The Island

Chapter 10- Wait, what!?

About an hour later- midday ish.

Ben shot up with a start. He tried to figure out how he ended up back at the cave. Something about venom? And a paw? What the heck happened? Ben pulled himself to his feet and looked around. There was a figure hunched over what looked like a makeshift fire pit.

Wait. Ben was the only one left on the island as far as he knew. So who was the person making the fire? Ben thought as he pulled himself to his feet.

The figure's back was turned to him, and even though it should be about midday-ish, it was so dark in the forest it was pretty much nighttime, so Ben couldn't tell who it was.

For all he knew, he was still halfway insane and was hallucinating.

"Hello?" Ben asked. "Who ar- oof!" he couldn't finish his sentence before getting attack-hugged by Hailey, who was grinning like a maniac.

"Wait, what?" spluttered Ben, shocked and barely able to breath due to Hailey's strangling him. "Aren't you supposed to be, you know, dead? Also, you're strangling me."

"Oops, sorry," Hailey said, backing off. "And to answer your question, I don't know. One minute I was dead, next minute I was alive. I saw you near the monster, and started making a fire."

"A fire?"

"To boil the water on. We still need to drink, we haven't had anything to eat or drink since we got here!"

"Right," Ben said.

"By the way, have you seen the others anywhere? Last I heard Bianca got dragged off by murder-horses and Todd was bringing you into the Cave."

"Oh, um. Todd's somewhere. I don't know where he went, and Bianca got brought out to sea fighting that murder-horse you mentioned."

Hailey's bubbly air seemed to sadden more with every word that came out of Ben's mouth. After Ben finished, all she said was "Oh,"

Silence. One minute, two minutes. Neither were sure of what to say to the other. Finally, Hailey spoke. "What happened to you?" she asked nervously, her light brown eyes large.

"Yeah, what happened?" A voice asks from in the woods. The pair whirled around, looking wildly around for the speaker. The pair spot a teen boy of about 16 with brown/black hair, bright green eyes, and a quirky smile step out of the trees.

Hailey and Ben gawked at the figure, hardly daring to believe what they were seeing. He seemed a little worse for wear, with the pants cuff around his head and what looked like a bunch of sweater sleeves around his torso. He also had only one shoe. The guy walked over and sat with them at the firepit, still smiling.

"Well?" Todd asked. "You gonna explain or not, Tremblay?"