A replay of the crash would play in Oliver's head, the impact of his head on the dashboard awoke him with a start. The sudden movement sent warning bells of pain as his concussion came back to the forefront of his memory. The crash was not a dream, as inexplicable as it was, it had indeed occurred.
He fumbled for two more pain medication capsules and tried to swallow them, but his throat was quite dry and his lips were chapped due to the cold. He grabbed a handful of snow and slowly sucked on it to re-hydrate his mouth. A little bit of snow would not reduce his internal body temperature much but it would allow him to swallow the medication tablets. He touched his face and felt the hard and dry skin on his cheeks, the first indication of frostbite as he could not feel the pressure of his fingers.
He ripped open a ration bar and alternated between chewing the extremely dry protein meal and sucking on the snow. He had to keep his calorie count high but not eat too much, doing so would give his body the fuel he needed to survive and not divert too much energy to digesting said food. Luckily, the people who designed these survival protein bars had the same concept in mind so Oliver did not need to keep a half open ration in his pockets.
A short rest and a few tired grunts later, the stranded pilot emerged back into the cold sub-arctic climate. His eyes were blinded by the overwhelming white snow reflecting in the morning sun. He tried to recognize any land marks but was unable to as he seemed to be in some valley surrounded by distant mountains. The nearest of the gradually sloping giants was at-least 5 kilometres away to what he believed was the east.
He had to figure out exactly where he was, the top of the mountain would be the best vantage point. While the hike would be exhausting, he would most likely be able to determine where he was in a general sense. He had flown over these mountains many times in the past and he would rely on his knowledge to find the nearest settlement.
With a pained start, he walked towards the peak of the nearby mountain, severely underestimating the depth of the snow. It crunched underfoot and then softly sank, swallowing his body to his mid thigh. This was no good, he would most likely only get a kilometre away before he ran out of energy.
Seeing some of the aircraft aluminum scattered in the snow, an idea flashed into his head. After some scavenging he found two large squares of jagged metal and bound them to his feet as makeshift snowshoes. He utilized the can opener on the Swiss multi-tool to make holes in the aluminum and the parachute cord as makeshift sandal leather.
The idea was not perfect and neither was the outcome, but one could hardly be picky in these type of situations. He looked around one last time at the trusty aircraft he had been used to flying and started his trek up the mountain. He expected it to take roughly 3 hours to cover the distance and then another 3 hours to come back. If he paced himself properly, he should be back before the 3:30 pm sunset, allowing him to see his tracks on the way back.
He set off on the hike, the makeshift snowshoes holding up his weight and dispersing it in the nearby snow. The trees grew as clumps and were completely covered in heavy snow, making them look like white phantoms. He kept his eyes down as he made his way, looking for any signs of civilization and to avoid the blinding reflection of the sun on the snow. No wonder pilots normally wore aviator glasses when driving over this landscape.
***
With heavy footsteps and an arched back, Oliver had successfully trekked up the side of the unknown mountain. The trees had folded away their territory gradually to rocky outcrops and the terrain had become much harder to traverse as the incline increased. The sky was an ocean like blue, only interrupted by the brilliant sun beaming down overhead. Through an estimate, it was believed to be about noon, but the sun was fickle and hard to evaluate in this region.
The wind was calm and gave no trouble to Oliver as he stretched his back and looked at the spanning mountains of the arctic taiga. Trees dotted the landscape like an ink drawing, working their way through the sheltered valleys and ridges. The peaks were dominated by hard blown snow drifts, the distance between each of these almost impossible to estimate as human perception was easily fooled by the lack of landmarks.
From his current location, Oliver could definitely recognize he was in the taiga belt of northern Nunavik, Quebec. This immense region spanned multiple biomes and his exact location was impossible to determine.
Another fact became depressingly obvious as he looked at the trail he had followed to get here. His plane perfectly blended into the white of the snow. From the top of the mountain he could barely see the outlines of the wings and the carriage. A small black hole denoted the mouth of the severed cockpit.
No one would be able to find him. The search area was hundreds of thousands of square kilometres, he was a veritable needle in a haystack. The smashed trees and landing scars he had caused were also mostly covered up by last night's blizzard. A few more days and those markings would blend completely into their surroundings.
He sighed and swore lightly under his breath, his voice ragged and exasperated. He needed to stay hopeful, but it was much easier said than done.
Looking around he saw no buildings or any type of evidence to say someone had come by recently. He looked into the beautifully cruel sky and saw clouds starting to form further east at the very edge of his perception. In that direction lay the Hudson Bay, a countless number of kilometres away. The large body of salt water would be responsible in forming those clouds, the coast was where most of the indigenous population lived and most likely his best hope for survival.
