The door gave a hiss as the airlock disengaged. After a delay, the dark metal door slid aside with a screech of old parts in sore need of oiling. The silence that followed was almost as deafening, and just as brief. With a clatter of snapping wing feathers, a flock of blackbirds swooped down, cawing as they settled on the roof of the bunker and the scraggly desert shrubs that clung to its shadows.

The warlock and the triplets paid the large birds no mind, but Troy still found them unnerving. For the most part, they seemed like typical ravens. But then there were times when he'd make eye contact with one and it was like there was something…else there looking back at him, something sinister and calculating. Something he didn't trust one bit.

He didn't believe it was Michael's doing, either. When the Antichrist was using the birds as his personal conduit, they behaved in a very specific manner that Troy had come to identify even if the creatures were at ease. When the "other" was there, the creatures seemed far more predacious. Troy didn't like it because he didn't know what it was. It could be any number of demons or spirits spying on him. Waiting for a moment when he was vulnerable to…what? Attack? He wasn't sure, which was even more reason to mistrust the black birds.

He hadn't told anyone of his concerns yet because he didn't want to sound paranoid. After all, the birds hadn't actually done anything they shouldn't. Not yet. His suspicions were based solely off impressions only he seemed to have, which made him hesitant to bring it up. It was possible he was imagining things. It was even more possible that the creatures were just infernal and disturbing by nature, and only became tolerable when under Michael's direct influence. Self-doubt kept him mute where the birds were concerned. If there was something wrong with them, surely Michael would know it.

Still, Troy kept a watchful eye on the flock until he was inside. He was concerned that some might try to accompany the group, but the birds all remained outside. It was a relief and a source of security as it meant Michael likely sent them along to act as lookouts for the convoy.

The entryway beyond the old airlock was a short concrete hall that quickly became a flight of stairs that descended down into darkness. The only light came from the doorway behind them.

"You still haven't said what you're looking for," Troy mentioned.

Pietre sighed. "Don't be tedious. We're looking for supplies."

He waved Alec ahead. The pale man turned on the Coleman lantern and lit the way down the narrow stairwell.

"Here," Troy pressed. It wasn't a question.

The older man stopped on the stairs and half-turned to sweep Troy with a head-to-toe look. "This isn't the time for a history lesson about Alamogordo's bunkers and launch complexes. Put a pin in that for later, hm? Right now, we have a few things to find."

"Like..?"

The stairwell emptied out into a wider corridor lined with doors, many of which stood open. Despite the state above, the halogen lights below were working, though one at the end of the hall flickered in a way that warned it wouldn't last much longer. The air was cool and slightly musty.

"I already told you," Pietre responded. His characteristically quiet voice echoed down the deserted hall in a strange way. "Supplies."

Troy was tired of the game. "You wouldn't have dragged us all the way out to this specific place just for some K-rations and double-A batteries."

When Pietre looked back at him then, there was a hint of mischief in his obsidian eyes. To the younger man's annoyance, the warlock didn't respond. He just headed on down the hall, barely glancing at the rooms they passed. His destination was the large grey steel door at the end of the hall.

The door swung open before they reached it, maneuvered by Pietre from afar with a cantrip. A rush of cold, stale air followed.

"Nasty," Troy winced, waving a hand before his face.

"Shit!" Dean yelped and scrambled back a few paces, a look of horror on his pock-marked face.

The thing that inspired the reaction was on the floor, crawling out of the newly opened room: A small, translucent scorpion. Barry stared at him.

"It's just a little scorpion," he chided his fellow roadie.

"Are you nuts?" exclaimed Dean, not looking away from the ambling arachnid. "The little ones are the worst ones!"

"And God said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth," Pietre quoted the Old Testament.

Barry crushed the little scorpion under his boot heel. "Problem solved."

Two more of the skittering, sting-tailed creatures darted out of the room, followed by three more.

"Ohhh, no," Dean said, backing up and trying without success to keep his eyes on all five as they fled for freedom. "No. Fuck this."

He turned and started back down the hall at a quick jog.

"Dean! Where ya going? Get your chicken-shit ass back here!" Barry called.

"Fuck that!" Dean called back, not slowing. "I didn't sign up for scorpions!"

Barry started to go after him, but Pietre put a restraining hand on his shoulder. "Let him go. This is no place for cowards."

The roadie shifted his attention to the warlock. "Right."

"Let's press on. But first…"

Pietre moved to the doorway and focused, chin tucked down in concentration. There was a crackling sound and a strong smell of ozone then lightning burst from his hands. It lit up the wide room beyond, chasing across the floor and up the walls to race across the ceiling. Anything living in contact with the surfaces perished painfully.

Once he was sure everything in the room was dead, Pietre cut the flow of electricity. Lightheaded, he brushed a hand under his nose to make sure he wasn't bleeding. Then he sent a self-satisfied smile around his reduced group. "Troy? Can you give us some light?"

…

"So, you really think this is where it is?" Michael asked, looking with great interest at the military map Pietre had brought back from New Mexico. The old document had been rolled up for so long, the stiff paper resisted being pulled apart, wanting to curl back up on itself.

"I have no doubt it is there," Pietre smiled confidently.

"Then," said Michael with a light note of an easy decision made. "As soon as you're rested and ready, we'll go."

"I'm ready now," the warlock said. "The younglings could probably use a night's rest, but it isn't absolutely necessary."

"We'll go in the morning," decided Michael.

The map he studied was an aerial view of a location he had never been to but knew he could shift himself to all the same. He could see it in his mind already, just a concentrated thought away.

The forested land surrounding the town was rich green. In the middle, the ground turned brown and blighted, devoid of living trees. Sun-bleached buildings poked up from the dead earth like tombstones. The streets between them were half-reclaimed by nature, coming together in an A-shaped intersection that led inevitably to a series of low, ashen buildings.

These buildings were anything but white. Blackened and warped, decaying in the elements, these were what remained of Pripyat's Chernobyl power plant. The meltdown in 1986 left the area irradiated and uninhabitable by anyone who valued a long, healthy life. In the early 2000s, the Ukrainian government tried to construct a new container for the crippled plant to contain the nuclear mess that was still festering there. Efforts to maintain it ceased in 2019, when the fog thickened and brought the monsters with it.

It was there, beneath a crumbling half-finished concrete dome, that the Rod of Wormwood could be found.

xxx

Author's Note:

That does it for this episode. Roll credits, end theme, etc.

Now, if you've watched the show, you know they tapped the nuclear vibe for Apocalypse. We're dipping into it as well, but not as an homage to the parent series so much as it's what follows logically in the Bible. Check it out: The power plant in Pripyat was called Chernobyl. The word itself means "wormwood". The Bible has an interesting remark about Wormwood in Revelation, which is partly the inspiration for this fanfic. I'm not giving any more spoilers, but if you want to know the Bible's take on Wormwood, you can find the info online.

Next episode is called "The Fallen". It's a multipurpose title.