SPN Fanfic: Ghosts, Spies and Campfire Lies 2/5
Title: Ghosts, Spies and Campfire Lies 2/5
Word Count: Total - 20770 Words. Part 2 - 3800
Disclaimer: I own neither Supernatural, nor the TV series Chuck.
A/N: This part contains a 'blink-and-you'll-miss-it' shout-out to one of ficwriter1966's stories.
Previously: Part 1
Summary: Abandoned campgrounds are never a good idea.
PART 2
"What are you doing here!" Chuck's whisper was high-pitched as he looked between his two handlers. "I can't have one weekend with my sister, one weekend without the government breathing down my neck?"
Sarah twirled a finger in her blond hair, smiling and looked just far enough past Chuck's left shoulder that he could tell she was watching the Winchesters. "How well do you know this guy, Chuck?"
"Not that well. We had a class together, that's it. Why?"
"It's just that it's kind of an extreme coincidence that he's shown up here like this."
"Did you tell anyone where you were intending to camp?" Casey growled.
"Did he ever say anything about having a brother?" Sarah added.
Chuck held his hands up. "Whoa, whoa. Sam did a cool presentation in a class I was in once! I talked to him a few times before classes started! That's it! Why are you guys freaking out about this?"
"I do not 'freak out'," said Casey.
Sarah stepped closer to Chuck and put a hand on his shoulder. "This friend of yours and his brother, any chance they're involved with Fulcrum?"
"What? No! He's just some guy I knew at Stanford!"
"So's Bryce Larkin," muttered Casey. "Look how that turned out."
"You're not saying he's...." Chuck turned to Sarah. "But I'd know about him if he was a spy or something! He'd be in the Intersect and I'd flash on him, right?
Sarah glanced at Casey then back to Chuck. "We're just saying be careful. Never trust a coincidence."
"Yeah, but coincidences do happen."
Sarah and Casey looked at Chuck like he'd started speaking Klingon.
"Or not. Okay. Paranoia it is. I'll be careful, and I'll watch for anything I might flash on. You guys are gonna back off now, right? Leave me and Ellie alone?"
"Oh no." Casey's teeth gritted in a grin. "We're here to camp, we're camping."
"But there's an entire campground..."
"Not close enough. Whatever their intentions, these people know where you are. Out in the open, no walls, no locked doors. No people around. Easy to make disappear. Even if they were leaving and not sticking around for the Stanford Alumni slumber party, we still wouldn't get more than twenty yards away from you."
"Sarah?"
"Sorry, Chuck. Casey's right. We can't risk your security."
"Great. Thanks." Chuck nodded wryly. "That's great, guys. I feel very secure."
Casey exposed more teeth. "You're welcome."
-
"How exactly does this gesture-" Sam held his hands at chest height as though they were supporting a pair of cantaloupes, "-translate into 'King-size Hot Dog?'"
Dean grinned lewdly.
"Don't even answer that. God." Sam stalked over to the Impala.
"Ah, Weinerlicious," Dean said wistfully. "The fast food industry's answer to Hooters."
Dean pulled the Impala further into the trail, off the path to one side of the campsite and set the e-brake to keep the car secure on the slight slope.
"We aren't staying here, are we?" asked Sam.
"We're gonna have to wait until after dark for something to show up anyway... And these idiot friends of yours-"
Sam looked up at the car ceiling in frustration. "One class, Dean! One semester! I barely know the guy!"
"Whatever. Your 'Stanford acquaintance and his entourage' need to be protected from their own stupidity. We can't pull the Park Ranger dodge because they know you, and now me, and your buddy has friends who look way too officially dangerous to be working in customer service."
"But 'they're not cops'," Sam quoted.
"Yeah," Dean snorted, getting out of the Impala and watching Casey and Sarah across the campsite. "And on long road trips I like to listen to Avril Lavigne."
"We should just get out of here," Sam said, still in the passenger seat. "We shouldn't even be wasting our time."
Dean hated to pull the Deal card, but if it got Sam to agree to stick around... "You know, this could be my last chance to camp, Sammy. Really actually camp."
Sam's face turned to stone. Dean instantly regretted the underhanded tactic, even if it got Sam to stop arguing.
"No." Sam gritted out. "There's no case here, and this is a load of crap."
"C'moooooon," wheedled Dean, grinning. "It'll be great! Campfires, weenie roasts. Fun times!"
Inside the Impala, Sam crossed his arms. "I hate camping, Dean. You hate camping. We are not camping."
-
"Marshmallow?"
"Oh hell yeah!" Dean took the puffy white confection from Ellie and stuck it on the end of a sharpened stick with a grin.
The fire crackled, sending sparks up with the rising smoke. The remains of a dozen foil-roasted ears of corn were either contributing to the blaze or tucked securely into a trash bag to be packed out when the group left. Firelight glinted from the Impala's headlights, parked just off the road and pointed into the camp. Sarah and Chuck were off in search of an outhouse. Casey stood against a tree, turned sideways to the fire, sharpening a stick with a respectable buck-knife. Sam sat on a log and huffed.
"Sam?" Ellie waved the bag of marshmallows in Sam's direction.
"No. Thank you."
"C'mon Shammy, live a liggl'!" Dean said through a mouthful of sugary white marshmallow goop.
Sam glared across the fire towards his brother.
Chuck and Sarah returned to the campfire. "I hate to inform you all, but the outhouses aren't usable."
"Vandals?"
"They haven't been cleaned in over ten years." Chuck said. "Also, things have kind of... built up inside..."
"Oh, ick." Ellie grimaced.
"Yeah."
"I brought hand sanitizer, but there's only so much it'll handle."
