Gillette Wyoming was as cold and miserable as he remembered.
The heater was full blast, the legos he'd crammed into the vents years ago rattled steadily. The corners of his mouth tugged, Dad had complained about the noise for weeks and weeks, but after so many years the sound was just another heartbeat of Baby. It used to lull him to sleep on long drives, curled into the passenger seat, the Beatles, humming softly through the speakers. Back when Dad drove and things were simple.
Those thoughts faded as he pulled Baby off the main road into a little wooded clearing, barely graveled and not the best for worn tires. It looked like a mangled camp/truck stop. A weathered picnic table stood off to the side, a dilapidated grill and overflowing trash can beside it. Grooves had worn themselves off to the side into a little makeshift parking spot, the earth worn from whoever needed a pit stop before them. The shabby little alcove was just what a smart Hunter would look for, if they needed to lay low but still catch some z's. He'd slept in a few, woke up with an ache in his spine but hadn't been shived in the night like he might've at a truck stop.
Caleb sat at the picnic table, he waved a hand and nodded as Dean pulled in and parked Baby as easy as he could. His eyes darted to Sam slumped over against his door, the heavy wool blanket they kept in the trunk was now draped haphazardly across his lanky frame. He isn't sure when Sam had slept last, his little brother was a sneaky little bastard.
That and he couldn't forget the way his little brother's hands had shook holding those files, they way his eyes darted back and forth between whatever he was seeing and himself. Dean hadn't looked yet, didn't have time between the unexpected reunion and then the drive. The tensions were already high without cementing his freaky science clones into his mind. For now he could shove it away and pretend this was just another, slightly stranger than usual job. That didn't involve tiny monster children with his face.
He steps out of the car, the door whines and and rocks the car when it shuts, but if anything Sam only makes a face, twisting deeper into his blanket.
Caleb meets him halfway, a hand held out. Dean hasn't seen him in year, since his and dad's last job in Michigan, the spirit of a pissed off janitor in a hockey rink.
"Been a while huh pal."
"Too long."
His face is lit up in a grin, Caleb was a hunter who hadn't managed to get all dark and cynical yet, not like Dad, not like what Sam was doing his best impression of lately. Caleb was like him, hunting was handed down from his father, his grandfather before that. He can't be sure why, he thinks it started one night when a great uncle lost a bet to a vampire and slashed the wrong man's tires. Better than a mother on the ceiling for sure.
"Where's 'yer Dad?"
"Figured he'd hit up the locals, see what the town nearby thinks of this little VA squat," He shoved his hands in his pockets, the wind on the road, and the shade from the forest makes this place bitter and cold as hell.
"Dad said you thought this Manticore place had eyes on your motel?"
"Yeah, you'd think me living outta one room would be a red flag for a job interview but honestly I'm thinking these people prefer vagrants, the other guy I'm working with is fresh out of jail and living in a rented basement."
"Yeah well Dad's 'lookin on scoring us a place to hunker down, too damn cold to sleep out here."
"That's for sure, almost froze my balls off last night, and the damn coyotes wouldn't stop yowling."
Dean winces.
"So what do you have to show me so far."
Caleb nods his head toward the picnic table, his journal, amongst other sorts of paper and folders displayed randomly, small rocks keeping the corners held down and safe from the breeze.
"Last Thursday I finished my job, a salt and burn no big deal. But I've been working my ass off the last few months so I figured I'd play civilian for a bit, answered an add in the paper for a janitors job, easy pocket change ya know?"
"I know," he didn't actually, he never really took breaks, last time he did was for Cassie. That worked out pretty crappy, people like him just ain't built for it.
"So I use some paperwork Singer scrounged up for me, and I get called in, but I'm stopped at the door. The interview sure was a little intense for mopping floors and cleaning windows, they 'was asking me all kinds of questions, blood type, family history, mental health and shit. I was gonna book it but, man, that place Dean, chilled me to bone."
Calebs face is deathly serious, pale as a ghost, his nose and cheeks scraped red from the wind.
