“Not exactly juvenile delinquents, but…”
“They have no memory of the incidents,” Sam said. “These two—and here are a few others—experienced lost time.”
“Lost time?” Dean asked. “As in UFOs and alien probes?”
“Nobody’s mentioned little green—or gray—men.”
“Locals have any theories?”
“The press suspects a chemical leak as a potential cause, suggesting Pangento Chemicals, a local manufacturer, might be at fault. And not above a cover-up. Apparently, they have a sketchy environmental track record. Law enforcement making due diligence inquiries but it’s still too early to know for sure. If they have a case against Pangento, they aren’t saying.”
“Makes sense,” Dean said. “Anything else?”
“Well, the tinfoil hat society believes it was a field test of some next-gen Black Ops crowd-control weapon.” Sam placed his hand on the top of the laptop screen and looked up at Dean as he closed it. “Well?”
“Hey, as long as the Men of Letters are out,” Dean said, “count me in.”
THREE
As classic rock thumped out of Baby’s speakers, Dean tapped his fingers to the beat on the steering wheel. Seeming to mirror his improved mood, late morning sunlight gleamed off the hood of the freshly waxed car as it zoomed along the interstate highway. Sam slouched on the passenger side, shoulder pressed at an angle against the door, discreetly observing his brother through hooded eyes as if he were about to doze off. So far, getting Dean out of the bunker had worked wonders.
Of course, they had yet to cross Moyer’s city limits and the case might not amount to anything, but sitting around the bunker directed all thought inward and the anxiety fed on itself. While the bunker served as a haven from supernatural threats, it offered no escape from a restless mind.
They would rather have their resurrected mother stay and hunt with them—if hunting was how she chose to spend her restored life—but they couldn’t force the issue. Having his mother—someone he couldn’t really remember—reappear thirty-three years into his life was weird for Sam, so he couldn’t begin to imagine how strange it must be for her. Strange, yes, as in strangers. A family of strangers. She could probably see the boy Dean had been in his adult face, but Sam must seem like a distant relative she had only met a short time ago. So, yeah, she needed some space and he had no problem with that. At the same time, he could understand how Dean could want her back immediately to catch up on all the lost time.
As far as the British Men of Letters situation went, Sam was willing to roll with it. The Men had, for the most part, a common mission even though they chose to go about that mission in a manner that was, literally, foreign to Sam and Dean and the rest of the American hunters. Sam recognized their efficiency even if he didn’t always agree with their methods. He saw a chance to make a real, long-lasting difference, something the domestic hunters rarely achieved. Maybe because they were the equivalent of soldiers on the front line, hip deep in daily battles but never seeing the full scope of the war.
Dean switched lanes and took the off-ramp at the Moyer exit of the interstate. The speed limit dropped significantly but traffic was light. A sign for Moyer directed them to Central Avenue. Pointing to a faded billboard with flaking paint advertising the Delsea Lake Inn, Dean said, “Check in and suit up?”
Sam nodded.
Based on the scant online reporting, Sam doubted much of an investigation was underway, at least regarding the midnight mass blackout. Pangento Chemical denied any involvement and, considering the local corporation employed over half the adult population of Moyer, the police were none too eager to press the issue. Insurance companies on the hook for payouts might grumble, but without a direct cause for sudden mass narcolepsy, they had nobody to blame, no way to recover their losses. A bunch of people fell asleep late at night. Basically, the property damage, injuries and fatalities were the result of multiple accidents. His inner cynic had no doubt the insurance companies would drag their feet before settling any claims.
As they drove along the winding Central Avenue, sun blazing in the blue sky through bucolic surroundings, Sam began to wonder if they’d jumped on this case too soon. Maybe the police had good reason to leave this on the back burner. There had been no recurrence of the mass blackout and no apparent side—
Sam rose from his slouch, leaned forward. “Is that what I think—?”
“A clothing optional 5K?” Dean suggested. “Don’t see any racing bibs, but you’re not hallucinating.”
Along the far shoulder of Central Avenue, with bare backs and some saggy butts to Sam and Dean, seven naked middle-aged men and women raced with careless abandon and a complete lack of modesty.
