I Thought I Saw Chapter 2, a supernatural fanfic

Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: See Chapter 1

I THOUGHT I SAW

Chapter 2

Sam did not look at Dean as they took their weapons from the Impala's trunk and double-checked them even though they gleamed as if just plucked from the assembly line and had already triple-checked them before driving out here. Almost uniquely, both brothers were wearing their toughest hiking boots, ankle, knee, wrist and elbow sports 'support bandages' plus shin guards and as much padding as they could without compromising their speed and manoeuvrability. Not that they intended any animal to get so close but better safe than sorry.

Instead of his usual leather coat, however, Dean was wearing his short, waist length denim jacket, because Dean, who had lightning reflexes, had clumsily slopped orange juice all down his coat and the top of a pair of jeans at breakfast and so the leather coat was currently at Westlake's small dry-cleaning service.

Sam's worry had gone up another notch and stayed there because Dean was unusually accepting of Sam's hovering 'mother hen' routine, when normally he would have been sarcastically snapping at his younger brother's 'chick-flick soppiness'. But he knew better than to suggest – to even hint – that Dean wasn't up to this job. Dean was rarely provoked to true rage against Sam, but that would push every button he had all at once. 'So ignore the big black suitcases under my eyes and my dishwater-grey face'; Sam sighed within himself.

Leaving the car as close to the shrubbery as possible to lessen the chances of anyone noticing it and coming to investigate, though it was unlikely on this unmapped back road, they walked up the narrow, winding trail into the woods, silent and grim in the knowledge they were probably going to have to kill more wildlife.

As far as the human ear could pick up sound, there was none. No birds, no insects, no rustling. It was as if any and every creature larger than a grasshopper had gone on vacation at the same time. There wasn't even a breeze to stir the leaves or twigs of the foliage.

After ten minutes, they came to what they were looking for and exchanged grim glances. At the bottom of a small slope the hiking trail forked, one going left and one going right. It didn't really matter, as the two trails eventually merged into one again about a quarter of a mile further ahead; the left hand trail was slightly steeper but straighter, curving slightly like a 'c', while the right hand trail was wider and easier but meandered more like an 's'. However, the evidence pointed to the Ghoul being holed up in a small cave that old local maps showed as being present in a crag that was situated in the land sandwiched between the two trails, a few hundred yards from where the trails merged again.

Cliff Notes: they had no choice but to separate. Yes, a high-risk strategy, but continuing together up one trail was pointless when it gave the Ghoul opportunity to set a few possessed possums on them and slip away down the other trail to either escape or loop round and come at them from behind. By each taking a trail, they could approach the Ghoul's lair in a pincer-movement. Yes, again, the two trails were not really that far apart 'as the crow flies', but distances of mere inches became hugely significant in some situations and this was one.

His face taut, Dean instructed curtly, "I'll go left, you take right. Meet you at the top."

Sam fought the urge to click his heels together and bark out, 'Ja voll' Mein Fuhrer!' as Dean marched up the left trail like his butt was on fire before Sam could try and suggest that maybe he should go left and Dean take the longer but easier path. Ah, Dean - born in Kansas, but, just like Dad, spent most of his life living in the State of Denial…usually in Absolute County.

Okay…Sam slowly made his way up the right hand trail, his finger curled around the trigger of the gun he was 'cradling' in the crook of his folded arms, which, unless you were a bona fide law enforcement officer, was a highly illegal Glock18C machine pistol fitted with the extended 33-round magazine of the heaviest calibre bullets available. Neither brother was carrying a hunting rifle, though both carried shotguns across their backs as back-up. A hunting rifle was only effective from a distance against stationery prey, not something large and ferocious heading towards you at a fast clip; while a shotgun at close range would do enough damage to stop a bear in its tracks, it was limited to two barrels, not good in an 'oops there's three' scenario. Again each of them was carrying his handgun in the back of his waistband as a back-up to the shotgun back-up, but again the big bad Ghoul possessed beast would have to achieve a major invasion of personal space for the handgun to be effective, which was not the desired scenario.

