty but for the bodies of the man and woman who'd lived and died there. Those were easily wrapped in bed linen and taken outside. In the morning, they would bury them, Dean thought. In the meantime, the countryside seemed deserted and they needed the rest.
In the farmhouse's basement, Lisa and Renee found kerosene lanterns and candles, canned vegetables and fruit, and a heavily salted side of bacon. Rufus unearthed a small propane camping stove from the barn, and Renee made soup, the smell aphrodisiacal after weeks of nothing fresh. They ate in the kitchen, the room lit by the warm glow of the lanterns, guns leaning against the cupboards, the windows curtained and boarded up.
Watching the children finish their food enthusiastically, their faces paint with the ruddy light of the lanterns, a stab of painful responsibility shot through Dean. He dropped his gaze and stared at the plate. They were all under his protection, he realised. That was going to be a burden he wouldn't be able to escape for a while, maybe a long while. He couldn't go hunting for his brother until he had somewhere secure for these people.
"Why can't we stay here?" Lisa asked, her voice soft as she stood with Dean in the doorway of the children's bedroom, watching Ben and Alice and Cory settling down in the big bed together. Her son leaned over to blow out the candle when all three were comfortable. "There's no one around here."
He shook his head, turning away. "It's too open, we can't defend it. We'd be trapped in the house if anything did come."
She backed out of the room, closing the door behind her and following him down the hall and stairs to the living room. A dozen candles and two lanterns provided welcome light in the small room. Rufus was sitting at a table, reading by the light of one of the lanterns, Bobby on the sofa, making notes in a thick, leather-bound journal. Cas and Chuck sat on the other sofa, talking softly.
"Then what?" she persisted. "Where is safe enough?"
"Probably nowhere's really safe, but there are places that are going to be better than others," he told her absently, looking through the cupboards. He grinned as he found a bottle of whiskey in one, unscrewing the lid and swallowing a mouthful from the neck.
"And then what? We just live in the backwoods until – when?" Lisa leaned against the doorway, looking from Dean to the others, one brow lifted.
"Better than dying now, ain't it?" Bobby asked, taking the bottle that Dean passed him.
Dean turned back to her, his gaze going past her for a moment before returning to her face. "You two get some sleep. We'll take watches tonight. We'll keep going in the morning."
Lisa turned and saw Renee standing silently behind her, holding a thick candle in an old-fashioned candle-holder. She followed the other woman back up the stairs to the room they were sharing.
"What do you think?" she asked Renee, closing the door behind her.
"About finding a safer place?"
Renee put the candle on the nightstand between the two single beds, sitting on the edge to pull off her boots and socks. "I agree with them. We can't keep moving. And if we're in one place, we have a chance at least of growing some food, maybe finding some animals."
She stood and stripped quickly, leaving on her tee shirt and underwear and pulling back the covers.
"You sound like you've thought about this," Lisa said, slipping into the other bed.
Renee smiled. "I have, since the moment I realised I was trapped in my house and watching monsters walking through my neighbourhood." She leaned back against the pillows then rolled over to face Lisa.
"The power's out and the government is either trapped somewhere themselves or gone for good. Whatever stores of canned and packaged food there were, those have probably gone now too. If we want to eat – if we want to survive – we're going to have to grow our own, or hunt it, or butcher it … this country isn't as good as, say Iowa, for farming and farms but it's not that bad, there must be some stock running around loose. We don't need much right now, and we might be able to get more if we can look around without needing to protect our children at the same time."
"So you're talking about returning to the Stone Age?" Lisa looked over at her uneasily.
"Well, no, not that far back. But early agriculture, I guess, yeah." Renee shrugged. "Look, at the moment, there's plenty of gas, in every underground tank in the country. And far fewer people competing for it. But sooner or later, that's going to run out, and we're not going to have tractors and bulldozers and cars and machinery to do things for us."
"That's – that's a long time frame you're looking at."
"Before the power went out, I was watching the news, Lisa." Renee rolled to lie on her back, tugging at the covers, her hands plucking restlessly at the bedspread. "The last thing I heard was that most of Europe and Asia had been infected. That's the bulk of the world's population, right there."
She was silent for a moment, her gaze on the opposite wall. "I don't know if this is fixable, but everything we've ever known? I know that's gone now. Even if the croaties – the infected people – and the virus disappeared tomorrow, it would take years to get back to having the power on, to having people who know how to do that, even. TV, phones, the internet … they would be small networks for decades, even travel would be limited for years."
