Sam Winchester lifted himself from the hard mattress with a groan. He cracked his neck and yawned, squinting to avoid the nuisance of morning light. This would be the last time he'd let his older brother, Dean, convince him that Dad's method of choosing lodging was the best method. It was time to splurge for one of those swanky hotel rooms. I'm probably just used to the bunker, he thought.
His body gave into his brain's desire to wake-the-hell-up and, upon his second yawn, he opened his eyes.
This was not the room he fell asleep in.
Dean, who was also sitting upright on a disgusting mattress, stared back at him. "You have a creepy yawn."
Sam ignored Dean's attempt at dark humor and checked the room. It had that unpleasant post-apocalyptic decor to it, with the cracked walls, peeling wallpaper, and dust-covered floors. The smell was unlike anything he'd ever smelled, like fresh air, but somehow permanently burnt by a soldering iron. It was a squatter's nightmare, and anyway, not even where they fell asleep. "Where the hell are we?"
"No clue, but I came to in that corner." Dean pointed to a corner of debris, made up largely of papers and dirty cloth. The pile sported a nice, person-sized depression. "You were on the floor next to me. I set you over there so you could finish your beauty rest."
"I didn't wake up?"
"Nope, you were sleeping like a baby." Dean shot him that smile that blended sarcasm and disappointment. Dirt had already settled into the creases near his green eyes, and there was a smear of dust atop the freckles on his fair peach skin. The black tee he wore the day before-was it tomorrow already?-also had a layer of brown and gray Pollocked atop it.
Looking at him, Sam suddenly had the feeling of dust and dirt and possibly bugs all over his own skin, although he'd worn a long-sleeved plaid shirt to bed. He was thankful for the habit; he and his brother had been attacked or called to action so many times during sleep that they'd grown accustomed to falling asleep in their clothes, sometimes even their shoes, and this time, it'd kept him clothed in a place he really didn't want to be wearing just boxers in. He patted down his clothes, holding his breath so as not to breathe in whatever covered him, then stood to stretch before shaking out the motel blanket that seemed to have traveled with him.
"Did you ever go to sleep?" he asked Dean.
"No, well, not until we got here. Nodded off for a bit after moving you, but it wasn't more than an hour." He pulled out his phone. "By the way, this thing's a piece of junk here."
Sam checked his pockets. That's one thing he didn't fall asleep with, because the phone would crack. He was missing his wallet too; actually, just about everything in his pockets was gone but a folded bandana he'd picked up at one of those dollar stores in town, and an article he'd found on the case were working. "Mine's back at the motel."
"Lots of stuff is back in the motel."
Sam searched the room, in case anything else had traveled with them.
"I already did that."
"So we just teleported here?"
"Yeah." Dean rubbed his face, making it even more dirty than before, and making the paleness of his skin where it was clean even more apparent.
"You okay, Dean?"
"Just a little nauseous, probably from the spell. You?"
"I mean, a little, but you look like you're about to turn green."
"Look outside, Sammy."
"There're no windows." In fact, now that Sam was starting to clean up the room in his mind, and make sense of some of the broken furniture, it looked like an office, one that people would be happy to take because of its medium size, but one that they would also be happy to upgrade out of on account of the closeted feeling. No windows even looked out into the hallway, unless you counted the Shining-sized hole in the wooden door.
Dean struggled to his feet-yeah, something was wrong with him-food poisoning?-and led Sam out into the hallway, a small dead end with the same amount of grime and crap littered everywhere. Across from them was a rusted-out bathroom with no door at all, and to their left, the hall opened up. Out here, there was the faint smell of...oil. A poster about cars that had a classic look to them, not unlike the Impala. Which is probably back at the motel parking lot, along with most of our guns.
Dean gestured to the open room, then nodded at a turned over bucket and entered. Sam lingered, waiting to hear if Dean were sick, but his brother only shuffled around in the room, so Sam continued down the hall. He came out into a garage with a broken door and no glass at all.
"Shit."
Beyond the windows lay a wasteland, worse than the post-Croatoan world Dean had once described to him. A world of brown and pale green, of bent and broken steel and shattered bricks. Naked trees raked an otherwise beautiful sky, one with the honey and tangerine colors of sunrise, but there was something faintly green about the horizon too, particularly to...the south? Yes, the south.
Sam's heart pounded. Nothing about their current or ongoing cases pointed to a land like this. Nothing about the crazy dealings in Heaven or Hell or Purgatory pointed to a land like this. So where were they? An alternate timeline? The same one from before? Did we fall into another world, like Oz? Or maybe another archangel was still kicking around, and screwing with their mind. Perhaps it was the work of another creature thus far unknown to them.
No matter the cause, they needed out.
