Growing in numbers

The others began to arrive fast and often in that deserted clearing. Within a week over one hundred people were living, fishing, hunting, running and planning there. Each had been involved in an incident, some minor collisions, others in collapsing building. All it seemed should have been at the very least injured when they had escaped without a scratch. All of the incidents had seemed to come from no-where. At least a third had had someone they knew killed and the same message Carol had recieved been given to them.
Beyond Carol another fifty had subsequently been in accidents that should have killed them, only to leave them alive. These fifty could also hear the beating, feel the pulsing that directed them to another who had survved two deaths.
There were people who had lived on the streets for years, others who were teachers, some had been in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. Not one was under eighteen, and none older than fifty six. What significance this might have, they didn't know. As they talked amongst themselves, they could find nothing in common, no link to say why they had all survived as they had.
Each of the fifty with the radar sense knew there were more like them out there, most coming closer.

As the weeks passed and the numbers grew, a resentment began to build. Soon, something would have to give.

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!"

Survived

Carol Manning sat with the unnecessary blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She had told the police officer with the unamused face that she was quite fine and didn't need one, but he'd been adamant.
Sat in the interview room she watched the door with interest. It had been fifteen minutes since they had sat her down at the table and told her someone would be in shortly. Why she was here and not at the hospital with Jake, she couldn't imagine.
Not that Jake needed her any more. The raging fireball that had melted the skin right off of his face has seen to that. His scream would haunt her for a long time, she knew that. A gurgling screech of pain and as his eyes turned to her they begged for relief. But she'd been strapped in the passenger seat and could do nothing to help him.
They day had been going so well. A ride in his new Skyline, just delivered from Japan. He'd never been happier, except for when she did that special something he liked so much.
Now he was dead, along with at least sixty others they told her.
She knew they were puzzled, quite frankly, so was she. How come she didn't have a mark or scratch on her? With the car upside down, how had a fireball melted her boyfriends face like ice cream yet left her untouched?
She didn't know and was sure that was an answer the officers asking the questions weren't going to like.

It took another ten minutes before two men entered. Wearing suits and not uniforms, she knew they had to be detectives. If cop shows on TV had taught her anything, it was that.
"Now, Miss. We want you to tell us what happened."
Carol shrugged and told them. How Jake had taken her for a spin, then suddenly cars were swerving all over the road and something had flipped them onto the roof. They had skidded for a distance and then there had been the explosion and the fireball.
"Did you see what caused it?"
"No."
"And you say it came through your boyfriends car, but didn't touch you, not even a minor burn. Can you explain that?"
Sighing, Carol told them she could not. Nor could she say why there wasn't a single scratch on her and why she was the only survivor from that area of the pile up.
With a slight nod the detectives stopped the recorder and left Carol to her thoughts again.

They let her go two hours later. She'd done nothing as far as they could tell, beyond have a miraculous escape.
Taking their card, she left the station on foot. Home was ten miles away and she didn't want to get in another vehicle just now.

The young officer who saw her to the door watched her back get smaller as she walked away. He never saw the lithe figure dressed all in black slip past him into the station. Nor did he feel it three hours later when the bomb exploded, killing everyone inside and leaving a crater the size of a football pitch in the centre of town.