Chapter 46 We are tired

Chapter 46 We are tired
The cabin felt smaller with each passing hour, like the walls were slowly contracting.

Around eleven, Brooks muttered something under his breath while staring out the window at David's body. Mara didn't catch all of it, but she heard enough: "...should have warned us better... should have made us understand..."

Eli's head snapped up. "Excuse me?"

"Nothing," Brooks said, but his jaw was tight.

"No, say it," Eli pressed. "You think this is our fault? That we didn't warn you properly?"

Brooks turned from the window. "Did you? Because from where I'm sitting, my partner is dead out there, and maybe if you'd been more forceful about what we were walking into…"

"We told you," Eli interrupted, voice rising. "We told you the road disappears. That people die here. That the entity takes you. What more did you want? A fucking PowerPoint presentation?"

"You could have stopped us from coming!"

"How?" Eli stood, hands clenched. "You're professionals. You came here to rescue us. Were we supposed to physically restrain you?"

"Enough," Chen said, but her voice lacked authority. "This isn't helping."

"Isn't it?" Brooks's voice was bitter. "Because I need someone to blame besides myself, and right now…"

"Blame the entity," Aria cut in sharply. "Blame this place. Blame whatever the hell is out there wearing your friend's corpse. But don't blame us for surviving."

Silence fell, heavy and uncomfortable. Brooks turned back to the window, shoulders rigid. Eli sat down hard, breathing through his anger.

"Turning on each other is exactly what it wants," Chen said quietly. "We need to stay united."

But no one responded. Because unity felt like a luxury they couldn't afford anymore.

Around noon, Lisa made a suggestion that had been growing in her mind for days.

"What if we burned it down?"

Everyone looked at her.

"The cabin," she clarified. "If this place is the focal point, if the entity is somehow tied to this structure, maybe destroying it weakens the entity. Maybe that's how we fight back."

"And then what?" Chen asked. "We sleep in the forest where it's even stronger?"

"Maybe it breaks the connection. Maybe burning this place is what releases us."

"Or maybe we die of exposure," Rhett said. "It's November. Temperatures drop to freezing at night. Without shelter, we'd last maybe two days."

"We're not lasting much longer than that anyway," Lisa said. "At least this way we're doing something. Taking action instead of just sitting here waiting to be picked off."

"It's too risky," Chen decided. "We keep the cabin. It's the only advantage we have."

Lisa's expression hardened but she didn't argue further. Just walked away, frustration radiating from her.

Marcus was in the corner with his medical kit, checking Sienna's vitals for the fifth time that hour. His hands trembled as he worked, making it difficult to get accurate readings.

"Heart rate is... I can't tell. The monitor keeps giving different numbers," he muttered. "Blood pressure is either dropping or the equipment is failing. I don't know. I don't know anymore."

He sat back, and pressed his palms to his eyes. "If I can just figure out how the infection spreads, how it progresses through the system, maybe I can slow it down. Maybe I can find something that stops it."

But his voice cracked on the last word. He was losing hope, losing his grip on the clinical detachment that had kept him functional.

Rhett watched Marcus spiral and said nothing. Because what was there to say? That Marcus was right to give up? That Sienna was dying and there was nothing anyone could do?

Around one PM, Aria made a discovery in one of the journals she'd read three times before.

"Listen to this," she said, reading aloud. "'The heart beneath the roots holds the answer. The entity has a center point, something physical that anchors it to this place. Destroy the heart, destroy the chain that binds it here.'"

"The heart," Mara repeated, feeling something cold settle in her chest. She'd heard that before. In the vision. Sarah had told her to find the heart, destroy the heart.

"Does it say where?" Eli asked.

Aria scanned the page. "Southwest of the structure, beneath the earth where the roots converge. But it doesn't give distances or landmarks. Just... somewhere southwest."

"That's not helpful," Juno said. "Southwest could be anywhere from ten feet to ten miles."

"It's something though," Aria insisted. "A target. If we could find it, destroy it…"

"How?" Chen asked. "How do you destroy something underground? We'd need equipment, excavation tools. We don't have any of that."

"We have shovels in the shed," Lisa pointed out.

"To dig how deep? Five feet? Ten? Twenty? We don't know." Chen shook her head. "It's not practical."

"Nothing about our situation is practical," Aria snapped. "But at least this gives us something. Some direction instead of just sitting here waiting to die."

The argument died there, everyone too exhausted to continue.

Around two PM, Juno broke down.

She'd been sitting quietly in the armchair, staring at her camera, and suddenly she was crying. Not sobbing, just tears streaming silently down her face, her shoulders shaking.

"I don't want to die here," she said, voice small and broken. "I don't want to become one of those things in the forest. I'm only twenty-two. I haven't done anything yet. I haven't mattered."

Mara moved to sit beside her, and put an arm around her shoulders. "You matter to us. You've always mattered."

"Not enough," Juno said through her tears. "I wanted to be someone. I wanted people to know my name. I wanted to create something that lasted. But I'm going to die in these woods and no one will ever know I existed. I'll just be another missing person. Another unsolved case."

"We'll remember you," Mara said quietly. "For whatever that's worth."

Juno leaned against her, crying harder. Mara held her, feeling useless but present. Sometimes that was all you could offer—presence in the face of inevitable death.

Around three, an argument erupted over nothing.

Brooks was at the window on watch. Eli came over to relieve him ten minutes early. Brooks said he'd finish his shift. Eli said he was there now, might as well take over. Brooks said he didn't need to be relieved early like he was incompetent.

It escalated fast, voices rising, old resentments surfacing. Brooks shoved Eli. "I don't need your pity."

Eli shoved back. "It's not pity, it's protocol. We switch on schedule."

"Fuck your protocol!"

Chen was between them immediately. "ENOUGH! Both of you, back off!"

They separated, breathing hard, glaring at each other. The tension in the room was thick enough to choke on.

"We don't have the luxury of fighting each other," Chen said, voice hard. "You want to be angry? Be angry at the entity. Be angry at this place. But don't turn on each other."

Brooks walked away without responding. Eli stayed at the window, jaw clenched. The others watched in uncomfortable silence.

By four PM, the group had scattered throughout the cabin. No one wanted to be in the same room as anyone else. Brooks sat in the kitchen alone. Lisa was in the basement, going through old boxes for anything useful. Aria was upstairs with the journals. Juno had retreated to a bedroom. Rhett stayed with Sienna in the living room. Eli and Mara stood at opposite windows.

The cohesion they'd built over days of survival was crumbling. Fear and grief were pulling them apart, isolating them even though they were all in the same structure.

Chen sat by herself in the dining room, staring at her hands. They were shaking. Had been shaking all day, and she couldn't make them stop.

"We're not going to make it," she said quietly to no one.

The words hung in the empty room.

No one answered.

Because deep down, they were all thinking the same thing.