"Guess we just make do with a designated shrubbery?" Casey muttered.
Ellie's face froze in bemused horror. "Everyone is using the sanitizer. No exceptions."
"No tent?" asked Sarah, looking at the minimal gear the Winchesters had brought from the Impala.
Dean swallowed. "Naw, we like camping in the car. Never get rained out, and the tunes can't be beat. Ain't that right, Sammy?"
Sam repressed a sigh. "Yeah. It's great."
Ellie turned to Sarah. "That tent you and Casey brought, that's not big enough for both of you, is it?" The one-person tent sat on an edge of the campsite, near the Crown Victoria.
"Oh, that's mine," said Sarah.
"Is Casey a car-camper too?"
"I prefer sleeping al fresco," Casey volunteered.
Chuck looked alarmed. "Um. But-"
"Under the stars. In the open." Casey bared his teeth. "No tent."
"Ah," said Chuck. "That's a relief."
"Soooo," said Dean, reaching for another marshmallow. "You've been camping around here since you were kids, right? Got any good local campfire stories?"
Subtle, Dean. Sam winced mentally.
"We haven't actually been camping here for over a decade."
"Oh. So before the place closed down?"
"Yep."
"No stories about, you know," Dean grinned gamely, "woodland monsters, or ghosts?"
"Not really, I mean there's the usual 'crazy man of the woods' stories and hookman and all that."
"Crazy man of the woods?" Dean prodded.
Chuck squinted, looking into the fire. "I forget how that one went."
"Dad wasn't big on ghost stories." Ellie's jaw tightened.
"Ah." Dean got up, dropped another chunk of wood on the fire and shifted around to sit beside Sam on the opposite side of the now flaring fire from the Bartowskis.
"No help there," murmured Dean, desultorily toasting his marshmallow.
"I still say there's no case here, Dean," Sam whispered back. The other campers had struck up a conversation about cooking. Something involving quiche and souffles. Sam did a small double-take at Casey's intense involvement in the discussion.
"One night," Dean said. "We spend the night, make sure these people don't get themselves killed. If nothing happens, I'm sure they'll chicken out of camping another day in this lovely outhouse-free campground. They'll head home in the morning, we can do a thorough check of the place after they leave. Then we'll see for sure if there's a case here or not."
"If there's no case here, then these people aren't in danger."
Dean shook his head. "No matter what might be causing the disappearances, if the twenty-three people who disappeared with no trace had any kind of violent death here..."
"...there could be a lot of angry spirits around," Sam allowed. "Yeah. Okay."
"I don't know about you, but I can do without another Thompson Lake."
"No kidding. So what are you thinking?"
"Circle the campsite with salt."
Sam raised his eyebrows. "Do we have enough salt to circle the whole campsite?"
"Should. I re-stocked in Tucson. There was a sale. I'll make it work." Dean stood up. "Excuse me. Which way is the 'designated shrubbery'?"
Chuck pointed. "Let's say it's that-away."
"Avoid anything that looks poisonous," Sarah added helpfully.
"Use the sanitizer," Ellie said pointing to a large bottle set on a nearby stump.
Sam watched Casey watch Dean leave the fire-lit area. "Here, hold this," Casey growled, passing a marshmallow-toasting stick with a lethal point to Sarah. "Gotta visit the shrubbery myself. Revenge of the corn gods."
"Nice," said Chuck. "Great visual on that."
Ellie grimaced. "Thanks for sharing, John."
Sam watched Casey go as the Bartowskis turned their attention on him. He wasn't sure what Casey's intent was, but he hoped Dean was on alert.
-
The elements are in motion. An unwise commander attacks an unfamiliar battlefield. Plenty of time to get the lay of the land. Find where the best targets lie.
-
"So, Sam!" Ellie said sociably, "Tell me about Stanford! Were you an Engineering Major like Chuck?"
Chuck picked up a stick and poked at the fire. Sarah shifted closer to him.
Sam frowned. "No, Law."
"Really?" asked Sarah. "How's that going?"
"I, uh. Never finished."
Chuck looked up from the fire. "Really?"
"Oh." Ellie glanced at Chuck and looked faintly dismayed.
Sam shifted uncomfortably on the log. "There was a fire in my apartment. My girlfriend, Jess. She died."
"Wow." Chuck dropped his fire-poking stick.
Ellie covered her mouth with her hand. "Oh my god. That's awful! I'm so sorry!"
Sarah looked away from the group, silent.
"It'll be three years ago, start of next month." He hadn't forgotten. Even though Dean's deal had shifted Sam's focus, Jess still lived in the back of his mind.
"Do you think you'll ever go back and try to pick up where you left off at Stanford?"
Sam glanced toward the Impala and Dean in the shadows. "No. Too many things have changed."
"Well," said Ellie. She scratched at her arm.
Chuck coughed, carefully not looking at Sam or the fire, which crackled in the ensuing silence.
"Uh, here." Sam dug in the bag beside him and produced a couple cans retrieved from the back of the Impala. "We brought beans."
"Great!" Ellie said with the sudden over-the-top enthusiasm of someone relieved of an awkward moment. "We've got a lot more corn on the cob, we can have a real feast tomorrow!"
"Yeah," said Chuck. "There was a roadside stand on the way down. We bought loads of corn, we're taking some back for Captain Awesome."
Ellie swatted her brother on the arm.
"Ow. I mean Devon."
"I brought a couple of those sampler take-home packs from work," Sarah offered. Sam didn't quite jump. She'd been so quiet on the opposite side of the fire Sam had nearly forgotten she was there.
Chuck brightened. "Hey! Gourmet hot dogs! Now we're talking!"
"Ooo!" said Ellie. "Are there some of those turkey smokies?"
