Warning: The Second Death contains adult content, including graphic descriptions of violence beyond canon-levels.
The Second Death
Chapter 2: The Chosen Few
Dean woke up in a dark, empty room sprawled across some seriously uncomfortable cushions. He scrunched up his face in confusion when he saw the blankets covering him, which were a combination of Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles and an ugly paisley pattern. He felt warm. No, he felt good.
Over the years, Dean had developed his own indicators for detecting dangerous scenarios when not at capacity. Coming to in an unknown location with no injury or symptoms of a hangover was a death-con-one alert in his mind. Thus, he jolted up out of his improvised bed, cracking his head against the incredibly low ceiling.
"Sonovabitch!"
He rubbed his forehead where it cracked against the ceiling, his head smarting from the impact. He shoved the sheets off and discovered that he was still fully dressed, down to his heavy boots.
There was a hatch in the floor a few feet away, so he was in some kind of crawl space. That would explain why he couldn't sit up, let alone stand. He ignored his throbbing head and made for the exit, shoving it open.
"Damnit!"
There weren't any stairs or a ladder, just a full story-and-a-half drop to the floor below. He didn't have a lot of options, so he didn't waste time thinking about it. He swung his feet over the side and wiggled into the opening, lowering himself as far as possible to shorten the fall. He probably looked like an idiot, dangling from the ceiling in rumpled and dirty clothing.
He grunted as he dropped to the floor, and his feet ached in protest. The only good news was that he was still inside the gas station.
"You're awake," Castiel said.
He was sitting on the couch, waiting, and as soon as Dean saw him, he remembered how he fell asleep the night previous.
"What the hell, Cas?"
Without replying, the angel handed him a faded and ragged edition of The Virginia Rural Times, dated September 30, 2012.
"September?" he read out loud. "Are you trying to tell me we've been MIA for four months? Where the hell did you find this?"
From the state of the pages, he knew that it wasn't current, which meant they'd probably been gone for a lot longer than just a few months.
"That paper is approximately twenty-one months old," Cas replied. "I discovered it in an abandoned building five miles down the road."
Dean scanned the headlines and began flipping through the paper, looking for some indication that it was an April's Fools Joke or a fabrication, but everything about it was authentic. He scanned the headlines and stopped when he read: EVACUATION OF ALL RESIDENTS.
There was nothing in the way of explanation; instead, the article detailed various destinations. Fairfax County residents were to evacuate to Fort Belvois, but to prevent dangerous traffic conditions, everyone was encouraged to arrive at a refugee port so they could be transported with maximum safety and efficiency.
Most of the other articles outline basic survival tips and warned people to remain behind barricaded doors at all times, especially at night. There was information about identifying contaminated water and even a short article warning against scams for counterfeit canned goods.
In his general experience, the media emphasized terror and fear because it sold papers. It was baffling to see so many articles about an apocalyptic-like situation without one damn reference as to the cause.
"What the hell?" Dean asked.
"I was not able to discover much else last night," the angel replied. "Other than the supernatural does not exist on this world and hasn't for a long time."
The conversation hadn't gone well. It took over an hour to convince Dean that they were in some kind of altered world where demons, monsters, and angels hadn't appeared for many years. It was a particularly exhausting affair because Cas had spent all night trying to contact other angelic beings.
After a lot of unnecessary shouting, they were finally able to agree that wherever they were, they needed to find a car, food, and better shelter.
"And we need to find Sam and Kev," Dean added.
"Given the absence of supernatural entities, it is highly unlikely that the Prophet of the Lord exists," Cas pointed out.
"And what about Kevin Tran?" Dean barked. "He doesn't count if he's not the prophet?"
"Kevin Tran would have no reason to cross paths with the Winchesters," the angel explained. "He's probably completely safe in Michigan."
"And Sammy?" Dean asked. "You think he's some attorney, married with two kids?"
"I don't know."
"So, you don't know where we are, how we got here, what kind of bad went down to make this place completely empty, or if Kev and Sammy are nearby," Dean said, clearly displeased. "Is there anything we do know?"
His stomach growled loudly.
"You require sustenance," Cas replied.
"What about you?"
"Have you forgotten that angels don't require food?"
"You said angels don't exist here," Dean said. "What if it's like during the Apocalypse. You lost your mojo because of the... connection or whatever to Heaven."
