It started with a plane crash that should’ve killed me, but didn’t.
I was on a work trip when the passenger jet that we were flying basically started falling apart, and the next thing I knew we were looking out the side of the plane that was no longer plane as the ground around us was rapidly approaching.
I have no idea how I survived, but a lot of people actually did. We were all sitting around the wreckage of this jumbo jet trying to make sense of it when I noticed that my phone was still intact and I was receiving frantic messages from a co-worker about what had happened. The news was talking about a plane being shot down over Afghanistan and how there were no survivors, even though it had literally just happened … after piecing a few things together quickly on the phone, I told her that they couldn’t tell anyone that we’d survived and turned my phone to silent before we started to run…
The group was already much smaller as we found ourselves hiding in the middle of a war torn city, suddenly painfully aware that we’d crashed in pretty much the worst possible place ever as we saw men carrying machine guns walking the streets nearby, though so far it didn’t seem that they were aware of our presence … yet. At the moment at least we were more or less invisible amid this chaos, whereas we knew that if they realized there were survivors we would quickly become the hunted.
Sneaking from building to building without much direction, it didn’t take long for one of our members to slip up and attract the attention that put us running for our lives, our numbers quickly dwindling as the gunfire gradually picked off our stragglers who we didn’t even have time to look back and acknowledge as we fled. Eventually I ended up alone, darting between houses in an almost suburban setting as I felt the chase somewhat slowing behind me until I was able to hide in a farmer’s field while I could overhear the soldiers wandering around nearby, but thankfully without a clue that one of their prospects was laying among the tall crops so close nearby.
It was in that field that I stayed for nearly a week, slowly inching my way further from the man’s house whenever the quiet encouraged me to move forward, sustaining myself on whatever I could find nearby on the ground that was mostly disgusting – a few of the crops that surrounded me, but also some bugs and even dirt. I hadn’t used my phone in days after turning it off upon overhearing one soldier commenting that they’d been tracking us via GPS, and I knew it just wasn’t worth the risk when already they were so close on the roads that bordered the fields that kept me hidden.
I finally had to make haste once again when it was the farmer itself who caught sight of me during his daily chores and quickly alerted the nearby soldiers – only a couple this time – who pursued me on foot as I proceeded to steal his car in return and take off back into the city that I’d just spent so much time trying to escape.
I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going – all I knew was that I had to get away.