Sarah and Ellie went off to investigate the cooler in the Crown Victoria. Sam watched Chuck watch his sister and girlfriend walk across the campsite, and didn't look away fast enough before Chuck caught him staring.
"So!" Chuck said with a nervous grin.
"Yeah! So," said Sam, smiling and slapping a bug off his knee. "This is weird, hunh?"
Chuck laughed. "You have no idea."
-
Dean didn't hear or see anything, but the chatter around the campfire muffled for a second. Something had moved between the Impala and the camp. He grabbed the salt sack out of the trunk and pushed the lid almost entirely closed before turning to face the lack of sound.
"Whatcha doing, Winchester?" said Casey from the shadows.
Dean rested the sack of salt on the trunk lid, pushing it closed with a click. "Salt."
"Salt." Casey's voice was flat.
Dean narrowed his eyes toward the patch of darkness containing Casey. As good a time for a test as any. "Yeah, I'm gonna lay a ring of salt around the camp. Seemed the sensible thing to do, under the circumstances. Don't you think so?"
Casey's voice went from flat to incredulous. "Under what circumstances would pouring salt around be sensible?"
Okay, not a hunter. "Uh. Keeps, uh. It keeps slugs from getting into the camp."
The bushes rustled. "Slugs?"
"It's damp, and slugs are gross." Dean nodded in somber agreement with himself.
Casey stepped into a patch of light cast by the campfire, one hand behind his back.
Armed too, thought Dean. I'm so shocked.
Casey stared at Dean for an endless second before emitting a succinct "Hunh."
Dean shifted the sack of salt. Come on, we're burning daylight. Or pre-midnight time, if any ghosts in the area happen to be traditionalists. "If you want to, you can watch," he said sarcastically, attempting to get Casey to back off and head back to the campfire.
"Oh, I will." Casey's teeth glinted in the dark.
Well. That's just dandy.
-
Ellie peered into the darkness. "Are they both using the same bushes?"
"Uh, I don't think so."
Sam figured that was as good an opening as he was going to get. "Hope they haven't disappeared, like all the hikers that go missing around here." Yeah, that was subtle.
"I don't think anything could make Casey disappear." Chuck said.
Sarah coughed into her hand.
Sam was about to say 'Dean either' but it got stuck somewhere on the way out. He frowned and cleared his throat. "Seriously though, I read a thing about this area, people go missing hiking out here all the time."
"Really?"
"Yeah, there was a corporate team-building bunch that went on an adventure-hike in the backwoods area around here in July, a husband and wife back last spring..."
Ellie frowned. "Was that the bunch of executives that went missing just before that big scandal?
"The securities commission shut down their company," Sarah nodded.
Sam raised his eyebrows. "When was that?"
"Last month, September. It was in the news. After they went missing some irregularities were discovered and the whole place was audited. They found over a million dollars had been embezzled."
"Yeah," said Chuck. "They're probably on some anonymous tropical island now."
"Hunh. Guess so," Sam said.
"Hey, what about that guy..." Chuck turned to Ellie. "He went missing somewhere with his wife and three more wives and a common-law husband turned up demanding explanations. Did they go missing around here?"
Ellie poked the fire with a stick. "I don't know, maybe."
"Jeff and Lester had Google alerts for it for a month. Last May?"
"That was horrible, the way the media turned that into a sideshow." Ellie shook her head. "Those poor people, finding out they were being lied to like that, and the news sticking cameras in their faces everywhere they went. Shameful."
"Yeah, really." Sam looked into the fire. Secrets. The two most recent disappearances had huge secrets. That could be a connection. Or a reason to disappear.
"You kids behaving over here?" called Dean, stepping into the firelight with Casey close behind him.
"You two were gone a long time," Sarah said.
"Corn." Dean shrugged.
"Never mind."
Dean watched Casey cross the clearing and leaned in to whisper to Sam. "Not hunters." He smiled at the group and reached for a marshmallow.
"Ah, ah, ah." Ellie pulled the bag out of Dean's reach. "Did you use the sanitizer?"
-
Casey retrieved his sharpened stick from Sarah.
"Well?" Sarah whispered.
Casey grimaced and resumed whittling, as though the stick needed to be armor-piercing to get through a marshmallow. "He poured salt around the camp."
"He what?"
"Poured salt. In a giant circle around the camp. Out around the cars, into the bush. A complete circle. Whole bag of it."
"Salt."
"Yup. I checked. Rock salt. He said it was to keep the slugs out."
Sarah frowned and watched Dean sanitize his hands under Ellie's supervision. "So, what? The guy has slug issues?"
Casey scowled. "It's a load of crap. I don't know what's up with these guys but something's not right."
"Maybe them showing up really is an honest coincidence, Casey. It's not like there's any explosive devices or weapons made out of salt."
Casey's face remained blank as he stared at the two men beside the fire.
"There aren't, are there?"
"I'm thinking," growled Casey.
-
Warm weather or not, the sun still went down early in October in California. The group around the campfire broke up and turned in.
In the back seat of the Impala, Sam re-examined half of the printed missing persons reports and newspaper articles. "Nothing. There's nothing in any of this about this corporate bunch being embezzlers or this guy having five spouses."
Dean flipped through the other half, flashlight tucked under his chin. "This stuff maybe only turned up after they'd been missing a while. You didn't cross check?"
Sam muttered something that was obscured by the rustling of papers.
Dean turned to look into the back seat. "Sam..."
"No, alright? I didn't cross-check because I didn't figure there was a case here."
"So check now."
"There's no wi-fi. No cell signal. No internet. We don't have Bobby's library stuffed in the trunk, and I can't get online. I have no resources to do research."
