SPN Fanfic: Ghosts, Spies and Campfire Lies 5/5
Title: Ghosts, Spies and Campfire Lies 5/5
Disclaimer: I own neither Supernatural, nor the TV series Chuck.
Word Count: Total - 20770, Part 5 - 4570
Previously: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4
Summary: Abandoned campgrounds are never a good idea.
PART 5
"What do you think?" Dean asked. "Armory? Stock room? Both?"
"Both. Anything else would be impractical."
The long tunnel they were skulking down was rife with short chamber-like branches, necessitating slow travel as they checked each one for signs of life. Or in Dean's case, with the EMF in his pocket, signs of un-life.
Many of the chambers were full of haphazardly stacked gun crates emblazoned with the same symbol as was on the cave entrance. Ah. It's a logo. Bobby would have laughed his ass off. He opened a case and whistled. "Grenades."
Casey glanced over Dean's shoulder and grunted appreciatively. "Thermite grenades. Burns everything down to slag."
Dean beamed, remembering a batch of thermite grenades Caleb had 'acquired' in the mid '90's. Fastest salt-n-burns ever. He saw Casey watching him out of the corner of his eye and adjusted his expression so it was less 'kid in a candy store' and more 'I have never heard of this strange weaponry before, officer'. "Really?" he said.
Casey snorted.
As they continued along the tunnel more of the chambers were blocked off with rubble.
Casey shone his light at the ceiling and frowned. "These tunnels aren't that unstable. And cave-ins aren't that precise."
"Maybe it happened during that big quake out here a while back." Sure it did. Holding his small flashlight between his teeth, Dean clambered up onto a rock fall to a tiny crevice near the top. He pulled some looser rocks away. Wedged into the crevice from the other side was a decomposed hand, fingernails torn and bloody.
"Gachhh..." Dean said, grimacing around his flashlight.
"What?"
Dean removed the flashlight from between his teeth. "Found some of the hikers that disappeared." He climbed a little higher and shone his flashlight in past the hand. The chamber beyond the rock fall illuminated to reveal three more corpses besides the one clinging to the crevice, all in nearly unweathered L.L. Bean hiking gear. "Probably the executives that went missing last summer."
Casey bared his teeth. "The guy's been killing anyone who got too close to his bunker for years and we never knew."
Dean flicked a glance to Casey and back to the oubliette full of corpses. "Something like that." He jumped down off the rock fall and called out. "Saaaam!" The echoes rebounded down the tunnel into the black distance.
"Subtle, Winchester."
"I'm pretty sure your, uh, 'guy' already knows we're here anyway."
Casey grunted. "Point taken."
Flashlights and guns at the ready, the two men proceeded down the tunnel.
-
So many intruders with secrets, more than ever before. The weight of them stretches me. It itches like fire. I like it.
-
After a long while of nervous walking along the tunnels, taking the branches that seemed to have a faint glow and a hint of maybe a voice after he called out, Chuck started to feel like he was in a really boring first-person shooter video game.
Not that boring is bad. Better boring than random thugs attacking. Although maybe it's not such a hot idea to follow the vague green glow. In video games that usually leads to face-sucking aliens.
Chuck turned a greenly-lit corner and entered a room-like section of tunnel with a cot and ammo cases, lit with glow-sticks. A familiar figure lurked in the shadows beside the cot, holding her unlit flashlight like a club.
"Ellie?"
"Chuck!" Ellie lowered her flashlight and hobbled across the room to hug her brother.
"Are you okay? You're limping!"
"I'm fine Chuck, it's just- can we get out of here?"
Chuck looked at Ellie. She was dirt-smudged and the corners of her eyes were pinched white with strain. This was his big sister, his strong rock and seeing her unflappability... flapped shook him in ways he couldn't put into words. All because his new spy life kept getting in the way of his real life. "Ellie, I wanted to say, I'm sorry. I keep screwing up, then screwing up apologizing for screwing up and this..." Chuck looked around the room at the weapon crates. "This is pretty epic."
Ellie frowned at him. "I appreciate the sentiment, but can we discuss this later? Let's get out of here before the person who lives here with all the guns comes back."
Chuck heard what Ellie was saying, but somehow the possible return of a crazed arms dealer didn't seem as important as telling Ellie the truth. He wished he could tell her everything.
He wanted to tell Ellie the real reason he missed their special family-of-two day was that he was helping rescue a Chinese diplomat from the restaurant they'd been getting shrimp at for the past several years. He wanted to tell her everything about the Intersect and what it meant to have a head stuffed full of encoded government secrets.
Chuck felt weird. Nauseous in the brain. Like he'd been playing Tetris for thirty hours straight.
"Chuck? What's wrong? Chuck?!"
Ellie sounded like she was talking to him from miles away, but she also sounded worried. He didn't want her to worry. Chuck wanted to tell her Sarah and Casey weren't stalkers, they were government agents assigned to protect him and keep him secret, so there wasn't any reason to worry. He wanted to tell her the real reason the deputy ambassador from Zaire had to return home suddenly two months ago, and why the third game of the World Series last year had been moved forward a day, and why-
Chuck hadn't seen anything. He hadn't looked at or heard or seen anything that might trigger a flash. But the images started flipping through his mind's eye. Thousands upon thousands of top secret government files started cascading in his mind, as fast as they had when he first got the e-mail from Bryce Larkin that put them in his head in the first place.
Chuck Bartowski started to flash and couldn't stop.
-
So many secrets. He sees them now. He sees the death he contains. He'll share it. He won't have any choice. I won't allow him to have any choice.
I'll make him see them all.
-
"So, your arms dealer, is he dead?" Sam said conversationally, hoping to catch Sarah off-guard.
Sarah seemed to fight a brief internal battle before answering. "...apparently not."
"But you'd been sure he was dead before this, right?"
Sarah's flashlight spotlighted Sam from behind, casting his shadow far ahead of them. "You're not going to claim he's a ghost, are you? Even if ghosts existed, how could one be doing all this?"
"You'd be surprised. Me and my brother, we've met a lot of really active dead people."
Behind Sam, Sarah snorted and moved her flashlight's aim.
"Here's another thing. Why would an arms dealer set up a base so close to a campground?" Sam mused quietly, scoping out the tunnel ahead.
He could almost hear the shrug in Sarah's voice. "Hiding in plain sight, accessibility to clients, cover. Sheer perversity. Who knows?"
