Although his memories were few and scattered, Thomas didn’t think the world was supposed to be like this.
With his eyes screwed shut against the white brilliance, he bumped into Minho and almost fell down. Regaining his balance, he bent his knees and squatted, tenting the sheet entirely over his body as he continued to fight for breath. He finally caught it, sucking air in and puffing it out rapidly as he tried to compose himself. That first instant after exiting the stairway had really panicked him. The other two Gladers were also breathing heavily.
“You guys all right?” Minho finally asked.
Thomas grunted a yes, and Newt said, “Pretty sure we just arrived in bloody hell. Always thought you’d end up here, Minho, but not me.”
“Good that,” Minho replied. “My eyeballs hurt, but I think I’m finally starting to get kind of used to the light.”
Thomas opened his own eyes into a squint and looked down at the ground just a couple of feet below his face. Dirt and dust. A few gray-brown rocks. The sheet lay draped completely around him, but it glowed so white it was like some odd piece of futuristic light technology.
“Who you hidin’ from?” Minho asked. “Get up, ya shank—I don’t see anybody.”
Thomas was embarrassed that they thought he was cowering there—he must look like a small child whimpering under his blankets, trying not to be seen. He stood up and very slowly lifted the sheet until he could peek out at their surroundings.
It was a wasteland.
In front of him, a flat pan of dry and lifeless earth stretched as far as he could see. Not a single tree. Not a bush. No hills or valleys. Just an orange-yellow sea of dust and rocks; wavering currents of heated air boiled on the horizon like steam, floating upward, as if any life out there were melting toward the cloudless and pale blue sky.
Thomas turned in a circle, didn’t see much change until he faced the opposite direction. A line of jagged and barren mountains rose far in the distance. In front of those mountains, maybe halfway between there and where they now stood, a cluster of buildings sat squatting together like a pile of abandoned boxes. It had to be a town, but it was impossible to tell how big it was from this distance. Hot air shimmered in front of it, blurring everything close to the ground.
The white-hot sun above already lay far to Thomas’s left, and seemed to be sinking toward that horizon, which meant that way was west, which meant that the town ahead and the range of black and red rock behind it had to be due north. Where they were supposed to head. His sense of direction surprised him, as if a piece of his past had risen from the ashes.
“How far away do you think those buildings are?” Newt asked. After the echoing, hollow sounds their speaking had made in the long dark tunnel and stairway, his voice was like a dull whisper.
“Could that be a hundred miles?” Thomas asked no one in particular. “That’s definitely north. Is that where we have to go?”
Minho shook his head under his sheet-hood. “No way, dude. I mean, we’re supposed to go that way, but it’s not even close to a hundred miles. Thirty at most. And the mountains might be sixty or seventy.”
“Didn’t know you could measure distance so well with nothing but your bloody eyeballs,” Newt said.
“I’m a Runner, shuck-face. You get a feel for stuff like that in the Maze, even if its scale was a lot smaller.”
“The Rat Man wasn’t kidding about those sun flares,” Thomas said, trying not to let his heart sink too much. “Looks like a nuclear holocaust out here. I wonder if the whole world is like this.”
“Let’s hope not,” Minho responded. “I’d be happy to see one tree right about now. Maybe a creek.”
“I’d settle for a patch of grass,” Newt said through a sigh.
The more Thomas looked, the closer that town appeared. Thirty miles might even have been too much. He broke his gaze and turned toward the others. “Could this be any more different from what they put us through in the Maze? There, we were trapped inside walls, with everything we need to survive. Now we have nothing holding us in, but no way to survive unless we go where they told us to. Isn’t that called irony or something like that?”
“Something like that,” Minho agreed. “You’re a philosophizing wonder.” He nodded back toward the exit from the stairway. “Come on. Let’s get those shanks out here and start walking. No time to waste letting the sun suck all the water out of us.”
“Maybe we should wait until it goes down,” Newt suggested.
“And hang out with those shuck balls of metal? No way.”
