Girl!Sam Episode 4 - Phantom Traveller - Part 2
Dean had quickly picked out a black suit and tie, a plain white dress shirt, and some black dress shoes. The longest part was when the salesman had measured him...the rest had taken a matter of minutes really. Now he sat in his new suit outside the dressing room of the misses department waiting impatiently for Sam to finish up. She had apparently taken 50 different black suits in there and insisted on asking his opinion on each one. His answer was always the same, “It looks fine. Get that one.”
A saleslady walked over and asked if they needed any help. “Na. I think she’s about done.” Then he mumbled, “I hope she is anyway.”
The lady smiled. “You know, not very many young men go shopping with their girlfriends.”
Dean was clearly horrified. “She’s my sister!”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I just assumed…” She was saved from any further comments by Sam emerging from the dressing room once again.
Dean stared at Sam. She was wearing a simple black pantsuit, but it was a perfect fit. “Huh.”
She beamed at him. “See. That’s the reaction a girl looks for. We’ll take this one. Now I just need shoes…”
Dean groaned.
They walked out of the store half an hour later, a cheerful Sam and a miserable Dean. “I look like one of the Blues Brothers.” He complained.
“No you don’t.” Sam tried not to smile. “You look more like a…seventh grader at his first dance.”
Dean looked down at himself. “I hate this thing.”
“You could’ve taken more time pickin’ it out.”
“We wasted enough time on your outfit.”
“Hey, I spent the first 18 years of my life wearing mostly your hand-me-downs, thank you very much. You owe me.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Just get in the car.”
Dean was glad they had no problems getting into the warehouse with their new suits and fake Homeland Security IDs. He was a bit less pleased by the appreciative looks Sam received from the security personnel.
He pulled something from his pocket that resembled an old Walkman and put the earphones on. “What’s that?” Sam asked.
“It’s an EMF meter. It reads electromagnetic frequencies.”
“Yeah. I know what an EMF meter is…why does that one look like a busted up Walkman?”
“’Cause that’s what I made it out of.” Dean smiled proudly. “It’s homemade.”
“Yeah. I can see that.” Sam teased.
Dean’s smile slowly faded with the insult. He turned around and started passing the EMF meter over the wreckage. As it passed over what was left of the emergency door, it made a buzzing sound. Dean put it way. “Check out the emergency door handle.” There was something on it. Dean looked closer and scraped it with his fingernail. “What is this stuff?”
Sam moved over. “There’s one way to find out.” She took out a knife and scraped some of the residue into a plastic baggie. Dean wiped his fingers on the shoulder of her suit, and Sam gave him a dirty look.
Meanwhile, back at the security station, two real Homeland Security agents showed up. The guard looked at their IDs. “Homeland Security? What? One team of you guys isn’t enough?”
“What’re you talkin’ about?”
“Two of your people just went inside, not five minutes ago.”
Suddenly, everyone realized Sam and Dean were fakes. The guard frowned. “I shoulda known you guys didn’t have any hot girls.”
Sam and Dean finished up and went out a side door just as the guards and agents entered the warehouse. They walked casually toward one of the exits until an alarm signaled they had been found out. They ran over to a fence and Dean gave Sam a boost before climbing over himself. He landed next to her on the other side. “See, this is why I insisted on a pair of shoes you could run in. Let’s go.”
Chuck Lambert was anxious. He was about to fly for the first time since the crash, and he was more than a little nervous about the whole thing. His friend Tom tried to reassure him. “Listen Chuck. It’s like getting’ back on a horse. Only in this case, a little twin engine. Not even a horse…more like a pony. And I’ll be right there with you too…any time you feel like you don’t want the wheel, I’ll take over.”
Chuck nodded his head, but he was far from reassured.
“Look, Chuck. We don’t have to do this today. I’m not tryin’ to rush you.”
“Na. The waiting is worse.”
Tom looked out the window behind them. “Okay. They’re fillin’ up the tank. Then we go.” He patted
Chuck on the shoulder as got up to use the restroom before they left.
As Chuck sat there alone, trying to calm his nerves, a swirl of black emerged from the air vent, just as it had with George Phelps. And just as it had with George, the blackness entered him and turned his eyes ebony.
Dean and Sam had taken the residue from the door handle back to Jerry’s office for him to examine for them. He looked up from his microscope to tell them what they had found. “Huh. This stuff is covered in sulfur.”
