SPN FIC - Bus Me (Part 3 of 4)
It's been a long six months, hiding out in abandoned houses, eating cold Hot Pockets and mourning the loss of the ones they love. So Dean signs himself and Sam up for what amounts to a little R&R: a six-day chartered bus tour. On a haunted bus. Destination: Dollywood. But what starts out as a simple case (a series of mysterious injuries that all took place on the bus) turns into something more, when one of their fellow travelers disappears ... and so does Dean.
Part 1 is here.
"Hey," Dean said, raising a finger that he waggled in Sam's face. "No dissing of Dolly Parton. Woman's an American icon. Queen of country music. Sold a hundred and seventy-four million records. Tell me that's not friggin' awesome."
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, various OCs
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: Remains to be seen; this part is 1932 words
BUS ME
By Carol Davis
He tried to be angry. Then he tried, for a good half a minute, to convince himself that there was no problem, that there was some simple explanation for this - that Dean had been pulled into someone's room for a Dolly Parton sing-along, or to compare favorite episodes of Dr. Sexy, M.D. Hell, maybe someone had offered him a pile of snacks. His phone battery might have gone dead, simply because Dean had neglected to recharge it.
Nothing wrong.
But when had there ever been nothing wrong?
Sam sat there for another minute or two, staring at the silent phone lying in the palm of his hand. Then he got up, shoved the phone into his pocket, and opened his duffel long enough to pull out a gun he tucked between his button-down and the small of his back. Some other items he stowed in another pocket. That done, he retraced his steps down to the lobby.
"Find him?" the clerk asked him cheerfully.
"No," Sam said. "Are you sure he said he was going back to our room?"
She went on smiling, but there was a wrinkle between her eyes. "Umm…yeah. That's what he said. He said he was gonna go for a walk, or maybe sit out by the pool, but he didn't want to keep walking around barefoot. Broken glass, you know. He said he's got a bad habit of stepping on things."
"Into things."
She raised a brow. "Hmm?"
"He's got a bad habit of stepping into things. We both do. Hell, our whole family does."
"Well, I'm sure he's -"
Sam waved that off, leaning in for a closer look at the clerk's nametag. "Libby. Libby? The people in our group. From the bus. Are they all in the same part of the hotel?"
A brief query to the computer gave her the answer. "Uh-huh. Two South, where your room is. Everyone's in that same corridor. Is there anything I can -"
"If he comes back here, tell him to call me."
"Of -"
Sam didn't hear the rest of it; he was already hurrying down the hallway, then back up the stairs to the second floor. Most of the tour group would be asleep, he figured, given that some of them appeared to be well into their eighties - but with two people (and a dog) now missing, cheating someone out of a little bit of sleep was the least of his worries. He hadn't bothered to ask Libby which of the rooms on Two South were occupied by tour group members and which ones weren't, but he couldn't stir up more than a moment's worth of concern about that, either.
The first door he knocked on belonged to the white-haired man who had loaned him the headphones. "We've got someone else missing," Sam told him. "Please, don't leave your room."
The second door was opened by a woman in purple flannel pajamas. "Ma'am?" Sam said. "We need you to stay in your room tonight."
"Where did you think I was going?" she asked, but he kept moving.
He'd worked his way halfway down the corridor when he realized that almost none of the people he had warned had followed his instructions. In various states of dress (daywear, nightwear, nightwear covered with coats or jackets; one scrawny, nearly-bald man dressed only in boxer shorts), they had all trailed out of their rooms and were following him down the hall in a cluster, like a big flock of ducklings following their mother, some of them murmuring amongst themselves.
"No, no," he blurted when he saw what had happened. "Please. I need you to go back -"
"Who's missing now?" asked a woman in an I ♥ MY SIAMESE sleep shirt.
"My brother. Please, ma'am -"
"Dean?"
Another voice chimed in, "Dean's missing?"
The man in boxers hooted and clapped his hands. "Dean and Evelyn! All righty, then!"
"That's not funny, Jerome," a woman chided him. "That's not nice."
"Who cares if it's nice?" Jerome countered. "Somebody's gotta get some nooky on this trip."
