The air whipping in the windows of their car du jour was meltingly hot. Dean tried to drain a few precious drops of clean water from the old canteen but it'd been emptied two hours ago; moisture wasn't going to magically appear no matter how hard he wished. He'd long since abandoned hope that Castiel would be anything but batshit nutty if the angel ever showed up, so there was no sense in praying for help either.
He could practically feel his lips cracking, the arid wind offering not one damned bit of relief. He threw the canteen into the backseat and kept driving.
Another ten minutes down the dusty road, Dean's stomach announced its hunger loud enough to make Sam startle in his sleep. It was probably just an autonomic reaction to an angry growl, but didn't change the fact they were not only dehydrated, but fucking starving. And not just "Oh, gee, I could eat" starving but Dean'd had to notch his belt tighter just to keep from flashing his ass to the world. He glanced over at Sam as his brother stirred, bruised eyes slitting open, a hand pulling through his snarled hair.
"Where're we?" he mumbled, sounding about as cracked as Dean's lips.
"Utah."
"Utah's a big state."
"Doesn't really matter where in Utah, does it?" Leviathans were everywhere; a healthy Mormon population didn't thwart the monsters' numbers, so yeah, what did it matter?
Sam seemed to agree because he settled into silence again, staring at the parched landscape flying past. They couldn't even kill the quiet with the radio; the crappy Kia Rio they'd jacked in Colorado didn't have one that worked. They'd have opted for a better model, but the Rio was practically a gift. Its owner had left the car running while he'd wandered off to do … whatever. Probably full to the gills with Leviathan-tainted turkducken and looking for seconds. And thirds.
The grimness of the situation was increasingly difficult to ignore. Sam, Mr. Let's-talk-it-out, wasn't even bothering to complain any more. That's how bad it'd gotten. Bobby and Frank were dead, Castiel was a few bees short of a hive, the Big Mouths were closing ranks, and Dean kept struggling to find a reason to put one foot in front of the other. Hard to work up rebellion when all you knew was hunger and sleeplessness and worry.
His eyes were starting to gloss over when Sam sat upright, glaring out the window.
"There. Turn back. Down that road."
"Wha—?" Had they even passed a road?
"Think I saw something."
Dean threw a u-turn across both lanes, the car plenty small enough for such a tight turning radius. Dirt and gravel kicked up into the wheel wells. "What kinda something? Big Foot? A parade? What?"
"Trees."
"Okay, nature boy, if you say so." But Sam didn't make observations frivolously these days. If there was something about these trees that caught his interest, it was worth investigating. Besides, it wasn't like they had anywhere better to be. All the Dick Roman intel was as dried up as the land.
The car rocked down a pitted single lane until the surroundings grew marginally greener. Somehow, the area was getting water. Someone still had the wherewithal to work the land and irrigate it. The trees sat in evenly-spaced parcels and though the weeds were growing tall and unruly, this had all the earmarks of an orchard.
Sam was leaning half out the window, looking hard for signs of life. Dean slowed the Rio, and eventually Sam pointed his long arm towards a side-alley.
"Truck," he barked. He did kinda look like a big Irish Retriever, Dean mused.
They followed the lead, easing the car between branches. An old Chevy pick-up came into view, and Sam didn't even wait for Dean to stop the car before he opened the door and rolled out. They weren't traveling fast, between navigating trees and potholes and thick weeds.
Sam approached the truck and Dean noted his brother's posture; though bent from riding in the tight quarters of the sub-compact, it wasn't tense with suspicion. Dean kept the car running, regardless.
Entering the thigh-high grasses, Sam paused and looked up into the cloudless sky. Dean followed his gaze: vultures, overhead. Bad sign. Sam crouched, half-vanishing in the weeds. Dean saw little more than his rawboned shoulders, expanding in a sigh and when Sam stood back up, he looked decidedly grim—grimmer than before, if that was even possible.
"There are bodies," he said flatly.
"Shit." Dean cut the engine and got out.
The partially eaten corpses of several workers in ichor-stained overalls were hidden by the bramble, and now Dean could smell the decay. The wind must've been blowing in the wrong direction before. From the notably large bite marks on the remains, it was clear how they'd met their deaths. Why the Leviathans hadn't eaten them completely was anyone's guess. Maybe it was becoming sport to the fuckers.
Dean's gut twisted and might've tossed its contents had it not been empty already. "Poor bastards. Wish I could say I'm surprised."
"Yeah. I know." Sam stepped over a lump of flesh and leaned into the open door of the truck. The ignition clicked but the engine was just as dead as the bodies.
Dean made a cursory search for anything useful—money, knives, cellphones—but the bodies had already been stripped. Scavenging was standard operating procedure these days.
Sam had found nothing in the cab of the truck either, as evidenced by his empty hands and hang-dog expression. "Damn. Still. I was hoping …"
Dean squinted around the orchard, hands on his hips, and then his brows lifted. "Hey. Might be somethin' here after all." He pointed up into the trees. Bunched in the gnarly higher branches, obscured by leaves, were ripe clusters of peaches. The low-hanging fruit had long since been snagged whereas the treetops still hung heavy with unharvested produce.
Sam waded through the weeds to the Rio and clambered up the hood to the roof of the car. It rocked and dented under his weight but he could reach the tops of the trees this way.
You go, you tall freak. Dean found himself grinning.
Sam plucked a single peach and tossed it to Dean, who snatched it from mid-air. His mouth watered wantonly but as much as he wanted to take a bite, he forced himself to wait. He slipped his hand into the pocket of his jeans and removed a tiny vial containing vinegar. It had come as no surprise to people-in-the-know that the Leviathans had leaked tainted pesticides and fertilizers to the farmers. Quite by accident, hunters had discovered that the poisoned crops would foam slightly when exposed to a dab of common, household white vinegar. Prior to cooking, at any rate.
Dean did the dab test and let out a whoop. Then he took a big fat bite. The taste exploded in his mouth and he experienced a ridiculous amount of joy over a lone piece of fruit. It would've been embarrassing had he given two fucks but in that moment, peaches were the closest thing to heaven he'd experienced since, well, Heaven.
Sam beamed like a fool from his perch atop the Rio and stripped off his t-shirt. He tied a quick knot in the bottom and began feeding peaches through the neck opening.
"Jesus, you've gotten skinny," Dean hollered with his mouth full.
"Shuddup, so've you." Sam kept collecting fruit, pausing only briefly to take a bite himself.
"Right you are, sir; pass me another!"
Sam lobbed the bitten peach to Dean, who grumbled "This has got your germs on it," but ate the thing anyway. Two additional peaches later, Dean was finally slowing down when Sam stopped picking, head tilting.
"What was that?"
Dean shrugged and carefully scanned the area in a full circle, eyes keen for any signs of movement.
Then he felt it, a shimmer in the world. The hair on the back of his neck prickled and the air eddied, almost like a sonic boom minus the 'sonic' part. "Earthquake?"
Sam softened his knees, readying to jump if need be. "Don't think so. Kinda feels like when Castiel uses his magical angel trans—"
With a rush of wind and the nauseating pull of g-forces on his gut, Dean lost all orientation, spinning tits over tail. Fierce vertigo made it impossible to think, let alone react. The atmosphere swelled and pressurized until, with an ear-popping wallop, Dean was spit back out.
Where? He hadn't a stinking clue.
Except that out of nowhere, there was a fist and it was flying straight at his face.
