The other Gladers moved out of their way, seemingly more than happy to let the three of them be the ones
to see what was outside. Thomas squinted and then shielded his eyes as they got closer. It was getting
hard to believe they could actually step through the door into that horrible brightness and survive.
Minho stopped on the last step, just short of the direct line of the light. Then he slowly held his hand out
until it entered the square of brilliance. Despite the boy’s olive complexion, it looked to Thomas as if
Minho’s skin shone like white fire.
After only a few seconds Minho pulled his hand back and shook it at his side like he’d hit his thumb
with a hammer. “That’s definitely hot. Definitely hot.” He turned to face Thomas and Newt. “If we’re
gonna do this, we better have something wrapped around us or we’ll have second-degree sunburns in five
minutes.”
“Let’s empty out our packs,” Newt said, already taking his off his shoulder. “Wear these sheets like
buggin’ robes as we check things out. If it works well enough, we can stuff the food and water into half
our sheets and use the other half for protection.”
Thomas had already freed his sheet to help Winston. “We’ll look like ghosts—scare away any bad guys
out there.”
Minho didn’t take the same care as Newt; he just upended his pack and let everything drop. The
Gladers closest to them scrambled on instinct to stop the stuff from tumbling down the stairs. “Funny boy,
that Thomas. Let’s just hope we don’t have some nice Cranks to greet us,” he said as he started untying the
knots he’d made in the bedsheet. “I don’t see how anyone could just be hanging out in that heat. Hopefully
there’ll be trees or some kind of shelter.”
“I don’t know,” Newt said. “Then they might be hiding, bloody waitin’ to get us or something.”
Thomas was just itching to check things out. Quit making guesses and see for himself what they were up
against. “We won’t know till we investigate. Let’s go.” He whipped out his sheet, then pulled it over
himself and wrapped it tightly around his face like an old woman in a shawl. “How do I look?”
“Like the ugliest shanky girl I’ve ever seen,” Minho responded. “You better thank the gods above you
were born a dude.”
“Thanks.”
Minho and Newt did as Thomas had done, though both of them took more care to grip the sheet with
their hands under it so they were completely covered. They also held it out to make sure their faces were
shaded. Thomas followed suit.
“You shanks ready?” Minho asked, looking at Newt, then Thomas.
“Kind of excited, actually,” Newt responded.
Thomas didn’t know if that was quite the right word, but he felt the same urge to act. “Me too. Let’s
go.”
The remaining steps above them went all the way to the top, like an exit from an old cellar, the last few
glowing with the brilliance of the sun. Minho hesitated, but then ran up them, not stopping until he’d
disappeared, seemingly absorbed into the light.
“Go!” Newt yelled, smacking Thomas on the back.
Thomas felt a rush of adrenaline. Blowing out a deep breath, he took off after Minho; he heard Newt
right on his heels.
As soon as Thomas emerged into the light, he realized that they might as well have been draped in seethrough
plastic. The sheet did nothing to block the blinding light and searing heat beating down from
above. He opened his mouth to speak and a raw plume of dry warmth shot down his throat, seeming to
obliterate any air or moisture in its path. He tried desperately to pull in oxygen, but instead it felt like
someone had lit a fire in his chest.
Although his memories were few and scattered, Thomas didn’t think the world was supposed to be like
this.
With his eyes screwed shut against the white brilliance, he bumped into Minho and almost fell down.
Regaining his balance, he bent his knees and squatted, tenting the sheet entirely over his body as he
continued to fight for breath. He finally caught it, sucking air in and puffing it out rapidly as he tried to
compose himself. That first instant after exiting the stairway had really panicked him. The other two
Gladers were also breathing heavily.
“You guys all right?” Minho finally asked.
Thomas grunted a yes, and Newt said, “Pretty sure we just arrived in bloody hell. Always thought
you’d end up here, Minho, but not me.”
“Good that,” Minho replied. “My eyeballs hurt, but I think I’m finally starting to get kind of used to the
light.”
Thomas opened his own eyes into a squint and looked down at the ground just a couple of feet below
his face. Dirt and dust. A few gray-brown rocks. The sheet lay draped completely around him, but it
glowed so white it was like some odd piece of futuristic light technology.
“Who you hidin’ from?” Minho asked. “Get up, ya shank—I don’t see anybody.”
Thomas was embarrassed that they thought he was cowering there—he must look like a small child
whimpering under his blankets, trying not to be seen. He stood up and very slowly lifted the sheet until he
could peek out at their surroundings.
It was a wasteland.
In front of him, a flat pan of dry and lifeless earth stretched as far as he could see. Not a single tree. Not
a bush. No hills or valleys. Just an orange-yellow sea of dust and rocks; wavering currents of heated air
boiled on the horizon like steam, floating upward, as if any life out there were melting toward the
cloudless and pale blue sky.
Thomas turned in a circle, didn’t see much change until he faced the opposite direction. A line of
jagged and barren mountains rose far in the distance. In front of those mountains, maybe halfway between
there and where they now stood, a cluster of buildings sat squatting together like a pile of abandoned
boxes. It had to be a town, but it was impossible to tell how big it was from this distance. Hot air
shimmered in front of it, blurring everything close to the ground.
