It moves in a glorified slow motion, more for effect than out of necessity. Speed won't mean anything for its trajectory or effectiveness. No matter what happens, it's on a straight and narrow path, moving directly towards them and they both know there's nothing they can do about it. Two men, one tall and one taller, stand side by side, watching its advancement with a kind of detached interest. The tall one readjusts his grip on the sword in his hand, glances at the taller.
"You ready Sammy?" His voice is rough with disuse, or very frequent use as it may be. The dust picks up the edge of his tattered shirt, brushes it against his skin.
"You know it's gonna call it's friends, right? Plan a little feast, maybe stop for a quick siesta before moving on?"
The taller, Sammy, quirks a smile, nods, "Sons of bitches take naps now?" He has his own sword in his hand, long coat swirling around his ankles, and it's a wonder they could even get one long enough for him, especially these days. It's a nice one too, tanned leather, long enough in the arms and wide enough in the shoulders to give him space for movement. "If we were any kind of smart we'd be out of here by now."
"Good thing we're not that kind of smart," Dean widens his stance, brings his free hand to grip around the end of the sword, fighting stance ready to face the beast and then he glances to the dark sky. Sky's always dark now, ever since the storms. Returning his gaze to the beast Dean watches as it lumbers towards them with the same purposeful slowness that means it intends to kill. With an exaggerated slowness that makes Dean grin wider, Sam moves to match Dean's stance, perfect mirrors of each other.
Just before it reaches them the beast throws its head back and howls, long and loud, calling in for backup. Then it starts up, running faster, a loping gait that makes it seem like it's wounded. Sam and Dean both know it's not.
When it reaches them, all hell breaks loose. Dean lunges for the side, drawing his sword across the underbelly of the beast while Sam rolls the opposite direction, not even trying to hit it. Instead he stands his ground as five more come rolling towards them. He's prepared, knows the moves, knows how to keep them at bay, and knows he can't spare a look for Dean, not now. There's grunts of exertion mixed in with the snarls of the beast, but still Sam doesn't look. Instead, he feints right as the first comes, then throws himself to the left, hitting the ground and rolling, rising to his fight and thrusting his sword forward in one perfect motion as the first beast sprawls across him. His strike hits home but he knows he's misjudged the distances as the falls backwards, the beast's dead weight on top of him. He cries out as his left arm bends the wrong way and the butt of the sword currently buried in the beast's chest rams into his ribs. Dean yells his name but Sam is already rolling, shoving the beast sideways, pulling his sword out of its flesh and standing up again. This time, he throws a glance at Dean, who has finished with his own beast and is moving in towards the other four. Shaking himself off Sam strides towards his brother until they're walking in perfect time, side by side.
"You good?" Dean doesn't look at him, knows it's suicide to take his eyes off the beasts, but his voice is filled with a concern that, while appreciated, Sam hates to hear.
"Fucked up my wrist," Sam replies truthfully, because they learned a long time ago that lying never got them anywhere, "Ribs are gonna be bruised good tomorrow. I've had worse. Let's send this bitches back to wherever they came from and then you can worry about me."
Dean huffs a laugh, makes a noise of agreement, and then they're attacking again. They've warmed up now, killed one each already today and they each take another two with quick, practiced precision. The world ended six years ago, but Sam and Dean have been hunting monsters long before that.
-
"Fucking idiot, you know that?"
"Yes, Dean."
"Beast comes at you and you wanna stab it in the chest, fine, but don't fucking leave yourself as a pillow for it to land on."
"Yes, Dean."
"I'm serious Sam! How fucking embarrassed would you be if you got crushed to death?"
"Yes, Dean."
Dean looks up from the task of wrapping Sam's injured hand (sprained, the fucker) to smack his little brother across the head. Sam makes a pained sound but keeps his head ducked, grinning. "You better listen to me dumbass. I don't wanna be scraping your flattened, dead ass off the desert floor, got it?"
Sam smirks, pauses, and then answers. "Yes, Dean." And has to roll out of the way fast before Dean can hit him again. The movement makes his ribs twinge and he lets out a surprised huff of air. "Hey, I'm injured here!"
"And whose fault is that smartass?"