“You’re sure.” Sam asked.
There was some banging outside on the warehouse floor. “Take a look for yourself. If you’ll excuse me…I have an idiot to fire.”
Dean walked around the desk and took a look after Jerry had closed the door behind him. “Hmm. Yeah, there’s not too many things that leave behind a sulfuric residue.”
“Demonic possession?”
“That would explain how a mortal man would have the strength to open up an emergency hatch.”
“If the guy was possessed…it’s possible.”
“Yeah. But this goes way beyond floatin’ over a bed or barfin’ pea soup. I mean, it’s one thing to possess a person…but to use ‘im to take down an entire airplane?”
“You ever heard of somethin’ like this before?”
Dean shook his head. “Never.”
Chuck met Tom by the little twin engine. He was remarkably upbeat for someone who had been so uneasy just minutes before. “I’m ready. Let’s do this.”
Tom laughed at his buoyant attitude and followed him onto the plane.
They flew for a while and everything was going rather smoothly. Tom turned to him. “How ya feelin’?”
“I feel great.”
“You’ll be back to flyin’ jumbos before ya know it.”
“Hope so. How long we been up?”
“Uh…” Tom looked at his watch. “Almost 40 minutes.”
“Wow. Time really does fly.”
He frowned and shook his head at the bad joke that was really so unlike his friend. Suddenly, Chuck sent the little plane into a nosedive.
“What’re you doin’!” Tom screamed.
Chuck used his elbow to bash Tom in the head until he was unconscious. He continued to point the plane toward the ground, in a full on dive. His eyes were completely black as he crashed the plane into a rural field.
Dean and Sam had been delving into the demon possession angle for hours back at their motel room. Dean had books laid out on the bed while Sam was researching online. Sam had finally found some relevant info and sighed as she leaned back in her chair. “So…every religion and every world culture has the concept of demons and demonic possession, right? I mean, Christian, Native American, Hindu…you name it.”
Dean looked up from his book. “Yeah, but none of them describe anything like this.”
“Well, that’s not exactly true. You see, according to Japanese beliefs, certain demons are behind certain disasters, both natural and man-made. One causes earthquakes, another causes disease.”
“And this one causes plane crashes?”
Sam shrugged. Dean sighed and stood up. “All right. So, what? We have a demon that’s evolved with the times and found a way to ratchet up the body count?”
“Yeah. And ya know, who knows how many planes it’s brought down before this one…” Dean laughed. “What?”
He rubbed the back of his head restlessly. “I don’t know Sam…this isn’t our normal gig. I mean, demons…they don’t want anything…just death and destruction for its own sake. This is big. I wish Dad was here.”
Sam looked over at Dean. “Yeah…me too.”
Dean’s phone rang. “Hello.”
“Dean, it’s Jerry.”
“Oh, hi Jerry.”
Jerry sounded troubled. “My pilot friend…Chuck Lambert is dead.”
“Wh-Jerry I’m sorry. What happened?”
“He and his buddy went up in a small twin about an hour ago. The plane went down.”
“Where’d this happen.”
“About 60 miles west of here near Nazareth.”
“I’ll try and ignore the irony in that.”
“Sorry?”
Dean shook his head. “Nothin’. Jerry, hang in there all right? We’ll get in touch with you soon.”
Dean hung up the phone and looked at Sam who had been listening to his side of the conversation with Jerry. “Another crash?”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
Dean smiled grimly. “Nazareth.”
Dean had collected another sample from the controls of the airplane. Jerry was examining it under his microscope as he had with the sample they had brought back from the wreckage of Flight 2485. He stood up and turned to Dean who was standing next to him. “Sulfur?” Jerry nodded his head. Dean sighed and turned to Sam. “Well, that’s great. That’s two plane crashes involving Chuck Lambert. This demon sounds like it was after him.”
Sam didn’t think it was that simple. “With all due respect to Chuck, if that’s the case, that would be the good news.”
“What’s the bad news?” Dean asked.
“Chuck’s plane went down exactly 40 minutes into the flight. And, get this, so did Flight 2485.”
Jerry didn’t get the significance. “40 minutes? What does that mean?”
“It’s biblical numerology.” Dean explained. “Ya know, Noah’s ark. It rained for 40 days. The number means death.”
Sam went over to the laptop. “I went back, and there have been six plane crashes over the last decade that all went down exactly 40 minutes in.”
