“I’m really sorry, sweetie.”
Mark couldn’t hold it in anymore. “I’ll tell you what happened. They probably thought she was sick from the dart and left without her.” The words sounded wrong, though. How could anyone actually do that? To a little kid?
“Is that what happened?” Trina asked her. “They left you because they thought you might be sick? Like the others?”
Deedee nodded and fresh tears streamed down her cheeks.
Trina stood up and turned to face Alec.
The soldier held a hand up. “I’ll stop you before you even start. I may look like I was chewed up and spit out by the meanest beast in the jungle, but I’m not heartless. We’ll take the girl with us.”
Trina nodded and genuinely smiled for the first time that day.
“It probably is true that she’s infected,” Lana pointed out. “It’s just taking longer to manifest itself.”
“Odds are we’re all sick,” Alec grumbled as he readjusted the straps of his backpack.
“We’ll be careful with her,” Trina said. “We just need to keep our hands clean and away from our nose and mouth. Wear a mask as much as possible. But I’m not letting this sweet thing out of my sight until…” She didn’t finish, and Mark was glad for that.
“It’s another mouth to feed,” Alec said, “but I guess she won’t eat much.” He smiled to show he was joking-something that didn’t happen very often. “Part of me wants to ransack this place to look for supplies, food, but whatever is taking everyone down is probably camped up nice and cozy on every dirty inch of the place. Let’s get out of here.”
Trina motioned to Deedee to come along, and surprisingly, she did so without any argument. Alec headed back the way they’d come, to the path he’d so carefully mapped out. As they walked, Mark tried not to think about the fact that they were going exactly where Deedee had pointed earlier.
They didn’t run into anyone-living or dead-for the next few hours, and Mark almost forgot about the people who had left Deedee behind. The girl stayed quiet through the journey, never complaining as they maintained a brisk pace, up and down the rocky terrain and then up and down all over again. Trina stayed by her side, wearing a cloth over her face.
Deedee eagerly devoured her dinner, probably the first decent meal she’d had in a while. Then they hiked for another hour or two before setting up camp. Alec announced that, according to his calculations, they only had one full day of traveling to go.
Mark watched Trina with Deedee. She took such good care of the little girl-making her a spot to sleep, helping her wash up in the stream, telling her a story as darkness settled on the wooded valley.
Mark watched, and hoped for a day when life could be good and safe again. When the horrors might end and boredom became their worst problem. When a girl like Deedee could run around and laugh like kids were supposed to.
He settled down next to Trina and the little girl, thinking about the past, and drifted off to sleep, only for the darker memories to come and stamp out his foolish hopes.
CHAPTER 19
It takes Mark only ten minutes or so to realize that Alec is the person he wants to be close to until they’re back safe and sound in their homes. Not only did he disarm three men and put them out of commission in less than thirty seconds, he is also a former soldier who wastes no time taking charge and telling them how it is.
“Sometimes you can believe the rumors and chitchat,” the older man says as they slosh through the water of the passageway outside the storage closet where they encountered the armed thugs. “Most times it’s some lame-brained numbskull trying to impress a lady or two. But once the majority of the rumors are saying the same thing, you better perk up and pay attention. You’re probably wondering what in the hell I’m trying to say here.”
Mark looks over at Trina-he can barely see her face in the dim glow from the flashlight that Alec is holding in front of them. She gives him a look that says, Who is this guy? She’s carrying the box of food she found earlier. It’s like her security blanket or something-she won’t let anyone else touch it. Not yet.
“Yeah, we’re wondering,” Mark finally replies.
Alec stops and whirls around, quick as a striking snake. At first Mark thinks his answer came out wrong, sarcastically, and the man might punch his lights out. But instead the tough old man just holds up a finger.
“We have one hour, tops, to get out of these rat tunnels. You hear me? One hour.” He turns back around and starts marching again.
“Wait, what?” Mark asks as they hurry to keep pace. “What do you mean? Why? Isn’t it a bad idea to go up there until… well, I don’t know.”
