Author's Note: Happy New Year everyone!

Direct continuation.

Hell On Wheels

Neither Hotch nor Emily spoke as their boots pounded through the snow. They were going at a full out sprint, with no concerns now about falling from the icy road beneath them.

Their feet were barely touching the ground.

But of course that was the adrenaline. There was very little left in the world that Hotch was truly afraid of, but whatever the hell these things were, men . . . or not, they scared the ever living SHIT out of him!

And he sure as CHRIST didn't want to run into them again!

Just then, through the swirling white haze, his eyes popped when he once more saw the black outline that he and Emily had been racing towards.

The SUV.

"Reload in the back," he gasped out as they closed in on it, "I'll try to get us moving! But if something else happens," he panted, "I'm going to need you on point, so hurry!"

"Got it!" Emily yelled back over the last of their pounding steps . . . they'd just arrived at the Suburban.

That's where they finally broke apart, with Hotch whipping open the driver's side door, while she was yanking open the back one. They both jumped inside and the doors simultaneously slammed shut.

Even while hearing the distinctive 'click' of Hotch hitting the locks, Emily, with her Sig in hand, was making a quick, frantic check of the back rows of the vehicle. She just needed to make sure that they had no stowaways.

Especially those of the variety that could rip their throats out.

"Clear back here!" She hollered over her shoulder.

"Good," Hotch muttered while twisting to yank off the backpack. A split second later it went flying over into the passenger seat, and fell to the floor.

That's when he took a breath, said a prayer . . . and finally turned the key he'd left sitting in the ignition a lifetime ago.

The engine sputtered once, twice, and then just when he winced and started to bite down on his lip . . . it turned over.

THANK GOD!

As the engine roared to life, he heard Emily muttering the same prayer from behind him.

"Thank you God."

"Yeah," Hotch ground his teeth as he jammed the gear shift into four wheel drive . . . they wouldn't be rolling a foot without it, "we were due for one break at least."

And with that, he tore out.

Of course with the amount of snow and ice on the ground, they didn't so much 'tear out,' as immediately go flying across the adjacent three lanes of road and then fishtail back again. But once they'd regained some traction, Hotch floored it.

It wasn't until they'd reached the fairly suicidal (under the circumstances) twenty-two miles per hour, that he felt Emily's hand on his shoulder. And then she was climbing over the console and into the passenger seat. Fortunately the back of the seat was still lying flat from when JJ had lowered Derek down earlier, so it made her shifting over a little easier.

At least she wasn't pressed completely against the dashboard.

But as soon as she dropped down, she leaned back to grab her shotgun . . . that was placed between her knees. Then she twisted, wincing slightly so she could reach the lever to snap the seat back into place. Once it was locked upright, she finally turned to Hotch.

The cold wind and snow were whipping at her face almost as badly as they had been when they were outside. But of course that was from the God damn broken window.

They still hadn't dealt with it.

"Give me whatever needs reloading." She said while hitching her seatbelt.

"Just this," Hotch answered quietly, with a blind pass of his shotgun . . . he'd had it jammed against the door.

After Emily had taken the Remington from his hand, he yanked a shell out of his jacket pocket.

"Here."

He didn't want her using up all of her ammo, on his guns.

"No," Emily pushed it back, "keep it. I've got the backpack here," she leaned down to snatch the strap, "I'll just replace it from the big bag."

That was where they'd put the bulk of the extra shells. Shells . . . she yanked open the zipper . . . that she also needed to fill her pockets with again.

They were both quiet for a moment, the only sounds that of Emily rifling through the bag of ammo, and the wind bellowing loudly through the open window. But then Hotch heard a sad murmur from the other side of the SUV.

"We left Derek."

And he nodded slowly.

"I know." He whispered back, "I know. But it couldn't be helped. We'll get him later." His eyes briefly flickered over to Emily's and then back out the front window.

"I promise."

Even if was just his body, it was a terrible thing leaving a man behind. But they couldn't have stayed to take him. They would have been ambushed again.

Hotch was sure of it.

What he wasn't sure of, was what the hell those things were! If they were human or if they were . . . and his brain started to short out.

No, no, no, no! That was not a mental road he was ready to walk down. Not yet. For now it was just enough to know that they were fast and strong, and VERY hard to kill. Head shots first, he reminded himself.

Actually head shots only.

They couldn't afford to waste any ammo that wouldn't actually save their lives. Though as he heard Emily zipping the backpack closed again, another thought came to him.

