A rat in a maze

He'd abandoned his temporary underground safehouse a week ago in the middle of the night. He'd grown far too comfortable there, and put everything at risk. He had carefully hidden his backtrail as he'd traveled, and obsessively checked and rechecked the area around himself to see if he was being followed. He had neither slept, nor eaten, very much in the days since then. Stopping long enough to sleep without it being completely secured was dangerous, and hunting took far too much attention from his surroundings. He hadn't yet found someplace secure enough to hole up so he'd had to continue on. Walking along the bottom of the ravine was a nervewracking experience - he felt trapped, only able to go forward or back. If something went sour he would have nowhere to escape. But he had not been able to find an easy way around it, so there was little choice in the matter. It made him paranoid, jumping at every little sound. A rock tumbled from the side of the ravine, and he flinched, whirling to face it, but there was nothing there and no way up or down the wall from this part of the ravine anyway. He'd passed a zig-zagging route down the wall a while back much like the one he'd used to climb down here, but it was on the wrong side of the ravine from where he was trying to go. He stopped, stock still, forcing himself into calm before he could continue.