Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 102
102
"Come on, put your back into it, Nicky!" Bartholomew said, shovelling a heap of snow in his brother's general direction.
"Sod off, Bart!"
"You call that shovelling? I bet old 'Thello's grandmum could shovel better than that, and she's got a hook for a hand!"
Nicky just shook his head, gritted his teeth, and plunged his shovel back into the snow without a word. It wasn't a good sign. The work has been getting to him (it's been getting to them all, but to him especially). The last two Wolves they unearthed were both dead, and were now on their way to that cosy little corner by the wall, where they would spend gods knew how long wrapped up with all the other corpses.
It was enough to make your fur turn white.
Bartholomew's shovel struck something solid and his heart stopped dead in his chest, sweat broke out on his forehead and his breathing doubled. He bent down and brushed the snow aside, feeling like he was shrivelling up on the inside, like all his guts had magically transformed into raisins (good gods how he hated raisins), but it was just a big grey rock. No more, no less. He sighed with relief and picked it up, getting a feel for the weight of it in his hands. He knew he shouldn't be relieved at finding nothing, but it had reached the point where he was almost glad every time his shovel sliced through the snow without any resistance, because every shovel scoop filled with naught but flakes of frozen water was another second he wouldn't have to worry about finding... one of them.
Staring down at the stone in his hands, his mind automatically tried to come up with a word that would make it seem smaller than it actually was, perhaps even funny. 'Wolfsicle' was one. But it wasn't funny. Not even a little bit. It was ghastly. Why not just be blunt about it? Blunt like this stone? What they were doing was digging dead Wolves out of the snow. The last one they dug up was frozen solid, with his arms high up in the air like he was reaching for something, which actually wasn't that far from the truth, now that he thought about it. The poor guy had died trying to dig his way up, probably choking on all the snow falling back into his face. He had died with his mouth contorted into a terrible sneer and his eyes wide open, all red and bloodshot and filled with popped vessels.
He didn't want to find something like that again. He didn't want to pull it out and put his ear to its mouth to see if it was breathing or not.
He didn't want to have something like that staring up at him again, asking him a million times in the span of a single second: Why?
Because it was the only way.
Bartholomew flung the stone aside, back where the snow had already been dug out, and was surprised to find that he was on the verge of crying.
Not wanting his brother to see this moment of weakness, he turned his back on the hole they were excavating and surveyed the rest of the pass.
There were still dozens of other Foxes all clustered together in little groups, but not quite as many as at the start. The more Wolves they dug up the more Foxes were needed to take care of them back at the base. It was a necessary sacrifice, but it also meant there were less Foxes around doing the actual grunt work.
"This is bad," Bartholomew said. "Everything is slowing down."
"Gee, I wonder why that could be?" Nicky said, heaving a big shovelful of snow off to the side. "Maybe because we've been stuck out in this blizzard for the better part of an hour, freezing our tails off?"
"That's cold, Nicky."
"Har har."
"I think we need more people."
"We haven't got more people."
"There's plenty back at the base, wasting time hauling blankets and building fires! We need them here, where it's urgent!"
Nicky planted his shovel in the snow like a spear and eyed his twin with a look bordering on incredulity. "Are you insane?"
"Debatable, but why do you ask?"
"Are you honestly suggesting we leave hundreds of potentially dangerous bloodthirsty warmongering Wolves unsupervised on the wrong side of the bloody wall just so we can dig more of their dead buddies out of the snow? Get real, Barty. We're not just wrapping them up and keeping them warm. We're keeping an eye on them, and for that we need all the healthy peepers we can get. They're the ones doing the urgent work, not us."
Bartholomew did not know it, but his mouth was hanging open. "Those Wolves are half-dead, Nicky! And they're the lucky ones! I hardly think they're in any condition to fight, let alone go on some kind of rampage!"
"Yeah? And how do you know? Remember what Ander looked like when we found him? Practically dead where he lay, and he pulled through just fine. And that little bro of his? Apparently he got shivved in the back before he came here, and I've seen him run up and down that hill like a friggin' billygoat. I'm telling you, Bart, these Wolves are tough. It frightens me."
"That's still no reason to -"
"What about Dad, huh? Forgot about him?"
Realising that he'd been standing around jawing off while Wolves might be suffocating below his feet this very moment, Bartholomew bent down and got back to shovelling. The fact that he didn't want Nicky to see the brief look of guilt on his face was secondary. "What about Dad?"
