Good Morning, SPN Family! I promised you blood and guts- and I'm delivering. This is a three part case story and probably the most gory I've ever written- you've been warned. This came out of a dream, a book, and a need to keep the story going (slight spoiler warning for 15x20).
Thank you to all of you who continue to read and review and encourage. You're a lifeline. Bella Winchester, it still keeps not letting me reply directly to you since it says you're signed in as a guest, but hang in there sweetheart. I'm praying from relief for you and your mom and all of you from Covid. Keep fighting, love.
Special thanks to Jenmm31, who has her hands full with life and still finds time to check in on me and beta these stories. Don't know what I did to deserve you Sammy.
A/N- in this story, Natalie is 20. Please see profile page for disclaimers.
All in the Family Part 1
Back at the trunk of the car, Natalie wiped her sweaty forehead with her sleeve. "Whew," she exhaled loudly, stretching her sore triceps. "Guess I can skip arm day tomorrow," she chuckled to her father.
Dean grinned proudly at her while wiping the blood off his machete. "Kid, you were a freaking machine back there. You got, what…four vamps?"
"Three," Natalie grumbled, wishing her count had been four, if only to make Dean more proud of her.
"Hey, three is a damn respectable number," Dean said, shaking the dripping rag onto the ground. "Not gonna lie, we were up against some pretty big odds in there. Had to be at least eight, nine vamps there. But you kept grinding and did more than your fair share. You take pride in that, you hear me?" he said, arching his brow at his daughter, who only shrugged in a self-deprecating response. Dean snorted an ironic laugh. "Figures. Most grown-ass hunters couldn't take on one vamp by themselves, and you're actually upset because you 'only' got three."
"Hey, I'm grown!" Natalie replied indignantly, choosing deliberately to engage in his crack about her size and not the other thing. Dean just arched an eyebrow at her, before coming over to stand right in front of her. The fact that her nose touched the center of his chest emphasized his point without him having to say a word. He looked down and gave her a shit-eating grin. She shot him a bitch face she clearly learned from Sam, damn him. "Well, it's your own damn fault that I'm short. Why didn't I get those genes from you?" Natalie retorted, trying to hang on to her righteously outraged look.
"Well, you clearly got my propensity for awesomeness. I guess there just wasn't enough space left for things like height," Dean quipped back to her. She playfully punched his stomach as she stepped back, laughing. Just then, Sam walked up to them, still cautiously scanning the area. "We clear?" Dean asked.
Sam nodded. "Yeah, I think we're good," he said. He turned his gaze to his niece. "You okay, Bug?"
Natalie nodded. "Yeah, I'm good. Other than my arm feeling like it's about to fall off."
Sam smirked at her and tousled her hair, earning him his own bitch face, before turning back to his brother. "Can't believe it was Jenny from all those years ago."
"I know. And what the hell was up with those creepy masks?" Dean said, slipping his now-clean machete into its sheath and reaching for Sam's to clean it. Handing his blade to Dean, he shrugged.
"I don't know. I think it was something ritualistic- I remember seeing something like it in Dad's journal. But I gotta tell you- I got a weird feeling about this place."
"Yeah, me too. Let's pack it in and go, kids," Dean said, hurrying to finish wiping the blade clean. Natalie carefully placed her sheathed machete in the trunk, along with Dean's and Sam's as her father handed them to her. Shutting the trunk, she slipped into Baby's backseat, and they all were off, leaving the creaky old barn in the distance.
A couple minutes later, Natalie felt her phone buzzing in her back pocket. Apparently, she missed some texts while she was slaying vampires. At the same time, Sam reached into his jacket pocket and extracted his own phone. "Hello?" he said, holding it up to his ear. A terrified babble came through on the other end, loud enough for both Dean and Natalie to hear. It surprised Natalie so much she fumbled and dropped her own phone. Cursing under her breath, she reached down towards the floorboards to get it.