Ellie's distressed voice calling her brother's name floated down the corridor. They ran towards the sound.
Sam and Sarah entered the room with the cot to see Chuck staring at a blank wall, eyelids fluttering and mouth hanging open. Ellie jittered in front of him, holding him by the shoulders, shouting into his face.
"What's going on?" asked Sarah, tucking her weapon away before Ellie could see it.
"I don't know, I think Chuck's having a petit mal seizure, but he's not epileptic. Chuck!"
Sarah looked at the crates of guns and glowsticks. "We need to get him out of here. Sam, can you help me carry him?"
"Hey, hey, the gang's all here," Dean said cheerfully as he and Casey entered the room from a different tunnel. "What's up with Chuck?"
"Never mind," said Sarah turning to Casey. "Casey, we need to get Chuck and Ellie out of here."
Casey took one look at Chuck's expression, glanced at Ellie and the Winchesters, then folded Chuck off his feet and over his shoulder into a fireman's carry.
"The path we took was a little-" Casey pointedly glanced at Ellie, who was snagging an armload of glowsticks. "-difficult. Which way did you come, Sarah?"
Sarah pointed. "That way. It was clear."
"Yes," said Dean, "you all need to get out now, we'll bring up the rear."
Casey shot Dean a look before taking Chuck into the tunnel. Ellie snapped a glowstick and dropped it at the path entrance before following after Casey and her brother, closely followed by Sarah.
"Sarah, hang on," Sam called.
"What?"
He handed Sarah the shotgun full of salt rounds. "Here."
Sarah raised an eyebrow at the weapon. "You do know that I'm armed, Sam."
"I know." Sam ran a hand through his hair. "But, uh, you seem to be hiding that from Ellie and having my shotgun might be easier to explain. You see anything moving, anything, no matter what it looks like, shoot it with that."
"What if it's one of you two?"
"Rock salt rounds. Rather be shot with this gun than yours any day."
"Got it." Sarah took the gun and jogged after the rest of the group.
"Right," said Dean, handing Sam the second salt gun from the bag on his shoulder. "Let's go find this guy. I think I know where to start looking."
-
Ellie followed after Casey and Chuck, pausing at each junction to snap a glowstick and drop it on the ground.
Not getting lost again in here. Not when Chuck's hurt. She saw Sarah coming up behind and was startled that besides her flashlight, Sarah was carrying something else.
"Sarah? You've got a shotgun?"
"This?" Sarah shifted her grip on it so that it looked even less natural for her to be carrying it. "Sam told me to take it. He and his brother are, um, hunters, I guess."
"Oh. Ew." Ellie winced at the thought of killing wild animals for fun.
"Lucky for us though. Some kind of crazy survivalist gun nut must live in these caves!"
"I know! I can't believe it. Did you see all the guns in that room?"
"Yes," said Sarah, nodding. "Very scary."
Ellie looked at the shotgun in Sarah's hands dubiously. "You know how to shoot that thing?"
Sarah grinned as they followed along behind Casey and Chuck. "Sam said to point it away from anything I don't want to hit and pull the trigger. It's, um, not loaded with real bullets, they use it mainly to make noise, to flush out game. If this survivalist guy shows up it should scare him enough that we can all run away."
"Oh, okay." Ellie was relieved. "So it's not like a real gun then."
"Not really."
Casey cursed in the tunnel up ahead. Ellie ran up, and checked on Chuck first by reflex. No change. "What's wrong?"
"Keep losing my footing, the floor's slippery or something. Keeps shifting under me. Could you do me a big favor, Ellie, and shine your light so I can see where I'm putting my feet? Hard to aim a flashlight and carry Chuck."
"Of course, John!" Stop thinking about guns, Ellie Bartowski. Chuck needs you. John and Sarah need you too. You're a doctor, you're used to dealing with crisis situations, they aren't. "You're doing a very good fireman's carry, by the way."
"Thanks. It's uh, standard Buy More first aid training." Casey shifted Chuck's weight on his shoulders and trudged on.
-
He's getting away! They're taking him away! How dare they! He's mine!
Fall down you great oaf, don't you carry him away! Your secrets are meager compared to his. Drop him, bring him back, bring him back to me! His secrets are mine! All the secrets are mine to keep!
-
Sam shone his light up and down the tunnel Dean and Casey had come up earlier. "So the blocked off ones have the missing hikers in them?"
"Yep."
"Grim."
"Just like I said."
"Why aren't they haunting the place too, though?"
"I figure this arms dealer guy is 'keeping' them here in more ways than one." Dean flicked his light over the row of caved-in chambers. "When we find him and salt and burn his ass, the rest should be cut loose. I don't think they'll stick around and cause any problems."
"If we find the guy. This place is a rat's nest."
"If we don't find him, we do the next best thing."
"Which is?"
Dean grinned. "Taste of his own medicine. Blow the cave entrance, wall him up down here. He did it to them, it'd be poetic or something."
"You really think that'll do any good, with that hole-popping trick he does?"
Dean went into a nearby alcove and shone his light around at the weapons cases. "We could set everything off. Collapse it all."
"What? Blow the place up? You know that's nuts, right?"
"Why not?"
Sam tapped his index finger on the side of his flashlight. "One, blowing up an extended cave system could cause massive surface disruption, fires-"
"Spare me the environmental impact statement, Sam. Bottom line is this ghost is going to keep killing people who wander through the park with secrets until he's stopped, so we gotta stop him."
Sam pursed his lips in frustration and continued as though Dean hadn't spoken, pressing his middle finger against his flashlight. "Two. How do we even know that'll work? What if the caves collapse and he still haunts what's left of the park?"
Dean ignored Sam, peering into weapons crates. "Will you look at some of the stuff this guy has? It's like Dad's lock-up in Black Rock. No, like Caleb's basement. This stuff's awesome."
"No souvenirs." Sam warned. "He might haunt them"
"Crap. Yeah. Last thing we need is haunted weaponry." Dean opened a smaller weapons case in the corner of the alcove. "Oh, no. No, no, no."
"What? What did you find?"
Dean stepped away from the case. "Take a look."
Sam looked in, expecting yet another example of deadly military creativity, but the case was empty. More than empty. A low tunnel led down and away.
"Nice little bolt-hole, one that exits into a room full of weapons." Sam shone his flashlight around the inside of the fake gun box. "Sliding false bottom, but it's only halfway shut."
