Family is Where the Heart is

Chapter 25

The Winchesters were at a bar, going over another job. A man had gone missing a few nights ago and a little boy said that he had been pulled under a car and never seen again. The boy also said he heard a whining growl. When the boy's mother stated he tell the Winchesters what he was watching on TV, they weren't sure what to believe.

"So, the local police have not ruled out foul play," Sam was saying, sitting at a table as he went through the research. "Apparently, there were signs of a struggle."

Dean was playing a friendly game of darts with Sarah. He looked back at Sam, "You know, they could be right. Could be just a kidnapping." Dean faced forward, towards the dart board, aiming a dart, "maybe this isn't our kind of gig," and threw it.

"Yeah, maybe not," agreed Sam. "Except for this. Dad marked the area, Dean. Possible hunting grounds for phantom attackers."

Dean walked over to look for himself. "Why would he even do that?" he asked.

"Well, he found a lot of folklore about a dark figure that comes out at night, grabs people, then vanishes. He found this, too," Sam turned a page in John's journal. "This county has more missing persons per capita than anywhere else in the state."

"That is weird." Dean walked back to finish his turn.

"Maybe it was some kind of dog," said Sarah. "Dogs have whining growls."

"There was no sign it could have been an animal attack, Sarah," Sam told her.

"Oh," she said. "Well then, I got nothing."

"Wait, don't phantom attackers usually snatch people from their bed?" Dean realized, looking over his left shoulder. "Jenkins was taken from a parking lot."

"Well, there are all kinds, you know, Springheeled Jacks, Phantom Gassers. They take people anywhere, any time."

Dean finished his turn and let Sarah take hers as Sam continued. "Look, I don't know this is our kind of gig either."

"Yeah, you're right," he said. "We should ask around more tomorrow."

Sarah finished her shots. They were pretty good for someone her age but Dean still one that game. Dean went over and pulled them off, giving three to Sarah.

"Right," Sam agreed.

Dean started the next game.

"I saw a motel about five miles back."

Dean looked back at his brother again. "Woah, woah. Easy. Let's have another round."

"We should get an early start," Sam told him.

"You really know how to have fun, don't you, grandma?"

"First of all, you have your daughter who is a minor in a bar with a bunch of bikers when she should be in bed, by now," he pointed out to his older brother. "Should I continue?"

Dean felt defeated, knowing Sam was right. "All right." He threw his last dart at the board and grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair. "I'll meet you outside. I need to take a leak. Need to use to use the restroom before we go, Sarah?"

Sarah tossed a dart at the board before looking up at her father. "Nope," she shook her head.

"Go with Sam, then. Okay?" he told her and walked away, towards the restrooms.

Sarah tossed the other two darts, one at a time at the board and followed her uncle out of the bar. The two of them walked through the parking lot as biker men came and went.

"I want a motorcycle when I'm older," Sarah stated, looking around at the motorcycles.

Sam looked down at his niece. "You want to be a biker chick?"

"Yeah," she replied, excited. "I can be a biker hunter or something. Cruising around, fighting ghosts and stuff from the back of it." Sarah made like she was riding on a motorcycle, making the noise with her mouth.

"Don't you want to go to college, become a doctor or something? Start your own family?"

She shrugged, "I hate shots and everything else sounds too plain."

Sam stared at her. "Too plain?"

"Yeah."

Sam looked away, sadly. He really did want his niece to do other things besides hunting. Joining the circus was better than this life. A weird feeling came over him and it felt like someone was there. Sam placed his father's journal on the trunk of the Impala and took out his flashlight from his jacket pocket, shining it around.

"What is it, Uncle Sam?" Sarah asked, quietly.

Sam put his finger to his mouth and kneeled onto the ground to look underneath. Sarah did, too, curious. They moved in closer until suddenly, a cat swiped at them, scaring the crap out of them both before it ran away.

The two of them broke into a laugh, together. "You got scared of a cat, Uncle Sammy," Sarah snickered.

They stood up. "So did you," he pointed out to her, laughing.

Sarah folded her arms across her chest. "Did not. It just surprised me, that's all."

"Oh sure," he grinned. Suddenly, Sam was yanked to the ground and was pulled under the Impala. Sarah tried to pull him back by his arm but whoever was on the other end was a lot stronger, and grabbed both of them, knocking them out.

Dean finally came out of the bar, himself and walked over to the Impala. However, Sam and Sarah were nowhere in sight with John's journal still where Sam left it. He looked in the car but it was empty. Dean frantically looked around the parking lot. He was alone.

