Supernatural Fresh Meat

FORTY-FIVE




Dean walked another circuit of the ground floor, then stopped before one of the large windows that looked out over the parking lot. The ski patrol were out there, gathered around a small cannon on a wheeled cart. He saw the hooded parka of Steven, the snow ranger, who bent over the howitzer. Five others clustered around him, but there was a sixth member in a red parka who was very short. Dean realized Grace had probably changed into dry clothes, and he might not recognize her in new outdoor gear.

Donning his winter jacket and hat again, he ventured out into the storm. As he approached the group, they watched while the snow ranger looked at a map, then manually adjusted the sights on the howitzer. Dean reached them. Steven didn’t look up from his task.

“Hey,” Dean said, hoping they would all turn. The wind carried his voice away, and almost tore the map from Steven’s hand.

One of them turned and saw Dean standing there. “What the hell are you doing out here?” he demanded. He was in his early twenties, long blond hair encrusted with snow. Dean recognized him from the crew room.

“I’m still looking for the person I arrived with. Grace.”

“You shouldn’t be out here. There’s extreme avalanche danger.”

A second man turned around, the exposure victim from earlier. “Don’t be rude, Ambrose. Dude lost his friend,” he admonished. He sized Dean up. “I’m Hank. Everyone’s been evacuated.”

Dean felt a flush of impatience. “I know. We just hiked in together about an hour ago.”

Hank looked thoughtful. “Right. Well, I haven’t seen her.”

Dean shifted his position and was able to see the faces of the rest of the group. They were the same from the crew room, plus a short woman in her mid-twenties wearing the red parka. From under a short crop of coppery hair, almond eyes set in a tanned face peered up at Dean.

She straightened up and moved away from the howitzer toward him. “Steve’s getting ready to fire. Susan,” she introduced herself.

“Dean.”

“You new to the ski patrol?” she asked, eyeing him dubiously.

Hank spoke up. “Dude can’t find his friend.”

“Oh, jeez. She’s not on the mountain, is she?”

Dean shook his head. “No. Believe it or not, I lost her inside the resort.”

Susan let out a short laugh. “Well, the place is a maze. ‘Luxury skiing at its finest.’ Lots of meeting rooms and places where guests can get a drink or sit by the fire. When the place isn’t empty, that is.”

“Everyone clear!” Steve shouted suddenly, and Susan pushed Dean back with the others.

With the help of two of the ski patrol, Steve loaded a massive four-foot bullet into the howitzer. When the others had moved away, Steve gripped a long cord trailing from the cannon.

“Ear protection! Don’t forget to open your mouths so your eardrums don’t burst!”

Dean slapped his hands over his ears as the howitzer went off with a deafening boom. Black smoke billowed around them. As Steven had predicted, the wheeled cart holding the howitzer shot backward, skittering across the ice, and lodged itself into a snow bank a few feet behind them. People coughed as the acrid smoke cleared.

“Okay! Let’s do it again!” Steven yelled.

Immediately, three of the ski patrol dug around in the snow bank for the cart. They found it and with great effort pulled it free from the drift.

Dean looked up on the slope where they had just fired. He couldn’t see anything but low-hanging clouds. Haze and fog drifted across the mountain, completely obscuring it. Visibility on the ground had cleared a little, though, and he could see the loading area of the ski lift, where it wound around and people jumped on.

“How can you know what you’re firing at?” he asked Susan.

“Certain areas are more prone to avalanching than others. We obviously can’t do it by sight right now, so Steve uses the map and adjusts the sights on the howitzer as best he can.”

“You mean he’s guessing.”

She looked away, and he could see that despite her businesslike tone, she was afraid. “Yeah. Basically we are guessing right now.” She gestured toward Hank. “Hank’s been up on the slopes for two days, throwing hand charges. He got caught in a little mini avalanche while he was up there. He managed to swim to the surface as it swept him down the mountain, but he still lost his water, his pack, his compass. He wandered for a bit before he found us again.”

That explained the condition of his lips and face.

Hank and the others repositioned the howitzer and Steve started adjusting the sights again.

Susan tugged at Dean’s sleeve. “You need to get inside now. What does your friend look like?”

“Five-two. Short blonde hair. She’s a ranger.” He added, “If you see her, keep her around a group of people who can watch her.” Dean thought people would be safer in groups. “It’s possible she has concussion. I’m worried she may have passed out somewhere,” he said, giving more weight to his lie.

“Okay. Will do. When we finish here, a couple of us will go inside and look for her.”

Susan gazed out toward the ski lift.

“What happens now?” Dean asked her.

“We wait. See if this triggers a directed avalanche that will release some of the tension down a safe channel. Then some of us might have to go up on the mountain again and throw hand charges.”

“Good luck,” he told her, and started off for the lodge again.

As he passed through the door into the welcome warmth, a man’s voice called from across the room. “Dean?”

He looked up to see Jason standing in front of one of the huge fireplaces.

“Jason!”

“No way! I thought you must have bought it on the mountain!” Jason sauntered toward Dean, clasping his hand warmly.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Hell, I didn’t mean it like that! It almost got me.”

“Where did you go?”

Jason looked around nervously. “Anyone around?” His face was covered with red exposure wounds, his lips chapped even worse than Hank’s.

“They’re all outside.”

“That thing came in the night. Swooped down and grabbed me before I could even pull my gun.”

Dean noticed torn holes in Jason’s parka, in the same places where the talons had ripped through Sam’s shirt.

“It flew over the trees, bee-lining for some cabin.”

Dean knew now why the blood trail had been perfectly straight.