The white-hot sun above already lay far to Thomas’s left, and seemed to be sinking toward that
horizon, which meant that way was west, which meant that the town ahead and the range of black and red
rock behind it had to be due north. Where they were supposed to head. His sense of direction surprised
him, as if a piece of his past had risen from the ashes.
“How far away do you think those buildings are?” Newt asked. After the echoing, hollow sounds their
speaking had made in the long dark tunnel and stairway, his voice was like a dull whisper.
“Could that be a hundred miles?” Thomas asked no one in particular. “That’s definitely north. Is that
where we have to go?”
Minho shook his head under his sheet-hood. “No way, dude. I mean, we’re supposed to go that way, but
it’s not even close to a hundred miles. Thirty at most. And the mountains might be sixty or seventy.”
“Didn’t know you could measure distance so well with nothing but your bloody eyeballs,” Newt said.
“I’m a Runner, shuck-face. You get a feel for stuff like that in the Maze, even if its scale was a lot
smaller.”
“The Rat Man wasn’t kidding about those sun flares,” Thomas said, trying not to let his heart sink too
much. “Looks like a nuclear holocaust out here. I wonder if the whole world is like this.”
“Let’s hope not,” Minho responded. “I’d be happy to see one tree right about now. Maybe a creek.”
“I’d settle for a patch of grass,” Newt said through a sigh.
The more Thomas looked, the closer that town appeared. Thirty miles might even have been too much.
He broke his gaze and turned toward the others. “Could this be any more different from what they put us
through in the Maze? There, we were trapped inside walls, with everything we need to survive. Now we
have nothing holding us in, but no way to survive unless we go where they told us to. Isn’t that called
irony or something like that?”
“Something like that,” Minho agreed. “You’re a philosophizing wonder.” He nodded back toward the
exit from the stairway. “Come on. Let’s get those shanks out here and start walking. No time to waste
letting the sun suck all the water out of us.”
“Maybe we should wait until it goes down,” Newt suggested.
“And hang out with those shuck balls of metal? No way.”
Thomas agreed that they should get moving. “I think we’re okay. Looks like sunset’s only a few hours
away. We can be tough for a while, take a break, then go as far as possible during the night. I can’t stand
another minute down there.”
Minho nodded firmly.
“Sounds like a plan,” Newt said. “For now, let’s just make it to that dusty old town and hope it’s not
full of our Crank buddies.”
Thomas’s chest hitched at that comment.
Minho walked back to the hole and leaned over it. “Hey, you bunch of sissy, no-good shanks! Grab all
the food and get up here!”
Not one Glader complained about the plan.
Thomas watched as each one of them did the same things he’d done when he first exited the stairway.
Struggling gasps for breaths, squinty eyes, looks of hopelessness. He bet that each one of them had hoped
the Rat Man was lying. That the worst times had been back in the Maze. But he was pretty sure that after
the crazy head-eating silver things and then seeing this wasteland, no one would ever have such hopeful
thoughts again.
They had to make some adjustments as they readied for the journey—the food and water bags were
stuffed more tightly into half of the original packs; then the free bedsheets were used to cover two people
as they walked. All in all, it worked surprisingly well—even for Jack and poor Winston—and soon they
were marching across the hard, rock-strewn ground. Thomas shared his sheet with Aris, though he didn’t
know how it had ended up that way. Maybe he was just refusing to admit that he’d wanted to be with the
boy, that he might be the only possible connection to figuring out what had happened to Teresa.
Thomas held one end of the sheet up with his left hand and had a pack draped around his right shoulder.
Aris was to his right; they’d agreed to trade off the now-much-heavier pack every thirty minutes. Step by
dusty step, they made their way toward the town, the heat seeming to suck a full day of their life away
every hundred yards.
They didn’t talk for a long while, but Thomas finally broke the silence. “So you’ve never heard the
name Teresa before?”
Aris looked sharply at him, and Thomas realized he’d probably had a less-than-subtle hint of
accusation in his voice. But he didn’t back down. “Well? Have you?”
Aris returned his gaze forward, but there was something suspicious there. “No. Never. I don’t know
who she is or where she went. But at least you didn’t see her die right in front of you.”
That was a punch to the gut, but for some reason it made Thomas like Aris more. “I know, sorry.” He
thought for a second before he asked the next questions. “How close were you guys? What was her name,
again?”
“Rachel.” Aris paused, and for a second Thomas thought the conversation might be over already, but
then he continued. “We were way more than close. Things happened. We remembered stuff. Made new
memories.”
Thomas knew Minho would’ve laughed his face off at that last comment, but to him it sounded like the
saddest three words he’d ever heard. He felt he had to say something—offer something. “Yeah. I did see a
really good friend die, though. Every time I think about Chuck I get ticked off all over again. If they’ve
done the same thing to Teresa, they won’t be able to stop me. Nothing will. They’ll all die.”
Thomas stopped—forcing Aris to as well—shocked that those words had just come out of his own
mouth. It was like something else had taken over him and said those things. But he did feel it. Very
strongly. “What do you think—”
But before he could finish the thought, Frypan started shouting. He was pointing at something.
It only took a second for Thomas to realize what had gotten the cook all excited.
Far ahead, from the direction of the town, two people were running toward them, their bodies like
ghostly forms of darkness in the heat mirage, small plumes of dust rising from their feet.
damn, this is a long chapter
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