Dean ran over to where some people were coming out of the bar. "Hey. Hey," he asked one biker couple. "You guys been outside, round here in, like the last hour or so?"

They shook their heads and continued walking.

Dean continued looking for his little brother and daughter, growing more and more worried. This could not be happening to him. Where were they? "Sam! Sarah!" He looked around some more. "Sarah! Sammy!" He walked around the parking lot, trying to spot them when he noticed a surveillance camera and walked out to the middle of the street to see if he could spot anything like a car or something. "Sam. Sarah," he said, quietly.

First thing, the next morning, Dean headed to the police station.

"So, what can I do for you, Officer Washington?" a policewoman asked him as she examined his fake badge.

"I'm working a missing persons," he told her.

She shrugged, "I didn't know the Jenkins case was being covered by the state police."

Dean shook his head. "Uh, no. No, this is someone else. Actually, it's my cousin and his niece. We, as in my cousin and I, were having a few last night at this bar down by the highway, and I haven't seen him since and his niece is gone, too."

"Does your cousin have a drinking problem?"

"Sam?" Dean scoffed. "Two beers and he's doing karaoke. He wasn't drunk. He was taken. They both were."

She looked at him, "Was his niece with you?"

"Yeah, but she wasn't drinking, herself. Unless you count root beer," he smirked.

"How did you sneak a minor into a bar?"

He shrugged, "They didn't seem to care all that much."

The policewoman nodded and walked back to her desk, "All right. What's their names?"

"Winchester," Dean replied. "Sam and Sarah Winchester."

"Like the rifle?" she asked, sitting down.

Dean sat next to her desk, "Like the rifle."

The policewoman typed in Sam's name into the box on the computer screen and both his and Dean's names popped up. "Samuel Winchester," she said, reading the screen. "So you know that his brother Dean Winchester died in St. Louis…and, uh, was suspected of murder?"

"Yeah, Dean," he chuckled to himself. "Kind of the black sheep of the family. Handsome, though."

The policewoman started typing again. "Well, Sam or his niece isn't showing up in any current field reports."

"Oh, I already have a lead. I saw a surveillance camera out by the highway."

"Uh-huh. County traffic cam?" she asked.

"Right, yeah. I'm thinking the camera picked up whatever took them." She stared at Dean. "Or whoever," he quickly added.

She breathed in through her nose. "Well, I have access to the traffic cam footage down at the County Works Department. But in the meantime, let's do this the right way." The policewoman stood up and walked back to receive a missing persons form, handing it to Dean who stood up.

Dean looked down at it. "Officer, look, uh…they're both family. I kind of look out for the kids. You gotta let me go with ya."

"I'm sorry, I can't do that," she told him.

Dean looked back down, "Well, tell me something." He looked up again. "Your county has its fair share of missing persons. Any of 'em come back?"

The policewoman didn't answer to that.

"Both Sam and Sarah are my responsibility," he continued, "and they're coming back. I'm bringing them back." That still didn't change the policewoman's mind and Dean ended up having to wait while she went to check the traffic cam footage.

Meanwhile, Sam woke up, gasping. He looked around and saw he was in a small cage. It was dark with minor light overhead. Sam sat up and noticed Sarah was lying next to him, still asleep. Or he hoped she was just asleep.

He got up onto his legs and shook her awake. "Sarah. Please wake up, Sarah." There was panic and worry apparent in his voice. Sarah stirred, moaning just a little. Sam blew a sigh of relief. "You okay, peanut?"

Sarah slowly pushed herself up onto her hands and knees to sit back on her legs. She looked around, trying to pierce through the darkness. "Where are we, Uncle Sam?" she asked, groggily.

Sam was looking around now, as well, "I don't know." He tried to stand up but was too tall for the cage and had to stand hunched over.

Sarah stood up, too but didn't have to hunch over. She went over to the bars and peered over at another cage. "Uncle Sam, I think someone's in there," she looked back at her uncle. "Maybe it's Mister Jenkins."

Sam walked over to stand beside her. He looked out, holding onto the bars. Over in another cage similar to the one they were in, was an older man lying on the ground, asleep. Sam moved to get a closer look.

"Uncle Sammy, are we gonna die?"

He looked back at his niece and saw a terrified look on her face. Sam turned his whole body to fully face her. "Look at me, Sarah," he tried sounding like his brother when Dean was assuring her. "Your dad is still out there. He'll find us. In the meantime, we have to be brave and do our part. Okay?"

She nodded at him and Sam dropped to one of his knees to pull her into a comforting hug. "I hope Dad finds us soon," she said from his right shoulder.