The machine pistol was designed to lay down an intense burst of fire and would empty its entire magazine into something as long as you continued to press the trigger; nothing with the possible exception of an exceptionally large male flathead grizzly bear – very uncommon in this area - could withstand the hail of bullets without being practically torn in two. The brothers' usual ammunition was rock-salt loaded handguns or shotguns, and Sam felt peculiarly unclean carrying around the murderous weapon.

True, Dean carried his favoured Glock-17 semi-automatic handgun even now in his waistband and the Impala's truck held both a Springfield Armoury .45 and the famous 'old time' Colt 1911, but neither were deliberately, ferociously lethal in the manner of the Glock18C and other machine pistol makes. Practically all humanity's scientific advances had a beneficial as well as a destructive application, with the glaring exception of the firearm. A gun had no other function, no other use in existing, than to kill living things, and the machine pistol was a grotesque elaboration of that, not designed just to kill, but to kill brutally.

The weapons were not a part of the arsenal secreted in the Impala's trunk, but realising what they were up against after their first encounter with the infected animals, they had been able to hire the two guns (including a supply of the extended 31- and 33-round magazines) for three days at a surprisingly reasonable rate from an arms dealer.

A hardcore criminal used to selling his wares to urban street-gangs, Mafiosi, illegal immigrant gang-masters, drug barons and the like, the gun-runner had fortunately been amused rather than affronted by the unusual request to 'hire' from what he, lacking perceptiveness, saw only as two rather 'weird' kids. His amusement at their bold request had only increased when they admitted their surname and confessed to being distant cousins of Oliver Winchester of Repeating Rifle fame, and so had been expansively inclined to tolerance.

Up ahead, Sam could hear faint, suspicious rustling, courtesy of the windless day, zero insect activity and the Ghoul's limited brainpower. The Ghoul was incapable of any other strategy than frontal attack-and-smash, and this was therefore the way its infected pawn animals also attacked, regardless of the fact that in nature, the bears, wolves, cougars and so on stalked intended prey and tried to sneak up on it. The instant he went around the bend – no pun intended – and the infected animals saw him, they would be triggered to charge.

Hefting the Glock, Sam took a controlling breath and picking up his pace, barrelled up the trail as fast as possible. An instant later, three wolves and two foxes hurtled out of the undergrowth at him with their eyes glowing ruby-red and fangs bared in a reckless charge; Sam fired the machine pistol in two short, controlled bursts and all five animals were cut down ten feet away from him. His hatred of the Ghoul increased as he saw that they were all young animals in their prime, that should have been gambolling somewhere with their cubs, not under a fatal supernatural compulsion to rip Sam apart. He swallowed back bile as, even horribly wounded, the surviving wolf writhed across the ground towards him on its front paws and belly, insane gaze fixed on his throat as it was forced to obey the Ghoul's command to kill regardless of its agony. Pulling out his Beretta, Sam fired one shot into the animal's skull, ending its suffering.

Figuring that subtlety at this point was a lost cause unless the Ghoul had suddenly been struck stone deaf, he yelled to reassure his brother, making it both statement and question, "Dean, OK!"

"Yo!" The answering call was faint but firm.

Quickly Sam tossed salt, gasoline and a lit match on the corpses after hastily pulling them into the centre of the trail, knowing that two consecutive nights of heavy rain meant it unlikely the woodland would catch alight. He prepared to continue but any notion that the Ghoul had not heard him was brutally disabused within a minute – as he approached the end of the trail, there was a cacophony and Sam found himself faced with a group of animals charging towards him. He fired the Glock again and again, sickened as animal after animal was cut down but those behind continued without slowing; out of sight but nearby he could hear identical rapid gunfire that meant Dean was under similar attack.

Some ancient instinct made him duck down and he felt rather than saw a heavy shape disturb his hair. Surging back up even as he ejected the empty first magazine and chambered the second, Sam witnessed a large lynx overshoot where his head and neck had been a moment before to collide with a black bear cub. Sam set his heels and simply spun around in a complete circle, firing the Glock continuously until the second magazine was exhausted and again ejecting the magazine and chambering the third – his penultimate magazine.

