Wasted

After Sam had excused himself and his friends from Jessica’s presence, he pushed the three of them outside where he thought it would be a good place to lecture McKenly and Dean. They shouldn’t have broken in the middle of the night. He said they shouldn’t have expected him to go with them.

McKenly laughed at the comment.

Sam looked to her with a questioning glance.

“I’m not expected you to come with us.” McKenly said.

“McKenly.” Dean warned, giving her a hard stare.

McKenly smiled and then acted as if she were zipping her lips and throwing away a key.

Dean’s attention turned to his brother. “You’re not hearing me, Sammy. Dad’s missing. WE need your help to find him.”

“You remember the poltergeist in Amherst? Or the Devil’s Gate in Clifton? He went missing then, too. He’s always missing, and he’s always fine. He comes back eventually. We can’t babysit a grown man, Dean.” Sam and Dean stood on the porch as McKenly stood behind Dean, watching their fight.

“It has never been this long.” Dean said, defiantly. “Now are you gonna come with me or not?”

“I’m not.”

“Why now?” Dean asked.

McKenly could hear the pleading tone to his voice, but she also knew he was trying to hide most of it.

“I swore that I was done hunting. For good.”

“Come on. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t that bad.” Dean went down the stairs to stand on the grass. Sam and McKenly followed.

Sam laughed. “When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my close, he gave me a .45.”

McKenly laughed. “That was great. You should have seen the look on your face when he handed you that gun.”

Dean shot McKenly a look and she quickly turned her laugh into a cough.

“I mean, uh, what was he supposed to do?”

“I was nine years old! He was supposed to say, don’t be afraid of the dark.”

“What? Don’t be afraid of the dark?” Dean questioned, as if Sam were crazy. “Are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark. You know exactly what is out there.”

“Yeah, but then I didn’t. The way we grew up, after Mom was killed, and Dad’s obsession to find the thing that killed her…” Sam paused. “But we still haven’t found the damn thing. So we kill everything that we can.”

“Sam, we’ve saved people.” McKenly said, taking a step forward. She wasn’t comfortable with the conversation. “We have saved so many lives. All of us have. You would rather live in a world where all of those people would have died without us?”

Neither guy answered.

“I think all of that is worth the job.”

Dean looked to McKenly and she could tell, just by his look, that he agreed with her.

“Do you think Mom would have wanted this for us?” Sam asked Dean. He looked to McKenly. “Ken, do you think that your parents would have wanted you running around with guns chasing after the supernatural?”

McKenly tensed up, her face hardening into a stare at Sam. She wasn’t comfortable with anyone talking about her parents, not even her. McKenly turned on her heel and started back for the Impala, already done with trying to help.

Dean slapped Sam on her arm.

“Ken, stop.” Sam called.

For some reason, McKenly stopped halfway to the Impala.

“All that I’m saying is that we learned how to use a gun before we were teenagers. We were melting silver to make bullets. Guys, we were raised like warriors. It’s like Dad was putting us through basic training.”

“So what are you gonna do, Sammy?” Dean asked. “You just gonna go back in there, have sex with your girlfriend and live some normal, apple pie life?”

“No, I don’t call it normal, Dean. It’s safe.”

“Were you scared?” McKenly asked, still angry at him for talking about her parents. “Is that why you ran away from us?”

Dean looked at her, but let her continue to take over.

“I didn’t run away, McKenly!” Sam argued, taking steps closer to her. “I was going to college. It was Dad who said if I was gonna go that I should stay gone. And that’s what I’m doing.”

“Yeah, well, your dad is missing, Sam. He could be in some real trouble. That is, if he’s not dead already.”

Dean caught McKenly’s eyes, and she apologized for bringing that up with just a look.

McKenly knew that he didn’t want to think that his father was dead, but they had to keep it on the table. “You were my best friend, like my brother. And then you were gone. And, as much as I hate you for leaving us, we can’t do this alone.”

Sam put his hands on McKenly’s shoulder so that she would focus on only him. “Yes, you can. You have each other.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t want to.” McKenly looked into Sam’s eyes.

“Sam sighed and pulled McKenly into a hug, wrapping his arms around her shoulders.

McKenly squeezed him tight, happy to have her other best friend in front of her, no matter how upset she was at him.

Sam looked over to Dean. “What was he hunting?”

