Supernatural Fresh Meat (19 page)

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Bobby insisted, but Sam could feel the weight of that white lie.

“I don’t like this.”

“Well, neither do I, but bitchin’ about it isn’t going to get us there any faster.”

They had left Point Reyes Station two hours ago, and were now passing through Sacramento. The American River sparkled in the sunlight as they passed over it, barges and a paddleboat lining its banks. The drive felt four times longer than it had on their way out.

They climbed into the foothills. As the elevation increased, they passed a sign that warned that snow chains were required on all vehicles heading east into the Sierra Nevadas. Bobby assured Sam he had chains in the back of the van.

Flurries started as they reached the historic town of Auburn. The snowfall increased as they got higher, and soon it was snowing so hard they could hardly see the road. A layer of ground fog hung thickly just above the highway, and Bobby slowed to a crawl behind a line of cars trying to reach Lake Tahoe and Reno beyond.

“This is terrible,” Sam said as they slowed down to five miles per hour.

A yellow road hazard sign glowed through the mist, warning them that the chain checkpoint was just a mile ahead. Bobby pulled over on the side of the highway and he and Sam quickly fitted the van with chains, tightening them down over the wheels. In five minutes they were back in the car, rattling toward the checkpoint.

As they neared the checkpoint agent, they crept ahead, a few feet at a time. The agent waved them ahead, seeing the chains on the van.

“How heavy is it snowing at Truckee?” Bobby asked.

“Highway might be closed by the time you get there. This is a whopper of a storm. You might have to spend the night there, or at the very least kill a few hours in a restaurant.”

“Thanks,” Bobby said, his mouth pulled into a colorless slit.

He pulled clear of the agent and picked up some speed, though the cars in front of them were only moving about twenty miles an hour. Still, it was better than the agonizing inching along they had been doing.

“Do you think Dean’s out in this?”

“He’s a smart kid. He can handle himself.”

Suddenly, the silver Escort in front lost control, skidding dangerously close to a guard rail.

“Jesus!” Bobby cursed, angling around it just in time.

The Escort recovered and pulled back onto the road.

“Idjits!”

As they moved along, it seemed to Bobby the road was filled with people who had never driven in snow before. Cars skidded dangerously close to each other, and they passed one that had gotten hung up near the median after driving into a snowdrift. A tow truck was attempting to pull it out. The cycling yellow light on top of the truck cut through the snowy haze, causing Sam to squint.

It was going to take them a long time to reach Truckee at this rate. Sam only hoped that Dean was somewhere warm and dry.

He looked into the back seat. The whip rested reassuringly by his winter jacket. Outside, snow obscured the road, making it hard to determine where lanes ended and began. Consequently, everyone had merged into a single, painstakingly slow line. Sam hoped Dean could hang on a little longer.

THIRTY

Plunging into thigh-deep snow, Dean hefted the carpet full of eggs through the blinding storm. Ice crystals stung his eyes and he struggled to see. At times the wind surged up, blowing so much snow at him he had to stop and wait for it to die down.

He needed to find someplace secure, somewhere they couldn’t be seen from the air and preferably where he could bury them in case the aswang could track them by scent. Maybe the snow would even help in that way.

He came to a river and walked alongside it, using it as a guide to keep from getting lost in the storm. The water surged past as he hiked upstream, burbling past boulders and fallen tree branches. The driftwood was soaked through and dark red, almost black. He glanced behind, making sure he was long out of sight of the cabin. The cloud layer had descended, so thick that Dean couldn’t make out more than forty feet in front of him, let alone see all the way to the cabin. But he kept hiking, trying to stick along the creek bank where the snow wasn’t so deep.

After half an hour, he looked back the way he’d come, surprised to see that the snow had covered his tracks completely. It fell hard and fast, unrelenting.

Dean searched around, finding a massive group of granite boulders with a large cleft between the two biggest ones. He hefted his burden over to it and peered inside.

It was tight, but full of wind-blown dirt. He could probably wedge himself all the way to the middle. Deciding on it, he tossed the carpet of eggs into the cleft.

Pulling himself up and into the crevice, he inched along, squeezing himself through. The cleft was so narrow he couldn’t straighten his feet, and had to walk on his toes, wedging his boots against the rock and inching sideways. In some places he had to exhale to even fit.

He reached the makeshift sack and threw it again, farther inside. Then he slithered toward it.

The deeper he penetrated, the darker it grew. Above him, the two granite boulders came together, blocking out the white sky and the storm. The break from the wind was incredibly welcome. Dean squeezed himself closer to the sack, and as he wedged his foot down to pivot and grab it, it slipped, falling down into a small hole. His toe hit something hard and he felt the obstruction move slightly. Granite bit into his ankle and he cursed. He tried to pull his foot up, but it was trapped beneath the huge boulder and the rock that had toppled over.

Dean tried to look down at his foot, but after hitting his forehead against the cold stone, he knew the space was too small for him to dip his head forward. He tried to crane his neck around to see out of the corner of his eye. All he could tell was that his foot had been swallowed up under a lip of granite. He twisted his foot again and tugged upward, trying to free it. He placed his hands on the stone wall in front of him, trying to pull himself up and get leverage. Managing only an inch or so, he let himself settle back into the space. He could smell the cold dank of the stone, the wetness of the soil beneath him.