"I stay okay, and I'm just gonna check it out right? But damn, Dean, I swear I've never seen shit like this. I started two days later, after they made me sign, like a dozen wavers, this place is locked down like it's the White House.
"I get inside right, and man, hospital my ass. Grey walls, grey floors, bars on the windows, bolts on the doors and barbed wire fences ten feet high, buzzing with electricity."
It sounded to Dean like a prison. Manticore obviously wasn't playing around with whatever they were 'cookin.
"Damn."
"That's to keep in these little kids. Dressed like tiny soilders, heads buzzed, little girls too? They all got this blank look on their faces, makes me sick. They walk in straight lines a dozen each, back and forth marching up and down. No kids stuff, no toys or parents, sure as hell ain't no damn playground inside those fences."
"And you're telling me one of these kids, is me? My clone?"
"Another guy inside, he was 'training me'. Said one of the little guys couple weeks ago was spazzing, full on having a seizure in bed. Sometimes they disappear at night, taken down the basement. Says it happens all the time apparently but this one is tiny one of the youngest on his team or whatever. Gave him a picture of the Virgin to calm him down."
It gets colder every second this story goes on, and Dean feels sick. His stomach is twisting uncomfortably, that knot that's been forming since Dad showed up is getting tighter.
"He says one of the older kids took it, got caught with it on the roof screaming his head off. They're locking down, trying to figure out where he got it. He refused to fess up. They took him down to the basement, like the others, and my guy ain't seen him since."
"Think he's dead?"
To think one of the kids with his face could already be dead doesn't sit right. Without even knowing what the hell he was, what he was like. If they were monsters like the file was portraying, like Dad has his mind set on. Hell in Dad's mind practically anything unnatural was a threat, and the world was better off without it, kid or not.
"I took a dip into one of the offices, took me forever to find it, had to go back and loop some camera footage during a shift change, but I found 'em. X-5 493."
He pulls over a beige Manila folder, flipped through color coded clumps of files, until he lands on a series of photos and heart rhythm charts. The photos are of a young boy, with glassy eyes clouded over staring into nothing. Grey skin stretched too tight over his bones. The blood vessels in one eye are busted and filled with bright cherry red, the skin across his nose and under his eye is nearly black. Purple and streaked with inflamed veins.
He looks like death warmed over. He looks intimately familiar, yet unsettlingly strange, like staring into a warped mirror in a funhouse, except maybe 20 years younger.
"What the hell..."
"He's still down there in the basement I guess, I don't have clearance for that, but my buddy does. He's feeling pretty guilty, said he'd help out, he's worked there for a few months and he's seen some shit."
Dean wonders how any one can work in a place like this one and not lose their minds and burn it down.
"So we get in, grab this kid and the other and book it?"
"That's the plan."
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There were a list of employees amongst the files Caleb lent him, Hannah Sukova was listed as a dietitian. She created formulas and a menu that sustain their 'patients', they're ever changing and fluctuating, John figures Manticore might be cooking up more than he thought considering the wide array of meal plans they hosted. None of them considerably appetizing. At least in Vietnam he'd never had to eat meal worms and eggshell supplements.
She'd faced a string of disciplinary measures for reasons unknown, pay cuts, suspensions.
He hopes whatever she did would sway her in his favor, if not this could get back to Manticore and their cover would be blown.
The facility itself wasn't that large. With only a dozen or so employees at a time, most of them teachers, doctors, dietitians.. ect.
If worse came to worse John had no doubts he and the boys, along with Caleb could handle it. Especially with other Hunters on speed dial. Unless they decided to sick their little science freaks after them, and then John isn't so sure. But he assumes the things aren't invincible, and without any magic he guesses good ole fashioned lead will do.
Not that he's itching to shoot what looks like a child in the face, but the sooner this is over with the better. If worst comes to worst and these things are as evil as their creators.
He shakes the thought from his mind, the shit storm brewing was going to drive him insane. All he wanted was to finish this and get back on the trail of the Demon. That was the only thing in his life it seemed that wasn't confusing.
He made a left turn through a gate of shrubs held up by an iron fence, past a fancy looking welcome to the neighborhood sign. Wellsgrove, painted in thick bold lettering.
