The Zombie Mash - 1/1
The Zombie Mash
Rating: R, Gen
Characters: Dean, Sammy, John
Word Count: 7,864
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchesters for fun and angst. Sorry about the holes!
A/N: Belated birthday fic for the awesome, pinkphoenix1985 who had a yen for “pre-series teen!chesters, solo hunts, evil teachers, and ZOMBIES.” I think I managed to fit everything in.
Three cheers for Lewis Carroll’s sublime Jabberwocky, and Bobby Pickett’s Monster Mash (the lyrics of which were randomly used as section headers.)
You can blame secret-seer for a certain twisted fish visual.
Warning: This may contain accidental traces of nuts, schmoop, and small furry animals.
Setting: Peculiar, Mo. Aug-Sept. 1994.
Summary: ‘Dean? Do those zombies look a little … hungry to you?’
Out from his coffin, Drac's voice did ring
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves…’
‘Toads?’
‘toves did gyre and gimble…’
‘Sammy!’
‘What?’ Sam’s voice wafted down from the top bunk, sounding incredibly innocent in the darkness.
Innocent in a way only an evil younger brother with a serious school fetish could truly master. Yeah, right. The room wasn’t big enough for both of them.
‘Beware the Jubjub bird!’ came the gleeful whisper from above.
‘Shut it, now! Or I’ll shove your Jubjub where the sun never shines!’
First thing in the morning Dean was dismantling the connectors-screw Dad’s rental agreement- and shifting Sammy’s bed over to the far side of the room. It might only gain him another three feet of distance but when you’re talking about an eleven year old kid, you take what you can get. If that didn’t work Dean wondered if Dad would notice if he started sleeping in the car. Brothers.
‘The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!’
Okay, now that was a little too close to home considering they were both still battered from trying to help their father with that last poltergeist. Crafty tough old bugger for a dead person.
‘Sammy! No more poetry at home, or I’ll make you eat Lewis Fucking Carroll.’
‘But it’s bound to be…’
‘Then I’ll staple your mouth shut.’
‘On the recommended reading list!’ Sammy wailed.
‘Staples, Sammy. Permanently.’
‘But…’
Dean took his pillow off his head and glared up at the wire netting above him. ‘We don’t start school till tomorrow, Sammy.’
‘But…’
‘No.’
‘Deeeeeeeannn. It’s for school! What if I’m behind?’ Sammy’s voice trailed off into the start of hiccupping sobs.
‘I have a dream,’ Dean muttered sourly as he got out of bed. ‘A very interesting dream, or I would have if you’d let me get some sleep.’
His romantic life in tatters, he climbed up the rusted ladder to try and convince his nerdy little brother-not for the first time, and unfortunately probably not for the last-that school didn’t have to be about being perfect.
Sometimes it was better to simply be cool.
Seems he was troubled by just one thing
‘Winchester. Dean and Alice Winchester, Ma’am.’
Dean smiled sweetly at the school secretary while he stifled his brother’s protestations underneath his arm.
‘Don’t mind my little sister. She’s always been a bit of a tomboy. We’re hoping she’ll grow out of it.’
He passed over their battered sizeable folder of transcripts with his free hand, automatically into their regular spiel of ‘new in town… father got called into an early shift… be in to sign the paperwork later… no, Ma’am, we don’t have the book lists… do you know where we can get some textbooks second-hand?’
He kept the smile, didn’t blink when she took in their worn clothing, and Sammy’s red face as he broke away to lean over the counter babbling about where he was up to in his studies, and how he was sure he’d be caught up in no time if they just gave him a chance…
Some things never changed.
The party had just begun
Sammy loved school. He loved his teachers-okay, not Mrs. Banner back in Mobile, and even Dean agreed that she was weird-he loved the classrooms, class rosters, homework, everything. He even loved the freaking lockers.
Nothing explained why he was walking out the main door towards Dean at the end of the first day frowning like someone had cancelled his library card.
His clothes were rumpled and his stupid hair was a mess, but that was standard Sammy. There were no obvious signs of a fight, and he was moving easily. He wasn’t hurt, that was the main thing. Everything else could wait unless his little brother signalled otherwise.
Sammy’s eyes just said, ‘Not now.’ That was enough. Which was good because if Dean had to go kill someone for his brother he preferred to go home and get some extra weapons first. Fucking school metal detectors were a damned nuisance. Dean added that to a list of things about their new schools that he needed to deal with immediately.
Their SOP meant that they never said anything on the school grounds that wasn’t actually about school, unless it was heavily coded. Camouflage was more than an automatic defence mechanism; it was a way of life.
Dean simply punched his brother none too gently on the arm in greeting, and they left the school side-by-side talking about baseball. Baseball was safe.
‘Spill.’ They were five minutes from Sammy’s school, and Dean had detoured them down a quiet side street, and they were finally safe to talk.
‘Jabberwocky was on the list! I told you I needed to know it. But I’m ahead on maths, but only because I did all that stuff for extra credit at South. I dunno about science yet, don’t have that till tomorrow, but Patty Riley says the teacher’s a total tool! And I had to sit next to Billy Willis twice, and he’s like this big, and he just looked at me like I was an idiot. And I got a note about gym that you need to fake Dad’s signature on andthere’saschooltriptothemuseumnextweek and that’stendollarsandtheywantitbyWednesday!I’mwearingthewrongclothesagainandeveryoneknows’ he stopped to take a breath, ‘and Mr Dalgety smells, Dean!’
Oh.
Drac's a part of the band
By the end of the week Sammy had slowed down, thankfully decided that oxygen was useful, and adjusted to school life at the Ray-Pac Middle School. Unfortunately it turned out that Dean was unaware that the term ‘adjustment’ in his little brother’s dictionary included the following warning.
‘Danger, Dean Winchester! Danger!’
It also had see references to the words: ants; budgerigars; gerbils; goldfish; hamsters; mice; rabbits; and snakes.
Scariest of all was the fact that the nouns were all presented in the plural form.
One day Dean was going to learn to open that dictionary. Tragically today was not that day.
‘You want to what?’
‘Take home the…’
Dean shuddered; placing a heavy hand over his brother’s mouth to stem the tide of yet another flood of … he couldn’t even think it. It was just too terrible.
Sammy bit his palm, none too gently. Little shit.
‘Ow, Sammy! You’ve got teeth like a…’ Oops. ‘Clever, Sammy. Very clever.’
His brother just grinned up at him while he hastily scrubbed the obviously disgusting taste of Dean off his lips. ‘Blech!’ he spat descriptively.
Dean whacked him on the head on principle, though he presumed Sammy wouldn’t taste any better either. Brothers. Eww.
Sammy proceeded to fucking well skip hyperactively alongside him the rest of the way home.
‘So, can I? Can I? Can I? Huh? Huh, Dean?’
Oh, God. Dean wondered if it was too late to find a zoo that was willing to accept donations of mammals. Human mammals. Short, annoying, talking ones. Though he wouldn’t necessarily have to disclose that up front, would he?
‘But, Daaaaaaad!’
‘Samuel Michael Winchester!’
Sammy pouted and subsided back to parade rest, still eyeing his father as if he’d suggested killing Bambi.
Which Dad definitely would do if it turned out Bambi was working for the other side. Considering the tears his little brother shed every time he watched the cartoon deer get shot on television, Dean already knew that Bambi; or at least Walt Disney was evil.
‘Bu…’
‘Sam.’
‘It’s only a small t…’
Dean winced. Sammy wasn’t going to let this go. Hell, they were probably only here for another few weeks anyway. What could it hurt to let his brother be like the other kids for once?
He knew better than to say anything without permission though. He came a little more obviously to attention beside his brother instead.
‘Yes, Dean?’
‘I can carry it there and back, Dad.’
‘And they give you all the food they need, and you get a star on the board if you do it!’ Sammy babbled out before his father could try and stop him again.
Dean kept his attention focused firmly on his father. Wasn’t hard to tell which way he’d go. He’d never said yes to anything like this before.
‘Daad?’
Eyes forward. Don’t look at Sammy.
Their father sighed. He looked like he’d just fought off a dozen werewolves. He held up one hand and started listing points off with the other. ‘Just this once; only the goldfish; Sammy, you’ll be handling their food and … uh … exercise or whatever they need; Dean’s in charge of transportation; And.’ He looked sternly at Sammy. ‘If any of them die, you get to explain it to your teacher.’
Huh.
Dean tried not to grin as his brother squealed and hugged Dad tight. He was glad Sammy was happy. But, honestly? Fucking class pets?
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight
Fred, Barney, Wilma, Betty, Bamm-Bamm, and Mary-Sue. Six Goddamn goldfish all in a row. Okay, they were swimming circles, but that wasn’t the point.
Six fish. Not one, not two. Six. He’d counted them twice to be sure. All right, it was three times because the littlest kept sneaking behind a stupid plastic box and stuffing up his tally.
And Sammy’s small fish tank weighed a fucking ton.
‘Why couldn’t we just scoop them into a plastic bag to take home, and then empty them into the bathtub for the weekend?’ he protested as he clutched the dangerously sloshing tank closer to his chest. Son of a bitch. If he wasn’t careful some of them were going to end up belly up on the sidewalk. At this stage he didn’t give a shit about the fish, but Sammy had apparently already bonded with the slippery critters.
Dean wished his father hadn’t been such a softy.
‘Who named them anyway?’ he gasped out as they turned the final corner for home, interrupting Sammy’s interminable monologue on fish, and water temperatures, and some other crap that Dean had managed to tune out.
‘Last class Mrs. Stone had. Angela told me she always has fish. It’s a tradition,’ Sammy said in an awed voice.
Traditions-apart from warding their rooms with salt-were something neither of them had seen except from a distance or on television. Dean didn’t give a hoot about it, but Sammy always got this curiously wondering look on his face, as if at times he wished he could pick the world up and shake it to make the snow fall.
Dean glanced at his brother, bit back another swear word, and tried not to spill the fish.
‘Mary-Sue?’
Sammy hovered importantly over the tank, the tip of his tongue just showing between his front teeth as he shook the canister into his palm and carefully separated out the scientifically correct number of fish flakes to apportion between his foster fish.
