SPN FIC - Bay (Part 2 of 12)
Part 1 is here.
A mysterious message, bearing a single word: BAY. It could be a cry for help, or it could be a trap. Armed with a little information from Bobby, Sam and Dean travel to a tiny town in the New Mexico desert and find themselves surrounded by angry hunters, oddball locals, and an elusive creature that's been slaughtering humans since before The West Was Won.
BTW: Don't let the "AU" put you off. We're simply fast-forwarding a bit, past deals and destinies and demon blood, to a time when the brothers are ... brothers. Saving people, hunting things. The family business.
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, Bobby, various OCs
TIMELINE: July 2011, AU after mid-Season 5
RATING: PG
GENRE: Gen
SPOILERS: Nothing after mid-Season 5
LENGTH: Remains to be seen; this part is 4087 words
BAY
By Carol Davis
Two
"You got what?" Bobby demanded.
"A thing," Dean told him drowsily. "Goin' on."
"And that would involve you and Mrs. Jones?"
"I - what?"
"Never mind. You got me out of bed at quarter to six in the morning to tell me you got a 'thing' goin' on?" There was a pause at the other end of the line, then Bobby asked, "You and Sam in some kind of trouble?"
"No."
"What, then?"
Sighing, Dean sank down onto the edge of his bed and frowned at the little bit of a wobble in his legs. Thirty-two wasn't old by anybody's reckoning (least of all his own) but damn, all-nighters weren't as easy to pull off as they used to be - particularly when there'd been three of them in a row. "Sorry," he said into the phone, and rested his forehead in the palm of his free hand. "Been up all night staring at a damn weejee board."
"You -" Bobby said, then cut himself off. "And?"
"Got a thing. A situation." The sound of Bobby sucking in a labored breath was a firm reminder of the time of day. Or not-quite-day. The sun was up, but…yeah. Six a.m.
Or maybe the sound meant something else entirely. Bobby'd been no great fan of spirit boards the past couple of years - they were too much of a reminder of Pamela Barnes, Dean figured, Pam being a lot more lamented than Bela Talbot, although she was arguably in a much better place than Bela.
Deserved to be in a much better place than Bela.
"Dean," Bobby prompted.
"We got a message from beyond," Dean told him. "We're gonna be a little late meeting up with you and Rufus, so me and Sammy can figure this out and deal with it. Which I'm sorry for, because a day without you two telling me I'm an idiot, that's just a day without sunshine."
"You've been messing with a spirit board?"
"It's messing with us. Every night for three nights now. We didn't touch it," he added before Bobby could ask. "The thing, the plancha-whattaya call that, it does its thing all by itself."
"What was the message?"
"Bay."
"What?"
"Bay. B-A-Y. Same thing, over and over."
"That's all?"
"That's all."
Dean waited, figured Bobby was thinking. Maybe rooting out an old book, or pouring a cup of coffee. Or winding up to call him an idiot. When half a minute went by without Bobby saying anything - or making any kind of a complaining noise - Dean asked, "You still there?"
"It said 'Bay'?"
"Yeah. Two o'clock in the morning, it fires up the engines and spells out 'bay' a couple dozen times."
More silence.
"Bobby?" Dean said.
"What time was this?"
"Two o'clock."
"Exact time."
"I don't know. Two fifteen." Dean glanced across the room at Sam, who was monitoring his brother's half of the conversation from a sleepy-eyed slump against the headboard of his bed. When Sam murmured two seventeen, Dean repeated the information to Bobby.
"Damn," Bobby said softly, his voice gone thick and mournful for no reason Dean could fathom. "Been holding out hope all this time, but I guess I shoulda known better. Damn."
"Known better about what?"
"Your daddy ever mention to you a hunter named Bay?"
"I don't think so."
"Guess it makes sense. You boys would've been little kids back then, and it ain't like John was ever much for reminiscing, anyway. Dammit all," and before Dean could request a clarification, Bobby asked, "You're in Utah, you said?"
"Just off the Fifteen, little ways north of Cedar City. Excitement capital of the world."
"Yeah. All right. Look - get some sleep. If you hit the road around dinnertime, you'll be in Albuquerque by morning."
"Albuquerque?"
"Ain't that what I just said?"
"Why are we goin' to Albuquerque?"
"Sleep. Food. Drive. I'll give you the rest of the directions when you get there."
And Bobby hung up.