"Do you really think only a headshot will kill them?" He asked with another flickering glance.

"I don't think it's necessarily the shot," Emily responded slowly, "but more taking the head off completely. Because remember the first one we encountered, you shot it twice in the head, but it didn't disintegrate. And I think now that was because most of the head was still attached to the body."

She looked over at him.

"I don't think you killed it. I think it was lying there in the road, looking like it was dead, but it wasn't. And that's what got Derek and the others."

It was a nightmare scenario . . . but the only one that fit the nightmare they were currently in.

"Emily, no," Hotch shook his head slowly, "no, it was dead. You saw that brain matter hit the ground."

He just wasn't ready yet to accept the word that was pressing against his cerebral cortex. Which was why he also wasn't quite ready to accept that ANY creature, even whatever those things appeared to be, could continue to be functional with its brains splattered all over the highway!

HOW did they exist?!

But then Emily again cut into thoughts.

"Yeah," Emily's jaw twitched, "I also saw that body lying on the ground. And I'm telling you Hotch," her voice got louder and tighter, "he wasn't dead. Or," she flapped her arm, "maybe it was dead all along. If they really are . . ."

For a second Emily almost said the word that they weren't saying. It was right there on the tip of her tongue . . . but she bit it away. Because it was something a child would say. One trying to apply a fairytale label to a flesh and blood monster. It didn't matter what they were, or what they called them. They were dangerous, and she and Hotch were being hunted them.

And they'd probably killed all of their friends.

With that last thought came the reality that she could now no longer ignore . . . that JJ and Reid could have been overrun within literally seconds. They wouldn't have been prepared for it. Not when that body had looked dead. That would explain why only one shotgun was grabbed – and why there hadn't even been time to fully load it up. They'd been snatched away.

Snatched away and murdered.

Emily slapped her palm then against her forehead, as a soft, anguished, "fuck," was muttered under her breath.

A slit second later she felt Hotch's fingers curling around her wrist. And even through the layers of their clothing, the effect was comforting. Which she knew, was what he had intended. So for his efforts to keep trying to help her even in the midst of this hell he understood no better than she, Emily reached over and patted his gloved hand with her own.

"I'm okay," she murmured with a light squeeze of his fingers, "I promise."

"It's all right if you're not okay," Hotch responded softly as he stared into the flakes smashing into the windshield, "because I don't know if I am."

She was surprised that he would make such an admission. Because for whatever emotional bonding they'd experienced in the recent past, verbal acknowledgement of such a human 'weakness' (the word he would use) had not been part of it.

Her teeth sunk into her lip as she turned to look directly at him. And for just a second his eyes flickered over and locked onto hers.

And then he looked back through the windshield.

She was just about to say something . . . to agree that maybe she wasn't that okay either . . . when a fresh gust of wind blasted her in the face.

Christ!

She threw her hand up to wipe away the film of water . . . melting snow . . . now covering her skin. Then she heard Hotch from beside her.

"Given that we've barely covered a mile so far, it's going to take a while to get anywhere at this speed, so why don't you try that trick that you and uh," he cleared his throat, "Reid, had been talking about. The vest and the flex cuffs."

God, now he was stammering over Spencer's name the same way he stammered over Derek's. Did that mean his brain was now processing his absence as a death?

Because Hotch wasn't ready for that to be a truth.

And it needed to stop!

"Oh," Emily moved to undo her belt, "right. And actually," she snapped her seat down again so she could more safely crawl from the front, half into the back . . . though given the road conditions, it wasn't safe at all to be unbelted, "those things are right here."

Fortunately they'd pulled all of those materials out earlier, so she just shimmied over and grabbed the box of cuffs, before stretching a little further to snatch up the vest that she'd pushed to the floor when she'd been sorting out the ammo.

And once she had both needed items in hand, she shifted back around, dropped the box into her lap, and hit the lever to snap the seat up into place again. Then she immediately re-clicked her seatbelt.

"All right," she muttered to herself as she began rifling around in the box that they'd been digging into less than an hour ago, "now let's pray this works."

No matter whether it did or not though, it was the only idea they had. So she quickly went about pulling out the bendy pieces of plastic, and linking them up into various lengths of chain. And once she felt there was a sufficient batch of faux rope to work with, she picked up the vest she'd dropped down onto her feet. And with a little bit of cursing, and a few more cuffs to hook around for locking into place, after a couple minutes of work, she did manage to get the vest up, and the wind and snow almost completely blocked.