Dean frowned and set aside his half of the print-outs. "Okay, so, never mind about the research. Assuming these people all had big secrets, that's a connection."
"We only know that two of the groups did, from a second-hand vaguely remembered report these people heard on the news months ago."
"It's what we've got, Sam. We may as well go with it."
"Maybe those people disappeared because they wanted to disappear? There was some pretty heavy stuff waiting for them when they got home, maybe they decided not to go back?"
Can't run away from problems. You face 'em or they find you. "I dunno. It's possible, I guess."
Sam laid down on the back seat, watching the first two lights on the EMF meter flicker and pulse silently. "So, what do you think about these people?"
"I think there's definitely something more to Sarah and Casey than they're saying. Your pal Chuck's a bit twitchy too."
"You don't think they're hunters though?"
Dean snorted. "I don't know about Sarah, but that Casey guy oozes cop vibes that are visible from outer space."
"Could also be Marine vibes, or hunter vibes."
"...maybe. He didn't know about salt."
Sam shrugged. "Maybe he's a really new hunter?"
Dean shifted in the driver's seat of the Impala. "I dunno what's up with him. He walks, talks and smells like a Fed, but he hasn't tried to bust us as two of the FBI's most wanted, even after your buddy gave him our real names. If he's a friend of Henriksen, he's a hell of a lot more subtle."
"Not that that would take much."
"Very true."
-
"They're armed." Casey muttered, laying on his bedroll on the ground, watching the Impala out the corner of his eye.
Sarah cushioned her chin on her hands, head sticking out of the emergency shelter they'd snagged from the surveillance van as supporting evidence for the ludicrous 'we're camping too' story. "Yeah, that's kind of worrisome. Who goes camping armed with hand guns? Besides us."
"Who goes camping with a '67 Impala and no tent?"
Sarah glanced at Casey. "You really think they're Fulcrum?"
"I think they're not telling us their whole story."
Sarah looked over towards the other black car lurking between the trees. "I don't think they're Fulcrum."
Casey grunted in agreement. "Fulcrum would have brought a tent."
-
Chuck hung a flashlight up inside the Bartowskis' tent. "So, camping. What do you think so far?"
"It's a great idea." Ellie said, neutrally, unrolling her sleeping bag.
"Really?"
"Sure. Some quiet family time, bonding with my brother..."
Chuck relaxed a little. "Yeah, see?"
Ellie picked up her pillow. "...and his girlfriend-"
"Uh-"
"-his coworker-" She fluffed the pillow vigorously.
"Well, that, they, um-"
"-and some random old Stanford acquaintance and his brother." Ellie punched her pillow.
"Heh. Wow. Yeah." Chuck grinned. "That was really random, wasn't-"
"This is just great, Chuck. I'm having a fantastic time." She threw the pillow down onto the sleeping bag with a tight smile. "I'm just surprised Morgan hasn't showed up yet."
Chuck opened his mouth then closed it.
Ellie rubbed her forehead. "Sorry. I'm sorry, Chuck. That wasn't fair of me. It's just frustrating lately, trying to spend any real family time with you."
Chuck stared up at the tent ceiling. "Yeah. I know."
"I'm also a little concerned about Sarah."
"What? Why?" Chuck crawled into his sleeping bag and adjusted his faded Atari-logo t-shirt.
Ellie sighed and sat on her sleeping bag, pulling on a pair of loose wool socks. "You don't think this whole 'tracking you down to go camping with you' thing isn't a bit stalkery?"
"Ha, no. No. Sarah's just..." assigned by the government to watch my every move. "Enthusiastic. About our relationship."
Ellie took down the hanging flashlight and wriggled into her sleeping bag. "There's enthusiastic and there's creepy, Chuck. I mean, Sarah's great, I love her, but being in a relationship doesn't mean devoting your entire life to one person. Balance is good."
"It's not like that, Ellie." Chuck felt a burning need to change the subject.
Ellie looked at Chuck. "We're back at this part of the conversation, aren't we?"
"Which part?"
"The 'something's going on but you won't talk to me about it so there's no sense in asking' part."
"Ah." Chuck said. "It's..."
Ellie waited for something to come after 'it's', but nothing did.
Nothing could, without endangering her, her fiance Awesome, himself, and half the free world.
"Well," Ellie patted Chuck's arm, "whenever you want to talk to me about what it is like between you and Sarah, you know where I am. Okay?" Ellie rolled over and turned off the flashlight.
Chuck sighed in the darkness. "Yeah."
-
All hiding inside their palisade, guards posted.
When it is tactically unwise or impossible to breach the enemy's fortress, you must encourage your enemy to leave it.
Fire in the hole.
-
Dean's wristwatch read ten past midnight. A little less than two hours before he was supposed to wake Sam up for his turn on watch.
He stared out the window at the campsite. Embers glowed in the fire pit, and both tents were dark. If whatever it was was taking people based on them having secrets, the campsite was a target-rich environment. Chuck, Casey and Sarah were up to something, and he and Sam weren't going to throw their life history out in the open to a bunch of strangers, cops or not.
In the back seat Sam snuffled and shifted in his sleep. Dean glanced in the mirror at his brother and frowned.
Sam hadn't cross-checked the victims list. He wasn't just dragging his feet on this case, he was missing things that would have supported this being a case the whole time. He figured it wasn't worth wasting time on.
My deadline's coming up, halfway there. No getting out of it. Sam has to get used to the idea that I'm gonna be gone. There's no hope of getting out of this deal. Dean rubbed a hand across his face and looked away from the rear-view mirror, out his open window to the bushes beside the trail. There can't be any hope of saving me or Sam will die.