He had to make a choice at the moment. He had gathered all the immediately useful materials from the plane and was now a good distance in the right direction to permanent human settlements. How far he had to go and if he would be able to survive the journey was a major gamble that he did not know the answer to. His knowledge of survival in this type of environment was limited to old shows he used to watch as a kid and some tips he had picked up from locals during his many nights in northern hotels.
His other choice would be to stay with his plane and hope for a rescue party. That was also a gamble, different in its essence since he was relying on someone else to find him. Who would be able to find his plane? Who would even look for him other than some half interested corporate employee just being tasked with his rescue. Oliver's family was estranged and he kept very little contact with them. The moment he had turned old enough to work he moved in with some friends and saved up to follow his dream job of flying planes. He knew the answer but it still hurt to admit it.
No one was coming.
In the face of adversity some people would crumble and hide, sobbing their issues away and wishing for them to end. Doing so would normally spell death for anyone stuck in a survival situation as their actions were rash and often illogical. The best trait to have in that sort of situation would be to simply be lucky. 'Lucky' was not going to save Oliver.
A single tear rolled halfway down his cheek before partially freezing, he wiped it off and hardened himself. He turned his back on the wreck and continued in the opposite direction with his gear on his back. The sun was hidden as he made his way over a ridge towards what he believed to be his only hope of being saved.
***
4 days.
The tip of Oliver's nose was black. Blood had long since stopped flowing to this extremity as frostbite took its toll. Prolonged exposure to the harsh elements caused multiple patches of skin to become brittle and painful.
He was lucky that his fingers had not fallen off, the gloves he wore were doing an adequate job at keeping out the cold during his trek. His toes however were not so lucky. His boots had frozen over, keeping his feet in a constant state of refrigeration. He dared not take them off to verify, doing so would only worsen his already poor mental condition.
He was not dehydrated, yet the early onsets of starvation could be seen as the musculature of his face was drawn out slightly, his eyes sunken from sleepless nights of bitter cold. He needed to find food in a place where food was a struggle for every living being.
Lastly, the sun was dipping towards the horizon, the flaming ball coming into contact with the mountain ridge Oliver had crossed during today's hike. Night would soon be upon him and he would need to set up his tent again.
By estimating how far he was able to walk each day, he guessed he had already made it about 30 kilometres from where he had started, always going west towards the coast of the Hudson Bay. One of those days was spent hiding between a clump of trees as another freak blizzard threatened to blow his tent across the valley.
As if his day wasn't going terribly enough, he felt the growing surges of wind bring about another of those freak blizzards. The winds shifted and he soon felt large clumps of snow falling on his coat, changing the landscape into a flurry of whiteness.
Oliver would easily get lost in these conditions therefore he found the nearest clump of trees he could spot and made his way in that direction. As he did so, one of the parachute cords that tied his heel to the airplane aluminum snowshoe snapped, sending Oliver sprawling forward into a face full of snow. He crawled the rest of the 5 metres to the clump of trees to set up his tent, cutting off the broken snowshoe with the multi-tool.
As he took out the tent and unfolded it into the tube-like structure that it held by itself his hands slipped. A powerful gust of wind picked up the tent and caused it to roll extremely quickly onto one of the nearby trees. It started to slip around the trunk.
Oliver grabbed wildly at it, his feet sinking into the deep snow as he tried to make his way towards it. He found no purchase as he squirmed towards his only shelter, inching towards it. He was about to wrap his gloved fingers around it when the tent finally slipped from the tree, disappearing into the blizzard.
He stayed there, hand outstretched looking at where the tent had disappeared to. That final little bit of hope that kept him going extinguished as he saw the orange emergency tent fly off into the wind.
It could have been minutes or seconds, but Oliver did not move from his position, unable to comprehend what he was supposed to do in this situation. Even with the emergency blanket, he would freeze to death out in the storm. The situation was hopeless.
Maybe it was out of sheer denial that he decided to try and chase in the direction of the run away tent. Some would argue it was delirium and stupidity. He trudged through the snow like a madman at first, enough so that the other metal snowshoe ripped off.
When he couldn't keep up the pace and the wind howled at him to the point that he needed to lean towards it to fight it, he kept trudging through the snow at a slower pace. thirty minutes later he slowed even more, as his exhaustion reached a point that couldn't keep him upright. He couldn't feel his face, his feet were akin to dead weight that had little to no sensation in them.