"Wait," Dean said, but he was talking to a dial tone.
He sat blinking at his phone, trying with no success at all to figure out what the hell was going on, until Sam said, "Dude?"
Sam was looking at him, one eyebrow quirked. "I figured I got out from under all that crap," Dean complained. "It was bad enough when I was a kid, with Dad and his 'Do this, go there, don't ask questions.' But come on."
"What did he say?"
"He said he'll meet us in New Mexico."
"For…what?"
"Some hunter he knew. Dad knew. Whatever."
"But the case is here. The board's active here."
Here: in this wide-spot-in-the-road of a town with its single, one-screen movie theater and its string of tiny gift shops and its one small school for educating kids who couldn't wait to bust loose and go somewhere else. Anywhere else.
But Bobby had said…
Dammit, Dean thought.
"Been three days, and nothing," he told his brother. "And it ain't like we're stupid. We've turned over every rock in this town." He stared down at the phone for a moment, tempted to throw it across the room, throw everything across the room so he could get some sleep. They'd found the only haunted motel on the I-15? Not only that, they'd found the only haunted motel where nobody had ever died. "Son of a bitch," he muttered. "Be nice if this got easier at some point. Maybe Bobby's right - I am an idiot. 'Cause I thought maybe it'd get easier."
Sam didn't say anything right away. Then he sighed quietly, and offered Dean a lopsided (and completely humor-free) smile. "If you're one, then I'm one too," he said. "If not easier, at least a little less frustrating."
Dean answered that with a grunt.
"We could stay," Sam suggested. "Keep digging. God knows we've had cases before where nothing turned up for weeks."
"Yeah."
"But Bobby seemed pretty sure?"
"Yeah."
"Then maybe we ought to go. See what's there. We could always come back, if it doesn't pan out."
Dean went back to staring at his phone for a while, then tossed it over onto the night table and rubbed hard at his eyes with the flats of his fingers.
"Up to you," Sam offered.
"I guess we're goin' to New Mexico," Dean sighed.
~~~~~
"You see anything?"
"I'm looking at the same signs you are, man," Sam said. "No, I don't see anything. Roswell, Alamogordo, Las Cruces. No Bingham."
"Head east on the 380 past San Antonio. Twenty-eight miles. That's what he said, right?"
"That's what he said."
"So there's supposed to be a town out here."
"In theory."
"See, this is why I love the great state of New Mexico," Dean announced, the sound of his voice almost completely lost in the rush of hot wind sweeping through the car and the AC/DC blaring from the tape player. His hand was light on the wheel, his tone cheerful in a way Sam suspected came from the two big cups of coffee he'd gulped down in Albuquerque, combined with a liberal serving of sugary pancake syrup and some punchiness from lack of sleep. Bobby had told them to rest, yeah, but they'd spent more time making a final attempt to coax more information out of the Mystical Talking Board, and the townspeople, than they'd spent sleeping.
"It's a thousand friggin' degrees," Dean chattered on, "and there's no there there. You drive for an hour towards something that's on the map, and when you get there it's a house trailer with a gas pump out front. That's not a town, man. Why do they put it on the map like it's a town?"
Sam said nothing until Dean turned to look steadily at him, a situation that might have been dangerous if there had been any other traffic on the road. Trapped by Dean's unblinking scrutiny - which was a good deal more intense than the brilliant desert sunlight - Sam had to surrender to saying simply, "I don't know."
"See, and there's that," Dean went on as they soared past a sign reading Ancient Indian Petroglyphs 15 Miles. "You and the damn petroglyphs. I thought Dad was gonna leave you by the side of the road."
"I didn't -"
"I thought we were walkin' to the frigging moon. How far did you drag us? Just to see a bunch of stick people scratched into the rocks."
"They're ancient, Dean. Like, hundreds of years old."
"Yeah? Well, I can show you some toilet stall graffiti that's a lot more interesting. And a lot easier to get to."
"Depends on your point of view," Sam said.
It was a game, he figured: Dean's litany of shortcomings of whatever state they happened to be in. Dean had very few legitimate beefs with the continental 48 (he hadn't yet discovered a way to drive to Hawaii, and Alaska was simply too far to drive, given that all that was up there - according to him - was "frozen completely friggin' solid") but he seldom missed an opportunity to complain about Minnesota, or Florida, or California, the Dakotas, the Virginias, the Carolinas. Too hot, too cold, too boring, too flat, bad roads, bad road signs, bad weather, bad restaurants, motels in all the wrong places, too many people, not enough people.
