Teresa didn’t answer the question, and an eerie silence swept across the group. The sun continued to rise, inching toward the point where its heat would beat down on them unbearably.
Teresa walked toward them again, and stopped about ten feet from where Minho and Newt stood side by side.
“Teresa?” Newt asked. “What the bloody—”
“Shut up,” Teresa said. She didn’t snap or yell it. She said it calmly and with conviction, which only made it that much more frightening to Thomas. “And any of you makes a move, the bows start shooting.”
Teresa brought her spear up to a better fighting position, swept it back and forth as she stepped past Newt and Minho and through the Gladers, acting as if she was searching for something. She came to Brenda, paused. Neither said a word, but the hatred between them was visible. Teresa moved past her, never dropping her icy stare.
And then she was in front of Thomas. He tried to tell himself that she’d never use that weapon on him, but believing it wasn’t easy when you were looking at the blade’s sharp edge.
“Teresa,” he whispered before he could stop himself. Despite the spear, despite the hard look on her face, despite the way her muscles tensed as if she was about to slash him, all he wanted was to reach out to her. He couldn’t help but remember the kiss she’d given him. The way it had felt.
She didn’t move, just kept staring at him, her face unreadable except for the obvious anger there.
“Teresa, what’s—”
“Shut up.” That same voice of calm. Of utter command. It didn’t sound like her.
“But what—”
Teresa reared back and swung the butt of her spear at him, smashing it into his right cheek. An explosion of pain shot through his skull, his neck; he crumpled to his knees, a hand to his face where she’d hit him.
“I said shut up.” She reached down and grabbed him by the shirt, jerked up until he stood once again. She repositioned her hands on the wooden shaft, pointed it at him. “Is your name Thomas?”
He gaped at her. His world was crashing in on him, even though he told himself she’d warned him. Told him that no matter what, he had to trust her. “You know who I—”
She swung the spear even more violently this time, crashing the bladeless end into the side of his head, right on his ear. The pain was twice as bad as the first hit; he cried out, clutching his head. But he didn’t fall this time. “You know who I am!” he screamed.
“I used to, anyway,” she said in a voice that was both soft and disgusted. “Now I’m going to ask you one more time. Is your name Thomas?”
“Yes!” he yelled back at her. “My name is Thomas!”
Teresa nodded, then started to back away from him, the tip of the blade once again aimed at his chest. People got out of her way as she passed the group and rejoined the circle of girls who surrounded them.
“You’re coming with us,” she called out. “Thomas. Come on. Remember, anyone tries something, the arrows fly.”
“No way!” Minho yelled. “You’re not taking him anywhere.”
Teresa acted as if she hadn’t heard him, her eyes riveted to Thomas in that strange squinty-eyed stare. “This isn’t some stupid game. I’m going to start counting. Every time I hit a multiple of five, we’ll kill one of you with an arrow. We’ll do it until Thomas is the only one left, then we’ll take him anyway. It’s up to you.”
For the first time, Thomas noticed that Aris was acting strange. He stood just a few feet to Thomas’s right, and he kept turning in a slow circle, staring at the girls one by one as if he knew them each well. But somehow he kept his mouth shut.
Of course, Thomas thought. If this really was Group B, Aris had been with them. He did know them.
“One!” Teresa shouted.
Thomas wasn’t taking any chances. He walked forward, pushing past people until he reached the open, then went straight toward Teresa. He ignored the comments from Minho and the others. He ignored everything. Eyes on Teresa, trying to show no emotion, he walked until he stood almost nose to nose with her.
It was what he wanted anyway, right? He wanted to be with her. Even if she’d been turned against him somehow. Even if she was being manipulated by WICKED, like Alby and Gally had been. For all he knew, her memory had been wiped again. Didn’t matter. She looked serious, and he couldn’t risk having someone shoot one of his friends with a bow and arrow.
“Fine,” he said. “Take me.”
“I only made it to one.”
“Yeah. I’m really brave that way.”
