فصل 61

CHAPTER 61

The next hour or so was a blur of sights and sounds for Thomas.

The driver drove at reckless speeds, through towns and cities, the heavy rain obscuring most of the view. Lights and buildings were warped and watery, like something out of a drug-induced hallucination. At one point people outside rushed the bus, their clothes ratty, hair matted to their heads, strange sores like those Thomas had seen on the woman covering their terrified faces. They pounded on the sides of the vehicle as if they wanted to get on, wanted to escape whatever horrible lives they were living.

The bus never slowed. Teresa remained silent next to Thomas.

He finally got up enough nerve to speak to the woman sitting across the aisle.

“What’s going on?” he asked, not sure how else to pose it.

The woman looked over at him. Wet, black hair hung in strings around her face. Dark eyes full of sorrow. “That’s a very long story.” The woman’s voice came out much kinder than Thomas had expected, giving him hope that she truly was a friend—that all of their rescuers were friends. Despite the fact that they’d run over a woman in cold blood.

“Please,” Teresa said. “Please tell us something.”

The woman looked back and forth between Thomas and Teresa, then let out a sigh. “It’ll take a while before you get your memories back, if ever—we’re not scientists, we have no idea what they did to you, or how they did it.” Thomas’s heart dropped at the thought of maybe having lost his memory forever, but he pressed on. “Who are they?” he asked.

“It started with the sun flares,” the woman said, her gaze growing distant.

“What—” Teresa began, but Thomas shushed her.

Just let her talk, he said to her mind. She looks like she will.

Okay.

The woman almost seemed in a trance as she spoke, never taking her eyes off an indistinct spot in the distance. “The sun flares couldn’t have been predicted. Sun flares are normal, but these were unprecedented, massive, spiking higher and higher—and once they were noticed, it was only minutes before their heat slammed into Earth. First our satellites were burned out, and thousands died instantly, millions within days, countless miles became wastelands. Then came the sickness.” She paused, took a breath. “As the ecosystem fell apart, it became impossible to control the sickness—even to keep it in South America. The jungles were gone, but the insects weren’t. People call it the Flare now. It’s a horrible, horrible thing. Only the richest can be treated, no one can be cured. Unless the rumors from the Andes are true.” Thomas almost broke his own advice—questions filled his mind. Horror grew in his heart. He sat and listened as the woman continued.

“As for you, all of you—you’re just a few of millions orphaned. They tested thousands, chose you for the big one. The ultimate test. Everything you lived through was calculated and thought through. Catalysts to study your reactions, your brain waves, your thoughts. All in an attempt to find those capable of helping us find a way to beat the Flare.” She paused again, pulled a string of hair behind her ear. “Most of the physical effects are caused by something else. First the delusions start, then animal instincts begin to overpower the human ones. Finally it consumes them, destroys their humanity. It’s all in the brain. The Flare lives in their brains. It is an awful thing. Better to die than catch it.” The woman broke her gaze into nothingness and focused on Thomas, then looked at Teresa, then Thomas again. “We won’t let them do this to children. We’ve sworn our lives to fighting WICKED. We can’t lose our humanity, no matter the end result.” She folded her hands in her lap, looked down at them. “You’ll learn more in time. We live far in the north. We’re separated from the Andes by thousands of miles. They call it the Scorch—it lies between here and there. It’s centered mainly around what they used to call the equator—it’s just heat and dust now, filled with savages consumed by the Flare beyond help. We’re trying to cross that land—to find the cure. But until then, we’ll fight WICKED and stop the experiments and tests.” She looked carefully at Thomas, then Teresa. “It’s our hope that you’ll join us.” She looked away then, gazing out her window.

Thomas looked at Teresa, raised his eyebrows in question. She simply shook her head and then laid it on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

I’m too tired to think about it, she said. Let’s just be safe for now.

Maybe we are, he replied. Maybe.

He heard the soft sounds of her sleep, but he knew that sleep would be impossible for him. He felt such a raging storm of conflicting emotions, he couldn’t identify any of them. Still—it was better than the dull void he’d experienced earlier. He could only sit and stare out the window into the rain and blackness, pondering words like Flare and sickness and experiment and Scorch and WICKED. He could only sit and hope that things might be better now than they’d been in the Maze.

But as he jiggled and swayed with the movements of the bus, felt Teresa’s head thump against his shoulder every once in a while when they hit big bumps, heard her stir and fall back to sleep, heard the murmurs of other conversations from other Gladers, his thoughts kept returning to one thing.

Chuck.

Two hours later, the bus stopped.

They had pulled into a muddy parking lot that surrounded a nondescript building with several rows of windows. The woman and other rescuers shuffled the nineteen boys and one girl through the front door and up a flight of stairs, then into a huge dormitory with a series of bunk beds lined up along one of the walls. On the opposite side were some dressers and tables. Curtain-covered windows checkered each wall of the room.

Thomas took it all in with a distant and muted wonder—he was far past being surprised or overcome by anything ever again.

The place was full of color. Bright yellow paint, red blankets, green curtains. After the drab grayness of the Glade, it was as if they’d been transported to a living rainbow. Seeing it all, seeing the beds and the dressers, all made up and fresh—the sense of normalcy was almost overwhelming. Too good to be true. Minho said it best on entering their new world: “I’ve been shucked and gone to heaven.” Thomas found it hard to feel joy, as if he’d betray Chuck by doing so. But there was something there. Something.

Their bus-driving leader left the Gladers in the hands of a small staff—nine or ten men and women dressed in pressed black pants and white shirts, their hair immaculate, their faces and hands clean. They were smiling.

The colors. The beds. The staff. Thomas felt an impossible happiness trying to break through inside him. An enormous pit lurked in the middle of it, though. A dark depression that might never leave—memories of Chuck and his brutal murder. His sacrifice. But despite that, despite everything, despite all the woman on the bus had told them about the world they’d reentered, Thomas felt safe for the very first time since coming out of the Box.

Beds were assigned, clothes and bathroom things were passed out, dinner was served. Pizza. Real, bona fide, greasy-fingers pizza. Thomas devoured each bite, hunger trumping everything else, the mood of contentment and relief around him palpable. Most of the Gladers had remained quiet through it all, perhaps worried that speaking would make everything vanish. But there were plenty of smiles. Thomas had gotten so used to looks of despair, it was almost unsettling to see happy faces. Especially when he was having such a hard time feeling it himself.

Soon after eating, no one argued when they were told it was time for bed.

Certainly not Thomas. He felt as if he could sleep for a month.