Listening to Dean, you'd have to conclude that the entire country was one vast, poorly maintained wasteland.
"So…where would you like to be?" Sam asked, shouting to be heard over the wind and the music.
"What?"
"I said, where -"
"I heard you," Dean said, and flapped a dismissive hand. After a quarter-mile's worth of consideration, he replied, "Haven't found it yet."
"But not here."
"New Mexico, man. There ain't no here, here."
He did have somewhat of a point; they hadn't passed much for the past twenty minutes but sand and desert grass and scrub brush, all of it the same uninspiring palette of brown and tan and gray. They'd seen clusters of mailboxes at the ends of dirt roads that seemed to lead nowhere, a sprinkling of run-down buildings, fences in every possible state of repair, but nothing that seemed like a here. Certainly nothing that looked like a town.
"We're near the Trinity site, you know," Sam told his brother, reaching out to crank down the volume on the tape player. "Where they conducted the first atomic bomb test."
"Oh," Dean said. "That explains it."
"San Antonio was decent."
"Yeah - they had electricity, and indoor plumbing. What, do you work for the tourism board now?"
"No. I just -" Sam had to cut himself off. He had in his hand, scribbled on a sheet of motel notepaper, the directions Bobby had given them over the phone during their breakfast stop in Albuquerque. Thanks to the nearly flat landscape, he could see quite a ways up ahead - and there was nothing up there.
"We getting near the twenty-eight miles?" he asked Dean.
"Just under," Dean said.
"What's that up there?"
"What's what?"
"There," Sam said, pointing.
Definitely not a town. Nothing that was even New Mexico's version of a town. Just a lone, sprawling, flat-roofed cinderblock building with an old Texaco gas pump out front.
It had a battered metal sign: Tacos Burgers Cold Beer.
Scowling, Dean surrendered to easing up on the gas, and they approached the building at a slow roll. "Are you shitting me? What is that?" he said as he grabbed the wrinkled slip of paper from Sam's hand and squinted at it. "We drove all night to get to this?"
"Apparently."
"He said Bingham, New Mexico."
"Yeah."
"And that's Bingham, New Mexico? It doesn't even look like it's open. You see anybody? Any kind of human activity at all?" When all he got from Sam was a shrug, Dean cranked the wheel and swung the car into the building's small, dusty parking lot, pulling to a stop close to the base of the wind-blasted Tacos Burgers sign. "I'm gonna kick his ass," he groused as he shoved the car door open and climbed out. "It's like the temperature of the frigging sun out here. He couldn't pick a place with a motel? Someplace that's an actual place? How long 're we supposed to camp here and wait for him? Until we cook like a friggin' turkey?"
"Didn't know you were that big a fan of air conditioning," Sam said as he got out of the car.
"I'm a big fan of not roasting my ass out in the middle of nowhere. And of explanations. I like explanations. Why are we here?"
"At least -"
"What?"
"It proves your point. Bingham, New Mexico: there is no there there."
Dean gaped at that for a moment, then told Sam firmly, "I'm gonna kick his ass."
Partly out of simple curiosity - and partly because he was no fonder of the idea of a slow death in the New Mexico summer heat than Dean was - Sam walked along the front of the building, which did indeed seem to be abandoned. When he got to the far end and turned the corner, though, he spotted something that because of a dip in the terrain and the sprawl of the building itself, hadn't been easily visible from the road.
"Dean," he said, and beckoned.
Out behind the building, surrounded by a forest of mismatched plastic and chrome lawn chairs, rows of cacti ranging from dwarves to plants three and four feet tall, and the biggest collection of garden gnomes Sam had ever seen, sat an aging but reasonably well kept up mobile home - and alongside it, an enormous satellite dish.
One of the lawn chairs was occupied.
"Need gas?" asked the person sitting in it.
The man's face was shadowed by the wide brim of a Stetson, but as he rose he pushed the hat back.
"We're good," Sam told him.
"Lost?"
"We - no. I don't think so. Is this - would this be Bingham, New Mexico?"
"More or less."
"That a yes or a no?" Dean asked from behind Sam.
