tw: mild language
summary: Dean hops the fence into the sister camp to start his hunt.
word count: 2,058
In a fortunate turn of events, the Infirmary, where Crew was spending the rest of the evening, was towards the edge of the camp space which their program actually used.
According to the map he'd printed at a library back in Santa Fe before they left, he'd have to hike through boy's camp and then the Capture the Flag field if he wanted to stay on a trail for as long as he could and get to the border of this camp's property and its sister location's. However, with that map and a compass in hand, he felt confident in his abilities to cut through the woods… and slice the journey in half or better.
He and Cade went and collected the other boys from the cabin, who he was briefly introduced to in the case of those he hadn't yet been, and then they all went and put their things down in the cabin. Dean's first bunk choice of a lower bed right next to the door wasn't exactly a hot commodity, so he was able to easily secure his quick ticket out in the middle of the night.
The bunks were equipped with thin, worn out blankets and flat pillows, but as he tossed his duffle under his bunk and was ready to go while the other boys were actually taking time to set up their sleeping spaces, Dean realized he was the only one who hadn't brought along a sleeping bag.
Given their line of work, you would really think he'd own one, but he didn't, and now, once again, he was sticking out like a sore thumb.
Cade, supervising from the doorway, locked eyes with him, glanced at his bare bed, and nodded slightly, mouthing, We'll get you one, without having to be told.
Dean's only reply was his gaze dropping to the floor. Fantastic. This was going fantastic.
After a few more minutes of the others unrolling sleeping bags and getting clothes and flashlights and everything else situated for easy access, they all finally headed out towards that edge of the camp Dean had found the "I" near on his map.
He stuck around to get Cade's attention off of him and wait for more campers to show up, enough time for him to smoke the other boys in a game of pool, before he thought the room was full enough for him to slip away without anyone noticing.
It was also resembling the Lower D more and more as more campers filled it in, and it was no sad affair for him to leave it behind as, with a check that Cade's attention was indeed elsewhere, he made his escape out the back door.
He paused against the wall outside to heave a deep, shaky breath before digging the map and compass out of his backpack. Pointed in the correct direction, he set his sights on the woods he was about to hike through.
It would have been nice to have hiking shoes that weren't a pair of second-hand sneakers on their last thread of life, but he'd certainly done worse.
He checked his watch. It was almost 5:00. They were supposed to be ready to head back to the cabin at 8. He didn't think he should push that on his first night, but three hours should be plenty to get there, poke around, and get back. At this point, he was just trying to figure out what, exactly, he was dealing with–and whether it was a supernatural monster or just the human kind.
It took him almost twenty minutes to navigate through the woods and to the fence which separated the two camps. A quick duck between wires and he was left to consult his map and journal of case notes once more.
He was on the southwestern edge of the camp. The disappearance had happened from girl's camp, which, in a mirror image of Thunder Lake, was in the southeastern corner of the used area of the property. He didn't have far to go.
As the teen made it to the utilized section of the camp, he was greeted by a sight and mood a hundred times creepier than the woods he'd just hiked through alone. A space designed to be crowded with children and their counselors, full of chatter and yelling and giggling, left not only completely abandoned, but done so in a clearly-rushed fashion, wasn't one he ever would have chosen to see.
It was dark and eerie and thoroughly depressing, and made the faces of the missing girls from the article throb that much closer to the forefront of his mind.
He pushed away the anxious sickness that came with it with an effort, momentarily transferring his backpack to one shoulder so he could dig out his EMF reader.
Nothing so far.
He was coming into girl's camp now, evidenced by the sign proclaiming, Daring Damsels of the Dominion. The other girls from the missing ones' cabin had said they'd gone to the bathroom in the middle of the night and never returned, so he'd have to investigate whatever shower houses and outhouses existed to see which one it was and hopefully establish a basic route they would have taken.
His task got a lot easier as he came around a bend and saw one cabin surrounded by bright yellow police tape. That would be the one they'd been occupying, and he was willing to bet the bathroom they were assumed to have gone to would be marked in the same way.
He stopped to look around the cabin, but as he'd expected, there was nothing, not even an increased EMF reading. None of the other girls had heard a thing, so it was unlikely that whatever had happened, had happened too close to where they were all sleeping.
He didn't waste too much time following in the footsteps of authorities who had clearly had no idea where to even start and digging around the cabin. Over the next hill, he found what he was really looking for.
Sure enough, the near side of the shower house was taped off just as the cabin had been. And the closer he got to it, the more the EMF reading slowly went up.
