When Dean had first learned about the island, it was nothing more than a pinned point on a map Sam had on his office wall. That was one part of a space filled with newspaper clippings, several shipping manifestos, random missing person reports, and a half-dozen note cards with company names scribbled on them. Dean just couldn't make heads-or-tails of any of it — how was an island off the coast of Alaska connected to Russian vampire nest disappearances and a company called SparkCo Natural Resources anyway? — and he didn't have a chance to snoop and figure it out either. Sam had returned to his office then, sounding like a squeaky 13-year-old again when he snapped, "This is private, Dean!" and shoved him out the door.
That memory resurfaced not long after Dean had realized it was Dick Roman who'd taken Sam. With nothing else to go on — all of Sam's notes, maps and research Dean knew existed (he had seen them!) had disappeared just like his brother — he had started digging into it. If some random island held clues, he had been determined to track them down.
Little did he know how deep that rabbit hole went.
Dean had never imagined being on the island, however. Knowing its history and memorizing its maps certainly hadn't prepared him for the rough terrain, the heavy vegetation, or the biting cold. The island's forests were old: tall, thick cedar and pine trees with branches weighed down by snow, roots hidden under a sea of ferns; thickets and bushes filling the space between trees; logs and large moss-covered rocks littering the ground. If there had been any trails to follow, they were now lost; any landmarks were covered in a fog so thick that Dean could barely see more than twenty feet in front of him at times.
It was eerily quiet too, something he noticed whenever he paused to rest his knee, or checked his watch's compass for due south toward the mountain. Even the crunch of snow and pine needles under his feet was lost in the overwhelming silence. If it wasn't for the sound of his own ragged breathing, Dean would have thought he had gone deaf.
It was unsettling, a feeling that wasn't welcome when he was already nervous about setting off another trap, or running into Dick or his demons. He wondered if it was just him, or if this was how Sam, and even Castiel, had felt about the island too. Not that Dean could really imagine what they, or any of the abducted people, had gone through. Being snatched from family and home, stuffed into a cargo crate, shipped halfway across the world, locked away in a prison run by demons — that was like a nightmare Dean never wanted to have.
But to then be let go onto this island… It must have been like entering another world. It had that kind of feel to it all on its own, and maybe it was. A psychopath's world, Dean thought sarcastically as he limped up a hill.
How that world worked though, he was still trying to figure out.
Dick ran a global empire of Fortune 500 companies, so Dean figured he wasn't at the island all that often to indulge in his serial killer ways. People were still brought here even when he wasn't around however (based off everything he knew, Dean figured they came in every few months), but then what? They were kept in the prison the demons had called the "holding facility" for some time but, as one of the demons had told him, they were released eventually. If Dick was absent, and if Castiel was any indication, would they just live on the island?
No, Dean realized. A lot of people would have died long before Dick got around to hunting them. Starvation, dehydration, exposure, injuries, and illness were very real killers, and for anyone who didn't have a lick of survival skills, they probably didn't have much of a chance. Still, it didn't make sense. While Dean really didn't want to question the logic of a mass murderer, why did Dick go through all the trouble of abducting people to hunt if he was just going to let most of them die anyway?
"Son of a bitch," Dean muttered under his breath then, pausing in his tracks. That was the point, wasn't it? Dick had told him that he only hunted the best, that he wanted the challenge that came from it. Dean had seen what remained of the victims, and that had been at least three hundred people. Those had to be the ones that were strong enough to survive on the island… but out of those three hundred, how many hadn't survived?
That thought made his stomach drop, the implications of it almost too much. And with that thought came other awful ones.
Had Sammy been one of those three hundred? Or had he been one of those who weren't strong enough…?
No, no. Dean shook his head, shoving those thoughts away. Sam is alive, he berated himself as he started walking again, angry at his own doubt and fears. Sam was alive, and his brother was the one who had effectively put a stop to this place. Who knew how many more people would have lived and died here if Sam hadn't learned about this place. And there was something Dean couldn't wrap his mind around! How had no one had figured out what was happening here besides his brother?
He understood not connecting random disappearances with a trafficking ring, but by the time they got to the little town off the island's coast? Why had no one there had never reported anything suspicious, like how demons were the ones picking up shipments and then taking them out to an island that was supposedly uninhabited? Not that every town didn't have their resident pack of demons, but when they were doing something out of the norm, you were supposed to report them.
That thought brought up something else Dean couldn't figure out: If people lived on this island, how come no one had ever escaped? He had already came up with at least one way that it could be done, simply by going out the same way he had come in. The demons docked their boat on in a small harbor of the secondary island right off the coast, and since they regularly went to the mainland to pick up supplies or shipments, Dean would have taken advantage of that just like he had when he had came to the island.