Suddenly Dean's whole world went bright white with a very loud bang.
- - -
(continued in Part 3)
Word Count: Total - 20770 Words. Part 2 - 3800
Disclaimer: I own neither Supernatural, nor the TV series Chuck.
A/N: This part contains a 'blink-and-you'll-miss-it' shout-out to one of ficwriter1966's stories.
Previously: Part 1
Summary: Abandoned campgrounds are never a good idea.
PART 2
"What are you doing here!" Chuck's whisper was high-pitched as he looked between his two handlers. "I can't have one weekend with my sister, one weekend without the government breathing down my neck?"
Sarah twirled a finger in her blond hair, smiling and looked just far enough past Chuck's left shoulder that he could tell she was watching the Winchesters. "How well do you know this guy, Chuck?"
"Not that well. We had a class together, that's it. Why?"
"It's just that it's kind of an extreme coincidence that he's shown up here like this."
"Did you tell anyone where you were intending to camp?" Casey growled.
"Did he ever say anything about having a brother?" Sarah added.
Chuck held his hands up. "Whoa, whoa. Sam did a cool presentation in a class I was in once! I talked to him a few times before classes started! That's it! Why are you guys freaking out about this?"
"I do not 'freak out'," said Casey.
Sarah stepped closer to Chuck and put a hand on his shoulder. "This friend of yours and his brother, any chance they're involved with Fulcrum?"
"What? No! He's just some guy I knew at Stanford!"
"So's Bryce Larkin," muttered Casey. "Look how that turned out."
"You're not saying he's...." Chuck turned to Sarah. "But I'd know about him if he was a spy or something! He'd be in the Intersect and I'd flash on him, right?
Sarah glanced at Casey then back to Chuck. "We're just saying be careful. Never trust a coincidence."
"Yeah, but coincidences do happen."
Sarah and Casey looked at Chuck like he'd started speaking Klingon.
"Or not. Okay. Paranoia it is. I'll be careful, and I'll watch for anything I might flash on. You guys are gonna back off now, right? Leave me and Ellie alone?"
"Oh no." Casey's teeth gritted in a grin. "We're here to camp, we're camping."
"But there's an entire campground..."
"Not close enough. Whatever their intentions, these people know where you are. Out in the open, no walls, no locked doors. No people around. Easy to make disappear. Even if they were leaving and not sticking around for the Stanford Alumni slumber party, we still wouldn't get more than twenty yards away from you."
"Sarah?"
"Sorry, Chuck. Casey's right. We can't risk your security."
"Great. Thanks." Chuck nodded wryly. "That's great, guys. I feel very secure."
Casey exposed more teeth. "You're welcome."
-
"How exactly does this gesture-" Sam held his hands at chest height as though they were supporting a pair of cantaloupes, "-translate into 'King-size Hot Dog?'"
Dean grinned lewdly.
"Don't even answer that. God." Sam stalked over to the Impala.
"Ah, Weinerlicious," Dean said wistfully. "The fast food industry's answer to Hooters."
Dean pulled the Impala further into the trail, off the path to one side of the campsite and set the e-brake to keep the car secure on the slight slope.
"We aren't staying here, are we?" asked Sam.
"We're gonna have to wait until after dark for something to show up anyway... And these idiot friends of yours-"
Sam looked up at the car ceiling in frustration. "One class, Dean! One semester! I barely know the guy!"
"Whatever. Your 'Stanford acquaintance and his entourage' need to be protected from their own stupidity. We can't pull the Park Ranger dodge because they know you, and now me, and your buddy has friends who look way too officially dangerous to be working in customer service."
"But 'they're not cops'," Sam quoted.
"Yeah," Dean snorted, getting out of the Impala and watching Casey and Sarah across the campsite. "And on long road trips I like to listen to Avril Lavigne."
"We should just get out of here," Sam said, still in the passenger seat. "We shouldn't even be wasting our time."
Dean hated to pull the Deal card, but if it got Sam to agree to stick around... "You know, this could be my last chance to camp, Sammy. Really actually camp."
Sam's face turned to stone. Dean instantly regretted the underhanded tactic, even if it got Sam to stop arguing.
"No." Sam gritted out. "There's no case here, and this is a load of crap."
"C'moooooon," wheedled Dean, grinning. "It'll be great! Campfires, weenie roasts. Fun times!"
Inside the Impala, Sam crossed his arms. "I hate camping, Dean. You hate camping. We are not camping."
-
"Marshmallow?"
"Oh hell yeah!" Dean took the puffy white confection from Ellie and stuck it on the end of a sharpened stick with a grin.
The fire crackled, sending sparks up with the rising smoke. The remains of a dozen foil-roasted ears of corn were either contributing to the blaze or tucked securely into a trash bag to be packed out when the group left. Firelight glinted from the Impala's headlights, parked just off the road and pointed into the camp. Sarah and Chuck were off in search of an outhouse. Casey stood against a tree, turned sideways to the fire, sharpening a stick with a respectable buck-knife. Sam sat on a log and huffed.
"Sam?" Ellie waved the bag of marshmallows in Sam's direction.
"No. Thank you."
"C'mon Shammy, live a liggl'!" Dean said through a mouthful of sugary white marshmallow goop.
Sam glared across the fire towards his brother.
Chuck and Sarah returned to the campfire. "I hate to inform you all, but the outhouses aren't usable."
"Vandals?"
"They haven't been cleaned in over ten years." Chuck said. "Also, things have kind of... built up inside..."
"Oh, ick." Ellie grimaced.
"Yeah."
"I brought hand sanitizer, but there's only so much it'll handle."
"Guess we just make do with a designated shrubbery?" Casey muttered.
