WILDERNESS TIPS
By Allegra
Disclaimers : Luckily for Dean & Sam Winchester, I do not own them. They are the property of Eric Kripke & the CW. In my fanfic world, however, their suffering is in my hands for all eternity! Enjoy. This fic was partly stoked by Polly's challenge that I try to write a story no longer than 40 pages. For me, that's like turning my ideas into a haiku but I won't back down now! I just hope it doesn't leave the story lacking.
PART 1 : ASSUME CRASH POSITIONS
"I can't believe I'm doing this," Dean grumbled as he pulled the seatbelt tighter across his lap, refusing to admit that it was mildly constricting his blood supply. He narrowed his eyes as he looked out of the Plexiglas window of the small plane at the stretch of runway ahead of them, wondering how the hell they were ever going to get off the ground on one engine alone and stay up there. "This just isn't natural, man." Sam's smug face only made Dean feel more irritated and unsettled.
His younger brother grinned as he moved awkwardly past his brother to sit in the window seat. "You didn't have to come, Dean. I told you Bobby and I could handle this on our own."
"And leave you to get mauled to death by some grizzly Big Foot? I don't think so," Dean defended himself. Sam gave him a sceptical look. They both knew, deep down, that the older Winchester lived in fear that hunters were on his brother's tail and he would never forgive himself if something happened to Sam because he had been too afraid to climb into a plane.
"Don't trust me enough to keep him out of trouble?" asked Bobby, offended, as he took his own seat in the twin seats on the other side of the aisle from the two brothers. He peered out from under the peak of his trademark baseball cap, eyes narrowed in mock annoyance. Dean opened and closed his mouth like a fish on a hook and the older hunter could almost see the poor boy's brain working overtime to come up with a suitably placating response. Saving him from digging a deeper hole, Bobby changed the subject. "'Sides, the Skyhawk is a classic light plane. Did you know there have been more Cessna 172s built than any other Western aircraft? It's arguably the most popular flight training aircraft in the world. This baby's got a 150 horsepower engine, goes a 123 knots…" He paused when he saw the amused expression on the Winchesters' faces. "What?!"
"Like your planes, huh, Bobby?" Sam smiled.
"I'm licensed to fly one of these things!" the hunter blurted out.
"Then why don't you?" Dean interjected. "I'd rather see you at the wheel than the geriatric we've been assigned." He jerked his head in the direction of the grey-haired man ambling across the runway.
"Is that a limp? Wonder how he got it…" Sam grinned over Dean's shoulder, receiving a venomous glare from his already petrified brother.
"You're going to pay for this in circus trips when we get back."
"What can I say, bro? It's a rare pleasure to see the wind put up you so easy. Besides, you've been on a plane before and we didn't die. With the odds we were up against, you'd think it would have restored your faith in man's greatest engineering advancement." Sam had run this argument past Dean too many times to remember but it did nothing to allay his brother's fears. Instead, Dean just leaned his head back against the leather seat and rolled his eyes in exasperation and whispered, "Yadda, yadda, yadda…"
"Fine," Sam shrugged. "I won't bother trying to make it easier for you anymore, Dean. You want to give in to completely irrational fears then be my guest. It just seems kind of hypocritical, that's all."
"Hypocritical?" Dean repeated. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
"It means saying one thing and…"
"I know what the damn word means, Sam!" Dean snapped, angrily.
Sam laughed, enjoying the small pleasure of pushing all his brother's buttons one after the other with such slick surety. "Well, given what we do. I mean most of it boils down to what people are willing to believe…"
"Don't try and stick me with that crap, Sam. This is completely different and you know it!" Dean interrupted again.
"How, Dean?! How is it different?" Sam asked, incredulous that his brother could be so level-headed about every creature of the night that crossed their path but be so irrational about a simple plane flight.
Bobby sighed in resignation. The trickster the brothers had encountered mere weeks before had really opened his eyes to the bickering that went on between the two but he was damned if he was going to put up with it on a beautiful day like today. The hunter was determined to enjoy this rare opportunity to get up in the air and relish the gorgeous scenery unfolding beneath him. He would not have it ruined by listening to Dean and Sam riling each other the entire time. "That's enough!" he bellowed, commanding silence immediately.
Sam looked sheepishly at the older man. "Sorry, Bobby." He looked at Dean to see if he would be gracious enough to apologise, too, but the older Winchester sat tight-lipped and Sam momentarily regretted rubbing salt in Dean's wounds. It wasn't like his brother made a fuss about anything much beyond the state of his beloved car, and Sam felt mean for being so unsupportive when Dean was clearly suffering.