It wasn't perfect of course . . . it wasn't like their personal Kevlar was designed for use in window treatments . . . but at least it was big enough that once the cuffs were hooked around on the sun visor, the 'oh shit' handle, and the seat belt holder, the vest basically kept in place. Because the one fortunate part of working with Kevlar, was that it was so heavy that the flapping was minimal. Really there was just a small whistling now at the top of the window, where the wind still blew in through a small gap. Also, Emily's face no longer felt like she had it jammed into an ice box.

That was a plus.

"Good job," Hotch murmured as Emily repacked the flex cuff box and tossed it into the back.

"Yeah well," she turned to give him a sad smile, "credit to Reid too."

Hotch was just about to respond, when suddenly Emily smacked his arm.

"OH MY GOD!" she yelled, "over there, up ahead on your left! There's a car spun out off the side of the road!"

It was so covered in snow, that if she hadn't happened to look over at him at that exact moment, Emily knew she might have missed it completely.

They both could have.

Even still, she could sense Hotch's hesitation to actually stop. He did pull his foot back from the accelerator, but she couldn't feel that he'd made any pressure to the brake itself.

"You think it's a trap?" She asked while reaching for the shotgun she had resting down between her legs.

Ordinarily that wouldn't be her first weapon of choice, but it was the only one they had that could take those things heads off with one shot.

Handguns were backup.

"I don't know," Hotch bit down on his lip as the car in question now loomed large in their headlights, "maybe. Or it could belong to those other people that we saw in the woods."

"Oh," Emily let out a soft breath, "right. Them."

The dead ones. Not that she'd forgotten about them. But she'd forgotten to think about them. To think about how they could have gotten out there. And their car spinning off the side of the road in the gathering storm . . . just as theirs had . . . was as plausible an explanation as any other.

Which would mean that there was no help there.

It would be a dead man's car.

Then she heard Hotch murmur, almost to himself, "we should still check it though. Just in case."

Of the many burdens Hotch carried, some were by choice, and some he had no choice in at all. Like his decision to become chief, to be 'in charge' of important things, all the time, that was a burden that he carried by choice. But the sense of responsibility and his protectiveness of others, that was burden he had no choice in at all.

It was just him.

So no matter the circumstance, and these were clearly some of the WORST ones imaginable, it just wasn't in him to drive past a car spun out in a storm, and not check and see if someone in there was hurt.

"Shit," he let out a huff as he shifted to neutral and began to tap the brakes, "okay, uh, you get in the back again. When I stop, we open both doors, but you cover me from back there, I'll run over and check it out."

"Um, Hotch," Emily gently reminded him, "you do know that it would be more logical if I jumped out, right? Because if we need to leave fast, we'll need to have somebody with a foot already on the gas pedal."

Though she knew he was just distracted with his fears of losing her out here too, it made no sense for him to be the one to get out.

None at all.

"Uh, yeah," Hotch winced slightly as they came to a slow stop a few yards south of the car in question . . . he was not thinking clearly at all, "that's a good point." He reached over to shift them into park, before his eyes snapped up to hers. "But I'm still not sending you out there." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "I'll climb over and get out the back," he smacked his hand down on the steering wheel, "you climb over here and get in the driver's seat. Once we're lined up, I'll go."

Though Emily knew that both of them were aware that she could handle the vehicle check herself, she also knew this was not the real point of their discussion. The unknown status of JJ and Spencer, and Derek's body lying abandoned on the side of the road, those were the real points of the discussion. But if their positions were reversed, if she were the one in charge, with half of her team now dead or missing, then she'd very likely be behaving the same way that he was.

Totally irrationally.

So she just nodded an, "okay," and let it go.

And with that, Hotch grabbed his shotgun in one hand and jammed his flashlight under his other arm. Then he quickly climbed over and into the second row.

Once he was out of the way, Emily immediately shifted across the console to drop into the driver's seat.

Then she reached back to snatch her own shotgun from the other side of the SUV.

"You ready?" she called softly over her shoulder, and she heard Hotch respond in the same tone.

"Yeah, and let's manually do the locks. I don't want the other doors to be vulnerable with all of our attention on only this side of the vehicle. And I'm just going to quickly check inside the car, if there's anybody there, I'll signal. If not, I'll just run straight back. I want this whole thing done in twenty seconds, tops."