Dean reached in and scrubbed his fingers across a dried brownish substance smeared on the edge of the false bottom. "Blood."
Sam flicked his flashlight around the hole. "Figure he's down there?"
"If he got attacked, shot or something, hauled ass back here, crawled in and died..."
"Great. I guess we're going in then." Sam straightened up and looked down at Dean. "Rock, paper-"
"Ohhh no," said Dean, tucking his flashlight under his arm and reaching for the lid of one of the weapon cases. "I have a much better idea."
"What?" Sam said, nervous of the sudden glee in Dean's eyes.
Dean grinned and opened the case with a flourish. Inside lay piles of smooth green-gray spheroids.
"Grenades?! You are crazy."
Dean held up a grenade and shook it so the pin jingled. "Thermite grenades. Incendiary."
"Like those ones Caleb had in '95?"
"Exactly. Dump most of these down there, rig a delay on a couple, close the lid, foom." Dean shone his flashlight down into the hole with a glint in his eye. "No salt, but it'll sure as hell burn."
Sam's light darted between the cases around the room. "It's still no good, Dean, the heat will set off the rest of the munitions here."
"It's our only option. It's the only way to be sure we've torched this guy's bones."
"It's still not a good idea."
"Not many things we do are." Dean put his flashlight down on top of a tower of boxes and dragged a full crate of grenades over to the false-bottomed ammo case. "Come on, Sammy, let's load him up."
-
As soon as Chuck crossed the line of salt at the cave entrance, the flash-cascade stopped. He opened his eyes to see the world upside down from somewhere near Casey's left armpit.
"Wha-"
"It's okay, Chuck, we found you and Ellie," Sarah said. In other words, Ellie's here, so don't say anything to compromise mission security. Gotcha.
"Chuck! Are you all right?" Ellie hove into view, filling Chuck's entire field of vision as she pulled his eyelids further up. Or down, since he was upside down. His head hurt.
"I'm fine. I'm just um." Chuck was rescued from having to think of something logical to say by Casey returning Chuck's feet to the ground and slapping him on the back. I just had the intelligence data of a large portion of the world streaming live in my head. My processors are a little bogged.
"You were not fine!" Ellie said. "It looked like you were having a seizure back there! I need you to tell me if you remember everything, or if you have a blank spot in your memory."
"What?" Blank spot? The exact opposite, really.
"Please answer the question. This is important Chuck." Ellie had her sternest Doctor Big Sister look.
"Of course I remember, Ellie, okay? I was just freaking out a little. I'm fine, it's just, um. Guns. I guess."
Ellie looked puzzled. "But you play Call of Duty 4 almost every day with Morgan."
"Uh. Right. Real guns, waaay different. Kinda freaked out."
"Hunh. Well, I suppose it's a good thing all the video games you play haven't desensitized you to violence."
"Ha. Ha ha. No." Chuck looked over Ellie's shoulder at Casey, who smirked.
-
He's been taken from me! All the secrets, all the death they could become, gone!
But there are still some in my domain with secrets, ones they don't want to tell. Those are the ones that always fetch the highest price from those that want to hear them, whether the price is paid in money or blood.
Money or blood, or both. No use for money any more, but the blood, that is always welcome payment.
He'll do. They'll pay.
-
Ellie ran ahead to get her first aid kit when Chuck mentioned his head hurt. He hoped he could downplay the whole 'uncontrollable flashing' incident enough that she wouldn't haul him into the hospital and insist he get a CAT scan or something.
"What the hell happened there Chuck?" muttered Casey as soon as Ellie was out of earshot.
"I started flashing and it wouldn't stop."
Sarah nodded. "No surprise there, half the stuff in that room was probably connected to some secret or operation of some kind."
"Like a 'stack/heap collision' then?" Chuck rubbed his head. "Too much data, not enough RAM? Although that makes me sound like an idiot."
Casey smiled. "Sure, let's go with that."
"I think there was some kind of truth gas too," Sarah added.
"Truth gas?"
"Aerosolized pentathol. A mild dose, but that would be my guess. I could feel the effect." They were coming close to the end of the trail. Sarah's eyes flicked towards the campsite where Ellie's flashlight illuminated the Bartowski's tent. "Maybe a canister leaking in that room."
Chuck laughed. "What kind of a weapon is truth gas?"
"Pipe it into the air conditioning at UN headquarters and you'd start World War Three within twenty minutes," Casey growled.
"Okay, yeah. I can see that."
Chuck looked around the campsite. The fire was long dead. In the pre-dawn light he could make out the shapes of the Nerd Herder and the Impala.
Chuck frowned and looked back toward the cave trail. "Where are Sam and Dean?"
-
The EMF began squealing constantly as Dean and Sam scooped thermite grenades into the arms dealer's final hiding place like shoveling coal into a train engine.
"Uh oh, Casper's pissed." Dean grimly doubled his grenade-scooping speed.
Sam was overcome by a sudden urge to tell Dean everything. It's not like his plan was really a huge secret, just that if he told Dean, Dean would say no and try to stop Sam from saving his life, which would be inconvenient. He could present it as a passing thought instead of a plan he'd been looking for a chance to act on since Elizabethville.
Sam shook his head and frowned. What the hell? Of course I'm not telling him. It'd just piss him off. Sometimes you have to keep a secret to save your family.
The ground shivered under Sam's foot as he swiveled to scoop out another armload of grenades. He slipped, flashlight spinning wildly as he threw his arms out to catch himself but a protrusion of the rock wall caught him in the temple. Fireworks went off behind his eyes.
"Sam!" Dean went to Sam and grabbed him by the elbow to help him up.
"I've got a plan to end your deal," groaned Sam, getting to his feet, leaning on Dean's arm.
"What?" The light from Dean's flashlight hit him square in the face.
Sam frowned, blocking the light with a hand. "I didn't mean to say that. Never mind."
"You didn't mean it and you didn't mean to say it aren't the same thing, Sammy. Spit it out." Sam couldn't see his face behind the light, but from his tone of voice Dean wasn't in the mood to take any crap.
"I've got a plan." Sam felt like the words were being pulled out of him. "I've had it for a while, I've just been waiting for a chance. I take the Colt, summon the Crossroads demon and threaten her. Maybe shoot her."
"No way Sam. No way. That's never gonna happen!"
