Supernatural Fresh Meat

FORTY-THREE




Sliding the spice concoction into his jacket pocket, Dean descended the stairs toward the employee area and equipment room. In a small crew room with lockers, he found five men milling around, suiting up.

Dean stepped inside. “You guys seen a short woman with blonde hair?”

One of the men turned to him. His face was covered with exposure wounds. Strips of raw flesh were exposed on his nose and cheekbones. Bloody cracks covered his lips. “Sorry, man,” he said.

“Anyone else?” Dean prompted.

Distracted, they looked at him briefly and a murmur of “no” went through the rest of the group. Dean left them getting their gear on and made a circuit of the entire understory of the lodge. Except for the crew room, the place was abandoned, most of the lights shut off.

Dean ascended the lodge’s stairs to the upper level, which held a kitchen and food court. He grabbed a couple of sandwiches out of the fridge and stuffed them in his pocket. Wide patios opened up onto balconies with vistas of the mountain and ski lifts. All Dean could see through the windows was blowing snow and hazy white.

Grace was not in the kitchen or the dining area. While he ate a sandwich, Dean searched through the pantries, meat lockers, and larders.

As he started down the stairs again, his eyes spotted movement outside in the snowstorm. He walked to a window, staring down, and saw a figure in white snowshoeing toward the lodge doors. For a second he hoped it was Bobby or Sam, but soon realized the person was far too slight to be either.

He jogged down the stairs as the person entered. A man clomped ice and snow off his snowshoes, then unbuckled them. Don rushed down the hall and greeted him. “Steven! Thank you for coming up. That must have been one hell of a hike with the road out.” The newcomer stripped off his hat, balaclava, and snow goggles, revealing a lean man in his early thirties with a tanned face and black hair. Snow clustered in his goatee. He wore a National Forest Service uniform.

Steven looked at Dean. “I thought this place had been evacuated.”

“It was, it was,” Don insisted. “But two hikers came out about half an hour ago. This is Dean, and Grace is one of yours.”

Steven held his hand out and shook Dean’s. “What do you mean ‘one of mine?’” Steven asked.

“A ranger,” Don clarified.

“Oh. She must be new.”

“Steven’s the snow ranger,” Don explained to Dean. “He’s the one who can fire the howitzer.”

“If I could see where the hell to aim it, anyway,” Steven said, gesturing at the whiteout beyond the windows.

“We can guestimate,” Don said.

Dean laughed mirthlessly. “Guestimate. Just the word you want to hear when firing a seventy-five millimeter shell.”

“You know about howitzers?”

“Weapons are… a hobby,” Dean said.

“Well, it’s a mess to fire the thing,” Steven told him. “It shoots backward. Usually lands in a snowdrift. Then we have to dig it out and do it all over again.”

Steven brushed the snow off his coat, then asked Don where the ski patrol was.

“Waiting for you in the crew room,” Don told him.

“So you don’t know Grace?” Dean said as Steven walked away.

Steven shrugged. “I’m a snow ranger. I don’t usually get to mix with the others.”

Dean turned to the mountain manager. “Have you seen her since we arrived?”

Don frowned. “Nope. I assume she’s still in the equipment room, changing into dry clothes.”

“Let me know if you see her.” Dean stared out into the storm, worrying about Bobby and Sam. Before Steven left, he asked, “Do you know if this will work? Will we be able to leave?”

“It’s hard to say. We’ll give it our best shot.” He glanced out at the grey. “But with no visibility, and the winds barreling down from the slopes, it’s going to be dicey. Right now the winds are cross-loading the slopes with snow much faster than it’s actually falling. That and the fluctuating temperature makes for bad avalanche conditions.”

Steven headed for the crew room, and Dean resumed his search for Grace.

He searched the public areas, including another circuit of the food court, the bar, two restaurants, the skating rink, the ski rental rooms. Nothing. Another round of the employee areas didn’t yield anything, either. She wasn’t in the break room, the locker room, or the equipment check-in room. He searched the outbuildings, including the ski lift mechanism shed, and the weather and avalanche forecasting station. He even checked the bathrooms and changing rooms.

Grace had vanished.