And we begin...with a dilemma.

About halfway between last night's camp and the city we're going to be staying in, Steve's leg siezed up. Steve's definitely in the worst shape of any of us, stick-thin and with the cardio ability of an eighty-year old, and he's been finding it difficult with the camping gear and basically everything he owns on his back while we hike. But hell, the rest of us do it. Rachel can do it, and she's seventeen, and been one of us for two weeks. He's been at it since before me.

So we're stopped right now, sitting on our asses while the sun goes down, and we've been walking alongside a motorway of fields and bare hills, but wouldn't you know it, we're right near a forest. And this presents a problem. If it's not a small forest, we might not be able to get through it before it gets dark. We'll have to camp. We can't camp here, it's too close to the forest. We sure as hell can't camp in the forest. And if we go back, we'll lose progress. Progress we'll have to make again tomorrow. Which puts more distance between us and our destination, and even more time for things to go wrong.

Roland's Ka-Bar knife is just visible under his jacket in its scabbard. He called it a D2. Said the steel was special. We have options. Just not many.

Forests, you see, are His territory.

And every second we're near one - too near, like we are now, and will be for a while - we're exposed. Exponentially increasing danger. Him or the psychopaths He seems to accumulate.

So everyone turns to Shannon, even though Steve, Roland and Lianne are older, and Roland certainly more experienced. Shannon makes the calls. She has as long as most of us have been here.

I'm sitting on my sleeping bag bundle, my own knife in my hands, the same type as Roland's. I've never even used it. Roland taught me a move or two, but against some nutcase with murder in his eyes, I don't place a lot of faith in my abilities. Only Shannon and Roland are good, and only Roland good enough.

And I've realised suddenly that I'm afraid. I told myself I'd write this, that I'd try and reach out to other people in a similar position to us, but all I'm doing is writing about how, when you read this, we might already be dead.

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, we're on the run. We've been driven from our homes and our families by...something that's rather hard to explain. That's where I got the blog title from.

Shannon's still thinking. Natalie's vocalising the pros and cons which she knows everyone already realised five minutes ago. Meanwhile the sun's setting and we're running short on time.