"Whoa, whoa, hang on!" Sam yelled, trying to interrupt the voice still screaming into his ear. "Slow down, Mitch- hang on- wait, what?" The voice paused long enough to take a breath. Natalie watched as Dean's eyes darted frantically between the road and his little brother. Her own eyes drifted down to her screen.
"Holy shit," she muttered. She had eleven missed calls and fourteen text messages. What the hell? The hunt had lasted fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. Who the hell needed her this badly?
"Yeah, we can get there-what happened?" Sam asked, his eyebrows flying into his hairline as the babble continued. He looked over quickly at his brother. "It's Mitch Dakari," he muttered out the side of his mouth at Dean. Focusing back on his phone, Sam said, "Mitch, what's going on?"
"Dakari," Dean murmured, trying to place him. "Wait- the father and son team? The one who…." His eyes suddenly darted to his daughter in the backseat. Natalie's face had gone liquid paper white as she scrolled her phone.
"Dad," she said in a strangled voice. "I've got eleven missed calls from Tyler in the last twenty minutes." Her wide, scared eyes met his in the rearview mirror.
Dean bit back a curse. Tyler Dakari had been Natalie's very first date at the age of fifteen. Dean remembered all too well not liking the kid at all- little shit wanting to date HIS Baby Girl- and insisting on accompanying them to the coffee shop. The little, logical part of Dean's brain that he couldn't quite kill (no matter how much alcohol he consumed) reminded him that Natalie had actually suggested the date be chaperoned herself. He shoved that little part down until he could drink it away later.
Dean remembered keeping a gun trained on the boy for the whole of the date. But nothing ever came of it. The father and son duo moved on to another case, and occasionally called the Winchesters for backup or advice. He knew Natalie had snuck around a bit with the kid after she was sixteen when the two families met up, but she had always been careful to come home by curfew, so Dean couldn't TECHNICALLY kill her- or so Sam constantly reminded him. But this wasn't the time to relive those particular moments.
"It was…a what?" Sam said, abjectly confused. He listened for a minute. "Mitch, that…hang on…Mitch, those don't actually exist like-" Sam was interrupted by another furious burst through the phone. As he tried to get a word in edgewise, Natalie scrolled through her missed texts from Tyler.
Natalie we need help
Natalie pick up please
Emergency SOS
I'm begging you pick up
Natalie this is Tyler Dakari I need help now
As she continued through the increasingly panicked messages, her throat got tighter and tighter. "Dad, the Dakaris are in trouble," she said flatly, trying to keep a lid on her emotions.
"You got coordinates?" Dean asked immediately, hearing that Sam wasn't getting anywhere concrete with Mitch. She kept scrolling, biting her lip nervously as she did so.
"No, nothing," she growled, reaching the end. She noted that the last message Tyler sent was about ten minutes ago. She punched the call button, pressing the phone to her ear.
"Mitch, Mitch! Okay, I'm sorry, man…We'll figure out what it is. Just tell me where you're at, we're on the way…" Sam said, scrambling for their dad's journal and a pen. Meanwhile, Tyler's phone went straight to voicemail. Natalie's blood turned to ice at hearing his voice, knowing that he wasn't picking up- or couldn't. Sam scribbled down the name of the town. "We'll get there as soon as we can. Hold tight. Call me if you come up with something…new." Sam hung up the phone and immediately started typing in Google Maps.
"Where we going?" Dean asked, his steely eyes fixed on the road.
"Michigan."
"Already heading north. Let me know when you come up with a direct route."
"Uncle Sam, was Tyler with Mitch?" Natalie asked. Sam stared deliberately at his phone as he typed and didn't answer her. "Uncle Sam?" she asked a little more insistently. Sam sighed heavily, but didn't turn around.
"No, Bug," he answered gently. "Tyler went missing during a hunt. That's why Mitch was calling us."
Natalie slowly sat back, gripping her phone tightly. It was the fear of every family that hunted together. One day, one of them would go missing or God forbid, go down. The thought had given her nightmares more than once. She felt her face hardening into the steel mask she often saw her father wear when he needed to keep a lid on his feelings until the job was done. She tried to calm her racing heart as Sam continued speaking.