Dean smiled. After McKenly pulled away from Sam, Dean put an arm around her shoulders and lead her to the car. Dean smiled down at her and she smiled back, leaning into him. He kissed the side of her head and the butterflies quickly erupted in McKenly’s stomach. “Thank you.” Dean said.

McKenly’s face heated up. She nodded at a loss for words.

When the three arrived at the car, Dean opened the trunk and then the spare tire compartment. He propped it open with one of their shotguns and started digging through the stuff. “Alright, let’s see.” Dean said, looking around. “Where the hell did I put that thing?”

McKenly rolled her eyes and handed him the file folder that he was looking for.

“So, when Dad left, why didn’t you guys go with him?” Sam questioned.

“We had our own gig. There was this ghost thing, down in New Orleans.”

“Dad let you go out on a hunting trip by yourselves?”

Dean looked to Sam.

“You aren’t giving us enough credit.” McKenly said, smiling.

“Seriously. I’m twenty-six, dude.” Dean said to his brother. Dean pulled a few papers out of the folder. “Okay. So, Dad was checking out this two-lane blacktop just outside of Jericho, California. About a month ago, this guy…” Dean handed Sam a paper with a picture of a guy on it. “They found his car, but he vanished. Completely MIA.”

“So, he was kidnapped?” Sam asked.

“That’s what we thought. Then there was another one in April.” Dean tossed more papers into the truck. “Another one in December ‘04, ‘03, ‘98, ‘92. Ten men go missing over the past twenty years.”

Sam picked up the papers and looked at them before putting them back in the folder.

“Same five-mile stretch.”

McKenly reached into the trunk for the video recorder with the voicemail from John on it. “It started happening more, so your dad went to go dig around. That was three weeks ago and we haven’t heard from him since. Until this.” McKenly held out the recorder. “We got a voicemail last night.” McKenly pressed play and all three listened closely to the recording which was full of static like the signal was breaking up. Then she stopped it.

“You know there’s EVP on that, right?”

McKenly nodded. “Good job, Sam. Kinda like picking up that bike again, huh?”

Dean laughed.

“So, I slowed the message down, worked a bunch of techy mumbo-jumbo, and then got this.” McKenly pressed play again.

“I can never go home…” a woman’s voice appeared quietly.

“Never go home?” Sam asked.

McKenly nodded. She threw the recorder in the trunk before Dean got around to closing it. The two of them leaned against the trunk of the car, facing Sam.

“You know it has been almost two years since we’ve bothered you or asked you for anything.” Dean pointed out.

Sam looked to McKenly.

“Please, Sammy.” McKenly begged, giving him puppy dog eyes.

Sam smiled at her and sighed, turning to Dean. “Alright, I’ll come. I’ll help you find him.”

Dean smiled and McKenly smiled just from looking at his.

“But I have to get back first thing Monday.” Sam turned away, back towards the house.

“What’s first thing Monday?” Dean asked.

“I have an interview.”

“What? A job interview? Skip it.” Dean said.

McKenly slapped Dean’s stomach and he groaned.

Sam smiled. “It’s a law school interview. And it’s my whole future on a plate.”

“Law school?” Dean smirked.

“Cool deal, Sammy.” McKenly congratulated.

“So, we got a deal or not?”

Dean didn’t answer.

McKenly knew that Dean really wanted Sam to stay with us, long term, so she answered for him. “Yes. We gotta deal.”

Dean gave McKenly a look once Sam worked his way back to his apartment.

“It’s better to have him for one job than not at all, isn’t it?”

Dean nodded. “Well, for someone who really doesn’t want him to come, you did a good job convincing him to.”

McKenly shrugged. “He’s your brother. And you want him back.” She stated, looking at the fingernail she was picking at.

“You really don’t like him, though, huh?”

“It’s not that at all.” McKenly shook her head. “I just…” She searched for the right words. “I feel really betrayed by him. He left us. There one, gone the next. And the fight that he had with your dad…” she trailed off, pausing to look at him. “I love Sam, I do. I just hate that he let things get that bad and just left them like that.”

Dean only nodded.

“But I know that you want him back. And I’m willing to be civil and help you. If only for a weekend.”

“I couldn’t have asked for a better you, Ken.”

“You could, but you wouldn’t get one. I’m just too awesome, huh?” McKenly hip-bumped him, smiling and joking.

