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.