“Well, that’s new,” Sam said.
“Welcome to Moyer,” Dean said.
The men outnumbered the women, four to three, but the women led the group, except for one, younger man out in front by a few paces, waving his hands overhead as if playing to a cheering crowd. Playing along, the woman closest to him blew kisses to the imagined spectators. One man alternated between running in a zigzag to avoid pretend sniper fire and flapping his arms like a chicken. All ran barefoot, heedless of the rough debris on the side of the road. The last man—about a hundred pounds over his ideal weight, with sweat beading on his bald head—stumbled along in their wake, huffing and puffing and coughing as he slowly lost ground to the others. For no apparent reason, they turned left as a group at the next intersection, heading toward a string of suburban houses and immediately spread out across both sides of the road. Taking advantage of the dearth of traffic, they weaved back and forth, arms waving overhead in apparent celebration, for reasons Sam couldn’t guess.
As Dean drove past the side street, Sam glanced back and shook his head. “What was that?”
“Had to guess?” Dean said. “Field trip from the loony bin.”
“A bit old for streakers,” Sam said. “Is that even a thing anymore?”
“Reliving their youth?”
Seconds later, a police siren whooped behind the group.
Sam leaned back, considering. “The pranks.”
“What about them?”
“Unusual behavior,” Sam said. “Uncharacteristic behavior.”
“Big checkmark in that first box.”
“Unless drugs are involved,” Sam said. “Same for the second.” Middle-aged and unfit adults rarely, if ever, went on cross country runs in the buff. “Lack of sleep might cause odd behavior, but not a few minutes of additional sleep.” Sleep wasn’t a factor, so… “It fits, Dean.”
“Fits what?”
“A pattern of misbehavior,” Sam said. “Following the blackout.”
“You think they’re related?”
“Don’t you?”
“Extra sleep?” Dean asked skeptically.
“Not sleep,” Sam said. “What if the blackout was something else?”
“Maybe,” Dean said. He glanced in the rearview mirror, but Sam doubted he could see the middle-aged streakers or the police rounding them up. They’d traveled too far from the incident. And he and Dean had come too far to turn back. “Let’s see where it leads.”
* * *
“What I have here, Mr. Special Agent Tench, is a big, whopping headache,” Chief Reginald Hardigan said, index finger raised for emphasis. “Scratch that. I have a whole heap of little headaches adding up to one mother-suffering doozy of a migraine.”
“It’s just Special Agent Tench,” Dean said. He’d introduced himself and Sam to Moyer’s blustering chief of police as Special Agents Tench and Blair. And that’s about as far as the introductions had gone before the ruddy-faced and barrel-chested Hardigan launched into his multitude of reasons for not advancing the mass blackout investigation beyond initial inquiries.
“Well, Agent Tench—or whatever the hell it says on your fancy FBI business cards,” Hardigan continued, “there ain’t no pill for this head-throbber. Far as I’m concerned, the blackout’s old
news. I’m down here in the metaphorical basement with the dang house on fire.”
“And what, exactly, is the house—?”
Before Dean could fan the flames of the chief’s impatience with a sarcastic reply, Sam interjected, “We’re here to help.”
“Got a woodpecker tapping out love letters in my skull,” Hardigan grumbled. “And you two are here to help?”
Sam began to think the man had an actual physical malady rather than an unexplained series of petty crimes. Might explain the perpetually flushed face. “Yes,” Sam said. “We’d like to investigate the circumstances of the blackout. If you could tell us anything you discovered at Pangento Chemicals or—”
“Pangento’s a dead end,” Hardigan said, attempting in vain to hoist his belt up to his waistline. “They denied any involvement.”
Dean frowned. “And you believe them?”
“Toured the facilities first thing in the morning. Nothing out of sorts at the site,” he said. “And we’ll have eggheads in spacesuits testing groundwater and tap water by end of day.”
“Biohazard suits?” Sam asked.
“Ain’t that a hoot?” Hardigan said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Overkill, in my opinion. Anyway, Pangento’s been here for years, employs half the town. We’re in this together. Management’s just as curious as the rest of us what happened.”