"They were tracking something. Mitch said they were closing in, when he and Tyler got separated by the thing they were hunting. He's combed the place and can't find him anywhere. No blood, no tracks, no trace. It's like he vanished."
"What were they hunting?"
"I don't know. And I don't think Mitch does either."
"Hang on," Dean said. "You telling me he went in not knowing what he was up against?" he asked incredulously. "C'mon. Dakari is smarter that that."
"He is. And he thought he knew what it was," Sam agreed. "But I think he got it wrong. He initially thought it was a rugaru. He was doing the typical hunter thing- found a case in the news, went to check it out. People torn up by what looked like a wild animal. Apparently it got to a whole family on a camping trip. Police only found parts of everyone." Dean exhaled heavily, shaking his head in anger at the monster that had torn a family apart. But Sam wasn't done. "But from what Mitch just described…I don't think that was it. A rugaru, I mean."
"What did he describe?"
"He…he used the word…zombie."
"Are you serious? Zombie?"
"That's what he said. But again- I think he's wrong."
"Why do you think that?"
"The way he described it…it was-" The silence stretched out as Sam tried to make sense of it in his mind.
"Not gettin' any younger here, Sam."
"I'm trying to think! He said it had gray skin, enhanced tracking senses, super strong…"
"Uncle Sam, that sounds like a zombie."
"Yeah- until he told me that it didn't heal at super speed. Mitch was able to dispatch a couple pretty easily with a single shot to the chest."
"He thought it was a zombie and shot it in the CHEST?"
"That's what I'm saying! And it didn't heal. It was enough to drop whatever it is." Sam arched his eyebrows at both his brother and his niece. "Zombies regenerate quickly. Chests wound would only maybe slow them down a little- not drop them. Mitch also said that…" Sam swallowed hard. "…that they all appeared to have…open wounds."
"Ugh. Like from the gunshot? Gross."
"It's actually grosser than that, Bug. Like…festering sores. He said that they smelled like rotting flesh. And the sores weren't just from the gunshots- they were like…all over their faces and arms."
"Hang on. You also said 'they'. Does that mean…"
"Yeah. Mitch said he and Tyler thought it was only one originally, but he swears there were at least five of them in the ambush. He said it smelled like…like a leprosy morgue in Texas heat."
"Sammy, if you make me yak in my car I swear…"
"Look, man, I'm just telling you what he said. Since when do real zombies have open sores? And tear people apart?"
"Could be some mutated branch zombie or something freaky like that. Didn't they show signs of decay?"
"This would be the first we're hearing of that kind of thing."
"Story's gotta start somewhere," Dean growled, refocusing on the road. "Alright gang. You good to burn the midnight oil?"
"Yeah, absolutely."
"Yes, sir."
"Good." Dean put his lead foot to the floor.
*SPN SPN SPN*
They arrived in Saginaw, Michigan around seven in the morning. Sam called Mitch once they hit the town limits, and the Winchesters made their way to the motel where the Dakaris had been staying. As Baby pulled into the parking lot, they saw a motel room door fling wide open. Mitch Dakari stumbled out into the parking lot, looking disheveled and exhausted, but at the same time terrified. His eyes locked on the black car instantly. Dean cranked his window down as Mitch ran towards them.
"Oh thank god you all are here," Mitch babbled, his eyes crazed and frightened. "We have to find him. Right now. We have to go. We have to find my boy."
"Hey- we will," Dean said in his determined tone. He gave Mitch a quick once-over. "Why don't you stay here, let us check out the place with fresh eyes?" he said firmly. Mitch was clearly not thinking straight, and loose cannons in the field led to dangerous situations.
Mitch violently shook his head. "No, no!" he said, almost yelling. "I have to find him! I have to find my son!"