Nicky kicked over his shovel and pointed at the remains of the wall. "They made it through, Bart!" he shouted. "For all intents and purposes, they breached our defences! They broke through the wall! They're in the valley! And if they get better and decide that this whole chummy-chummy buddy-buddy thing is for the birds, we're screwed! No ifs, ands, or buts about it! We gave ourselves up on a silver platter, and if you ask me, those Wolves look mighty hungry for some Fox meat." He stood there, breathing heavily for a few seconds, then sighed, picked up his shovel, and carried on digging.
Dig, dig, dig. Shove the blade into the snow. Give it a good stomp. Rip it back out. Repeat.
"If you really believe that," Bartholomew said, "then why are you digging?"
Nicky did not answer. He simply kept on digging, faster and faster, tossing snow to the wind.
"Nicky!"
"Because!" Nicky stuck the shovel back into the snow, holding onto the handle with both hands. Bartholomew could see the strain in his grip even through the thick gloves, like he wanted to throttle it. He thought he knew his brother pretty well (they were only seven minutes apart, after all), but even he was surprised by what Nicky said next. "I had a lot of fun with Hezzi at the party, okay?" The way he said it almost had the air of a confession. "He's got this energy to him, like he's always happy just for the hell of it. No, wait, it's not just for the hell of it. I get the feeling that he's actively trying to spread that happiness around for the sake of his friends, maybe because there was so little of it back where he came from. And Renna, too. She's sort of... how should I put it? She's got this innocence about her, but it's... 'scuffed', if that makes sense? Like prized silverware that's been scrubbed with gravel. That time we talked to her, I kept thinking how amazing it was that she wasn't completely and utterly ruined. I just wanted to wrap her up in a towel and put her someplace high where nobody could put any more scratches in her. And those two older Wolves, what were their names?
"Mellah and Sorrin, I think."
"Yeah, them. They're like an old married couple. No different from what you'd find in any old Fox home down in the 'Glen. I keep expecting to see her wearing an apron and holding up a big tray of sugar buns, can you believe that?" Nicky chuckled and wiped his sleeve across his face. "And then there's Nilia. Oh my gods, Nilia... She strikes me as the kind of person who's always on edge, you know? Like she's always expecting some kind of ambush to come bursting through the ceiling or something. But I think the reason she's like that is because she needs to be, because she knows just how messed up, how fundamentally nasty this world can be, and if you believe half the stories floating around about that lot, then they have even more reason to hate these bastards than we do." Nicky stamped the snow with his foot. "If I went through that stuff, I'd be some kind of quivering mental defect rocking back and forth in the corner of somebody's basement, or a raging lunatic out for blood, or most likely dead." He frowned, still looking down at the snow. "I know why the other Foxes started to dig. We see somebody in trouble and we lend a hand. It's part of who we are. But they... they went against their nature to save a bunch of Wolves who wouldn't think twice about killing them, who've already tried to kill them numerous times. Especially Ander. Hell, he was the first one to jump down. After everything they did to him, after all the times they tried to kill him, after they practically tore him apart, he still wants to help these people? So... I guess what I'm trying to say is... If they dig and I don't... then... I don't know. It'll feel like I'm even worse than the ones they're trying to save. Look, I know it's stupid!" Nicky suddenly snapped, as if Bartholomew had called him out. "Does that mean I think all of this is fine? No! Does that mean I won't care if some Wolf barges in on Dad while he's waiting for us to come back home, only we won't, because we and everyone else out here are dead? No! Does that mean I think that maybe the right thing to do is to just stand back and let hundreds of Wolves die if it means our own safety will be guaranteed? I... I don't know... Just forget I said anything, okay?"
Nicky pushed his shovel back into the snow, turned his head away, and wiped his face against his shoulder in what was probably meant to be a subtle way.
It used to be so easy. Bartholomew would just make up a stupid joke and clap his brother on the back and everything would be right as rain again. Whether it was girl troubles or a raging hangover, a stupid joke could heal any wound. It wouldn't even have to be a good stupid joke. Sometimes the bad ones are the best. But now? Here, in this place?
This was no place for stupid jokes, and that made Bartholomew feel completely powerless.
