The Hunters Gather - prt 2
***
Dean managed to get himself seated at the table adjacent the one Spencer sat. He admired the way Spencer won the confidence of his fellow Marine. Dean figured he’d run with the marine theme, say he was Echo 2/1 like his old man. He googled the battalion’s history while he waited for Spencer’s next move and found they’d been active in the 2003 Kuwait campaign. That gave him something to work with and when the freshman kid came round looking for volunteers he signed himself up as Tom Jones ex-marine corporal.
Dean didn’t know what kind of loony they were trying to study, but he doubted it was anything to do with sleep. Not with Metallica blaring full volume into their cell-like accommodations. Not that it worried him in the least. The louder one played Metallica, the better, so he yelled for whatever snot-nosed student was running the show to ‘bring it’ and settled back down to sleep.
***
The following morning they bought in a Suit of some kind. Dean and Spencer soon figured out he was there to interrogate them. Dean watched the Suit try and psyche Spencer out with amusement. Then, a couple of wannabe tough guys manhandled him out of his cell and led him towards the corridor exit. A third followed behind them. Once in the corridor, the third undergrad told the others to buzz off. Dean turned to give some attitude to the undergrad and found himself dealing with a demon.
The demon threw Dean against the wall and seemed to have the upper hand of the fight until Dean landed him on his back hard enough to wind him. That gave Dean enough time to pin down the undergrad long enough to exorcize the demon. The black-smoke son-of-a-bitch had just left the body when two undergrads came into the corridor, they wrestled Dean back into his cell.
Dean messed with them a little, shouting about how they were demons. There wasn’t a rise from any of the undergrads or the Suit. Which meant either there’d been only one, or they were all in on the act.
They changed the music to country and western, which pissed him off a little, but otherwise, didn’t affect him the way he could hear it affecting some of the older veterans. Sometime during the night, Sammy woke him over the ear piece with information he’d gathered as a ‘pledge’ for Travis Zilgram’s fraternity house. As far as Sam could tell, Zilgram was in charge of the volunteers and those that proved resistant were sent up to Mossman where more extreme measures where used to cause them to break.
It was an ugly business all round and sickened Dean and Sam.
***
While Dean was being serenaded by Tammy Wynette, Sam was performing pranks as a pledge for the Dustmen. It meant he could keep an eye on the conman known as Hardison, but it was humiliating in a way he didn’t remember Stanford being. The only thing good about the experience was getting a decent bed to sleep on for a change.
Sam had to admit, he was pretty impressed at the opening scam Ford and Hardison pulled to grab the attention of Travis Zilgram. Sam ran his own background check on Zilgram and deduced that the kid wasn’t bright enough to warrant the attention of either Meg or Conrad for anything more than grunt work. Without their interest and protection, he was just another rich kid who believed his own press.
Anyway, the opening gambit worked and Hardison then went on to ‘pledge’. Which meant Sam had to. Which was the reason Sam was in a crowded common room, cheering on Hardison as he played “Call of Duty: Black Ops” against the Phi Kappa Gamma house. Sam found the whole experience pathetic and couldn’t believe that this is what he’d wanted to be a part of back at Stanford. Of course that was when he had a girlfriend he loved and was ignorant of the giant ‘X’ branded on his back, courteous of Azazel and his machinations.
A loud cheer of victory told him that Hardison had won and he eased himself out of the room into the hallway to call Dean. Blaring Tammy Wynette was the first thing he heard followed by Dean’s sleepy, “Wazzupp?”
“How do you sleep?” Sam asked.
“Tammy? She’s cool. Plus, beat up a demon earlier, kind of beat,” Dean answered, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“Demon?” Sam’s raised voice drew the attention of a couple leaving the common room. Sam just shrugged and kept talking to Dean. “Demons? How many?”
“Just the one, near as I can tell. I didn’t get the chance to ask what it was doing there. Sent it back to Hell,” Dean said matter-of-factly. “Kid it was riding’s okay, I think.”
“Not much at this end. Zilgram’s probably just a grunt, far as I can see. I think Conrad is only using him because they’re in the same club. That guy, Hardison, has wormed his way in. Pretty sweet how he did that, I’ll tell you when meet up. Gottta go, keep safe,” Sam said and hung up.
Hardison came out of the common room and made his way out. Sam followed, cutting through a lecture room and coming out just in front of Hardison. They knocked shoulders and Sam bugged Hardison’s jacket. That way, they’d be able to track his movements.
He hung around long enough to witness the exchange between Hardison and the girl Parker, then he headed back to the Ashford Motel. The beds might not be as comfortable as his dorm room, but University life was driving him nuts and he now longed to get on with the hunt.
Conrad the Barbarian