“Sun flares.”
He says the two words like he needs to say nothing else. Like the others should instantly know everything going on in his mind.
“Sun flares?” Trina repeats. “That’s what you think happened up there?”
“Pretty sure, my lovely lady. Pretty sure.”
Mark’s bad feelings about it all have escalated exponentially upon the news. If it’s not an isolated incident, if it’s truly something as global as sun flares, then the little hope he held out for his family is gone. “How do you know?”
He hears the quaver in his voice. Alec answers with no shaking in his whatsoever.
“Because there were too many people from too many places describing the same thing before I got away from the masses. And supposedly the news agencies put out warnings right before they struck. It’s sun flares, all right. Extreme heat and radiation. Double whammy. It was something the world thought it was trained and prepared for. The world was wrong, in my humble judgment.”
All three of them fall silent. Alec keeps moving, Mark and Trina keep following. They turn corners, enter different tunnels, steer clear of other people when they get close. All the while, Mark’s heart is sinking further and further into a dark place. He doesn’t know how to handle something like this. He refuses to believe his family is gone and swears to himself that he won’t rest until he finds them safe and sound. Finally Alec stops in the middle of a long passageway that looks much like all the others.
“I have a few other friends in here,” he says. “Left them to go look for food, learn some things. I’ve worked with Lana for years and years. We were contractors for the defense department-she’s a former soldier, like me. Army nurse. The others are strays we picked up. You two max us out-we can’t take one more or we’ll never make it.”
“Make it where?” Mark asks.
“To the world above,” Alec replies, the last thing Mark expected to hear. “Back into the city, as hellacious as it may be. As long as we stay inside for a while, we should be okay. But we have to get up there before the waters flood this place and kill us all.”
Mark woke up and rolled onto his side, his eyes fully open, his breathing heavy. And he hadn’t even dreamed about the bad part. He didn’t want to remember any of it. He didn’t want to relive the terror of that day.
Please, he thought. Please, no. Please. Not tonight. I can’t.
He didn’t even know who he was talking to. Was he talking to his own brain? Maybe he’d caught the disease from the Toad and was beginning to go crazy.
He flopped onto his back, stared up at the branches and the stars above. There wasn’t even the slightest hint of dawn creeping into the sky. It was dark, dark, dark. He wanted it to be morning, wanted to be done with the threat of dreams for at least a few hours. Maybe he could keep himself awake somehow. He sat up, looked around. But he couldn’t see much, only the outlines of trees and the shapes of his friends lying around him on the ground.
He considered waking up Trina. She’d understand that he needed company. He wouldn’t even have to tell her about his dream. But she seemed so peaceful at the moment, breathing softly. With a quiet groan to himself he gave up on the idea, knowing he’d feel too guilty about depriving her of valuable sleep. Not only did they have a lot of walking to do the next day, she had the added burden of looki
ng after little Deedee.
Mark flopped back down, shifted around until he got comfortable. He didn’t want to dream. The raging waters, the screams of people drowning. The frantic, unbearable fear of fleeing it all. Even awake he could see that room beneath New York City where they’d first met Lana and the others. Alec’s weathered face as he explained to them that after surviving such massive sun flares, their biggest and most immediate worry now was the surge of a tsunami. The flares must have been devastating, inflicting catastrophic damage worldwide and unleashing the heat of hell itself.
Which meant a quick melting of the polar ice caps. Which meant sea levels rising at an alarming and apocalyptic rate. Which meant that the island of Manhattan would be a dozen feet underwater within a few hours. He explained all this to them while they huddled in a room far underground, where the water would seek out and drown everything in its path.
Back in the present, these thoughts tormented Mark for at least another hour-and he knew if he dreamed it would only get worse. He was scared of being scared.
He drifted off despite his efforts. Sleep came over him like cold, crashing waves.