Sam looked around for something to use as a weapon. He spotted some heavy, blunt objects that could be swung several times before breaking, depending, of course, on what they were swung at. Sam had watched those movies replay on TV, and he knew that somehow, someway, there'd be something out there with bones and soft skin causing terror.
He hefted a long wrench first, testing its weight. He gave it a swing to check the grip. No good. He swept a pile of bottle caps off a built-in countertop, then set down the wrench. The bottle caps bounced and tumbled with tiny clacks. He toed them aside so they wouldn't keep crunching underfoot, then picked up a pipe, wondering if it were made of something safe to hold. He set that down too, and looked for anything that could be made of iron. He lifted a discarded baseball bat, its sturdy wood scratched and a little splintered where a logo once existed. A few small dents spoke of mishandling. Good enough. He lay that alongside the other weapons and expanded his search for anything useful. The gorgeous red paint of a workshop tool chest called to him from behind a cart loaded with crispy, decaying magazines. He pushed and pulled until the cart's rusted wheels scraped and screeched and finally rotated. He pulled on one of the tool chest's drawers, expecting the same resistance, but it opened with little fuss.
"Sammy?" Dean called out from the back hall. "You come across any water out there?"
"No, but I found some things we could use as weapons." It'd been a while since he'd been called Sammy, but that was likely indicative of how Dean was feeling. Sam was nauseated too, but he didn't think it was to the extent Dean was, and he figured that most of it had set in on account of seeing what he had seen.
"I've got a few things here too," Dean yelled back.
A flutter.
Sam's head shot up, his ears pricked. The weapons were on the other side of the room.
A rustle.
Dean's head poked out from the hall. The two brothers nodded at each other; neither had made the noise they'd clearly both heard.
Sam watched the outside world, an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar colors. Would he be able to spot anything out there? Had whatever or whomever inhabited this world developed the ability to blend in?
A click and a clack. Insect-like. Repetitive. More shuffling, more harsh clicks with that otherworldly quality. Sam looked at Dean, who signaled to the window in the far corner. Sam's eyes darted around, looking for anything beside him that could be used as a weapon, but unless he wanted to use a rolled up a magazine, he wouldn't be able to kill anything but a fly.
And from the sounds of it, what approached was likely no ordinary bug.
He'd have to make a mad dash for the weapons, or pull out one of the tool chest's drawers and use it like a shield, if this particular chest had easy-to-remove drawers.
A green glow ebbed up the edges of window. An apparition? Damn, couldn't there be anything made of solid iron around here? He glanced at Dean, who gripped a wrench that looked a lot like the one Sam had found, then looked back at the glow.
Antennae emerged, huge antennae, at least a foot long, probably longer when they weren't curled.
A giant cockroach?
A metallic boom pierced the air as a red flash hit the approaching roach, turning it into ash. Sam and Dean ducked, and Sam crab-walked to the counter, reaching up to grab whatever he grabbed first-the baseball bat-then he joined Dean in the hallway while red flashes soared toward the other clacking noises.
"Star Wars?" Dean whispered. "Did we fall into a fricken Star Wars movie?"
Burnt meat wafted into the hallway, making Dean grimace and further greening his complexion. Sam's gut didn't have quite the same reaction.
"Clear!"
"Clear!"
"What's our plan?" Dean asked.
"Reason?" said Sam, standing and offering Dean a hand.
Dean declined, and allowed himself to look as sick as he likely felt. "Roll with it."
The "we need help" angle. Made them look more vulnerable and less likely to be considered as threats by anyone they'd come across. They would be underestimated, or at least, Dean would.
Or maybe Dean really feels that sick.
"Hold!" said a man's voice. "Who's there?"
"We could use some help over here!" Sam called back. Better to let them know where they were than to startle them and take a laser in the head.
"We're armed," the voice called back.
"We don't want any trouble," said Sam. He hated the old line, but it worked.
A steady pair of footsteps approached them. Sam looked up to find a woman in a cowboy hat and duster, armed with a weapon straight out of a sci-fi movie. Her light brown skin looked battle-worn, her chin bore a scar, and she kept her black hair tied tight and low behind her head.
"Drop the weapons," she said.
The brothers did so, though Dean's grip hadn't been very firm to begin with.
"They're clear," she called to those behind her. "One of 'em looks like he picked up too many rads."
Three more people approached, each wearing similar garb. Their leader, a man of dark brown skin and a strong posture, kept his long hi-tech rifle pointed down and away from everyone else. He set his rifle against the wall, and held out his hand.
"Preston Garvey, Commonwealth Minutemen."
Minutemen. A militia? Sam wondered if Dean had picked up the historical reference. He'd been getting better with his non-supernatural history since they got into the bunker. Sometimes, Sam could lovingly return the "nerd" insult Dean's way too.