She wriggled down in the bed, her exhale sharp in the silent room. "Cory and Alice are alive. I'm alive. That's a miracle in itself. I'd be pretty happy to find a place that the guys thought was safe enough and just be for awhile."
"Yeah," Lisa agreed reluctantly, rolling over and blowing out the candle on the nightstand. "I guess."
"How much further do you think this place is?" Dean took the chair on the other side of the table from Rufus, and turned to Bobby.
"A couple of hours from here, pretty much due east," Bobby said, holding up a map. "The nearest town is Tawas, not very big, mostly shipping on the lake and holiday homes. We can do a recce there and see what's around, then go look for the camp."
"We got a couple of months to get ourselves organised, before the cold weather sets in," Rufus added, taking a swig from the bottle before he passed it back to Dean. "I think a lot of the croaties are going to be dead after winter."
"Yeah, well, we can only hope," Dean said, leaning back in the chair and closing his eyes.
July 4, 2010. Lake Solitude, Michigan
Dean lay on the ground, looking down through the bracken and spindly undergrowth at the buildings that were spread out beneath him. He could hear the hum of the genset, even at this distance, the silence in the woods almost complete. No traffic on the highways, no rumble of planes overhead, or the noises of shipping, that would've once carried clearly over the water.
To his left, the small lake sparkled with fall sunshine, visible between the lines of trees. Directly ahead, and only partially seen, Lake Huron's vast stretch isolated the camp from the town and the neighbouring farms. It was a good location, but there was a problem.
Someone was down there. He lifted the binoculars to his eyes and scanned the compound slowly. The main building was in good order, windows unbroken, clean, the porch cleared of leaves, raked piles here and there on the ground outside the house. Perhaps half of the cabins also looked like they'd been cleaned up, in contrast to the rest which were unkempt with leaves piled into the corners of the small porches, cobwebs clumped in between the roof and the columns supporting it. He caught movement at the edge of his vision and turned his head.
The woman came around the corner of the main building pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with split logs. He watched her stop in front of the porch steps, filling her arms with the firewood and carrying it up to stack it neatly along the wall. She turned back and returned the wheelbarrow for another arm load.
Not abandoned, then, he thought tiredly. And she wasn't infected, her movements methodical and economic. He adjusted the field a little and saw that she had clear, pale skin, was healthy-looking, clean hair, well-covered for someone who'd been living in the post-Apocalypse world for over two months now.
Lowering the glasses, his eyes narrowed as he thought about that. A good lot of supplies in the house?
Beside him, Rufus lowered his binoculars as well. "Looks like she's on her own."
"Yeah," Dean murmured.
"Do we leave her to it?"
Dean exhaled softly. "No. The place … Bobby was right, it's too good to pass up."
The entire compound and around ten acres lay on a small natural plateau, joined to the next ridge in the Huron National Park by a narrow saddle. The slope up to the place meant that building a fence – or a stockade – around it would be easier than he'd expected, the drop of the land adding height without effort. The two lakes meant they would have water and protection as well. Enough timber here to last them forever, plenty of accommodation and storage, the power provided by the generator. They wouldn't find anywhere better.
And, he thought, looking back down at the house, the woman would have their protection as well. She'd been missed by the croaties so far, but that didn't mean it would last. Being here on her own wasn't a good long-term plan for her. He wondered how easy it was going to be to convince her of that.
"Let's go," he said, rolling to his knees and getting up. Rufus glanced back down at the woman, barely visible without the glasses and followed him.
Alex looked up as she heard the rumble of the car engines, dropping the split logs in her arms with a resounding clatter on the porch floor as three vehicles drove slowly down through the trees and pulled up in front of the house.
The week before, she'd driven into East Tawas to pick up more supplies and she'd seen the emptiness of the town, the stores and markets stripped of everything, no one there, just the faint scent of decay and decomposition rising on the breeze that blew across the lake shore. She'd found the bodies in the first house she'd entered, two of them, ripped to shreds, and had backed out, gotten into her truck and driven back to the camp as fast as she could. She'd tried every radio station her small radio could reach but there'd been nothing on the airwaves but the hiss of static.
Since then, she'd realised that she could no longer hear any traffic on the highway, or any planes taking off or landing at the county airport. In fact, she hadn't heard anything at all that wasn't of a natural origin in the last week.
A man got out of the sleek, black car at the front of the small cavalcade, and she felt her heart start to hammer as she saw the gun in his hands. Just play it cool, she told herself tensely, taking a step toward the porch stair.
"Can I help you?"
He looked up and walked up to the porch steps, the sunlight showing paler tips against the dark of his short-cut hair; glancing off the polished black metal of the rifle.
