Talker – Chapter Fifteen: Right Back to Nothing
Author's Note: Sorry, sorry. Didn't mean to let this fic lag behind. Oooh, have I kept you in suspense? '
"Well what happened? How did they get in?" Ana ordered, looking around at the group incredulously. She was out of breath and out of patience, and damn near close to out of her mind as well.
They all sat or lay in the sand, trying to catch their breath after the attack. Tensions were high, they were all angry. At the situation and themselves.
"The door wasn't-" Terry panted. "Th-they…broke through the uh…" after that, he couldn't seem to find the right way to relay what exactly had happened. The gist of it was caught, however. Their petty barricade had been a hopeless effort.
Ana was frozen for a moment, shaking her head in disbelief. "Shit." She sat on the ground in frustration, muscles burning from the acid coursing through her veins as she tried to think through the numbness of her brain. She didn't want to act out on her fury, but God, was she ever angry. Look at what had happened. Look at what had happened because they had done exactly what she told them was a bad idea. They'd lost Tyler because of it. They'd lost Tyler, Christ…she thought back to the argument they'd had prior to leaving, about how Tyler was sick and they couldn't just take him on some ignorant little expedition. Had they listened? They hadn't. They hadn't, and Tyler had paid the price for it.
She looked her companions over, all of them in a miserable silence that was only accompanied by a few gasps and pants. They were lucky they made it out if there with as many people—uninjured—as they had. Lucky that they all weren't just torn apart in their sleep. But she had to shake her head at what was left. Now, in addition to being one man down, they had nearly no supplies, no weapons, nothing at all. Just the clothes on their backs and the memory of a damn stupid mistake. Another one. Fuck! Ana thought as she kicked the sand with her shoe. How many God damn stupid mistakes are we gonna make? We leave the mall—which we were lucky to have—for this shit island, and then, when we're lucky enough to have an uninfested area where they haven't found us, and we blow it all by chancing our lives on some fucking adventure. Perfect. She snorted and rested her head down in her arms.
"Chips." Nicole sighed as the dog came bounding up to her. She sighed and hugged him, putting her face into his fur.
"What do we do now?" Terry lifted his head, eyes in the direction of their original camp, which was only a few feet away.
No one responded. It was obvious what they would do now. The same thing that they had done every time something like this went down: pretend that nothing happened and go on. They were all just sick of doing it. They all sat in silence for a few moments longer before Kenneth became the initiator of said reaction, standing to his feet and brushing the sand off his clothes. "Let's build up a fire." He muttered. Ana wanted to berate him for his damn 'visage of apathy' persona, but she looked at him and could see the build-up of strain on him. He may have hid his stress well, but he'd been doing it for much too long.
Ana just turned her head away, unable to take this awful mood once again. The same thing after they'd lost Michael, after they'd landed on the island, and now this. In the end, though, what else would they do? She just supposed they didn't have the luxury of giving up.
Kenneth stopped short of himself in an instant as he stood, eyebrows high as he gawked towards the direction from which they had come. Fearing the worst at his unexplained stillness, they all turned to follow his gaze. There really wasn't anywhere to run now, nowhere to go if they'd been followed.
Tyler was coming towards them from the distance, looking behind him as his feet made a slow stumble for them, one arm clutched the other in a nervous jitter.
"Tyler?" Ana sprang to her feet, feeling as though an anchor was lifted off of her shoulders. He was alive? More or less, anyway.
"Holy shit…" Kenneth muttered. The others were rising as well, surprise clearly written in their faces along with a great deal of apprehension. Ana came to a halt within roughly five feet of him, watching as he stopped and stared, almost seeming to look right past her. He was shaking.
"What happened…?" she almost reached out to him, but quickly thought better of it. Please say something…
Tyler let out a shuddering sigh and swallowed, shaking his head as though he'd seen something simply too terrible to tell. "They…" he croaked, voice a whisper. He suddenly couldn't quite support himself as he stepped a foot out to the side and his legs buckled underneath him, bringing him to his knees.
Ana was down in front of him, hands on his shoulders as she tried to snap him out of his trance. "Tell me what happened. What did they do to you?"
This elicited some form of grumble as he put a hand to his head. "They didn't…they just…It was like they didn't even know I was there. I just expected them to be…to be on me."
"…" Ana's eyes went wide and she looked back at the others.
"I thought I'd had it for sure." He blinked a few times. "But they…didn't even touch me…"