Movement in the vent caught Dean’s eye. It was on the periphery of his vision, but he could just see part of the hole the unfortunate man had left in the wall. Two pinpoints of light flashed in the dark.
At first Dean thought it was a flashlight, someone coming through again, thinking this side was safe. He tried to warn them off, tried to lift his heavy head, but nothing worked. Then the pinpoints grew larger, the shuffling sound growing closer. A face swam up from the darkness. The two points of light became eyes, flashing reflectively in a gaunt face.
Jimmy.
Dean tried to thrash around, tried to stand, but all he could do was lean against the wall with his head down, staring out of the corners of his eyes.
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 w
ith 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.
FIFTY-FOUR
“Is he gone?” Jimmy asked from the vent.
Dean blinked, unable to do anything else.
“Oh, damn. He got you, too.”
He pulled himself out a little farther, and now Dean could see his shoulders and head. The black hoodie was ripped, the hood pulled down to reveal Jimmy’s shortly cropped blond hair.
“Listen, that stuff wears off. It just takes time, and he may have bitten you more than once, but play it cool. If he’s distracted, he might not remember to bite you again before you get your body back.”
Dean stared at Jimmy.
“I’m going to try to dig myself out. Get help. I don’t think I can fight him on my own. If I can’t get out, I’ll come back and try to get the jump on him somehow.”
He shimmied back into the hole, leaving Dean alone and wondering what the hell he was going to do.
Cold began to creep around Dean. He still wore his parka and warm layers beneath, but the wall he leaned against felt unbearably cold. He guessed that on the other side of it, snow pressed in. He tried to imagine the scene from above. Was any part of the lodge still visible? How much snow had buried them?
His mind felt fuzzy. The desire to sleep pressed in on him, his dry eyes longing to close for a while, but he couldn’t let himself drift into unconsciousness.
Somewhere, far away down the corridors and in another devastated room, Dean heard a woman’s voice. “Is anyone alive in here?”
It was Susan. Maybe she had dug down. Maybe she was with rescuers. Hope filled him.
“My leg is trapped. Can someone help me?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. Damn it!
“Hello?”
Dean willed her to be quiet.
“Can someone come help me?”
Shut up, shut up, shut up, he pleaded with her silently, because someone is coming.
FIFTY-FIVE
Sam looked back at Bobby, who now trailed him. “We need to rest,” he said.
His friend waved him on. Blood from Bobby’s head wound soaked the parka. They had tried to stop the bleeding by applying pressure, but it kept opening up again with Bobby’s exertions.
Sam bit his lip. He knew Bobby was going to hate him for this. “Why don’t we put up your tent? I’ll set you up in there, all warm, and come back and get you after I reach the resort.”
Bobby stopped, staring at him with narrowed eyes. “What are you, some kind of idjit?” He gestured dismissively at his head. “You think I haven’t had worse than this? Son, I’ve been near death so many times it would astound you. Now shut your trap and keep hiking. I’m fine, god damn it.”
Yeah. Bobby hated that.
Sam turned around and kept walking, stopping every half-hour to double check the map. They’d had precious few glimpses of the cliffs around them, but were fairly certain they were headed in the right direction. But now the light was starting to fade, and with both of them injured, he knew that the plummeting temperature would be brutal.
Still, they had at least an hour of daylight left, and were determined to make it count. They hiked through the forest, the snow drifts many feet deep in places. Sam listened to the rhythmic pace of his snowshoes as they moved through the powder.
Bobby shivered and muttered to himself, and Sam started to worry about hypothermia. They had laid out in the snow all night. Their only water was what Sam had in his water bottle, and that was almost gone. Dehydration and blood loss were taking their toll.
Sam felt colder than he ever had before. Sometimes Lucifer walked beside him, whispering of the fires of Hell, of the warmth there. Lucifer told him to lie down in the snow and sleep.
Shaking his head, Sam pushed away the images.
He’d stopped the bleeding on his forehead and washed most of the dried blood from his face with snow, but he felt it sticking in his hair and woolen hat. His battered fingers stung in the cold despite the gloves. Still, none of his injuries were as bad as Bobby’s. That blow to the head was a nasty one, and he definitely had a concussion. His wrist may not be broken, but it was badly swollen.
As he trudged, Sam’s thoughts wandered to the Donner Party. He imagined the Forlorn Hope slogging through the snow like this with makeshift snowshoes. Sam’s stomach rumbled. He and Bobby had split the last of the jerky more than an hour ago. He couldn’t imagine being out here and not having eaten for a week. Mired in during a blizzard, the Forlorn Hope had been reduced to eating the oxhide laces of their snowshoes. The desperation of eating the very mode of conveyance that could deliver you to safety was a bleak act.
His thoughts turned to Dean. His brother had always been there for him, defending him no matter what, always looking out for him. There was no way he was going to let Dean down. No way.
He glanced back at Bobby, who was still grumbling.
Bobby tore off his warm cap and threw it down in the snow, then kept walking.
“Bobby.”
Bobby tore off his gloves and started to unzip his jacket.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s too damn hot. I’m burning up in all these layers.”
Sam rushed back to him. “Bobby. It’s not hot. It’s freezing.”
“Maybe you’re freezing. I’m burning up.” He shucked off his jacket, casting it aside. “It ain’t enough that we can’t get the floors clean. Now we have to deal with this.”
“Floors?” Bobby shoved past him, leavin
g his warm clothes behind. Sam picked them up. “Bobby, put these back on.”
He waved at Sam dismissively. “Hell if I will.”
The anger, the illusion of warmth… Sam stopped. This was advanced hypothermia. They had to stop now and build a fire, or Bobby would be dead within a few hours.
FIFTY-SIX
Dean snapped awake, horrified that he’d dozed off. He was useless. Uselessness had taken over his whole life. He was unable to help Sam in the aftermath of Hell. Every time he saved the world, it was ready to off itself again. Now here he was, unable to even lift his pinkie, struggling merely to stay awake while people around him died.
He could feel the weight of his .45 in his jacket pocket. He still had it, with the bullets soaked in the spice concoction. If he could just reach it somehow, unload it into Jason, maybe getting the mixture inside his body would do some damage.
His breath frosted in the air, and he knew then that it wouldn’t be long before the place really cooled down. It could be night outside. He had no idea how much time had passed since the avalanche or how long he’d been unconscious. It could be days. The air felt stale and thin, making him breathe shallowly.
Across from him the mountain manager lay awake again, eyes finding Dean’s in the gloom. Dean blinked at him.
Movement in the narrow corridor let them know someone was coming. Don’s eyes went wild, his pupils darting around as Jason entered the room.
Dean closed his eyes. He heard Jason’s clawed feet crunching on the debris of broken glass, insulation, and destroyed ski equipment. The footsteps moved away from Dean and he allowed his eyes to open just a slit.
Jason stood over Don, studying him. The proboscis snaked in the air, and Dean could hear Jason sniffing as he had before. He was going to take one of Don’s organs.
Frustration welled up inside Dean. He willed himself to move, to move anything, just an inch. Just one inch.
Suddenly his foot twitched. He felt the toe of his boot nudge a fallen ceiling tile.
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