Ellie's face froze in bemused horror. "Everyone is using the sanitizer. No exceptions."
"No tent?" asked Sarah, looking at the minimal gear the Winchesters had brought from the Impala.
Dean swallowed. "Naw, we like camping in the car. Never get rained out, and the tunes can't be beat. Ain't that right, Sammy?"
Sam repressed a sigh. "Yeah. It's great."
Ellie turned to Sarah. "That tent you and Casey brought, that's not big enough for both of you, is it?" The one-person tent sat on an edge of the campsite, near the Crown Victoria.
"Oh, that's mine," said Sarah.
"Is Casey a car-camper too?"
"I prefer sleeping al fresco," Casey volunteered.
Chuck looked alarmed. "Um. But-"
"Under the stars. In the open." Casey bared his teeth. "No tent."
"Ah," said Chuck. "That's a relief."
"Soooo," said Dean, reaching for another marshmallow. "You've been camping around here since you were kids, right? Got any good local campfire stories?"
Subtle, Dean. Sam winced mentally.
"We haven't actually been camping here for over a decade."
"Oh. So before the place closed down?"
"Yep."
"No stories about, you know," Dean grinned gamely, "woodland monsters, or ghosts?"
"Not really, I mean there's the usual 'crazy man of the woods' stories and hookman and all that."
"Crazy man of the woods?" Dean prodded.
Chuck squinted, looking into the fire. "I forget how that one went."
"Dad wasn't big on ghost stories." Ellie's jaw tightened.
"Ah." Dean got up, dropped another chunk of wood on the fire and shifted around to sit beside Sam on the opposite side of the now flaring fire from the Bartowskis.
"No help there," murmured Dean, desultorily toasting his marshmallow.
"I still say there's no case here, Dean," Sam whispered back. The other campers had struck up a conversation about cooking. Something involving quiche and souffles. Sam did a small double-take at Casey's intense involvement in the discussion.
"One night," Dean said. "We spend the night, make sure these people don't get themselves killed. If nothing happens, I'm sure they'll chicken out of camping another day in this lovely outhouse-free campground. They'll head home in the morning, we can do a thorough check of the place after they leave. Then we'll see for sure if there's a case here or not."
"If there's no case here, then these people aren't in danger."
Dean shook his head. "No matter what might be causing the disappearances, if the twenty-three people who disappeared with no trace had any kind of violent death here..."
"...there could be a lot of angry spirits around," Sam allowed. "Yeah. Okay."
"I don't know about you, but I can do without another Thompson Lake."
"No kidding. So what are you thinking?"
"Circle the campsite with salt."
Sam raised his eyebrows. "Do we have enough salt to circle the whole campsite?"
"Should. I re-stocked in Tucson. There was a sale. I'll make it work." Dean stood up. "Excuse me. Which way is the 'designated shrubbery'?"
Chuck pointed. "Let's say it's that-away."
"Avoid anything that looks poisonous," Sarah added helpfully.
"Use the sanitizer," Ellie said pointing to a large bottle set on a nearby stump.
Sam watched Casey watch Dean leave the fire-lit area. "Here, hold this," Casey growled, passing a marshmallow-toasting stick with a lethal point to Sarah. "Gotta visit the shrubbery myself. Revenge of the corn gods."
"Nice," said Chuck. "Great visual on that."
Ellie grimaced. "Thanks for sharing, John."
Sam watched Casey go as the Bartowskis turned their attention on him. He wasn't sure what Casey's intent was, but he hoped Dean was on alert.
-
The elements are in motion. An unwise commander attacks an unfamiliar battlefield. Plenty of time to get the lay of the land. Find where the best targets lie.
-
"So, Sam!" Ellie said sociably, "Tell me about Stanford! Were you an Engineering Major like Chuck?"
Chuck picked up a stick and poked at the fire. Sarah shifted closer to him.
Sam frowned. "No, Law."
"Really?" asked Sarah. "How's that going?"
"I, uh. Never finished."
Chuck looked up from the fire. "Really?"
"Oh." Ellie glanced at Chuck and looked faintly dismayed.
Sam shifted uncomfortably on the log. "There was a fire in my apartment. My girlfriend, Jess. She died."
"Wow." Chuck dropped his fire-poking stick.
Ellie covered her mouth with her hand. "Oh my god. That's awful! I'm so sorry!"
Sarah looked away from the group, silent.
"It'll be three years ago, start of next month." He hadn't forgotten. Even though Dean's deal had shifted Sam's focus, Jess still lived in the back of his mind.
"Do you think you'll ever go back and try to pick up where you left off at Stanford?"
Sam glanced toward the Impala and Dean in the shadows. "No. Too many things have changed."
"Well," said Ellie. She scratched at her arm.
Chuck coughed, carefully not looking at Sam or the fire, which crackled in the ensuing silence.
"Uh, here." Sam dug in the bag beside him and produced a couple cans retrieved from the back of the Impala. "We brought beans."
"Great!" Ellie said with the sudden over-the-top enthusiasm of someone relieved of an awkward moment. "We've got a lot more corn on the cob, we can have a real feast tomorrow!"
"Yeah," said Chuck. "There was a roadside stand on the way down. We bought loads of corn, we're taking some back for Captain Awesome."
Ellie swatted her brother on the arm.
"Ow. I mean Devon."
"I brought a couple of those sampler take-home packs from work," Sarah offered. Sam didn't quite jump. She'd been so quiet on the opposite side of the fire Sam had nearly forgotten she was there.
Chuck brightened. "Hey! Gourmet hot dogs! Now we're talking!"
"Ooo!" said Ellie. "Are there some of those turkey smokies?"
