Supernatural Fresh Meat

FIFTY-THREE




Light leaked into Sam’s blood-encrusted eyes. He forced them open, the rock against his cheek rough and freezing. He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious. The clouds had moved, no longer veiling the nearby cliffs. He couldn’t tell if it was later that same day, or if he’d spent the night out on the exposed ridge. His body was frozen through, and he could barely move his fingers. He struggled to his hands and knees. He couldn’t quite make out the sun’s position, but it looked a little brighter in the east than it had before the vampires showed up. Sam had the terrible feeling that he had been unconscious all night. His mouth felt completely parched, his body aching for a drink of water.

He rummaged through his pack, pulling out his bottle of water, but there wasn’t much left. He drank some eagerly, feeling the liquid refresh him.

Next to him lay the decapitated body of the female vampire. Somewhere below, on the pile of rocks that he and Bobby had climbed, lay the body of the other.

Sam crept to the edge of the ridge as a tremendous gust of wind swept over him. Bracing himself, he lay down and grasped the rocks around him. His parka hood nearly ripped free in an almost deafening burst of fluttering material. He leant over where Bobby had fallen and peered down.

“Bobby!” he shouted.

He didn’t see the orange of Bobby’s parka anywhere, no tangled mass of color among the rocks below.

Then, on a ledge about thirty feet down, Sam spotted an orange shape. He leaned out a little more, snow raining down as he scrunched forward.

“Bobby!” he shouted again.

The orange patch didn’t move. He couldn’t make out legs or arms. It was half buried in the white. Bobby’s pack was nowhere to be seen, no longer on his back.

“Bobby!”

The orange stirred a little. Sam heard a groan, and then a gloved hand appeared from beneath the snow, accompanied by a sharp cry of pain. Bobby cried out again as he flipped over, moving his legs as though he was preparing to stand.

“Don’t try to move!” Sam called down.

Either Bobby was in shock or didn’t hear him, because he kept shifting his position around. He got dangerously close to the edge. Sam shouted down again.

“Bobby! You’re going to fall!”

He stopped moving and stared up, then signaled to Sam, weakly waving an arm.

“God damn mess I’ve gotten myself into here,” he shouted.

At least he was conscious. Sam watched as he tried to sit up, struggled with it, and collapsed back, cradling his arm.

“You waste those two losers?” Bobby called after a moment.

“Yep.”

“Good.” Moving all his limbs now, Bobby added, “My wrist is screwed.” He reached gingerly up to his head. “And I’ve smashed my head pretty good.”

Sam could see the blood, even from his height, staining the snow.

“How long have we been here?”

Sam stared up at the sky again. “I don’t know. Maybe overnight.”

“That’s not good. I’m damn thirsty.”

“What should we do?” Sam shouted down.

“I could try to climb up,” Bobby said, “but that’ll take too long.”

“Do you have more rope?”

“In my pack.” Bobby glanced around on the ledge. “Where’s my pack?”

Sam scanned the boulders at the bottom, not seeing anything. Then he spotted the pack on a ledge above Bobby, about ten feet under and to the right of him. It had ripped open in the fall, some of its contents spilling out and falling to the bottom of the ridge.

“It’s up here,” he called down.

“Can you reach it?”

Sam saw a couple of likely hand- and footholds descending down to the ledge with the pack.

“I think so,” he shouted back.

Another blast of wind buffeted Sam. Once he swung over to the other side of the ridge, though, he’d be on the lee side and safer from getting blown off the rock.

Sam debated whether he should take off his pack before attempting the descent. It had his tent, food, and water in, and if Bobby’s food had fallen out, that was all they had left. On the other hand, the pack was heavy and ungainly on his back, with the potential to throw him dangerously off balance. Finally, he decided to keep it.

He swung his legs over the edge of the ridge and flipped over on his stomach. Reaching down with each foot, he found good handholds and lowered himself down. The storm raged around him as he descended, huge snowflakes getting in his eyes every time he craned his neck around to find his next foothold. He knew that if he fell, both he and Bobby were toast.

After fifteen painstakingly slow minutes, he reached the ledge with Bobby’s pack. Stepping down gingerly onto the rock, Sam tested its solidity, hoping it would hold his weight. It did.

