Sirens blazed behind me as my bare feet hit the hard ground of the woods. Wood and stone piercing into my skin, adrenaline and fear making the pain almost invisible.
I stumbled as I pushed a branch away from my face.
Waves of dizziness hitting my head as my body tried to adjust.
Keep moving. Keep moving. Keep moving.
The words ran on a loop because if they stopped I would stop and if I stopped it was over. The trees were dense here, close together the way forest grew when nobody had cleared it in years, and the dark between them was the kind of dark that had no bottom to it. My eyes kept trying to adjust and the fever kept interfering, throwing soft halos around everything, making distances unreliable.
I caught a root with my left foot and went down hard.
Both palms hit stone. The pa
