Pool-house -Dylan

They had just seen Abi's head get ripped off by a creature that should only exist in nightmares. Where Nick had been standing, no longer Nick had exploded out of it's skin, decapitating their friend, and jumped out the window, running off into the night.
"Fuck- Fuck, Fuck. What the fuck -..." He was on his knees, beside the bench. Doubled over, he vomited.

Ryan is just standing there in shock. Kaitlyn is helplessly sitting next to Abi's body, staring at her headless corpse. Her finger's curl into her thigh, as if to tell herself, this wasn't real, it didn't really happen.

Dylan looks away, feeling the need to vomit again.

He spits out the acrid taste of bile but nothing else comes out. He already emptied the contents of his stomach, (his throat burning from the beer, his vomit a foamy liquid with chunks of partially digested watermelon, which was not helping) using his one hand to try and scramble to his feet. But his legs felt like lead. Blurriness pressed in on both sides of his vision.

"Dylan. What's going on..."
How would I fucking know?

"He's having a panic attack..." Kaitlyn's voice sounds far away. "Dumb ass."

"used to...get them..." He had gone all summer without one. He had manged to avoid one in the radio hut.

"Dylan, take a deep breath." She was saying seriously now. Abi was beyond help. She had to help Dylan. But it didn't seem to be working.

He tried to listen to Kaitlyn. But it just sounded like she was underwater. It was getting so damn hard to breath.

He felt a hand around his wrist.

"Dylan- Dylan, look at me."

Dylan continued to hyperventilate.

"Dylan, I need you to breath."

I can't fucking breath. It was like that time he accidentally ate a peanut and Nick, quickly acting, injected him with an epi pen from the nurse's office. Fuck. Nick. He could be dead and Abi...she was definitely dead. Fuck. They were all going to die.

"Hey, look at me." Ryan's hands cupped his face " I need you to calm down. Can you do that for me?"
"Yeah. Yeah. Yeah." His heart beat was beginning to slow. Ryan helped him up back onto the bench. Dylan drew his knees up to his chest.

"Should we cover her body or something?" Kaitlyn asks.

"I think it's too late for that." Ryan glances at Dylan. He's still in a state of shock but at least he's not freaking out. He spoke too soon.

"He's dead. He's fucking dead. He killed...fucking Abi. We're so fucked."

"I mean, I don't think dead people jump out of windows and run off into the woods, howling at the moon."

Ryan slanted his eyes at Kaitlyn for being insensitive. He turned back to Dylan. His arms around his knees, starting blankly at the carnage that is left of Abi, but he's not really seeing it. Ryan doesn't know what he's seeing. If he's still with them at all.

"Hey. Hey." Ryan rested his hand on his knee. He needed something to ground him. "Listen, bud. There was nothing we could do. You know he would never hurt Abi. Whatever...that was... that wasn't him. That wasn't Nick. We're going to get you out of here and get you some help ok?"

There was a banging on the door and a sound of a woman's voice.
His was heart pounding again, but at least his breathing was finally back to normal. Though he didn't understand the words the woman was saying or Ryan's exchange with her.
Until she said her name.
"Kearney." It sounded familiar. "you're Laura Kearney?"
"Yes."
"You were supposed to be working, helping out in the nurses office right? And you never showed up, you and that guy. What's his name?"
"Max."
"Yes. Yeah. Max. Mr Hackett said you had changed your minds last minute. I think that...we should listen to her. Inside."

Laura told them where she and Max had been for the last two months, that Sheriff Hackett, Chris's brother, had them locked up. They discovered what had happened to Max, that Chris had been a werewolf and Max was now one too.

"Are you out of your mind? What's so funny?"

"I literately said the exact same thing."

"How is this any different from your ghost stories?" Asked the boy with the missing hand. She didn't ask about it. They hadn't asked about her missing eye. She would get to that part eventually.

"Dylan...Those...those are campfire stories." said the darker skinned boy with the shotgun.

"It would make a lot of sense. That thing on the roof. What happened to Nick...we saw him literally explode out of his skin and kill Abi..." He trails off and looks at her but her body is now covered with towels, ( that Kaitlyn had placed over her while Laura shared her story) only her arm is visible.

"Dylan, right? I'm sorry about what happened to your friend." Laura takes a brief look at the pile of towels. Then back at Dylan. Behind his humor and smile, she could tell he was terrified, trying to make the best out of a horrible situation. Just like Max would. Max. "They don't keep their mind when they turn. It wasn't him. If that helps."

"It doesn't, but ok." Max would say that too. Or maybe she's just projecting?

If her hunch was right and he was similar to Max, she can get him to listen to her. She knows she's manipulating him. She hates it, hates the person Sheriff Hackett has made her become. God, is this what it's like to be him? Maybe once this was all over she'd apologise for the fucked up shit his family dragged him through, maybe not. He fucking ruined her life. She had a chance to salvage it, though she knew things would never quite be the same again. For the other counselors, their lives tonight would forever be chanced. All because she opened that stupid door.

She couldn't let her conscience get to her now. She wasn't getting anywhere. And there wasn't much time. By helping Max, she could help his friends. It too late for the girl under the towels. She could tell that he was closer to the dead girl and the friend who turned into a werewolf and killed her. God, she hated to do this. That she couldn't even recall their names.

" I can help your friend..." She searched for it. The name. What's the name? "Nick...was it?"

Dylan nods. "How?" It's the only word he can get out. Man, it was getting hard to focus. How did you come back from what happened to Nick.

"If I kill the werewolf that bit him."

"Dylan, don't listen to her. She killed Kaylee." Ryan knows she's using sympathy to take advantage of Dylan's vulnerability right now. Even if it was for a good reason, (which he believed there wasn't) there's no excuse. A dull fire growing in his chest started to roar. Every instinct in him wants to protect Dylan. For all they knew she was some psycho chick waving a gun around. She could be working with the hunters.