How am I supposed to cheer him up?_Bartholomew asked himself, and on the heels of that, an immediate answer: _Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe this is supposed to be bad. Maybe this is supposed to be difficult. Maybe this is supposed to be painful.
He scratched his ear and looked up at the mountain side, stretching up and up forever, until it disappeared in a veil of shifting white, and said: "Listen, Nicky -"
"I found one!" A voice suddenly screamed from behind. "I found one! Guys! Somebody help me! I found one!"
Bartholomew turned around and saw Jonah struggling to pull a Wolf out of the snow. There were already five others there to help (Dean from the wheat farm, Rufio with his useless pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth, Peter from the bakery, Mateo with his crossbow slung over his back, and even scrawny little Devvie, all but dead on his feet from the long hike down the mountain), so Bartholomew stayed back with his brother and watched from a distance, holding his breath.
Oh sure, that's why you're staying back.
Shut up, self.
They all heaved and hoed and finally managed to pull it out of the snow. It was a tall one, but very slim and slender, and as the face fell to the side, Bartholomew realised it was a female. She had war paint underneath her eyes and her hair was done up in a long ponytail that dragged along the snow. She would have been gorgeous, had she not been dead.
"Oh, Gods..." Bartholomew made a fist and bit down on his glove.
Ol' Dean pressed his straw hat flat against his head -
Why is he even wearing that stupid thing out here in the middle of a damn blizzard?
- bent down, and pressed his ear against her mouth, but Bartholomew already knew she was dead. He could see it.
And, sure enough, Dean raised his head and gave it a sad little shake.
She was dead.
Jonah sat down heavily and covered his face. Judging by the slow, rhythmic plumes of mist issuing from between his hands, he was having a rough time keeping it all together. Rufio bent down and patted him on the back, maybe whispering encouragements, but Jonah only shook his head, too tired and worn down to even get back up.
Bartholomew was grateful he had listened to his instincts and stayed back. He didn't want to see another dead Wolf up close again. It drains you. It makes you think all kinds of strange thoughts, each one like a wasp sting in your head.
I wonder what her name was.
I wonder if she had any family. A mother, a father, brothers and sisters?
What if she had children? What if they're waiting for her to come home just like my father is waiting for me to come home?
What if things had been different? What if they hadn't attacked? What if they had been peaceful? What if they had just wanted to talk instead? Would she have been the kind to prefer wine or tea? Would she have been kind, or grumpy? Would she have been uppity or down to earth? What was her favourite colour? What was her favourite food? What was her favourite season? What did she like to do in her spare time?
So many questions, all of them flying through his head in a single moment as he stared at her still face, knowing she would never smile again, or laugh, or talk, or yawn, or sneeze, or anything else, because she was dead, and all his questions would forever remain unanswered.
Because she was dead.
Nicky turned back to their hole and plunged his shovel into the snow, digging like a mad Fox, heaving big clumps of white powder over his shoulder at a frantic pace. His face was all scrunched up and contorted and a single runner of snot hung from one nostril, frozen solid and shining in the dim torchlight.
It looked more like he was trying to bury something than dig it up.
Bartholomew sighed, fell in beside his brother, and continued digging, praying that his shovel wouldn't hit anything other than snow, praying that the blade wouldn't strike something soft and yielding, praying that he wouldn't have to dig out yet another corpse and have his brain bombarded with all those unanswerable questions yet again, questions of hopeful possibilities long rendered impossible, questions for a time that never even existed.
In a way, he got his wish.
His shovel struck something hard and rebounded with a clang that reverberated all the way up his arm and into his aching shoulder.
"Ow! Son of a bitch, what the hell!?" He bent down and wiped the snow away, expecting to see another big ugly rock blocking his way, but what his gloved hand revealed instead was something very different. It was wood, which wasn't all that weird by itself (they had dug up dozens of broken branches and even entire chunks of trees before now), but the shape of it was enough to give him pause. This wasn't the rough, jagged point of a broken branch, or even the rounded edge of a trunk. It was flat as a board, which was exactly what it was.
He had discovered a plank.
"What the hell?" he echoed himself and started to wipe away the snow in a bigger and bigger circle like a kid trying to see through a foggy window. It wasn't just one plank, he saw, but a whole series of them nailed together.
To his left, Nicky suddenly cussed as his shovel hit the exact same thing. Whatever it was, it was long, too.
"What the bloody hell is this thing?" Nicky said, crouching down. "A piece of the wall, you think?"