"Why not? It's worth trying!"
"It's not, even if-"
The floor shook, and chunks of rock fell from the cave ceiling.
"You haven't set off the grenades already, have you?" Sam asked in alarm.
"Nope." Dean stood, and scooped a few thermite grenades out onto the cave floor. "Either we got a Balrog, or our friendly neighborhood dead arms dealer is trying to entomb us. Help me with this."
Low booms of munitions exploding deep within the caves shook the walls as Sam and Dean took either side of the crate of grenades and dumped the remainder down the tunnel under the false-bottomed ammo case. Rocks and debris fell around them.
"Now what?"
Dean grabbed three grenades, pulled the pins on all of them, and dropped them in, closing the lid and jamming the latch with a quick kick.
"Now we run!"
-
The fire is coming. It spreads, down the tunnels, to where I've hid myself away, where my bones lie, my own secret, my own death. I become my own last secret.
I will become-
-
After about five minutes of dodging falling rocks and keeping their footing as the path under their feet almost squirmed like a nest of rattlesnakes, the shaking stopped and the EMF fell silent. The rocks falling from the ceiling as the Winchesters ran seemed much less targeted, and the ground stayed in one place.
"I do believe we got him." Dean grinned.
The Winchesters followed the glowstick trail Ellie had left out to the cave entrance, dodging less malevolent falling debris.
-
It was nearly sunrise; the light made flashlights unnecessary, and the first birds of the morning were starting to sing in the abandoned campground. Sam, Chuck and Ellie stood in a little knot beside the Nerd Herder.
"Some crazy old survivalist living in the caves," said Ellie. "Who knew?"
"Yeah, weird, hunh?" Chuck grinned a little too broadly.
"Totally weird," agreed Sam. It was a plausible fiction for what really happened in the caves.
"You think he was living there when we went camping with Mom and Dad, Chuck? Some of the stuff down there looked like it had been there a long time."
Chuck shrugged and shook his head. "I doubt it. This whole campsite with loads of people in it? Not a smart place to set up a secret survival bunker. Right?"
"I guess not," said Sam. Even though that symbol has been on the cave wall for at least twenty years, if I'm any judge. From the shifting, faintly horrified expression on Chuck's face, Sam could tell he was thinking the same thing.
"Well, it was great to meet you Sam," Ellie spread her arms wide and folded Sam into a hug. "Thank you."
"Um, yeah, no problem. Good to meet you too," Sam said, bemused.
She released Sam and turned to Chuck. "I'm going to start packing up. The sooner I get to a real bathroom with a real shower the better."
"Tell me about it," groaned Chuck.
Ellie grinned. "Devon's never going to believe all this. I feel like Nancy Drew, finding secret smugglers' caves!"
Chuck grinned. "He'll think it's awesome, just like the corn on the cob."
Sam and Chuck watched Ellie disappear into the tent.
"So," said Chuck, turning to Sam. "In case you haven't noticed, my life got a little weird after I left Stanford. You?"
Sam chuckled and nodded. "Yeah. Mine was always weird, though. Stanford was about as normal as it got."
"Ouch."
Sam shrugged.
Chuck clapped his hands together and pointed, like he was aiming a brilliant idea at the center of Sam's chest. "Hey! You know, we should swap e-mails or something! Stay in touch, exchange seasonal e-cards and stuff!"
"Um." Sam winced. "Nothing personal but given the people you hang out with... I probably shouldn't leave you any contact information."
Chuck nodded, looking over to where Casey and Sarah were standing next to the Impala and talking with Dean. "You have a point."
"Take care, alright? Watch out for your sister." Sam held out a hand for a handshake.
"You too." Chuck shook Sam's hand and slapped him on the shoulder. "Take care of Dean."
Sam glanced across the campsite at Dean. "I intend to."
-
Over by the Impala, Casey smirked at Dean. "Whatever happened down there, there's a cell signal now. Civilian authorities will be here in forty-five minutes."
Sarah shot a glance at Casey. "Twenty-five minutes."
Dean smirked back. "We'll be gone in five."
Casey grunted. Dean thought it sounded faintly disappointed, with a hint of respectful amusement. When you can interpret the grunts of some random guy you met in a haunted campground less than 24 hours ago, it's a sign you need to leave.
"Come on, Sammy, shake a leg!" he shouted as he got in behind the wheel of the Impala and shut the door.
Sam waved acknowledgment from across the campsite and exchanged a few more words with Chuck.
Dean looked back up at Sarah and Casey, squinting into the first rays of full morning sunlight. "You know, those people down in the caves are still listed as missing..."
"Oh they'll be found," said Casey. "Just not here."
Dean nodded. "Good."
Sam jogged over, got in and slammed the door. Dean started the engine.
"So," said Sam, ducking low to look at Sarah and Casey from the passenger side of the car. "Good luck with the, uh, TV selling and hot dog making."
Sarah smiled innocently. "And good luck with whatever it is you really do."
"See you around, Winchesters," Casey growled.
Dean grinned. "Not if we can help it."
-
The Impala rolled over the ruts and scrub of the abandoned campground trails. Sam had retrieved his phone from Dean and was checking through his messages as a way of stalling the conversation he figured was going to happen. Dean's face was flat, bland. That was never a good sign.
Sam pocketed his phone.
"Anything good," Dean asked.
"Possible werewolf attack in Maple Springs, New York. Also, we can get a subscription to Good Housekeeping for twenty-five percent off."
"Great. I need some tips on knitting my own dust-ruffle."
They bumped over the ruts in silence for a while.
Dean inhaled and looked over at Sam. "What you said back there, in the caves-"
"Dean, I wasn't gonna tell you."
"I know you weren't gonna tell me!" Dean snapped. "You think that's reassuring, Sam? That you'd cook up some half-assed plan to get yourself killed and not even tell me, just go ahead with it?"
Sam stared out the window at the greenery rolling past.
"There is no getting out of this for me, Sammy, so no more bullshit about using the Colt on the Crossroads Demon, or trying to break my deal. Okay?"
Sam shifted in the passenger seat, turning further toward the window. "Fine."
"I mean it, Sam."
"I said 'fine', Dean."
"Fine. End of discussion then."
The Impala rolled out of the campground and on to the road, heading toward the East Coast.
- - -
(that's all. Hope you enjoyed it!)