Lost in their argument, neither boy had noticed the pilot taking his seat and running a battery of instrument checks. When the plane rumbled into action, Dean's hand gripped the arm rest with vice-like strength, his knuckles whitening with the exertion.
"Everyone buckled up?" the pilot enquired.
Sam checked himself and turned to Dean who was fumbling to tighten his belt even further. "It doesn't go any tighter than that, Dean." He gently pushed his brother's hands away from the fabric belt and glanced at Bobby for some kind of support.
Bobby called out to the pilot. "We're good." Turning his attention to Dean, he decided to distract the boy with details of their investigation. He knew it would sound pretty far-fetched to the pilot but preventing Dean's meltdown seemed more important. "So, there have been some pretty savage attacks on animal hunters in the wilderness outside of Whitehorse. What little has been found of the bodies showed signs of claw marks."
"Remind me why they couldn't just have been bear strikes?" Sam asked, happily joining in Bobby's plan to calm Dean down.
"The marks were always in the same place on the torso, creating an intricate geometric pattern on the victims' chests, directly over the heart. No bear would be so premeditated, not to mention the fact that the designs are similar to some Native American patterns hundreds of years old linked to forest spirits." Bobby passed the file to Sam who flicked through the photographs, pausing to get a closer look of the ravaged bodies. The pilot was taxi-ing down the runway, then gathering speed. Dean squeezed his eyes closed, his mouth moving in silent words of what Sam could only imagine to be prayer and he waited until the first stomach flipping moment of flight had passed before handing the file to his brother. Dean did not take it, his eyes still firmly closed against the reality of what was happening.
"Dean? You want to look at these?" Still, Dean did not respond. "Dean? Closing your eyes will only make it worse. You'll feel every bump and air current more acutely," Sam sighed in frustration.
Finally, Dean cracked an eyelid open and said, stiffly, "Did you say it's the most popular training aircraft?"
"Sure did," Bobby confirmed, thinking perhaps they had finally found a turn in the road for Dean's fears. His joy died quickly with the typical sarcastic response.
"I guess that means the rookies must have crashed them a lot, too, huh? They must be really cheap to make." Dean absolutely refused to enter into any train of thought that might actually make his ordeal easier. "Jesus, we're all gonna die," he muttered, peering in terror over Sam's shoulder and out of the small window. "Oh my God!" he suddenly blurted out, leaning back rigidly in his seat.
Sam craned his neck further out of the window to try and glimpse what had set Dean off. "What?"
"There's a crack in the window… I can actually see a hole…" Dean started, his face screwed up as if he imagined willing hard enough would 'genie' him out of the plane and back onto safe ground.
Sam's hand hovered over the tiny crack in the Plexiglas. "I can't feel anything, Dean. It's not like we're flying at 30,000 feet anyway. Listen, why don't you take one of those sleeping pills? We're going to be up in the air for a couple of hours at least. By the time you wake up, you'll be back on solid ground." In Sam's mind, the idea seemed pretty sensible but, judging from Dean's incredulous expression, it was just the wrong thing to have said.
"And die in my sleep?! No thanks. I want to know when I'm plummeting in a nose dive to the ground, the engines failing, wind whistling through the cabin before hitting the tree line…" His voice grew fainter as Dean continued to fuel his agitation with his graphic realisation of the worst-case scenario.
Sam, finally admitting defeat, merely stated, "Yeah, I think sleeping through that is a great idea." He gave Bobby a look of surrender and decided to ignore Dean's snowballing for the moment and enjoy the beautiful views opening out as the Skyhawk gained altitude. The green canopy of trees became peppered with deciduous patches of orange and rust, occasionally giving way to the snake-like wind of rivers and the glint of lakes large and small, winking up at Sam like huge eyes. "It's beautiful," he breathed.
"Beautiful," Bobby echoed.
Perturbed by the sudden silence beyond the hum of the engine, Dean opened his eyes and glanced perilously over Sam's shoulder again. "Hmph, lacking some decent tarmac if you ask me," he noted, wryly. "Would have made a great road trip." Sam smiled, on the cusp of asking his brother how he felt, before deciding it was better to leave well alone. Dean hated a fuss and it was better not to draw attention to his helpless situation when it had taken him so long just to open his eyes. Once more, Sam settled back in his seat to enjoy the ride.