Bartholomew looked back over his shoulder at the feeble dots of torchlight lining the mouth of the pass. "Can't be. The snow pushed the wall back, not forward."
"Then what in blue blazes is this?"
"I dunno."
"Oy! You boys find something?" That was Ol' Dean, jogging over while still hanging on to that ridiculous hat of his.
"Let the devil take that hat and maybe you can help us find out!"
"Screw you, this is my lucky hat! Woven out of the highest quality straw!"
"Just help us dig!"
Ol' Dean made a sound of righteous indignation ("Humph!") but was quick to lend a hand regardless, occasionally stopping to shove and twist his hat down over his forehead to ensure the wind wouldn't snatch it away, and soon a whole horde of Foxes had joined to see what they were unearthing. Before long, they cleared a big enough chunk of snow to reveal a large, flat, rectangular construction of wood propped up against the wall of the pass.
"It looks like a giant door flipped on its side," Mateo remarked, brushing away the snow. Big chunks occasionally slid down from the top and clumped together at the base.
"I know what this is! I know what this is!" Devvie suddenly exclaimed, practically jumping up and down. "It's that thing that Ander built! The uh, the whatchucallit? The lid that kept the snow back. I saw it break off when the snow came rushing down."
"The trap?" Bartholomew could hardly believe it. He never actually saw the thing being built, but to think that all this destruction had come from a bunch of planks?
"Yeah, this is definitely it! The front bit! Right at the edge of the cliff. I saw it well enough up there while I was freezing my ass off, waiting for that damn signal. The whole thing snapped off at the hinges. Made a noise like you wouldn't believe."
Bartholomew looked down at the 'door', then at the opposite side of the pass, craning his neck back as far as it would go. This pass wasn't very wide, but it was still hard to imagine something as big and heavy as this making it all the way over here.
Nicky tapped his shovel against the trap. "You think there could be somebody under here?"
The Foxes stood regarding each other for a moment, and then they all bent down as one and pressed their ears against the wood.
Bartholomew was moving his face from side to side, trying to get his ear to line up with one of the cracks, when he suddenly pulled back, barely managing to stifle a gasp.
"What's wrong, Barty?" Nicky asked.
"N-Nothing," he replied, giving his head a firm shake. His mind must have been playing tricks on him, that was all. But still. For a moment there he thought the wood was... warm? And not the good kind, either. It was a nasty kind of warm, like a cow's udder.
No, Barty, he tried to reason with himself. It's wood. Your face is used to the wind and snow. The wood is a bit warmer than that, so that's why it felt weird. It wasn't the wood heating up, it was your own cheek finally getting out of the biting wind for a change.
Yeah. Yeah, that must have been it.
But still, he didn't much like the idea of pressing his face up against the side of that thing anymore. Maybe because it was literally a deathtrap? He didn't know...
"Can you guys hear anything?" Matty asked.
"I'm not sure." A deep frown crossed Rufio's face. "Is that... scratching?"
The faces everyone was pulling trying to listen in on whatever might be on the other side of the door might have been comical under other circumstances, but right now Bartholomew simply couldn't shake this insane feeling telling him to just pull everybody up by the scruff of the neck and insist they all dig elsewhere. Maybe even cover this thing back up. But that was crazy.
"Oh, crud, I think that was Agatha," Matty said and readjusted his crossbow across his back. "Sorry."
Everyone groaned and muttered curses, then went back to listening. It reminded Bartholomew of a game he and his brother used to play back when they were stupid little kids. They'd find an old abandoned rabbit hole or a warren or just some hollowed out chunk of earth beneath the roots of a tree and pretend there was a monster in there, guarding some fabulous treasure, a prize worthy of only the most fearless explorers.
One time there really was a monster in one of those holes. Turned out to be just an ornery old badger, but Nicky still had a crescent scar where the thing chomped down on his thumb.
If there was a monster in this hole, it would take more than a bandage and a kiss from Mom to make it all better, that was for sure.
But what if someone needs our help down there? What if they're trapped, alone, scared, barely clinging to life?
Bartholomew took a few quick breaths, hunkered down, and pressed his ear against the wood. It still felt warmer than it should, like the whole thing was alive somehow, but he didn't pull back this time. He closed his eyes and listened...
There was a very faint noise coming from the other side, barely audible above the roar of the wind.
"Is that one of you guys?"
