First off, let me start with the ever-popular disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, and I do not own Sam or Dean. They belong to Kripke, the CW, and all the other awesome people that make that show so immensely amazing. All other characters in this story do not exist, nor have they ever existed. Now, on with the show!
NORTH FERNLEY, NEVADA
CHAPTER ONE
Despite it being three in the afternoon, Lucy's Diner was overflowing with people, and mostly kids fresh out of a Monday's worth of school. It was loud and cramped, and despite the air conditioner being turned up to way beyond freezing, it was so hot Sam had had to shed his jacket. He fingered a heavy ceramic coffee mug, filled to the brim and steaming silently beside him as he clicked through page after page of potentially-freakish news, no longer really wanting the scalding beverage. So he avoided it, going over and over the three mildly suspicious stories he'd found: a guy getting shredded to bits by a wood chipper, a woman who's apartment managed to set itself on fire, and a man who was shredded to bits on his way home from work in San Francisco. After twenty minutes of looking, those were about the most 'supernatural' he could find, and they were all still kind of questionable. The wood chipper could be considered as kind of suspicious, the apartment could have been a case, but the one that seemed most likely at the moment was San Francisco; probably a werewolf or something.
Sam's shaggy head turned up as he heard footsteps making their way over to him, their clacking practically drowned out by the dozens of teeny-boppers snapping and shouting all around them. "Find anything?" Dean asked loudly, sliding a Caesar Salad in his general direction as he took the seat opposite his brother. When he was comfortably set up, he looked out into the overflowing crowds. "I've never seen so many hormones in one place. Except maybe at a Hannah Montana concert," he grumbled crankily. "So! What we got? Anything fun or exciting?"
Sam shook his head disapprovingly at his elder brother and ran his fingers over the keyboard, pressing this-that-and-the-other to get all the stories opened up again. "I don't know about fun or exciting," he said, as he browsed one last time through the three stories, getting himself back up to speed, "but there's a possible werewolf in San Francisco. That might be worth checking out, right?"
"A werewolf?" Dean asked speculatively, lathering a french-fry in ketchup. At the moment, he wasn't keen on werewolves: they'd gone through two in the past five weeks. "Great. The Revenge of Jacob Black."
"Who?" Sam asked half-heartedly, not really paying attention as he pulled up a picture of the corpse. It had only taken a couple of minutes to sort through the San Francisco police database, considering they hadn't updated it in a couple decades.
"Dude. Twilight. Common man," Dean said irately, throwing his napkin at Sam's head. "He's on my most wanted list."
"Why, what'd he do? Eat a stripper?" Sam asked, pulling up the man's police records: his name was Spencer Gunderson, twenty seven years old, born and raised in Utah, moved to San Francisco in 2004. According to the report, he didn't have any sort of criminal record, worked a median job in a bank, and didn't have any real enemies. He didn't have any family either.
Dean gave him an exasperated look. "No, genius," he said, annoyance creeping into his heavy voice. "It's what he didn't do. The guy's a freakin' pansy with an eight-pack. And a paedophile by the way."
Sam looked up at Dean over the top of his laptop and furrowed his brow at him. "What?" he asked in disbelief. He'd never in all his life herd of a paedophilic werewolf.
"Twilight Sammy, get with the times," Dean replied, shoving as much burger as he could into his mouth. He let out a groan of pleasure as the grease and cheese dripped out of the corners of his mouth. "Oh my god, heaven's in Nevada!"
Sam rolled his eyes and turned back to his computer. "So, the guy's in his late twenties, some sort of accountant working for Bank of America. The autopsy file says he was dismembered and his flesh shredded, like he had been attacked by a pack of wild dogs," he summarized, scrolling down the page as he went, scanning the file for anything else that could be mildly important.
"Or one very pissed off mog," Dean commented, revelling in another gigantic bite.
"A what?" Sam asked blankly, shutting the top of his computer and pushing it aside to make way for 'lunch'.
Dean gagged as a chunk of burger that slid down the wrong tube, partially to express his disbelief and mostly to keep from being killed by a dead cow. "Mog! Man-Dog! Spaceballs! Come on Sam, work with me!"
"Sure, if you say so," Sam said airily, with that tone of his that meant 'I'm humouring you so we can carry on with our lives.'
Dean grumbled something under his breath and took a deep drink of coke, draining the can quite happily. He was about to wave the waitress over for a second when he stopped. His brow furrowed and his dark eyes flashed over to the pre-teens sitting scattered around the table behind Sam. There were six of them, three on each plushy cushion, all talking in semi-hushed voices. Or, as hushed as was possible in this messed-up place.
"What?" Sam asked, watching him with concern and speculation from across the table.