Hanna Sukova also lived closest to the condemned two story he'd found a few miles downtown. Her street was just personal enough to not be a suburb, but reeked of a home owners association. Painted fences, mowed lawns, straight shutters. Images of his own home flash behind his eyelids.
Her house blended into the background, it was distinctly a home built in mind for a family, but Hanna Sukova had no living relatives, no dependents, not even a cat. It lacked any depth or emotion like most family homes. No flowers, no little signs or garden knomes like her neighbors.
He stepped out into the crisp daylight and beat his coat down, making his way up the perfectly manicured lawn to the apple red door. The doorbell chirped, he rang it twice and waited. Listening to the shuffling behind the wood getting closer, before the pause. He could almost feel her eyes on him through the peephole.
Then it opened, and the women on the other side looked so achingly tired John had to grit his teeth to keep from raising a brow.Her eyes were circled with purple and her hair was frizzed. She wore a blue bath coat wrapped and tied haphazardly around her waist and held shut at her chest. She wasn't expecting company that was for sure.
"Hello?" Her voice was unused.
"My name is Daniel Mower, department of family and children's services, may I speak with you a moment?"
"I don't have any children?" Her brows draw together. She turns sideways, angling her body away trying to retreat further into the house, shrouded in darkness behind her. Not a light on as far as he could see, and the curtains out front were drawn tight despite the mild sun which was rare this time of year.
"It's not that ma'am, I was called in to investigate reports of small children wandering the woods alone, looking a little worse for wear. They all came from around the Gillette Veterans Hospital, where you work?"
This wasn't a lie but the reports were old, filed three years ago and then abruptly dropped without another word. But there had been several claims, all anonymous. But one was made from a corner store pay phone, just two streets over. All things considering Hanna Sukova was lucky to be alive. John couldn't imagine a place like Manticore keeping a loose thread like that?
"Im sorry I don't know anything about that, there aren't any children at our hospital, I don't understand-?" She goes to pull away, before John can step closer. In a split moment he juts out a hand against the door, stopping it from swinging shot. Hanna's face twists from shock to fear to anger in a matter of moments, and John can feel his shot slipping. Undoubtedly the impulsiveness he'd tried so hard to train out if Sammy had come from somewhere familiar.
He wasn't going to think about Sam right now, or else he'd get sloppy. He's also not gonna wish the boy was here to help either, dispite all his faults his big eyes and clumsiness could charm anyone, and if it didn't work he pulled out his lawyer face and forced his verdict anyway.
"Mrs. Sukova I understand it's difficult to speak up in situations like these but if you were to know nothing useful.."
"I haven't, why would I? I don't spend my free time at work running around the woods?"
"What about your coworkers, huh? Heard anything around the breakroom?"
"No, I've seen nothing. Please leave?" Her face is pinched, her lips pressed tight. Her eyes darting back and forth, behind him, behind herself into her own home. Sweat beads on her brow. The hand clasped to her chest is white knuckled around her robe collar.
He can feel the moment slipping, he reaches into his coat pocket. "Mrs. Sukova if you decide you know anything about these children would you please give me a call, this is my cell number."
She hesitates, and John is afraid he lost this lead. They're wasn't many another's, and none as good as her. Then her hand darts out and takes his number, before snatching it back to her chest.
"Goodbye Mr. Mower." She shuts the door, leaving John cold on the step.
He grits his teeth, his head is starting to hurt. He stuffs his hands into his pockets and stomps his way perhaps a bit aggressive back towards his truck. It wasn't the first time a lead didn't pan out. Hell John has chased hundreds of dead ends by now but it never seems to get any easier. If anything though he's only sorry he wasted an hours drive.
It was time to get back to the boys and get some actual work done.
This chapter was so hard I have no idea why but it took me awhile. It's mostly dialogue which really gets on my nerves but I've rewritten it so many times already. I'm really rusty can ya dig lol some criticism would be nice, if anyone has got any opinions to share I'm all ears. I'm grinding though so please don't give up on me, it's been a long while since I've been in the gig
