Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: See Chapter 1
I THOUGHT I SAW
Chapter 4
At first light, Sam levered himself out of the bed, every joint and muscle feeling as if it had seized up overnight. Hunched over like a nonagenarian, he made his way into the bathroom and simply stood under the hottest shower he could stand to loosen up his body as much as possible.
He dressed in the warmest clothing he could, then went out to the bait & tackle store and without blinking at the cost bought waterproof pants and fishing boots that he donned back at the motel room. Stocking a backpack with water, spare ammunition and the Winchester-style First Aid kit that differed wildly from the AMA version (they for instance did not usually contain Holy Water, exorcism chants and powerful mystically medicinal herbs), he set out in the Impala and drove back to the road/track. Hoisting the backpack, he took a hunting rifle, as now it was probable that the four infected animals would stay as far away as possible, with his shotgun across his back and his handgun in his waistband as yesterday.
He went straight up the trail to the cave, which was now a hollow of charred ash, and picked up the two Glock18Cs from the ground, looping them onto his backpack. They were 'due back' tomorrow and Sam would have to take them - once he found Dean the last thing his injured brother would need whilst recuperating was to face the wrath of a seriously pissed psycho.
Leaving the clearing, Sam tramped down the other trail and went back into the stream, his lips tight with determination and anxiety. Wading straight across to the other bank, he aimed downstream and began to almost 'inch' his way along the stream's edge, scouring the opposite slope for any hint Dean had exited the water and managed to crawl up the slope, deeply grateful for the first time that Dad had insisted on teaching both him and Dean how to hunt meat for the pot. He was no Apache, but he could still follow a trail; his acutely motivated eyes considered the potential in every bent stalk, scraped patch of bark, or depression in the ground; but none were a match with Dean.
A flash of russet ahead made him focus. A large dog-fox was drinking in the stream. Actually in the stream; Sam eased his rifle off his shoulder and aimed it at the animal. Right now the four escapees of the Ghoul were the only non-insect wildlife around here, and even if not, there was no mistaking that this fox was the right one. Animals approached river banks cautiously and lapped delicately, whereas as this fox had simply waded into the water and was guzzling it like Stanford's star quarterback quaffing beer after a home-team win.
Sam sighted on the fox but hesitated briefly; he had come equipped with salt, gasoline and matches almost automatically, but not an excessive supply. The four infected mammals were a distant second on his priority list right now. On the other hand, if he took this opportunity it was one less to deal with over the next couple of days, which meant he could spend his time looking after Dean and making sure he firmly squashed his brother's usual idiotically macho 'It's just a little internal haemorrhaging, I could run a marathon!' nonsense. Though of course, as soon as Dean was fit enough to physically dominate his little brother again, payback would be a bitch…in some ways Dean would never grow up beyond the age of about three. Still, no matter how much Dean was always that bit stronger, Sam would always have the height, proving that God was both just and possessed of a wicked sense of humour.
He rustled but the fox didn't even look up from drinking; Sam fired one shot to the head and then splashed through the water to catch the tail before the fox could float downstream; he salted and burned the corpse on a small nearby flat rock, and moved on as a glance at his watch showed it was nearly midday.
A hundred yards further down, he saw a splotch of black colour on a small round rock. Mud? Moss? Or…?
His throat constricted as he took in the scene. The black was dried blood. Next to it were shallow grooves in the rock – claw marks, and the deep depression of a large animal's paw. Sam was dimly aware that his sudden inability to feel anything was his brain's self-defence mechanism, but vaguely he was grateful for being able to study the signs analytically not hysterically. The grass blades and plant stalks had sprung back fully upright, and the claw and paw marks showed that they had been made at a very similar time to the blood smear...so whatever had crawled out of the stream at this point had only been on the bank for minutes at the most before something else had come and…taken it…else the grass would have been much more crushed and flattened.
Sam slowly moved up the slope. More splotches of blood and paw prints, but scattered in a wildly erratic zigzagging path up the incline away from the stream; if human the tracks would have read like a man staggering home after a three-day drunk…or if something large and heavy was being pulled with difficulty up the slope.
Dreading each step but relentlessly moving, Sam followed the spoor away from the stream, through the trees and higher up, finding himself trying to estimate the quantity of blood accounted for by each splotch. A human had eight pints, each smear was probably about five fluid ounces…
He came out of the trees and stopped. There was a small plateau of bare rock here and the trail vanished. Sam stepped onto the flat rock and looked around keenly. Last night there had only been a light shower, but it would have been sufficient to wash away a lot of signs unprotected by foliage. There must be some way to determine which way –
The rock was brown and weathered with age, apart from a spot about three feet away, where the rock was fresh and white. Slowly Sam advanced and found himself on the lip of a ledge overlooking a sheer drop into a deep pool of mercury-grey water, some sort of side channel. The rock plateau was not solid granite or basalt, but chalkier, like limestone, and at some point in the past forty-eighty hours, a chunk of the edge had collapsed.
On the edge of the break was a dark black smear and deep, straight white grooves were clearly visible as if something had clawed desperately for a foothold but had been unable to find one. In his head Sam suddenly had an image of a cougar-like shape hauling and mauling an unconscious Dean to this point and the sudden collapse of the ledge and two forms plunging into the water, the heavy weight of an injured large feline pressing Dean down into the depths, pinning him to the bottom of the pool…
Continued in Chapter 5…
© 2006, Catherine D. Stewart