She hit him with the spear, so hard that he couldn’t help but drop to the ground again. His jaw and head ached like smoldering fire. He spit, saw blood splatter on the dirt.
“Bring the bag,” Teresa said from above.
In his peripheral vision he saw two girls walking toward him, their weapons hidden away somewhere. One of them—a dark-skinned girl with hair cut almost to her scalp—held a large frayed burlap sack. They stopped two feet from him; he got back to his hands and knees, scared to do anything more for fear of getting pummeled again.
“We’re taking him with us!” Teresa yelled. “If anybody follows, I’ll hit him again and we’ll start shooting you. We won’t really bother aiming. Just let the arrows fly any old way they feel like.”
“Teresa!” Minho’s voice. “You catch the Flare that quickly? Your mind’s obviously gone already.”
The butt of the spear smashed into the back of Thomas’s head; he collapsed onto his stomach, black stars swimming in the dirt inches from his face. How could she do this to him?
“Anything else you wanna say?” Teresa asked. After a long moment of silence, she said, “Didn’t think so. Put the bag over him.”
Hands roughly grabbed his shoulder and spun him onto his back—their grip dug into his bullet wound enough to send a deep ache flashing through his upper body for the first time since WICKED had fixed him up.
He moaned. Faces—they didn’t even look angry—hovered over him as two girls held the open end of the sack directly above his head.
“Don’t resist,” the dark-skinned girl said, her face shining with sweat. “Or it’ll just get worse.”
Thomas was perplexed. Her eyes and voice held genuine sympathy for him. But her next words couldn’t have been more different.
“Better just to go along and let us kill you. Doesn’t do you any good to have a lot of pain along the way.”
The bag slipped over his head, and all he could see was ugly brown light.
CHAPTER 45
They shifted him around on the ground till they got the bag slipped entirely over his body. Then they tied the open end at his feet with a rope, knotting it tight and wrapping its ends up and around the rest of him, pinning him inside the bag, cinching another knot just over his head.
Thomas felt the bag going taut; then his head was pulled up. He imagined girls holding either end of this impossibly long rope. Which could only mean one thing—they were going to drag him. He couldn’t take it anymore, started squirming even though he knew what it’d get him.
“Teresa! Don’t do this to me!”
This time a fist hit him right in the stomach, making him howl. He tried to double over, tried to clutch his middle, but couldn’t because of the stupid bag. Nausea swept through him; he fought it, kept his food down.
“Since you obviously don’t care about yourself,” Teresa said, “talk again and we’ll start shooting your friends. That sound good to you?”
Thomas didn’t respond; he heaved a silent sob of agony. Had he really been thinking things were looking up in the world only yesterday? His infection cured and his wound healed, away from the city of Cranks, nothing but a swift and hard hike through the mountains between them and the safe haven. He should’ve known better after everything he’d been through.
“I meant what I said!” Teresa yelled at the Gladers. “There won’t be a warning. Follow us and the arrows start flying.”
Thomas saw her outlin
e as she knelt next to him, heard her knees crunching on the dirt. Then she grabbed him through the material of the bag, put her head against his, her mouth just half an inch from his ear. She started whispering, so faintly he had to strain to hear, concentrating to separate her words from the breeze.
“They’re blocking me from talking to you in our heads. Remember to trust me.”
Thomas, surprised, had to fight to keep his mouth shut.
“What’re you saying to him?” This came from one of the girls holding the rope attached to the bag.
“I’m letting him know just how much I’m enjoying this. How much I’m enjoying my revenge. Do you mind?”
Thomas had never heard such arrogance from her. She was either a really good actress or had started going crazy. Gained a split personality or two.
“Well,” the other girl responded. “Glad you’re having so much fun. But we need to hurry.”
“I know,” Teresa said. She gripped the sides of Thomas’s head even harder, squeezed and shook it. Then she pressed her mouth against the rough material, pushing on his ear. When she spoke, again with that hot whisper, he could feel her hot breath through the weave of the burlap. “Hang in there. It’ll be over soon.”