"You're contradicting yourself now big brother, cause I was a dumbass before,"
"I swear to god I'm going to kick your ass into the next county." Dean looks genuinely annoyed as he collects the bandages up and shoves them back into the improvised first-aid bag they have. Moving to put it into his backpack he glances over his shoulder at his stupid floppy haired little brother, "Where we stayin' for the night?" Can't stay out in the deserts unprotected at night. Not unless you want to die.
"Close to the Roadhouse, we can swing by there, see if they got any extra room." Sam knows the response before it even comes, but it disappoints him all the same.
"Ellen's overcrowded as it is. You know that Sammy," After the storms hit, the Roadhouse became an improvised refugee camp for hunters and their families. Then word of it spread and people started showing up out of nowhere, hundreds of them. Now it's a huge compound, surrounded by improvised walls and barbed wire, with what seems like miles of network tunnels running beneath it. Right at the center sits the Roadhouse, and in the middle of the Roadhouse sits Ellen, making sure everything runs smooth as it can. Course, a post-apocalyptic world isn't exactly a lucrative business. "Try somewhere closer."
"There's the southwest bunker few miles from here. Take us till nightfall to get there but it's better than stayin' out here and freezing to death." Or worse was implied at the end but neither of them said it. Enough troubles without putting them into a verbal stamp of definition.
"Yeah, alright." Standing Dean picks up Sam's backpack and tosses it to him, then picks up his own and slings it over his back. Pulling on the straps he rolls his shoulders and watches Sam flex his hand, testing for flexibility. Apparently he's satisfied because he picks up his sword belt and straps it back on, throwing Dean his own, which he also straps on. Damn but Dean misses his guns. With ammo all over the world getting low and the beasts getting stronger and stronger a gun just wasn't practical anymore. Still, it always seemed better than getting up close and personal to Dean. He hated being close enough to feel the beast's breath on his face. Damned wrong was what it was.
The brothers start walking together, in sync, in the same direction, no words of direction needed. They walk for less than five minutes before Dean says, "Aliens." He grins as Sam sighs, because Sam knows this game and he doesn't like this game, but they play it anyway.
Guess Why The World Is Ending isn't exactly up to game show standards but it's born from too much whiskey and too little sleep, and they've been playing it for three years now so Dean figures why the hell not?
"What would aliens gain from sending in poisonous dust storms that kill all the animals and mutate all the monsters? C'mon, that was weak even for you," Sam pauses, thinking, then says, "God's righteous and holy anger." And there's a hint of cynicism in his voice because they both stopped believing in any type of God a long time ago.
Dean shakes his head, "Nah, if he wanted us wiped off the map he probably would'a sent some messiah or something to warn us first, convert all our unholy, little hearts to get us to heaven and then kill off the non-believers."
"Maybe he did send a messiah, just not to us."
"Well then he's an asshole. We saved like half the people on this planet, I'm pretty sure we deserved to be saved a little ourselves." Dean's exaggerating obviously, but it's clear he's serious about being saved. Serious about Sam being saved at least.
"Alright, alright, calm your virtuous little heart." A pause and then, "Besides, it's your turn to go."
Dean grins.
The game carries them almost halfway there, but Sam draws the line at 'It's a government conspiracy to turn us all into lizard people Sammy!'Eye-Spy carries them the rest of the way and for a little while Sam feels like a kid again, thrown into the car for fourteen hours at six-years-old and demanding that Dean play with him so they're not bored.
When they reach the bunker it's a weird kind of relief.
It takes Sam's cold numbed fingers several minutes to find the ring buried under the sand, and it takes his and Dean's combined strength to pull the door up.
It's made of a heavy iron, the edges sealed in tight with an improvised insulin to keep out the toxic fumes. Sam goes down first, hands clinging tightly to the metal bars of the ladder as he descends. Once he's safely at the bottom Dean follows, making sure he's far enough down to be clear before he grabs the metal chain and pulls the door closed after him.
For a moment they're plunged into total darkness, and then Sam lights up one of the battery powered lanterns to illuminate the small space. Thank god for Ash, friggin' genius figured out how to make new batteries, easily charged and lasting for close to two years. Sam's still not sure how he did it, but he knows that he's happy as shit the mullet adorned kid found out how.
