The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner Book 2) (17)
CHAPTER
17
The
other Gladers moved out of their way, seemingly more than happy to let the
three of them be the ones to see what was outside. Thomas squinted and then
shielded his eyes as they got closer. It was getting hard to believe they could
actually step through the door into that horrible brightness and survive.
Minho
stopped on the last step, just short of the direct line of the light. Then he
slowly held his hand out until it entered the square of brilliance. Despite the
boy’s olive complexion, it looked to Thomas as if Minho’s skin shone like white
fire.
After
only a few seconds Minho pulled his hand back and shook it at his side like
he’d hit his thumb with a hammer. “That’s definitely hot. Definitely hot.” He
turned to face Thomas and Newt. “If we’re gonna do this, we better have
something wrapped around us or we’ll have second-degree sunburns in five minutes.”
“Let’s
empty out our packs,” Newt said, already taking his off his shoulder. “Wear
these sheets like buggin’ robes as we check things out. If it works well
enough, we can stuff the food and water into half our sheets and use the other
half for protection.”
Thomas
had already freed his sheet to help Winston. “We’ll look like ghosts—scare away
any bad guys out there.”
Minho
didn’t take the same care as Newt; he just upended his pack and let everything
drop. The Gladers closest to them scrambled on instinct to stop the stuff from
tumbling down the stairs. “Funny boy, that Thomas. Let’s just hope we don’t
have some nice Cranks to greet us,” he said as he started untying the knots
he’d made in the bedsheet. “I don’t see how anyone could just be hanging out in
that heat. Hopefully there’ll be trees or some kind of shelter.”
“I
don’t know,” Newt said. “Then they might be hiding, bloody waitin’ to get us or
something.”
Thomas
was just itching to check things out. Quit making guesses and see for himself
what they were up against. “We won’t know till we investigate. Let’s go.” He
whipped out his sheet, then pulled it over himself and wrapped it tightly
around his face like an old woman in a shawl. “How do I look?”
“Like
the ugliest shanky girl I’ve ever seen,” Minho responded. “You better thank the
gods above you were born a dude.”
“Thanks.”
Minho
and Newt did as Thomas had done, though both of them took more care to grip the
sheet with their hands under it so they were completely covered. They also held
it out to make sure their faces were shaded. Thomas followed suit.
“You
shanks ready?” Minho asked, looking at Newt, then Thomas.
“Kind
of excited, actually,” Newt responded.
Thomas
didn’t know if that was quite the right word, but he felt the same urge to act.
“Me too. Let’s go.”
The
remaining steps above them went all the way to the top, like an exit from an
old cellar, the last few glowing with the brilliance of the sun. Minho
hesitated, but then ran up them, not stopping until he’d disappeared, seemingly
absorbed into the light.
“Go!”
Newt yelled, smacking Thomas on the back.
Thomas
felt a rush of adrenaline. Blowing out a deep breath, he took off after Minho;
he heard Newt right on his heels.
As
soon as Thomas emerged into the light, he realized that they might as well have
been draped in seethrough plastic. The sheet did nothing to block the blinding
light and searing heat beating down from above. He opened his mouth to speak
and a raw plume of dry warmth shot down his throat, seeming to obliterate any
air or moisture in its path. He tried desperately to pull in oxygen, but
instead it felt like someone had lit a fire in his chest.
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.
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