Supernatural Fresh Meat - By Alice Henderson Page 0,87
were gone. The clouds had returned, packing in tightly around them. He watched Bobby making fast headway in front of him. He glanced backward, seeing a patch of red where Bobby had been resting to put on his snowshoes.
He was bleeding a lot worse than he let on.
FIFTY-FOUR
“Is he gone?” Jimmy asked from the vent.
Dean blinked, unable to do anything else.
“Oh, damn. He got you, too.”
He pulled himself out a little farther, and now Dean could see his shoulders and head. The black hoodie was ripped, the hood pulled down to reveal Jimmy’s shortly cropped blond hair.
“Listen, that stuff wears off. It just takes time, and he may have bitten you more than once, but play it cool. If he’s distracted, he might not remember to bite you again before you get your body back.”
Dean stared at Jimmy.
“I’m going to try to dig myself out. Get help. I don’t think I can fight him on my own. If I can’t get out, I’ll come back and try to get the jump on him somehow.”
He shimmied back into the hole, leaving Dean alone and wondering what the hell he was going to do.
Cold began to creep around Dean. He still wore his parka and warm layers beneath, but the wall he leaned against felt unbearably cold. He guessed that on the other side of it, snow pressed in. He tried to imagine the scene from above. Was any part of the lodge still visible? How much snow had buried them?
His mind felt fuzzy. The desire to sleep pressed in on him, his dry eyes longing to close for a while, but he couldn’t let himself drift into unconsciousness.
Somewhere, far away down the corridors and in another devastated room, Dean heard a woman’s voice. “Is anyone alive in here?”
It was Susan. Maybe she had dug down. Maybe she was with rescuers. Hope filled him.
“My leg is trapped. Can someone help me?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. Damn it!
“Hello?”
Dean willed her to be quiet.
“Can someone come help me?”
Shut up, shut up, shut up, he pleaded with her silently, because someone is coming.
FIFTY-FIVE
Sam looked back at Bobby, who now trailed him. “We need to rest,” he said.
His friend waved him on. Blood from Bobby’s head wound soaked the parka. They had tried to stop the bleeding by applying pressure, but it kept opening up again with Bobby’s exertions.
Sam bit his lip. He knew Bobby was going to hate him for this. “Why don’t we put up your tent? I’ll set you up in there, all warm, and come back and get you after I reach the resort.”
Bobby stopped, staring at him with narrowed eyes. “What are you, some kind of idjit?” He gestured dismissively at his head. “You think I haven’t had worse than this? Son, I’ve been near death so many times it would astound you. Now shut your trap and keep hiking. I’m fine, god damn it.”
Yeah. Bobby hated that.
Sam turned around and kept walking, stopping every half-hour to double check the map. They’d had precious few glimpses of the cliffs around them, but were fairly certain they were headed in the right direction. But now the light was starting to fade, and with both of them injured, he knew that the plummeting temperature would be brutal.
Still, they had at least an hour of daylight left, and were determined to make it count. They hiked through the forest, the snow drifts many feet deep in places. Sam listened to the rhythmic pace of his snowshoes as they moved through the powder.
Bobby shivered and muttered to himself, and Sam started to worry about hypothermia. They had laid out in the snow all night. Their only water was what Sam had in his water bottle, and that was almost gone. Dehydration and blood loss were taking their toll.
Sam felt colder than he ever had before. Sometimes Lucifer walked beside him, whispering of the fires of Hell, of the warmth there. Lucifer told him to lie down in the snow and sleep.
Shaking his head, Sam pushed away the images.
He’d stopped the bleeding on his forehead and washed most of the dried blood from his face with snow, but he felt it sticking in his hair and woolen hat. His battered fingers stung in the cold despite the gloves. Still, none of his injuries were as bad as Bobby’s. That blow to the head was a nasty one, and he definitely had a concussion. His wrist may not be broken, but it was badly swollen.