Supernatural Fresh Meat

THIRTY-SIX




Grateful for his snowshoes, Bobby trekked through the powder with Sam walking beside him. At first they had walked single file, taking turns in the lead, but the wind was so powerful that the person behind could never hear the person in front unless they stopped and turned around.

Every twenty minutes or so, Bobby pulled out the map and compass and checked their location. Not only were they hiking into an unknown area, but the snow fell so intensely beneath such a low cloud cover that he wasn’t able to check for landmarks. The battery-operated device that he’d sneered at before had now come in handy more times than he could count. He stopped, pulling out the GPS unit from the warmth of his pocket and powering it on.

He waited while it found their location, then waited another thirty seconds while it averaged readings, making the outcome more accurate. He checked the map against the coordinates. They were on the right track, thankfully. To save time, they were trailblazing, not sticking to any known route. It had seemed like a good idea at first, but now Bobby would have welcomed a marked trail in the blizzard. While any sign of a trail would have been lost beneath the feet upon feet of snow, the forest service regularly marked them by leaving small metal placards in trees.

“How we doing?” Sam yelled above the gale, lifting his goggles. Bobby could only make out Sam’s eyes. Snow completely encrusted his balaclava, and his hood was pulled low over his hat.

Bobby struggled with the map as a sudden gust tugged at it. He knelt down, smoothing it back. They needed to go another 1.7 miles northwest, and they would intersect the trail on which they’d last seen Dean. Of course, that had been more than a day ago. Now it was light, but Sam and Bobby had hiked through the bitter darkness, only the effort of trekking through the snow keeping them warm. That first vague glow in the east had been a welcome sight to Bobby. It would be a hell of a lot easier to navigate in the daylight.

He turned off the GPS unit, got out his compass to ensure the right direction to head in, and folded up the map. He pointed in the direction they’d been heading and nodded to Sam. Sam lowered his goggles back in place, and they trudged on in silence.

The crunch of the snow beneath their feet filled Bobby’s world. His breath frosted beneath his fleece face covering. He was glad they’d brought snow goggles as the world around them grew brighter and brighter. He couldn’t make out the sun overhead, the clouds were too thick, but the diffused light gave everything an almost ghostly glow.

It was obvious Dean and Jason wouldn’t be out in this. Even with their tents and warm bags, they would likely have sought shelter of some kind. Bobby knew there were a few backcountry cabins out this way, and hoped Dean had found his way to one of them.

The lack of sleep burned Bobby’s eyes, making him want to rest. But first they had to find Dean, then he’d get a few hours of shut-eye. He had to know Dean was all right.

The powdery snow was easy to walk in, and the snowshoes made it simple to ascend and descend the steep hills that separated them from the trail they sought. They walked up forested knolls and crossed a few areas of exposed granite.

As they summited a rounded section of rock, Bobby’s snowshoe slid on a patch of ice beneath the powder. His foot slipped out from under him. At the last minute he lashed out with his trekking pole, saving himself.

“Nice moves,” Sam told him.

“Thanks. Don’t think I’ll be applying for a spot on the Ice Capades any time soon, though.”

They continued on in silence once again, then Bobby stopped to check the map. Still they couldn’t see any cliffs or landmarks around them. The mist crept through the forest, making it impossible to see more than twenty feet in front of them. The GPS unit told Bobby they were still on the right track.

“0.6 miles to go!” he called to Sam above the wind.

They walked on, Bobby looking forward to reaching terrain that Sam might recognize. Then they could start searching for Dean’s trail.

The wind buffeted Bobby’s back and snow spiraled around him, landing on his eyelashes. His fingers felt warm inside the thick mittens as he moved with the trekking poles, working himself into a rhythm. They crested a small hill and descended the other side, moving around tremendous boulders and a few stunted trees. At the bottom, Bobby spotted a trail running to the northeast and southwest. Trees had been cleared out for it, forming a perfect tunnel through the snow-laden forest.

“Look familiar?” he asked Sam.

Sam looked both ways, studying the area. “I don’t know… Everything looks so different in the snow, and I can’t see into the distance.”

Bobby hooked his thumb toward the southwest. “You think the car’s back this way?”

Sam squinted. “Maybe. Sorry, Bobby, it all looks so different.”

Bobby pulled out the GPS unit and checked their location. They were right where Bobby thought, according to the map. They’d intercepted the trail Dean had been using. Two miles to the southwest was likely the Impala.

“If he made it back to the car, he would have driven out, or at the very least recharged his phone and called us,” Sam said.

Bobby tightened his mouth. “So you’re thinking he hasn’t made it back to the car?”

“Maybe he didn’t even try in all this.”

Bobby looked up at the heavily snow-laden trees. “You could be right.”

“He might be hot on the trail, reluctant to lose it,” Sam suggested.

Bobby pointed up the trail. “I say we rule out that he’s back at the car, and go check it out.”

“Good idea. If it’s still there, we come back and follow the trail, searching for any sign of him.”

Bobby nodded. “Right.” He considered separating, one of them trekking back to the Impala to see if it was still there. But in this storm, finding each other again might be impossible.

Bobby had never been in a snowstorm this bad, and he was starting to worry about Dean. He knew he could take care of himself, but even the most experienced outdoorsman could get hopelessly lost in whiteout conditions like this.

As they set off toward the last known location of the Impala, Bobby hoped that Dean had held on to his map and compass, because without it, he could be freezing to death even now.