Survival: Fight or Flight

4th Hour: It's a game

03:00 - 04:00 GMT

A gust of wind blew from ahead of me, blowing in my face and past me, right after an ominous moan had reverberated all around me.

I stopped walking then. My mind was working. This was definitely some kind of signal. It seemed to be triggered when I changed the direction I walked - a sudden deep, pained moan, and then a sudden gust of wind blowing past.

That was the only thing I'd managed to figure out so far. This was a puzzle; and the moans that were followed by the winds - that was a clue. They were somehow triggered by the direction I chose to walk - probably indicating that I'd made a wrong turn. Hmm.

Only moments ago, I had made a random turn - without triggering the moan and wind. But it had been triggered as soon as I turned left after that. That was the most recent case.

But it didn't make sense, since the previous two times, it got triggered when I turned around. Changing patterns? I had concluded that I was supposed to walk in a predefined set of directions in order to escape the swirling mass of black fog that surrounded me and made my vision every bit of useless.

But if those directions, if the pattern I was supposed to follow, changed every time I made a wrong move, then this would be a lot more complicated than I'd feared.

Another thing occurred to me. Could it be that the moans and gusts of wind were actually signalling that I was making the right turns? This was getting more and more complicated.

So what was it? Wrong turn signal? Or right turn signal? It seemed I had to figure this out first, before even bothering to try to figure out the pattern of directions to take, which were probably constantly changing.

As I thought about all this, I was slowly moving forward. Yet nothing had been triggered. I began to wonder if the speed with which I walked was also involved. I increased my pace, while my heart did little dances in hopes that this wasn't the case.

No eerie moan and gust of wind came. Okay, good. I continued walking straight ahead, not worrying about tripping in my near-blindness, and making sure I kept my direction. My mind, meanwhile, continued to work.

A random turn hadn't triggered the 'alarm'. Nothing to deduce from that. But then after a while of walking, I had turned left. That's when the 'alarm' was triggered. This time, the wind had curiously blown from ahead of me. So obviously, that was a clue as well - the direction of the wind. The eerie moan and the gust of wind, which came in response to a direction I turned; and the direction of the wind that came - these were my best clues so far.

03:07 GMT ...

I'd been walking for a while now, without making any turns. Yet the 'alarm' still hadn't been triggered. Which meant I was either walking in the right direction, or I was totally walking the wrong way. I needed to verify this somehow, and I didn't know how. I decided to try turning left again.

A sudden moan rumbled, stopping me in my tracks. A moment later, a gust of wind blew past, clearly blowing from ahead of me. It subsided a few moments later, leaving that seemingly solid silence in its wake. It seemed obvious that there was a set pattern going on here.

Turning left had triggered the 'alarm', twice in a row. Plus, the wind blew from in front of me. Both times. Previously, the wind had blown from my left. But those had been in response to my turning around. I had a sudden feeling of elation that sent warmth up my abdomen. I felt I was getting somewhere. With a little more excitement, I turned backward. Nothing. I started walking. Nothing. I turned backward again after a while, expecting the signal. Sure enough, the moan came.