The man took a relaxed step toward them, tucking his hands into his armpits. The broken lawn chair had swallowed him up somewhat, making him seem smaller than he was, but standing, walking, Sam put him at 6'6", well over two hundred pounds. He was all shoulders and biceps, with a stride that said he knew how to handle himself in a fight and had demonstrated that ability any number of times.
In the center of the V formed by the open top two buttons of his white-piped black Western shirt, a small silver cross glittered in the sun.
It was the only delicate thing about him.
"Nice place you got here," Dean quipped, and stuck out his hand.
The stranger, predictably, did nothing but stare at the Winchesters from behind the shield of his sunglasses.
"Okay, then," Dean said.
Sam glanced around, taking in the barren surroundings, the gnomes, the lack of cars in the parking lot. He saw no sign that the big man wasn't alone, but that didn't mean he and Dean weren't being watched from inside the cinderblock building or the trailer - and the fact that the man hadn't displayed a weapon didn't mean he didn't have one. Or several. "Friend of ours asked us to meet him in Bingham," he said amiably. "So I guess he meant here. Unless there's another Bingham. Or…you know. More to it than this."
"Used to be," the man told him.
"I see."
"Had a fire, ten, eleven years back."
"I see."
"What's his problem?" the man asked, nodding at Dean, who was bouncing a little on the dusty ground, hands curling and uncurling. Restless. Overcaffeinated.
"No problem," Sam said.
"Needs to calm down some."
"I'm good," Dean announced.
"Need something to eat, then."
"Already had breakfast."
Ignoring that, the man strode past them to a rickety screen door in the back wall of the cinderblock building, yanked it open with a screech of protesting, rusty hinges, and went on inside.
"Frickin' Bobby," Dean said. "I could be in the hot tub right now."
"Except that you wouldn't be," Sam replied. "We were there for three days, and you never set foot anywhere near it."
"Doesn't mean I wasn't gonna."
They could see nothing but shadows inside the building, a predicament that made Dean scowl and lean back into that ready-to-fight stance. "Maybe it's just a restaurant," Sam said. "Bobby wouldn't have sent us here if it was dangerous."
"Maybe Bobby hasn't been here since there was a town here."
That established, Dean seized the handle of the screen door, hauled it open and went in. Sam followed quickly, anxious to stand between his caffeine-wired brother and whatever might be lurking inside.
What was in there wasn't anywhere on the list of things he'd expected.
"Baby," the man in the Stetson was saying to someone, "we got a couple boys here from Ohio need some breakfast."
"We had -" Dean began.
Then the someone stepped out of what seemed to be the kitchen, and Dean's mouth lolled open. Whatever else he had intended to say was completely lost.
She was dressed in jeans cut off at mid-thigh, and was barefoot. Her white t-shirt, decorated with the silhouette of a baying wolf and the words New Mexico Land of Enchantment, was rolled up and knotted underneath her ample - and braless - breasts. She was in her early 40s, Sam figured, although she might have been a little younger than that and had simply soaked up a little too much desert sun; there were crinkles around her eyes and her skin was tanned a deep gold. Smiling, she ducked underneath the man's outstretched arm and wrapped her own arm around his waist as she snuggled against him.
"You boys hungry?" she asked.
"We had breakfast in Albuquerque," Sam told her. "But we could eat…something. Sure."
He managed to steer Dean to one of the half-dozen battered picnic tables that occupied the dining room portion of the place, although Dean's attention was firmly glued to the woman until she disappeared back inside the kitchen with the Stetson-wearing man. "Jesus," Dean whispered as he sank down onto the picnic bench. "Did you see -"
"You can't be serious."
"That woman's a goddess, Sammy."
"So you'd like to be murdered and dismembered and your body parts left out in the desert for scavengers?"
"I'm just looking. I can't look?"
"You looked. You're done looking now."
"I don't feel like I am."
"Murdered, Dean. Violently and messily murdered, and left out for the coyotes."
"I knew I shoulda stayed in friggin' Utah."
The woman came out a few minutes later carrying twin plates heaped high with home fries, eggs, bacon and toast arranged around healthy servings of corned beef hash, all of it steaming hot and fragrant. She was still smiling as she set the plates down in front of Sam and Dean, then dashed back to the kitchen for a pot of coffee and two mugs.
"It looks great," Sam told her.
"You're from Ohio, you boys?"
It took him a moment to understand she'd assumed that based on the Impala's license plate. "Kansas, actually. But mostly - here and there."
"Friend of mine used to have a car like that."