‘Huh?’
‘Fred and Wilma, Barney and Betty, Bamm-Bamm and Mary-Sue? One of these names is not like the others. One of these names just doesn’t belong,’ Dean sing-songed. He was a little peeved at the lack of attention, but he wasn’t going to let it show.
‘Come on, Sammy. Why the heck would anyone name a fish Mary-Sue?’ Dean had already forgotten his initial distain for the teacher’s homage to The Flintstones, because the biggest fish really did look like Fred when you got close to it. Though if it had been up to Dean they would have been named after characters from Batman or the Dukes of Hazzard. ‘What about P…? Ow!’
Sammy took his foot off Dean’s, let the last flake fall into the water directly over the treasure chest and waited until he saw Mary-Sue make a successful break for her dinner before he quietly grabbed Dean by the arm and dragged him over to the far wall.
‘Pebbles is dead!’ he murmured in Dean’s ear.
‘No!’ Dean shouted. Because that thought totally hadn’t occurred to him. Fish dying. Fish being eaten. Fish fingers. Mmm…
‘Sssh!’ Sam ordered, before punching him in the stomach. Hard.
It was just as well he hadn’t had dinner yet.
Sam turned them to face the wall, presumably in case the fish could lip-read. With goldfish you just never knew.
‘Someone in the last class killed her! Their Mom bought a new one. She named it.’
Oh. Why hadn’t Dean seen that coming? A Mom, and a fish called Mary?
Bugger.
It's now the monster mash
Mondays were Dean’s new favourite thing. Best day of the week.
Weekends were endless.
School? Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Ever.
‘A little more to the left, Dean.’
Dean was sure Sammy was going to grow up to be a prissy interior decorator if he didn’t intervene and do something about earning his little brother some serious street and school cred soon.
‘Back about an inch. No, no. Not that far!’
‘That was an inch, Sammy,’ Dean snarled.
‘You’re taller! Besides it’s hard for me to judge when you’re in the way,’ Sammy complained, almost justifiably. ‘A squidge more to the right and … perfect!’
This behaviour? Wasn’t helping Sammy’s cause. A squidge?
Dean pushed the fish tank into its final position, did a triple-fin count to be sure-checking behind the chest, because two days and three long nights had clued him into Mary-Sue’s tricks-and breathed the kind of sigh only known to people who’d suffered the strains of temporary guardianship of a school pet.
He’d just wasted the last thirty minutes carting and aligning fish, he was exhausted, there were only five minutes left before the his High School bell went off, and now Mary-Sue was bumping her head into the side of the tank closest to him as if to ask, ‘Take me with you?’
He’d had his Monday. He was over it, and ready to move on.
Life got easier after the Flintstones and Rubbles went back to do their bit for modern education. A lot easier. For forty-eight hours that is. It was a good two days. If Dean had known, he’d have made better use of them. He certainly would have tried to kiss Lois O’Connell after second period instead of stopping in to check on the fish, not because he missed them or anything, just... nothing. And he would have had that third helping of dessert in the cafeteria at lunch on Wednesday. It wasn’t great, but it was pie after all.
Wednesday was when life in Peculiar, Missouri, decided it was time to live up to the name. Or rather, die up to it.
Something started killing the pets of Peculiar, and Sammy didn’t like it.
So, Dean forgot all about pie.
It started with the budgies.
Four birds in the one night. Each one belonged to someone from his brother's school.
‘Captive…’ audience, Dean started to say before Sammy’s haunted eyes shut him right up. It was just as well he hadn’t uttered his first thought that the killer was getting dinner to go.
Empathy. He could do that. Budgies. Dead budgies. Messy, all those bloody feathers caught in the wires of their broken cages tossed aside in the streets. Dead birds … um … sad, very sad.
Fine. Maybe empathy was harder than it looked.
Over the next week Martin Suarez lost his pet frog, Rover. Betty Harkness lost her iguana, and their gym teacher lost Fabio, her long-haired Syrian hamster.
Next thing it was kittens, snakes, canaries, mice, the odd rat, salamander, and ferret, one ant farm, and a lot of rabbits. Rabbits were big that year in Peculiar. Dean was betting that a pet shop accidentally mixed up some pink and blue tags, and had a clearance sale on the resulting offspring. Whatever the reasons, Peculiar’s children were fond of their rabbits, and the hutches were coming up empty.
Okay, the rabbits were starting to get to Dean. Maybe it was the picture Billy Willis’ little sister held out to him? Those pink eyes, the nose, or the clearly cuddly fur? It certainly wasn’t Jill’s face when she cried and talked about how Thumper II liked carrot and celery sticks.
Dean didn’t do pets. He was just here for Sammy.
According to their father, Sammy didn’t have a case worth pursuing. Nothing supernatural anyway.
‘Someone could be taking them and re-selling them elsewhere, a store recycling its profit again and again,’ Dad said with cynical commonsense, as he fended off his youngest son’s tearful cry of, ‘Animal sacrifice!’
‘Or animal rights groups setting them free?’ Dean offered doubtfully. None of his research over the past few days had indicating that Peculiar’s Animal Liberation Front had stooped to lifting pets from children yet. They were more prone to standing outside the local hot chicken store waving their placards at passing cars while they drank camomile tea out of tartan flasks. He was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt, or until he caught them rabbit-handed.
‘Sacrifice!’ Sammy repeated. ‘Dark magic.’ In the past few years he’d spent all his spare time finding out as much as he could about what his family hunted.
Little geek now did two types of homework. Voluntarily.
Making up for lost time was all well and good, but as Dean had soon come to realise, it meant that his brother had a tendency to see evil everywhere. Life as a Winchester meant most of the time he was right, but evil in the schoolyard? That was a little far-fetched even for Dean who’d kill for an excuse to get out of school early. He knew his father too well to believe that he’d fall for the old, ‘My teacher’s a demon!’ line. Especially when that had been a dismal failure for him back in Indiana in May. What? He’d had an English test!
‘Do you have any evidence of magic and ritual sacrifice?’ their father asked reasonably.
Sammy mutely held out a bloody feather and a list of the victims’ names, addresses, and favourite foods. Possibly not as much evidence as Dad usually collected on a case, but it was a long list, Sammy’s handwriting was very neat, and he had included photos or descriptions of the animals where possible. He even had an awesome map with all the crime scenes carefully plotted. Dean had totally helped with that.
Dad looked back and forth between Sammy and the mountain of research he’d accumulated on the bodies missing from the Harrisonville Cemetery with a frown, and Dean knew they were on their own. Their Dad had a real hunt to concentrate on.
Somebody had to save the rabbits of Peculiar and Dean guessed it was up to him.
Sometimes it was a lot of work being a big brother.
When you get to my door, tell them Boris sent you
Interviewing sobbing little kids sucked dead bunnies through a stra... um ... it wasn’t nice at all. Dean’d had no idea that this part of being a hunter was so stressful. When he grew up he was going to leave this and the research to Sammy. The hunting and killing he knew he could handle. Crying witnesses? They were scary.
Besides, do you know how hard it was for Dean-even with the assistance of his baby brother’s powerful puppy-dog eyes-to talk his way past some of those Moms?
The weirdest thing wasn’t that the animals were disappearing, or the occasional disturbing traces of blood, feathers, and fur left behind. It was the fact that the only pets that hadn’t disappeared were those still safely inside the Middle School.
According to Sammy his school’s weekend pet roster ended up having to be abandoned after Jill Willis threw herself in front of the fish tank in Mrs. Stone’s classroom and screamed that she’d chain herself to it if she had to.
He said it took the teacher’s promise to give Thumper’s photo pride of place on the new memorial wall outside the biology lab, and Sammy’s own secret stash of candy to finally draw her away from the equally upset fish.
It took even longer that evening for Dean to get his brother to admit what the worst thing about the day had been. Sammy’s current passion was Gummi Bears. Jill’s hand had frozen with a red one inches from her lips. Sammy swore that even the bear looked guilt-stricken.
Dean decided to look on the bright side. On a positive note at least they’d got Jill away from the tank before she broke down again, even without Dean there to help them. And Dean had a feeling he wasn’t going to have to waste valuable girl watching time stealing lollies from the local 7-Eleven ever again.
Where the vampires feast
Amongst all the uproar in the neighbourhood Dean wasn’t surprised to find that most of his teachers didn’t seem to notice he’d been absent from most of his classes, not to mention the school premises for the past week.
Sammy naturally refused to miss a single one. That didn’t stop him attempting to micro-manage the investigation as if he was the big brother. Sammy’s list-making propensities were becoming disturbingly obvious. When they rendezvoused between classes and his brother passed over his latest numbered and colour-coded instructions Dean wondered if it was all worthwhile. Sammy’s narrowed eyes convinced him that whatever he felt he had better learn how to smile through the pain.
Dean spent two hungry days and part of one night-carefully timed to take place while Dad was thankfully away on his own hunt-staking out the Sammy’s school cafeteria. He was relieved to find no evidence of Tweety, Sylvester, Thumper, or their kindred in the deep freezes, though he still had his doubts about the savoury mince.
Eventually he knew it was time to move on to number seven on Sammy’s master list of suspects, but not before he grabbed a packet of beer nuts, and a couple of donuts to go. Stakeouts were hard on the metabolism, and the cheese and pickle sandwiches Sammy had insisted on making for him before he left home that night hadn’t lasted long at all.
The next morning he found Mr. Dalgety carefully straightening Thumper’s picture on the wall outside his laboratory.
‘Cute rabbit,’ Dean remarked casually. He was getting better at projecting the whole, ‘Fear not! I come in peace,’ vibe that civilians seemed to respond to.
The biology teacher nodded mournfully. ‘So many innocent creatures. It’s a tragedy.’
Dean personally thought that about the man’s tie, but he guessed that purple was a brave fashion statement, and his colour fixation did make him easy to identify from Sammy’s concise description. (Dark hair; tall, with a gut; purple, purple, purple.) Not to mention, Sam was right. Mr. Dalgety did smell.
Yuck! What is that? Dean did his best not to gag as he recognised the scent. Formic acid. Urk. Dean hated ants.
