Walls

03

Nothing was helping with her headache. Not the beams of sunlight striking her eyes through the tall trees, not her drumming heart or the sound of her labored breathing. It was painful.

Her hair billowed around her as she dashed through the trees. Bushes and thorns brushed her knees and ankles, making her wince with pain.

All around her was the doom of a forest leading nowhere. Trees appeared out of the blue.

She cussed when a long root that was porking out of the ground stubbed her toe. Luckily, she did not stumble onto the floor.

Dried leaves and twigs of branches crunched far behind her, making her aware of the man chasing her. He was closer than Abbie would have liked.

She was mad that she couldn't remember a good chunk of whatever happened on the previous day. It couldn't have been a simple drunken night. Her brain wasn't just hazy and foggy, like how she would have woken up after a party - it was blank.

"Abbie!" the gunman yelled.

His voice echoed around the trees in many directions. It was loud and raucous - like that of someone who spent the better part of their life screaming at the top of their lungs. It was also scaring the crap out of Abbie. She shuddered.

Her feet bashed against the ground beneath her in loud thuds, and she did not dare look back. Her eyes were glued to the ground ahead of her - looking for roots poking out of the earth.

"Stop running, Abbie!"

The damp floor was becoming increasingly slippery. Abbie prayed that she did not slip and fall.

Her breath was hitching with every step she took. The trees beside her passed in a blur. She risked a glance over her shoulder. The shadow of a man zoomed dangerously behind the trees. She willed her legs to move faster.

But where? She did not know where she was running. Or who she was running from.

"Abbie, stop!"

A curse rang in the air behind her. Merely a foot away from her, a bullet grazed the side of a tree.

Abbie was blinded for a split second by a fiery beam of light trickling through the trees.

Her body made a crazy decision. She took a sharp turn to the left and hoped against hope that the man too was blinded by a similar beam of sunlight to ever notice that she took off in a different direction.

The trees were closely packed and made it very hard to identify what was coming next until it smashed her in the face.

Which was what happened when she ran directly into a mesh fence. It was hard and made of steel. Abbie was sure that the impact left a mesh-shaped imprint on her face. On the other side of the fence was a pathway that looked like a hiking trail.

She risked another glance behind her. Phantom footsteps echoed among the trees. She was not sure if it was the man chasing her or something else entirely. But she had to get over the fence before it was too late.

Abbie hooked her finger through the holes in the mesh fence and slipped the pointy toes of her shoes to two more holes trying to haul herself up.

She cursed herself for not trying to join the gym when her roommate had listed off all the cons of spending her college life on a chair.

"What if you had to chase the man of your dreams...like literally?" her roommate had raised a pair of bushy eyebrows at Abbie.

Abbie knew that the man chasing her was most definitely not the man of her dreams. But the advice still mattered.

She tried imitating Spiderman as she pushed her feet from hole to hole until she was at the very top. The adrenaline in her system was probably masking the pain from all the bruises. She was sure that she couldn't have accomplished climbing a fence under normal circumstances.

Her head swam when her mind unknowingly calculated the height of her drop - It was at least six feet.

She scrunched her eyes shut. Her woozy head was not helping.

The echoes of footsteps - phantom or not, launched her over the top of the fence. Her feet hit the ground with her fingers still hooked to the mesh. She slowly opened her eyes and found herself on the trail.

The trees were dark now on the other side of the fence. And the man did not seem to have caught up to her.

But it was not a time to take chances. Abbie started upon the trail.

********************

The adrenaline in her system was wearing off. Her head was throbbing, and her limbs were beginning to ache again. She also needed some water!

Abbie had been following the trial for what felt like hours. The phone in her pocket had only counted down forty minutes from when she last checked it.

A slight ping of a vehicle made her heart skip. Was it the man with the gun following her in his motorcycle?

But on further straining her ears, she realized that it couldn't be a bike. It had to be a four-wheel vehicle - like a car. Her heart picked up speed, drenching her with hope.

Maybe she was close to a road.

She hurried her steps, ignoring the weird pain in her legs.

Five minutes later, she found herself at the side of a deserted road - in some part of the country that she barely recognized.

The empty road was definitely not anywhere near Angelora, which was where she lived.

She decided to walk further down the road until she could find someone to hitch a ride. The sun was warming up now. She was damp with sweat and thirsty like hell. It was killing a little part of her to take a footstep forward.

But just when she thought her luck had run out, she saw it - the fiery red board of a gas station.

The station looked empty except for the beaten-down old sedan parked at the front. A man in a baseball cap was whistling as he pumped gas.

He pulled the pipe off leisurely and closed the cap of the tank. The whistling died down as he disappeared inside the building to pay.

Abbie grit her teeth together. It was now or never - she had to steal that car.