"I think we can help each other," he said, putting his foot on the bottom step. "You know what's going on?"
She shook her head warily, her gaze skittering past him to the other car and pickup as two more men got out. Looking back at him, she said, "I went into town last week. There was no one there. No one alive."
"Yeah." He climbed the steps slowly, the barrel of the gun pointed down, held in the crook of his arm. "You don't get TV – or radio?"
"No, I – I only got the generator working a couple of weeks ago, and there's not much reception here," Alex said, trying to hide her nervousness. She wondered if she should be lying, making up a husband, brother-in-law and three grown sons or anything to seem less vulnerable. She backed away a step as he reached the top of the stairs.
Dean looked at her and stopped. She wasn't frightened, not yet, and he had the feeling everything she'd told him had been true. Honesty wasn't something he came across all that often, even before the end of the world. He hoped it meant he could be honest with her, about her chances of staying here alone, but there was no gain to scaring the crap out of her and he could see she was all too aware of her vulnerability. He forced his impatience back and down.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he said. "Has anyone else been out here?"
She shook her head, her gaze flicking down to the gun. "No."
"Chuck." He turned, looking down at the men waiting by the stairs. "Bring the water."
Alex watched the smaller man go to the blue sedan and pull out a bottle of water. She turned her gaze back to the man standing in front of her, wondering what he wanted. He was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in jeans and an Army jacket over a dirty plaid shirt. His face was hard, stubble shadowing his jaw and cheeks, a smear of dirt under one high cheekbone. As Chuck reached the top of the porch steps, he took the bottle and held it out to her.
"There's a lot to explain, but the short version is that there's a virus, a pandemic. It's killing a lot of people. It's hard to tell who's infected at first. This is water, but it shows up if a person has the virus."
She looked at the bottle for a moment then reached out and took it, looking at the clear liquid suspiciously. It looked like water. She lifted her gaze back to the man standing in front of her. "You want me to drink from this?"
He nodded, his eyes on hers. It seemed insane, an insane request from an insane man. But looking at the gun he was holding, she couldn't think of a single good for him to poison her when it would be quicker and less involved just to shoot her if he wanted her dead.
She unscrewed the lid and sniffed cautiously at the contents. It smelled of nothing. As water does. Didn't make it any safer, though, she decided, holding the bottle out to him.
"If it's just water, prove it," she said, surprised when he smiled, the full-lipped mouth lifting higher to one side. He took the bottle and tipped it up, swallowing a mouthful. When he handed it back, she did the same. It tasted like water. A little flat, as if it had been in a car for awhile.
"Alright," he said softly and Alex saw his shoulders drop a little as if he'd relaxed. "I'm Dean Winchester."
"Alex Tennyson," she said, screwing the lid back on the bottle and giving it back to him.
"This is Chuck Shurley," he added, handing the bottle back to Chuck. "That's, uh, Rufus Turner, Lisa Braedon and her son, Ben, Renee Taylor and her kids, Alice and Cory. Um … Castiel. And in the car, Bobby Singer."
Looking down at the group of them, she had the feeling that whatever was going on, whatever it was that had driven them here, they all felt a relief to be standing there.
"This virus – this pandemic –" she clarified to herself. "Is that why you're here?"
He nodded. "It's right across the country, spread over most of the world by now."
"And it's deadly?"
"Yeah. Yeah, the kill rate is very high," he said, inclining his head as his gaze shifted behind her to the door of the house. "We need a place to stay."
She blinked at him. "Uh … you mean here?"
"Looks like you got enough room," he said, glancing around, one shoulder lifting in a shrug. "We've got supplies, weapons, skills. We'd be helping you as much as you helping us."
If what he was saying was the truth, then it would be a fair enough trade, she thought, looking down at the two women, standing by the cars with their children. She thought of the bodies in town and felt a shiver race down her spine, her tongue darting out to lick her lips nervously.
"Alright."
The decision was abrupt, but, she thought later, inevitable. She had no weapons of any description here, unless she counted the kitchen knives. And the thought of whatever had killed the people in town coming up here, in the darkness, had been giving her nightmares for a week. Maybe it would be better to have company.
She looked down at the gun again, at the way the man who held it did so with complete relaxation. Like he knew exactly how to use it. Maybe it would be better to have protection.
"How many bedrooms do you have here?" He looked past her into the house.
"Twelve."
He nodded. "If you don't mind, it would be better if we were mostly in the house, for the time being, anyway."
For the time being? She pushed the question, with all its implications, aside and stepped back, gesturing to the doorway. "Come in."