He slouched next to what must surely be Jill’s arrangement of plastic pansies. ‘Want a donut?’ He wasn’t above bribery, even if it hurt, because those donuts were amazing.
Dalgety patted his stomach thoughtfully before grinning and accepting the offer. ‘Thank you …?’
‘Winchester. Dean.’
‘Winchester? Ah, you must be Samuel’s older brother. He’s in my class you know. Very bright.’
Dean nodded. The truth almost made up for the guy using Sammy’s name like he really knew him. Right then Dean decided he didn’t like the man. The purple tie had almost nothing to do with that.
He gestured to his backpack. ‘Kid forgot his gym shoes, I brought them over. Sammy has a thing about not having any black marks on his record.’ He grinned disarmingly. Teachers were so easy to manipulate if you gave them exactly what they wanted to hear.
‘He does seem very intense,’ Dalgety agreed. ‘But it’s nice to get someone who listens in class for a change. I’m looking forward to seeing how he does with our first practical anatomy lesson on Friday. I always find my brightest students find that the most exciting class. He doesn’t have a problem with blood does he?’
Dean frowned. Dalgety seemed oddly enthusiastic-almost salacious-about his subject. Mind you, Sammy loved the teachers that seemed to live for their subjects. He’d probably end up Dalgety’s pet like Mrs. Stone’s fish.
Dean might call Sammy the family wuss to his face, but he didn’t let anyone else diss him. Besides, his brother had probably seen more blood in the past few years than Dalgety had in decades of teaching children how to dissect frogs. ‘Nah, he’s good with a knife too,’ he said dismissively. Suddenly this was the last person he wanted to talk about his brother to.
‘Great! Be looking forward to seeing him in class. Gym’s that way,’ he waved down the corridor. ‘Thanks for the donut,’ he smiled as he returned to his lab, closing the door firmly in Dean’s face.
Lab. Hmmm. Dean didn’t like where that thought was going.
Specimens.
Free, and fresh.
It caught on in a flash
‘It’s got to be him!’ Sammy seemed to be torn between throwing up at the pets of Peculiar’s undoubted demise, and bouncing with excitement that they’d narrowed the list of potential baddies down to one smelly teacher.
‘Yeah, well. We’ve still got to prove it,’ Dean said grumpily.
‘Before the weekend,’ Sammy agreed.
‘Earlier is good, but you got another reason for saying that, Sammy?’
Sammy ducked his head.
Fuck.
‘What did you do, Sammy?’
‘Uh. I kind of started a petition to get some of the classes to have a sleepover at the school. Sort of rotating shifts to guard the pets. Almost everyone signed up. Even some of the teachers!’ Sam was defiant, his face anything other than guilty.
Oh, Sammy. ‘Damn it, Sammy!
‘I couldn’t just leave them unprotected, could I?’ Sammy objected.
Dean blocked out the innocent faces of the Flintstones, Rubbles, and little Mary-Sue. And poor dead Thumper II.
‘Rather them than you, Sammy,’ he said truthfully.
His brother just glared back at him over firmly crossed arms.
Yup, Sammy was already in sit-in mode. Dean blamed his brother’s last history teacher for introducing Sammy to the subject of student protests. Sammy never forgot anything he’d been taught. Sooner or later it always came out, usually in the most unexpected ways. That was one thing their father still hadn’t learnt about Sammy. He didn’t just use the knowledge blindly; he adapted it creatively. That kind of imagination could be extremely dangerous. Dean had spent most of his life hauling his nerdy brother back from the edge of one of his ideas. He wasn’t sure he was strong enough to cope with what Sammy would get up to in High School.
Higher education was a bad, bad thing.
‘I’m going in tonight, Sammy.’ Mr. Dalgety wasn’t going to be coming to class tomorrow.
‘We’re going in tonight,’ his brother corrected strongly.
Humph. Dean was secretly proud of his geeky little brother, and knew he was capable of anything-Dean had taught him everything after all-but he couldn’t imagine Sammy actually killing a teacher. Even a smelly one.
‘WE!’ Sammy repeated again with more emphasis.
‘Mr. D...’
‘Is going down,’ Sammy promised grimly, suddenly sounding decades older than his age.
Dean shrugged. He’d tried. What more could he do?
‘Fine, but don’t come whining to me when you get an F on your Report Card for Biology.’
I was working in the lab late one night
Dean spent the time while they waited for the school cleaner to leave trying to calculate exactly how many specimens Dalgety used for his classes each week. He had a nasty feeling that the number of pets on his brother’s list of victims was much higher than could be explained by educational requirements. He hoped Dalgety was simply stockpiling the excess because he liked to buffer with inventory. If not, he was doing something else with the bodies other than getting children to slice, dice, and label them for the benefit of science.
One thing he’d learnt from his father. The alternatives were always worse.
The cupboard was bare. That is to say the biology lab freezer was full of bodies; it was just that none of them looked familiar. Probably because each one was vacuum sealed and bar-coded by an out-of-state medical supply company.
Mr. Dalgety apparently wasn’t promoting the use of local produce at all.
Surrounded by what felt like at least 300 bags of frozen cow eyes, frogs, and rabbits, Dean wished he’d made sure they’d had a vegetarian dinner before they went back to school.
Strangely enough his little brother was bearing up better than he was. He seemed to be compartmentalising it more than Dean could. Which was good. Dean just hoped that Sammy could keep it up when they killed the teacher.
But first they had to find the fucking Peculiar bodies. Tonight if at all possible. Preferably before Sammy’s practical anatomy class in the morning. And definitely before the whole damned student body staged their pyjama party in the gym and they became bodies of a different sort.
Dean stuck his face next to the glass tank while Sammy added a few bonus flakes to the water as a secret midnight snack for the goldfish. He thought Mary-Sue looked a little different. She seemed listless, and she wasn’t popping out from behind the chest to try and surprise him the way she usually did. He guessed she was a little lonely. The other fish obviously still treated her like an outsider. Must be hard being the replacement fish. Just as well they hadn’t dared name her Pebbles II; that would have probably been the last nail in her coffin.
‘Sorry,’ Dean muttered. He knew what it was like to be new in town.
‘Dean? Are you talking to the fish?’
No? ‘No way, dude! Won’t catch me doing the warm and fuzzy,’ Dean said, backing away from the tank as fast as he could without scaring the goldfish.
‘Come on, liar. There’s nothing here. Let’s go stake out Mr. Dalgety’s house.’
Sam sounded surprisingly perky all things considered.
Dean hoped this whole situation was leaching some of the geek right out of his brother.
Mr. Dalgety never came home that night. And his house was spotless. Surgically spotless. Not a body in sight.
Dean guessed they would have to go to school tomorrow after all.
On Friday Dean decided to demote himself a few grades. Who needed High School anyway?
He got a few looks as he loitered outside each of Sammy’s classrooms, but before long a budding reporter named Angela had apparently spread the word that he was the Pet Policeman. After that he couldn’t go anywhere without several adoring fans trailing in his wake.
After thirty minutes that started officially freaking him out.
By the time everyone was sitting in the Biology lab waiting for Mr. Dalgety to turn up Dean was ready to give education a miss for the rest of his life. The kids wouldn’t stop looking at him. Trying to hide under the lid of a too-small desk at the back of the lab didn’t help either.
Sammy, who was a little bitch, forgot about the pets for a moment and snickered, telling him to he’d just have to learn how to deal with fame.
Dean raided the teacher’s desk in search of an instrument of revenge, but unfortunately it didn’t contain a staple gun.
Needless to say, Friday was a disaster. Their suspect, somewhat suspiciously, didn’t come to work.
That left Dean with three problems: what were they going to do if Mr. Dalgety had flown the coop taking Thumper and Co. (dead or alive) with him; was it fair to consider singling the goldfish out and taking them home for safekeeping until this was all over; and what was he supposed to say to all of the girls in Sammy’s class that kept asking for Detective Dean’s autograph?
The coffin-bangers were about to arrive
Their father seemed a bit bemused at the whole sleepover concept when Sammy attempted to sell it as a start of term bonding exercise during Dad’s daily report-back call. Dean was just grateful that an outbreak of unearthly screams and gunfire on the other end of the phone interrupted what would have been the start of an in-depth interrogation.
Dean knew that when their father returned they were probably going to get grounded for life. But between now and then he had goldfish and rabbits to save.
In the meantime a last minute trip to the Peculiar public library had revealed one vital bit of information that wasn’t included in any of the school brochures.
‘They built the school right over an old graveyard, Dean.’
Oops. That was never a good idea. You’d think people would learn, wouldn’t you?
For my monster from his slab began to rise
Dean prepared for a hunt the same way Sammy swotted for every exam he’d ever had. He memorized all the facts; worked out alternate entrances and exits from the venue; prepared at least four back-up plans to cover any eventuality; loaded up on protein before the event, and wore his lucky t-shirt. The only difference between Sammy and Dean in the end was a subtle one. Dean chose to take weapons with him. Lots of weapons.
He wasn’t losing the goldfish without a fight.
The sleepover had the air of a temporary holiday armistice in the middle of battle. Everyone, including the teachers, was unnaturally cheerful, they all pretended to be blind to the fact that each of them was clutching homemade wooden weapons, and they jumped at every loud sound.
Dean was just glad that he and Sammy were the only ones who were carrying live ammunition.
He hoped they were the only ones because he’d been up at dawn sneaking into the school to secrete their armaments all over the school-he hadn’t wanted either of them to get busted for setting off the metal detectors. Sammy really was serious about not wanting detention.
Dean was fairly sure they were the only ones. 90% sure. Make that 75%.
When nothing had happened by dusk on Saturday-except for Billy Willis getting caught in the broom closet with Angela Morelli-everyone started to relax.
Everyone, except Sammy and Dean. And the goldfish.
Dean had taken over Mrs. Stone’s room as his campaign headquarters, over her initial vociferous objections. Luckily Dean had yet to meet a teacher he couldn’t charm, or outrun if he had too. He was glad Mrs. Stone fell into the first category because she looked surprisingly nimble and he was disinclined to break his record.