"Folks…" Sam said feebly. "Could you just -"
"We need to spread out!" cried someone near the back of the crowd. "Search the building! We need to get organized, now, and do this right!"
Yet another voice insisted, "Somebody needs to call 9-1-1!"
Agreement with that sentiment spread quickly, and Sam caught a glimpse of several cell phones being produced.
"NO!" he shouted.
There was a possibility that local law enforcement could resolve the whole thing - that they could quickly set up an organized search that would produce Ricky the dog, Evelyn, and Dean, none of them the worse for wear.
There was also the possibility that local law enforcement - the addition of more people to this mix - would make things a lot worse.
My life, Sam thought wearily. My God, my life.
Now and then, being taller than practically everyone he encountered had its advantages. On this particular night it allowed him to hold the wallet containing his phony FBI badge up close to the ceiling, where everyone in the crowd would be able to see it - every one of these well-meaning, wrinkled, white- and gray- and lavender-haired people, all of them at their most vulnerable, away from home, many of them barefoot and half-dressed.
"I need you to go back to your rooms, folks," he said firmly. "Right now. And stay there."
"How's that gonna find those missing people?" Jerome demanded.
Another man countered, "Thought you decided they were off dancin' in the sheets, you old fool."
"He says they're missing."
"Well, there's missing, and then there's missing. They were at dinner, weren't they? The rule's forty-eight hours. Cops won't even listen to you unless it's been forty-eight hours. That's what they always say on Law & Order. Forty-eight hours."
Someone in the crowd began to cry, in great, whooping sobs. Ricky's owner, Sam guessed; the voice sounded the same. "Why can't you -" she wailed. "Why -"
"If you'd'a followed the RULES, Denise -"
"My Ricky can't BEAR to be AWAY from ME!" she howled. "He's my BABY!"
"Then you shoulda stayed HOME with him, for cryin' out loud!"
The acoustics in the corridor amplified her sobbing to the point that doors further along the hall began to open. From behind him, Sam could hear complaints and questions and a few whimpers of distress, and even without looking he could tell that a crowd had begun to gather back there, probably identical in size to the one in front of him.
"He's a FED!" Jerome called out to the new arrivals. "This big galoot right here, he's a FED!"
Been to Hell, Sam thought, and gave it one more try. "Seriously. Folks. The situation is under control, so if you'll just -"
"It don't look like you've got it under control."
"If you'll just go back to your rooms -"
"On what authority?" called out one of the men. "This a police state, now? I was defendin' your butt against the Red Chinese before you were even hatched, Mr. Rule-Spoutin' G-Man. I'll go back in when I get damn good and ready to go back in."
"Charlie," said the woman standing next to him. "You're in your pj's. Come on, now."
"Back OFF, Arlene."
"Excuse me?" she shrilled. "EXCUSE ME? Don't take that tone with me, Charlie McGraw!"
Dean could have charmed these people, Sam thought mournfully. Dean would have had them sitting in a circle singing "Kumbaya" and eating S'mores they'd cooked in the toaster oven he'd seen one of the old folks toting into the motel.
"Folks?" he said feebly.
No one paid the slightest bit of attention to him. They were too busy quarreling.
"Keep an eye on each other," Sam sighed.
Then he trotted off down the hall.
~~~~~~~~
Libby's eyebrows shot up underneath her bangs when Sam flashed the FBI badge at her. "Whoa!" she blurted. "Seriously? Wow."
"I'm gonna need access," Sam said. "To - I don't know. Everywhere."
"Why? Do you think they're dead?"
She hadn't blinked; her eyes kept opening wider, to a point Sam thought must be painful. How she'd leapfrogged from "missing" to "dead" he wasn't sure, but he'd stopped feeling like he had time to indulge her curiosity. "No," he told her. "I just need to search everywhere they might conceivably be. They might have gotten locked in somewhere."
"Well…we've got three meeting rooms. I can have Security open them for you."
"Master key," Sam said.
"Uhhhnnnn…"
Sam flapped the badge.
There was no one in any of the meeting rooms, and they offered no place for anyone to hide. With the door of the last room banging shut behind him, Sam moved on to the equipment closet, which was occupied only by a collection of overhead projectors, microphones, and a battered podium.