Sarah and Ellie went off to investigate the cooler in the Crown Victoria. Sam watched Chuck watch his sister and girlfriend walk across the campsite, and didn't look away fast enough before Chuck caught him staring.
"So!" Chuck said with a nervous grin.
"Yeah! So," said Sam, smiling and slapping a bug off his knee. "This is weird, hunh?"
Chuck laughed. "You have no idea."
-
Dean didn't hear or see anything, but the chatter around the campfire muffled for a second. Something had moved between the Impala and the camp. He grabbed the salt sack out of the trunk and pushed the lid almost entirely closed before turning to face the lack of sound.
"Whatcha doing, Winchester?" said Casey from the shadows.
Dean rested the sack of salt on the trunk lid, pushing it closed with a click. "Salt."
"Salt." Casey's voice was flat.
Dean narrowed his eyes toward the patch of darkness containing Casey. As good a time for a test as any. "Yeah, I'm gonna lay a ring of salt around the camp. Seemed the sensible thing to do, under the circumstances. Don't you think so?"
Casey's voice went from flat to incredulous. "Under what circumstances would pouring salt around be sensible?"
Okay, not a hunter. "Uh. Keeps, uh. It keeps slugs from getting into the camp."
The bushes rustled. "Slugs?"
"It's damp, and slugs are gross." Dean nodded in somber agreement with himself.
Casey stepped into a patch of light cast by the campfire, one hand behind his back.
Armed too, thought Dean. I'm so shocked.
Casey stared at Dean for an endless second before emitting a succinct "Hunh."
Dean shifted the sack of salt. Come on, we're burning daylight. Or pre-midnight time, if any ghosts in the area happen to be traditionalists. "If you want to, you can watch," he said sarcastically, attempting to get Casey to back off and head back to the campfire.
"Oh, I will." Casey's teeth glinted in the dark.
Well. That's just dandy.
-
Ellie peered into the darkness. "Are they both using the same bushes?"
"Uh, I don't think so."
Sam figured that was as good an opening as he was going to get. "Hope they haven't disappeared, like all the hikers that go missing around here." Yeah, that was subtle.
"I don't think anything could make Casey disappear." Chuck said.
Sarah coughed into her hand.
Sam was about to say 'Dean either' but it got stuck somewhere on the way out. He frowned and cleared his throat. "Seriously though, I read a thing about this area, people go missing hiking out here all the time."
"Really?"
"Yeah, there was a corporate team-building bunch that went on an adventure-hike in the backwoods area around here in July, a husband and wife back last spring..."
Ellie frowned. "Was that the bunch of executives that went missing just before that big scandal?
"The securities commission shut down their company," Sarah nodded.
Sam raised his eyebrows. "When was that?"
"Last month, September. It was in the news. After they went missing some irregularities were discovered and the whole place was audited. They found over a million dollars had been embezzled."
"Yeah," said Chuck. "They're probably on some anonymous tropical island now."
"Hunh. Guess so," Sam said.
"Hey, what about that guy..." Chuck turned to Ellie. "He went missing somewhere with his wife and three more wives and a common-law husband turned up demanding explanations. Did they go missing around here?"
Ellie poked the fire with a stick. "I don't know, maybe."
"Jeff and Lester had Google alerts for it for a month. Last May?"
"That was horrible, the way the media turned that into a sideshow." Ellie shook her head. "Those poor people, finding out they were being lied to like that, and the news sticking cameras in their faces everywhere they went. Shameful."
"Yeah, really." Sam looked into the fire. Secrets. The two most recent disappearances had huge secrets. That could be a connection. Or a reason to disappear.
"You kids behaving over here?" called Dean, stepping into the firelight with Casey close behind him.
"You two were gone a long time," Sarah said.
"Corn." Dean shrugged.
"Never mind."
Dean watched Casey cross the clearing and leaned in to whisper to Sam. "Not hunters." He smiled at the group and reached for a marshmallow.
"Ah, ah, ah." Ellie pulled the bag out of Dean's reach. "Did you use the sanitizer?"
-
Casey retrieved his sharpened stick from Sarah.
"Well?" Sarah whispered.
Casey grimaced and resumed whittling, as though the stick needed to be armor-piercing to get through a marshmallow. "He poured salt around the camp."
"He what?"
"Poured salt. In a giant circle around the camp. Out around the cars, into the bush. A complete circle. Whole bag of it."
"Salt."
"Yup. I checked. Rock salt. He said it was to keep the slugs out."
Sarah frowned and watched Dean sanitize his hands under Ellie's supervision. "So, what? The guy has slug issues?"
Casey scowled. "It's a load of crap. I don't know what's up with these guys but something's not right."
"Maybe them showing up really is an honest coincidence, Casey. It's not like there's any explosive devices or weapons made out of salt."
Casey's face remained blank as he stared at the two men beside the fire.
"There aren't, are there?"
"I'm thinking," growled Casey.
-
Warm weather or not, the sun still went down early in October in California. The group around the campfire broke up and turned in.
In the back seat of the Impala, Sam re-examined half of the printed missing persons reports and newspaper articles. "Nothing. There's nothing in any of this about this corporate bunch being embezzlers or this guy having five spouses."
Dean flipped through the other half, flashlight tucked under his chin. "This stuff maybe only turned up after they'd been missing a while. You didn't cross check?"
Sam muttered something that was obscured by the rustling of papers.
Dean turned to look into the back seat. "Sam..."
"No, alright? I didn't cross-check because I didn't figure there was a case here."
"So check now."
"There's no wi-fi. No cell signal. No internet. We don't have Bobby's library stuffed in the trunk, and I can't get online. I have no resources to do research."