The words numbed Thomas’s brain; he had no idea what to think. Was she being sarcastic?
She released him and stood back up. “Okay, let’s get out of here. Make sure you hit as many rocks as you can along the way.”
His captors started walking, dragging him along behind them. He felt the rough ground below him as he was dragged across it, the big sack providing absolutely no protection. It hurt. He arched his back, putting all his weight on his feet, letting his shoes bear the brunt of the impacts. But he knew his strength couldn’t hold out forever.
Teresa walked right beside him as they pulled his body along. He could just make her out through the burlap.
Then Minho started yelling, his voice already fading with distance, the sound of being dragged against the dirt making it that much harder to hear. What Thomas did hear, however, gave him little hope. Between garbled unflattering names, Thomas heard the words “we’ll find you” and “time is right” and “weapons.”
Teresa slammed her fist into Thomas’s stomach again, shutting Minho up.
And across the desert they went, Thomas bouncing over the dirt like a sack of old clothes.
Thomas imagined horrible things as they went along. His legs were weakening every second, and he knew he’d have to lower his body to the ground soon. He pictured the bleeding wounds, the permanent scars.
But maybe it wouldn’t matter. They planned on killing him anyway.
Teresa had said to trust her. And even though he had a hard time doing it, he was trying to believe her. Could all the stuff she’d done to him since reappearing with the weapons and Group B really be an act? If it wasn’t, why would she keep whispering to him to trust her?
His mind turned it all over in circles until he couldn’t concentrate anymore. His body was being rubbed raw, and he knew he needed to figure out how to prevent every inch of skin from being scratched off.
The mountains saved him.
When they started going up the steep slope, it obviously became difficult for the girls to drag his body the way they’d done across flat ground. They tried pulling him in quick jerks—slipping and letting him slide several feet back down, then hauling him back up only to let him slip again. Teresa finally said it’d probably be easier to carry him by the shoulders and ankles. And that they should do it in shifts.
An idea hit Thomas then that was so obvious he thought surely he’d missed something. “Why don’t you just let me walk!” he called through the burlap, his voice muffled and cracking from thirst. “I mean, you do have weapons. What am I gonna do?”
Teresa kicked him in the side. “Shut up, Thomas. We’re not idiots. We’re waiting until your Glader buddies can’t see us anymore.”
He’d done his best to stifle his groan when her foot crashed into his rib cage. “Huh? Why?”
“Because that’s what we were told to do. Now shut up!”
“Why’d you tell him that?” one of the other girls whispered harshly.
“What does it matter?” Teresa responded, not even trying to hide what she was saying. “We’re gonna kill him anyway. Who cares if he knows what we were told to do?”
Told to do, Thomas thought. By WICKED.
A different girl spoke up. “Well, I can barely see them now. Once we reach that crevice up there, we’ll be out of sight, and they’ll never find us after that. Even if they do follow.”
“All right, then,” Teresa said. “Let’s just get him that far.”
Hands were soon gripping Thomas on all sides, lifting him into the air. From what he could see through the sack, Teresa and three of her new friends were carrying him. They picked their way through boulders and around dead trees, going up and up and up. He heard their heavy breaths, smelled their sweat, hated them more with each jolting step. Even Teresa. He tried one last time to reach her mind, to salvage his trust in her, but she wasn’t there.
The trudge up the mountain went on for maybe an hour—with stops here and there for girls to switch off carrying duties—and it had been at least twice that long since they’d left the Gladers. The sun was reaching a point where it would become dangerous, the heat stifling. But then they rounded a massive wall, the ground leveling a bit, and entered shade. The cooler air was a relief.
“All right,” Teresa said. “Drop him.”
Without ceremony, they did what she said and he slammed into the ground with a heavy grunt. It knocked the wind out of him, and he lay there gasping for air as they started untying the ropes. By the time he caught his breath, the bag had been taken off.
