The neverending journey that wouldn't go right

I made two failed attempts to catch a flight back to South Africa, thinking the flight was at 3:18pm when it was in fact 3:18am. By the time I realized this, I was it was already 2:30pm and pretty much impossible for me to catch any flight there.

So while packing, the place was suddenly overrun by aliens and managed to hide in the bathroom and turning off the lights. They didn't bother checking but they did stand outside the door debating whether or not anyone was inside. When they were gone, I grabbed my sister, remembering the directions "head 15 kilometers east then start heading north". I didn't even know where this was going to lead me or how we'd make it. It was dark outside and pretty much a vast, empty desert forest. We grabbed two pairs of night vision goggles and ran like the wind. Sometimes I'd have a compass, other times I didn't. We reached this random patch of forest comprised of barren trees, we used our goggles to see if there was anything in there. We had to run through them as fast as we could, there were lights coming up behind us. It was other people in some old Camrys and Civics seeing if we were human and then as quickly as they came, they backed out of the forest saying something about the trees waking. I saw green oozing out of the trees and they latched on to any thought or fear you had and made them real. I told my sister to stop thinking and just run.

By daylight we reached a big open hillside which rolled out into the distance, nIbbling on leaves we hoped wouldn't kill us. I had the compass again. And it looked like we had been going in the wrong direction this time but it kept changing polarities on me.