A maid sitting with her feet up in the Housekeeping office offered him a Diet Coke that he refused.
The Maintenance office was empty; the door bore a hand-lettered sign saying BACK IN 10 MINS.
The restaurant was dark and locked. The master key didn't work, since the restaurant was under separate ownership from the rest of the motel, so Sam picked the lock, then scoured the place, checking the kitchen, the rest rooms, and the foyer separating the dining room from the parking lot. From the foyer he could see across the parking lot to the tour bus, which showed no sign of activity, supernatural or otherwise.
"Dammit, Dean," he muttered. "How'd you manage to disappear that fast? How -"
He tried calling Dean's cell again and got no answer.
Six days with normal people. That's what this was supposed to be?
If a kidnapper had genuinely been interested in Evelyn (which would rapidly turn into a Ransom of Red Chief situation, Sam figured), they would have taken her somewhere; they wouldn't have hung around looking for more victims to pick off. So…what? Dean had stumbled onto something Evelyn was involved in, and she'd taken him captive? Him and the dog? She'd silenced the dog because it threatened to bark, and give away her whereabouts?
And you accuse Dean of watching too much TV.
According to Libby, the motel had a hundred guest rooms. If he moved rapidly, he could search all of them before morning.
Dean? This is the last time I ever…
There'd been stairs going down.
In the stairwell he'd taken to go up to the second floor, there'd been another flight, going down.
He had to pass the reception desk again - this time, Libby almost cowered as he flew past, but he ignored that and trotted down the hallway to the stairs. There was a door at the bottom level marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, and he ignored that too, using the master key to unlock it, then thrusting it aside.
He found himself in a long, narrow passageway lit by a series of bulbs in the ceiling, several of which had dimmed to the point of being almost useless. The place stank of mildew; dampness clung to the walls and the cement floor had a slick feel to it. An abandoned feel, really, which didn't gibe with the well-kept, if somewhat dated, state of the upper floors.
As the door settled shut behind him, Sam retrieved the gun from the small of his back.
Twenty years of this, he thought.
Twenty years of knowing that things that went bump in the night often weren't the result of an overactive imagination.
He'd taken less than a dozen steps past the door when the lights went out.
The conclusion…
Part 1 is here.
"Hey," Dean said, raising a finger that he waggled in Sam's face. "No dissing of Dolly Parton. Woman's an American icon. Queen of country music. Sold a hundred and seventy-four million records. Tell me that's not friggin' awesome."
CHARACTERS: Dean, Sam, various OCs
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: Remains to be seen; this part is 1932 words
BUS ME
By Carol Davis
He tried to be angry. Then he tried, for a good half a minute, to convince himself that there was no problem, that there was some simple explanation for this - that Dean had been pulled into someone's room for a Dolly Parton sing-along, or to compare favorite episodes of Dr. Sexy, M.D. Hell, maybe someone had offered him a pile of snacks. His phone battery might have gone dead, simply because Dean had neglected to recharge it.
Nothing wrong.
But when had there ever been nothing wrong?
Sam sat there for another minute or two, staring at the silent phone lying in the palm of his hand. Then he got up, shoved the phone into his pocket, and opened his duffel long enough to pull out a gun he tucked between his button-down and the small of his back. Some other items he stowed in another pocket. That done, he retraced his steps down to the lobby.
"Find him?" the clerk asked him cheerfully.
"No," Sam said. "Are you sure he said he was going back to our room?"
She went on smiling, but there was a wrinkle between her eyes. "Umm…yeah. That's what he said. He said he was gonna go for a walk, or maybe sit out by the pool, but he didn't want to keep walking around barefoot. Broken glass, you know. He said he's got a bad habit of stepping on things."
"Into things."
She raised a brow. "Hmm?"
"He's got a bad habit of stepping into things. We both do. Hell, our whole family does."
"Well, I'm sure he's -"
Sam waved that off, leaning in for a closer look at the clerk's nametag. "Libby. Libby? The people in our group. From the bus. Are they all in the same part of the hotel?"