Sam stood and shook the man's hand. "Sam Winchester." No use for an alias here, despite Dean's grunt of disapproval. "That's my brother, Dean."
"What do you mean by rads?" Dean said, tight-throated.
"Radiation?" said Preston. He nodded to another man on the team, a guy with tanned peach skin and a little less age than Preston seemed to have. The guy took off his massive backpack, akin to the kind that hardcore hikers use, and removed a first-aid kit.
"Isn't that the last of it?" said another woman, who looked a lot like the guy Sam presumed was the medic. They shared the same dirty blond hair and serious brow.
"I need your arm," the medic said to Dean, pulling out an IV bag of weird, orangish fluids with a sketchy label reading "RadAway."
Dean's eyes widened and he straightened his back along the wall, as if trying to escape. Sam reached for the bat, but was urged to drop it when the first woman reminded him of her gun.
"What is that?" Dean said, watching with horror as the medic used vodka from a dirty bottle to sanitize his hands and the other instruments.
"RadAway," said the medic, who had reached for Dean's arm for the next part of process. Dean pulled away, but the medic was stronger, and he forcefully cleaned the future entryway of the RadAway.
"You're gonna need to be more specific," Dean said. "Because that stuff looks toxic."
"Pretend we're...uh...new to the area," Sam said.
The sister scoffed, while the medic explained in pure medic fashion: calm, collected, and in the midst of the procedure. "Rads are jargon for units of radiation, specifically ones we take into our body. Too much, and you get sick. RadAway clears that out, provided you haven't gone to the point of no return." The medic paused and examined Dean's face, and the exposed skin of his other arm. "You haven't gone ghoul yet, so I think we're safe."
Sam and Dean shared a look. This was the only way, they realized. There was no use in asking questions. They were in a messed up world with giant, glowing roaches, no lush greens, and laser guns. Radiation poisoning-if that's what Dean had, and Sam was pretty sure that Dean had the symptoms, since they could come on quickly after exposure-was no joke.
"Do it," said Dean. "And if you can save some for my brother-"
"This is all we have left, until we get to Sanctuary," the medic said, which was met with his sister's silent approval. "I'll check you out when I'm done with your brother, Sam, but I think a dose of Rad-X will cover you 'til we make it back."
"Thanks, Doctor...?"
"Grant, just Grant is fine. Hold still. This is going to pinch." Grant proceeded to treat Dean with precision, though the apocalypse had given the procedure some rough edges, such as Grant becoming the IV stand and holding the bag high above Dean.
When everything was said and done, Dean complained of being sleepy, so Grant forced him to drink some water (which he assured the brothers was purified), and a slurry of herbs. After quickly judging the mattress situation, he encouraged Sam to lay out the blanket and the two helped Dean walk over to it to rest.
"His immune system will be a little weak for a while, but that's what the antimicrobial is for," said Grant. "Preston, we hunkering down for a bit?"
"I suppose so," said Preston. "But not long. We just broke down a camp, and I'd like to stay on schedule. The second he's ready to go, we go." He nodded at the hall. "Got a minute, Sam?"
Sam looked at Dean, who had his eyes closed. "Go ahead, Sam, I got this."
"So do I," said Grant.
Sam nodded at Preston, and they headed back to the main garage, where the other two in the squad had already begun scavenging and moving around bigger pieces to build fortifications.
"Where're you two from that you don't have radiation like this?" Preston asked.
"It's complicated," said Sam. "It's different. Very different."
"Like a vault? Where're the jumpsuits?"
A vault? "Like I said, it's pretty different." Sam stared into the distance. They were on the edge of a town, or a city, and he could see vague shapes in the distance that suggested more. The morning light now consumed the landscape; maybe that's what the roaches were trying to get away from. "You made it sound like we were going with you, before."
"You are, if you want to. Especially if you've got no clue how to survive out here." He rifled through the tool chest that Sam hadn't realized he had inwardly claimed for himself. "Tell me more. Just how different are we talking?"
"Our trees had leaves," said Sam. Is it worth it to lie? At least if he were vague, Preston would slip up and let him know about places that were green. Then Sam could get a sense of where they were. Somewhere in the States, he figured, one of the states that still had "Commonwealth" in its name. Massachusetts made sense with the reference to the Minutemen.
Preston let that information sit for a moment. He pocketed some screws, and picked up a half-used roll of duct tape and slid it over his wrist. "Leaves. That's interesting." He moved to the cart with all of its crispy reading material, and made two piles: one of somewhat viable reading material, and the other faded kindling. "You know, Sam, I think there's someone you need to meet, someone who came from a world where the trees still had leaves."
"Who?"
Preston stared him in the eye. "The General of the Minutemen."