(Anyone who wants to read my ramblings about this fic or my writing process in general, there's a "DVD Fanfic Extra" here.)
Disclaimer: I own neither Supernatural, nor the TV series Chuck.
Word Count: Total - 20770, Part 5 - 4570
Previously: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4
Summary: Abandoned campgrounds are never a good idea.
PART 5
"What do you think?" Dean asked. "Armory? Stock room? Both?"
"Both. Anything else would be impractical."
The long tunnel they were skulking down was rife with short chamber-like branches, necessitating slow travel as they checked each one for signs of life. Or in Dean's case, with the EMF in his pocket, signs of un-life.
Many of the chambers were full of haphazardly stacked gun crates emblazoned with the same symbol as was on the cave entrance. Ah. It's a logo. Bobby would have laughed his ass off. He opened a case and whistled. "Grenades."
Casey glanced over Dean's shoulder and grunted appreciatively. "Thermite grenades. Burns everything down to slag."
Dean beamed, remembering a batch of thermite grenades Caleb had 'acquired' in the mid '90's. Fastest salt-n-burns ever. He saw Casey watching him out of the corner of his eye and adjusted his expression so it was less 'kid in a candy store' and more 'I have never heard of this strange weaponry before, officer'. "Really?" he said.
Casey snorted.
As they continued along the tunnel more of the chambers were blocked off with rubble.
Casey shone his light at the ceiling and frowned. "These tunnels aren't that unstable. And cave-ins aren't that precise."
"Maybe it happened during that big quake out here a while back." Sure it did. Holding his small flashlight between his teeth, Dean clambered up onto a rock fall to a tiny crevice near the top. He pulled some looser rocks away. Wedged into the crevice from the other side was a decomposed hand, fingernails torn and bloody.
"Gachhh..." Dean said, grimacing around his flashlight.
"What?"
Dean removed the flashlight from between his teeth. "Found some of the hikers that disappeared." He climbed a little higher and shone his flashlight in past the hand. The chamber beyond the rock fall illuminated to reveal three more corpses besides the one clinging to the crevice, all in nearly unweathered L.L. Bean hiking gear. "Probably the executives that went missing last summer."
Casey bared his teeth. "The guy's been killing anyone who got too close to his bunker for years and we never knew."
Dean flicked a glance to Casey and back to the oubliette full of corpses. "Something like that." He jumped down off the rock fall and called out. "Saaaam!" The echoes rebounded down the tunnel into the black distance.
"Subtle, Winchester."
"I'm pretty sure your, uh, 'guy' already knows we're here anyway."
Casey grunted. "Point taken."
Flashlights and guns at the ready, the two men proceeded down the tunnel.
-
So many intruders with secrets, more than ever before. The weight of them stretches me. It itches like fire. I like it.
-
After a long while of nervous walking along the tunnels, taking the branches that seemed to have a faint glow and a hint of maybe a voice after he called out, Chuck started to feel like he was in a really boring first-person shooter video game.
Not that boring is bad. Better boring than random thugs attacking. Although maybe it's not such a hot idea to follow the vague green glow. In video games that usually leads to face-sucking aliens.
Chuck turned a greenly-lit corner and entered a room-like section of tunnel with a cot and ammo cases, lit with glow-sticks. A familiar figure lurked in the shadows beside the cot, holding her unlit flashlight like a club.
"Ellie?"
"Chuck!" Ellie lowered her flashlight and hobbled across the room to hug her brother.
"Are you okay? You're limping!"
"I'm fine Chuck, it's just- can we get out of here?"
Chuck looked at Ellie. She was dirt-smudged and the corners of her eyes were pinched white with strain. This was his big sister, his strong rock and seeing her unflappability... flapped shook him in ways he couldn't put into words. All because his new spy life kept getting in the way of his real life. "Ellie, I wanted to say, I'm sorry. I keep screwing up, then screwing up apologizing for screwing up and this..." Chuck looked around the room at the weapon crates. "This is pretty epic."
Ellie frowned at him. "I appreciate the sentiment, but can we discuss this later? Let's get out of here before the person who lives here with all the guns comes back."
Chuck heard what Ellie was saying, but somehow the possible return of a crazed arms dealer didn't seem as important as telling Ellie the truth. He wished he could tell her everything.
He wanted to tell Ellie the real reason he missed their special family-of-two day was that he was helping rescue a Chinese diplomat from the restaurant they'd been getting shrimp at for the past several years. He wanted to tell her everything about the Intersect and what it meant to have a head stuffed full of encoded government secrets.
Chuck felt weird. Nauseous in the brain. Like he'd been playing Tetris for thirty hours straight.
"Chuck? What's wrong? Chuck?!"
Ellie sounded like she was talking to him from miles away, but she also sounded worried. He didn't want her to worry. Chuck wanted to tell her Sarah and Casey weren't stalkers, they were government agents assigned to protect him and keep him secret, so there wasn't any reason to worry. He wanted to tell her the real reason the deputy ambassador from Zaire had to return home suddenly two months ago, and why the third game of the World Series last year had been moved forward a day, and why-
Chuck hadn't seen anything. He hadn't looked at or heard or seen anything that might trigger a flash. But the images started flipping through his mind's eye. Thousands upon thousands of top secret government files started cascading in his mind, as fast as they had when he first got the e-mail from Bryce Larkin that put them in his head in the first place.
Chuck Bartowski started to flash and couldn't stop.
-
So many secrets. He sees them now. He sees the death he contains. He'll share it. He won't have any choice. I won't allow him to have any choice.
I'll make him see them all.
-
"So, your arms dealer, is he dead?" Sam said conversationally, hoping to catch Sarah off-guard.
Sarah seemed to fight a brief internal battle before answering. "...apparently not."
"But you'd been sure he was dead before this, right?"
Sarah's flashlight spotlighted Sam from behind, casting his shadow far ahead of them. "You're not going to claim he's a ghost, are you? Even if ghosts existed, how could one be doing all this?"
"You'd be surprised. Me and my brother, we've met a lot of really active dead people."
Behind Sam, Sarah snorted and moved her flashlight's aim.
"Here's another thing. Why would an arms dealer set up a base so close to a campground?" Sam mused quietly, scoping out the tunnel ahead.
He could almost hear the shrug in Sarah's voice. "Hiding in plain sight, accessibility to clients, cover. Sheer perversity. Who knows?"