CHAPTER 20
The Lincoln Building, one of the tallest, newest, grandest buildings in New York. One of the few with direct access to the subtrans system.
That’s where Alec keeps telling them they need to go. He says he has a full subtrans map saved on his phone, but he’s visibly worried about them being able to make it in time. Mark was able to see, even in the dim light before they headed out, that Alec has major doubts-which is contrary to the overall persona of the hardened man he seems to be. Mark would’ve guessed the man could be caged with a dozen hungry lions and he’d still only have a smirk on his face as he decided which one to kill first.
The Lincoln Building, Mark tells himself. Get there; then you can go find your family.
They are all running down one of the countless seemingly endless tunnels below the city. Alec in the lead, then the woman he said he’s had the pleasure of working with for a dozen years: Lana. A boy about Mark’s age named Darnell is next, then a girl named Misty-another teenager, but older, maybe eighteen-then a dude, also older than Mark, but short and loaded with muscles. Misty refers to him as the Toad, and he actually seems to like the moniker. Mark and Trina are next, with a boy named Baxter bringing up the rear. Baxter is the youngest of them all, maybe thirteen, but Mark can tell he’s a tough little sucker. Insisted on being in the back, said he wanted to protect everyone from surprise attacks.
As they run, Mark hopes he has enough time left in life to become friends with the kid.
“I hope he knows what he’s doing,” Trina says quietly next to him. They are jogging along side by side and Mark finds himself having the ridiculous thought that it’d be nice if they were on a beach, the sun just setting on the water. He thanks the powers that be that Trina can’t read his mind.
“He does,” Mark insists. He also doesn’t want her to know how he’s almost trembling with fear of what might happen at any second, which is making it hard to run. Almost seventeen years of life, and he never knew what a coward he was.
“Tsunami.” Trina says the word like it’s the evilest thing to ever come out of her mouth. “We’re in the middle of the subtrans system in New York City and that’s supposed to be our biggest worry. A tsunami?”
“We’re underground,” Mark replies. “And our city is right by the ocean, in case you forgot. Water drains downward. Ya know, gravity and all that.”
He can sense her giving him a nasty look, and he knows he deserves it. His nerves must be finally getting to him to be such a smart aleck. He tries to save himself the only way he knows how-honesty.
“Sorry,” he mutters. The run is getting to him and he’s breathing heavily. “I’m just scared out of my mind. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay. I didn’t really mean it like a question. I’m just… I don’t know. Saying how crazy this is I guess. Sun flares and a tsunami. A few hours ago those words weren’t even on my radar. Not by a long shot.”
“It sucks” is the best Mark can come up with. He just doesn’t want to talk about it anymore-the more they do, the more his insides twist with distress and worry.
Alec slows down when they reach the end of the latest tunnel. He stops and turns to face them. Everyone is breathing heavily and Mark’s entire body is soaked with sweat.
“We have to go through one of the newer subtrans sections now,” Alec says. “There’s bound to be people out there, and who knows what kind of mood they might be in. Sometimes folks get downright nasty when they think the world’s about to end.”
Now that their little group is calming their breathing a bit, Mark can hear faint sounds coming from behind their leader. The hum of a crowd, people talking and bustling about. A few disturbing noises mixed in as well: distant screams, crying and wailing. The isolation of their dank little storage room doesn’t seem so bad now.
Lana picks up the line of conversation. “We just need to get through it. Walk fast, but don’t look like you know where you’re going. We can’t afford to carry anything-empty your arms and pockets or we might get attacked. We’ll just have to hope we can find things in the Lincoln Building.”
A few of them have been carrying packets of the food Trina found earlier. They dump them on the ground. The act seems to suck some of the life out of Trina.
“We’ll go through this door,” Alec says as he looks at his phone-the battery has to be close to dying. “And then jump onto the tracks. If we stay off the concourse maybe we’ll come across fewer people. Straight for about half a mile; then we can enter the doors of the stairwell for the Lincoln Building. That sucker goes all the way up to the ninetieth floor. It’s our only shot.”