Mrs. Stone was very fond of her fish. And all except Mary-Sue seemed to return that affection judging by the cute way they all started swimming with their fins stretched stiffly out in front of them when she took over their nighttime feeding from a jealous Sammy.
Dean nominated Mrs. Stone his second lieutenant. Sammy of course was first.
The ghouls all came from their humble abodes
It was unfortunate that the dead began to arise just as everyone flooded into the cafeteria to celebrate a day without the loss of a single school pet.
Possibly the dead were merely ready for dinner too?
Dean had had another dream. No, not that kind of a dream! What kind of freaks are you; that can think about that when the pets are in danger? Shame on you!
Dean’s dream/plan for global-okay just the Ray-Pac School District-domination involved Mr. Dalgety foolishly committing himself (or itself if it turned out Mr. Dalgety was actually an it) to a berserker attack on the pet sanctuary Dean had turned Mrs. Stone’s homeroom into. About twenty minutes into the dream, after a thrilling fight against the teacher’s madness/badness/evil/whatever, Dean with the assistance of Sammy and some of his helpers would annihilate their opponent, and then maybe everyone sat down to some pie. So, the after stage of Dean’s grand plan was a little fuzzy, but he’d spent most of his time working out ways to kill the teacher and he figured he could adlib the pie scene if he had to.
When what he got was not a rampaging Biology teacher with a taste for budgies and bunnies, but what turned out in the end (Sammy counted body parts afterwards) to be twenty-eight dead people shambling in for a snack he wasn’t the only one surprised.
‘Dean? Is that…? Are they…? Do those zombies look a little … hungry to you?’
To get a jolt from my electrodes
Dean’s second thought-Fine! It was his third thought if you want to get picky in the middle of a Goddamn zombie attack-after swearing, and worrying about Sammy, was a desperate hope that zombies didn’t like the taste of fish.
Fucking zombies! (His first thought was on a loop for some reason). Zombies had been further down Dean’s own list of supernatural possibilities for Mr. Dalgety than on Sammy’s. That hurt.
Still, that graveyard and the missing pets had raised them as a possibility. Dean spared one fleeing thought for poor Thumper and switched to Plan Z. No, he hadn’t alphabetised the plans; you can blame Sammy for that. Maybe his brother would end up being a librarian rather than a decorator. Dean didn’t know which would be harder to bear.
Dean liked Plan Z almost as much as Plan G (which involved a do-it-yourself flamethrower). Plan Z was carefully calculated to deal with the fragile remnants of old reanimated corpses. Plan Z-after the kids stopped screaming and milling around and started listening to Dean’s bellowed instructions-worked perfectly on the first wave of zombies.
After an hour Dean was ready to pull out the marshmallows-stocked according to Plan Q, subsection 32-and fill in time until Mr. Dalgety (clearly the evil zombie Overlord) braved up and came to get his.
Right about then Sammy highlighted a flaw in Dean’s superb planning.
‘Dean? Can you hear moaning? Coming clos…?’
Igor on chains, backed by his baying hounds
‘Dean! Watch out!’
The next wave of monsters was definitely fresher, and not as easy to disarm even with machetes.
They also looked hungrier. Obviously they were more used to regular meals than their older compatriots.
Dean needed a diversion. He looked at the line of filthy kids and teachers standing in a protective huddle around the fish tank and cages at the back of the room.
Maybe he could toss in the ant-farm? Then the worms, and the snakes? He didn’t like the thought but if he gave them a little appetiser it might give him time to move everyone to his secret backup, backup location. And who needed ants anyway?
‘Don’t even think it, Dean!’
Damn it. Sometimes Sammy could read him too well.
‘Fuck it!’ Dean yelled as he ducked and eventually managed to slice off another limb of the closest zombie. It was a lot harder with the fresh ones.
‘Billy, grab the ants! Angela, take the worms!’
By the time he’d finished pairing their assistants off with pets, he and Sammy had cut a few more down to twitching parts. That started a minor feeding frenzy among the zombies who were not averse to grabbing a few limbs to go. It was definitely time for a change of scene.
‘Go! Go! Go!’ he screamed. ‘Cooking classroom! Now!’
Then you can monster mash
The weapons stashes throughout the school? That was one of his more brilliant ideas. Knives were good, but guns and bullets meant you didn’t have to get in close for the slaughter. Because, not only were these dudes rank, but once they got a grip or a bite, they didn’t like to let go, even after you’d separated an arm or a head from the torso.
And it turned out that the sewing teacher was a really good shot when she was motivated. No wonder Sammy said he liked Mrs. Henderson. She rocked!
Dean was almost worn out by the time they slowly fought their way to the place he’d planned for his final, final stand. (Backup, backup; remember?) Those zombies were fucking determined. He also had a niggling feeling that this juicier batch was another example of Dalgety’s imports, this time from Harrisonville. Dad was going to be pissed if Dean was right. Okay, Dad was going to be pissed, regardless. Shit.
He shoved Sammy inside and slammed the door shut, and threw the lock for what it was worth. Turning around he found that all the kids, teachers, and pets had arrived minutes ahead of them, battered but safe. For now.
And it turned out that Mary-Sue was made of the right stuff. Her head was half out of the water taking everything in. By the way she kept staring at the doors to the classroom, Dean just knew that she could feel where the danger lay.
Mary-Sue was pretty awesome. For a goldfish.
Dean loved food, almost every kind of food. Didn’t even have to be pie most of the time, as long as his meals ended with pie. He wasn’t really what you would call a picky eater. He just liked to eat.
So, naturally you’d think that he’d chosen the cooking classroom as his final stand for reasons that related just to his stomach. You’d be partly wrong. It had running water, electricity, chemicals (although not as obviously explosive), and freezers, just like Mr. Dalgety’s lab. It also had the following advantages: it wasn’t Dalgety’s and was less inclined to be booby-trapped for that reason alone; it had food (Yeah, the food was a big component. Dean liked food, but he wasn’t stupid), and an adjoining bathroom in case of a long-term siege.
It also had one other advantage he didn’t think Dalgety would factor in.
Dalgety didn’t. When Dalgety finally appeared-scary purple tie firmly in place-surrounded by his slightly decimated second wave of zombies, he had obviously forgotten the reason why cooking was still considered by many students to be a vital part of their curriculum.
You got to cook your chocolate cake and eat it too.
Cooking requires some very helpful devices.
Sammy wasn’t the only Winchester who remembered everything (okay, Dean was selective about the process) he learnt, and adapted that knowledge creatively. Who do you think taught Sammy how to do that in the first place?
Duh!
Now everything's cool
It was, as Dean had dreamed, a mad, glorious, and completely insane battle.
And if, in the middle of it all he had to make a decision between saving Mary-Sue and the other goldfish, and saving Sammy? Well, there was only one real choice after all.
Dalgety and his zombie army were finally laid to waste by a two Winchesters, and a bunch of kids and teachers wielding knives and potato mashers; electric eggbeaters and blenders; and microwaves and ovens. Lots of very hot ovens.
And suddenly to my surprise
Victory was sweet. For about an hour. Until the principal turned up. Looking for a scapegoat. Possibly two.
That was the day Dean Winchester learnt the value of a speedy getaway. Never stick around the crime scene mourning a freaking goldfish for Christ’s sake!
You save the world, or at least the school? And you happen to make a Hell of a mess doing it? And a teacher goes missing?
Don’t hang around waiting for someone to thank you. Steal a cool car, and get out of town quick! Preferably wearing sunglasses, boots, and an awesome leather jacket while a really cool rock soundtrack blares out the driver’s window.
‘Winchester! Front and centre!’
‘Do you suppose he means me?’
‘Well, Dean. You are the oldest. What did you expect?’
Despite that Sammy was lining up with him. They were going down, they were going down together.
And my monster mash is the hit of the land
Dean carefully aligned the notes dead centre on the kitchen table and followed Sammy back to their room. He wondered how long it would take to smother himself with his pillow.
It had to be less painful than what their father would do to him for getting Sammy in trouble.
He opened the lid and shook his fist
‘Dean! Sammy! Now!’
Fuck. Dad was home, and he’d read them. Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck.
‘Fuck!’ Dean whispered into the pillow for good measure. It didn’t make him feel any better.
‘Dean?’ His protection was peeled away and Sammy’s wrinkly concerned face was right there in his. Dean decided he really didn’t need to be intimately acquainted with his little brother’s nostrils. Not today anyway.
Maybe they should have washed off all the zombie fragments before they came home? Or right after they got home? Now might be good.
‘Dude, you reek!’
‘You’re not exactly smelling like a rose to me either, Dean.’
Roses? Huh?
‘Dean Winchester! In here, right now, and bring your brother with you!’
‘Come on, Dean.’
Sam was tugging him off the bed, and dragging him to the door as if he was the pouting little brother. Dean wasn’t pouting. He wasn’t.
‘I heard him. I’m coming.’ He stopped pouting, stiffened up, and marched towards his doom.
‘I think he’s read them,’ Sammy said helpfully as he followed him out to the kitchen.
You think?
Dean had been right all along.
Dad was pissed. Possibly more about the notes calling him in to an emergency conference with the principals of two different schools the previous day, than the fact that he’d obviously just worked out what had happened to the corpses he’d been hunting in Harrisonville.
Dad was pissed. Sammy had gotten detention for the first time ever. Dean had been banned from the Middle School for life, suspended from High School indefinitely, and their father wanted an answer.
In the end, what could Dean say?
‘A zombie ate my homework?’
Whatever happened to my Transylvania twist?
Meanwhile, back in cooking classroom, Mary-Sue, the one remaining and curiously alert, goldfish finally came out from behind the safety of the plastic treasure chest and viewed what had until so recently been her empire.
Her initial plans lay in ruins with the loss of that idiot Dalgety. Someone was going to pay. Goldfish could live extraordinarily long lives if they wanted to. Mary-Sue was very determined, and she wasn’t ever going to forget the name Dean Winchester.
Footsteps signalled the entrance of the cleaner. It would be morning soon, and she had her priorities in order. She’d heard the Home Ec teacher say it a hundred times since she’d come to school.
‘Breakfast’s the most important meal of the day.’
It was almost dawn, and she was hungry.
