With Me
Chapter 4
She hadn't counted on it being this cold.
Shivering, she crouched down behind a thicket, the sturdy brush only mildly effective as a windbreak. She wished she'd thought to grab her jacket before she left. The wind wasn't too bad yet, but the temperature had dropped quickly with no clouds to keep the earth's warmth trapped near the surface.
She could hear Dean - and farther off, Sam - calling her name, but she stubbornly stayed put. She wouldn't go back. Her mother would never understand. She loved working at the Roadhouse, but she loved Hunting more. She loved being out on the road, meeting people in coffee shops and gas stations and even libraries. She loved helping people, especially those being tormented by some evil creature. Why couldn't her mother see that she only wanted to help? She didn't care about fame or making money; she just wanted to make sure no other little girl had to grow up without her daddy. Why was that such a bad thing?
And why did she hate the Winchesters so much?
"Your daddy was trouble, and rotten apples don't fall far."
What did she mean by that? What had their father done that was so terrible? She knew John Winchester had been at the Roadhouse before, and from what she could remember of him he'd seemed far from a bad person. She could still recall seeing his wide grin as she ran to him and gave him a big hug around his knees, could feel the scratch of his beard as he swung her up into his arms and blew raspberries into her neck, making her collapse into fits of laughter.
Jo smiled despite the cold. Whatever had happened, it must've been an accident. He had been like family to the Harvelles. He would never hurt her family on purpose, and neither would his sons.
In the distance, a coyote howled, and she suddenly sat up a little straighter, her eyes darting around nervously at every shadow as if she expected a whole pack of them to come bursting out at her.
This was stupid, she scolded herself. Out in the middle of nowhere, in the dark of midnight, no weapons, and no coat. Are you trying to kill yourself?
She looked down and saw the bandage on her arm. She had come close to danger once already today; the wisest thing she could do was get up and go back home. She was still mad at Ellen for being so overbearing, and while her mom would be pissed and threaten to ground her for a year, she knew it would be better than staying out here and getting eaten by wild animals.
Jo stood up and looked around, but all she could see was a seemingly endless stretch of prairie, each bunch of shrubs identical to the next, and even worse, she couldn't hear the brothers calling for her. She tried to remember which way she had run from the house, but she had been so upset that she had just let her body take over and so had not been paying much attention to where she was going. Wrapping her arms around herself, she blinked back tears as she realized she was lost. The sky was dark, the nearly-full moon the only light shining down on the scrub land, and she suddenly remembered that more than coyotes would be coming out now. Scorpions were her first concern, as they blended in with the dark brown sand at her feet and so could sneak up on her. Snakes were another issue, hunting at night for prey like mice and bugs.
Fire, Jo thought; fire would serve dual purpose as it would give both light so she could see, and heat to scare such predators away. Her icy fingers fumbled through her pockets, and after a moment she came up with a lighter and a scrap of paper. That wouldn't last long enough to make a torch, but it would be sufficient to create a spark. Jo carefully searched the ground for a stick and found a sturdy branch, one that had mostly likely come from the dead tree a few yards away. It was pointed at one end and forked at the other, the bark stripped off by the elements in the months it had lay there until it was rubbed smooth. She tested its strength and found it held up to a good amount of weight pressed on it. If nothing else, it would make a good walking stick.
She heard a howl once again, closer this time, and she froze where she stood. She widened her eyes to take in as much of the moonlight as possible, feeling her eye muscles strain with the effort. Just ahead of her stood the half-shadowed form of a canine, crouched low beneath a bush. Holding her breath, she drew herself up to her full height and held her stick out in front of her. "Go away!" She cried. "Get!"
It darted to the side at first, startled, and when she saw that she took a few more menacing steps toward it, her feet stamping hard in the packed dirt. The coyote yelped and melted into the darkness, and only when she heard it yelp farther away did she let out a sigh of relief. She still needed to find something to make fire, so she continued to search the prairie a few steps at a time. The wind blew hard against her back, so cold it felt like ice water being splashed on her, but she set her jaw and kept moving, well aware that each step she took could be taking her even further from home.
Finally, she found another fallen tree, this one fresher and still leaking sticky sap. Curious, Jo pulled out the paper and tore off a small scrap, then smeared it through the sap. She held it between her fingers and lit the edge with her lighter, and it sparked and caught flame almost immediately. The fire soon licked at her fingertips and she dropped the paper, but to her surprise it continued to burn for almost a full minute on the ground.
"This could work," she muttered to herself through chattering teeth. If she could only find...
She looked down at the upturned roots of the tree and gasped. There, entangled in the thin strands, was what looked like a discarded article of clothing - a shirt or the leg from a pair of pants. She did not waste time wondering how it had gotten there; leaning her stick against the tree she worked on freeing the fabric from the roots until finally it pulled away with a shower of dried dirt and small pebbles. Shaking it out a few more times, she wrapped it around the forked end of the stick, then swabbed it in as much of the sap as she could find. Once again she took out her lighter and held its flame to her homemade torch. At first it only spat and fizzled, and Jo swallowed hard to keep her tears at bay as she tried again. This time the sap caught, and she had to pull her head back as it blazed bright and hot. She turned in a slow circle and again attempted to figure out where she was, but the torch light only penetrated the darkness a few yards in each direction. She really shouldn't move, especially if the boys were looking for her - and she knew that by now they would be - but she needed to find cover for the rest of the night. It was bound to get much colder now that the sun was down, and she was still wary of the animals out here hunting.
Even being up in a tree would make her feel better.
TBC...