“I’ve got it!” he called down to Bobby.

He stared over the lip of his platform at his ledge some twenty feet below.

Bobby didn’t stir.

“Bobby!” he shouted.

When he still didn’t move, Sam dug into his pack, relieved to see the rope hadn’t fallen out. Bobby’s tent and sleeping bag were still lashed to the outside of the pack, and his weapons and the research folder Marta had given him were still safe inside another zip pocket, but his food, his water bottle, and the stove they’d been using to melt snow for additional drinking water were all gone.

Sam was scouring the rocks around him for something to anchor the rope to when he heard Bobby shout, “I can do it myself, you idjit. Just tie the rope to something solid up there and toss it down.”

Sam leaned over. Bobby was awake, but a lot of blood had run down his face and stained his orange parka.

“I can come down and get you.”

“What am I, a helpless namby-pamby? Just toss it down. Find an anchor up at the top of the ridge.”

Sam lowered one end of the rope to Bobby, swinging it so it reached his ledge. Bobby grabbed it with his good hand. Sam stuffed the other end inside his parka to keep from jostling it.

Sam put Bobby’s pack on one shoulder and his own on the other, then tied them together with some of the rope. He studied the rock face above him, looking for a quicker route back up than the one he had followed down. Not seeing one, he started retracing each careful step.

It took him longer to get back up than it had to descend. He glanced down at Bobby a few times, worried he might find him passed out in the snow, but he was busy tying the rope around himself.

The snowfall near the top of the ridge was so thick that it coated Sam’s face instantly and a powerful gust of wind screamed up the opposite side, creating a wall of white at the crest, a vertical, unyielding snowfall. With the rope tied to a loop in his rainproof pants, Sam crept on hands and knees across the ridge. Each time he heard the roar of an upcoming gust, he laid flat, waiting for it to blow over him and die down again.

He crawled the remaining feet to the tree line. It felt incredible to stand up and walk into the trees. He found a massive ponderosa and anchored the rope around it.

He walked to the edge, braced himself against a tremendous boulder, and called out to Bobby, motioning that he was ready. Bobby gave him a thumbs up. Then, cautiously, he placed both feet on the cliff wall, hung onto the rope with his good hand, and walked his away laterally across the cliff face.

Bobby moved fast, Sam noticed, and with a great deal of agility for someone who must be in a world of pain. When he was directly under him, Sam pulled him up.

Bobby crested the ridge and they fell back in the shelter of the trees. Bobby groaned in pain. Up close, Sam could see how soaked his hat and parka were with blood. He examined his eyes, finding one pupil wide and the other dilated. Concussion.

“Let me see your wrist.”

Bobby bit his lip. “I don’t think it’s broken. I was worried for a second there that it had shattered and was more boneless than an octopus tentacle. It might be fractured.” He gestured toward his pack. “I can take that now.”

“What about your tentacle arm?”

“I’ll live.”

Damn, he was tough.

“Besides, if I get separated from you in the storm, I can’t afford to be without it.”

Sam relented. He slid the two packs off his shoulders and untied the rope binding them together. Together they looked through what remained in Bobby’s pack, Bobby happy to see his guns and Bowie knife remained.

Sam checked his own food supply. Two packages ofjerky and three granola bars. It wasn’t much. Bobby had had the bulk of their food. He indicated the research folder. “You can do some light reading tonight. That’ll take your mind off starving.”

Bobby still had his map, but the GPS unit was gone. It was a blow. The GPS had been the only thing keeping them on track in the whiteout.

“What are we going to do?” Sam asked.

“We know where we are now. We’ll just have to be really careful as we proceed. The cloud layer’s a little higher. We’ll keep getting glimpses of where we are. That’ll help.”

Sam used the rope to tie Bobby’s torn pack together, then helped Bobby heave the pack on and fasten the hip and chest straps.

“Now we really have to make it fast to the resort. The more we’re out with injuries like this, the faster we’re going to weaken.”

Blood had crusted around Bobby’s eye, and they used some snow to clear it away. Bobby strapped his snowshoes back on and continued into the forest. Sam hurriedly put his pack back on and took up the rear.

Already the brief glimpse he’d had of their surroundings 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.