Summary: An alternative to the events of episode 5x04, The End. In this version both Dean and Sam are dropped in a post-apocalyptic nightmare where sane humans are practically non-existent and demons have taken over as head of security. A perilous journey and ultimate choice push the brothers to a fate they can't seem to escape.

Disclaimer: The boys and their woes don't belong to me, I'm just meddling. All hail Eric Kripke and the CW. The boys are colorful with their expressions and there's definitely gonna be some icky moments.

Rant: Basically, I've always wanted to read something where both boys were stuck together in the midst of the apocalypse. I never really found anything so I decided to write it myself! The End is one of my favorite episodes of the entire series, partially because I'm sort of hoping - evil person that I am - that it does all end up right back there ;) Just giving everyone fair warning, this is going to SUUHUCK for the boys. Like, I have so much crap planned for them…it's not even funny. Not exactly sure where it will all end up, but should be a fun ride nonetheless ;)

Okay, I'm shutting up...y'all go read!

Damn sunshine. Searing holes straight through his damn eyelids. His head was killing him and he couldn't swallow around the mouthful of cotton wool. Something was jammed uncomfortably between his ribs. Funny, he didn't remember going on a bender.

Someone was shaking him roughly by the shoulder. Wasn't helping the headache and the movement sent whatever he was lying on pogo-sticking into tender flesh.

"Dean!"

Go away. He batted clumsily at the pair of hands.

"Dean, come on, man. Wake up."

Opening his eyes felt like swimming underwater. Everything was blurry and surrounded by fuzzy, gray edges. A concerned pair of familiar hazel's appeared in his line of vision. He felt rough, giant hands gripping his face, trying to get him to focus.

"Hey, you with me?"

"S-Sam…th'…'ell?" Dean's voice cracked. His throat stung like hell and was dryer than the Gobi. He coughed and tried swallowing to get a little saliva circulating.

"Yeah, yeah I'm here. Look man, we have to leave. Like now." Sam glanced nervously over his shoulder towards a window covered in grime – which apparently did nothing to block out sunlight – and was in desperate need of Windex. Rust decorated the metal sills and bled into mold. Sam shook him again, and for some reason, Dean was reminded of when Sam was little and he'd scamper over to Dean's bed and tug on his shirt after he'd had a nightmare. Sweat glistened in the creases of his brother's face and Sam was breathing like he'd just run a marathon.

Dean blinked, propped himself up on an elbow, and finally managed a half-hearted look at his surroundings. He was lying on a woven skeleton of rusted springs, completely bare of a mattress. One of the coils had popped. That would be the thing currently shish kabob-ing his ribs. He could feel the sting of a fresh cut scraping against his rough cotton shirt. Vaguely, he tried to recall the last time he'd had a tetanus shot. Couldn't remember.

The cracked walls were covered in stained plaster that looked as though it was just waiting for an opportune moment to collapse on top of their heads. Sam knelt beside the bed – rusted hammock of death - visually triaging Dean as he swung his legs over the side in an effort to sit up. He took a few deep breaths, silently willing his throbbing skull and churning stomach to get a grip.

"You good to stand?" Sam's eyes shifted from his brother to the door, anxiously pleading with Dean to get a move on.

"Uh, yeah," Dean scrubbed a hand over his face and sniffed noisily – it only clogged his head and the headache returned with a vengeance.

He stood and reflexively gripped Sam's available shoulder to steady himself.

"Easy." Sam dug a dusty plastic bottle out of his jacket pocket and offered it to his brother, "Here, it'll help."

"Where'd you dig that up?" Dean grimaced at the filthy plastic.

"You don't wanna know." Sam shrugged absently. "But it was unopened and I already tried it. Haven't keeled over yet, so…"

Dean took the bottle, uncapped it and swallowed a few mouthfuls. Tasted all right - the liquid blissfully soothing his parched throat as he gulped and felt it settle in his belly. Anyway, he probably already contracted tetanus, what were a few more strands of bacteria…

"Alright," Sam lightly clapped him on the shoulder. "We need to get moving."

"Wait," The water had helped clear the cobwebs and confusion was catching up with his brain. "Sam, what the hell is happening? Where are we? Who got the jump us? Man, we weren't even in the same states!"

"I don't know," Sam answered uneasily. Dean thought he looked, not exactly frightened, but definitely on edge…jittery. What the fuck was going on?

"Sam, just hang on a second, huh?" Dean sat down on the edge of the mattress and brought clasped hands to his mouth. "What do you remember?"

Sam shifted uncomfortably and the muscles in his jaw tensed.

"I uh…was at a motel. Just checked in for the night. I'd gone to bed. That's about it."

Lucifer slowly advanced a few steps, the movement loose and comfortable - the confidence of a predator closing in on his prey. His shoulders slouched casually. He quirked his head in an exaggerated show of understanding. A tangible glean of trust.

