Determinant: a gene or other factor that determines the character and development of a cell or group of cells in an organism.
Chapter 15: Caraquet - Lonesome Night
Jamie braves the wilderness of New Brunswick, but misfortune lurks around every turn.
Despite her rural upbringing, Jamie had never been a fan of the outdoors. Oh, she enjoyed the occasional day at the beach or brief walks in the park, but the moment anyone mentioned words like "hiking" or "camping" she was out. Her cousin, Stephan, had been the outdoorsman of the family. He'd often talked about wanting to hike the Appalachian Trail or go overseas and do one of those backpacker tours of Europe. Jamie had called him crazy every time.
He'd love this.
When she'd left Anik's, she made sure her pack wasn't too heavy; she had a long way to go and no experience with long distance hikes. Now, though, it felt like she'd stuffed it with bricks the way it pulled at her shoulders. It was time for a break.
She pulled out a small plastic bottle - the only portable container she could find - and took a few sips of water. If she'd calculated right, she'd reach the river in a few hours and get a refill. From there it would be a simple matter of following the river's course until she reached the outskirts of Caraquet.
Still, she thought, it never hurts to check.
The map was folded in her coat pocket, and her fingers ached as she slipped off her gloves to unfold it. She found the river easily, a thin blue line snaking its way south and west from her destination. The tricky part would be finding it from wherever she was. She had tried to keep her feet pointed north, knowing that she'd hit the river at some point. But between the trees and the cloud cover, she had no idea if she'd managed it. Just a few degrees off could mean the difference between life and death.
She reached for her water again, ready to close it up and get back on her feet, but nature had other plans. Dozens of large beetles swarmed the bottle, and as she moved it tilted and spilled onto the forest floor.
"No, no, no!" she tried to grab it, to save what precious liquid was left, but the frigid air had stolen her dexterity and it slipped further away.
Damn!
She jumped away from the log and lifted her pack to keep the bugs out of it. If she let them get to her small food stores, she was done for. Frustration gathered into a growl as she forced herself to take deep breaths.
It's alright, she told herself. You're surrounded by water. You can eat the snow. Just keep moving.
To prove her point she gathered a handful of the white powder and slipped it into her mouth. The crystals melted as they hit her tongue and she shivered as it ran down her throat. Satisfied that she could subsist at least until she reached the river, she turned and kicked the bottle against the log. The beetles scattered and she quickly scooped it up and shoved it into her bag.
"Time to go."
Her voice sounded odd, almost muffled somehow in the snowy forest. Of course, that might have been because she hadn't used it all day. It was rare for her to go so long without speaking. Words were her craft, her profession, and she loved them. They had been her comfort after her mother's passing and her weapon as she battled the beast that had killed her. Words were both ever-changing and unyielding, mercurial and absolute. Their dichotomous nature both fascinated and challenged her, and Jamie gladly rose to meet it everyday.
They would now be her savior.
"Okay, Jamie," she reoriented herself north and began her trek once again. "Time for all of those English classes to pay off."
She spoke as she walked, recalling the most peculiar words she'd ever learned. Hours that amounted to weeks - months, perhaps - spent in the Baton Rouge library devouring book after book each week had expanded her vocabulary well beyond that of a normal person. Words like pauciloquent, cabotage, and infandous; vernalagnia, noceur, and pettifoggery.
The last one made her smile.
She lingered on it for a bit, letting the word sit on her tongue like wine before she opened her mouth to utter it aloud.
"Pettifoggery," she repeated.
A wolf howled in the distance and Jamie froze. Had they followed her all this way, or was this a different pack? She wasn't going to hang around and find out. She pushed the last few steps through the woods into a clearing, and when she was about halfway across she turned to check behind her.
She expected wolves, shadowed forms slinking through the trees, ready to devour her. What she saw was far worse.
Red blotches stained the white snow, spaced almost five feet apart. Jamie glanced down in horror at the blood pooling around her right foot. Sinking to sit, she angled her boot to inspect the bottom. A nail protruded from the sole, and she grimaced in anticipation as she gripped it and pulled it from her foot.
But she felt nothing, no pain, not even a pinch.
That's not a good sign.
Quickly she unlaced her boot and tugged it off. The entire end of her sock was red and sickly wet with blood, though she couldn't feel it. She peeled that off to get a look at her foot and immediately wished she'd hadn't.
The nail had pierced straight through her big toe. Blood coated the entire digit, and Jamie let out a strangled cry. A dozen idioms raced through her mind, each more cliche than the last. In the end, though, they all amounted to the same thing. She was in big trouble.