Ellie's distressed voice calling her brother's name floated down the corridor. They ran towards the sound.
Sam and Sarah entered the room with the cot to see Chuck staring at a blank wall, eyelids fluttering and mouth hanging open. Ellie jittered in front of him, holding him by the shoulders, shouting into his face.
"What's going on?" asked Sarah, tucking her weapon away before Ellie could see it.
"I don't know, I think Chuck's having a petit mal seizure, but he's not epileptic. Chuck!"
Sarah looked at the crates of guns and glowsticks. "We need to get him out of here. Sam, can you help me carry him?"
"Hey, hey, the gang's all here," Dean said cheerfully as he and Casey entered the room from a different tunnel. "What's up with Chuck?"
"Never mind," said Sarah turning to Casey. "Casey, we need to get Chuck and Ellie out of here."
Casey took one look at Chuck's expression, glanced at Ellie and the Winchesters, then folded Chuck off his feet and over his shoulder into a fireman's carry.
"The path we took was a little-" Casey pointedly glanced at Ellie, who was snagging an armload of glowsticks. "-difficult. Which way did you come, Sarah?"
Sarah pointed. "That way. It was clear."
"Yes," said Dean, "you all need to get out now, we'll bring up the rear."
Casey shot Dean a look before taking Chuck into the tunnel. Ellie snapped a glowstick and dropped it at the path entrance before following after Casey and her brother, closely followed by Sarah.
"Sarah, hang on," Sam called.
"What?"
He handed Sarah the shotgun full of salt rounds. "Here."
Sarah raised an eyebrow at the weapon. "You do know that I'm armed, Sam."
"I know." Sam ran a hand through his hair. "But, uh, you seem to be hiding that from Ellie and having my shotgun might be easier to explain. You see anything moving, anything, no matter what it looks like, shoot it with that."
"What if it's one of you two?"
"Rock salt rounds. Rather be shot with this gun than yours any day."
"Got it." Sarah took the gun and jogged after the rest of the group.
"Right," said Dean, handing Sam the second salt gun from the bag on his shoulder. "Let's go find this guy. I think I know where to start looking."
-
Ellie followed after Casey and Chuck, pausing at each junction to snap a glowstick and drop it on the ground.
Not getting lost again in here. Not when Chuck's hurt. She saw Sarah coming up behind and was startled that besides her flashlight, Sarah was carrying something else.
"Sarah? You've got a shotgun?"
"This?" Sarah shifted her grip on it so that it looked even less natural for her to be carrying it. "Sam told me to take it. He and his brother are, um, hunters, I guess."
"Oh. Ew." Ellie winced at the thought of killing wild animals for fun.
"Lucky for us though. Some kind of crazy survivalist gun nut must live in these caves!"
"I know! I can't believe it. Did you see all the guns in that room?"
"Yes," said Sarah, nodding. "Very scary."
Ellie looked at the shotgun in Sarah's hands dubiously. "You know how to shoot that thing?"
Sarah grinned as they followed along behind Casey and Chuck. "Sam said to point it away from anything I don't want to hit and pull the trigger. It's, um, not loaded with real bullets, they use it mainly to make noise, to flush out game. If this survivalist guy shows up it should scare him enough that we can all run away."
"Oh, okay." Ellie was relieved. "So it's not like a real gun then."
"Not really."
Casey cursed in the tunnel up ahead. Ellie ran up, and checked on Chuck first by reflex. No change. "What's wrong?"
"Keep losing my footing, the floor's slippery or something. Keeps shifting under me. Could you do me a big favor, Ellie, and shine your light so I can see where I'm putting my feet? Hard to aim a flashlight and carry Chuck."
"Of course, John!" Stop thinking about guns, Ellie Bartowski. Chuck needs you. John and Sarah need you too. You're a doctor, you're used to dealing with crisis situations, they aren't. "You're doing a very good fireman's carry, by the way."
"Thanks. It's uh, standard Buy More first aid training." Casey shifted Chuck's weight on his shoulders and trudged on.
-
He's getting away! They're taking him away! How dare they! He's mine!
Fall down you great oaf, don't you carry him away! Your secrets are meager compared to his. Drop him, bring him back, bring him back to me! His secrets are mine! All the secrets are mine to keep!
-
Sam shone his light up and down the tunnel Dean and Casey had come up earlier. "So the blocked off ones have the missing hikers in them?"
"Yep."
"Grim."
"Just like I said."
"Why aren't they haunting the place too, though?"
"I figure this arms dealer guy is 'keeping' them here in more ways than one." Dean flicked his light over the row of caved-in chambers. "When we find him and salt and burn his ass, the rest should be cut loose. I don't think they'll stick around and cause any problems."
"If we find the guy. This place is a rat's nest."
"If we don't find him, we do the next best thing."
"Which is?"
Dean grinned. "Taste of his own medicine. Blow the cave entrance, wall him up down here. He did it to them, it'd be poetic or something."
"You really think that'll do any good, with that hole-popping trick he does?"
Dean went into a nearby alcove and shone his light around at the weapons cases. "We could set everything off. Collapse it all."
"What? Blow the place up? You know that's nuts, right?"
"Why not?"
Sam tapped his index finger on the side of his flashlight. "One, blowing up an extended cave system could cause massive surface disruption, fires-"
"Spare me the environmental impact statement, Sam. Bottom line is this ghost is going to keep killing people who wander through the park with secrets until he's stopped, so we gotta stop him."
Sam pursed his lips in frustration and continued as though Dean hadn't spoken, pressing his middle finger against his flashlight. "Two. How do we even know that'll work? What if the caves collapse and he still haunts what's left of the park?"
Dean ignored Sam, peering into weapons crates. "Will you look at some of the stuff this guy has? It's like Dad's lock-up in Black Rock. No, like Caleb's basement. This stuff's awesome."
"No souvenirs." Sam warned. "He might haunt them"
"Crap. Yeah. Last thing we need is haunted weaponry." Dean opened a smaller weapons case in the corner of the alcove. "Oh, no. No, no, no."
"What? What did you find?"
Dean stepped away from the case. "Take a look."
Sam looked in, expecting yet another example of deadly military creativity, but the case was empty. More than empty. A low tunnel led down and away.
"Nice little bolt-hole, one that exits into a room full of weapons." Sam shone his flashlight around the inside of the fake gun box. "Sliding false bottom, but it's only halfway shut."