Dean frowned and set aside his half of the print-outs. "Okay, so, never mind about the research. Assuming these people all had big secrets, that's a connection."
"We only know that two of the groups did, from a second-hand vaguely remembered report these people heard on the news months ago."
"It's what we've got, Sam. We may as well go with it."
"Maybe those people disappeared because they wanted to disappear? There was some pretty heavy stuff waiting for them when they got home, maybe they decided not to go back?"
Can't run away from problems. You face 'em or they find you. "I dunno. It's possible, I guess."
Sam laid down on the back seat, watching the first two lights on the EMF meter flicker and pulse silently. "So, what do you think about these people?"
"I think there's definitely something more to Sarah and Casey than they're saying. Your pal Chuck's a bit twitchy too."
"You don't think they're hunters though?"
Dean snorted. "I don't know about Sarah, but that Casey guy oozes cop vibes that are visible from outer space."
"Could also be Marine vibes, or hunter vibes."
"...maybe. He didn't know about salt."
Sam shrugged. "Maybe he's a really new hunter?"
Dean shifted in the driver's seat of the Impala. "I dunno what's up with him. He walks, talks and smells like a Fed, but he hasn't tried to bust us as two of the FBI's most wanted, even after your buddy gave him our real names. If he's a friend of Henriksen, he's a hell of a lot more subtle."
"Not that that would take much."
"Very true."
-
"They're armed." Casey muttered, laying on his bedroll on the ground, watching the Impala out the corner of his eye.
Sarah cushioned her chin on her hands, head sticking out of the emergency shelter they'd snagged from the surveillance van as supporting evidence for the ludicrous 'we're camping too' story. "Yeah, that's kind of worrisome. Who goes camping armed with hand guns? Besides us."
"Who goes camping with a '67 Impala and no tent?"
Sarah glanced at Casey. "You really think they're Fulcrum?"
"I think they're not telling us their whole story."
Sarah looked over towards the other black car lurking between the trees. "I don't think they're Fulcrum."
Casey grunted in agreement. "Fulcrum would have brought a tent."
-
Chuck hung a flashlight up inside the Bartowskis' tent. "So, camping. What do you think so far?"
"It's a great idea." Ellie said, neutrally, unrolling her sleeping bag.
"Really?"
"Sure. Some quiet family time, bonding with my brother..."
Chuck relaxed a little. "Yeah, see?"
Ellie picked up her pillow. "...and his girlfriend-"
"Uh-"
"-his coworker-" She fluffed the pillow vigorously.
"Well, that, they, um-"
"-and some random old Stanford acquaintance and his brother." Ellie punched her pillow.
"Heh. Wow. Yeah." Chuck grinned. "That was really random, wasn't-"
"This is just great, Chuck. I'm having a fantastic time." She threw the pillow down onto the sleeping bag with a tight smile. "I'm just surprised Morgan hasn't showed up yet."
Chuck opened his mouth then closed it.
Ellie rubbed her forehead. "Sorry. I'm sorry, Chuck. That wasn't fair of me. It's just frustrating lately, trying to spend any real family time with you."
Chuck stared up at the tent ceiling. "Yeah. I know."
"I'm also a little concerned about Sarah."
"What? Why?" Chuck crawled into his sleeping bag and adjusted his faded Atari-logo t-shirt.
Ellie sighed and sat on her sleeping bag, pulling on a pair of loose wool socks. "You don't think this whole 'tracking you down to go camping with you' thing isn't a bit stalkery?"
"Ha, no. No. Sarah's just..." assigned by the government to watch my every move. "Enthusiastic. About our relationship."
Ellie took down the hanging flashlight and wriggled into her sleeping bag. "There's enthusiastic and there's creepy, Chuck. I mean, Sarah's great, I love her, but being in a relationship doesn't mean devoting your entire life to one person. Balance is good."
"It's not like that, Ellie." Chuck felt a burning need to change the subject.
Ellie looked at Chuck. "We're back at this part of the conversation, aren't we?"
"Which part?"
"The 'something's going on but you won't talk to me about it so there's no sense in asking' part."
"Ah." Chuck said. "It's..."
Ellie waited for something to come after 'it's', but nothing did.
Nothing could, without endangering her, her fiance Awesome, himself, and half the free world.
"Well," Ellie patted Chuck's arm, "whenever you want to talk to me about what it is like between you and Sarah, you know where I am. Okay?" Ellie rolled over and turned off the flashlight.
Chuck sighed in the darkness. "Yeah."
-
All hiding inside their palisade, guards posted.
When it is tactically unwise or impossible to breach the enemy's fortress, you must encourage your enemy to leave it.
Fire in the hole.
-
Dean's wristwatch read ten past midnight. A little less than two hours before he was supposed to wake Sam up for his turn on watch.
He stared out the window at the campsite. Embers glowed in the fire pit, and both tents were dark. If whatever it was was taking people based on them having secrets, the campsite was a target-rich environment. Chuck, Casey and Sarah were up to something, and he and Sam weren't going to throw their life history out in the open to a bunch of strangers, cops or not.
In the back seat Sam snuffled and shifted in his sleep. Dean glanced in the mirror at his brother and frowned.
Sam hadn't cross-checked the victims list. He wasn't just dragging his feet on this case, he was missing things that would have supported this being a case the whole time. He figured it wasn't worth wasting time on.
My deadline's coming up, halfway there. No getting out of it. Sam has to get used to the idea that I'm gonna be gone. There's no hope of getting out of this deal. Dean rubbed a hand across his face and looked away from the rear-view mirror, out his open window to the bushes beside the trail. There can't be any hope of saving me or Sam will die.
Suddenly Dean's whole world went bright white with a very loud bang.
- - -
(continued in Part 3)