"Once again, I didn't kill anyone. What I shot at, that was no girl. Unless the werewolf turned back?"

"Werewolves, really?That's what you're still going with? There has to be a rational explanation. For all of this."

She had had it with this guy. She stormed over to him, lifting up her eye patch. "Is this rational enough for you? This is what Max did to me. He scratched me. When he turned. I stood too close." She gave a sigh." Believe me or not, I don't care. But I don't have much time. If I don't kill Chris, Max and I are stuck like this until the next full moon. And everyone else he might have bitten. Until he's dead, no one is safe."

"She is making a lot of sense, dude. How else do you explain what we've seen?" Kaitlyn reasoned.

"Oh c'mon..." Ryan said in disbelief. He couldn't believe that she was starting to buy this too. "Guys, we can't kill Chris. We have to think rationally here."

"You weren't thinking so rationally when you separated my hand from the rest of my body."

"Neither were you!"

"For if it's a bite with which you're faced, cleave limb from torso with great haste.."
"See, she's even got a poem about it."

"You did the right thing."

Dylan nods his head in agreement, as if to say, see I told you. Then he shakes his head. He probably shouldn't have done that. Did the light just get dimmer in here?

"Wait if you were scratched, why haven't you turned?" Kaitlyn asks.

"Scratches don't get you infected. Bites do..." She lifts up her forearm, revealing a bit mark on her burned arm. "After I shot Chris, who I thought was Chris...I went back to the Island. I left Max there, after we made our escape. And I came here. Thought he'd be safe, surrounded by water and all. Only Max hadn't turned back. I got away but not without this."

"Wait...the island? Like our Island?" Kaitlyn asked.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Because Jacob went to the Island looking for Emma and he hasn't come back yet. Neither of them have..."

"Well, I didn't see them. They're probably fine. If they didn't go poking around where they shouldn't have." The very thing that had gotten her into this whole damn mess. If only she would have left it alone. But they would have all been stranded here. And blind to what it happening. They had a chance to fight this thing. All she needed to find out is where Chris Hackett was.

Dylan suddenly feels dizzy. It's not just that he's worried about Jacob and Emma. "This is bad. This is very bad." He leans up against the wall, or slumps back.

"Whoa, Dylan!" Kaitlyn rushes over to him.

"I don't feel so hot." He just wants to sleep.

She puts one hand to his forehead. "He doesn't seem to be running a fever. So that's good news. " She checks the stump again. Red almost completely soaked the bandage. "Shit, it's bleeding again." Preoccupied with getting answers, they hadn't notice how silent Dylan had become. Damn it, they should have noticed. He was her responsibility from now on. "I'll get him back to the lodge. I need to cauterize the wound. Then I'll go to the junk yard, see if we can find a way out of here."

"Wait...I think...is that...?" Laura made her way over to Abi's body and bent down. The piece of jewelry glittering on her wrist from the moon light. It had caught her eye before but she wasn't sure.

"Stop. What are you doing?" Ryan pointed the gun at her. "Get away from her. Don't touch her."

"I'm trying to help." She took off Abi's bracelet and put it in an empty shotgun casing. "Here. It's silver." She handed it to Kaitlyn. "Worse case scenario, this should give you a fighting chance."

"What if it's Nick or someone?"

"Like I said, worse case scenario."

When they made it to the nurses office, she saw that Dylan was about ready to collapse, so she put her arm around him and led him to the bed behind the partition and eased him down onto it. She put a tourniquet around his arm. "Ok, let's see what we're looking at"

As started peeling back the layers of the makeshift bandage, Dylan took a sharp intake of breath and looked away.
"Put your head down between your legs, if you feel like you're going to faint. "
"I'm ok." He said.
"No one's ok." Certainty not Abi. She felt like she was trembling now. He wasn't the only one trying to retain a brave face. "I'll be right back."
She was relieved to see that there was a fire already going in the lodge's fireplace. All she needed was something metal. the fire poker would do. She didn't want to inflict anymore pain on to him, but it had to be done. Or he'd bleed out. She was surprised he hadn't already. Maybe after that thing bit him, it had healed the wound a bit?
She came around to his other side and started fiddling with his belt. "Kai...what are you doing?" He tried to twist away from her. "You know I don't like you that way..."

"Dylan. Stop moving." She manages to take it off when he stills. She holds it up in front of him. He looks at it, confused.

"To bite on. Unless you want to bite your tongue off."
"Just do it." With annoyance but with the same conviction he had told Ryan to cut off his hand.
"I'm sorry but this is going to hurt..."
"Just do it." She put the belt in his mouth and he clamped down on it as hard as he could. " Do it, do it, do it."
It was a knife to her heart to hear his screams, though muffled. She couldn't stand watching him in pain. But she couldn't look away, she needed to see what she was doing. Hadn't he been through enough trauma? Losing a hand, losing his two best friends in one night.
When it was done, the smell of blood and burnt flesh hung in the air. She wondered if those bastards could smell fear too. She took the belt out of his mouth. She was met by no snarky comeback. She'd prefer one of his dirty jokes over silence.
She was afraid he was in a catatonic state, when she finally brought herself to look at his face. Wet tear tracks shimmering down his cheeks. One tear trailed out of the corner of his eye. He made no move to wipe it away. He was staring off into space, almost a glazed look in his eyes.

Oh, no you don't. You're not going to flake out on me now.

Then he spoke,
"I can't stop thinking about Abi."
"We can't think about that now. We need to focus on surviving."
"You're brave, Kaitlyn."
"Me? Pfft. You're the one missing a hand."
But he had already passed out. She hoped it wasn't from blood loss and just from the pain and exhaustion. She let him rest.