"One of us guys what?"
"Making that sound!"
"What sound?"
"Shush for a second!"
Bartholomew held his breath. It was quiet for a while, long enough to make him think that maybe he had imagined the whole thing, when it suddenly came again: a wet, slithery kind of sound, like a snake moving through mud.
Wait, wet? Why on earth would it sound wet?
Because the snow must be half-melted in there, dumbass. Gods!
As logical as that sounded, Bartholomew couldn't stop himself from feeling... disgusted. All these different factors, the weird heat rising off the wood, this sense of unease, and now a sloppy slithery sound, it all came together in a way that was downright repulsive. It felt like he was pressing his face up against a gigantic cocoon with some unspeakable bug crawling around inside, scratching at the silken walls, trying to bite and scratch its way into the outside world.
What is this feeling? Seriously, what the hell is it?
"I think I hear somethin'." Ol' Dean said and raised his fist in a gesture quite befitting of a door. He was about to knock.
"Wait, don't!" Bartholomew cried, but it was already too late.
Ol' Dean rapped his knuckles against the wood, cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed: "Hellooo!? Is anyone alive in there? Helloooo!" He pressed his ear back against the wood, one hand planted on top of his head to keep his stupid lucky hat on.
Bartholomew's mouth dried up and his stomach felt like a twisted knot of ropes. For some reason, he couldn't stop thinking about what Dad had told them just before they stepped out.
Either_both _of you come back, or neither_of you come back._
Bartholomew lifted his head just enough to look over Dean's back and got a glimpse of his brother, lying flat against the wood, listening intently, a deep frown creasing his forehead.
Either_both _of you come back, or neither_of you come back._
A shuddering series of knocks suddenly slammed against the wood from the other side, hard enough to send vibrations reeling through Bartholomew's already queasy stomach. A clump of snow broke free from the top and came sliding down to burst against Ol' Dean's lucky hat.
"By the gods, there's somebody alive in there!" he said, ecstatic. He cupped his hands again and screamed: "Don't worry, we'll dig you out! Just hang on, okay?"
Everyone scrambled to their feet, brushed the snow off their clothes, and immediately set to work clearing the rest of the door, all while Bartholomew stood back, pulling on his ears and chewing on his lip.
"What's wrong, brother of mine?" Nicky said, hurrying around to the side.
"I don't know about this, Nicky. I got a bad feeling. That knock was too strong, man, waaay too strong."
Nicky stopped. "Well gee, if you were stuck in what amounted to a giant coffin, trapped under the snow, thinking you were about to die, then I think your knock might be a bit overzealous, too."
Bartholomew had no answer for that. He kept shifting his weight nervously back and forth, watching the progress of the others as they dug through the snow, revealing more and more of that crazy deathtrap door.
"What's gotten into you?" Nicky asked. "Weren't you the one being all chivalrous, saying we should give them a chance, save their lives, all hold hands and live happily ever after? Where did all that hogwash go?"
"I don't know! It just- I don't know!" Bartholomew kept looking at that big brown rectangle against the grey slate of stone, growing bigger and bigger. He knew it was just a trick of the darkness and the swirling snow, but sometimes, it almost looked like that thing was pulsating. Yeah, that was the word. Pulsating like a giant pupae ready to burst open and birth some kind of... of... thing into the world, a thing with lots of legs and feelers and wet, crumpled wings and nasty mandibles and quite possibly a venomous stinger.
"I found the edge!" Jonah cried out. "It's packed tight!"
"Me too!" Matty replied, clawing at the snow on his end.
Rufio switched his pipe over to the other side of his mouth and went to work clearing the base, scraping the snow away with quick flicks of his shovel. "This'll take forever!"
"Then let's just flip the sumbitch like a fried egg!" Peter said and grabbed hold at Mateo's end, bracing one foot against the wall of the pass for leverage.
"Good idea!" Dean scurried around to Jonah's side, still holding on to the brim of his stupid straw hat. Bartholomew didn't know why that damn thing bothered him so much, but he wished it would just blow away and get stuck up a tree somewhere. "All right, lads! Heave!"
Peter and Dean pushed off against the mountain while Matty and Jonah leaned as far back as they could. They grunted like drayhorses and scraped trenches in the snow with their backpedalling feet. Even Rufio, who was easily the oldest one here, didn't hesitate to squeeze in next to Peter and help out, biting down on his pipe hard enough to make the calabash quiver in the wind. "You guys gonna help or just stand there like a pair of old biddies!?" he shouted, sweat pouring down his forehead.