"It's okay, Mitch, it's okay," Sam said in a soothing tone, leaning down so he could make eye contact with the man. "We'll find him." Suddenly, tears were running down Mitch's face. He looked at the brothers pleadingly.
"I have to find him," he said hollowly. "I can't live with myself if I don't go with you. Please. We need to go, now." Dean looked sideways at Sam quickly. Sam looked back at his brother and nodded once. Dean turned back to the distraught father.
"Alright. Then pull yourself together, okay? Can't rush in there all wild. Tyler needs you," he said in his gruff tone. Natalie could have kicked him for his lack of compassion, but apparently, it was what Mitch needed to hear. He squared his shoulders, stood up straight, and nodded. Running his hand under his nose, he took a deep breath.
"Let me get my twelve gauge. I'll be right back."
*SPN SPN SPN*
The ride to the abandoned warehouse where Tyler went missing was silent. Mitch had pulled himself together and was sitting next to Natalie in the backseat of the car. Natalie was still catching whiffs of liquor from him, so she knew he was still physically compromised, while stuffing down the emotional trauma. Not a good combination. She wracked her brain for something to say. Her guts felt like they had all turned themselves inside out with worry. She knew it probably didn't even come close to what Mitch was feeling, but she felt she still needed to reach out; to say something, to at least try. But the words wouldn't come.
At one point, she reached across the seat and took Mitch's calloused hand. He had been staring out the window, but he turned to look at her as if he'd forgotten she was there. She gave a weak squeeze and a smile, but Mitch just stared at her. She saw his bloodshot eyes fill with tears. Inwardly, she cursed herself- obviously she brought up memories of Tyler, how had she not thought of that?- but before she could pull away, he squeezed her hand back bracingly. He let go with a kind pat, letting her know he appreciated it but couldn't speak either. They both stared out their respective windows for the rest of the trip.
Despite the fact that it was eight in the morning, they didn't see another car for the last five miles before reaching the place. But the smell hit them before the building was even in sight. "It's worse. It's worse than before," Mitch commented hollowly while the three Winchesters tried not to gag.
"Then that means there's more of 'em," Dean said stoically. He pulled the car close to the tracks that were there from the Dakaris' vehicle the night before. He put Baby in park, thinking hard. His wheels were turning as he game planned. He didn't want to saddle Sam with an unfocused, slightly drunk hunter, but there was no way he was letting Natalie out of his sight- not when another hunter's kid was missing. For all he knew, kids were the target. He wasn't about to hand these fucking monsters the most precious thing in his life even if she technically wasn't a kid anymore. She was HIS kid and that was all that mattered.
"Alright gang, here's the plan," he said, turning around so he could keep all three in his vision. "Mitch, take Sammy with you. Keep to the same path you stayed on last night, alright? Retrace your steps, see if you can find any clues as to where Tyler might be. Stay sharp." Dean looked over at Sam once, his eyes asking a question. Sam nodded back, his game face on. He was good with this plan, and he knew to keep one eye on the ground and one eye on Mitch. Dean nodded subtly back before locking eyes with Mitch.
"Which way did you two go first last night?" he asked.
Mitch pointed. "We were following tracks down that side of the building. There's a loading dock door that we jimmied open, that's how we got in."
Dean nodded in acknowledgement. "Fine. The kid and I will take the west side, check the perimeter, and meet you inside. Everyone, grab your gear from the trunk, let's move out."
Natalie exited the car and was immediately assaulted by the stench in the air. It was like baby vomit left in a vat of toxic waste, baked on the equator. She swallowed the bile threatening to make an appearance and stomped her way determinedly to the trunk. She pulled out her pearl handled .45, checking to make sure it was fully loaded. Mitch saw it and gave a faint grin.
"Same gun as your old man, huh?" he asked. Natalie nodded back with a smile.
"Nothing but the best for me and my dad," she said back. When she saw Mitch's smile slip a bit, she could have kicked herself, but she reached out and took the older man's hand again. "Mr. Dakari, we'll find him. We won't rest until we find him. You know that, right?"