A howl punctuated her woes, and she scrambled to her feet. Her toe would have to wait. She cleaned it as best she could, packing ice around it to stop the bleeding before shoving her sock back on. The movement had restored some of the circulation, and her toe was beginning to throb like hell. She winced as she slid her foot back into her boot and laced it up. Pain cleared the panic from her mind and she turned around to continue her journey north.
The sun had set long before Jamie found any sort of respite. Around a bend she spotted a shadow, a block that solidified into an old style police cruiser. The cold had seeped into her bones, but seeing something resembling salvation stoked a fire in her again.
"Hey," she called out reflexively. Movement inside the car spurred her on, and she picked up her pace. "Hey! Hey, hey, hey, hey!" She jogged the remaining distance. "Officer! Officer, help!" she cried as she reached the door and yanked it open.
"Offic-oh!" Jamie jumped back as the masked vermin looked up from their feast of innards. The man sitting in the driver's seat would be of no help to her. The raccoons chittered angrily at being interrupted, but didn't attack. Instead they scattered, leaping from the car and dashing off into the darkness.
Jamie knew what she had to do. With effort she managed to pull the man from his seat, and she grunted as he tumbled into the snow at her feet. She quickly took his place, hoping beyond hope that his car still ran. She found a flashlight first, and the bright white beam pierced the night as she searched the front seat for keys. She found them already in the ignition.
"Oh, please, please, please," she whispered fervently. But it didn't start. "Come on!" She tried again, but only silence answered. She pounded the steering wheel in frustration as she fought tears. "No, no, no, no, God!" She slumped forward and rested her head against the steering wheel as hopelessness crept over her.
No, she pushed back and sat up straight. "You're okay," she told herself. At least the car would provide shelter from the bitter cold and a place to rest for the night. Tomorrow, she could start fresh. "You're okay," she repeated as exhaustion crept over her. She grabbed the jacket sitting on the passenger seat and draped it over her legs to contain her body heat, trying not to think about the dead man lying just outside the door who no longer needed it. "Caraquet. Caraquet. Caraquet." Her eyes slipped closed as she breathed the word once more.
It was snowing when she woke. The sky was just beginning to turn gray with the dawn, and Jamie sucked in a breath as she stepped out of the car. She told herself it was from the cold and not from the mound of snow beneath her feet that concealed the body of the officer. Jamie grabbed her pack and the policeman's jacket before walking away from the shelter of the car; she'd likely need the extra layer if she didn't make Caraquet by nightfall.
She didn't. Confusion unbalanced her, and she stuttered to a stop. She should have reached the river by now. Her fingers were numb as she fumbled for the map and her flashlight. She studied the paper for a long minute before realizing it was doing no good. She had no idea where she was.
Just keep moving, she told herself. The river is there, you just haven't gotten to it yet.
She put the moon on her right side and kept moving, heading north and praying she hadn't somehow missed the landmark entirely.
"One more step," she muttered. "Just one more step." Her feet didn't ache, but she guessed that was from the cold. Her muscles felt like jelly, but she kept moving. She knew she should stop - at least take a look at her toe - but Jamie knew if she stopped now she'd freeze to death. "Put your foot in front of the other," she told herself. "Then repeat, like, a million more times." She made her legs obey her words, her footfalls heavy in the thick snow.
Something chittered in the darkness and Jamie turned sharply. "Just a critter," she reassured herself. "Yeah," she scoffed a second later, "just a critter says the woman who saw a raccoon family eat dinner on a police officer's chest." She shuffled through the snow as the darkness seemed to close in around her. She knew, subconsciously, that her mind was just creating demons to scare her. There was nothing out there.
Then something pulled at her sleeve and Jamie let out a shriek of surprise. Cold and exhaustion slowed her enough that she didn't immediately lash out at the figure next to her. The fingers that had tugged on her coat now wrapped around her arm like a vice.
"Help me," he rasped.
"Oh my God," she willed her heart rate back to a normal pace as she realized this was no monster; just a man.
"Help, please," he breathed again, and she moved to take some of his weight. He was carrying a small duffel bag, and his fingers clutched at it like his entire life rested inside.
"Come on," she pushed him toward the treeline, knowing there was no point in trying to walk any further tonight. There was no shelter in sight, but at least the forest would stifle the bitter wind that was nipping at her exposed skin.
He stumbled along beside her, obediently following wherever she led. Luckily the moon was almost full, and it didn't take long to find a small copse of trees close enough together to provide cover from the biting wind. A fallen log across the side of a small hill created a nice little nest for them to spend the night. When she gestured to the space he collapsed gratefully in a shivering heap.