Mark takes a quick look around and sees that the others are fidgety and nervous. The Toad is hopping up and down, which seems ridiculously appropriate.
“Let’s go,” Alec says. “Stay close together, tight. Defend each other to the death.”
Trina groans at that, and Mark really wishes the man hadn’t said it.
“Go, go, go!” Lana shouts, whether from frustration or to psych them up, Mark may never know.
Alec opens the door and walks through. The others follow as a blast of heat surges past and washes over them. Mark feels as if the oxygen is being burned out of his chest; he fights for each breath until he gets used to it.
He enters the larger tunnel on Trina’s heels. They’re on a narrow ledge a few feet above the actual tracks for the trains-Alec and Lana have already jumped down, are reaching up to help the others. One by one they take hands, leap off the edge, land with a thump and a jolt to the legs. Mark looks up. Light is spilling in from the stairs that eventually lead up to the devastated world above them. He studies the people milling about on the landing across from where he stands, every one of them with their gaze locked on the new arrivals.
What Mark sees up there makes his heart want to stop.
The place is packed. At least half of the crowd is wounded in some way. Cuts and slashes. Terrible burns. There are people lying on the ground screaming. Children of all ages, many of them hurt, too. That’s what breaks Mark inside the most. Two men are fighting brutally in one spot, pounding each other, scratching and clawing. No one even makes a move to break them up. There’s a lady slumped on the edge of the landing and her face is gone, replaced by melted skin and blood. Mark feels as if he’s been given a glimpse into hell.
“Walk,” Alec orders once everyone is down on the tracks.
They do, staying as close together as possible. Mark has Trina on his left, the boy named Baxter on his right. The kid looks terrified and Mark wants to say something to help him feel better but can’t find the words. They’d be empty anyway. Alec and Lana are right in front of Mark, their body language daring anyone to be stupid enough to confront them.
They’ve made it halfway across the main section of the concourse when two men and a lady jump down onto the t
racks and stand directly in their path, forcing them to stop. The strangers are dirty but look unhurt. Physically, anyway. Their eyes are haunted by things they’ve seen.
“And where do you think you’re going?” the woman asks.
“Yeah,” one of her friends adds. “You seem mighty important. You know about some place to go that we don’t?”
The other man steps up closer to Alec. “Not sure if you’ve noticed or not, but the sun decided to belch all over us. People are dead, sir. Lots of people. And I don’t like how you think you can just march through here and pretend everything’s okay.”
A few other people are jumping down from the landing, congregating behind the first three strangers. Blocking their path.
“Let’s see if they have any food!” someone shouts.
Alec rears back and punches the man standing in front of him. The guy’s head snaps back and blood sprays from his nose; he collapses to the ground. It’s so sudden and shocking that no one moves for a second. Then several people charge into Mark’s group, screaming and shouting.
Chaos ensues. Fists are flying, feet kicking, fingers grasping hair and yanking. Mark is punched in the face just as he sees Trina yanked away by a man. Rage explodes inside of Mark and he fights back at whoever hit him, swinging his arms wildly until he connects twice. Then he pushes the guy away to see a man on top of Trina-he’s struggling with her on the ground, working to get control of her arms as she desperately tries to fight him off.
Mark flies in, throwing his body at the man. They tumble off Trina and roll onto the ground. The man punches Mark and Mark punches back, barely feeling where he’s been hit. Then they’re in a tangle, squirming, arms flailing, kicking. Mark breaks free, crawls away, checks to see that Trina is okay. She’s gotten up, runs over and kicks at her attacker’s face but slips when she does it, lands on her back. The stranger goes after her, but Mark’s on him again, diving shoulder-first into his gut. The man grunts and curls into a ball as Mark climbs to his feet, grabs Trina by the hand. They both push out of the crowd, then look to see what’s going on with the others.
The Kill Order (maze runner prequel) Page 9