A brief query to the computer gave her the answer. "Uh-huh. Two South, where your room is. Everyone's in that same corridor. Is there anything I can -"
"If he comes back here, tell him to call me."
"Of -"
Sam didn't hear the rest of it; he was already hurrying down the hallway, then back up the stairs to the second floor. Most of the tour group would be asleep, he figured, given that some of them appeared to be well into their eighties - but with two people (and a dog) now missing, cheating someone out of a little bit of sleep was the least of his worries. He hadn't bothered to ask Libby which of the rooms on Two South were occupied by tour group members and which ones weren't, but he couldn't stir up more than a moment's worth of concern about that, either.
The first door he knocked on belonged to the white-haired man who had loaned him the headphones. "We've got someone else missing," Sam told him. "Please, don't leave your room."
The second door was opened by a woman in purple flannel pajamas. "Ma'am?" Sam said. "We need you to stay in your room tonight."
"Where did you think I was going?" she asked, but he kept moving.
He'd worked his way halfway down the corridor when he realized that almost none of the people he had warned had followed his instructions. In various states of dress (daywear, nightwear, nightwear covered with coats or jackets; one scrawny, nearly-bald man dressed only in boxer shorts), they had all trailed out of their rooms and were following him down the hall in a cluster, like a big flock of ducklings following their mother, some of them murmuring amongst themselves.
"No, no," he blurted when he saw what had happened. "Please. I need you to go back -"
"Who's missing now?" asked a woman in an I ♥ MY SIAMESE sleep shirt.
"My brother. Please, ma'am -"
"Dean?"
Another voice chimed in, "Dean's missing?"
The man in boxers hooted and clapped his hands. "Dean and Evelyn! All righty, then!"
"That's not funny, Jerome," a woman chided him. "That's not nice."
"Who cares if it's nice?" Jerome countered. "Somebody's gotta get some nooky on this trip."
"Folks…" Sam said feebly. "Could you just -"
"We need to spread out!" cried someone near the back of the crowd. "Search the building! We need to get organized, now, and do this right!"
Yet another voice insisted, "Somebody needs to call 9-1-1!"
Agreement with that sentiment spread quickly, and Sam caught a glimpse of several cell phones being produced.
"NO!" he shouted.
There was a possibility that local law enforcement could resolve the whole thing - that they could quickly set up an organized search that would produce Ricky the dog, Evelyn, and Dean, none of them the worse for wear.
There was also the possibility that local law enforcement - the addition of more people to this mix - would make things a lot worse.
My life, Sam thought wearily. My God, my life.
Now and then, being taller than practically everyone he encountered had its advantages. On this particular night it allowed him to hold the wallet containing his phony FBI badge up close to the ceiling, where everyone in the crowd would be able to see it - every one of these well-meaning, wrinkled, white- and gray- and lavender-haired people, all of them at their most vulnerable, away from home, many of them barefoot and half-dressed.
"I need you to go back to your rooms, folks," he said firmly. "Right now. And stay there."
"How's that gonna find those missing people?" Jerome demanded.
Another man countered, "Thought you decided they were off dancin' in the sheets, you old fool."
"He says they're missing."
"Well, there's missing, and then there's missing. They were at dinner, weren't they? The rule's forty-eight hours. Cops won't even listen to you unless it's been forty-eight hours. That's what they always say on Law & Order. Forty-eight hours."
Someone in the crowd began to cry, in great, whooping sobs. Ricky's owner, Sam guessed; the voice sounded the same. "Why can't you -" she wailed. "Why -"
"If you'd'a followed the RULES, Denise -"
"My Ricky can't BEAR to be AWAY from ME!" she howled. "He's my BABY!"
"Then you shoulda stayed HOME with him, for cryin' out loud!"
The acoustics in the corridor amplified her sobbing to the point that doors further along the hall began to open. From behind him, Sam could hear complaints and questions and a few whimpers of distress, and even without looking he could tell that a crowd had begun to gather back there, probably identical in size to the one in front of him.
"He's a FED!" Jerome called out to the new arrivals. "This big galoot right here, he's a FED!"