“Any survivors?”
“No. Or not until now at least. Not until Flight 2485 for some reason. On the cockpit voice recorder…remember what the EVP said?”
“No survivors.” Dean took a deep breath as he realized what Sam was thinking. “It’s going after all the survivors. It’s tryin’ to finish the job.”
Sam and Dean were back on the road. Dean was driving, and Sam was in the process of calling each of the six remaining survivors under the pretext of a survey to find out if they would be flying again in the near future. “Really. Well, thank you for taking our survey, and if you do plan to fly, please don’t forget your friends at United Britannia Airlines. Thanks.”
She hung up the phone. “All right. That takes care of Blain Sanderson and Dennis Holloway. They’re not flying anytime soon.”
“So our only wildcard is the flight attendant, Amanda Walker.”
“Right.” Sam confirmed. “Her sister Karen said her flight leaves Indianapolis at 8 PM. It’s her first night back on the job.”
“Well, that sounds like just our luck.”
“Dean. This is a five hour drive…even with you behind the wheel.”
“Why don’t you try callin’ Amanda’s cell phone again? See if we can’t head her off at the pass.”
“I already left her three voice messages. She must have turned her cell phone off. God…we’re never gonna make it.”
Dean had that determined look in his eyes. “Oh…we’re gonna make it.”
Dean proved how well he could handle the Impala and as luck would have it, they didn’t see a single officer of the law. They ran into the airport and over to the nearest Flight Schedule screen. Sam pointed. “Right there. They’re boarding in thirty minutes.”
“Okay, we still have some cards to play.” Dean began looking around for a courtesy phone. “We need to find a phone.” He spotted one and picked it up.
“Airport Services.”
“Gate 13.” Dean requested.
“Who are you calling sir?”
“I’m trying to contact an Amanda Walker. She’s a flight attendant on Flight…uh,424.”
He waited impatiently while Airport Services paged Amanda to the courtesy phone at Gate 13. “Come on…”
“This is Amanda Walker.”
“Ms. Walker, hi. This is Dr. James Hedfield from St. Francis Memorial Hospital. We have a Karen Walker here.”
“Wha-Karen?!”
“Nothing serious. Just a minor car accident, but she was injured, so-“
“Wait. Wait. That’s impossible. I just got off the phone with her.”
Dean paused. He didn’t know how to recover. “You what?”
“Five minutes ago. She’s at her house cramming for a final…who is this?
“Ah…uh…there must be some mistake.”
“How would you even know I was here? Is this one of Vince’s friends?”
Dean decided to go with it. “Guilty as charged.” He laughed.
“Wow. This is unbelievable.”
“He’s really sorry.”
“Well you tell him to mind his own business and stay out of my life, okay.”
“Yes, but, he really needs to see you tonight. So-“
“No, I’m sorry. It’s too late.”
“Don’t be like that! I mean come on…the guy’s a mess. Really, it’s pathetic.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Look. I gotta go. Um, tell him to call me when I land.” She hung up the phone.
“No, no. Wait. Amanda!” Dean slammed the phone down, frustrated. “Dammit. We were so close.”
Sam took a deep breath. “All right. It’s time for plan B. We’re getting on that plane.”
Dean didn’t like that idea. “Www-Now, just hold on a second.”
“Dean, that plane is leaving with over a hundred passengers on board. And if we’re right, “ she glanced around and whispered. “…that plane is gonna crash.”
“I know!”
“Okay. Then we’re getting on the plane. We need to find that demon and exorcise it. Look, I’ll get the tickets. You just go get whatever you can out of the trunk …whatever’ll make it through security. Meet me back here in five minutes.” Dean just stared at her. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t want to admit it, but he couldn’t think of an excuse. “No. Not really.”
Sam was surprised. Dean never acted like this. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“Well, I kinda have this problem with, uh…” Dean made a non-decipherable motion with his hand.
“Flying?”
“It’s never really been an issue until now.”
“You’re joking right?” Sam honestly couldn’t believe she was seeing this from Dean.
“Do I look like I’m joking?! Why do you think I drive everywhere Sam?!”
Sam quickly considered the options. “All right…I’ll go.”
“What!”
“I’ll do this one on my own.”
“What’re you nuts?! You said it yourself. The plane’s gonna crash.”
“Dean. We can do this together or I can do this one on my own…I’m not seeing a third option here.”
“Come on! Really? Man.”
last part