Sixty hours and handful of minutes ago, Allison Fuller had left Boston in pursuit of a new and better life. After working so hard through college and medical school at Harvard, surviving a failed engagement and gracefully deflecting pity left and right, she was ready to move on and start her residency. Ideally, it should have been somewhere closer to home where she could have been surrounded by her friends and family, still kept some semblance of a social life, but starting over seemed appealing. It was time to branch out, do something new and leave the bubble that had become Cambridge, Massachusetts. Portland was all the way across the country, a new extreme with new challenges to tackle and new work to keep her mind more busy than it usually was. Allison told herself that this was where life started to get good.

After two days on the road and stopping at motels along the way for rest and a shower, Allison was only two hours outside of the city. It was close enough that she could be excited, and she was looking forward to checking out her new apartment and getting settled in. She had never actually set foot in place, just taken one of those virtual tours online and decided that the one bedroom with a modest kitchen and living area would be enough for her. It wasn't as though she expected to spend a ton of time there and already knew how busy she would be with a new job and actual time in the ER. To Allison, home was the hospital, an apartment was just a place she kept her clothes; a glorified storage locker.

The GPS in her black SUV had routed her through the Cascade mountains. Allison had never been an outdoorsy person, but she wasn't above appreciating the view as she drove along through the winding curves of the road. It didn't take long for her to fall in love with the landscape, thinking it was better than the congested nature of Boston, this was unspoiled, untouched by man. Alone in her car, Allison finally felt as though she could breathe, as though it was okay to leave her old self behind and become a better version of herself out here. On the radio, a popular song from the 90s filled the silence and Allison hummed along as she continued her drive. It was starting to get dark out, and she flipped on her headlights after going around yet another steep curve. 

In place of Alanis Morissette's [i]Irony[/i] came the noisy buzz of static. This wasn't the first time that Allison had lost a good radio station on her drive, and it had become a habit to mindlessly turn the dial until something new popped up to take the place of the last song. Strange, however, Allison couldn't seem to find anything but static. Assuming she was just out of range, the dark-haired woman turned it off, thinking that she would be out of the mountains and arriving at her new apartment soon enough. Her eyes shifted, looking at her GPS for a time estimation, only to find that the screen was completely black. Immediate panic set in, and Alison couldn't help but think of all the hikers who got lost in the woods each year, or those people who ran out of gas and got stranded, only to be eaten by a cougar or mauled by a bear.

She shook her head at herself, hating that she jumped to extreme conclusions whenever something went wrong. Reaching over into the passenger seat, Allison grabbed her cell phone, but was met with no signal. The thing was useless now, just a paper weight until she got out of the mountains.

Fifteen more minutes of driving brought Allison to a stretch of road and she peered through the darkened trees looking for any signs of life. If she could just find someone and ask them for directions, everything would be okay. In the distance, she saw a light and breathed a sigh of relief as she quickly pulled over to the side of the road and left her car. The cabin wasn't far off, and Allison half-jogged over to the door, just praying someone was inside and willing to help send her in the right direction. She ignored the the grim fact that this was how most low budget horror movies started, and subconsciously pulled her sweater a little closer to her body for comfort.

The cabin looked solid and resilient, probably built by hand decades ago. Allison hesitated for a moment before knocking her first against the sturdy wood a handful of times. "Hello?" she called, knocking again. "Is anyone in there? I'm a little lost..." She cursed herself for not stopping to get a physical map the night before when she had gotten into Oregon, but Harvard had never offered a course on common sense.