Supernatural Fresh Meat

THIRTY-SEVEN




Dean stepped around a tree, suddenly sinking up to his knee, even with the snowshoe on. “What the hell?” He struggled to pull his foot free.

“It’s a tree well,” Grace told him, hooking a hand under his arm and hefting him upward. “Snow collects at the base of a tree, and it gets really powdery and deep. People have been known to suffocate in them.”

“Great. I’ll keep that in mind.” He extracted his foot, then gave the tree a wide berth.

They’d been walking for over two hours, the progress painfully slow, while the storm raged on. He had hoped they’d come across some sign of Jason. Dean dismissed images of the hunter lying frozen at the base of a tree. Jason could easily have gotten hopelessly lost. He wasn’t even entirely sure Grace knew which way they were going. She kept staring off into the distance, waiting for clouds to part. Sometimes they waited more than ten minutes, just standing and staring. Then they’d either move on without getting a glimpse of landmarks, or the landmarks would be treated with the briefest of looks before Grace hurriedly jotted down notes and studied the map again.

They entered a very dense section of forest. Dean had slipped more than once on strange shapes under the snow, logs and huge rocks. Once he’d even stumbled over what turned out to be an old mine car. At least that meant they weren’t the first humans here, though it felt like it to Dean.

All he could hear was the wind sighing through the trees. They hadn’t seen a single sign of human habitation since they left the cabin.

“How are we doing?” Dean asked Grace when she stopped again to look at the map.

“Good, I think.”

“You think?”

“Well, it’s hard. I’m pretty much having to use dead reckoning.”

“That sounds about as cheerful as I feel.”

“It works, that’s the good part. You just try to keep track of the distance and time you’ve traveled. Well, it works most of the time. Unless you’re a complete idiot, which I’m not.”

“As long as this doesn’t end with one of us slicing the other open for warmth, I’m game.”

“Don’t worry. You smell better on the outside.”

He peered over her shoulder at the map while she consulted it. His breath frosted in the air. Beyond them, the clouds slid through the tree trunks, creating an unsettling, eerie landscape.

Dean had been watching for the gaunt figure, but hadn’t seen any sign of him.

“Okay.” She checked the bearing with her compass. “Let’s head slightly to the northeast. It’ll take us around a massive ridge that we can’t see, but is only a half-mile away from us right now. If we keep going straight, we’ll be looking at an impossible ascent. So instead we’ll skirt around the base. It’ll still be a bit steep in parts, but we’ll go around the worst bits.”

Dean quickly compared his own map to hers, seeing what she was talking about. The last thing he wanted to do was to be completely lost if they somehow got separated. He stared around, tried to get his bearings. Behind him, according to the map, was that ridge, ahead of him this ridge. It seemed impossible in the whiteout. He stuffed the map back in his parka pocket.

They started climbing at a slight angle. The snowshoes which at first had felt cumbersome and awkward now felt like part of Dean’s feet. They hissed in the powder when he stepped down, and the metal teeth on the underside made climbing easy.

He glanced around the snow as they walked, searching for another blood trail, but not seeing anything but white. He put his sunglasses on as the whiteness grew too much to look at. With his scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth, though, the lenses kept fogging up. Having to choose between squinting and having a numb face, he chose the numb face. He couldn’t afford to go snow-blind.

He thought he heard something moving behind them and spun around. Only forest greeted him, their tracks vanishing into its depths. He continued on, hearing a distinct rustling behind them again. He jerked around, stopping.

By the time Grace noticed he’d stopped, she was thirty feet ahead of him. “What is it?” she called back.

He stared around the forest, then turned to her and pointed at his ear.

She glanced around, then over to him. “What is it?” she repeated in a whisper.

“I thought I heard something. A rustling.”

She scanned the area. “It’s probably your parka hood. It can play tricks on you in the wind, making you think you’re hearing things as it flaps against your head.” She pulled hers down, exposing her ears. “Mine does all the time.”

Dean lowered his hood and listened. All he could hear was the wind. It howled around them, instantly chilling his face and exposed head.

They stood for five minutes, just listening, until, reluctantly, Dean pulled his hood up. “Okay. Let’s go.”

She did the same and started out ahead of him.

He followed in her footprints, taking advantage of her trailblazing to stare around them furtively. He did not relish the idea of a fight. He was more trussed up than the little brother in A Christmas Story. He thought if someone knocked him over in all his gear he’d just land on his back like a turtle, feet and arms flailing ridiculously.

Then he had the unmistakable hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck feeling of being watched. He stopped, whirling around.

Behind them, staring out from a tree some thirty feet away, was the gaunt figure. He stood just at the range of visibility, with tendrils of grey sweeping around him. The hood was still pulled low over the face, but Dean could just see inside it now, making out a pale face and a pair of snow goggles.

Instantly, Dean grabbed his rifle and fired. The man moved fast, but Dean was pretty sure he’d hit him in the upper arm. Mist swallowed the retreating figure, but Dean was not going to let him get away this time. He was tired of checking over his shoulder every two minutes.

“Stay here!” he shouted to Grace, then took off running on the snowshoes in pursuit.