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“Lucky I could do it,” I said. “Or you’d be stranded out here. Say, did you see a pickup truck somewhere back there on the road?”
“Yeah,” said Jamie.
“I spoke to the guy on the highway,” I said. “He told me there’s an old fishing village a couple of miles here.”
“We’re near the sea?”
“Buzzard’s Bay’s in that direction,” I said, pointing towards the ridge. We’d climbed almost halfway up the hill by now and were almost back where I’d had to ditch the Wrangler.
“How do you know?”
I pulled a map from my pocket. “Because unlike you,” I grunted, “I don’t try to navigate my way around on a cellphone.”
“We’re not in the middle of the wilderness,” she began to argue.
“And I am sure that you’ve had great cell reception, right? Exactly why I don’t rely on cell phones,” I said. “Besides, this is unfamiliar terrain. Now come on.”
I hopped over the fence. In the distance I could see the sea, roiling and dark in the storm. The wind was buffeting the trees along the side of the road and across the fields that led down to the seafront; there was already flooding. I caught sight of the Wrangler. It was covered in mud and leaning awkwardly into the ditch where I’d pulled it off the road.
“What’s wrong with your car?” Jamie said.
“I think the engine’s flooded,” I said. “These things are supposed to be watertight. Guess there was just a little bit too much water to deal with.”
“My car is just fine,” Jamie said stiffly.
I resisted the temptation to tell her to change her attitude. We weren’t going to get anywhere if we started bickering now.
I went to the backseat and grabbed the bag of stuff I’d taken with me. I didn’t have much at the hotel, but I’d managed to get some bottles of water, a map of the area, and some basic survival equipment. When I arranged my baggage for any trip, I always took the basics. Not that I ever expected to have to use them.
“Come on,” I said, slamming the car door and shouldering my pack. “We need to get out of here.”
“Can't we just shelter in the car?” said Jamie.
“If you want to get hypothermia, sure.”
“I’m not that cold.”
“You will be after a while. You’ve been standing out in the rain for what—ten minutes? Imagine what happens when the sun goes down.”
Jamie sighed. “All right,” she said.
We found a gap in the fence and began to trek across the muddy, rain-soaked fields. I wasn’t making things easy for Jamie—even now, at my age, shouldering two packs, I could keep pace with any hiker.
“Can you just … slow down?” said Jamie, almost tripping over a muddy bank behind me.
“We’re almost there,” I said, studying the map and wiping water from its plastic cover. “Look.”
Even in the dark, with the rain coming down hard, I could see the tiny figures of some cabins on the horizon. Soon the roar of the sea sounded. I didn’t want to go too close to the water, so when we finally crossed the last fence, I waited to help Jamie over and then pointed to the nearest cabin.
“Let’s see if there’s anyone here,” I said. But the place looked abandoned. It had probably been ditched a few years ago because of the flooding. There were plenty of abandoned shacks up the coast this way since the fishing industry had trickled out of business, and people had moved away to nearby cities and towns.
“This?” said Jamie incredulously. “This is your plan?”
“My plan,” I said, “is to call for help from here. To do that, I need somewhere dry. Okay?”
“Okay,” she murmured and looked away. “Wow,” she said.
Up the coast was a lighthouse, its beam winking in the darkness. It was almost completely dark now, and I couldn’t see a single light around. We weren’t near a highway or a gas station—we were in the middle of nowhere. And no one was coming to help us until I figured out where we were or how to contact them.