Thomas agreed that they should get moving. “I think we’re okay. Looks like sunset’s only a few hours away. We can be tough for a while, take a break, then go as far as possible during the night. I can’t stand another minute down there.”
Minho nodded firmly.
“Sounds like a plan,” Newt said. “For now, let’s just make it to that dusty old town and hope it’s not full of our Crank buddies.”
Thomas’s chest hitched at that comment.
Minho walked back to the hole and leaned over it. “Hey, you bunch of sissy, no-good shanks! Grab all the food and get up here!”
Not one Glader complained about the plan.
Thomas watched as each one of them did the same things he’d done when he first exited the stairway. Struggling gasps for breaths, squinty eyes, looks of hopelessness. He bet that each one of them had hoped the Rat Man was lying. That the worst times had been back in the Maze. But he was pretty sure that after the crazy head-eating silver things and then seeing this wasteland, no one would ever have such hopeful thoughts again.
They had to make some adjustments as they readied for the journey—the food and water bags were stuffed more tightly into half of the original packs; then the free bedsheets were used to cover two people as they walked. All in all, it worked surprisingly well—even for Jack and poor Winston—and soon they were marching across the hard, rock-strewn ground. Thomas shared his sheet with Aris, though he didn’t know how it had ended up that way. Maybe he was just refusing to admit that he’d wanted to be with the boy, that he might be the only possible connection to figuring out what had happened to Teresa.
Thomas held one end of the sheet up with his left hand and had a pack draped around his right shoulder. Aris was to his right; they’d agreed to trade off the now-much-heavier pack every thirty minutes. Step by dusty step, they made their way toward the town, the heat seeming to suck a full day of their life away every hundred yards.
They didn’t talk for a long while, but Thomas finally broke the silence. “So you’ve never heard the name Teresa before?”
Aris looked sharply at him, and Thomas realized he’d probably had a less-than-subtle hint of accusation in his voice. But he didn’t back down. “Well? Have you?”
Aris returned his gaze forward, but there was something suspicious there. “No. Never. I don’t know who she is or where she went. But at least you didn’t see her die right in front of you.”
That was a punch to the gut, but for some reason it made Thomas like Aris more. “I know, sorry.” He thought for a second before he asked the next questions. “How close were you guys? What was her name, again?”
“Rachel.” Aris paused, and for a second Thomas thought the conversation might be over already, but then he continued. “We were way more than close. Things happened. We remembered stuff. Made new memories.”
Thomas knew Minho would’ve laughed his face off at that last comment, but to him it sounded like the saddest three words he’d ever heard. He felt he had to say something—offer something. “Yeah. I did see a really good friend die, though. Every time I think about Chuck I get ticked off all over again. If they’ve done the same thing to Teresa, they won’t be able to stop me. Nothing will. They’ll all die.”
Thomas stopped—forcing Aris to as well—shocked that those words had just come out of his own mouth. It was like something else had taken over him and said those things. But he did feel it. Very strongly. “What do
you think—”
But before he could finish the thought, Frypan started shouting. He was pointing at something.
It only took a second for Thomas to realize what had gotten the cook all excited.
Far ahead, from the direction of the town, two people were running toward them, their bodies like ghostly forms of darkness in the heat mirage, small plumes of dust rising from their feet.
CHAPTER 18
Thomas stared at the runners. He sensed that the other Gladers around him had stopped as well, as if there’d been an unspoken command to do so. Thomas shivered, something that seemed completely impossible in the sweltering heat. He didn’t know why he felt the tickle of cold fear along his back—the Gladers outnumbered the approaching strangers almost ten times over—but the feeling was undeniable.
“Everyone pack in tighter,” Minho said. “And get ready to fight these shanks the first sign of trouble.”
The blurry mirage of upward-melting heat obscured the two figures until they were only a hundred yards or so away. Thomas’s muscles tensed when they came into focus. He remembered all too well what he’d seen through the barred window just a few mornings ago. The Cranks. But these people scared him in a different way.