All someone had to do was sneak onto the other island, and hide on that boat… Unless the demons expected that, and checked for it.
Dean grunted in annoyance. Okay, so maybe there were holes in that plan, but there had to be a way off the island somehow: smoke signals, message in a bottle, building a canoe, something. And what about Castiel? How come he hadn't escaped? If he couldn't slaughter his way to the boat, couldn't the angel have just flown away?
Unless the demons expected that too, and that was a chilling thought.
What if there is no way to escape? Dean wondered then, remembering how Castiel had reacted to what he had said.
I can save you, Dean had told him.
Those must have been words the angel had wanted to hear for more than two years.
That was an awful thought, even worse than seeing Castiel bruised and battered. And it just escalated from there.
How many people had lived here? Dean wondered, the chill going down his spine only growing colder. How many people had died here? There was no way of really knowing, but the sheer scope and size of Dick's operation was ballooning to epic proportions the more information he gathered. Hundreds of people? Dick had owned this island since the '80s, though. Thousands of people?
And for those that there were strong enough to survive, it would have had to be hell. A constant struggle to find food, water, and shelter, all before they had to avoid the guy shooting at them. If they had no hope of escape…
Dean cursed again, running a hand down his face and then shaking his head again. All those people … At some point, all the people must have realized there was no escape, no hope of rescue. And that feeling, that utterly helpless, hopeless feeling — Dean knew what it was like: remembered it from Colt's Gate; when Sam had disappeared. No deserved that feeling, not his brother, and certainly not a hero like Castiel. It was just as deadly as a murderer with a gun, but Dean wasn't sure which was worse death.
Well, as long as they didn't know what Dick did with their bodies. Dean couldn't think of anything that was gut-wrenchingly and demoralizing — and he didn't want to think about it either if he could help it. Not if he wanted to remain hopeful himself.
There was some things best left to his nightmares anyway, and this island was promising to give him plenty of those already.
Hours passed. The fog faded enough to reveal gray sky, the sun a dull, white circle behind the cloud cover. The ground grew steadily steeper the further Dean went, and it began to take its toll after a while. His knee ached, and blisters were forming on feet no longer used to marching on patrols. He was soaked in sweat too, a cold wind from the north making him shiver violently whenever it caught on his damp clothing. His mouth had gone dry about an hour in, he had a pounding headache, and his stomach grumbled away, reminding him that he hadn't eaten anything since that mooseburger a day before.
Still, there were some positives. For one, he hadn't seen hair or hide of Dick and his demons. He was making good time too, even with his bad knee, and he had started to remember stuff Bobby had taught Sam and him when they were kids.
Bobby had wanted them to know how to hunt, fish and set up camp, but also be able figure out who lived where in any given place. "That way, you won't accidentally walk right into a vampire nest or werewolf den," he had joked at the time, though the chances of that were pretty slim even back then — most werewolves or vampires lived in houses of their own now, unlike when Bobby was a kid.
On the island, however, Dean wondered if people would fall back on their old ways to help them survive. For once, all that stuff Bobby had taught him would come in handy.
Dean went over what he knew: Werewolves — who had never really lost their instincts — were territorial, and transformed or not, they would leave claw marks on some sort of surface to show what was theirs. In a forest like this, that would be trees, somewhere near an open field or a water source. They often lived within range of humans or vampires, which, as long as the werewolves stayed away from the nest, the vampires never seemed to mind.
That wasn't the case with humans. While humans and vampires more or less got along nowadays, a human going into a vampire's territory was just pushing their luck. Dean kind of couldn't blame the vamps — back in the day, any human in their territory was either there on accident, or was a Hunter (and it was usually the latter more than the former). Still, the Hunter program had died out more than fifty years ago, and humans had been doing their best to make up for their past mistakes. Dean wished the vampires would let bygones be bygones.
That was a long time coming, and until then it was just best to avoid vampires if you could help it. On this island however, it would actually be good to break that rule, if there were vampires here. Dean wasn't sure where a nest would be exactly, but vampires would want somewhere dark, downwind, and out-of-sight. Possibly a cave, or maybe a dense thicket of trees, near wherever a werewolf lived if there were any on the island. Dean would know when he found it either way, when he got close enough and caught a whiff of that metallic scent that all vampires had. It smelled like blood, which was no surprise when that was what they ate.
