Supernatural Fresh Meat - By Alice Henderson Page 0,11

spirit like the Uruguayan rugby players. They fought and squabbled and some of them were killed even before the group got snowed in. Once that happened, it was every man for himself. More than one person was suspected of murdering his fellow man to fill his stomach.”

Bobby pulled out the items they’d retrieved at the shack, including the pocket watch and photos, and placed them on the table. He clicked open the watch to reveal the initials W. F. “This could be William Foster’s.”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “Who’s that?”

“William Foster was with the emigrants trapped near Donner Lake. He was a member of the Forlorn Hope, a group of fifteen snowshoers who left the snowbound emigrants to try to breach the mountains and reach help at Sutter’s Fort near Sacramento. They had two Miwok guides, and Foster, half-crazed with starvation, hunted them down in cold blood and ate them. He reasoned that their being Miwoks made them less human and that they should sacrifice themselves to the white emigrants.”

“Nice guy,” Dean said drily.

“Yeah, a real prince,” Bobby agreed. “After the Forlorn Hope reached help, Foster returned with one of the rescue parties for his kid. Only by then the kid had died and been eaten. By that time, Foster himself had eaten at least six different individuals.”

“You think he’s our wendigo?” Sam asked. Wendigos didn’t start out as crazed, inhumanly strong killers. They’d been regular people, pushed to the limit of endurance and driven to cannibalism to survive. Those who relished in it could lose themselves, the sickness spreading through them until they craved human meat and nothing else would satisfy them.

“At the very least, I think it was his things at that shack. This daguerreotype of the little town and the other of the child and wife are definitely linked to him. Couldn’t find any known photos of the kid, but here’s one of his wife.”

Bobby slid a book over to them. A black and white photograph showed a much-aged version of the woman in the daguerreotype.

“Also found this.” Bobby slid over another book, showing a clearer photograph of the general store and post office with the name Foster’s Bar. “It was a little settlement near the Yuba River that was inundated when they made Bullards Bar Reservoir.”

“What happened to Foster?” Dean asked.

“Records say he sickened and died in 1879.”

“But he could have just disappeared and the family could have thought he was dead.”

“Especially if he’d started to transform. He would have looked seriously ill at first.”

Sam leaned forward. “Any guess as to where his lair might be?”

Bobby turned back to the books, pulled one off the stack. “Far as I can tell, there was a place called the ‘Camp of Death.’ It’s where the Forlorn Hope was hit by a nasty blizzard and resorted to cannibalism. Could be he’s revisiting the site of his old crimes.”

“So we go out there and we kill him,” Dean said.

“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. None of these sources say exactly where the Camp of Death was, only that it was near what is now Emigrant Gap. I looked at a USGS topo., and that area is riddled with mines. Could be anywhere in that area. We need some more info.”

“So where to?” Sam asked.

“Virginia City,” Bobby said, closing his notebook.

“What’s in Virginia City?”

Bobby stood up. “The Aces and Eights Saloon.” The chair legs screeched on the library floor in that unique way reserved for library chairs. Bobby winced at the sound. “It’s a hunters’ hangout. I figure we’re not the first to hunt this thing. Someone’s gotta know something.”

Dean and Sam stood up, too. “Sounds good to me,” Dean said. “Let’s go.”

SEVEN

A cold wind blew over Virginia City. The main street of the town stood before them, apparently unchanged since 1879. The city had been built on the side of a steep mountain, with forested slopes above and the high desert stretching away beneath. Wooden sidewalks ran the length of the street. Old saloons, hotels, and casinos rose on both sides, some of their wooden structures leaning. The sidewalk creaked beneath Dean’s feet as he walked toward the Aces and Eights Saloon. A motorcycle roared by, pulling over in front of the Delta Saloon, whose windows advertised the “World Famous Suicide Table.” Up one of the steep streets stood Piper’s Opera House and Millionaires’ Row, home to huge mansions built with the riches from the famous Comstock lode of silver.

A few people milled around the streets, and he could hear the bluegrass