It was a graveyard smash…
Rating: R, Gen
Characters: Dean, Sammy, John
Word Count: 7,864
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchesters for fun and angst. Sorry about the holes!
A/N: Belated birthday fic for the awesome, pinkphoenix1985 who had a yen for “pre-series teen!chesters, solo hunts, evil teachers, and ZOMBIES.” I think I managed to fit everything in.
Three cheers for Lewis Carroll’s sublime Jabberwocky, and Bobby Pickett’s Monster Mash (the lyrics of which were randomly used as section headers.)
You can blame secret-seer for a certain twisted fish visual.
Warning: This may contain accidental traces of nuts, schmoop, and small furry animals.
Setting: Peculiar, Mo. Aug-Sept. 1994.
Summary: ‘Dean? Do those zombies look a little … hungry to you?’
Out from his coffin, Drac's voice did ring
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves…’
‘Toads?’
‘toves did gyre and gimble…’
‘Sammy!’
‘What?’ Sam’s voice wafted down from the top bunk, sounding incredibly innocent in the darkness.
Innocent in a way only an evil younger brother with a serious school fetish could truly master. Yeah, right. The room wasn’t big enough for both of them.
‘Beware the Jubjub bird!’ came the gleeful whisper from above.
‘Shut it, now! Or I’ll shove your Jubjub where the sun never shines!’
First thing in the morning Dean was dismantling the connectors-screw Dad’s rental agreement- and shifting Sammy’s bed over to the far side of the room. It might only gain him another three feet of distance but when you’re talking about an eleven year old kid, you take what you can get. If that didn’t work Dean wondered if Dad would notice if he started sleeping in the car. Brothers.
‘The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!’
Okay, now that was a little too close to home considering they were both still battered from trying to help their father with that last poltergeist. Crafty tough old bugger for a dead person.
‘Sammy! No more poetry at home, or I’ll make you eat Lewis Fucking Carroll.’
‘But it’s bound to be…’
‘Then I’ll staple your mouth shut.’
‘On the recommended reading list!’ Sammy wailed.
‘Staples, Sammy. Permanently.’
‘But…’
Dean took his pillow off his head and glared up at the wire netting above him. ‘We don’t start school till tomorrow, Sammy.’
‘But…’
‘No.’
‘Deeeeeeeannn. It’s for school! What if I’m behind?’ Sammy’s voice trailed off into the start of hiccupping sobs.
‘I have a dream,’ Dean muttered sourly as he got out of bed. ‘A very interesting dream, or I would have if you’d let me get some sleep.’
His romantic life in tatters, he climbed up the rusted ladder to try and convince his nerdy little brother-not for the first time, and unfortunately probably not for the last-that school didn’t have to be about being perfect.
Sometimes it was better to simply be cool.
Seems he was troubled by just one thing
‘Winchester. Dean and Alice Winchester, Ma’am.’
Dean smiled sweetly at the school secretary while he stifled his brother’s protestations underneath his arm.
‘Don’t mind my little sister. She’s always been a bit of a tomboy. We’re hoping she’ll grow out of it.’
He passed over their battered sizeable folder of transcripts with his free hand, automatically into their regular spiel of ‘new in town… father got called into an early shift… be in to sign the paperwork later… no, Ma’am, we don’t have the book lists… do you know where we can get some textbooks second-hand?’
He kept the smile, didn’t blink when she took in their worn clothing, and Sammy’s red face as he broke away to lean over the counter babbling about where he was up to in his studies, and how he was sure he’d be caught up in no time if they just gave him a chance…
Some things never changed.
The party had just begun
Sammy loved school. He loved his teachers-okay, not Mrs. Banner back in Mobile, and even Dean agreed that she was weird-he loved the classrooms, class rosters, homework, everything. He even loved the freaking lockers.
Nothing explained why he was walking out the main door towards Dean at the end of the first day frowning like someone had cancelled his library card.
His clothes were rumpled and his stupid hair was a mess, but that was standard Sammy. There were no obvious signs of a fight, and he was moving easily. He wasn’t hurt, that was the main thing. Everything else could wait unless his little brother signalled otherwise.
Sammy’s eyes just said, ‘Not now.’ That was enough. Which was good because if Dean had to go kill someone for his brother he preferred to go home and get some extra weapons first. Fucking school metal detectors were a damned nuisance. Dean added that to a list of things about their new schools that he needed to deal with immediately.
Their SOP meant that they never said anything on the school grounds that wasn’t actually about school, unless it was heavily coded. Camouflage was more than an automatic defence mechanism; it was a way of life.
Dean simply punched his brother none too gently on the arm in greeting, and they left the school side-by-side talking about baseball. Baseball was safe.
‘Spill.’ They were five minutes from Sammy’s school, and Dean had detoured them down a quiet side street, and they were finally safe to talk.
‘Jabberwocky was on the list! I told you I needed to know it. But I’m ahead on maths, but only because I did all that stuff for extra credit at South. I dunno about science yet, don’t have that till tomorrow, but Patty Riley says the teacher’s a total tool! And I had to sit next to Billy Willis twice, and he’s like this big, and he just looked at me like I was an idiot. And I got a note about gym that you need to fake Dad’s signature on andthere’saschooltriptothemuseumnextweek and that’stendollarsandtheywantitbyWednesday!I’mwearingthewrongclothesagainandeveryoneknows’ he stopped to take a breath, ‘and Mr Dalgety smells, Dean!’
Oh.
Drac's a part of the band
By the end of the week Sammy had slowed down, thankfully decided that oxygen was useful, and adjusted to school life at the Ray-Pac Middle School. Unfortunately it turned out that Dean was unaware that the term ‘adjustment’ in his little brother’s dictionary included the following warning.
‘Danger, Dean Winchester! Danger!’
It also had see references to the words: ants; budgerigars; gerbils; goldfish; hamsters; mice; rabbits; and snakes.
Scariest of all was the fact that the nouns were all presented in the plural form.
One day Dean was going to learn to open that dictionary. Tragically today was not that day.
‘You want to what?’
‘Take home the…’
Dean shuddered; placing a heavy hand over his brother’s mouth to stem the tide of yet another flood of … he couldn’t even think it. It was just too terrible.
Sammy bit his palm, none too gently. Little shit.
‘Ow, Sammy! You’ve got teeth like a…’ Oops. ‘Clever, Sammy. Very clever.’
His brother just grinned up at him while he hastily scrubbed the obviously disgusting taste of Dean off his lips. ‘Blech!’ he spat descriptively.
Dean whacked him on the head on principle, though he presumed Sammy wouldn’t taste any better either. Brothers. Eww.
Sammy proceeded to fucking well skip hyperactively alongside him the rest of the way home.
‘So, can I? Can I? Can I? Huh? Huh, Dean?’
Oh, God. Dean wondered if it was too late to find a zoo that was willing to accept donations of mammals. Human mammals. Short, annoying, talking ones. Though he wouldn’t necessarily have to disclose that up front, would he?
‘But, Daaaaaaad!’
‘Samuel Michael Winchester!’
Sammy pouted and subsided back to parade rest, still eyeing his father as if he’d suggested killing Bambi.
Which Dad definitely would do if it turned out Bambi was working for the other side. Considering the tears his little brother shed every time he watched the cartoon deer get shot on television, Dean already knew that Bambi; or at least Walt Disney was evil.
‘Bu…’
‘Sam.’
‘It’s only a small t…’
Dean winced. Sammy wasn’t going to let this go. Hell, they were probably only here for another few weeks anyway. What could it hurt to let his brother be like the other kids for once?
He knew better than to say anything without permission though. He came a little more obviously to attention beside his brother instead.
‘Yes, Dean?’
‘I can carry it there and back, Dad.’
‘And they give you all the food they need, and you get a star on the board if you do it!’ Sammy babbled out before his father could try and stop him again.
Dean kept his attention focused firmly on his father. Wasn’t hard to tell which way he’d go. He’d never said yes to anything like this before.
‘Daad?’
Eyes forward. Don’t look at Sammy.
Their father sighed. He looked like he’d just fought off a dozen werewolves. He held up one hand and started listing points off with the other. ‘Just this once; only the goldfish; Sammy, you’ll be handling their food and … uh … exercise or whatever they need; Dean’s in charge of transportation; And.’ He looked sternly at Sammy. ‘If any of them die, you get to explain it to your teacher.’
Huh.
Dean tried not to grin as his brother squealed and hugged Dad tight. He was glad Sammy was happy. But, honestly? Fucking class pets?
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight
Fred, Barney, Wilma, Betty, Bamm-Bamm, and Mary-Sue. Six Goddamn goldfish all in a row. Okay, they were swimming circles, but that wasn’t the point.
Six fish. Not one, not two. Six. He’d counted them twice to be sure. All right, it was three times because the littlest kept sneaking behind a stupid plastic box and stuffing up his tally.
And Sammy’s small fish tank weighed a fucking ton.
‘Why couldn’t we just scoop them into a plastic bag to take home, and then empty them into the bathtub for the weekend?’ he protested as he clutched the dangerously sloshing tank closer to his chest. Son of a bitch. If he wasn’t careful some of them were going to end up belly up on the sidewalk. At this stage he didn’t give a shit about the fish, but Sammy had apparently already bonded with the slippery critters.
Dean wished his father hadn’t been such a softy.
‘Who named them anyway?’ he gasped out as they turned the final corner for home, interrupting Sammy’s interminable monologue on fish, and water temperatures, and some other crap that Dean had managed to tune out.
‘Last class Mrs. Stone had. Angela told me she always has fish. It’s a tradition,’ Sammy said in an awed voice.
Traditions-apart from warding their rooms with salt-were something neither of them had seen except from a distance or on television. Dean didn’t give a hoot about it, but Sammy always got this curiously wondering look on his face, as if at times he wished he could pick the world up and shake it to make the snow fall.
Dean glanced at his brother, bit back another swear word, and tried not to spill the fish.
‘Mary-Sue?’
Sammy hovered importantly over the tank, the tip of his tongue just showing between his front teeth as he shook the canister into his palm and carefully separated out the scientifically correct number of fish flakes to apportion between his foster fish.
