Thomas looked over at Chuck, who seemed as pale-faced as Newt.
“Newt won’t say it,” the boy said, “so I will. If they’re not back, it means they’re dead. Minho’s too smart to get lost. Impossible. They’re dead.”
Newt said nothing, and Chuck turned and walked back toward the Homestead, his head hanging low. Dead? Thomas thought. The situation had become so grave he didn’t know how to react, felt a pit of emptiness in his heart.
“The shank’s right,” Newt said solemnly. “That’s why we can’t go out. We can’t afford to make things bloody worse than they already are.”
He put his hand on Thomas’s shoulder, then let it slump to his side. Tears moistened Newt’s eyes, and Thomas was sure that even within the dark chamber of memories that were locked away, out of his reach, he’d never seen someone look so sad. The growing darkness of twilight was a perfect fit for how grim things felt to Thomas.
“The Doors close in two minutes,” Newt said, a statement so succinct and final it seemed to hang in the air like a burial shroud caught in a puff of wind. Then he walked away, hunched over, quiet.
Thomas shook his head and looked back into the Maze. He barely knew Alby and Minho. But his chest ached at the thought of them out there, killed by the horrendous creature he’d seen through the window his first morning in the Glade.
A loud boom sounded from all directions, startling Thomas out of his thoughts. Then came the crunching, grinding sound of stone against stone. The Doors were closing for the night.
The right wall rumbled across the ground, spitting dirt and rocks as it moved. The vertical row of connecting rods, so many they seemed to reach the sky far above, slid toward their corresponding holes on the left wall, ready to seal shut until the morning. Once again, Thomas looked in awe at the massive moving wall—it defied any sense of physics. It seemed impossible.
Then a flicker of movement to the left caught his eyes.
Something stirred inside the Maze, down the long corridor in front of him.
At first, a shot of panic raced through him; he stepped back, worried it might be a Griever. But then two forms took shape, stumbling along the alley toward the Door. His eyes finally focused through the initial blindness of fear, and he realized it was Minho, with one of Alby’s arms draped across his shoulders, practically dragging the boy along behind him. Minho looked up, saw Thomas, who knew his eyes must be bulging out of his head.
“They got him!” Minho shouted, his voice strangled and weak with exhaustion. Every step he took seemed like it could be his last.
Thomas was so stunned by the turn of events, it took a moment for him to act. “Newt!” he finally screamed, forcing his gaze away from Minho and Alby to face the other direction. “They’re coming! I can see ’em!” He knew he should run into the Maze and help, but the rule about not leaving the Glade was seared into his mind.
Newt had already made it back to the Homestead, but at Thomas’s cry he immediately spun around and broke into a stuttering run toward the Door.
Thomas turned to look back into the Maze and dread washed through him. Alby had slipped out of Minho’s clutches and fallen to the ground. Thomas watched as Minho tried desperately to get him back on his feet, then, finally giving up, started to drag the boy across the stone floor by the arms.
But they were still a hundred feet away.
The right wall was closing fast, seeming to quicken its pace the more Thomas willed it to slow down. There were only seconds left until it shut completely. They had no chance of making it in time. No chance at all.
Thomas turned to look at Newt: limping along as well as he could, he’d only made it halfway to Thomas.
He looked back into the Maze, at the closing wall. Only a few feet more and it’d be over.
Minho stumbled up ahead, fell to the ground. They weren’t going to make it. Time was up. That was it.
Thomas heard Newt scream something from behind him.
“Don’t do it, Tommy! Don’t you bloody do it!”
The rods on the right wall seemed to reach like stretched-out arms for their home, grasping for those little holes that would serve as their resting place for the night. The crunching, grinding sound of the Doors filled the air, deafening.
Five feet. Four feet. Three. Two.
Thomas knew he had no choice. He moved. Forward. He squeezed past the connecting rods at the last second and stepped into the Maze.
The walls slammed shut behind him, the echo of its boom bouncing off the ivy-covered stone like mad laughter.
CHAPTER 17
For several seconds, Thomas felt like the world had frozen in place. A thick silence followed the thunderous rumble of the Door closing, and a veil of darkness seemed to cover the sky, as if even the sun had been frightened away by what lurked in the Maze. Twilight had fallen, and the mammoth walls looked like enormous tombstones in a weed-infested cemetery for giants. Thomas leaned back against the rough rock, overcome by disbelief at what he had just done.
Filled with terror at what the consequences might be.
Then a sharp cry from Alby up ahead snapped Thomas to attention; Minho was moaning. Thomas pushed himself away from the wall and ran to the two Gladers.
Minho had pulled himself up and was standing once again, but he looked terrible, even in the pale light still available—sweaty, dirty, scratched-up. Alby, on the ground, looked worse, his clothes ripped, his arms covered with cuts and bruises. Thomas shuddered. Had Alby been attacked by a Griever?
“Greenie,” Minho said, “if you think that was brave comin’ out here, listen up. You’re the shuckiest shuck-faced shuck there ever was. You’re as good as dead, just like us.”