Dean reached in and scrubbed his fingers across a dried brownish substance smeared on the edge of the false bottom. "Blood."
Sam flicked his flashlight around the hole. "Figure he's down there?"
"If he got attacked, shot or something, hauled ass back here, crawled in and died..."
"Great. I guess we're going in then." Sam straightened up and looked down at Dean. "Rock, paper-"
"Ohhh no," said Dean, tucking his flashlight under his arm and reaching for the lid of one of the weapon cases. "I have a much better idea."
"What?" Sam said, nervous of the sudden glee in Dean's eyes.
Dean grinned and opened the case with a flourish. Inside lay piles of smooth green-gray spheroids.
"Grenades?! You are crazy."
Dean held up a grenade and shook it so the pin jingled. "Thermite grenades. Incendiary."
"Like those ones Caleb had in '95?"
"Exactly. Dump most of these down there, rig a delay on a couple, close the lid, foom." Dean shone his flashlight down into the hole with a glint in his eye. "No salt, but it'll sure as hell burn."
Sam's light darted between the cases around the room. "It's still no good, Dean, the heat will set off the rest of the munitions here."
"It's our only option. It's the only way to be sure we've torched this guy's bones."
"It's still not a good idea."
"Not many things we do are." Dean put his flashlight down on top of a tower of boxes and dragged a full crate of grenades over to the false-bottomed ammo case. "Come on, Sammy, let's load him up."
-
As soon as Chuck crossed the line of salt at the cave entrance, the flash-cascade stopped. He opened his eyes to see the world upside down from somewhere near Casey's left armpit.
"Wha-"
"It's okay, Chuck, we found you and Ellie," Sarah said. In other words, Ellie's here, so don't say anything to compromise mission security. Gotcha.
"Chuck! Are you all right?" Ellie hove into view, filling Chuck's entire field of vision as she pulled his eyelids further up. Or down, since he was upside down. His head hurt.
"I'm fine. I'm just um." Chuck was rescued from having to think of something logical to say by Casey returning Chuck's feet to the ground and slapping him on the back. I just had the intelligence data of a large portion of the world streaming live in my head. My processors are a little bogged.
"You were not fine!" Ellie said. "It looked like you were having a seizure back there! I need you to tell me if you remember everything, or if you have a blank spot in your memory."
"What?" Blank spot? The exact opposite, really.
"Please answer the question. This is important Chuck." Ellie had her sternest Doctor Big Sister look.
"Of course I remember, Ellie, okay? I was just freaking out a little. I'm fine, it's just, um. Guns. I guess."
Ellie looked puzzled. "But you play Call of Duty 4 almost every day with Morgan."
"Uh. Right. Real guns, waaay different. Kinda freaked out."
"Hunh. Well, I suppose it's a good thing all the video games you play haven't desensitized you to violence."
"Ha. Ha ha. No." Chuck looked over Ellie's shoulder at Casey, who smirked.
-
He's been taken from me! All the secrets, all the death they could become, gone!
But there are still some in my domain with secrets, ones they don't want to tell. Those are the ones that always fetch the highest price from those that want to hear them, whether the price is paid in money or blood.
Money or blood, or both. No use for money any more, but the blood, that is always welcome payment.
He'll do. They'll pay.
-
Ellie ran ahead to get her first aid kit when Chuck mentioned his head hurt. He hoped he could downplay the whole 'uncontrollable flashing' incident enough that she wouldn't haul him into the hospital and insist he get a CAT scan or something.
"What the hell happened there Chuck?" muttered Casey as soon as Ellie was out of earshot.
"I started flashing and it wouldn't stop."
Sarah nodded. "No surprise there, half the stuff in that room was probably connected to some secret or operation of some kind."
"Like a 'stack/heap collision' then?" Chuck rubbed his head. "Too much data, not enough RAM? Although that makes me sound like an idiot."
Casey smiled. "Sure, let's go with that."
"I think there was some kind of truth gas too," Sarah added.
"Truth gas?"
"Aerosolized pentathol. A mild dose, but that would be my guess. I could feel the effect." They were coming close to the end of the trail. Sarah's eyes flicked towards the campsite where Ellie's flashlight illuminated the Bartowski's tent. "Maybe a canister leaking in that room."
Chuck laughed. "What kind of a weapon is truth gas?"
"Pipe it into the air conditioning at UN headquarters and you'd start World War Three within twenty minutes," Casey growled.
"Okay, yeah. I can see that."
Chuck looked around the campsite. The fire was long dead. In the pre-dawn light he could make out the shapes of the Nerd Herder and the Impala.
Chuck frowned and looked back toward the cave trail. "Where are Sam and Dean?"
-
The EMF began squealing constantly as Dean and Sam scooped thermite grenades into the arms dealer's final hiding place like shoveling coal into a train engine.
"Uh oh, Casper's pissed." Dean grimly doubled his grenade-scooping speed.
Sam was overcome by a sudden urge to tell Dean everything. It's not like his plan was really a huge secret, just that if he told Dean, Dean would say no and try to stop Sam from saving his life, which would be inconvenient. He could present it as a passing thought instead of a plan he'd been looking for a chance to act on since Elizabethville.
Sam shook his head and frowned. What the hell? Of course I'm not telling him. It'd just piss him off. Sometimes you have to keep a secret to save your family.
The ground shivered under Sam's foot as he swiveled to scoop out another armload of grenades. He slipped, flashlight spinning wildly as he threw his arms out to catch himself but a protrusion of the rock wall caught him in the temple. Fireworks went off behind his eyes.
"Sam!" Dean went to Sam and grabbed him by the elbow to help him up.
"I've got a plan to end your deal," groaned Sam, getting to his feet, leaning on Dean's arm.
"What?" The light from Dean's flashlight hit him square in the face.
Sam frowned, blocking the light with a hand. "I didn't mean to say that. Never mind."
"You didn't mean it and you didn't mean to say it aren't the same thing, Sammy. Spit it out." Sam couldn't see his face behind the light, but from his tone of voice Dean wasn't in the mood to take any crap.
"I've got a plan." Sam felt like the words were being pulled out of him. "I've had it for a while, I've just been waiting for a chance. I take the Colt, summon the Crossroads demon and threaten her. Maybe shoot her."
"No way Sam. No way. That's never gonna happen!"
"Why not? It's worth trying!"
