Rachel quickly contemplated her possibilities. Trying to hide in the vegetation to the sides of the trail? Not bottomless with all those stinging nettles. Running along the trail in the opposite direction? Not with the possibility of other hikers coming from there as well. Staying on the road and ask for help? Not from total strangers... while bottomless. Especially since at least one of the voices she heared had got to be a man's.
The rapidly approaching hiker group left her with few better options than "up". She glanced to the side of the trail and saw a sturdy-looking tree with enough low-hanging branches that could serve her purpose. She wasted no time scampering up the tree to avoid being seen. As for what she would do after that? She would have to figure that out later.
One after the other she kept grabbing branches to pull herself up into safety. Well, if you could call the top of a tree a place of safety. By the time the hiking group reached her position, she was well above 16 feet (~5m) up on that tree. She could see the group of two guys and two girls who appeared to be in their twenties. She was glad she had rejected the notion of asking them for aid. She never got along well with her own age group. Nor any other, for that matter. She breathed a sigh of relief as they were about to go past "her" tree. Except, they stopped on the trail right below her. Then she heard one of the girls, a short redhead, say something that made her blood chill.
"Look! What's on those branches?" she asked pointing forward.
"Trash." shrugged the other girl. "A plastic bag." said one of the guys. But the other stepped closer to examine the object in question. "Tattered clothing." he said poking the pieces of Rachel's former attire. "Looks like someone's ... shorts?"
Rachel started to panic. They just happened to stop in the worst possible spot for her. A couple of feet forward or backwards and they couldn't have seen her through the branches. But where they were now, they only had to look up to spot her. So with great haste, she started to climb around the tree to the other side where she would be hidden.
"And it looks kinda clean." added the guy inspecting her shorts. "This can't have been here for too long."
"Oooh. Does that mean there's someone on this trail who's streaking?" asked the other guy with a grin.
"Or maybe someone has turned into a werewolf and is watching us from amongst the trees." said one girl jokingly.
Rachel tried getting out of sight, but the more she hoped the thicker branches would hide her, the more she had to realize that all those branches hindered her movement significantly. To the point that her camel bag got caught on one of the stronger branches, anchoring her to the spot and preventing her from moving at all. As she was trying to get her bag free from the obstacle, the branch she was holding onto snapped loudly.
Comments