“You definitely are.” He smiled down at McKenly and moved around to face her. He picked her up by her waist to sit her down on the trunk of the Impala.

McKenly laughed. “Dean?” she asked. “What are you doing?” She watched as he pulled himself up to sit next to her.

Dean wrapped an arm around her shoulder again and pulled her with him to lean back and look at the stars.

McKenly laughed at him. “Fair warning would have been nice.” She said, leaning into him.

“Nah, he said, shrugging. “I like the element of surprise.”

“It definitely suits you.” McKenly enjoyed this time she had with her best friend.

!@#$#@!

The three of them were about halfway to Jericho when the Impala, and Dean, needed to fill their tanks. McKenly worked on filling the Impala and returned to the back seat to stretch out along it.

Dean came out of the convenience store with a bag full of snacks. He threw a bag of chips and a soda through the open window.

Sam had Dean’s box of tapes in his lap, searching through it with the door open.

“Hey!” Dean called to get Sam’s attention.

Sam leaned out the door to look to Dean.

“You want breakfast?”

Sam shook his head. “Nah, thanks.” He said, still searching through the box.

Dean leaned against the car.

“So, how’d you pay for that stuff anyway? You and Dad still running credit card scams?”

Dean scoffed. “Yeah, well, hunting doesn’t exactly bring home the bacon.”

“They send us the cards. That’s not our fault. All we do is apply.” McKenly joked.

Sam laughed. “What names did you apply with this time?”

Dean walked back around to his side of the car.

Sam swung his legs back into the car.

“Uh,” Dean tried to remember his father’s card. “Burt Aframain?” He questioned, looking back at McKenly’s nod as he put his snack bag on the floor. “Son, Hector. Daughter, Abby. Got three cards outta the deal.” Dean closed the door.

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Same gave up on the box of tapes. “You have got to update your cassette tapes.”

“What?” Dean looked over. “Why?”

“Well, for one, they’re cassette tapes. And two,” Sam held up a few tapes. “Black Sabbath? Motorhead? Metallica?”

Dean took the last tape from his brother.

“It’s the greatest hits of mullet rock.” Sam finished.

Dean looked at McKenly through his rearview mirror. “You got something to say about my tapes?”

McKenly shook her head. “I don’t mind at all.” She smiled.

“That’s my girl.” Dean said, making McKenly blush.

Sam looked back at McKenly and she tried to hide it.

“Well, house rules, Sammy.” Dean put the tape in the player and dropped the case back into the collection. “Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cake hole.”

McKenly laughed taking the box from Sam and putting it on the floor by her feet. The music began to play.

Sam had to yell to speak to Dean, making McKenly laugh. “You know, Sammy is a chubby twelve-year-old! It’s Sam, okay?”

“Sorry, I can’t hear you. The music’s too loud.”

McKenly smiled at Dean through the rearview as he drove off.

!@#$#@!

About an hour later, Sam had made a couple calls to the Jericho hospital and morgue. There was no one matching John’s description or name. McKenly noticed Dean relax his shoulders, but there was no doubt that he was still worried. Dean drove up to the bridge where a kid’s car was found abandoned.

Dean grabbed the box of their fake badges and dug around for the ones they’d be using to pose as federal marshals. “Sorry, Sammy, but you don’t have a badge.”

McKenly laughed. “Looks like you’re hanging here.”

Sam sighed and Dean smiled at McKenly through the mirror.

“Let’s go.” Dean said, hanging McKenly her badge before the two got out of the car. McKenly looked over the side of the bridge as they walked to see two men in wetsuits, probably searching the waters for a body. There were officers who were sitting and analyzing the car. There were two deputies who were talking at the abandoned car. McKenly thought she heard something about how his daughter is somehow connected to the missing guy.

Dean spoke up first. “You guys had another one like this, just last month, didn’t you?”

One of the man looked Dean and McKenly up and down. Probably scoping them out. “And you are?”

The two flashed their badges. “Federal Marshals.” Dean said.

“You two are a little young for marshals, aren’t you?”

Dean laughed.

McKenly smiled at the man.

“Thanks, that’s awfully kind of you.” Dean said.

McKenly rolled her eyes at him, and brought them make to why they were impersonating feds in the first place. “You did have another disappearance like this one, correct?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Only this one was about a mile up the road. There were also others, even before that.”

“So, the victim,” McKenly started gently. “You knew him?”