As it stood, Hotch wasn't sure if he was praying to find an unconscious traveler slumped over the steering wheel, or if it would be better if this was a car that had belonged to one of the victims in the woods. Ordinarily of course he would prefer to find life than death, but the thought of having to take in a stranger . . . after all of the strangers they'd met that night who had tried to kill them . . . really held no appeal.

None at all.

So yeah . . . his thumb and forefinger moved to pinch the door lock . . . under the circumstances, a completely abandoned vehicle would definitely be the lesser of all evils.

And hearing Emily murmur a, "got it," Hotch flung open the back door.

His feet were hitting the ground just as he saw Emily's door snapped back. And then with his shotgun up and a combination of their headlights, and Emily's flashlight guiding him . . . he'd decided to shove his Mag light into his vest to keep both his hands free . . . the whole area was bathed in a bright swirling light. It was more than enough to see by. So he cautiously scuttled first around the left side of what he could identify now was a grey, four door sedan.

He let out a sigh of relief.

Nothing there but a layer of pristine, undisturbed, snow . . . though one which was unfortunately covering over both the front and rear windows of the car. Even the side windows were half coated in a layer of frost. It wasn't completely blocking the view of the inside of the vehicle, but it was definitely obscuring it.

So he started to back up, tipping his head to see if there was anything visible through the front passenger side window.

Then suddenly he froze.

There was a figure there. Not slumped though. The head was turned in his direction. Whoever it was . . . that person was looking back at him.

Ah . . . he swallowed . . . shit.

Feeling his heart once more began to pound in his chest, with his right hand Hotch flashed Emily a signal behind his back. Almost immediately, he could hear the distinct sound of her shotgun being cocked. And feeling an ever so slight loosening of the tension in his stomach . . . that woman always had his back . . . he shifted three inches to the right, so that he'd be completely out of her line of fire.

Basically he wanted her to be able to aim dead center on at anything that might come flying through that window. And he had no doubt whatsoever, that whatever the hell those things were hunting them, that they'd have no difficulty at ALL, smashing through tempered glass.

And likely they'd be doing it head first.

Still though, he was hoping against hope that whoever was in that car, was one hundred percent human, and maybe . . . God forgive him . . . completely incapacitated. A broken leg, a couple of broken arms.

Any broken limbs would do.

But for now he needed to cowboy up. So with Emily, and the relative safety of the SUV, a solid twelve paces back . . . which felt like a mile at the moment . . . Hotch took a breath, and clenched his jaw.

Time to do something stupid.

"FBI!" He shouted through the glass, "STEP OUT OF THE VEHICLE WITH BOTH OF YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD!"

His voice came out in the usual loud and authoritative tone he wanted it to, but still he mentally flinched at the sound. Because he had no desire to once more draw attention from anything in the woods. But he was praying that the howl of the wind would prevent it from carrying beyond their small patch of land they were on at that moment. And unfortunately, the lack of immediate movement from the person in the vehicle, indicated that he was probably going to have to yell again. Or else go over there and just yank open the damn door.

Neither of which sounded like particularly 'safe,' options.

But just as he went to open his mouth, through the frost on the window, he saw the person in the car turning the other way.

And then the door started to open.

Feeling another ratcheting up of his tension level . . . and his index finger now hovering over the trigger of the shotgun . . . Hotch himself, with his heart pounding in his throat, waited to see what was about to emerge from the vehicle. Because somebody was coming out of the door that had just opened. The hands were already locked high above the head even as the body was still unfurling from the driver's seat.

And unfortunately the person's face was still partially turned away.

Though Hotch did think it was a good sign that at least there were a hat and gloves clearly visible in the headlights. Because the others, those things, none of them had been wearing anything more than a suit jacket. And the last two, the ones that Emily had decapitated, they hadn't even had on that much. Just a shirt and pants. So seeing this winter gear was probably a good sign. He let out a faint breath.

The person was probably a person.

Once, yesterday, he would've believed that was the most ridiculous sentence he could have constructed. Today it was simply a relief. And as this person fully emerged from the car, and began to turn around, Hotch continued on with his attempts to keep control of the situation.

"Now state your . . ."

The rest of his sentence fell away as the person lifted his head and squinted into the snow.

It was SPENCER!

"Reid!" Hotch sputtered in disbelief as the shotgun dropped to his side.

"Where the hell have you BEEN?!"

A/N 2: Finally! One of them turned up! And I'd really forgotten how short these chapters were back then. I think I have one or two more already written for repost, then we'll be back into the wild, snowy white, yonder.

Thanks for sticking with me everybody!