"It's not, even if-"
The floor shook, and chunks of rock fell from the cave ceiling.
"You haven't set off the grenades already, have you?" Sam asked in alarm.
"Nope." Dean stood, and scooped a few thermite grenades out onto the cave floor. "Either we got a Balrog, or our friendly neighborhood dead arms dealer is trying to entomb us. Help me with this."
Low booms of munitions exploding deep within the caves shook the walls as Sam and Dean took either side of the crate of grenades and dumped the remainder down the tunnel under the false-bottomed ammo case. Rocks and debris fell around them.
"Now what?"
Dean grabbed three grenades, pulled the pins on all of them, and dropped them in, closing the lid and jamming the latch with a quick kick.
"Now we run!"
-
The fire is coming. It spreads, down the tunnels, to where I've hid myself away, where my bones lie, my own secret, my own death. I become my own last secret.
I will become-
-
After about five minutes of dodging falling rocks and keeping their footing as the path under their feet almost squirmed like a nest of rattlesnakes, the shaking stopped and the EMF fell silent. The rocks falling from the ceiling as the Winchesters ran seemed much less targeted, and the ground stayed in one place.
"I do believe we got him." Dean grinned.
The Winchesters followed the glowstick trail Ellie had left out to the cave entrance, dodging less malevolent falling debris.
-
It was nearly sunrise; the light made flashlights unnecessary, and the first birds of the morning were starting to sing in the abandoned campground. Sam, Chuck and Ellie stood in a little knot beside the Nerd Herder.
"Some crazy old survivalist living in the caves," said Ellie. "Who knew?"
"Yeah, weird, hunh?" Chuck grinned a little too broadly.
"Totally weird," agreed Sam. It was a plausible fiction for what really happened in the caves.
"You think he was living there when we went camping with Mom and Dad, Chuck? Some of the stuff down there looked like it had been there a long time."
Chuck shrugged and shook his head. "I doubt it. This whole campsite with loads of people in it? Not a smart place to set up a secret survival bunker. Right?"
"I guess not," said Sam. Even though that symbol has been on the cave wall for at least twenty years, if I'm any judge. From the shifting, faintly horrified expression on Chuck's face, Sam could tell he was thinking the same thing.
"Well, it was great to meet you Sam," Ellie spread her arms wide and folded Sam into a hug. "Thank you."
"Um, yeah, no problem. Good to meet you too," Sam said, bemused.
She released Sam and turned to Chuck. "I'm going to start packing up. The sooner I get to a real bathroom with a real shower the better."
"Tell me about it," groaned Chuck.
Ellie grinned. "Devon's never going to believe all this. I feel like Nancy Drew, finding secret smugglers' caves!"
Chuck grinned. "He'll think it's awesome, just like the corn on the cob."
Sam and Chuck watched Ellie disappear into the tent.
"So," said Chuck, turning to Sam. "In case you haven't noticed, my life got a little weird after I left Stanford. You?"
Sam chuckled and nodded. "Yeah. Mine was always weird, though. Stanford was about as normal as it got."
"Ouch."
Sam shrugged.
Chuck clapped his hands together and pointed, like he was aiming a brilliant idea at the center of Sam's chest. "Hey! You know, we should swap e-mails or something! Stay in touch, exchange seasonal e-cards and stuff!"
"Um." Sam winced. "Nothing personal but given the people you hang out with... I probably shouldn't leave you any contact information."
Chuck nodded, looking over to where Casey and Sarah were standing next to the Impala and talking with Dean. "You have a point."
"Take care, alright? Watch out for your sister." Sam held out a hand for a handshake.
"You too." Chuck shook Sam's hand and slapped him on the shoulder. "Take care of Dean."
Sam glanced across the campsite at Dean. "I intend to."
-
Over by the Impala, Casey smirked at Dean. "Whatever happened down there, there's a cell signal now. Civilian authorities will be here in forty-five minutes."
Sarah shot a glance at Casey. "Twenty-five minutes."
Dean smirked back. "We'll be gone in five."
Casey grunted. Dean thought it sounded faintly disappointed, with a hint of respectful amusement. When you can interpret the grunts of some random guy you met in a haunted campground less than 24 hours ago, it's a sign you need to leave.
"Come on, Sammy, shake a leg!" he shouted as he got in behind the wheel of the Impala and shut the door.
Sam waved acknowledgment from across the campsite and exchanged a few more words with Chuck.
Dean looked back up at Sarah and Casey, squinting into the first rays of full morning sunlight. "You know, those people down in the caves are still listed as missing..."
"Oh they'll be found," said Casey. "Just not here."
Dean nodded. "Good."
Sam jogged over, got in and slammed the door. Dean started the engine.
"So," said Sam, ducking low to look at Sarah and Casey from the passenger side of the car. "Good luck with the, uh, TV selling and hot dog making."
Sarah smiled innocently. "And good luck with whatever it is you really do."
"See you around, Winchesters," Casey growled.
Dean grinned. "Not if we can help it."
-
The Impala rolled over the ruts and scrub of the abandoned campground trails. Sam had retrieved his phone from Dean and was checking through his messages as a way of stalling the conversation he figured was going to happen. Dean's face was flat, bland. That was never a good sign.
Sam pocketed his phone.
"Anything good," Dean asked.
"Possible werewolf attack in Maple Springs, New York. Also, we can get a subscription to Good Housekeeping for twenty-five percent off."
"Great. I need some tips on knitting my own dust-ruffle."
They bumped over the ruts in silence for a while.
Dean inhaled and looked over at Sam. "What you said back there, in the caves-"
"Dean, I wasn't gonna tell you."
"I know you weren't gonna tell me!" Dean snapped. "You think that's reassuring, Sam? That you'd cook up some half-assed plan to get yourself killed and not even tell me, just go ahead with it?"
Sam stared out the window at the greenery rolling past.
"There is no getting out of this for me, Sammy, so no more bullshit about using the Colt on the Crossroads Demon, or trying to break my deal. Okay?"
Sam shifted in the passenger seat, turning further toward the window. "Fine."
"I mean it, Sam."
"I said 'fine', Dean."
"Fine. End of discussion then."
The Impala rolled out of the campground and on to the road, heading toward the East Coast.
- - -
(that's all. Hope you enjoyed it!)
(Anyone who wants to read my ramblings about this fic or my writing process in general, there's a "DVD Fanfic Extra" here.)