Nicky immediately fell in line next to Jonah and started to pull back, swearing beneath his breath, but Bartholomew simply couldn't bring himself to go anywhere near that thing. There was this godsawful prickly feeling in the pit of his stomach telling him to just drop his shovel and run for the safety of the basecamp, but -
Either_both _of you come back, or neither_of you come back._
He couldn't leave his brother.
So he stood there, feeling completely and utterly useless as they rocked the giant door back and forth. It wasn't easy. The top was thoroughly wedged against the side of the pass and the bottom was still partially buried in snow, but the damn thing was moving nonetheless.
"It's going! It's going!" Dean yelled. "Come on, lads! Just a lil' bit more!"
They managed to get the door standing straight up and Bartholomew took a frightened step back, watching as this behemoth balanced on its side. Standing in that thing's shadow made him feel like a mouse staring up at a snake, too terrified to move. It teetered on the edge of balance, then slowly, almost lazily, started to fall.
It crashed down to the snow with a rather anti-climactic floomph sound, kicking up a big cloud of white powder. Bartholomew shielded his eyes and coughed into his arm, wondering why everything had suddenly gone so quiet. He wiped the snow off his face and squinted into the darkness. The wind was doing a good job of snatching the offending cloud away, and his comrades' silhouettes quickly emerged out of the swirling grey vapours. But why were they all standing still like that? From the way they were carrying on, he would have expected them to go streaming in the moment they cleared the way.
"Guys?" Bartholomew went closer, stepping on top of the fallen door as he did so, and by the gods he knew he was being insane, but he could actually feel the heat baking through his shoes, like they had just flipped over a stove instead of a big wooden rectangle. "Guys! What's the matter? Is there-"
Everything came back into view all at once, and Bartholomew saw, quite clearly, what was the matter.
It stopped. Everything around him, it just stopped dead. His brother, his friends, the wind and the snow, even his own body. Everything just stopped. He couldn't feel anything, do anything, or even think anything. All he could do was stare at the horror they had uncovered.
Bodies, steaming in the open air, soaked in blood. Bartholomew couldn't tell exactly how many, because none of them seemed to be in a single piece. There were arms and legs strewn about the ground with brownish slivers of bone still sticking out of their shredded stumps, but the corpses that were still mostly intact were the absolute worst. There were Wolves that had been cleaved wide open from throat to groin and hollowed out like fleshy canoes, their steaming innards exposed to the elements. Loose coils of intestines floated around inside mushy lakes of blood and melting snow. There was so much blood everywhere that Bartholomew couldn't even tell what colour most of these Wolves had been.
Off to the side, wedged between a jagged outcropping of rocks, there was a single, severed head. It looked kind of... lonely over there, all by itself. One eye was still open, but had rolled back in its socket, exposing the white and all its tiny little veins and bloodvessels. Its tongue was hanging out of the side of its mouth and was covered in a fine layer of frozen blood and frost. Bartholomew couldn't even tell if it was male or female because the face had been absolutely shredded. Four long gashes started from the top of its head and followed a diagonal path all the way down to the flaps of skin and fur dangling from its neck. He should have taken that as a warning, but that was also the exact moment the smell finally struck home. It wasn't just the blood. Blood by itself he could have handled no problem. It was the mixture that got to him, doubling him over and making him wretch long ropes of spit into the snow. It was the bitter smell of bile and the sharp sting of urine and waste. All of that mixed with the metallic scent of blood made the chicken broth he had had for dinner rise up in his gullet.
I will not throw up, I will not throw up, I will not throw up... He repeated this to himself over and over, first desperately, then calmly, until the urge to vomit passed.
Devvie was not so lucky. He always had a 'thing' about blood, and this was far worse than a cut finger or a torn claw.
"Oh my gods..." he muttered, stumbling backwards. "Oh my gods, oh my gods, oh my gaawww -" He bent over and shot a thick glurt of steaming vomit into the snow, more than Bartholomew would have believed could possibly fit inside such a scrawny little body.
Way to go, Devvie. Make the smell even worse, why don't you?
Bartholomew did believe he might have come quite close to losing his mind just then.