"I cannot predict if that will be the case," Cas said. "As of right now, my vessel does not require food or drink to survive."
"Did you see any vehicles we could use last night?"
"One of the refugee centers is only twenty miles from here and has many abandoned vehicles."
Dean made quick work of the last of the canned foods he'd found the night before, which was some sickly sweet orange slices and a can of beef and rice soup. It wasn't all that satisfying a meal, but it was better than nothing. Once he was done, Cas teleported them into a thicket of trees.
"I thought we were going to the refugee center," Dean complained.
"It's just over that field," Cas replied. "This was the closest place to land with cover."
"Cover?" Dean repeated. "Cas, man, no one else is here."
The hunter had a point, for as far as Castiel knew, this area had been deserted for a while. Yet he felt the need to take precautions and keep his powers hidden. They walked passed the trees and through the field in silence. Up ahead, there as a parking lot filled with all kinds of vehicles, from school buses to tractors.
Everything had collected a heavy line of dust, and as they approached, they saw that there had been recent disturbances. The tires had been removed from a few cars, and all the buses had been picked over from engine parts to seat padding. Many of the trucks and cars had been broken into, and, if the handful of car-sized vacancies in the lot were any indication, a few had probably been stolen.
"People just left all this here?" Dean asked. "Seems weird that no one came back for some of these."
"Perhaps the evacuation relocated them permanently," Cas suggested.
"If that's the case, then who did all this? We obviously weren't the first who've come through here since. Gonna make our job a lot harder."
"What do we require?" Cas asked awkwardly.
"From the looks of the streets, we're gonna need something that can handle off-roading. Trucks, cars with some clearance," Dean reeled off. When he saw Cas's confusion, he added, "Anything that is high off the ground would work. Then it's about what we can get started."
They spent the next few hours scouring the lot, identifying possible cars. Dean managed to find a partial toolkit hidden inside a compartment on one of the muscle cars. Some of the less commonly used tools had been removed to make room for a small handgun and ammo.
Neither one mentioned how creepy the place felt. The area was absolutely silent, and Dean's hand never strayed far from his machete. The refugee center itself was little more than a module that had been set up in the adjacent field, and after wasting an hour exploring it, Dean found a few candy bars that expired in twenty-ten.
Happy to have something to eat, the Winchester set to work wiring cars. He quickly discovered that none had much gasoline, so he gave Cas the task of siphoning whatever he could. There was nothing like his Impala on the lot, but there were a few cars that he could make work. In the end, the vehicle in the best condition was a pickup truck. It could seat five or six people in the cab, though it was a tight squeeze, and the back had a decent cap that no one had bothered to steal. There was also a spare tire, a few blankets, and a very old cooler filled with canned beer.
The truck did have the best tires and two working headlights, but in truth, Dean picked it because none of the windows had been smashed in. Everything was much easier when he didn't have to deal with broken glass. He checked the engine and found a few old lines and caps. Normally that kind of work would take him an hour, tops, but every time he saw that something needed to be replaced, he had to scavenge for a substitute. Still, he'd rather put in the time now than have the thing break down on the road at an inopportune moment.
Cas kept returning with the most random things: backpacks, ropes, toilet paper, hauling chains, and the occasional Jerry Can of gasoline. Anything the angel thought might be useful was placed either beside the truck or under the cap.
His work finished, Dean turned his attention to the previously discovered cooler. The ice inside had long-since melted, so he emptied it and opened a lukewarm beer. It wasn't a great brand to begin with, and age and heat made it watery, but it was just want he needed.
"Cas, something tells me we won't need a broom or empty cans," Dean said as the angel returned with his most recent haul.
"I've only managed to acquire a hundred gallons of gasoline," Cas replied. "I've siphoned every vehicle in the lot."
Dean pointed to the Jerry cans and asked, "These are all full?"
Cas nodded his head, yes. "All the larger vehicles had one, but most were empty."
"Don't worry about it, Cas, a hundred gallons will get us pretty far," he replied. "We should pack up."
The angel packed the car rapidly while Dean filled the tank with gas. As soon as he was done, Cas tied the Jerry Cans together and secured them under the cap.
"You in a rush?" Dean asked, somewhat amused.
"Beyond vegetation, there is no sign of life anywhere," Cas said. "A lack of human population does not mean silence nor emptiness. In fact, without humans to slaughter them or scare them away, insects, birds, mammals should all be in abundance."
