The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner Book 2) (19)
CHAPTER
19
Soon
after dark, Thomas heard a girl screaming.
At
first he didn’t know what he was hearing, or if maybe it was just his imagination.
With the thumps of dry footsteps, the rustling of the packs, the whispers of
conversation between heavy breaths, it was hard to tell. But what had started
as almost a buzz inside his head soon became unmistakable. Somewhere ahead of
them, maybe all the way in the town but more likely closer, a girl’s screams
tore through the night.
The
others had obviously noticed it, too, and soon the Gladers quit running. Once
everyone caught their breath, it became easier to hear the disturbing sound.
It
was almost like a cat. An injured, wailing cat. The kind of noise that made
your skin crawl and made you press your hands to your ears and pray it went
away. There was something unnatural about it, something that chilled Thomas
inside and out. The darkness only added to the creepiness. Whoever the source,
she still wasn’t very close, but her shrill screeches bounced along like living
echoes, trying to smash their unspeakable sounds against the dirt until they
ceased to exist in this world.
“You
know what that reminds me of?” Minho asked, his voice a whisper with an edge of
fear.
Thomas
knew. “Ben. Alby. Me, I guess? Screaming after the Griever sting?”
“You
got it.”
“No,
no, no,” Frypan moaned. “Don’t tell me we’re gonna have those suckers out here,
too. I can’t take
it!”
Newt
responded, just a couple of feet to the left of Thomas and Aris. “Doubt it.
Remember how moist and gooey their skin was? They’d turn into a big dust ball
if they rolled around in this stuff.”
“Well,”
Thomas said, “if WICKED can create Grievers, they can create plenty of other
freaks of nature that might be worse. Hate to say it, but that rat-lookin’ guy
said things were finally going to get tough.”
“Once
again, Thomas gives us a cheerful pep talk,” Frypan announced; he tried to
sound jovial, but it came out more like a spiteful rub.
“Just
saying it how it is.”
Frypan
huffed. “I know. And how it is sucks big-time.”
“What
now?” Thomas asked.
“I
think we should take a break,” Minho said. “Fill our little tummies and drink
up. Then we should
book
it for as long as we can stand it while the sun is still down. Maybe get a
couple hours’ sleep before dawn.”
“And
the psycho screaming lady out there?” Frypan asked.
“Sounds
like she’s plenty busy with her own troubles.”
For
some reason that statement terrified Thomas. Maybe the others, too, because no
one said a word as they slipped the packs off their shoulders, sat down and
began eating.
“Man,
I wish she’d shut up.” It was about the fifth time Aris had said that as they
ran along in the darkerthan- dark night. The poor girl, somewhere out there,
getting closer all the while, was still crying her fretful, high-pitched wails.
Their
meal had been quiet and somber, the talk drifting toward what the Rat Man had
said about the Variables and how their responses to them were all that
mattered. About creating a “blueprint,” about finding the “killzone” patterns.
No one had any answers, of course, only meaningless speculations. It was odd,
Thomas thought. They now knew they were being tested somehow, put through
WICKED’s trials. In some ways it felt like they should behave differently
because of this, and yet they just kept going, fighting, surviving until they
could get the promised cure. And that was what they’d keep doing; Thomas was
sure of it.
It
had taken a while for his legs and joints to loosen up once Minho got everyone
moving again. Above them, the moon was a sliver, barely providing any more
light than the stars. But you didn’t need to see much to run along flat and
barren land. Plus, unless it was his imagination, they were actually starting
to reach the lights from the town. He could see that they flickered now, which
meant they were probably fires. Which made sense—the odds of having electricity
in this wasteland hovered around zero.
He
wasn’t sure when it happened exactly, but suddenly the cluster of buildings
they were running toward seemed a lot closer. And there were a lot more of them
than he or anyone else had thought. Taller, too. Wider. Spread out and
organized in rows and in an orderly fashion. For all they knew, the place might’ve
once been a major city, devastated by whatever had happened to the area. Could
sun flares really inflict that much damage? Or had other things caused it
during the aftermath?
Thomas
was starting to think they’d actually reach the first buildings sometime the
next day.
Even
though they didn’t need the cover of their sheet at the moment, Aris still
jogged right next to him, and Thomas felt like talking. “Tell me more about
your whole Maze thing.”
Aris’s
breaths were even; he seemed to be in just as good shape as Thomas. “My whole
Maze thing? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ve
never really told us the details. What was it like for you? How long were you
there? How’d you get out?”
Aris
answered over the soft crunch, crunch, crunch of their footsteps on the
desert ground. “I’ve talked with some of your friends, and it sounds like a lot
of it was exactly the same. Just … girls instead of guys. Some of them had been
there for two years, the rest had shown up one at a time, once a month. Then
came Rachel, then me the next day, in a coma. I barely remember anything, just
those last few crazy days after I finally woke up.”