Matty covered his mouth and nose and approached one of the corpses, his crossbow bouncing against his back as he carefully manoeuvred around all the blood puddles. He bent down and examined one of the mostly intact ones, tilting his head first one way, then the other. He even lifted its chin to examine the wounds on its neck.
Devvie straightened up and wiped his sleeve across his lips. "W-What happened to them? D-Did the - Did the planks, the boards - The thing - The trap? Did the thing do that? To them? Did it crush them, you think?"
Mateo shook his head gravely. "Couldn't have been. If they got crushed, there would have been a lot of broken bones and battered bodies, but not this much blood." He held up the Wolf's arm, showing all the scratch marks running along its length, some so deep you could actually see a glint of bone through the muscle. "It looks more like these guys got torn apart by a wild animal. A big one."
A terrible thought suddenly flashed through Bartholomew's mind. "You don't think they did this to each other, do you?"
They all looked at each other nervously. It was too horrible to consider, but what else could have caused something as gruesome as this?
Bartholomew could imagine it so clearly: a horde of rampaging Wolves, out for blood, snarling and growling and waving their weapons, suddenly trapped under a mountain of snow, miraculously preserved inside this cramped pocket of air. Didn't it make sense that their raw, animalistic rage would turn them against each other? Maybe it was panic that caused them to take leave of their senses. Maybe they tore into each other without even realising what they were doing.
What a nightmare it must have been, trapped down there in the cold and the dark. The noises. The pain of something biting into your flesh. What choice did you have but to lash out, to fight back? To bite and bite and bite until the pain went away?
Bartholomew suddenly felt like he was going to be sick again.
If only he had stopped to consider a different possibility, that all of this death and destruction had been wrought by something else, maybe things would have happened differently.
But how could he have known?
How could he possibly have known?
"But there was a knockin'!" Dean said. "I heard it clear as day! Somebody's gotta be alive in here, I just know it!" He started moving among the bodies, carefully eyeing each mutilated corpse along the way.
He was doing a rather admirable job of keeping a straight face, Bartholomew thought. Those awful squelching noises rising up from beneath his boots were enough to make his stomach roll.
"Buddy! Hey, buddy? Where are you?" Dean yelled, walking in a loose zigzag pattern. His head kept whipping back and forth with greater and greater urgency. "Give a shout, yeah? I know you're scared, but we won't hurtcha, I promise! We just wanna help! Oy! Where are you!?" His foot accidentally nudged one of the smaller Wolves and it just sort of... well, folded open like a cherry blossom in full bloom, spilling a fleshy red pile of innards onto the snow in a billowing plume of steam.
Devvie took one look and threw up yet again, this time all over his shoes. Nicky was there to pat him on the back and tell him it was okay, he didn't need to look, he could go on back to the basecamp if he wanted to.
Devvie wiped his mouth and shook his head.
Bartholomew did not know it yet, but it was a decision that would impact all their lives going forward. Some for the better, and some for the worse. There was simply no way to know for sure, because it was impossible to go back and see how things might have happened differently had he simply staggered away while he still had the chance.
Only one thing was for certain. Ol' Dean's fate was sealed the moment he approached the pile of corpses at the centre of the destruction.
They lay over and under each other in a lake of blood that was only just now starting to freeze over at the edges. Their limbs were splayed out and their faces were contorted by pain and fear, as if they had died in the middle of a mortal struggle. At least two of them that Bartholomew could see didn't even appear to be 'bodies' as such. They were all flat and limp and their heads had an odd sort of 'caved in' look, like they were actually just hollowed out skins, just empty pelts soaked in blood.
"Buddy?" He bent down, one hand planted on his knee and the other on top of his head, keeping his hat in place. "Buddy? You in there?"
He leaned closer.
*
There were no words anymore, only feelings, only knowings. Everything else was fake.
There was an outside, and there was an inside. He knew this to be true. He knew that the outside was cold. He knew that the outside was bad. He knew that it was part of everything that was fake, everything that was not him, and he knew that it would not stop, could not stop, until it had taken everything.
But the inside... the inside was warm. He could feel it all around him, soaking into his fur, flowing over his face, dripping from his lips and pooling against his back, keeping the cold at bay. The scent of it filled him up, made him feel happy. He could taste it.
It was delicious.
But why was he here? Was there not something he was supposed to be doing? Something that - No, someone who needed him?