But the ground was littered only with dead and grievously wounded animals. Gorge rose and not fighting the urge, Sam vomited at the carnage. Aware that he was crying and not giving a damn, he ended the suffering of the still living beasts and made a salt and gasoline funeral pyre, hearing the intermittent bark of Dean's handgun indicating he too was doing the same.

Wiping away tears, with the hem of his shirt, Sam swallowed and made sure his voice was steady as he called out again, "Dean, I'm nearly through!"

"Yeah! I'm – Aaaagh!"

Dean's yell was drowned out by a burst of rapid gunfire but by that point Sam was running flat out towards his brother's position as the noise abruptly and ominously stopped to be replaced by an even more frightening silence.

"DEAN! DEAN!"

Pelting along heedless of anything that might bar his way up to and including the Ghoul, Sam simply ran straight through the undergrowth that formed the shortest distance between his and Dean's location, bursting out onto the other trail at a dead run.

And skidding to a halt in terror and horror. Nearby another funeral pyre consumed the bodies of infected animals, trees and bushes showing the damage wreaked by bullets, but Sam was oblivious. On the grass verge to the left of the trail was Dean's denim jacket, ripped and blood-smeared, as if something had grabbed the back of it with big claws and dragged/torn it off. Dean's Glock18C lay inches away on flattened grass, but of his brother there was no sign.

Fighting a gag reflex, Sam moved numbly to the grass verge and looked at…nothing. By some optical illusion the trail gave the impression of being lined by trees, but as you got close you could see that the ground fell away down a steep, tree-dotted slope to end in a deep, fast-flowing stream. There was a wavy line of flattened grass and torn-out flower stalks and a large red smear on a protruding rock at the edge of the stream, but no Dean.

"DEAN!" He gave the call all his lung power, but there was no response.

Sam didn't hesitate, and didn't give a damn that he was giving the Ghoul time to escape. Picking up the other Glock, he slid on his ass down the wet grass to the stream edge, looking right and left, but there was no sign of Dean nor any visible indication on the other bank as far as he was able to see in either direction of Dean clambering out of the water.

Heedless of the freezing water or ruining his boots, Sam splashed downstream; if Dean had been unconscious – Sam refused to countenance any more serious possibility for his failure to answer - he would be unable to fight the flow of the water. The stream was icy and fully of pot-holes and rocks, causing Sam to stumble along as the water went from ankle to knee deep within a distance of inches and back again. But there no sign of Dean in the water or out of it. After ten minutes, Sam came to a halt at the sight of a small weir that beavers had made a dam across. If he had been unconscious, Dean should be right in front of him blocked from further travel downstream by the weir but there was nothing there.

Which meant that Dean had left the water before this point, or been conscious enough at the start to make his way upstream, but for some reason was unable to respond loudly enough to make Sam hear him, because he'd suffered some injury to his throat or….

No.

Sub-vocally cursing in every language he knew plus several ancient tongues most people hadn't spoken in millennia, Sam scanned the banks of the stream. There was no flattened grass or damaged shrubbery, but he was so intent that the beaver made it to within five feet of him, it was only out of his peripheral vision that he glimpsed it waddling towards him with its huge gnawing front teeth bared and the familiar red film over its eyes. Pulling out his handgun he fired one shot into its head and then had to grab a foot to stop it going over the weir. Tossing the corpse onto the bank, Sam burned it, then as fast as he could, made his way back up to where Dean had fallen in.

Instead of going upstream, Sam clambered back up the slope, carrying a fully-loaded Glock18C in each hand with an expression of distilled fury on his face. Somewhere his brother was lying badly injured and probably unconscious – therefore defenceless - in a wood polluted by a flesh-eating monster; annihilate the monster, and he could look for his brother without the terror of the Ghoul finding Dean first.

Continued in Chapter 3…