‘Huh?’
‘Fred and Wilma, Barney and Betty, Bamm-Bamm and Mary-Sue? One of these names is not like the others. One of these names just doesn’t belong,’ Dean sing-songed. He was a little peeved at the lack of attention, but he wasn’t going to let it show.
‘Come on, Sammy. Why the heck would anyone name a fish Mary-Sue?’ Dean had already forgotten his initial distain for the teacher’s homage to The Flintstones, because the biggest fish really did look like Fred when you got close to it. Though if it had been up to Dean they would have been named after characters from Batman or the Dukes of Hazzard. ‘What about P…? Ow!’
Sammy took his foot off Dean’s, let the last flake fall into the water directly over the treasure chest and waited until he saw Mary-Sue make a successful break for her dinner before he quietly grabbed Dean by the arm and dragged him over to the far wall.
‘Pebbles is dead!’ he murmured in Dean’s ear.
‘No!’ Dean shouted. Because that thought totally hadn’t occurred to him. Fish dying. Fish being eaten. Fish fingers. Mmm…
‘Sssh!’ Sam ordered, before punching him in the stomach. Hard.
It was just as well he hadn’t had dinner yet.
Sam turned them to face the wall, presumably in case the fish could lip-read. With goldfish you just never knew.
‘Someone in the last class killed her! Their Mom bought a new one. She named it.’
Oh. Why hadn’t Dean seen that coming? A Mom, and a fish called Mary?
Bugger.
It's now the monster mash
Mondays were Dean’s new favourite thing. Best day of the week.
Weekends were endless.
School? Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Ever.
‘A little more to the left, Dean.’
Dean was sure Sammy was going to grow up to be a prissy interior decorator if he didn’t intervene and do something about earning his little brother some serious street and school cred soon.
‘Back about an inch. No, no. Not that far!’
‘That was an inch, Sammy,’ Dean snarled.
‘You’re taller! Besides it’s hard for me to judge when you’re in the way,’ Sammy complained, almost justifiably. ‘A squidge more to the right and … perfect!’
This behaviour? Wasn’t helping Sammy’s cause. A squidge?
Dean pushed the fish tank into its final position, did a triple-fin count to be sure-checking behind the chest, because two days and three long nights had clued him into Mary-Sue’s tricks-and breathed the kind of sigh only known to people who’d suffered the strains of temporary guardianship of a school pet.
He’d just wasted the last thirty minutes carting and aligning fish, he was exhausted, there were only five minutes left before the his High School bell went off, and now Mary-Sue was bumping her head into the side of the tank closest to him as if to ask, ‘Take me with you?’
He’d had his Monday. He was over it, and ready to move on.
Life got easier after the Flintstones and Rubbles went back to do their bit for modern education. A lot easier. For forty-eight hours that is. It was a good two days. If Dean had known, he’d have made better use of them. He certainly would have tried to kiss Lois O’Connell after second period instead of stopping in to check on the fish, not because he missed them or anything, just... nothing. And he would have had that third helping of dessert in the cafeteria at lunch on Wednesday. It wasn’t great, but it was pie after all.
Wednesday was when life in Peculiar, Missouri, decided it was time to live up to the name. Or rather, die up to it.
Something started killing the pets of Peculiar, and Sammy didn’t like it.
So, Dean forgot all about pie.
It started with the budgies.
Four birds in the one night. Each one belonged to someone from his brother's school.
‘Captive…’ audience, Dean started to say before Sammy’s haunted eyes shut him right up. It was just as well he hadn’t uttered his first thought that the killer was getting dinner to go.
Empathy. He could do that. Budgies. Dead budgies. Messy, all those bloody feathers caught in the wires of their broken cages tossed aside in the streets. Dead birds … um … sad, very sad.
Fine. Maybe empathy was harder than it looked.
Over the next week Martin Suarez lost his pet frog, Rover. Betty Harkness lost her iguana, and their gym teacher lost Fabio, her long-haired Syrian hamster.
Next thing it was kittens, snakes, canaries, mice, the odd rat, salamander, and ferret, one ant farm, and a lot of rabbits. Rabbits were big that year in Peculiar. Dean was betting that a pet shop accidentally mixed up some pink and blue tags, and had a clearance sale on the resulting offspring. Whatever the reasons, Peculiar’s children were fond of their rabbits, and the hutches were coming up empty.
Okay, the rabbits were starting to get to Dean. Maybe it was the picture Billy Willis’ little sister held out to him? Those pink eyes, the nose, or the clearly cuddly fur? It certainly wasn’t Jill’s face when she cried and talked about how Thumper II liked carrot and celery sticks.
Dean didn’t do pets. He was just here for Sammy.
According to their father, Sammy didn’t have a case worth pursuing. Nothing supernatural anyway.
‘Someone could be taking them and re-selling them elsewhere, a store recycling its profit again and again,’ Dad said with cynical commonsense, as he fended off his youngest son’s tearful cry of, ‘Animal sacrifice!’
‘Or animal rights groups setting them free?’ Dean offered doubtfully. None of his research over the past few days had indicating that Peculiar’s Animal Liberation Front had stooped to lifting pets from children yet. They were more prone to standing outside the local hot chicken store waving their placards at passing cars while they drank camomile tea out of tartan flasks. He was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt, or until he caught them rabbit-handed.
‘Sacrifice!’ Sammy repeated. ‘Dark magic.’ In the past few years he’d spent all his spare time finding out as much as he could about what his family hunted.
Little geek now did two types of homework. Voluntarily.
Making up for lost time was all well and good, but as Dean had soon come to realise, it meant that his brother had a tendency to see evil everywhere. Life as a Winchester meant most of the time he was right, but evil in the schoolyard? That was a little far-fetched even for Dean who’d kill for an excuse to get out of school early. He knew his father too well to believe that he’d fall for the old, ‘My teacher’s a demon!’ line. Especially when that had been a dismal failure for him back in Indiana in May. What? He’d had an English test!
‘Do you have any evidence of magic and ritual sacrifice?’ their father asked reasonably.
Sammy mutely held out a bloody feather and a list of the victims’ names, addresses, and favourite foods. Possibly not as much evidence as Dad usually collected on a case, but it was a long list, Sammy’s handwriting was very neat, and he had included photos or descriptions of the animals where possible. He even had an awesome map with all the crime scenes carefully plotted. Dean had totally helped with that.
Dad looked back and forth between Sammy and the mountain of research he’d accumulated on the bodies missing from the Harrisonville Cemetery with a frown, and Dean knew they were on their own. Their Dad had a real hunt to concentrate on.
Somebody had to save the rabbits of Peculiar and Dean guessed it was up to him.
Sometimes it was a lot of work being a big brother.
When you get to my door, tell them Boris sent you
Interviewing sobbing little kids sucked dead bunnies through a stra... um ... it wasn’t nice at all. Dean’d had no idea that this part of being a hunter was so stressful. When he grew up he was going to leave this and the research to Sammy. The hunting and killing he knew he could handle. Crying witnesses? They were scary.
Besides, do you know how hard it was for Dean-even with the assistance of his baby brother’s powerful puppy-dog eyes-to talk his way past some of those Moms?
The weirdest thing wasn’t that the animals were disappearing, or the occasional disturbing traces of blood, feathers, and fur left behind. It was the fact that the only pets that hadn’t disappeared were those still safely inside the Middle School.
According to Sammy his school’s weekend pet roster ended up having to be abandoned after Jill Willis threw herself in front of the fish tank in Mrs. Stone’s classroom and screamed that she’d chain herself to it if she had to.
He said it took the teacher’s promise to give Thumper’s photo pride of place on the new memorial wall outside the biology lab, and Sammy’s own secret stash of candy to finally draw her away from the equally upset fish.
It took even longer that evening for Dean to get his brother to admit what the worst thing about the day had been. Sammy’s current passion was Gummi Bears. Jill’s hand had frozen with a red one inches from her lips. Sammy swore that even the bear looked guilt-stricken.
Dean decided to look on the bright side. On a positive note at least they’d got Jill away from the tank before she broke down again, even without Dean there to help them. And Dean had a feeling he wasn’t going to have to waste valuable girl watching time stealing lollies from the local 7-Eleven ever again.
Where the vampires feast
Amongst all the uproar in the neighbourhood Dean wasn’t surprised to find that most of his teachers didn’t seem to notice he’d been absent from most of his classes, not to mention the school premises for the past week.
Sammy naturally refused to miss a single one. That didn’t stop him attempting to micro-manage the investigation as if he was the big brother. Sammy’s list-making propensities were becoming disturbingly obvious. When they rendezvoused between classes and his brother passed over his latest numbered and colour-coded instructions Dean wondered if it was all worthwhile. Sammy’s narrowed eyes convinced him that whatever he felt he had better learn how to smile through the pain.
Dean spent two hungry days and part of one night-carefully timed to take place while Dad was thankfully away on his own hunt-staking out the Sammy’s school cafeteria. He was relieved to find no evidence of Tweety, Sylvester, Thumper, or their kindred in the deep freezes, though he still had his doubts about the savoury mince.
Eventually he knew it was time to move on to number seven on Sammy’s master list of suspects, but not before he grabbed a packet of beer nuts, and a couple of donuts to go. Stakeouts were hard on the metabolism, and the cheese and pickle sandwiches Sammy had insisted on making for him before he left home that night hadn’t lasted long at all.
The next morning he found Mr. Dalgety carefully straightening Thumper’s picture on the wall outside his laboratory.
‘Cute rabbit,’ Dean remarked casually. He was getting better at projecting the whole, ‘Fear not! I come in peace,’ vibe that civilians seemed to respond to.
The biology teacher nodded mournfully. ‘So many innocent creatures. It’s a tragedy.’
Dean personally thought that about the man’s tie, but he guessed that purple was a brave fashion statement, and his colour fixation did make him easy to identify from Sammy’s concise description. (Dark hair; tall, with a gut; purple, purple, purple.) Not to mention, Sam was right. Mr. Dalgety did smell.
Yuck! What is that? Dean did his best not to gag as he recognised the scent. Formic acid. Urk. Dean hated ants.