Been to Hell, Sam thought, and gave it one more try. "Seriously. Folks. The situation is under control, so if you'll just -"
"It don't look like you've got it under control."
"If you'll just go back to your rooms -"
"On what authority?" called out one of the men. "This a police state, now? I was defendin' your butt against the Red Chinese before you were even hatched, Mr. Rule-Spoutin' G-Man. I'll go back in when I get damn good and ready to go back in."
"Charlie," said the woman standing next to him. "You're in your pj's. Come on, now."
"Back OFF, Arlene."
"Excuse me?" she shrilled. "EXCUSE ME? Don't take that tone with me, Charlie McGraw!"
Dean could have charmed these people, Sam thought mournfully. Dean would have had them sitting in a circle singing "Kumbaya" and eating S'mores they'd cooked in the toaster oven he'd seen one of the old folks toting into the motel.
"Folks?" he said feebly.
No one paid the slightest bit of attention to him. They were too busy quarreling.
"Keep an eye on each other," Sam sighed.
Then he trotted off down the hall.
~~~~~~~~
Libby's eyebrows shot up underneath her bangs when Sam flashed the FBI badge at her. "Whoa!" she blurted. "Seriously? Wow."
"I'm gonna need access," Sam said. "To - I don't know. Everywhere."
"Why? Do you think they're dead?"
She hadn't blinked; her eyes kept opening wider, to a point Sam thought must be painful. How she'd leapfrogged from "missing" to "dead" he wasn't sure, but he'd stopped feeling like he had time to indulge her curiosity. "No," he told her. "I just need to search everywhere they might conceivably be. They might have gotten locked in somewhere."
"Well…we've got three meeting rooms. I can have Security open them for you."
"Master key," Sam said.
"Uhhhnnnn…"
Sam flapped the badge.
There was no one in any of the meeting rooms, and they offered no place for anyone to hide. With the door of the last room banging shut behind him, Sam moved on to the equipment closet, which was occupied only by a collection of overhead projectors, microphones, and a battered podium.
A maid sitting with her feet up in the Housekeeping office offered him a Diet Coke that he refused.
The Maintenance office was empty; the door bore a hand-lettered sign saying BACK IN 10 MINS.
The restaurant was dark and locked. The master key didn't work, since the restaurant was under separate ownership from the rest of the motel, so Sam picked the lock, then scoured the place, checking the kitchen, the rest rooms, and the foyer separating the dining room from the parking lot. From the foyer he could see across the parking lot to the tour bus, which showed no sign of activity, supernatural or otherwise.
"Dammit, Dean," he muttered. "How'd you manage to disappear that fast? How -"
He tried calling Dean's cell again and got no answer.
Six days with normal people. That's what this was supposed to be?
If a kidnapper had genuinely been interested in Evelyn (which would rapidly turn into a Ransom of Red Chief situation, Sam figured), they would have taken her somewhere; they wouldn't have hung around looking for more victims to pick off. So…what? Dean had stumbled onto something Evelyn was involved in, and she'd taken him captive? Him and the dog? She'd silenced the dog because it threatened to bark, and give away her whereabouts?
And you accuse Dean of watching too much TV.
According to Libby, the motel had a hundred guest rooms. If he moved rapidly, he could search all of them before morning.
Dean? This is the last time I ever…
There'd been stairs going down.
In the stairwell he'd taken to go up to the second floor, there'd been another flight, going down.
He had to pass the reception desk again - this time, Libby almost cowered as he flew past, but he ignored that and trotted down the hallway to the stairs. There was a door at the bottom level marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, and he ignored that too, using the master key to unlock it, then thrusting it aside.
He found himself in a long, narrow passageway lit by a series of bulbs in the ceiling, several of which had dimmed to the point of being almost useless. The place stank of mildew; dampness clung to the walls and the cement floor had a slick feel to it. An abandoned feel, really, which didn't gibe with the well-kept, if somewhat dated, state of the upper floors.
As the door settled shut behind him, Sam retrieved the gun from the small of his back.
Twenty years of this, he thought.
Twenty years of knowing that things that went bump in the night often weren't the result of an overactive imagination.
He'd taken less than a dozen steps past the door when the lights went out.
The conclusion…