They stood in the middle of the squad room ringed by several patrol officers who made a point of avoiding the chief’s attention, giving the three of them a wide berth in passing and, when seated at their desks, focusing on computer screens, legal pads and evidence folders. Sam had the impression the chief needed a handy subordinate scapegoat on whom he could unleash some of his building frustration.
Hoping to extract additional information from Hardigan while avoiding collateral damage to the Winchesters’ budding independent investigation, Sam proceeded with caution. “Pangento has a checkered history.”
“Toxic spills,” Dean added bluntly.
But Hardigan took it in his stride. “Ancient history and unconfirmed rumors,” he said with a dismissive wave. “Besides, that dog won’t hunt.”
“Meaning?” Sam asked.
“If they had another spill—and I’m just speculating here—but if they had a spill and contaminated all the water in Moyer, wouldn’t somebody have to drink it to be affected?”
Though he had an idea where the chief’s argument was headed, Sam said, “Stands to reason.”
Hardigan spread his hands. “At the same time?”
“Midnight,” Sam said, nodding when Dean looked at him.
A toxic spill would not affect everyone at the same time in the same way. Side effects could be delayed, expressed in different ways to varying degrees of harm. Even if Pangento was responsible for another toxic spill, how could everyone in Moyer lose consciousness at the same time? A toxic cloud seemed more likely as a potential cause, but fumes or evaporating chemicals would spread on wind currents, their toxicity dissipating with time and distance. Everyone could have succumbed, but not everywhere in town at the same moment. Without a highly effective and deliberate delivery system, the simultaneous nature of the mass blackout seemed to exonerate Pangento.
Maybe the tinfoil hat society was onto something.
“Exactly,” Hardigan said. “I don’t see any way to hang this on Pangento. Meantime, I’ve got a string of vandalism and disorderly charges backed up like seniors at an all-you-can-eat buffet line. Broken shop windows and graffiti, delivery truck driver who took out a row of fire hydrants before busting an axle, middle school teacher—sweet little old lady—wrote ‘Go to Hell’ on her chalkboard and walked out on her class, and a dozen more besides. But if you insist on beating the dead horse of the midnight blackout, forget Pangento and look at the train derailment from a few weeks—what fresh hell is this?”
“The streakers,” said a cop at the nearest desk.
Sam and Dean followed his gaze to the hallway outside the patrol room where two uniformed cops shepherded the seven middle-aged streakers toward booking and holding. The seven naked men and women huddled together, hunched over in embarrassment, emergency blankets clutched around their torsos. One woman shook her head in disbelief and asked, “What happened? I don’t understand…”
Through the open doorway, Sam spotted a bloody footprint on the tile floor. He recalled the group jogging almost obliviously over pebbles, broken glass and litter on the shoulder of Central Avenue.
“Whoa, that’s Bart Hodges!” Broder, the seated cop exclaimed. “And… is that Anita Finamore? Used to mow her lawn in middle school…”
Bowman, the cop at the next desk said, “That’s the board of directors of the Barclay Homeowners Association.”
“I’ll be damned,” Hardigan said softly. “You’re right, Bowman.”
Bowman said, “Heard from Sheila in dispatch they all jumped up from a luncheon meeting at Beltram’s, ran out to the parking lot, whipped off every last stitch and sprinted down Maple Lane like a nude flash mob.”
“Adds a new wrinkle to the association standards,” Dean said.
“Quite a few wrinkles,” Bowman said, looking away when Hardigan scowled at him.
A third patrol officer carrying a Moyer P.D. duffel bag overstuffed with clothing, leaned through the doorway and called to the chief. “Collected their clothes from Beltram’s lot. Short a few wallets and cell phones from the looks of it.”
“How liquid was this so-called luncheon?” Hardigan asked.
“According to Peterson, they all passed the breathalyzer. But not one of them remembers a damn thing from the start of lunch until they were zip-tied in the back of the patrol cars.”
Hardigan’s scowl deepened. “Like the others.”
“Others?” Dean asked.