"I will never lie to you," He hummed. "I will never trick you. But you will say yes to me."

"You're wrong," Sam steeled his shoulders despite their shaking, determined to keep the terror devouring his mind in check.

"I'm not," Lucifer assured. A playful smile slithered across thin lips. "I think I know you better than you know yourself."

Sam couldn't help the hot tears that leaked down his flushed cheeks. He felt the fear, the sheer desperation pierce his heart like a white-hot needle. It wasn't a request. It was a death sentence. The breath stuttering in his chest was irrelevant. He might as well already be dead.

He choked back an angry sob. "Why me?"

Lucifer's grin was hideously gleeful. "Because it had to be you, Sam," He shook his head as though reprimanding a child for questioning his adults.

"It always had to be you."

"Woke up here, with you." Sam swallowed and glanced up, hoping against hope that his short exposition would fly. Dean stared fixedly, the creases around his eyes betraying his disbelief. Well, Dean could believe whatever the hell he wanted to. Sam was still too busy trying to convince himself he'd been dreaming. He didn't have the energy or the desire to try to convince Dean of anything.

Sam hurriedly broke the uncomfortable silence. "What about you?"

Dean's questioning gaze lingered, but he sighed in resignation and rubbed his jaw.

"Pep-talking with Cas," he grunted, all the while moving the wandering hand to the back of his neck. "He's working through some daddy issues."

"What about you?"

Castiel turned to look at Dean, politely anticipating. Dean swallowed around the tightness in his throat. Clearing it, he spoke with levity.

"Honestly? I'm good," he huffed a laugh, adding credence. "I can't believe I'm saying that but I am, I'm…I'm really good."

The angel stared for a moment before turning his gaze back to the road. "Even without your brother?"

That tightness again. Except not his throat…his heart. He gripped the steering wheel harder and steely eyes narrowed on the flashing pavement.

"Especially without my brother."

"Whoever zapped us better not have touched my wheels," Dean stood abruptly as realization set in. "If those winged bastards went all angelic-teleportation-ejection-seat on me and turned my baby into a tin can, they won't have to worry about Lucifer. I'll send all their feathered asses right back up to heaven for the son of a bitch!"

"Dean," Sam held his hands out in a placating gesture. "I think we have bigger problems to worry about."

"Oh, you mean like where they zapped us to, for instance," Dean shouted as he gestured around the room. He was frustrated, nauseous, and clueless in every sense of the word – a combination he wasn't too keen on.

"Just…just look out the window." Sam hesitantly gestured over to the panel of filthy glass shrouded by cheap, moth-eaten curtains. Dean warily eyed the dingy window before strolling over to take a look.

He wasn't sure what he was expecting. Zachariah's heavenly holding cell, maybe? Certainly not a god-forsaken street littered with immobilized cars and crumbling buildings – not the remnants of civilization. Weeds devoured brick and cement. Every store and house in sight was either a charred pile of ash or an ancient mess of rubble. Only a few buildings stood erect, and even they looked like they were one greedy termite away from collapse.

The stench of death hung thick and crimson in the air, like an infected wound.

Broken shards of glass, rotting garbage, discarded belongings, all ripe with decay and not a living soul in sight.

"Well, that can't be good," Dean muttered. "Seriously, what the hell? Where is everybody?" He turned back to face his brother and nearly jumped out of his skin when he spotted the body lying in the corner behind the bed.

"Jesus," Dean gasped as his mind processed the image.

It looked to be a middle-aged man, matted gray beard and long dirty hair obscuring most of his face. A fresh puddle of blood pooled underneath his head. He couldn't have been dead longer than a half hour. More alarming, were the numerous boils, about the size of baseballs, decorating every inch of visible flesh. They were still oozing. Dark yellow pus mixed with flecks of gooey black and trickled sluggishly down to mingle with the blood.

Dean pried his eyes from the gruesome sight and glanced up at his brother. "Sam?"

Sam avoided the gaze. "He was what woke me up."

"What do you mean?" Dean's voice lowered to a dangerous decibel. Alarm bells sounding off in his head.

Sam's breathing hitched slightly as he tried to explain, "I woke up…on the floor and this…this guy was choking me. I got it together and pushed him off. He felt like a bag of bones."

Dean noted that the dead man was indeed, grotesquely thin. Like he hadn't eaten a proper meal in months.

"I tried talking to him, reasoning. Told him I wasn't going to hurt him. But he wouldn't listen." Sam's haunted gaze traveled over to the body. "Dean, he was crazy."

"Yeah, obviously," Dean bent down to get a better look. "Crazy hobo."

"No, I mean…" Sam paused, struggling to find the right words. Trying to make his brother understand. "He was sick. Completely out of his head."