A single tear slipped down Mitch's cheek. He gently brought his hand to her face. "I know, honey, I know," he whispered. "You take care of yourself, you hear me?"
"Yes, sir," Natalie replied, keeping the lump in her throat down where it belonged. Mitch nodded once, then moved to meet Sam. Sam looked at the other two.
"Be safe, we'll see you inside, alright?" he asked, addressing them both, but looking at Natalie.
"See you inside," she confirmed back with a determined nod. Sam's smile crept onto his face briefly before he and Mitch began following the path from last night. Natalie watched them disappear around the right side of the building as Dean closed the trunk.
"Alright, kid, you good to go?" he asked, eyeing her carefully. Squaring her shoulders, she turned around and looked Dean dead in the eye.
"Yes, sir," she said, matching his no-nonsense tone. "Let's find these sons of bitches and bring that fellow hunter home."
Even though he kept it inside, Dean's heart nearly burst with pride at hearing her determination and dedication. "That's my girl," he said. "Stay on my six and keep your eyes open."
"Yes, sir."
"Let's go."
Father and daughter moved around to the left side of the building, guns at the ready. Natalie suppressed her gag reflex as they got closer and the smell got stronger, but she mentally pushed her disgust to the side and examined every single thing her eyes could take in for clues. They reached the corner of the building, and Dean gave her the silent hand signal to get against the wall. She obeyed, flattening herself next to him, and followed his silent lead in whipping around the corner, guns drawn. There was nothing except some large, overturned, cardboard boxes that looked like they'd been haphazardly thrown from the windows of the second floor or something.
Dean gritted his teeth and silently swore in his head. The boxes were creating perfect little hiding places for a creature or two. He moved steadily and as quietly as he could, making sure that Natalie was always behind him- just in case. Not that he didn't trust her; he just had a bad feeling ever since Ohio. His own personal Spidey sense. He'd been a hunter long enough to trust that feeling at all costs.
As they got closer to the warehouse, the boxes began increasing in numbers. When they came upon their first dead monster, sprawled out face up on the brown and wind-burned grass., Dean thrust his hand backwards automatically to protect his daughter.
Sam had been right. This was no zombie.
The greyish, mottled skin looked like it had been an afterthought on the bone structure. It was lumpy and bloated in places that didn't make sense with a human skeleton. Of course, the thing might not have a fully human skeleton, but it was definitely modeled after one. The head, two arms, two legs, torso, ears, nose, lips, eyes were all the same. But the open sores both Sam and Mitch had mentioned were very, very different. Even though the creature was obviously dead, the gaping holes on its face, arms and legs had wept a foul concoction that had dried into congealed pus. Natalie forced herself to continue examining the creature for clues, but desperately looked for anything other than the skin to focus on.
The creature appeared to wear torn, rag-like clothing very similar to what one typically sees on a zombie, but there had been obvious, if unsuccessful, attempts to patch some of the worst rents. That made her raise an eyebrow. But before she could think too deeply about the implications of that, Dean whipped his head up. Instantly on alert too, she followed his lead, taking careful steps around the dead beast.
Within another twenty feet they found another dead monster. Same grey skin, same stink. This one appeared to have his skull smashed in. The flies were buzzing around, so they steered clear to avoid disturbing them and raising the alarm that something was moving in the area.
Something caught Natalie's eye, and she lightly tapped Dean on the back once to alert him. She turned to her left, creeping up to the pile of rain-soaked boxes that had obviously been out here a while. The small, white object was mostly hidden behind the makeshift hill, so she stepped around the corner for a closer look. What she saw brought her to a complete standstill.
There were two dead creatures, lying behind the boxes, with claw marks running from their empty eye sockets and down their dead faces. The small white thing Natalie had seen was Tyler's hand. It was outstretched and open. Her horrified eyes followed his arm to his face. His glazed-over, dead eyes were wide open, staring at the sky. He laid where he had fallen on the grass.
The top half of him, anyway.