One hour into the trip and Dean might have retracted his refusal to take that sleeping pill when the engine made its first worrying sputter. To the two Winchesters, who had never been in a light aircraft before, there was nothing unusual about the sound. To Bobby and the pilot, however, it was something to be concerned about. The older hunter opened his mouth to check what was going on but thought better of it when he glanced across at Dean and Sam. The younger man was staring thoughtfully out of the window, clearly deep in his own thoughts while Dean's eyes were closed but Bobby didn't believe for a second it was actually in sleep. Trying to ignore the apprehension in his heart, the hunter sat back and tried to relax.
The second sputter was too hard to ignore, especially when it was followed by a deafening silence throughout the craft. Sam turned questioningly to Bobby and Dean's eyes flew open. "What's that?" Sam asked, innocently. "Is it supposed to do that?" He turned to stare back at the rear of the plane as if expecting to see something to explain all of this.
Bobby didn't reply, his sense of dread already too great to make time for niceties. He called out to the pilot, "What's going on? Sounds like the engine's cut out."
Dean sat bolt upright in his seat, his hazel eyes wide with terror as he looked to Bobby to make everything okay. "What?! The engine's stopped? Are you kidding me?! This is some sort of joke, right?"
"It can't have done. I checked the gauge before we set out. There was more than enough for the journey!" His denial of the reality of the situation was hardly comforting and the agitated movements he made as he flicked switches and struggled to keep hold of the shaking controls only served to highlight how much trouble they were really in.
Dean gripped the arm rests, swallowing hard through his parched, constricted throat. "I knew it. We're going to die," he murmured and Sam couldn't help but wonder why the fact that Dean was right seemed to be giving his brother a sick sense of satisfaction.
Sam turned to Bobby. "Bobby, what's going on? What should we do?"
"Sit tight, Sam. Just sit tight. We might be able to glide in." Bobby prayed the pilot was experienced enough to manoeuvre the plane into a position for a bumpy but not fatal landing. He knew that if the plane were in his own hands, based on his limited stacked up flight hours, they probably wouldn't be so lucky. The plane tipped sickeningly and, for the first time, Dean's hand shot out in search of Sam's reassuring grip.
Sam had kept his cool up until that precise moment. Little had he realised how much his ability to keep himself together had depended on Dean's reactions and the need to keep him going. Dean had vented a lot of hot air but, with the touch of his hand, his older brother had communicated the fear that lived deep within his core. They were in serious trouble.
Bobby felt his stomach lurch as the plane plummeted downwards, the rush of air outside the cabin rattling the aircraft and buffeting it around. The pilot struggled to maintain some control over the flailing craft but was failing miserably. "Adopt crash positions! We're going down!" he shouted, never knowing that they would be the final words he spoke on this earth. Bobby could hardly tear his gaze away from the forest looming closer until the belly of the plane was grazing the tips of the highest trees.
Dean began to panic and dragged his hand free from his brother's. "Screw this! I'm not dying strapped into this thing. There's got to be parachutes in here or something!" Without warning, he fumbled awkwardly with the seatbelt and the first thing Sam realised, from his crash position, Dean was trying to stand up in the confined space of the cabin. The young Winchester's eyes grew wide with fright. "Dean! Sit down!"
Dean's gaze fell on his brother for a second, his eyes wild with panic. "Parachutes, Sammy! Where the hell are the parachutes?!"
"We're too low, Dean! It's too late! You've got to sit down!" Sam pleaded, praying that, for once in his life, Dean would actually heed him. Dean was never one to give up without a fight, but battles had to be chosen carefully and this was one he was doomed to lose. Unable and unwilling to see his brother crushed to death against the cabin wall on impact, Sam clawed at his own seatbelt and launched himself at Dean, trying to get him down onto the floor.
Both boys were flung to one side as the belly of the Cessna clipped the first crop of trees. Sam shoved Dean forwards and down onto the floor below their vacant seats, pressing him down so that he could not rise again. The next to go were the wings as they whipped against tree trunk after tree trunk, felling the first ones until the impact became too much and a deafening crack hailed their departure from the rest of the plane.
After that, the world became a blur as Sam and Dean covered their heads to avoid luggage and equipment landing on their heads. Time became nothing more than a series of lurches, bumps, desperate cries and then all encompassing blackness.
END OF PART ONE
Please review! I promise I'll turn all the warm fuzzies they give me into fuel for Dean & Sam whump!