He slouched next to what must surely be Jill’s arrangement of plastic pansies. ‘Want a donut?’ He wasn’t above bribery, even if it hurt, because those donuts were amazing.
Dalgety patted his stomach thoughtfully before grinning and accepting the offer. ‘Thank you …?’
‘Winchester. Dean.’
‘Winchester? Ah, you must be Samuel’s older brother. He’s in my class you know. Very bright.’
Dean nodded. The truth almost made up for the guy using Sammy’s name like he really knew him. Right then Dean decided he didn’t like the man. The purple tie had almost nothing to do with that.
He gestured to his backpack. ‘Kid forgot his gym shoes, I brought them over. Sammy has a thing about not having any black marks on his record.’ He grinned disarmingly. Teachers were so easy to manipulate if you gave them exactly what they wanted to hear.
‘He does seem very intense,’ Dalgety agreed. ‘But it’s nice to get someone who listens in class for a change. I’m looking forward to seeing how he does with our first practical anatomy lesson on Friday. I always find my brightest students find that the most exciting class. He doesn’t have a problem with blood does he?’
Dean frowned. Dalgety seemed oddly enthusiastic-almost salacious-about his subject. Mind you, Sammy loved the teachers that seemed to live for their subjects. He’d probably end up Dalgety’s pet like Mrs. Stone’s fish.
Dean might call Sammy the family wuss to his face, but he didn’t let anyone else diss him. Besides, his brother had probably seen more blood in the past few years than Dalgety had in decades of teaching children how to dissect frogs. ‘Nah, he’s good with a knife too,’ he said dismissively. Suddenly this was the last person he wanted to talk about his brother to.
‘Great! Be looking forward to seeing him in class. Gym’s that way,’ he waved down the corridor. ‘Thanks for the donut,’ he smiled as he returned to his lab, closing the door firmly in Dean’s face.
Lab. Hmmm. Dean didn’t like where that thought was going.
Specimens.
Free, and fresh.
It caught on in a flash
‘It’s got to be him!’ Sammy seemed to be torn between throwing up at the pets of Peculiar’s undoubted demise, and bouncing with excitement that they’d narrowed the list of potential baddies down to one smelly teacher.
‘Yeah, well. We’ve still got to prove it,’ Dean said grumpily.
‘Before the weekend,’ Sammy agreed.
‘Earlier is good, but you got another reason for saying that, Sammy?’
Sammy ducked his head.
Fuck.
‘What did you do, Sammy?’
‘Uh. I kind of started a petition to get some of the classes to have a sleepover at the school. Sort of rotating shifts to guard the pets. Almost everyone signed up. Even some of the teachers!’ Sam was defiant, his face anything other than guilty.
Oh, Sammy. ‘Damn it, Sammy!
‘I couldn’t just leave them unprotected, could I?’ Sammy objected.
Dean blocked out the innocent faces of the Flintstones, Rubbles, and little Mary-Sue. And poor dead Thumper II.
‘Rather them than you, Sammy,’ he said truthfully.
His brother just glared back at him over firmly crossed arms.
Yup, Sammy was already in sit-in mode. Dean blamed his brother’s last history teacher for introducing Sammy to the subject of student protests. Sammy never forgot anything he’d been taught. Sooner or later it always came out, usually in the most unexpected ways. That was one thing their father still hadn’t learnt about Sammy. He didn’t just use the knowledge blindly; he adapted it creatively. That kind of imagination could be extremely dangerous. Dean had spent most of his life hauling his nerdy brother back from the edge of one of his ideas. He wasn’t sure he was strong enough to cope with what Sammy would get up to in High School.
Higher education was a bad, bad thing.
‘I’m going in tonight, Sammy.’ Mr. Dalgety wasn’t going to be coming to class tomorrow.
‘We’re going in tonight,’ his brother corrected strongly.
Humph. Dean was secretly proud of his geeky little brother, and knew he was capable of anything-Dean had taught him everything after all-but he couldn’t imagine Sammy actually killing a teacher. Even a smelly one.
‘WE!’ Sammy repeated again with more emphasis.
‘Mr. D...’
‘Is going down,’ Sammy promised grimly, suddenly sounding decades older than his age.
Dean shrugged. He’d tried. What more could he do?
‘Fine, but don’t come whining to me when you get an F on your Report Card for Biology.’
I was working in the lab late one night
Dean spent the time while they waited for the school cleaner to leave trying to calculate exactly how many specimens Dalgety used for his classes each week. He had a nasty feeling that the number of pets on his brother’s list of victims was much higher than could be explained by educational requirements. He hoped Dalgety was simply stockpiling the excess because he liked to buffer with inventory. If not, he was doing something else with the bodies other than getting children to slice, dice, and label them for the benefit of science.
One thing he’d learnt from his father. The alternatives were always worse.
The cupboard was bare. That is to say the biology lab freezer was full of bodies; it was just that none of them looked familiar. Probably because each one was vacuum sealed and bar-coded by an out-of-state medical supply company.
Mr. Dalgety apparently wasn’t promoting the use of local produce at all.
Surrounded by what felt like at least 300 bags of frozen cow eyes, frogs, and rabbits, Dean wished he’d made sure they’d had a vegetarian dinner before they went back to school.
Strangely enough his little brother was bearing up better than he was. He seemed to be compartmentalising it more than Dean could. Which was good. Dean just hoped that Sammy could keep it up when they killed the teacher.
But first they had to find the fucking Peculiar bodies. Tonight if at all possible. Preferably before Sammy’s practical anatomy class in the morning. And definitely before the whole damned student body staged their pyjama party in the gym and they became bodies of a different sort.
Dean stuck his face next to the glass tank while Sammy added a few bonus flakes to the water as a secret midnight snack for the goldfish. He thought Mary-Sue looked a little different. She seemed listless, and she wasn’t popping out from behind the chest to try and surprise him the way she usually did. He guessed she was a little lonely. The other fish obviously still treated her like an outsider. Must be hard being the replacement fish. Just as well they hadn’t dared name her Pebbles II; that would have probably been the last nail in her coffin.
‘Sorry,’ Dean muttered. He knew what it was like to be new in town.
‘Dean? Are you talking to the fish?’
No? ‘No way, dude! Won’t catch me doing the warm and fuzzy,’ Dean said, backing away from the tank as fast as he could without scaring the goldfish.
‘Come on, liar. There’s nothing here. Let’s go stake out Mr. Dalgety’s house.’
Sam sounded surprisingly perky all things considered.
Dean hoped this whole situation was leaching some of the geek right out of his brother.
Mr. Dalgety never came home that night. And his house was spotless. Surgically spotless. Not a body in sight.
Dean guessed they would have to go to school tomorrow after all.
On Friday Dean decided to demote himself a few grades. Who needed High School anyway?
He got a few looks as he loitered outside each of Sammy’s classrooms, but before long a budding reporter named Angela had apparently spread the word that he was the Pet Policeman. After that he couldn’t go anywhere without several adoring fans trailing in his wake.
After thirty minutes that started officially freaking him out.
By the time everyone was sitting in the Biology lab waiting for Mr. Dalgety to turn up Dean was ready to give education a miss for the rest of his life. The kids wouldn’t stop looking at him. Trying to hide under the lid of a too-small desk at the back of the lab didn’t help either.
Sammy, who was a little bitch, forgot about the pets for a moment and snickered, telling him to he’d just have to learn how to deal with fame.
Dean raided the teacher’s desk in search of an instrument of revenge, but unfortunately it didn’t contain a staple gun.
Needless to say, Friday was a disaster. Their suspect, somewhat suspiciously, didn’t come to work.
That left Dean with three problems: what were they going to do if Mr. Dalgety had flown the coop taking Thumper and Co. (dead or alive) with him; was it fair to consider singling the goldfish out and taking them home for safekeeping until this was all over; and what was he supposed to say to all of the girls in Sammy’s class that kept asking for Detective Dean’s autograph?
The coffin-bangers were about to arrive
Their father seemed a bit bemused at the whole sleepover concept when Sammy attempted to sell it as a start of term bonding exercise during Dad’s daily report-back call. Dean was just grateful that an outbreak of unearthly screams and gunfire on the other end of the phone interrupted what would have been the start of an in-depth interrogation.
Dean knew that when their father returned they were probably going to get grounded for life. But between now and then he had goldfish and rabbits to save.
In the meantime a last minute trip to the Peculiar public library had revealed one vital bit of information that wasn’t included in any of the school brochures.
‘They built the school right over an old graveyard, Dean.’
Oops. That was never a good idea. You’d think people would learn, wouldn’t you?
For my monster from his slab began to rise
Dean prepared for a hunt the same way Sammy swotted for every exam he’d ever had. He memorized all the facts; worked out alternate entrances and exits from the venue; prepared at least four back-up plans to cover any eventuality; loaded up on protein before the event, and wore his lucky t-shirt. The only difference between Sammy and Dean in the end was a subtle one. Dean chose to take weapons with him. Lots of weapons.
He wasn’t losing the goldfish without a fight.
The sleepover had the air of a temporary holiday armistice in the middle of battle. Everyone, including the teachers, was unnaturally cheerful, they all pretended to be blind to the fact that each of them was clutching homemade wooden weapons, and they jumped at every loud sound.
Dean was just glad that he and Sammy were the only ones who were carrying live ammunition.
He hoped they were the only ones because he’d been up at dawn sneaking into the school to secrete their armaments all over the school-he hadn’t wanted either of them to get busted for setting off the metal detectors. Sammy really was serious about not wanting detention.
Dean was fairly sure they were the only ones. 90% sure. Make that 75%.
When nothing had happened by dusk on Saturday-except for Billy Willis getting caught in the broom closet with Angela Morelli-everyone started to relax.
Everyone, except Sammy and Dean. And the goldfish.
Dean had taken over Mrs. Stone’s room as his campaign headquarters, over her initial vociferous objections. Luckily Dean had yet to meet a teacher he couldn’t charm, or outrun if he had too. He was glad Mrs. Stone fell into the first category because she looked surprisingly nimble and he was disinclined to break his record.
