Dean trudged back into the motel room carrying a six pack of beers. "Hey Sammy." he called, "Brought you a beer." he flicked the frail overhead light on. "Sam?" he saw the overturned table and the laptop on the floor. The room was a mess. He chucked the beers onto Sam's empty bed and ran into the bathroom looking for Sam but he saw no one. "Dammit Sammy where the hell are you?" He brought out his gun and his phone and quickly speed-dialled Sam's number and looked about franticly. Sam's phone buzzed from under his bed. "Crap." Dean muttered and fished it out. Something was definitely wrong. He could feel it. Where ever Sam was he was in trouble. The splintered remains of the bathroom door creaked back and forth on it's hinges. He went over to the table and looked closely, specks of blood dotted the edge. "No... no. Sammy!" he yelled, but it was futile. His little Sammy wasn't here. Dammit. . . what had that kid gotten himself into now? He picked up Sam's laptop and flipped it right way up. Nothing. The screen was blank and a long thin crack ran jaggedly from one corner to another. The window above Sam's bed stood ajar and the covers were all bunched up at the head of the bed. It looked like he had been dragged out. He couldn't blame whatever it was for not being able to lift him, that kid weighed a lot for a sixteen year old, even if he was a giant.
Within seconds Dean had dialled his father's number, he franticly paced the room as he waited for the old guy to pick up. "Come on, come on. . . pick up you son of a bitch. . ." he muttered angrily. Nothing. It went straight to the answering machine. "Dad, please you gotta call me back, Sammy's gone." he took a few deep breaths, shut off the call and threw the phone at the wall.
Dean sat in the Impala, the waxing moon shone down weakly and cast a soft white glow into the car. He drummed his fingers impatiently on the wheel. If only Sam was here, he'd know where to look in order to find himself, but Sam wasn't there. And Dean was on his own. He glanced sadly at the empty seats. "I'll find you Sam, I promise." Dean had been out hustling pool and flirting with hot bartenders for hours, Sam could be well on his way to the other side of the country by now. He walked back into the motel room feeling a little more calm and a little less agitated. There was no way he could find Sam if he was acting like a frantic mother who's late for the school run. He stepped over the debris and splinters of the plywood door and stepped onto the black tiled floor of the bathroom. Sam's shirt and belt sad on top of his trainers and socks. It looked to Dean as though Sam had been jumped whilst getting dressed, awkward situation there... He looked closely at the window ledge, the salt line was broken. Splashes of water had sprayed onto the ledge and broken the line. "Dammit Sam, take more care when you shower. And when I find you, you had better be wearing boxers. I ain't dragging your naked ass back here."
His nose pricked up at the smell of sulphur by the bed. Demons. A demon had almost certainly been here. He checked his watch, who knew how long Sam had been gone for. Dean ran his hand through his sticky up hair and climbed over Sam's messy bed and out the window. They probably wouldn't have wanted to drag Sam very far in fear of being seen. So they must have had a car. "Think Dean, what would you do if you were lugging him out the window?" Dean gasped, the Land-rover that had been parked two spaces down from the Impala. Feeling slightly smug about his 'moment of genius', he vaulted back through the window and fished out his laptop. He quickly closed the porn window and began hacking into the traffic cameras that he knew sat on the street corner at either and and were the same all the way down the main road. It took him a while and two cups of coffee before he managed to find the correct cameras. There was an image of the army green Land-rover driving Northwards but when he flicked to the picture at the next traffic camera it was gone. The car must have turned off at some point down the road. The loud ringing of his phone made him jump as the noise pierced the silent air. The display read "Dad"
"Finally!" Dean scrambled for the phone and answered, lying lengthways across two beds, "Dad!"
"Dean?" his fathers confused voice came through, "I thought I'd told you not to call unless it was an emergency."
"Yes sir. But it is. Sam. He's gone."
"Gone? Sam's in a huff gone or taken gone?"
"Taken. The place was a mess when I got back."
"I'll be there in two hours, maybe less."
The line went dead.
An hour and thirty minutes later John Winchester burst through the door.
"Came as fast as I could." he panted
"Wendigo dealt with?"
"Dead as a doornail. Now tell me everything." Dean quickly recounted to his dad what he had found and his current deductions, "Well we follow the road, find a turn off." They grabbed all the weapons they could carry, including a machete and a silver knife. They jumped into John's pick-up truck and headed off down the same road in under five minutes.