"So, this place creeps you out?"
"That is one way of putting it," the angel said tersely. "We should - "
Cas stopped speaking because the horrible smell of decay and blood picked up with the wind, paired with a cacophony of approaching groans and gasps. He turned his attention to the source of the noise, which was the field they crossed to get to the lot.
Dean lifted his machete, but his hand faltered when he saw that what approached them was neither demon nor monster but rather the rotting, animated corpse that was once a person - down to the inelegant style of dress - but now it was putrid, thoughtless, and, above all else, very, very hungry.
Castiel and Dean had both encountered zombies, revenants, spirits, and other creatures that were once human beings, but these were different.
"So much for nothing supernatural," Dean mused.
"That thing isn't supernatural."
"It's a zombie," Dean retorted. "Zombies are supernatural."
The hunter was disappointed. He had expected a big bad monster, and this just didn't qualify.
"Keep packing, I'll take care of it," he said to Cas.
He strolled out to the edge of the parking lot and waited for it to come to him. Once it was within reach, he swung his machete and decapitated it. Noticing that it was still snapping its teeth on the ground, he jabbed the blade into its severed head for good measure. It stopped moving.
He had been so caught up in his disappointment and dispatch of the zombie that he failed to recognize that the silence was gone. He hadn't even registered the gasping sounds as dangerous.
"Dean," Cas said from the truck. "We need to get out of here."
"What, you think this is contagious?" Dean said jokingly as he wiped off his blade.
That was when the hunter saw a dozen other zombies, all coming from the same direction as the first, trickling into view from the tree line and stumbling across the field. Their number quickly doubled, then tripled, as they came closer. There were men in overalls, women in broken high heels, children in their Sunday best, and people in pajamas. More and more arrived, and Dean had no reason to assume there weren't a hundred or a thousand more just out of sight.
Dean didn't know what possessed him to do it. Maybe it was the fact that he hadn't had real food in the past day. Maybe it was the lack of other people in the general vicinity. Maybe he was still spoiling for a fight after the big leviathan showdown. Whatever the reason, he didn't listen to Cas and return to the car. Instead, he chose the best place to handle the next wave of the undead and stood his ground.
He noticed a number of things about them as they closed in. One, they weren't quick. Two, they zeroed in on him. Three, they weren't stealthy. He and Cas should've noticed them gathering because they seemed to make noise constantly.
A gaggle of them approached, and he slashed them with his machete, angling for headshots every time. They must've been more rotted than he realized because his machete passed straight through their skulls. He didn't mind being splattered or the pile of bodies that formed as wave after wave came to him. He lost count of how many he'd taken out when his arm began to tire. Thirty? Fifty? Yet no matter how many he felled, the others continued to attack.
Guess they aren't smart either, he thought.
His arm was getting tired, and the pile of corpses around him forced him to back up so his line of sight wasn't impeded because a few of these undead things were creepy-crawlers, dragging themselves across the ground. He wasn't about to let some ankle-biter get the best of him.
There was a rumbling noise that caught the attention of every undead douchebag in the immediate area, followed by screeching wheels. Castiel pulled the truck onto the grass behind him. Dean finished off the five that were too close to outrun, then he turned to the passenger side door and yanked it open.
One of the rotting corpses grabbed hold of his jacket before he could get inside, its rank breath billowing over him as it snapped its teeth, trying to bite him, but Cas threw something like a javelin into its eye. Dean shoved it away, climbed inside, and slammed the door behind him, and they drove off.
Dean got a good look at his handiwork in the rearview mirror. There was a wall of bodies piled up in front of where he made his first stand, and there were a few smaller piles on either side where he was forced to back up. He must've put down a hundred of those things.
"Damn that felt good," he said.
"I'm glad it provided entertainment," Cas said tersely. "There were hundreds of those things, Dean."
"Hundreds?" Dean asked. "Guess we know why this area was evacuated."
"Those things want to eat us alive," the angel pointed out. "And we only have a hundred gallons of gas."
The adrenaline from the fight was tapering off. He was tired and hungry, and for all they knew, people hadn't lived in this area for years. He might be living off expired canned foods and candy bars for a very, very long time.
"Well, we're good for now," he said.
There was no way that either of them could've known that, at that very minute, someone was following them.
Author's notes: Characters from the Walking Dead will be coming up in the next chapter.