فصل 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.