Why was he here? What was he doing here?
He would have asked himself these questions, but there were no words anymore, only feelings, only knowings.
He knew he was waiting, but waiting for what? Waiting for something to happen? For something to change? That was impossible. The world could never change because the world didn't really exist. He knew that now. Nothingness stays exactly the same forever and ever, because it is nothing. For something to change, it must be real. That meant that he was the only thing that could ever truly change.
Was that what he was waiting for? Was he waiting to change? To become something different from what he once was? Maybe...
Maybe he was waiting to be born.
There were no words, only feelings, only knowings, and what he felt right now, what he knew right now, was the wet warmth of the womb. Walls of flesh all around, keeping him safe until he was ready...
Ready to face the empty world and taste its death.
*
Dean saw the eye open. In this hellish pocket of space and time where all movement had ceased, even the tiny flicker of that fellow's eyelid stood out like a candle in the dark. "Buddy!" Dean exclaimed, not scared in the least. "You all right?"
The eye swivelled around and fixed onto Dean's in an unblinking stare. The coloured bit was black as coal through and through, but the white had a reddish tinge to it, like he had been crying.
Gotta keep this fellow calm, Dean thought. No telling what went down in here.
He opened both hands to show he didn't have any weapons on him. "It's okay, buddy, we're not gonna hurt ya. We just want to help, okay?"
The eye kept staring, but the rest of him was still as the grave. Poor fellow must be scared stiff and, quite honestly, Dean couldn't blame him in the least. He himself always felt all heebidy-jeebidy whenever he had to go down basement, where the ceiling was low and the cold stone walls were lined with rickety old shelves, all of them creaking and groaning under the weight of dozens of jars of preserves, twinkling in the dark, seeming to lean towards you, ready to fall at the drop of a hat, making the place even smaller than it already was.
Yeah. Dean knew a thing or two about feeling uncomfortable in small, tight spaces, and he had nothing but sympathy for this big fellow, lying petrified among the bodies of his brothers, literally encased in death. It was something that made his own fear seem piddling and paltry by comparison.
"Do you think you can stand?" Dean asked, extending his hand. "We can get you someplace warm, clean you off. How does that sound?"
The fellow didn't take his hand, but he did start to get up. And up. And up.
It was at this moment, eye to eye with a Wolf that was still sitting down, yet already almost as tall as he was, that Dean began to think he might have stepped in over his head.
The solid corpses slid off his blood-slicked fur and thumped into the snow on either side, but the... the floppy ones, the ones who were mostly just wet rags lined with a thin layer of meat and blood on the inside, stuck fast to his body with their hollowed out heads draped over his shoulders and the rest hanging against his back like a gruesome cape.
It was still getting up. Still getting taller. Dean had to crane his neck further and further back just to keep his face in view. It felt like he was staring up at a mountain.
He tried to speak, but no sound came out. He had found several Wolves before this one, had dragged them out of the snow with his bare hands, many of them huge, but none of them came even close to this.
His fur was clearly black (blacker than any black he had ever seen), but he was absolutely soaked in blood from head to toe, making him look more red than anything else. The long crimson lines broken up by spikes of black created a sight that actually hurt his eyes to behold, like he wasn't looking at a Wolf at all, but something that had ripped its skin off, and instead of having flesh underneath, there was only a blackness as deep as the night, bleeding the blood of others.
Dean desperately wanted to back away, but he simply could not move. Standing straight up, this creature was easily twice as tall as he was. Heck, his eyes barely came up to this thing's stomach! It was absolutely gargantuan! Actually, it was even taller than it appeared to be, because it wasn't standing straight at all. It had lost a foot somewhere along the line, and as a result it was all hunched over. Its arms hung limply by its sides, thick as tree trunks, blood dripping from pitch black claws so big and sharp they would put a bear to shame. They rose and fell slightly with every heavy breath, but even the air passing in and out of its lungs seemed big somehow. The mist billowing from its nostrils made a sound like a soft, deep growl with every exhale and heat seemed to come off its body in waves. It was so easy to imagine that there was a hellfire raging inside this creature's chest, and that the mist was actually smoke and sulphur.
It looked down at Dean with a single, bloodshot eye, and Dean looked right back, taking in the double row of jagged teeth sticking out from behind a shredded mouth, and uttered the last words he would ever say on this earth.
"By the gods, you're even bigger than Ander."
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