Jamie took a moment to study him. He was about her height and slim, and the moonlight made his skin almost ghostly white. His teeth chattered together as she stared down at him, and it was then she realized he wasn't wearing a coat. How he hadn't already frozen to death was anybody's guess.
"Here," she stripped off her outer coat, then shed the policeman's jacket quickly. She bared her teeth as the sub-zero temperatures reached more of her and raced to put her coat back on. The jacket she tossed at her new companion. "Put this on."
"Th-thanks," he muttered, fumbling with the material until it was wrapped around him. He shifted slightly and leaned back against the tree stump, pulling his knees to his chest in an effort to keep himself warm. Luckily he had gloves on or he might have already lost a finger or two to the cold.
"You scared the hell out of me," she told him.
"Sorry," he stuttered. "The name is Logan."
She thought it was funny that his first instinct was to introduce himself as he trembled uncontrollably. "I'm Jamie," she answered. "Logan, use your armpits."
He looked up at her then. "For what?"
"Tuck your fingers under your armpits. When your body's freezing, it focuses all its energy to keep your vital organs warm, so your torso stays toasty." See Stephen, she mused silently, I was paying attention.
Logan did as she said, and he seemed to relax a bit. "Thanks."
Jamie felt her entire body quake as it fought to maintain heat, but it was a losing battle as the temperature kept dropping. She needed something to focus on other than their rather bleak chances of surviving the night. "So were you just chilling in the woods, waiting for someone to scare the bejeezus out of?"
"Yeah," he glanced up. "You got me. I was about to give up, too. Lucky for me that you came along. You made it all worthwhile."
His dry delivery instantly made her think of Mitch and she smiled. "Well, I'm happy to be of service." It hurt to breathe, she noted, as her lungs protested the icy air. She tried to focus on slow breaths through her nose but fatigue was making any sort of concentration impossible.
"Thank you for the coat," Logan went on.
"Sure." Jamie had a million questions for her new companion, but based on his earlier deflection he didn't seem at all eager to share right now. She couldn't blame him really. There were more important things to focus on - like not dying of exposure.
"Some kind of gentleman I'm turning out to be, right? It's the man who's supposed to give up his coat for the lady. Not vice versa." She refused to even acknowledge that with a response. He tucked his head down to gather some warmth before uttering his next words toward the ground. "We're gonna die out here, aren't we?"
"Oh, no," Jamie refuted. "No, no, no, no. No one's dying out here." Even as she spoke she could hear her words slurring together, but still she refused to relent. "We made it this far, we're gonna make it the rest of the way."
"Rest of the way to what?" Logan asked. "Look around. There's nothing out here."
She reached over and grabbed the end of his jacket, ignoring his protest. Her fingers found the seam of the pocket and fished the map from inside. She unfolded it enough to point her gloved finger at their destination.
"See this? This is where we're going. There's shelter. There's hope. And if we're lucky," she looked up at him determinedly, "there's a hell of a lot of vodka...in Caraquet."
"Caraquet," he repeated. "How far is that?"
"I'm not sure," she told him truthfully. "I've been trying to reach the river here," she pointed a little further west and south of the city. "Once we find that, we can follow it all the way to Caraquet."
"You're not sure?" Logan scoffed. "So it could be just over that hill," he looked behind them, "or miles away."
"Yep," she folded the map back and stuffed it into her own pocket. "And in the morning, we'll find that river."
"If we make it to morning." He had already given up. If Jamie hadn't come along when she had, he would have been dead in hours. She knew she'd saved his life tonight, and something in her wouldn't let him die so easily.
"We'll make it," she told him firmly. "We'll make it." She scooted over until they were resting side by side. She tucked her hood around her face completely and laid her head down on her knees as Logan curled toward her. She heard his breathing become shallow and resisted the urge to check and make sure he wasn't dying next to her. He needed rest - they both did. As she drifted off, she whispered her promise once more.
"We'll make it."
A/N: I am SOOO sorry. I've been keeping up on Ao3 but completely neglecting this site. I'm going to upload all of season 2 tonight and tomorrow, so expect a big dump if you're subscribed.
Inspiration for this chapter title comes from a poem of the same name by Hermann Hesse
"You brothers, who are mine,
Poor people, near and far,
Longing for every star,
Dream of relief from pain,
You, stumbling dumb
At night, as pale stars break,
Lift your thin hands for some
Hope, and suffer, and wake,
Poor muddling commonplace,
You sailors who must live
Unstarred by hopelessness,
We share a single face."
Lonesome Night by Hermann Hesse