Dean kept watching for small roads as they drove, every now and then he glanced at his dad. He looked so calm, as if it didn't bother him at all, but Dean didn't question him. The moon hung mockingly in the sky among a sea of diamonds. John glanced at his son when he wasn't looking. It hurt him to see Dean so nervous and worried, it hurt even more to not know where Sam was or if he was even alive. If he had been taken by a demon who knew what damage it could be inflicting on him. John remained calm on the outside and kept driving. They passed the second traffic camera.
"Wait!" Dean exclaimed noticing the camera, "Pull over. We've missed it. He would have turned off before this camera."
"You're right." John observed and spun the truck around in a three point turn. They drove back slower this time, once again they almost missed the turn off. He slammed on the brakes and almost sent Dean flying into the dash, thankfully he was wearing his seatbelt.
"Whoa dad!"
"There." he indicated towards a tiny little road, only just big enough for a car to pass down, Tall trees and thick thorn bushes grew by the track. John slowly wheeled the car down the track, it was very rocky and they were shaken about in their seats as they rumbled down the road. Neither said anything until they reached a relatively small clearing, a carpet of decaying leaves and dead pine needles covered the ground. They both climbed out of the car and flicked their torches on. Small beams of light swept over the leaves as they searched for clues, anything that could lead to Sam. A small gust of wind around their ankles blew some leaves across the clearing, conveniently revealing a faint set of tyre tracks leading left down and even narrower track.
"The truck won't fit down there." John remarked, "Get the weapons, we go in on foot."
"Yes sir." Dean went into the car and picked up the two duffel bags that contained an array of weapons and ammo.
Keeping the torch beams ahead of them they cautiously crept through the woods, all of a sudden the tyre tracks stopped. Dean nodded to his father and they both scoured the surrounding area for any trace.
"Dean." John whispered from his side of the path. Dean ran over to him stumbling once, he covered it up as a jump and John pretended not to notice. It was clear that Dean was really worried for Sam, ever since the fire Dean had cared more for Sam than anything else in the world.
A rust bucket of a car lay in a ditch. The army green paint was fading and covered in scratches and rust that Dean hadn't noticed beforehand. The wing mirror was cracked and the windows were non existent, only their shattered remains lined the edges of the frame like a serrated glass knife. There were no plates to be seen.
"Did they steal this from a scrap yard of something?" Dean commented.
John shook his head in response, equally disgusted by the car. Like father like son, they shared a taste for cars. He crept round the side, holding his torch between his teeth and a gun with iron rounds in one hand. He and Dean prised open the trunk of the car and shone the torchlight into the small space.
"If Sammy was in here it would have been a hell of a tight fit." humour was the only way Dean could stop himself from having a breakdown there and then. Sam had been in the hands of monsters before, but not like this. He gasped as the torchlight slid over a patch of almost dry blood. Sam's. He ran back up onto the path and started searching for any sign that Sam had gone down that road and not into the forest, if he had it would be a lot harder to find him.
John knelt down a metre or so ahead of him, he inspected the ground. Leaves were all over the place covering any possible trail. The small breeze picked up slightly and whooshed through a bramble bush. John looked up at the bush and in the moonlight he noticed something hanging off one of the thorns. A small rag. "Dean, get over here."
"What is it?" he asked doing as he was told.
"You recognise this?" John asked holding up the small scrap of material.
Dean held it tentatively in his hand as if he was scared he would break the only trace of his brother. "Yeah..." he uttered in a voice barely above a whisper. It was a fragment of one of Sam's joggers. He turned the material over in his hand, he must have been getting ready to go to bed. He hadn't worn pyjamas since he was a kid, now he just flung on whatever was comfy and warm. There were still a few weeks before Sam had to go back to school. Perfect time to take him, no one other than Dean and whomever Dean chose to tell would know that Sam was gone. "They're from his pants." At least he now knew that Sam wasn't going to be stark naked when they found him, "So they must have gone this way." he indicated forwards.
John nodded and they began to follow the almost invisible trail, torches pointing ahead and guns at the ready. Something wasn't right, it seemed too easy. The car, the blood, the tyre tracks, the clothes. Hell, even the breeze seemed wrong. But he said nothing, he didn't care if it was a trap. He wasn't going to leave Sam in there, where ever 'there' was.
After about ten minutes of creeping through the woods they reached a wider gravel road, it headed towards a big chain link fence. John and Dean slowly crept up to it, sticking to the shadows.