"Me, too, peanut," he said.

Dean was waiting on a park bench when the policewoman walked up. She handed him some black and white-printed pictures of the night before. "These traffic cams take an image every three seconds. It's part of the Amber Alert program. These images were all taken around the time that your cousins disappeared," she told him as Dean flipped through the pictures.

"Uh, this really isn't what I'm looking for," he said.

"Just wait. Next one."

Dean turned the page once more to a picture of an old trailer.

"This one was taken right after Sam and Sarah left the bar. Look at the back end of that thing."

Dean glanced up her.

"Now, look at the plates," she continued.

He shrugged, "The plates look new. It was probably stolen."

"So, whoever's driving that rust bucket must be involved."

A black van drove by, behind them making a horrible screeching sound. Almost like…a whining growl and Dean realized it.

Sam was busy, trying to bust him and his niece out, using his feet. It was no use though, the bars were hard metal. He dropped to the ground, worn out. Sarah caught him from behind so he wouldn't fall back.

"Don't you have your phone, Uncle Sam?" she asked.

Sam sat there, leaning on his left hand. "No, whatever grabbed us took it."

Sarah squeezed by him and sat in his lap, snuggling into his chest. "I'm really trying to be brave, honest."

He hugged her to him with one arm, placing his chin on top of her head. "I know you are."

Suddenly, they heard movement and groans coming from the other cage. Sam and Sarah looked up to see the man sitting up, slowly. "You're alive?" Sam asked.

He groaned again. "Huh?"

"You okay?"

"Does it look like I'm doing okay?" the man asked.

"Where are we?"

He shrugged, "I don't know. Country, I think. Smells like the country."

"Are you Mister Jenkins?" Sarah asked the man.

"Yeah," he replied.

Sam laughed to himself. "Wow. We were looking for ya."

"Oh, yeah? Well, no offence, but this is a piss-poor rescue."

"My dad's out there and he'll save us." Sarah hoped that saying that out loud would help keep her assurance up. She really did want to believe that her father will get there in time to save them.

"So he's not gonna find us," said Jenkins.

"No, he will," she argued with him. "My dad is the best in the whole wide world and strong and brave."

"Kid, we're in the middle of nowhere…waiting for them to come back and do God-knows-what to us."

"What are they?" Sam asked him, getting up onto his feet in a squatting position. "Have you seen them?"

"What are you talking about?" Jenkins asked him.

"What grabbed us," he said. "How do they look?"

Just then, the door opened.

"See for yourself."

Sam looked over as a couple hooded figures came into the room where the three prisoners were being held. Sarah grabbed onto her uncle's neck as they watched them unlock Jenkins' cage from a lockbox. One of the hooded figures walked over to his cage and set a plate of food inside. When the other one banged on Sam and Sarah's cage with a blunt instrument, Sam fell back. Sarah continued to cling to his neck with her face buried his neck, shaking from fright.

"I'll be damned," Sam told himself when the hooded figures left. "They're just people."

"Yeah," said Jenkins, eating, "what did you expect?"

"How often do they feed you?"

"Once a day. They use that over there to open the cage," he explained.

Sam looked over at the lockbox. "And that's the only time you see 'em?"

"So far but I'm waiting."

Sam pushed his niece off of him to move to the other side of the cage. "Waiting for what?"

"Ned Beatty time, man," Jenkins replied.

"Who's he?" asked Sarah, sitting on her legs.

"Never mind, peanut," Sam told her. "That's the least of our worries right now."

"What do you think they want then?" Jenkins asked Sam.

Sam reached up, through the bars for a metal pipe. "Depends on who they are."

"They're a bunch of psycho hillbilly rednecks, if ya ask me…looking for love in all the wrong places."

Sam was pulling on the metal pipe by now.

"What are you doing, Uncle Sam?" Sarah asked, watching him.

Sam did not answer. He was too focused on pulling down the pipe. Sarah crawled over to a far corner of the cage and sat down, flat on her bottom. She brought her knees up and hugged them to her. She shivered from the cold. They had taken her sweatshirt and Sam's jacket which kind of sucked to her considering that was the only one she had at all. Sarah didn't even own a jacket. It had always been the same black sweatshirt for two years now. It had started out a little big on her and now that it fit her right, some messed-up humans with a sick mind takes it.

Sarah felt a tear and quickly wiped it away. She couldn't cry. She had to stay strong, like a big girl. Hunters were brave. There was no room for tears. As Sarah thought about never seeing her father again, she couldn't help but let another tear slide down her right cheek.