The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner Book 2) (23)
CHAPTER
23
Thomas
woke up to wind beating at his face and hair and clothes. It felt like
invisible hands were trying to rip them off. It was still dark. And cold, too,
his whole body shivering from it. Getting up on his elbows, he looked around,
hardly able to see the huddled shapes sleeping near him, their sheets pulled
tightly against their bodies.
Their
sheets.
He
let out a frustrated yelp, then jumped to his feet—at some point in the night
his own sheet had slipped loose and flown off. With the tearing wind, it could
be ten miles away by now.
“Shuck
it,” he whispered; the howl of the wind stole the words before he could even
hear them. The dream came back to him—or was it a memory? It had to be. That
brief glimpse into a time when he and Teresa had been younger, learning how to
do their telepathy trick. He felt his heart sink a little, missing her, feeling
guilt over yet more proof that he’d been part of WICKED before going to the
Maze. He shook it off, not wanting to think about it. He could block it out if
he tried hard enough.
He
looked up at black sky, then sucked in a hurried breath as the memory of the
sun vanishing from the Glade came rushing back. That had been the beginning of
the end. The beginning of the terror.
But
common sense soon calmed his heart. The winds. The cool air. A storm. It had to
be a storm.
Clouds.
Embarrassed,
he sat back down, then lay on his side and curled into a ball, his arms wrapped
around himself. The cold wasn’t unbearable, just a vast change from the
horrible heat of the last couple of days. He probed his mind and wondered about
the memories he’d had lately. Could they be lingering results of the Changing?
Was his memory coming back?
The
thought gave him mixed feelings. He wanted his memory block finally cracked for
good—wanted to know who he was, where he came from. But that desire was
tempered by fear of what he might find out about himself. About his role in the
very things that had brought him to this point, that had done this to his friends.
He
needed sleep desperately. The wind a constant roar in his ears, he finally
slipped away, this time to nothing.
The
light woke him to a dull, gray dawn that finally revealed the thick layer of
clouds covering the sky. It also made the endless expanse of desert around them
look even more dreary. The city was so close now, only a few hours away. The
buildings really were tall; one of them even stretched up and
disappeared in a low-hanging fog. And the glass in all those broken windows was
like jagged teeth in mouths open to catch food that might be flying about in
the stormy wind.
The
gusty air still tore at him, and a thick layer of dirt seemed forever baked
onto his face. He rubbed his head and his hair felt stiff with wind-dried
grime.
Most
of the other Gladers were up and about, taking in the unexpected shift in the
weather, deep in conversations he couldn’t hear. There was only the roar in his
ears.
Minho
noticed him awake and came over; he leaned into the wind as he walked, his
clothes flapping around him. “’Bout time you woke up!” He was fully shouting.
Thomas
rubbed the crust out of his eyes and got to his feet. “Where’d this all come
from!” he yelled back. “I thought we were in the middle of a desert!”
Minho
looked up at the roiling gray mass of clouds, then back at Thomas. He leaned
closer to speak directly in his ear. “Well, guess it has to rain in the desert sometime.
Hurry and eat—we gotta get going. Maybe we can get there and find a place to
hide before we’re soaked by the storm.”
“What
if we get there and a bunch of Cranks try to kill us?”
“Then
we’ll fight ’em!” Minho frowned as if disappointed that Thomas had asked such a
stupid question. “What else you wanna do? We’re almost out of food and water.”
Thomas
knew Minho was right. Plus, if they could fight dozens of Grievers, a bunch of
half-mad, starved sicklings shouldn’t be too much of a problem. “All right,
then. Let’s go. I’ll eat one of those granola things while we walk.”
A
few minutes later, they were once again heading for the city, the gray sky
above them ready to burst and bleed water at any moment.
They
were only a couple of miles away from the closest buildings when they came
across an old man lying in the sand on his back, wrapped in several blankets.
Jack had been the one to spot him first, and soon Thomas and the others were
packed in a circle around the guy, staring down at him.
Thomas’s
stomach turned as he studied the man more closely, but he couldn’t look away.
The stranger had to be a hundred years old, though it was hard to tell—the wear
and tear of the sun might’ve made him just look that way. Wrinkled, leathery
face. Scabs and sores where his hair should’ve been. Dark, dark skin.
He
was alive, breathing deeply, but he gazed at the sky with an emptiness in his
eyes. As if he was waiting for some god to come down and take him away, end his
miserable life. He showed no sign he’d even noticed the Gladers approach.
“Hey!
Old man!” Minho shouted, always the tactful one. “What’re you doing out here?”
Thomas
had a hard enough time hearing the words over the ripping wind; he couldn’t
imagine that the ancient guy could make anything out. But was he blind as well?
Maybe.
Thomas
nudged Minho out of the way and knelt down right beside the man’s face. The
melancholy there was heartbreaking. He held his hand out and waved it right
above the old guy’s eyes.
Nothing.
No blink, no movement. It was only after Thomas pulled his hand back that the
man’s eyelids slowly drooped closed, then open again. Just once.
“Sir?”