They stopped just a couple of dozen feet in front of the Gladers. One was a man, the other a woman, though Thomas could only tell this from the lady’s slightly curvy figure. Other than that, they had the same build—tall and scrawny. Their heads and faces were almost completely covered in wrappings of tattered beige cloth, small ragged slits cut for them to see and breathe through. Their shirts and pants were a hodgepodge of filthy clothing sewn together, tied with ratty strips of denim in some places. Nothing was exposed to the beating sun but their hands, and those were red and cracked and scabby.
The two of them stood there, panting as they caught their breath, a sound like sick dogs.
“Who are you?” Minho called out.
The strangers didn’t respond, didn’t move. Their chests heaved in and out. Thomas observed them from under his makeshift hood—he couldn’t imagine how anyone could run so far and not die of heat exhaustion.
“Who are you?” Minho repeated.
Instead of answering, the two strangers split apart and started walking in a broad circle around the bunched-up Gladers. Their eyes, hidden behind the slits in those odd mummy wrappings, stayed fixed on the boys as they made their way in a wide arc, as if sizing them up for a kill. Thomas felt the tension inside him rise, hated when he could no longer see both of them at once. He turned around and watched as they met back up behind the group and once again faced them, standing still.
“There are a whole lot more of us than there are of you,” Minho said, his voice betraying his frustration. To threaten them so soon seemed desperate. “Start talking. Tell us who you are.”
“We’re Cranks.”
The two words came from the woman, a short burst of guttural annoyance. For no discernible reason she pointed across the Gladers back toward the town from which they’d run.
“Cranks?” Minho said; he had pushed his way through the crowd to be closest to the strangers again. “Just like the ones that tried to break into our building a couple days ago?”
Thomas cringed—these people would have no idea what Minho was talking about. Somehow the Gladers had traveled a long way from wherever that place had been—through the Flat Trans.
“We’re Cranks.” This time from the man, his voice surprisingly lighter and less gruff than the woman’s. But there was no kindness in it. He pointed over the Gladers just like his companion had done. “Came to see if you’re Cranks. Came to see if you’ve got the Flare.”
Minho turned to look at Thomas and then a few others, his eyebrows raised. No one said anything. He turned back. “Some dude told us we had the Flare, yeah. What can you tell us about it?”
“Don’t matter,” the man responded; the strips of cloth wrapped around his face jiggled with every word. “You got it, you’ll know soon enough.”
“Well, what do you bloody want?” Newt asked, stepping up to stand next to Minho. “What’s it matter to you if we’re Cranks or not?”
The woman responded this time, acting as if she hadn’t heard the questions. “How’d you get in the Scorch? Where’d you come from? How’d you get here?”
Thomas was surprised at the … intelligence evident in her words. The Cranks they’d seen back at the dorm had seemed absolutely insane, like animals. These people were aware enough to realize that their group had appeared out of nowhere. Nothing lay in the opposite direction from the town.
Minho leaned over to consult with Newt, then turned and stepped closer to Thomas. “What do we tell these people?”
Thomas had no clue. “I don’t know. The truth? It can’t hurt.”
“The truth?” Minho said sarcastically. “What an idea, Thomas. You’re freaking brilliant, as usual.” He faced the Cranks again. “We were sent here by WICKED. Came out of a hole just a little while that way, from a tunnel. We’re supposed to go one hundred miles to the north, cross the Scorch. Any of that mean a thing to you?”
Once again, it was as if they hadn’t heard a word he’d said.
“Not all Cranks are gone,” the man said. “Not all of them are past the Gone.” He said that last word in a way that made it sound like the name of a place. “Different ones at different levels. Best you learn who to make friends with and who to avoid. Or kill. Better learn right quick if you’re coming our way.”
“What’s your way?” Minho asked. “You came from that town, right? Is that where all these Cranks live? Is there food and water there?”
Thomas felt the same urge as Minho—to ask a million questions. He was half tempted to suggest they capture these two Cranks and make them answer. But for the moment the pair didn’t seem intent on helping at all, and they split again to circle back around to the side of the Gladers closest to the town.