Nothing crazy yet, but it was something…
On the concrete doorstep to what was marked as the camper half of the shower house, his device screeched with a sudden, intense influx of radiation.
Dean's pulse picked up as he swung the meter back over the spot and was met with the same result. Now he was getting somewhere.
The teen dropped to one knee to investigate the concrete under his feet. The thing would have had to leave some trace of itself behind to give him that strong of a reading.
In the shadows of the forest in the late afternoon, the concrete had appeared as usual from a standing position. But once he got closer, he could see that the dirt coating its grey surface wasn't brown, but a dark, greyish yellow.
He collected a bit of the chalky substance on one thumb and briefly held it to his nose.
Sulfur, easy.
He hadn't expected a demon, but the bastards were always an option.
Imagine the look on his dad's face if it turned out the hunt he'd passed off to chase Yellow-Eyes ended up being Yellow-Eyes himself.
The irony only stayed amusing for a moment before it sent a spike of sick anxiety through him.
If it was Yellow-Eyes, he was screwed.
And there was no reason to think it was. He didn't even know it was a demon. Sure, sulfur suggested it, but the was one, rather pathetic clue.
He straightened up to search for a more decisive one. The reading stayed intense, though not quite as much as in that particular spot, in a short path from the concrete pad to the bushes and trees which grew in a thick, natural fence up against one side of the simple brick building.
He pulled out his flashlight and shone it over the dirt, dried leaves, and twigs which made up the forest floor. He was rewarded by a thin, uneven dusting of the same yellowish substance he'd just identified.
The light also brought new depth to the ground he was looking at. That almost looked like a trail of some sort…
He transferred the beam to the forest proper, still low.
Between bushes and trees and over stumps and moss and everything else in the way, obviously stepped on by the people searching for the missing parties, that was a drag trail.
Now he was getting somewhere.
The early success brought him a welcome spike of adrenaline and excitement.
If he could just get this right, imagine the look on Dad's face…
He shoved the thought aside. John's level of pride would depend entirely on his own success and mood at the time, and he knew that. And that wasn't the point. This was. Saving people, hunting things.
Either way, the conceptual hunt was morphing into a real one. A drag trail dusted with sulfur was a monster hunter's playground.
He made a quick check of his surroundings before plunging into the forest, flashlight in one hand, EMF radar in the other. The trail stayed hot.
He followed it for a few minutes, heart pounding in his head in time with the whining read of the device he was using, until he came to a creek bed, the distant feed of the lake from the camp he was supposed to be attending based on its direction of flow.
It was shallow and narrow, but a quick step over it didn't find the continuation of his drag trail. So it had stopped at the creek?
The forest was too thick and the stream of water not straight enough to see where it led, but by logic, the monster had to have gone one direction or the other along it with whatever it was dragging.
Unless it had picked it up instead. But the EMF readings also dropped on this side of the creek.
Frowning, the boy checked his watch. It was past 7:00.
How had the afternoon slipped away so quickly?
He'd made progress to be sure, but he just wished he had something more tangible to work with in the time between now and when he could come back to continue his investigation.
He stepped back to the other side of the creek and trailed his flashlight through the darkness that was quickly engulfing the forest floor completely, more carefully than he had before. The same dusting of sulfur which had remained present the entire chase, but nothing else that he could see…
The tip of something thin and black, sticking out of the mud along the edge of the creek, caught his eye. Was that an antenna?
Quickly, he reached down and pulled gently, then harder as whatever it was turned out to be more stuck than he'd initially anticipated. Finally, wet dirt gave way, and the boy found himself holding a small, black device caked in more mud.
It had indeed been an antenna, and this was a phone of some sort.
A short battle of nail and mud later, enough of the thing's branding was visible for him to make it out.
Simon
Between that and the thing's build, it was an IBM. Blank greenish screen that would light with device commands rather than relying on buttons. Sammy was obsessed with tech like this, this model in particular. Called it touch screen, said it was ahead of its time. He'd gone on a full-on discourse about it during a long car ride after researching it on a library computer while Dean and their dad hunted.
He'd flip when Dean showed him this.
And hopefully, they could figure out how to get it enough of a charge to dig around on it for any sort of clues. Even if they could only confirm that it belonged to the missing counselor, that meant that she'd been here, and that meant he was on the right track.
With the phone tucked into pocket, he was almost excited to go back and connect with his techy little brother.
Stupid, chick-flick, church stuff aside, he was hunting, alone, and that felt good.