To Serve Man
K Hanna Korossy
"Not good."
Sam only found it in himself to nod at his brother's massive understatement.
Frank Devereux's trailer was trashed. Papers were everywhere. Equipment was smashed and, in some places, obviously missing. Most damning was the blood that was sprayed across several surfaces. Sam was pretty sure Frank had never made it out of the trailer alive.
Dean swore next to him, and as Sam looked over, his brother was already moving. Going down on his knees—had he seen something that shocked him so badly? Was he that affected by the loss? But then he was reaching under one of the tables, working something loose.
"What—?"
"Ha. Gotcha." Dean sat back on his heels, holding a small object. "Frank, you old dog, you still got the last word in, didn't you?"
Sam moved closer to examine what Dean was holding, ignoring Lucifer, who also leaned in from the other side. "What is that?"
Dean held up a matchbook-sized, nondescript metal box. Tape still clung to one side where it had been affixed under the table. "One of Frank's toys. He showed me last time I was here."
"I smell another father figure," Lucifer mused, glancing around the trailer. He sniffed. "Literally."
Sam clenched his jaw and followed his brother out of the trailer, back to the car. He waited impatiently as Dean retrieved their laptop from the back seat and settled with it in the front. Sam slid in next to him, grimly ignoring the back where Lucifer appeared. With Jessica, who was fawning over him.
San turned away, trying hard to focus on what Dean was doing.
He didn't see it all, but somehow Dean hooked up the little box to the laptop. "So, saying Frank was paranoid was like saying Page can play the guitar. He had a lot of backups and insurance policies. This is one of them." Dean pointed to the box. "A rolling twenty-four recording of the inside of the trailer. If it happened in the last day, it's on here."
Sam shifted in his seat, frowning. "You talked to Frank this morning, didn't you?"
"Yep," Dean said, typing and moving through windows with an ease that left Sam jealous. "Poor son of a bitch had no idea they were coming for him. Well," he tilted his head in concession, "no more idea than he usually did. Ah, got it."
Sam crowded in to watch over his shoulder.
Frank appeared on the screen, sitting in profile. The picture was black and white and not the best quality, but it was clear enough and even had sound. A lot of Frank muttering to himself as he worked, moving from one monitor to another. Dean started fast-forwarding through the footage.
He stopped when they saw Frank was on his feet, rewound a little, then hit play.
Frank was focused on his largest screen when his head suddenly whipped up, reacting to something Sam couldn't see or hear. He shot to his feet and peered through the slats of the trailer window, spitting out what sounded like a curse.
"You hear anything?" Dean asked.
"Yeah, Sammy, you hear anything?" Lucifer asked conversationally from the back, then moaned happily from something "Jess" was doing.
Sam's lips tightened. "No."
A shadow passed behind the blinds. And on one small screen in the corner of the shot that showed camera footage from outside the trailer, several dark figures converged.
Frank, for all his dramatic tendencies, faced the actual end with surprising calm. Mouth twisted in what almost looked like a smirk, he reached off-camera and retrieved a handgun. He looked at it a moment, then stared straight into the hidden recorder.
"In the slim possibility you see this in time, cupcake? It's a cookbook."
And then with the most genuine smile Sam had ever seen from the guy, Frank raised the handgun to the side of his head.
Sam closed his eyes just as the shot rang out and Dean quietly swore.
He started watching again as the figures in black swarmed the trailer.
"They don't even care about him," Dean said in disgust.
It was true: they barely spared a glance at the body. Instead, the team immediately started going through his papers, checking his computers. One shoved the slumped Devereaux out of the way to gain access to the bloody keyboard. It all took less than a minute before they were leaving, some carrying equipment with them. And then one stopped by Frank. He pulled his mask halfway up, tilted his head back to reveal the massive mouthful of teeth, and—
Sam looked away even as Dean recoiled. "Dude, that's just sick." He turned the recording off with a jab of a button.
"I don't know, Sammy," the Devil chimed in from the back seat, "seems pretty efficient to me. Waste not, want not, right? Besides, humans taste just like chicken, remember?"
Sam squeezed his eyes shut, fingernails digging uselessly into his palm.
"Sam?" Dean's grasp of his wrist was more effective.
Sam pulled in a breath and nodded. "I'm okay."
"Yeah. Right." Dean dragged his gaze back to the monitor, and scrubbed a hand over his mouth. "You know, I'm gonna miss that crazy bastard. He didn't deserve this."
Sam swallowed, licking his lips, and refocused on his brother, who looked...sad. "Sorry."
Dean snorted. "Yeah. Well, maybe he's with his family now."
Right, his wife and kids. Dean had told him about that. Maybe he really was better off now. Sam cleared his throat and nodded at the screen. "'Cupcake'—that's, uh, you?"
Dean's mouth ticked up even as he seemed to try to pull it down. "Yeah, probably. Frank had a weird sense of humor."
No kidding. Sam frowned. "What does 'it's a cookbook' mean?"
Dean turned to stare at him. "Seriously?"
"Uh. Yeah?"
"Dude." Dean was shaking his head. "How do you not know this? We watched Twilight Zone whenever it was on and Dad was out."
"Twilight Zone?" Sam was sure he looked even more perplexed.
"'How to Serve Man'? One of the most classic episodes ever? Aliens come and they're all, like, 'we're here to serve man, help them cure diseases, stop killing each other'? And in the end it turns out their manual—"
"—is a cookbook," Sam finished. He sorta remembered burying his face in Dean's side when the revelation came, horrifying to an elementary school kid. "Yeah, can't imagine how I forgot that one."
But Dean had already turned thoughtful. "That sound familiar to you? Just here to help, cure cancer, make sandwiches that turn people into fat sheep?"
"And then eat them," Sam finished grimly.
"Yum," came cheerfully from the back.
Dean sighed. "Awesome. Well, at least we have an idea what their endgame is."
"Yeah. If we—and crazy Frank—are right," Sam said wryly. "And if that's the whole plan." He lifted, then dropped a hand heavily. "We still don't know what's up with that field in Wisconsin Bobby found. Or why—"
"Whoa, slow down, tiger," Dean cut him off with a huff. "First things first. Joaquin says he'll take the curse boxes if we haul them down to Utah. We'll make the delivery, then figure out how to save the world from turning into an all-you-can-eat buffet."
"Sounds good." Sam sank back into the truck's relatively comfortable seat. He missed the Impala. And Bobby. And Jess.
"She's right here, Sammy..."
"You should get some sleep on the way, man." Dean rattled a bottle in front of Sam's face, making him jump. "Picked up some sleeping pills. Label promises 'deep, dreamless sleep.'"
Sam snorted. "I don't think that includes people with Hell stuffed into their brains." But he was so tired. He hadn't even told Dean about the semi he'd almost hit earlier, because one time was plenty for their family. He sighed and grabbed the bottle from Dean's hand. "I'll try."
Dean thwapped him agreeably on the leg. When he leaned back to put the laptop in the back seat, he returned with a blanket he tossed at Sam. "I'll find some emo station for you."
"Whatever. Thanks."
Dean shrugged off the gratitude. "Get some rest." He turned the truck's engine over and, with a final glance at Frank's trailer, shook his head once and made a U-turn back toward the dirt road they'd come in on.
Sam's sleep wasn't dreamless or deep. But at least when he started awake, Dean was still there beside him, smiling mournfully in the dark.
The End