He
went on to explain what had happened, and so much of it matched what Thomas and
the Gladers had been through, it was just plain bizarre. Almost impossible to
believe. Aris came out of his coma, said something about the Ending, the walls
quit shutting at night, their Box stopped coming, they figured out the Maze had
a code, on and on and on until the escape. Which went down almost the same as
the Gladers’ terrifying experience, except less of the girl group died—if they
were tough like Teresa, this didn’t surprise Thomas in the least.
In
the end, once Aris and his group were in the final chamber, a girl named
Beth—who’d disappeared days earlier, just like Gally had—killed Rachel, right
before rescuers came in and whisked them away to the gym Aris had mentioned
before. Then the rescuers took him to the place where the Gladers had finally discovered
him—what had been Teresa’s room.
If
that
was what had happened. Who knew how things worked anymore, after seeing what
could happen at the Cliff and the Flat Trans that had taken them to the tunnel.
Not to mention the bricked-up walls and the name change on Aris’s door.
It
all gave Thomas a big fat headache.
When
he tried to think of Group B and imagine their roles—how he and Aris were
basically switched, and how Aris was actually Teresa’s counterpart—it twisted
his mind. The fact that Chuck had been killed in the end instead of him … that
was the only major difference that stood out in the parallels. Were the setups
meant to instigate certain conflicts or provoke reactions for WICKED’s studies?
“It’s
all kind of freaky, huh?” Aris asked after letting Thomas digest his story for
a while.
“I
don’t know what the word for it is. But it blows me away how the two groups
went through these trippy parallel experiments. Or tests, trials, whatever they
were. I mean, if they’re testing our responses, I guess it makes sense that we
were put through the same thing. Weird, though.”
Right
when Thomas stopped speaking the girl in the distance let out a shriek even
louder than her nowregular cries of pain and he felt a fresh rush of horror.
“I
think I know,” Aris said, so quietly Thomas wasn’t sure he’d heard him
correctly.
“Huh?”
“I
think I know. Why there were two groups. Are two groups.”
Thomas
looked over at him, could barely see the surprising look of calm on his face.
“You do? What then?”
Aris
still didn’t seem very winded. “Well, actually I have two ideas. One is I think
these people— WICKED, whoever they are—are trying to weed out the best of both groups
to use us somehow. Maybe even breed us or something like that.”
“What?”
Thomas was so surprised he almost forgot about the screaming. He couldn’t
believe anyone would be so sick. “Breed us? Come on.”
“After
going through the Maze and what we just saw happen in that tunnel, you think breeding
is farfetched? Give me a break.”
“Good
that.” Thomas had to admit that the kid had a point. “Okay, so what was your
other theory?” As he asked it Thomas could feel the weariness brought on by the
run settling in; his throat felt like someone had poured a glassful of sand
down his gullet.
“Kind
of the opposite,” Aris responded. “That instead of wanting survivors from both
groups, they only want one group to live through to the end. So they’re either
weeding out people from the guys and the girls, or an entire group
altogether. Either way, it’s the only explanation I can think of.”
Thomas
thought about what he’d said for quite some time before responding. “But what
about the stuff the Rat Man said? That they’re testing our responses, building
some kind of blueprint? Maybe it’s an experiment. Maybe they don’t plan for any
of us to survive. Maybe they’re studying our brains and our reactions and our
genes and everything else. When it’s all done, we’ll be dead and they’ll have
lots of reports to read.”
“Hmm,”
Aris grunted, considering. “Possibly. I keep trying to figure out why they had
one member of the opposite sex in each group.”
“Maybe
to see what kind of fights or problems it would cause. Study people’s
reactions—it’s kind of a unique situation.” Thomas almost wanted to laugh. “I
love how we’re talking about this—like we’re deciding when we need to stop for
a klunk.”
Aris
actually did laugh, a dry chuckle that made Thomas feel better—actually made
him like the new kid even more. “Man, don’t say that. I’ve had to go for at least
an hour.”
It
was Thomas’s turn to snicker, and right on cue, like he’d heard Aris calling
for it, Minho yelled out for everyone to stop.
“Potty
break,” he said with his hands on his hips as he caught his breath. “Bury your
klunk and don’t do it too close. We’ll rest for fifteen, then we’ll just walk
awhile. I know you shanks can’t keep up with Runners like me and Thomas.”
Thomas
tuned out—he didn’t need directions on how to use the bathroom—and turned to
get a look at where they’d stopped. He took a deep, full breath, and when he
relaxed his eyes caught on something. A dark shadow of a shape a few hundred
yards in front of them, but not directly in the path of their journey.
A
square of darkness against the faint glow of the town up ahead. It stood out so
distinctly he couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it until now.
“Hey!”
he yelled, pointing toward it. “Looks like a little building up there, just a
few minutes away, to the right some. You guys see it?”
“Yeah,
I see it,” Minho responded, walking up to stand next to him. “Wonder what it
is.”
Before
Thomas could respond, two things happened almost simultaneously.
First,
the haunted screams of the mystery girl stopped, instantly, cut short as if a
door had closed on her. Then, stepping out from behind the dark building up
ahead, the figure of a girl appeared, long hair flowing from her shadowed head
like black silk.
0 comments:
Post a Comment