Dean kept those clues in mind as he hiked along. He didn't know if there were other people on the island — in hindsight, he probably should have asked Castiel (but, to be fair, he did have other things on his mind) — and when his priority was finding Sam, he wasn't going to actively seek them out. If he saw signs of them however, he wanted to make a mental note for later search-and-rescue teams. What Bobby had taught him wasn't common knowledge anymore, and Dean knew the process would go faster if he could provide rescuers with that info.
Not that he was seeing any evidence of other people, but Dean wasn't surprised about that since he was in an open forest. (Someone as big as a werewolf or vampire wouldn't be able to hide well in a forest.) As he went further along however, the lack of signs began to bother him, though he wasn't sure why at first. He didn't expect to see anyone or anything, and he wasn't.
So why did that feel so wrong?
He was focused so hard on figuring out what was missing that the sound of trickling water caught him by surprise. It was the first noise he had heard in hours, and all he could do was stare in the direction it was coming from before the sound properly registered in his brain.
Water, his mind bellowed then, and Dean forgot everything else as he followed the sound to its source, hobbling through a thicket of leafless trees and over a half-frozen log. His mouth seemed to grow dryer and dryer with every step he took, and it was positively raw by the time he found the small pool. His feet sank in the mud and dead leaves circling the pond, making him stumble a bit as he made his way to the water.
Dean couldn't bend his knee well, so he got as close as he could to the stream that fed the small pond. He cupped his hands under it, hissing at the cold; it was a small discomfort however, when the water pooled in his hands looked as inviting as a bottle of brandy. He was probably going to drink as much of it too. "Please don't make me sick," he pleaded to the water, before bringing his hands to his lips.
It was the best damn water he ever had, Dean drinking until his sides ached along with his knee. Totally worth it, he decided when it helped ease his headache, his body relaxing in a way it hadn't since he stepped foot on the island. It made him want to sit down for a bit and rest, his feet sliding in the mud again as he went to sit on a nearby rock.
As he made a mental note to clean up the footprints before he left, that was when it hit him why the lack of signs in the forest were so wrong.
Footprints.
There were no footprints.
It was more that that, too. Dean did a quick survey of the trees and foliage around him, which confirmed his suspicions: There were no broken tree branches, half-eaten shrubs, dug-up roots, burrows, droppings, pawprints… Nothing that would be typical in a forest like this. He hadn't been seeing anything like it at all, and he wasn't seeing anything here, at a watering hole that would have the sure-fire place to find all those things.
Dean's eyes slowly lifted back up to the forest as he was confronted with a very disturbing thought.
Where were all the animals?
There had to be some: Rabbits, foxes, raccoons, beavers, squirrels, lizards, frogs, birds, something. Dean hadn't been hunting in years, but he didn't think he was that out of practice to miss the obvious signs. Except he wasn't seeing any, and now that he thought about it, he hadn't heard any animals either — not a chrip, chitter or ribbet, or the sounds of something running or flying for cover. But that was impossible: While he didn't know if the island was large enough to support bigger animals, there had to be the smaller ones. Even Dick and the demons had said there were animals on the island, so where were they?
Dean tensed then. They had said there were animals, but had they meant animal animals or...
He felt another chill go down his spine. And, as much as he didn't want to, he found himself thinking back to early that morning, to when he had first arrived. Right when he snuck off the boat, avoiding the demons (though he hadn't known that was what they were at the time) unloading supplies as he had made his way up the docks to the lodge that he had known belonged to Dick Roman.
It had been so easy to infiltrate the island; even easier to get into the lodge. Dean had moved unnoticed passing several buildings that on a first glance through their windows seemed to contain barrack style furnishings. The lodge had been right after that, the back door left wide open to receive the shipments. Dean had slipped right in without a sound, making his way past the kitchens, where a chef was working with a large slab of meat and what smelled like garlic sauce, and then into the main part of the lodge. Dean had slid his gun out from the back of his waistband, holding it loosely in his hand as he began his search.
The lodge had been massive, Dean passing a lounge, the dining room, a ballroom. Up a set of stairs were the bedrooms, Dean carefully opening each door to peer inside. They were mostly empty, large beds set up so they faced the view of the ocean or island through large bay windows. None contained Dick or a computer he could hack into however, so Dean had moved on.
He checked a few more rooms before he came to set of double doors that opened up to a large office. There had been nothing much to it at first glance: bay windows looking out island; a large mahogany desk perpendicular to a wall with a television on it; sofa chairs facing a fireplace where embers glowed red.
The computer monitor on the desk had drawn Dean's attention, and he closed the door quietly behind him. As he had headed over to the desk, the odd shapes behind the gleam of the glass shelves caught his eye. Curious, he had retrieved a small flashlight from his jacket, clicking it on and lifting it up.
What he had seen would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life.