The man nodded. “In a town like this, everybody knows everybody.”

McKenly walked one way around the car and Dean walked the other way.

“Any connections between the victims?” Dean asked. “Besides the fact that they’re all men.”

“No, not so far as we can tell.” the officer said.

“So, what is your theory?” McKenly questioned, furrowed her brow.

“Honestly? We don’t know. Could be serial murder? Maybe a kidnapping ring?” The deputy shrugged.

“Well, that is exactly the kind of crack police wo - ” Dean didn’t get to continue because McKenly slapped his chest so hard that he lost his breath.

“Thank you for your time. Keep up with good work.” McKenly enforced with a smile. She started going backwards for the car.

Dean followed her. He realized that McKenly was walking to fast and jogged to keep up. “Ken, what was that for?”

“You can’t talk to cops like that, Dean.” McKenly stopped, waiting for him to catch up.

“They have no idea what’s going on here. They aren’t any help to us.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to be a sarcastic asshole.”

“We are alone in this. Excuse me for being a little mad about them not knowing absolutely nothing that’s going on, when we know nothing ourselves.”

McKenly rolled her eyes and turned back walking to the car, but she almost ran into a sheriff and two FBI agents. McKenly took in a breath.

“Can I help you?” the sheriff asked.

McKenly opened her mouth to say something, but she panicked. She didn’t really ever like going undercover. McKenly respected the lawmen and it annoyed her to lie to them.

Dean noticed her struggle and grabbed her elbow. “No, sir, we were just leaving.” He pulled her along past the men.

McKenly’s eyes wouldn’t leave the sheriff’s. She felt like he was staring her down, and it scared her.

Ken?” Dean called and McKenly’s head looked back to Dean.

McKenly nodded. “Right, sorry.”

Dean and McKenly filled Sam in with what little information that they had found out from the crime scene. Sam didn’t like that Dean was about to mouth off to the cops either. McKenly laughed as she agreed on something with Sam.

Dean pulled into a small town close by and parked somewhere to walk to find food.

McKenly noticed a girl was putting up flyers at an old movie theater. She got the boy’s attention. “Guys, maybe that’s the deputy’s daughter.”

“We can’t know that for sure.” Sam said.

McKenly shrugged. “No harm in trying to find out.” McKenly walked up to the girl.

Sam gave Dean a look and Dean copied her actions.

“You must be Amy.” McKenly asked.

Amy nodded her head. “Yeah.”

“Troy told us about you. We are his cousins. I’m McKenly, this is Sam and Dean.” McKenly said as she gestured to each of them.

Amy shook her head, confused. “He never mentioned you to me.”

McKenly opened her mouth to speak, but Dean spoke instead, interrupting her. “Well, that’s Troy, I guess. We’re not around much. We’re up in Modesto.”

“We’re looking for him, too.” McKenly said. “We’re kinda asking around, trying to find out where people say him last.”

Another girl came up to them and put a hand on Amy’s arm. “Hey, are you okay?” she asked.
Amy nodded.

“Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?” Sam asked, leading them into a diner nearby. The five sat at a booth with a chair pulled up to the end for Sam.

Amy began telling the story of the last time she spoke to Troy. “I was on the phone with him. He was driving home. He said he had to go, but he would call me right back. And… He never did.”

“Was there anything strange or out of the ordinary? Did he say anything to you?” Sam asked.

Amy shook her head. “No, not that I can remember.”

Dean put his arm around the back of the seat behind McKenly.

McKenly leaned forward with her elbows on the table after assuming Dean was going to let her get a try. “We really wanna find Troy.” she said. “The way Troy disappeared… I just don’t feel right about it. If you have heard anything, that you can think about, you can tell us.”

The two girls looked at each other.

Dean leaned forward, noticing their hesitation. “What?” Dean asked. “What is it?”

“Well, it’s just…” Rachel started. “I mean, with all these guys going missing, some people talk.”

“About what?” Dean and McKenly said at the same time.

McKenly looked at him, blushed, and looked away.

“It’s kind of this local legend.” Rachel explained. “This one girl, got murdered out on Centennial. It was decades ago, only…” She paused. “Only some people think that she’s still out there.”

Sam nodded for her to go on.

“She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up, they disappear. Forever.”

Sam and Dean looked to each other, while McKenly sat between them nodding to the girls, happy they had something to go off of.