And Dean saw the first genuine twinge of fear cloud Sam's eyes. "He tried to bite me."

"Sam, things try to bite us all the time," Dean snorted incredulously. "Just part of the gig."

"He wasn't a thing," Sam stared down at the floor and gulped. "He was human."

"He didn't…did he?"

"Didn't what?"

"Bite you?" Dean gave his little brother a once over. "I mean he's probably carrying bubonic plague or something."

"No," Sam swallowed thickly, his face paled. "He came at me. God, Dean…you didn't see his eyes. He wasn't going to stop. I didn't…I couldn't…I don't even know what happened."

Dean followed his brother's gaze and noticed the jagged shard of glass embedded in the man's skull, blood already congealing around the edges.

"I know," Dean couldn't stop himself from doing what came as naturally as breathing – reassuring his brother. Then added without thinking, "From the looks of the him, it was basically a mercy killing."

Sam looked like he was going to throw up.

"Sorry, I didn't mean-"

"No, I know." Sam shook his head, took a deep breath, and rolled his tense shoulders. "Dean, we really do need to leave. He may not be the only one here."

"Yeah, where exactly is here?" Dean sighed in exasperation. "It's like somebody dropped us in the middle of fucking Chernobyl." Dean patted himself down, searching all of his usual hiding places. "And no firepower. Not even the damn pig sticker," he grumbled after rummaging in his boot. "You have anything on you?"

"No, nothing."

"Well this is just…awesome." He suddenly looked confused and placed his hands on his hips. "How come you woke up so damn perky? I feel like I was hit by a rogue refrigerator."

"I didn't," Sam knelt down beside the bed, attempting to pry the metal leg off one of the corners. "I felt weird, but you know, the whole crazy guy trying to kill me thing... Probably adrenaline. Cleared my head pretty quick. Here, help me with this."

Dean sighed, rubbing his head - trying in vain to knead away the ache - and knelt beside his brother. The two of them put their weight together and eventually twisted the metal leg off the crumbling frame. Ugly, triangular strips of rust adorned the end of the makeshift club.

Sam tested the weight of the weapon. "Better get you one, too."

With the clothes on their backs and a couple of rusted rods, the brothers ventured cautiously outside the room. Dean led the way down a narrow hall. Moldy wallpaper peeled in clumps from the top down, and the smell clinging to what remained of the dingy carpet was reminiscent of a cesspool. In it's heyday it could've been a pretty snazzy hotel. Numbered doors lined the hall, most of them closed. A few stood ajar on broken hinges and opened to inky blackness. Like gaping mouths waiting to close.

"Freakin' bed of roses," Dean muttered in disgust as he stepped over a suspicious looking mound scattered over the carpet. Sam followed suit.

Both stopped dead in their tracks when a chilling sound whistled free from the shadows behind them. A grating cackle that couldn't possibly be laughter accompanied the lazy creaking of a door. Both filtered through the stale air and caused the blood to run cold in Dean's veins.

The brothers spun on their heels in unison, rods at the ready. They watched as a hand emerged to clasp the door of room 217 - a good two doors behind them. The hand was skeletal, and pale almost to translucence. The ends of sickly fingers were bloody nail beds, although the thumbnail still appeared to be hanging on for dear life. An arm quickly followed, attached to a jutting shoulder. Oozing boils covered almost every inch of visible flesh. A face – or what was left of it – popped around the corner and a woman grinned through a few bloody teeth. She wilted against the wall before collapsing into a cross-legged position in the middle of the hallway.

Her face. Dean couldn't stop staring at her face. Her head was bald, save a few patches of stringy hair tangled in the mess of sores decorating her scalp and jaw. Her bottom lip was one long, jagged split, and ran to her chin. The two flaps of flesh were gummy and swollen. They swayed as her mouth split open, grinning up at them. In spite of everything, her eyes were what sent icy pricks of terror crawling the length of Dean's spine. No natural color…the irises were a spider web of blood red.

They were the eyes of a mortally wounded predator. Nothing save instinct, rage, and hate - devoid of humanity. She assessed the brothers every move, anticipating and savagely gleeful.

Dean instinctively shoved his arm in front of his brother and roughly pushed Sam behind him.

"Sam, get back," he warned, keeping his voice as low as possible.

Before Sam could protest, the woman quirked her head to the side and licked her top lip with a shriveled, blackened tongue.

"Mmm…Sam," she hissed. "Sam. Sam I am. Green eggs and ham."

The brother's exchanged a confused look, Dean shoved them both another step backwards. The woman rose to her hands and knees. Her body rocking gently as she began crawling towards them.