Once they met up in the spot where they’d first spoken, the distant town almost seeming to float between them, the woman said one last thing. “If you don’t have it yet, you’ll have it soon. Same with the other group. The ones that’re supposed to kill you.”
The two strangers then turned around and ran back toward the cluster of buildings on the horizon, leaving Thomas and the other Gladers in stunned silence. Soon, any evidence of the running Cranks was lost in a blur of heat and dust.
“Other group?” someone said. Maybe Frypan. Thomas was in too much of a trance staring at the disappearing Cranks and worrying about the Flare to notice.
“Wonder if they’re talking about my group.” This was definitely Aris. Thomas finally forced himself to snap out of his gaze.
“Group B?” he asked him. “You think they’ve already made it to the town?”
“Hello!” Minho snapped. “Who cares? You’d think the little part about them supposedly killing us would be the attention getter. Maybe this stuff about the Flare?”
Thomas thought of the tattoo on the back of his neck. Those simple words that scared him. “Maybe when she said ‘you’ she didn’t mean all of us.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, pointing down at his menacing mark. “Maybe she meant me specifically. Couldn’t tell where her eyes were looking.”
“How’s she gonna know who you are?” Minho retorted. “Plus, doesn’t matter. If someone tries to kill you, or me, or anyone else, they might as well try to get all of us. Right?”
“You’re so sweet,” Frypan said with a snort. “Go ahead and die with Thomas. I think I’ll sneak away and enjoy living with the guilt.” He cast his special look that meant he was only kidding, but Thomas wondered if a little truth might be hiding in there somewhere.
“Well, what do we do now?” Jack asked. He had Winston’s arm around one of his shoulders, but the former Keeper of the Blood House seemed to have recovered some of his strength. Luckily the sheet covered the hideous parts of his head.
“What do you think?” Newt asked, but then he nodded at Min
ho.
Minho rolled his eyes. “We keep going, that’s what. Look, we don’t have a choice. If we don’t go to that town, we’re gonna die out here of sunstroke or starvation. If we do go, we’ll have some shelter for a while, maybe even food. Cranks or no Cranks, that’s where we’re going.”
“And Group B?” Thomas asked; he glanced over at Aris. “Or whoever they were talking about. What if they really do wanna kill us? All we have to fight with are our hands.”
Minho flexed his right arm. “If these people are really the girls Aris was hanging out with, I’ll show ’em these guns of mine and they’ll go runnin’.”
Thomas kept pushing. “And if these girls have weapons? Or can fight? Or if it’s not them at all but a bunch of seven-foot-tall grunts who like to eat humans? Or a thousand Cranks?”
“Thomas … no. Everybody.” Minho let out an exasperated sigh. “Would everyone just shut their holes and slim it? No more questions. Unless you have an idea that doesn’t involve absolute certain death, then quit your pipin’ and let’s take the only chance we got. Get it?”
Thomas smiled, though he didn’t know where the impulse came from. Somehow in a few sentences Minho had cheered him up, or at least given him a little hope. They just had to go, to move, to do. That was it.
“That’s better,” Minho said with a satisfied nod. “Anybody else wanna pee their pants and cry for Mommy?”
A few snickers broke out, but no one said anything.
“Good. Newt, you lead up front this time, limp and all. Thomas, you in the back. Jack, get someone else to help with Winston to give you a break. Let’s go.”
And so they did. Aris held the pack this time, and Thomas felt as if he were almost floating along the ground, it felt so good. The only hard part was holding that sheet up, his arm growing weak and rubbery. But on and on they went, sometimes walking, sometimes jogging.
Luckily, the sun seemed to gain weight and drop more quickly the closer it got to the horizon. By Thomas’s wristwatch, the Cranks had only been gone an hour when the sky turned a purplish orange and the intense glare of the sun started to melt away into a more pleasant glow. Not long after that, it disappeared below the horizon altogether, pulling nighttime and stars across the sky like a curtain.
The Maze Runner Series Complete Collection Page 41