He tried to take a deep breath and found he couldn’t.

To his left, his grasping fingers could just feel the fabric of the carpet.

Damn it!

He lowered his weight a little, straining his foot against the rock that had shifted. It was either huge and weighed more than Dean did, or was wedged tightly against the tremendous boulder. And if he lowered his other foot into the hole, it might get stuck, too.

Dean cursed, then let out a bellow of frustration.

He tried to console himself with the thought that the aswang would have a problem getting into the space. It was bigger than Dean, and it wouldn’t be able to fly in. Of course, he might still be stuck when the eggs hatched.

He checked the sack again out of the corner of his eye.
Please don’t be moving,
he asked it silently. It was still, crammed in the cleft.

He tried to pivot his body as much as he could, but it wasn’t enough. The granite lip held his foot firmly. He was going to have to risk it and lower his other foot into the crack to try and shift the rock around.

Dean squeezed his foot into the hole and kicked hard. He felt the rock shift. His trapped foot came free and he slammed downward. The granite gouged into his shins as his feet landed in dirt a few inches below. The granite walls on either side of him cinched up painfully. Dean gripped the flat of the boulder and heaved himself up, chimney crawling high enough up the cleft to actually take a deep breath. He breathed in the air. He was no longer stuck.

Be grateful for little things,
he thought,
like not suffocating in a cleft in a rock or having to cut your own foot off.

Dean leant sideways and reached down with grasping fingers to grab the sack of eggs. A bit further in, the lip of rock his foot had gotten trapped under met the ground. Plenty of dirt had gathered there over the years. The space was too tight to bend over in, so he dug with his feet. Gouging out dirt with his boot toe, Dean created a trench.

The loose soil piled up at his feet. The work sent sprays of earth up into the tiny confines and Dean spat out the bittersweet taste of dirt. He started to sweat under all his winter layers. Every few minutes, the wind blew a welcome gust of cold air his way.

Finally, the trench was deep enough for the eggs. He pushed the sack in with his boot, then kicked the soil back over it. When it was done, he turned his head and started out of the cleft, taking care not to step down into the lip again.

After a few minutes of squeezing and crawling, his head came out into the open. A white haze had consumed the forest. Dean could barely make out tree trunks only a few feet away. The wind blew even stronger, swirling snow up into a ground blizzard of ice needles that stung his eyes, making them tear.

He knew which direction the stream lay in, but couldn’t see it at all. Hefting himself free of the crevice, he fell into almost hip-deep snow. He trudged in the direction of the stream, each step a tiring effort. He heard the water before he saw it, glad to locate the burbling little river.

Hiking downriver, he hoped he’d recognize where he should break off to get back to the cabin. He worried about Sam and Bobby, wondering if they were out in the storm looking for him. Once it died down, he’d go back to the car and contact them.

The storm had bleached the world of its color. The trees were no longer green, their trunks no longer brown or red. The world had gone monochromatic, a glass painting backdrop from a black-and-white 1930s film.

As he struggled back to the cabin, he wondered if the aswang could survive in a storm like this, or if it, too, would be seeking shelter. Dean felt the reassuring weight of the spice container inside his jacket. He hoped that the reason it hadn’t worked on the eggs was their encasing shell. If it didn’t work at all, he was in serious trouble.

THIRTY-ONE

For the tenth time in five minutes, Sam looked at his phone’s clock. “We’re not going to get there before dark.”

Bobby peered ahead at the line of cars in front of them. Tail lights burned through the haze of snow. “I know.”

They’d just crawled through Emigrant Gap, and Bobby knew it took more than thirty minutes to reach Truckee on a good day. At this rate, they wouldn’t get there for another hour and a half or more.

The sun still hung above the peaks to the west, but soon it would dip low. Not that it mattered; they’d hike out in the middle of the night if they had to. With agonizing slowness, the line of traffic ascended and descended, working through the mountains into the town of Truckee. As the gloaming set in, Bobby spied Donner Lake on the right, gleaming in the last of the light.

“We’re close.”

They peeled off at one of the first exits, near the Donner Party memorial. Bobby saw the statue rising on the side of the road, the brave figure of a man and woman with two little children.

To avoid more traffic, they took side streets toward the main road that led to the trailhead and the ski slopes beyond. When they got there, two sheriff’s department SUVs blocked the road.

As Bobby approached, a deputy stepped out of his car and held up his hand, telling him to stop. He slowed to a halt and rolled the window down.

“What’s going on?” Bobby asked the deputy.

“Road’s closed, sir. You can’t go through this way.”

“Why?”

“Avalanche danger. Whole mountain’s ready to go.” He sized them up. “You folks headed up to ski?”

Bobby shook his head. “Hike.”

“At night?”

Sam leaned over. “We’re backcountry campers.”

The deputy looked over his shoulder at the forest and mountains beyond. “Well, it’s going to be a while before you can go up there. The ski resort’s in the middle of evacuating all its guests. All those backcountry sites at the bottom of the slope are in extreme avalanche danger. I’m afraid we just can’t allow any hikers in there right now.”

Bobby frowned. “How long until we can?”