"We're going on a trip first, Byers."

Famous last words, he thought, as one second the almost romantic park bench against desert ground and swamp air was pulled away by her like a tablecloth from under a dinner set.

The clouds split open and they came to a stop over a trail of dirt roads surrounding either side of a busy highway. It took a few minutes, but his knowledge on the geography of their state had never been too shabby. Not to mention it was the most frequented road in Indiana...

"What are we doing on the 65, Carrie?" Will asked in confusion.

He barely caught the edge of her gaze, intense scanning across the terrain widened when she caught her target and smiled like a cheshire cat. "Yesterday you asked me to help you get in El's head right?"

"Just to figure out her location-"

"I don't care why." She interrupted, stopping him short. "But I can't give you that power."

He sighed in annoyance, wanting to turn away but unsure of how when they were floating hundreds of feet in the air in corporeal bodies.

"Okay. So once again, what are we doing here?"

Their advantage had always been their diminutive size. Where most of their cartels accessed the flashy vehicles and heavy equipment only necessary in nuclear warfare, their unit specialised in human trafficking, and little more became necessary than the few guns needed to keep them in line. It was easy money, with almost always willing participants... well, drugged out to within an inch of their life...

But the people they brought in from the homeland, first by boat and then a harmless looking tour bus that in fifteen years of operation had never once been pulled up, were as docile as cows. Most sought to creep their way into the US system and start a new life, away from the dictators of their old world. Away from the bloodstained soil of a war they had nothing to do with, taking place outside their homes... for god forbid the americans let the fighting they instigated touch their own lands...

It was the people they took that called for weapons and harsh orders. For strict adherence to maintain a persona of not about to be kidnapped and taken to be sold and marketed to a rich, foreign niche clientele in search of probably sex (but sometimes other duty) slaves.

The bus had passengers coming to, ready to make a stop on the empty side of the road with blinking hazard lights to indicate to other drivers they had a problem. According to plan, the passengers getting out to stretch their legs, none the wiser, would increase by five as their comrades slipped out of the forest and boarded.

Hawkins was less than twenty minutes away when the seemingly fine running highway turned into a high fatality collision and roll zone involving a bus careening into oncoming traffic.

The bus steered left for absolutely no reason, onlooking survivors and police later argued. But as soon as they crossed lanes, spinning out the car in centre lane beside them and flipping the six coming toward them, it was over.

One of the policemen, an unknown, unimportant man in his mid-30's with nondescript features designated to taping off the crash scene, would later go home and hug his wife and young children. In a hushed voice muffled between bedsheets he'd describe the eerie, shimmering outline of two small children, a boy and girl floating in the sky. The numerous deaths led him to believe the apparitions were victims, or perhaps angels sent to guide lost souls...