Mrs. Stone was very fond of her fish. And all except Mary-Sue seemed to return that affection judging by the cute way they all started swimming with their fins stretched stiffly out in front of them when she took over their nighttime feeding from a jealous Sammy.
Dean nominated Mrs. Stone his second lieutenant. Sammy of course was first.
The ghouls all came from their humble abodes
It was unfortunate that the dead began to arise just as everyone flooded into the cafeteria to celebrate a day without the loss of a single school pet.
Possibly the dead were merely ready for dinner too?
Dean had had another dream. No, not that kind of a dream! What kind of freaks are you; that can think about that when the pets are in danger? Shame on you!
Dean’s dream/plan for global-okay just the Ray-Pac School District-domination involved Mr. Dalgety foolishly committing himself (or itself if it turned out Mr. Dalgety was actually an it) to a berserker attack on the pet sanctuary Dean had turned Mrs. Stone’s homeroom into. About twenty minutes into the dream, after a thrilling fight against the teacher’s madness/badness/evil/whatever, Dean with the assistance of Sammy and some of his helpers would annihilate their opponent, and then maybe everyone sat down to some pie. So, the after stage of Dean’s grand plan was a little fuzzy, but he’d spent most of his time working out ways to kill the teacher and he figured he could adlib the pie scene if he had to.
When what he got was not a rampaging Biology teacher with a taste for budgies and bunnies, but what turned out in the end (Sammy counted body parts afterwards) to be twenty-eight dead people shambling in for a snack he wasn’t the only one surprised.
‘Dean? Is that…? Are they…? Do those zombies look a little … hungry to you?’
To get a jolt from my electrodes
Dean’s second thought-Fine! It was his third thought if you want to get picky in the middle of a Goddamn zombie attack-after swearing, and worrying about Sammy, was a desperate hope that zombies didn’t like the taste of fish.
Fucking zombies! (His first thought was on a loop for some reason). Zombies had been further down Dean’s own list of supernatural possibilities for Mr. Dalgety than on Sammy’s. That hurt.
Still, that graveyard and the missing pets had raised them as a possibility. Dean spared one fleeing thought for poor Thumper and switched to Plan Z. No, he hadn’t alphabetised the plans; you can blame Sammy for that. Maybe his brother would end up being a librarian rather than a decorator. Dean didn’t know which would be harder to bear.
Dean liked Plan Z almost as much as Plan G (which involved a do-it-yourself flamethrower). Plan Z was carefully calculated to deal with the fragile remnants of old reanimated corpses. Plan Z-after the kids stopped screaming and milling around and started listening to Dean’s bellowed instructions-worked perfectly on the first wave of zombies.
After an hour Dean was ready to pull out the marshmallows-stocked according to Plan Q, subsection 32-and fill in time until Mr. Dalgety (clearly the evil zombie Overlord) braved up and came to get his.
Right about then Sammy highlighted a flaw in Dean’s superb planning.
‘Dean? Can you hear moaning? Coming clos…?’
Igor on chains, backed by his baying hounds
‘Dean! Watch out!’
The next wave of monsters was definitely fresher, and not as easy to disarm even with machetes.
They also looked hungrier. Obviously they were more used to regular meals than their older compatriots.
Dean needed a diversion. He looked at the line of filthy kids and teachers standing in a protective huddle around the fish tank and cages at the back of the room.
Maybe he could toss in the ant-farm? Then the worms, and the snakes? He didn’t like the thought but if he gave them a little appetiser it might give him time to move everyone to his secret backup, backup location. And who needed ants anyway?
‘Don’t even think it, Dean!’
Damn it. Sometimes Sammy could read him too well.
‘Fuck it!’ Dean yelled as he ducked and eventually managed to slice off another limb of the closest zombie. It was a lot harder with the fresh ones.
‘Billy, grab the ants! Angela, take the worms!’
By the time he’d finished pairing their assistants off with pets, he and Sammy had cut a few more down to twitching parts. That started a minor feeding frenzy among the zombies who were not averse to grabbing a few limbs to go. It was definitely time for a change of scene.
‘Go! Go! Go!’ he screamed. ‘Cooking classroom! Now!’
Then you can monster mash
The weapons stashes throughout the school? That was one of his more brilliant ideas. Knives were good, but guns and bullets meant you didn’t have to get in close for the slaughter. Because, not only were these dudes rank, but once they got a grip or a bite, they didn’t like to let go, even after you’d separated an arm or a head from the torso.
And it turned out that the sewing teacher was a really good shot when she was motivated. No wonder Sammy said he liked Mrs. Henderson. She rocked!
Dean was almost worn out by the time they slowly fought their way to the place he’d planned for his final, final stand. (Backup, backup; remember?) Those zombies were fucking determined. He also had a niggling feeling that this juicier batch was another example of Dalgety’s imports, this time from Harrisonville. Dad was going to be pissed if Dean was right. Okay, Dad was going to be pissed, regardless. Shit.
He shoved Sammy inside and slammed the door shut, and threw the lock for what it was worth. Turning around he found that all the kids, teachers, and pets had arrived minutes ahead of them, battered but safe. For now.
And it turned out that Mary-Sue was made of the right stuff. Her head was half out of the water taking everything in. By the way she kept staring at the doors to the classroom, Dean just knew that she could feel where the danger lay.
Mary-Sue was pretty awesome. For a goldfish.
Dean loved food, almost every kind of food. Didn’t even have to be pie most of the time, as long as his meals ended with pie. He wasn’t really what you would call a picky eater. He just liked to eat.
So, naturally you’d think that he’d chosen the cooking classroom as his final stand for reasons that related just to his stomach. You’d be partly wrong. It had running water, electricity, chemicals (although not as obviously explosive), and freezers, just like Mr. Dalgety’s lab. It also had the following advantages: it wasn’t Dalgety’s and was less inclined to be booby-trapped for that reason alone; it had food (Yeah, the food was a big component. Dean liked food, but he wasn’t stupid), and an adjoining bathroom in case of a long-term siege.
It also had one other advantage he didn’t think Dalgety would factor in.
Dalgety didn’t. When Dalgety finally appeared-scary purple tie firmly in place-surrounded by his slightly decimated second wave of zombies, he had obviously forgotten the reason why cooking was still considered by many students to be a vital part of their curriculum.
You got to cook your chocolate cake and eat it too.
Cooking requires some very helpful devices.
Sammy wasn’t the only Winchester who remembered everything (okay, Dean was selective about the process) he learnt, and adapted that knowledge creatively. Who do you think taught Sammy how to do that in the first place?
Duh!
Now everything's cool
It was, as Dean had dreamed, a mad, glorious, and completely insane battle.
And if, in the middle of it all he had to make a decision between saving Mary-Sue and the other goldfish, and saving Sammy? Well, there was only one real choice after all.
Dalgety and his zombie army were finally laid to waste by a two Winchesters, and a bunch of kids and teachers wielding knives and potato mashers; electric eggbeaters and blenders; and microwaves and ovens. Lots of very hot ovens.
And suddenly to my surprise
Victory was sweet. For about an hour. Until the principal turned up. Looking for a scapegoat. Possibly two.
That was the day Dean Winchester learnt the value of a speedy getaway. Never stick around the crime scene mourning a freaking goldfish for Christ’s sake!
You save the world, or at least the school? And you happen to make a Hell of a mess doing it? And a teacher goes missing?
Don’t hang around waiting for someone to thank you. Steal a cool car, and get out of town quick! Preferably wearing sunglasses, boots, and an awesome leather jacket while a really cool rock soundtrack blares out the driver’s window.
‘Winchester! Front and centre!’
‘Do you suppose he means me?’
‘Well, Dean. You are the oldest. What did you expect?’
Despite that Sammy was lining up with him. They were going down, they were going down together.
And my monster mash is the hit of the land
Dean carefully aligned the notes dead centre on the kitchen table and followed Sammy back to their room. He wondered how long it would take to smother himself with his pillow.
It had to be less painful than what their father would do to him for getting Sammy in trouble.
He opened the lid and shook his fist
‘Dean! Sammy! Now!’
Fuck. Dad was home, and he’d read them. Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck.
‘Fuck!’ Dean whispered into the pillow for good measure. It didn’t make him feel any better.
‘Dean?’ His protection was peeled away and Sammy’s wrinkly concerned face was right there in his. Dean decided he really didn’t need to be intimately acquainted with his little brother’s nostrils. Not today anyway.
Maybe they should have washed off all the zombie fragments before they came home? Or right after they got home? Now might be good.
‘Dude, you reek!’
‘You’re not exactly smelling like a rose to me either, Dean.’
Roses? Huh?
‘Dean Winchester! In here, right now, and bring your brother with you!’
‘Come on, Dean.’
Sam was tugging him off the bed, and dragging him to the door as if he was the pouting little brother. Dean wasn’t pouting. He wasn’t.
‘I heard him. I’m coming.’ He stopped pouting, stiffened up, and marched towards his doom.
‘I think he’s read them,’ Sammy said helpfully as he followed him out to the kitchen.
You think?
Dean had been right all along.
Dad was pissed. Possibly more about the notes calling him in to an emergency conference with the principals of two different schools the previous day, than the fact that he’d obviously just worked out what had happened to the corpses he’d been hunting in Harrisonville.
Dad was pissed. Sammy had gotten detention for the first time ever. Dean had been banned from the Middle School for life, suspended from High School indefinitely, and their father wanted an answer.
In the end, what could Dean say?
‘A zombie ate my homework?’
Whatever happened to my Transylvania twist?
Meanwhile, back in cooking classroom, Mary-Sue, the one remaining and curiously alert, goldfish finally came out from behind the safety of the plastic treasure chest and viewed what had until so recently been her empire.
Her initial plans lay in ruins with the loss of that idiot Dalgety. Someone was going to pay. Goldfish could live extraordinarily long lives if they wanted to. Mary-Sue was very determined, and she wasn’t ever going to forget the name Dean Winchester.
Footsteps signalled the entrance of the cleaner. It would be morning soon, and she had her priorities in order. She’d heard the Home Ec teacher say it a hundred times since she’d come to school.
‘Breakfast’s the most important meal of the day.’
It was almost dawn, and she was hungry.
It was a graveyard smash…