“That thing dumped me by the door and went straight into the kitchen. It seemed desperate to check something—or maybe it wanted to get a knife and fork.” He laughed a joyless laugh. “Anyway, I took a chance and ran out into the storm. Then I just wandered. Got lost. One of the ski patrol guys found me and brought me here. There were times I wished I’d let that thing eat me.” He laughed again. “Well, not really. But there were times I wished I’d gutted that sucker in the cabin and stayed by that fire.”

“You can’t kill it that way, anyway.”

“How are your guys and the weapon? You got it?”

Dean shook his head. “They’re on their way here with it, but they’re out in that.” He hooked a thumb toward the storm. “You ever meet Grace Cumberlin?”

“She a hunter?”

“Nope. A ranger. Supposedly. Patrols the backcountry where we fought the wendigo.”

“What do you mean ‘supposedly?’”

“Sam told me she didn’t check out at the ranger station. They’d never heard of her.”

“Only ranger I ever knew was the one we left that family with.”

“She helped me get here to the resort.”

“So who is she?”

Dean raised one eyebrow.

“Oh.”

Dean glanced around the room. “Anyway, she’s petite. Got short blonde hair. As soon as we got here, she went off for a change of clothes, and now I can’t find her anywhere. So if you see her—”

Dean heard shouting from outside. He looked out the large picture windows overlooking the ski lift area to see the howitzer team scattering. He ran to the door, opening it and letting in an uproar of shouting. The whole ski patrol was running for the building, shouting and waving for him to move inside. Then he felt it. The ground shaking. A dull rumble from up on the mountain. The windows started vibrating and shuddering.

“Get behind something solid!” Susan shouted at him. She reached the door and they rushed inside. “The avalanche didn’t trigger the way we thought! The whole mountain’s coming down!”

Then Dean was running with the others, heading for an area with a large, interior stone wall and fireplaces on the far side of the room. He’d almost reached them when he heard the massive windows shatter. One of the ski patrol guys flew through the air beside him.

When he was on the mountain with Grace, Dean had imagined getting swept up in an avalanche, being hit by a wall of snow. But it wasn’t snow or ice that hit him now. It was air. A powerful sheet of air traveling at the foot of the avalanche swung his feet up, twisting him around. It thrust him four feet off the ground, and as he flailed, he caught a brief glimpse of the avalanche as it poured in through the shattered windows. He saw the jagged metal of ski lift chairs, picnic tables, all roiling around in the unbelievably fast-moving surge of snow. Dean was hurled through a window and crashed down, momentarily at a standstill. He looked up in time to see the avalanche sweeping around the corner of the building.

The moving sea of snow caught him, tumbling him head over feet. Susan’s words about swimming came back to him in a flash, and Dean thrust out in the snow, kicking as hard as he could and fanning out his arms, trying to stay on the surface.

Suddenly, the snow covered his head, throwing him in a somersault, and he couldn’t figure out which way was up. He tried to see around him. One side was darker than the other, so Dean swam for the lighter side. Something sharp scraped along his shoulders and then moved past him. He tried to gasp for air, but snow filled his mouth. He pushed it out with his tongue, gagging. He tried to suck in oxygen, but there was none. He kicked his feet out, reaching up with his arms and trying to breaststroke his way out of the tumbling cascade of snow.

The rumble filled his body, thrumming in his chest. He couldn’t get a breath. His vision started to tunnel as he thrust his arms out, trying to reach air. Cold filled his nose and mouth. As his lungs burned, panic seized him.

Then his head burst above the snow. He gulped in oxygen, his lungs filling with it, giving him a sense of euphoria and another burst of energy. He kicked harder, struggling to stay upright.

The surge plowed him down into the parking lot, engulfing the cars there. He barreled headfirst toward a silver SUV. At the last second, he pivoted his body so his feet were in front. His boot struck the bumper on one side, deflecting him away, but the speed of the snow bent him at the waist, forcing him back under the surface. Dean flipped onto his stomach, swimming once more toward the light, his lungs aching for a breath. Panic crept in again, but Dean forced himself to think. He let the snow continue to flip him until he thought he was on his back. He kicked and did the backstroke, letting the snow continue to turn him until he flipped back over onto his stomach. Now he used all his strength to swim up to the surface.

His head broke through into sweet, fresh air. All he could hear was the roar around him, and the sounds of twisting metal as the avalanche picked up cars and shattered windshields.

Then the motion started to slow. Dean kept swimming, trying to free his entire body from the snow. He was still waist-deep when he came to a standstill. At first, he felt relieved, thinking he could just pull his legs out, but the snow had settled into a solid force as impenetrable as concrete. Dean managed to work his hands free and pushed as hard as he could at the snow crushing his legs and hips. He didn’t have the leverage.

The wind howled around him, and for the first time, Dean looked back toward the lodge. What he saw didn’t resemble much of a building anymore. Twisted timber and the empty frames of devastated windows jutted from the ruins of the shattered building. The west wall and part of the roof had managed to stay standing, and Dean saw a door leading to the interior. Snow spilled out of all the broken windows. The east side wasn’t so lucky. The roof had caved in, staircases knocked over. Miraculously, one crossbeam still hung, a massive chandelier swinging from it.

Trying to twist around, he looked to where the howitzer had been set up in the parking lot. There was no sign of it now, and the cars that had been parked out there were completely buried.

“We got someone here!” Dean recognized Susan’s voice, calling from nearer the lodge. “Get a shovel! Anyone who can hear me, turn on your avalanche transceivers!”

As Dean thrashed around again, trying to pull his lower body free, he saw a pale hand sticking out of the snow a few feet away. It waved weakly. Dean knew the person was suffocating and had only minutes to live, if that.

With renewed vigor, he started digging around his waist, desperate to free himself.