"Sam I am…likes green eggs and ham. Ham. I like ham," she clicked her black tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Pink. Piggy. Pink like a piggy…"

"Lady," Dean pointed the rod as he retreated another step, bodily shielding Sam. "Look, I don't wanna hurt you, but you need to stop where you are."

"Dean," Sam brushed his brother's shoulder. "Let's just go, she's not going to follow."

"Yeah," Dean snorted. His tone was disbelieving, wary from years of experience. "How do you know?"

"Look at her, she's too weak," Sam felt a twinge of pity looking down at the mess of a woman.

"Sam, I'm not taking any chances."

"Ssssaaam…" The woman braced a gnarled hand against the wall. "Sam…pink like a piggy. Niiiice, salty…salty, salted pork. No chances, Sam I am, no chance cards. Don't pass go." She threw back her head and the flaps of skin hanging from her bottom lip slapped against her neck. She cackled before grinding her teeth as a painful wheeze rattled from her chest. Suddenly, she sprang to her feet, screaming wildly, and lunged for the two men.

Dean didn't hesitate. He swung the rod, landing a powerful blow on top of her head. Sam heard a sickening thud as metal connected with skull. The woman crumpled in a bloody pile of limbs at their feet.

"Jesus," Dean breathed, slightly shaken. "You were right. No reasoning with these bastards."

He raised the rod over the woman's body and braced his legs before Sam caught his bicep.

"Dean, what're you doing?" Sam glared intently.

"Sam," Dean stared back, undeterred. "She's still breathing."

"She's not getting up any time soon. Come on, let's just get out of here."

Dean hesitated, glancing from the woman to his brother's pleading eyes. He shook his head and lowered the weapon. He turned back and faced the length of hallway. He could see it ended in a case of stairs about thirty feet from where they stood.

"Fine," Dean hefted the rod and started walking. "Watch our rear," he instructed.

The stairs were mercifully empty. The doors to the entrance were nonexistent. Broken shards of glass mingled with cracked pieces of tile. Leaves and debris were scattered over the front desk and destroyed pieces of furniture littered the entryway.

The outside world was just as shocking as it had been from the window. Dean took a few steadying breathes. Get a grip.

They made their way over the debris to the street. Something that could've once been a person sat in a rusted truck, skeletal fingers still clenching the steering wheel, dried pieces of skin and clothing hung in ragged tatters over skewed limbs. Empty eye sockets stared out of a broken window. Dean grimaced but kept moving, Sam on his heels. His little brother looked just as shell-shocked as Dean felt.

Dean was approaching the end of a brick wall that dipped into an alleyway when he heard a loud thump, like someone had been thrown against a door. He held up his hand in warning, but Sam had already stopped to listen.

Muffled snarls and the sound of crunching…like someone was cracking walnuts.

The boys peered cautiously around the side. Two men sat huddled over a red heap in the road. They squatted unceremoniously beside each other, facing a row of dumpsters. These were just as filthy and decrepit as the other two they'd come across earlier – and barely clothed. Boils covered their bodies and pink salvia dripped from their chins as they buried their teeth into the meal at their feet. Dean heard a slurping tear as a piece of flesh was ripped from the pile. He realized with disgusted horror that one of the men had bitten into the calf of a leg. Other body parts suddenly emerged with startling clarity from the tangle of flesh. Intestines. A hand, gnawed at the fingers. Patches of black hair clung to flaps of skin and lay scattered in the pile. He heard Sam stifle a gag behind him and Dean couldn't help the shudder of revulsion that turned his stomach and made it difficult to swallow.

He motioned silently to turn back and quickly followed his brother away from the horrible scene.

"Oh my God," Sam whispered once they had retreated out of range. His face was the color of chalk. He ran a shaky hand through his hair.

"Sam," Dean caught his breath and looked up at his brother. "We're in deep shit."

"Yeah," Sam's eyes had gone wide and his breathing quickened as he glanced over Dean's shoulder. "You could say that."

Dean spun around and immediately tensed, his body already pumping with adrenaline. Emerging from the dark doors of what they had previously assumed to be abandoned buildings, were a group of people. Seven in total. Two women - one without a top and the other missing an ear – and five men. An atrocious gang of animated corpses. Gray skin and leaking sores…all mingled with dark blood.

They snarled and glared appraisingly at the newcomers. Their colorless, bloodshot eyes seeking out signs of weakness. The man out in front, a looming, twiggy wraith with long strands of dark hair covering the diseased skin of his chest, took a step forward. He smiled wickedly through cracked lips and clicked his teeth in anticipation. As if taking a cue, the topless woman started clapping her hands and laughing hysterically.

Dean didn't wait to see what came next. His hand flailed before catching hold of his brother's jacket.

"Run!"

A/N: Okay, basically if people are interested in this nuttiness, I'll try to have the next chapter up within a day or so. Click that button and let me know ;) Thanks for reading! ~P