Thomas asked. “Mister?” The words sounded strange to him, conjured up from the
murky memories of his past. He certainly hadn’t used them since being sent to
the Glade and the Maze. “Can you hear me? Can you talk?”
The
man did that slow blink again, but didn’t say anything.
Newt
knelt next to Thomas and spoke loudly over the wind. “This guy’s a bloody gold
mine if we can get him to tell us stuff about the city. Looks harmless,
probably knows what to expect when we go in there.”
Thomas
sighed. “Yeah, but he doesn’t even seem to be able to hear us, much less have a
long talk.”
“Keep
trying,” Minho said from behind them. “You’re officially our foreign
ambassador, Thomas. Get the dude to open up and tell us about the good ol’
days.”
For
some odd reason Thomas wanted to say something funny back, but he couldn’t
think of anything. If he’d been funny in his old life, every scrap of humor had
certainly vanished in the memory swipe.
“Okay,”
he said.
He
scooted as close to the man’s head as he could, then positioned himself so
their eyes were square, just a couple of feet apart. “Sir? We really need your
help!” He felt bad for shouting, worried the old man might take it the wrong
way, but he had no choice. The wind was gusting stronger and stronger. “We need
you to tell us if it’s safe to go inside the city! We can carry you there if
you need help yourself. Sir? Sir!”
The
man’s dark eyes had been looking past him, up at the sky, but now they shifted,
slowly, until they focused on his. Awareness filled them like dark liquid
poured slowly into a glass. His lips parted, but nothing came out except a
small cough.
Thomas’s
hopes lifted. “My name is Thomas. These are my friends. We’ve been walking
through the desert for a couple of days, and we need more water and food. What
do you …”
He
trailed off when the man’s eyes flicked back and forth, a sudden hint of panic
there.
“It’s
okay, we won’t hurt you,” Thomas quickly said. “We’re … we’re the good guys.
But we’d really appreciate it if—”
The
man’s left hand shot out from beneath the blankets wrapped around him and
clasped Thomas’s wrist, gripping it with a strength far greater than seemed
possible. Thomas cried out in surprise and instinctively tried to pull his arm
free, but couldn’t. He was shocked by the man’s strength. He could barely budge
against the man’s iron manacle of a fist.
“Hey!”
he shouted. “Let go of me!”
The
man shook his head, those dark eyes full more of fear than any kind of
belligerence. His lips parted again, and a rough, indecipherable whisper rose
from his mouth. He didn’t loosen his grip.
Thomas
gave up the struggle to free his arm; instead, he relaxed and leaned forward to
put his ear close to the stranger’s mouth. “What’d you say!” he shouted.
The
man spoke again, a dry rasp that was unsettling, spooky. Thomas caught the
words storm and terror and bad people. None of them
sounded very inspiring.
“One
more time!” Thomas yelled, his head still cocked so his ear rested only inches
above the man’s face.
This
time Thomas understood most of it, missing only a few words. “Storm coming … full
of terror … brings out … stay away … bad people.”
The
man shot up into a sitting position, his eyes full and white around his irises.
“Storm! Storm! Storm!” He didn’t stop, repeating the word over and over; a
mucus-thick strand of saliva finally crested over his bottom lip and swung back
and forth like a hypnotist’s pendulum.
He
released Thomas’s arm, and Thomas scooted back on his butt to get away. Even as
he did so, the wind intensified, seemed to go from strong gusts to outright
hurricane-strength gales of terror, just like the man had said. The world was
lost in the sound of roaring, screaming air. Thomas felt as if his hair and clothes
might rip off at any second. Almost all of the Gladers’ sheets went flying,
flapping over the ground and into the air like an army of ghosts. Food
skittered in all directions.
Thomas
got to his feet, an almost impossible task with the wind trying to knock him
over. He stumbled forward several feet until he leaned back into it; invisible
hands held him up.
Minho
stood nearby, frantically waving his arms as he tried to get everyone’s
attention. Most saw and gathered around him, including Thomas, who fought off
the panic creeping along his insides. It was only a storm. Far better than
Grievers or Cranks with knives. Or ropes.
The
old man had lost his blankets to the wind, and he huddled now in the fetal
position, his skinny legs squeezed against his chest, eyes closed. Thomas had
the fleeting thought that they should carry him someplace safe, save him for at
least attempting to warn them about the storm. But something told him the man
would fight tooth and nail if they tried to touch him or pick him up.
The
Gladers were now packed together. Minho pointed at the city. The closest
building was within a half hour if they ran at a good pace. The way the wind
tore at them, the way the clouds above thickened and churned and bruised to a
deep purple, almost black, the way dust and debris flew through the air, reaching
that building seemed the only sane choice.
Minho
started running. The others fell in, and Thomas waited to bring up the rear,
knowing that was what Minho wanted him to do. He finally broke into a brisk
jog, glad they weren’t going directly into the wind. Only then did a few of the
words the old man had said pop into his mind. They made him break into a sweat
that quickly evaporated, leaving his skin dry and salty.
Stay
away. Bad people.
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