"Really."
"Haven't seen him in - wait," she said, and the smile dimmed down a bit. "You aren't John's boys, are you? John Winchester's boys?"
"Depends," Dean said. "Anybody here need to chase him off at gunpoint?"
"You're John's boys."
"Guilty," Sam replied.
"Oh, God. Oh, my God. Sil," she called out. "C'mere. These here, these are John Winchester's boys."
She was actually tearing up a bit as the man (her husband? Sam wondered) came out of the kitchen carrying a mug of coffee and a Danish. His memories of Sam and Dean's father weren't as sentimental as hers, apparently, because his expression was the next best thing to blank, and Sam began to consider the wisdom of fleeing this place and letting Bobby track them down somewhere else. Someplace more like the Barnes & Noble they'd passed in Albuquerque, for example, the appeal of those plates of home fries and hash notwithstanding.
"I'm Monica," the woman said, scrubbing a line of tears from her face with the heel of one hand. "This is Silvio. Your dad - oh, my God."
"Most people didn't think so," Dean told her.
She blinked at him, confused.
"Didn't figure he was godlike. Never mind. Me and m' brother - should we run, now? Head for the hills?"
"Oh, honey. Why would you run? Your dad loved it here. That right there" - she gestured at the plates - "I fixed him more than one of those. He'd come in here all beat up and looking half starved, and I'd send him off with a smile on his face."
"I bet," Dean murmured.
"Coyotes," Sam hissed at him.
Sniffling, she disappeared again, leaving the man - Silvio - to sip his coffee and stand guard over Sam and Dean, as inscrutable as the garden gnomes that populated his property.
"Met a bad end," he said after a minute, and it wasn't exactly a question.
Sam settled for saying, "Yeah."
"Figured that was gonna happen."
A glance over at his brother told Sam that Dean wasn't happy with this turn in the conversation. His posture had tightened up a little, and he made a small show of pulling a fork from the basket in the middle of the table and leaning in to begin eating his second breakfast of the day. When Silvio didn't object to that, and simply took a seat at another of the picnic tables to finish his much simpler meal, Sam let himself relax enough to follow Dean's lead, selecting some cutlery from the basket and digging in to the big plateful of food.
"Good?" Silvio asked.
Dean tipped a nod at him. Didn't do anything that would encourage more talk about Dad.
The food was good - more like home cooking than the roadside diner fare that had been a norm for the Winchesters for most of their lives. How Silvio and Monica could make a living selling food at a place like this, in a building that looked all but abandoned from the road, was a mystery - but, Sam thought, maybe the place wasn't a restaurant at all.
Maybe it was…
He lifted his head, looked across the room at Silvio, who smiled for the first time since Sam had spotted him sitting in the broken lawn chair.
The expression made a chill crawl up Sam's back.
Monica came back then, carrying a plate of dessert: some diced-up cantaloupe and half a dozen small sugar cookies. Her eyes were a little puffier than they'd been, and she dabbed at them a couple of times as she set the plate down near the basket of cutlery.
New Mexico, Land of Enchantment, Sam thought wryly.
They were silent, all four of them, as Sam and Dean worked their way through the plates of eggs and hash and toast and Silvio ate his Danish. The light in the dining room changed a couple of times while they ate, turned dim and shadowy, something Sam figured was the result of a bank of clouds passing overhead, driven by a strong wind, but it seemed to imply something else entirely: that the mood around here could turn on a dime, and not necessarily for the better.
Dean was right, he thought: they could've stayed in Utah.
"Your last name wouldn't be Bay, would it?" Sam asked Silvio, then shifted his head a little so the question could include Monica as well.
Silvio grunted softly and took another swig of his coffee.
"It's Ramirez," Monica said.
"Our friend," Sam went on, "the one we're supposed to be meeting here? He mentioned someone named Bay."
He hadn't quite finished with that when he heard a car approaching, the crunch of tires on the gravel shoulder at the edge of the road. A big vehicle, from the sound of it. Bobby, maybe; maybe Bobby and Rufus. When he looked over at Dean, Dean's attention was on the screen door at the front of the place, with its limited view of the parking lot. The car - or whatever the vehicle was - had already gone past, and when its engine cut out, it might as well have never been there at all.
Then a shadow fell past the door.
And the door opened.
"Hola," Silvio said to the newcomer. "These boys here are looking for you."
Part 3…