Out in the Sticks

Carol shivered in the coldness of the thin tent. It was twenty days since the car crash, twenty days since the police station she had been interrogated in had exploded. Now death seemed to follow wherever she went. At first she had gone to a firend's house to stay the night and for company, in the morning she had awoken to find her friends eviscerated in the lounge, their blood used to paint strange and gruesome pictures of dogs tearing at small children on the wall. The house phone had rang soon after she awaoke and screamed herself hoarse - "They will think it was you. The crash, the bomb, this murder."
"What is going on?" she sobbed down the line.
"We tell you nothing but the truth. We give no answers, ask no questions. We command but one thing, get away from people. Get away from anyone and anything. You have a day."
As the line went dead Carol didn't spend more than a second in thought. Dressing quickly she gathered her things and fled.
She didn't know who was doing these things around her, but people were dying because of her. She took what money she had and went to the nearest outdoor supply shop. She bought a tent, a sleeping bag, several gas lamps and gas cookers, then drove her dead friend's car to the supermarket and stocked up on tinned food.


Now she was spending her eighteenth day in these woods. Alone, out of contact with anyone. She had no idea of what was occurring in the world and nor did she care. This day began as the other seventeen had, she awoke and dressed quickly. She had planned decently, but now all of the clothes she had brought were being worn for the third time and they started to smell. She had tried washing them in the small stream she had camped near, but the smell was beginning to linger in them.
Stepping out of the tent into the cool morning air, she limbered up and began to run. She had worked out five different routes to run already and this morning she wanted to find a sixth. Taking a left turn from where route three became route four she started to jog through overgrown and unknown parts of the forest.
Unfamilier tress flashed by on both sides, the sound of the stream, which she had started using to orient herself, had faded away so softly that it came as a shock when she realised she couldn't hear it any more. Slowing down, she began to think of how to get back to the camp. There was nothing else she could use to tell where she was, she didn't even know whether she was now North, South, East or West of her camp.
There was nothing for it but to try running back the way she had come, but she hadn't left much of a trail in her passing. Best as she tried, she could not find the route she had been running. Suddenly, while her eyes and mind were occupied searching for something recognisable, her fott slipped and she was tumbling down a steep slope. Head over heels, round and around she span until her head slammed into a large rock with enough force to leave part of her skull and brains on it. The world ended in her mind and her body tumbled on.

She never knew how many minutes, hours or days she spent in a black nothing at the bottom of the incline, but one day light exploded behind her eyes and she could see.
While she looked around, she still had no idea of where she was, in her mind it did not seem like long since she had started to fall. Then she felt a slight pulsing in her mind. As she turned her head the pulsing would increase or decrease depending on where she faced.
Turning so the pulsing was at it's most insistent she began to walk, changing her direction each time it started to fade away.
It took only ten minutes for her to reach a part of the forest she recognised, and now she could tell what was happening. Her mind was pulsing like a radar, directing her back to the camp.

When she finally stepped into the clearing, she saw another three tents had been set up next to hers.
A man stepped out of one of them, saw her and turned to yell "Hey guys, she's here!"