“The perps,” Hardigan said. “The vandals, pranksters. Every one of them with a convenient case of temporary amnesia. Next they’ll be saying the devil made them do it.”
The Winchesters exchanged a look, but Sam doubted demonic involvement. Demons had no qualms about possessing humans as disposable meat suits, but their agenda steered a bit more toward the nefarious rather than broken windows, graffiti tags and streaking.
“You mentioned a train derailment…?” Dean prompted.
“Few weeks back, Hanchett Creek swing bridge—damn near a century old—collapsed under the weight of train cars carrying vinyl chloride to Jefferson City. One of them cars split open, leaked all over. A hundred thousand pounds of the stuff, cloud of gas rolling down the street like something out of one of those creature features—highly flammable. Had to evacuate two dozen homes, put the local school in lockdown, county’s Office of Emergency Management issued a ‘shelter in place’ alert.”
“Casualties?” Sam asked.
“Took dozens to the hospital—including emergency workers—with burning eyes and throats, headaches, some had trouble breathing,” Hardigan said. “But you know what else that stuff causes?”
Sam glanced at Dean, who gave an almost imperceptible shrug, and cleared his throat. “Not offhand.”
“Loss—of—consciousness,” Hardigan replied, placing equal emphasis on every word. “And enough of the stuff can kill you. Lucky half the town didn’t go up in flames.”
“This happened weeks ago,” Sam said. “Where’s the investigation stand?”
“Who the hell knows,” Hardigan said. “NTSB got their hands on it, won’t let us move the dang train cars, and the Department of Environmental Protection is buzzing around like flies on a manure pile. All I know is, I want the whole poisonous mess out of my town.” He pursed his lips and wagged an index finger at the Winchesters. “Think you boys can help me with that? Put in a good word?”
“Technically, the Hanchett Creek bridge is over the town line,” Broder said. “In Bakersburg.”
Hardigan stared at Broder so long the younger man nodded his head quickly, as if to silently apologize for the interruption, and turned in his chair to focus all
his attention on his computer screen, fingers pecking away at his keyboard.
With a massive sigh, Hardigan returned his attention to the brothers. “What Officer Broder says is technically true, but wind don’t care a lick about lines on a map. And on the fateful day in question, Moyer was downwind of Bakersburg. Take a guess how many Bakersburg residents were carted to the county hospital, coughing their guts up, after the derailment.” He glanced down at the patrol officer. “You got the statistics on that, Officer Broder?”
“Um, none, Chief,” Broder said hastily.
“Damn straight,” Hardigan said, then turned back to Sam and Dean. “So, you two tell the NTSB I want it all—”
“Hey, Chief,” a smiling patrol officer called as he came through the doorway into the squad room. Mid- to late twenties, clean-shaven, with a crewcut and a lean build, he looked like a walking, talking recruitment ad. “Heard you rounded up a bunch of streakers.”
Without looking up from his workstation, Bowman said, “Barclay Homeowners Association board.”
“I can top that.”
“What is it, Gruber?”
“Granted, my guy was still wearing his tighty-whities,” Gruber said, unable to contain his smile, “but get this. He was swinging from tree branches in Penninger Park.”
“Wannabe king of the jungle?” Dean asked.
“In his dreams!” Gruber laughed. “Of course, he fell.”
“Of course,” Sam said.
“Damn fool’s lucky he only sprained his ankle and dislocated a shoulder.” Gruber pulled out a flip notebook. “Anyway, when he’s not answering the call of the wild, Mr. Walter Skaggs is a butcher at Moyer Meats.”
“Let me guess,” Sam said. “He has no memory of climbing the trees.”
“How did you—?” He looked quickly between the brothers before focusing on his boss. “Who—?”
Hardigan tucked his thumbs behind his belt, arms akimbo and nodded first to Dean and then Sam. “Agents… Bench and Bear?”
“Tench and Blair,” Sam corrected before Dean could grouse. If Hardigan wanted to get under their skin, he was succeeding with Dean, judging by his furrowed brow. Sam took the flubs—intentional or not—in stride, since the Winchesters’ fake ID had already passed muster. The less the chief remembered about them the better.
Supernatural--Joyride Page 3
