Teresa held her hand out to Brenda, who shook it. "I'm Teresa."
"Nice to meet you," Brenda replied. "I'm a Crank. I'm slowly going crazy. I keep wanting to chew off my own fingers and randomly kill people. Thomas here promised to save me." Though she was obviously joking, she didn't even crack a smile.
Thomas had to hide a wince. "Funny, Brenda."
"Glad to see you still have a sense of humor about it," Teresa said. But her face could've turned water to ice.
Thomas looked down at his watch. Fifty-five minutes left. "I, um, need to talk to Newt." He turned and quickly walked away before either girl could say anything. He wanted to be as far away from both of them as possible.
Newt was sitting on the ground with Frypan and Minho, all three looking as if they were waiting for the end of the world.
The tearing wind had gained a moisture to it, and the billowing, churning clouds above them had lowered considerably, like a dark fog dropping to swallow the earth. Glimpses of light flashed here and there in the sky, burning patches of purple and orange in the grayness. Thomas hadn't seen an actual lightning bolt yet, but he knew they were coming. The first big storm had begun just like this.
"Hey, Tommy," Newt said when Thomas joined them. He sat down next to his friend and wrapped his arms around his knees. Two simple words with nothing behind them. It was as if Thomas had just gone for a leisurely walk instead of being kidnapped and almost killed.
"Glad to see you guys made it here," Thomas said.
Frypan snorted his usual animal-like bark of a laugh. "Same back at ya. Looks like you had more fun, though. Hangin' with your love goddess. Guess you two kissed and made up?"
"Not exactly," Thomas said. "It wasn't fun."
"Well, what happened?" Minho asked. "How can you trust her after all that?"
Thomas hesitated at first, but he knew he had to tell them everything. And there was no better time than the present. He sucked in a deep breath and started talking. He told them about WICKED's plan for him, the camp, his talk with Group B, the gas chamber. Still none of it made sense, but he felt a little better telling his friends.
"And you forgave that witch?" Minho asked when Thomas finally finished. "I won't. Whatever those shuck WICKED people wanna do, fine by me. Whatever you wanna do, fine by me. But I don't trust her, I don't trust Aris, and I don't like either one of them."
Newt seemed to consider it more deeply. "They went through all that―all that planning and acting―just to make you feel betrayed? Doesn't make any bloody sense."
"Tell me about it," Thomas muttered. "And no, I haven't forgiven her. But for now I think we're in the same boat." He looked around―most people were sitting down, staring off into the distance. Not much conversation, and not a whole lot of mingling between the two groups. "What about you guys? How'd you make it here?"
"Found a gap through the mountains," Minho answered. "Had to fight through some Cranks camping in a cave, but other than that, no problems. Food and water's almost out, though. And my feet hurt. And I'm pretty sure another big bolt of shuck lightning's about to come down and make me look like a piece of Frypan's bacon."
"Yeah," Thomas said. He glanced back at the mountains, guessed that all in all they'd probably come about four miles from the base. "Maybe we should bag this whole safe haven thing and try to find shelter." But even as he said it, he knew it wasn't an option. At least not until the time ran out.
"No way," Newt replied. "We didn't come this far to go back now. Let's just hope the buggin' storm holds off a little longer." He looked up at the almost black clouds with a grimace.
The other three Gladers had grown silent. The wind had continued to pick up, and its rushing roars and whips now made it hard to hear each other anyway. Thomas looked at his watch.
Thirty-five minutes. No way this storm would hold for―
"What's that!" Minho shouted, jumping to his feet; he pointed at a spot over Thomas's shoulder.
Thomas turned to look as he stood up, alarm igniting inside him. The terror on Minho's face had been unmistakable.
About thirty feet from the group, a large section of the desert ground was ... opening. A perfect square―maybe fifteen feet wide―pivoted on a diagonal axis as the dirt-packed side slowly spun away from them and what had lain underneath rose up to replace it. The sound of groaning, twisting steel pierced the air, louder than the roaring wind. Soon the rotating square had fully flipped, and where once had been desert ground now lay a section of black material, with an odd object sitting on top of it.
It was oblong and white with rounded edges. Thomas had seen something just like it before. Several of them, in fact. After they'd escaped the Maze and entered the huge chamber where the Grievers had come from, they'd seen several of these coffinlike containers. He hadn't had much time to think about it then, but seeing it now, he thought those must've been where the Grievers stayed―slept?―when not hunting humans in the Maze.
Before he had time to react, more sections of the desert floor―surrounding their group in a large circle―started to rotate open like dark, gaping jaws.
Dozens of them.
CHAPTER 58
The squeal of metal was deafening as the square sections slowly spun on their axles. Thomas had his hands to his ears, trying to keep the sound out. The others in the group were doing the same. All around them, scattered evenly and fully encircling the area in which they stood, patches of desert ground rotated until they disappeared, each one eventually replaced with a large black square when it finally settled with a loud clank, one of those bulbous white coffins resting on top. At least thirty in all.