Dean waved him into general silence and leaned forward a bit, folding his hands on the table, trying hard to listen in on the kids' conversation while not looking overly conspicuous – he was fairly good at it, especially these days. He'd had lots of practice throughout his one-track life.
"Shut up Ed!" a boy said. He seemed to be the eldest, but probably only by a year or two; his hair was dark and shaved close to his head, and he had a very commanding air about him. "You want the whole damn place to hear?"
"Why the hell shouldn't they?" Ed snapped back, leaning over the table towards the older guy. "The guy's dead, Jimmy! Dead! He's not supposed to be dead!"
"It wasn't our fault, all right," Jimmy answered, pressing his back into the cushioned diner chair to get away from Ed's scalding eyes. "We didn't do anything wrong. All we did was chase him."
"Yeah, into oncoming traffic," Ed replied, a manic tone seeping into his frigid already quivering voice. Everyone else at the table was quiet, their eyes turned away to examine their forks, the tabletop, the monotonous road out the window, or their uneaten food. Really, anywhere but at Jimmy and Ed, who seemed about ready to crack.
"Shut up, Ed!" Jimmy snarled again, smashing his balled up fist against the table. "It was a freak accident! The horses never come this close to town," he said, his own voice starting to betray his uneasiness.
Ed stared at him with utter disbelief. "We chased him into a stampede," he said, trying to get the fact beaten into Jimmy's thick skull.
"He went of his own accord!" the other replied, still trying to defend themselves against the thought of maybe doing something wrong…especially so wrong as killing someone.
"Are you not paying any attention? The guy's dead for goodness sakes! And it's not like it's the first time ever that they've come through there, right? The Baker kid last week, and Lucy Samuels before that, and what's-his-face Adamson last month! That's a heck of a lot of kids Ed. A heck of a lot! All in the same place, by the same stupid-arse horses! How was this a freak accident?" Ed's green eyes were getting bigger and more terrified with every word he uttered, until they looked like they were going to pop out of his skull. He was shifting desperately in his seat, his head turning every-which-way as though he were looking for something. "We're gonna get tossed in juvi man. Our lives our ruined, we're gonna die old and alone in some prison somewhere."
"Ed! Zip it!" Jimmy snapped for the third time, his fists quaking on the table-top. "Those fucking things came out of nowhere, we had no idea they were coming, and I'm betting neither did he. So can we get the hell out of here and maybe talk about this somewhere else?" he asked exasperatedly, pushing himself up off the seat.
Dean watched as one by one the kids filled after him, sliding out of the booths and then ducking quickly out of the door, their hands shoved in their pockets as their eyes flashed around them nervously. Ed followed last, looking as though he'd just seen a ghost: he was pale as a sheet and his skin had started to shine with the unwelcome tinge of a cold sweat.
"You hear that?" Dean muttered to Sam as he toyed with what was left of the burger. "Maybe we won't have to leave Nevada after all!"
"It was a stampede. Of horses. Last time I checked Dean, horses weren't supernatural," Sam said, pushing a few leaves of lettuce into his mouth. "I mean, if it was a herd of elephants then yes, but it wasn't. It was horses. In Nevada. We're going to San Francisco."
"You heard the kid! They came outta nowhere! Something huge like that, you figure you'd hear it from here to China, right? And four kids, in the past month? And a horse stampede? When was the last time you herd of any kind of stampede? Cowboy movies don't count. And the Lion King: that doesn't count either. Like, real life stampede. Never Sam. Never. Dude, there's a job here, and I'm not leaving until we've fixed everything," he said determinedly, throwing the last of the burger into his mouth. "Best cheeseburger ever."
Sam raised an eyebrow at him. "Nevada's pretty much the wild horse capital of America, so a herd of stampeding horses really isn't that weird," he commented.
Dean's brow furrowed. "There's a wild horse capital in America?" he asked speculatively. "Wow. I really don't care."
"Dean, it's on their state quarter," Sam said with, impatience and exasperation slipping back into his voice.
"I still don't care. Hurry up, I wanna go check this out," Dean said impatiently.
"This? What happened to San Francisco?" Sam asked in disbelief, pushing his empty bowl away.
"Yup. This. Common, Sammy! Time's a wastin'," he replied, sliding out of the booth and pushing his way through the teeny-boppers towards the big glass doors.
Sam almost knocked himself out with the table. The last thing he wanted to do right now was chase a bunch of wild horses. People were killed in stampedes…well, he wasn't sure how often it happened, but he knew it did. In San Francisco, they had a werewolf waiting for them.
He sighed with irritation and pushed himself out, tossing his jacket over his shoulder and tucking his computer under his arm. Maybe if he could prove to Dean that this was just some crazy, random happenstance, they could move on and actually help someone.