Supernatural Fresh Meat - By Alice Henderson Page 0,80
had caved in all around him. He followed the sound of the crying man. Dean recognized him as Bill, who he’d helped dig out of the first avalanche. A massive head injury yawned in his forehead. His eyes were unfocused and glassy. Dean shucked off his jacket and folded it tightly, then pressed it against the wound.
“Anyone else down here?” Dean yelled. “Jason!”
He listened, hearing only the sparking of the wires and water dripping from somewhere nearby.
He told Bill to put pressure on the wound and moved away in the darkness. Crawling over debris and walking bent over when the space allowed it, Dean entered the neighboring room. It was the locker room where he’d originally seen the avalanche control team.
One wall had completely caved in, the lockers fallen over against the benches in the center of the room. It left a space big enough to protect someone. Dean bent down and peered in. The red emergency lighting had kicked on, and he could just make out the shapes of two bodies in the confined space.
“Hey,” he said.
A hand reached out for him, and he grasped it. Pulling gently, he dragged the person out. It was Steven, the snow ranger.
“Thanks, man,” he said. “I can get Hank out. He was next to me in there. We’re both okay, I think.”
Dean nodded and continued on, crawling through the wreckage. Beyond the crew locker room lay the equipment room. Dean moved to it at a crouch. He wondered if anyone who’d been on the floor above when the avalanche hit could possibly have survived. He wondered if Don had dashed down here at the last minute, but somehow he doubted he could have made it in time.
As Dean made his way toward the equipment room, Steven and Hank emerged from the locker room and crawled away toward Bill. “Everyone should try to stay together,” Dean told them.
Steven nodded dreamily, showing signs of shock.
Dean could hear Bill’s voice echoing down the hall. “Hey, dude. You seen my car? It was parked out in the lot. We’re probably going to go out later and cruise around.”
Hank responded, his voice strained. “We’ll do that.”
The equipment room lay at the end of a narrow corridor sparking with live wires. Before he went in, Dean searched for additional rooms, but didn’t see any other spaces where people could have survived the building’s collapse.
Finally, he slunk down the hallway, keeping well away from the live wires. The equipment room lay in ruins. Splintered skis and snowboards stuck out from a collapsed ceiling that descended at an angle. Some of it still held, creating a triangular space.
He saw two shapes moving in the gloom and crept closer. A man lay on the floor with a figure bent over him. Suddenly the man cried out in pain, and Dean recognized Jason’s voice. He crept closer and saw Grace stooping over him, her back to Dean. Blood soaked her hands and Jason’s chest. She bent her head low over him, and he screamed.
Dean dug around in his pockets, his hand closing around the spice concoction. “Hey!” he shouted.
Grace turned around, and Dean released a big splash of the mixture, hitting her squarely in the face.
FIFTY
Grace reached up and wiped the fluid from her face with one sleeve. “Jesus, Dean! What the hell are you doing?”
Dean crept closer. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to stabilize him before he goes into shock.”
Dean moved toward them at a crouch, still unable to stand. He could see now that Jason’s stomach had been torn up by something sharp. His shirt and jacket lay ripped open, and a bloody, ragged wound gaped in his abdomen. Next to Grace lay an open medical kit. She was in the middle of preparing a gauze pad to apply pressure.
When she did, Jason cried out again in pain.
“You’re more of a wuss than an incontinent kid at a summer camp,” she told him. “This is nothing. I bet you cry over paper cuts, too.”
Dean knew Grace was lying to Jason, trying to force him to fight against the pain. It was no paper cut, and Dean was sure he’d seen the glistening white of Jason’s intestines before Grace covered them with the pad.
“Anyone else need help?” she asked Dean.
“There’s a guy back there with a pretty bad head wound.”
“How many people are down here?”
“Three others that I saw.”
She frowned, leaning over Jason and applying tape to the gauze pad. “There have to be more. I saw at least seven people when