After he's hung the lantern on the hook in the middle of the ceiling, letting the light wash over the whole room, Sam sits down heavily on the bottom bunk of the old metal bunk bed that stands pushed into one corner. A second is pushed into the opposite corner, and there's additional bedrolls on the shelving units that line one of the walls. Sam loves being in these bunkers sometimes, because it's such a cool reminder of how humans rose to the challenge of the apocalypse. Nothing could've been done for the first wave of people taken out by the storms. They swept across most of the southern hemisphere first, and millions were dead before anyone knew what was happening. Word spread to America, and for once the government acted with intelligence. Hundreds of underground bunkers of various sizes were built throughout the country and filled with dehydrated foods, bedding supplies and water. It was nowhere near enough, but it was something. Sam always thought of it like the Titanic. America was the ship, taking precautions but still thinking it could rise above and be immune to the storms that were killing half of the planet. Didn't pack enough life boats.
Sam and Dean were in a bunker in Arizona when Texas was wiped off the map, huddled in with a family of six that had a seven-year-old son, twin daughters of five-years-old and one screaming six month old child. Sam ended up having the two girls clinging to either side of him, faces buried in his chest, while Dean ended up with baby. It was six hours of hell. Texas was taken out and the storm rolling over them with a roar that seemed to put everything into perspective. It was the exact moment where Sam realized that, in the grand scheme of things, they were specks, inconsequential. When the eight of them finally crawled from the bunker, stiff and sore and lungs aching for fresh air, the land was a desolation of dead and dying. Everything from plants to people were collapsed, and Sam had started hyperventilating when he'd caught sight of the kid clinging to the bunker door, wheezing and struggling to draw in air because no one had heard him to let him in. It had taken Dean more than half an hour to calm Sam down, and by then they'd been in desperate need of movement, had to get out of there as fast as possible.
That was the first storm the Winchester brothers experienced.
It was most certainly not the last.
But they adapted, because that's what Winchesters did. So, Sam kicks off his boots and twists until he's lying horizontal on the bunk breathing deep to test his ribs out. He can hear Dean bustling around the echo-y chamber but doesn't open his eyes. Dean was gonna do what he was gonna do, and Sam knows he's not gonna be able to slow him down either way. Finally the swishing of Dean's jeans stop near Sam's head, and a cool hand comes down to rest on his forehead.
"You feel a little warm." Which yeah, Sam got was abnormal in the cold space, but he pushes Dean's hand off anyway.
"I'm always warm dude, you know that." Course Dean knew that, how many times throughout their lives had he commented on Sam being a human furnace?
"Warmer than usual, bitch. I know what temperature you run at." Oh.
Sam sighs and rolls over, curling up. "Then let me sleep it off." His words come out muffled as his face was now pressed into the pillow, "M fuckin' tired as hell." A blanket lands on his back and Sam wants to rolls his eyes at Dean's mother-henning but he's already half asleep.
It's not three hours later and Dean's watching Sam sleep when the bunker door pounds above them. It makes Dean jump and, to Dean's annoyance, jolts Sam awake. The brothers stare at each other for a minute before Sam's practically leaping to open the door. Dean doesn't try and stop him because he was there when that kid died too, and he knows how hard it is to realize you could have saved someone. He watches Sam climb the ladder and push up on the trapdoor, giving it enough so that the person above can pull it all the way open. That's the thing about those doors, you can get 'em open when you have two reasonably strong people, but one person by themselves or one person with someone injured doesn't have any chance. Once it's wide enough open Sam moves back down the ladder to let the person through. He and Dean stand shoulder to shoulder, watching the newcomer's descent.
It's a man, that much is obvious from the figure and build, the shape of the brow. The rest of the dark face is covered with a scarf, leaving only the eyes up visible. It's not uncommon to see nowadays, people thinking that a layer of cloth will protect them from the storms. They're dead wrong but who's to take that hope away from them? Once the guy's all the way down Dean moves to grab the chain and pull the door closed before moving back to Sam, standing just a tiny bit in front of his little brother.
For a minute the two parties stare each other down, Sam and Dean on one side and the masked stranger on the other. Then the guy pulls down his scarf, revealing a dark face with worry lines and an unhappy looking mouth. Dean can't imagine the guy eve smiling.
A few more moments of silence and then, "I'm Gordon."