He blinked, looking up at Teresa and her friends. They all had their weapons pointed at him, which just seemed ridiculous.
From somewhere he found a trace of courage. “You guys must think a lot of me, twenty of you with knives and machetes, me with nothing. I feel so special.”
Teresa reared back with her spear.
“Wait!” Thomas cried, and she stopped. He held his hands up in deference, slowly got to his feet. “Look, I’m not gonna try anything. Just take me wherever we’re going and then I’ll let you kill me like a good boy. I don’t have any shuck thing to live for anyway.”
He looked directly at Teresa when he said this, tried to put as much spite into his words as possible. He still held on to a little hope that somehow this would end up making sense, but either way, after how he’d been treated, he wasn’t in such a hot mood.
“Come on,” Teresa said. “I’m sick of this. Let’s get to the inside of the Pass so we can sleep the day off. Tonight we’ll start heading through.”
The girl with dark skin who’d helped put him in the sack spoke next. “And what about this guy we’ve been hauling around for the last few hours?”
“Don’t worry, we’ll kill him,” Teresa replied. “We’ll kill him just the way they told us to. It’s his punishment for what he did to me.”
CHAPTER 46
Thomas couldn’t figure out what Teresa meant by her last statement. What had he done to her? But his mind went numb as they walked and walked and walked, apparently heading back to Group B’s camp. A steady climb uphill, the effort burning his legs. A sheer cliff to their left kept them in the shade as they hiked, but everything was still red and brown and hot. Dry. Dusty. The girls gave him a few sips of water, but he was sure that every drop evaporated before it hit his stomach.
They reached a large indentation in the east wall just as the noon sun broke out overhead, a golden ball of fire bent on burning them to ashes. The shallow cave went about forty feet into the mountain face; it was obvious that this was their camp, and it looked like they’d been there for a day or two. Blankets strewn about, the remains of a fire, some trash piled on the edge. Only three people were there when they arrived—girls just like the others—which meant they’d fel
t they needed almost everyone to kidnap Thomas.
With the bows and arrows, the knives and machetes? It seemed almost silly. A few of them would’ve done just as well.
Along the way, Thomas had learned some things. The dark-skinned girl’s name was Harriet, and the one who was always with her, with the reddish blond hair and white, white skin, was named Sonya. Though he couldn’t tell for certain, he guessed that those two had mostly been in charge until Teresa had arrived. They acted with some authority, but always deferred to her in the end.
“Okay,” Teresa said. “Let’s tie him to that ugly tree.” She pointed at the bone-white skeleton of an oak, its roots still clinging to the rocky soil even though it had to have been dead for years and years. “And we might as well feed him so he doesn’t moan and groan all day and keep us awake.”
Laying it on a little thick, isn’t she? Thomas thought. Whatever her true intentions, her words had started to get a little ridiculous. And he couldn’t deny it anymore—he was really starting to hate her, no matter what she’d said in the beginning.
He didn’t fight as they tied his torso to the trunk, leaving his hands free. Once they had him good and secure they gave him a few granola bars and a bottle of water. No one spoke to him or met his gaze. And strangely, if he wasn’t mistaken, he noticed that everyone looked a little guilty. He started eating, and as he did he carefully took in everything around him. His thoughts wandered all over the place as the rest of them began settling in to sleep out the remaining daylight. Something wasn’t right about all this.
Teresa’s display certainly didn’t seem like an act. It never had. Was it possible that she was doing the exact opposite of what she’d told him—making him think he should trust her when her real plan had been and was to—
With a jolt he remembered the tag outside her door back in the dorm. The Betrayer. He’d completely forgotten about it until that moment. Things started to make more sense.
WICKED was the boss, here. They were the groups’ only hope of surviving. If they’d really told her to kill him, would she do it? To save herself? And what was that line she’d spit out about his having done something to her? Could they even be manipulating her thoughts? Making her not like him anymore?
The Maze Runner Series Complete Collection Page 55