Unable to continue, Oliver Plante collapsed like a dying tree. He sprawled out into the snow, his face a blackish-blue hue from dead tissue covering it. He lay there for several moments, wondering if he should have stayed by his plane in the hope for rescue. He did not accept his fate, but he was powerless to change it.
He wanted it to end. He wanted someone to come out of the snowy hell on a ski-doo and bring him to someplace warm. If anything else, the rider could confuse Oliver with a yeti and shoot him, it would be a quicker death than freezing. He felt like crying but nothing came out. In the end, he was just another dead animal cast away in this dreadfully beautiful yet cruel region of the world.
"I want to go home."
He let out a ragged and wispy cry. He wanted a bed to sleep on. He wanted a cup of tea. He wanted to watch television till his own vision failed and he fell asleep on the rerun of a movie he had already seen. He wanted to go to a home that he did not own. He realized the idiocy of that claim, but it was the only thing he could think of in his final moments.
He raised his head slightly as he stared at the frozen void, perhaps out of hatred, but most likely for no reason at all. That's when he saw it.
A yellow flicker. Ever so soft, as if it did not even exist. Hell, it might have been an optical illusion or a hallucination given the state of Oliver, but it was enough to make him squint and get up off the ground with his frozen gloves.
He tried walking again, only to be swallowed by the snow up to his waist. He crawled towards where he saw the flicker. One meter at a time he crawled through the soft and unforgiving snow. He did so until he was no longer doubtful that he had seen something.
The flicker of light became a glow, it did not seem to be moving but he seemed to be getting closer. Maybe it was the aspect of death itself, coming to claim him. The thought ran through Oliver's mind as he made his way slowly towards the light.
When he was about 5 metres further towards his goal he looked up and saw a great looming shadow. At first he was scared as nothing was that big in this part of the world. It seemed to be over 30 metres tall, but in reality he had no way of seeing the entirety of the shadow since the storm hid the upper half.
The light was still softly glowing underneath the huge, black phantom. It was somewhat obscured by thick rope-like structures that seem to interrupt it's source. At this distance the light was constant, radiating a shine into the otherwise pitch black darkness of the blizzard.
Oliver scrambled at it, his feet finding grip as the snow seemed to become shallower as he got closer to it. He was soon able to crawl on his hands and knees, then he picked himself up by placing a hand on one knee and lurched forward.
He reached out with his hands and found the rough surface of one of the rope like protrusions to be quite solid. It felt familiar, and by moving his hand up and down on the object, he recognized it as the bark of a tree. The huge shadow must be the trunk of a massive tree, and what he was touching must be either a fallen branch or a root that was semi-exposed.
Why was there a light underneath a giant tree's roots? Why was there even a tree this large in the place? All of these questions rushed through Oliver's head but he was unable to answer them so he quickly suppressed them. Maybe a bizarre hermit had decided to make this tree his home. He hoped that was not the case but at least it would be someone else, at least there would be warmth.
He pushed towards the light, walking through the net of large intertwined roots. He found himself underneath the tree in a hollow cavern made of soil. He followed the light, which was getting brighter as he crawled his way through this strange tunnel.
After a few movements forward, he felt something new. Heat. It flowed from deep within this soil cavern. He redoubled his efforts and started to frantically rush downwards towards the source of this heat.
For what felt like 50 meters he crawled further and further into the tunnel, until he finally saw the it open up into something bright and radiant. Like a groundhog coming out of his hole, he tumbled out into this open, underground expanse.
Trees and grass. The world he looked onto became bright with the chlorophyll green of hundreds of trees and plants. It defied logic. How could this shining bright world exist underneath the earth of a frozen taiga biome? He thought maybe he was still out there in the frozen wasteland, dying slowly and these were the perverse thoughts of his mind. A quick pinch solved that right away as he saw that he was in fact in reality.
He heard no animal sounds, no wind either. He slowed his breathing and started to hear a faint murmur. The gurgling of a small creek could be heard going through the trees. He walked forward, slowly pacing next to the trees, touching them to see if they were real. After 50 metres, he walked past many different species of trees and arrived in front of a one foot wide brook.
He stooped down on his knees, hands slack at his side like a man who had been slain. He touched the water and cupped his glove to bring it to his mouth. His frozen and chapped lips came into contact with the fresh and electrifying taste of pure glacier water. He started to cry as he couldn't believe it was true.
He lied down, staring up at a sky that seemed to flitter through the branches. He did not see any blue, but he could see thousands of star-like crystals hanging 40 metres off the floor. They projected brilliant and warming rays of sunshine.
He fell asleep, nestled between a fern and another type of horsetail aquatic plant, a smile on his lips as he had survived another night that he should not have.