Thomas thought of the tattoo on the back of his neck. Those simple words that scared him. “Maybe when she said ‘you’ she didn’t mean all of us.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, pointing down at his menacing mark. “Maybe she meant me specifically. Couldn’t tell where her eyes were looking.”

“How’s she gonna know who you are?” Minho retorted. “Plus, doesn’t matter. If someone tries to kill you, or me, or anyone else, they might as well try to get all of us. Right?”

“You’re so sweet,” Frypan said with a snort. “Go ahead and die with Thomas. I think I’ll sneak away and enjoy living with the guilt.” He cast his special look that meant he was only kidding, but Thomas wondered if a little truth might be hiding in there somewhere.

“Well, what do we do now?” Jack asked. He had Winston’s arm around one of his shoulders, but the former Keeper of the Blood House seemed to have recovered some of his strength. Luckily the sheet covered the hideous parts of his head.

“What do you think?” Newt asked, but then he nodded at Minho.

Minho rolled his eyes. “We keep going, that’s what. Look, we don’t have a choice. If we don’t go to that town, we’re gonna die out here of sunstroke or starvation. If we do go, we’ll have some shelter for a while, maybe even food. Cranks or no Cranks, that’s where we’re going.”

“And Group B?” Thomas asked; he glanced over at Aris. “Or whoever they were talking about. What if they really do wanna kill us? All we have to fight with are our hands.”

Minho flexed his right arm. “If these people are really the girls Aris was hanging out with, I’ll show ’em these guns of mine and they’ll go runnin’.”

Thomas kept pushing. “And if these girls have weapons? Or can fight? Or if it’s not them at all but a bunch of seven-foot-tall grunts who like to eat humans? Or a thousand Cranks?”

“Thomas… no. Everybody.” Minho let out an exasperated sigh. “Would everyone just shut their holes and slim it? No more questions. Unless you have an idea that doesn’t involve absolute certain death, then quit your pipin’ and let’s take the only chance we got. Get it?”

Thomas smiled, though he didn’t know where the impulse came from. Somehow in a few sentences Minho had cheered him up, or at least given him a little hope. They just had to go, to move, to do. That was it.

“That’s better,” Minho said with a satisfied nod. “Anybody else wanna pee their pants and cry for Mommy?”

A few snickers broke out, but no one said anything.

“Good. Newt, you lead up front this time, limp and all. Thomas, you in the back. Jack, get someone else to help with Winston to give you a break. Let’s go.”

And so they did. Aris held the pack this time, and Thomas felt as if he were almost floating along the ground, it felt so good. The only hard part was holding that sheet up, his arm growing weak and rubbery. But on and on they went, sometimes walking, sometimes jogging.

Luckily, the sun seemed to gain weight and drop more quickly the closer it got to the horizon. By Thomas’s wristwatch, the Cranks had only been gone an hour when the sky turned a purplish orange and the intense glare of the sun started to melt away into a more pleasant glow. Not long after that, it disappeared below the horizon altogether, pulling nighttime and stars across the sky like a curtain.

The Gladers kept moving, heading toward the faint twinkle of lights coming from the town. Thomas could almost enjoy it now that he wasn’t holding the pack and they’d put the sheet away.

Finally, when every last trace of dusk had gone, full darkness settled on the land like a black fog.

CHAPTER 19

Soon after dark, Thomas heard a girl screaming.

At first he didn’t know what he was hearing, or if maybe it was just his imagination. With the thumps of dry footsteps, the rustling of the packs, the whispers of conversation between heavy breaths, it was hard to tell. But what had started as almost a buzz inside his head soon became unmistakable. Somewhere ahead of them, maybe all the way in the town but more likely closer, a girl’s screams tore through the night.

The others had obviously noticed it, too, and soon the Gladers quit running. Once everyone caught their breath, it became easier to hear the disturbing sound.

It was almost like a cat. An injured, wailing cat. The kind of noise that made your skin crawl and made you press your hands to your ears and pray it went away. There was something unnatural about it, something that chilled Thomas inside and out. The darkness only added to the creepiness. Whoever the source, she still wasn’t very close, but her shrill screeches bounced along like living echoes, trying to smash their unspeakable sounds against the dirt until they ceased to exist in this world.

“You know what that reminds me of?” Minho asked, his voice a whisper with an edge of fear.

Thomas knew. “Ben. Alby. Me, I guess? Screaming after the Griever sting?”

“You got it.”

“No, no, no,” Frypan moaned. “Don’t tell me we’re gonna have those suckers out here, too. I can’t take it!”

Newt responded, just a couple of feet to the left of Thomas and Aris. “Doubt it. Remember how moist and gooey their skin was? They’d turn into a big dust ball if they rolled around in this stuff.”

“Well,” Thomas said, “if WICKED can create Grievers, they can create plenty of other freaks of nature that might be worse. Hate to say it, but that rat-lookin’ guy said things were finally going to get tough.”

“Once again, Thomas gives us a cheerful pep talk,” Frypan announced; he tried to sound jovial, but it came out more like a spiteful rub.

“Just saying it how it is.”

Frypan huffed. “I know. And how it is sucks big-time.”

“What now?” Thomas asked.

“I think we should take a break,” Minho said. “Fill our little tummies and drink up. Then we should book it for as long as we can stand it while the sun is still down. Maybe get a couple hours’ sleep before dawn.”

“And the psycho screaming lady out there?” Frypan asked.

“Sounds like she’s plenty busy with her own troubles.”

For some reason that statement terrified Thomas. Maybe the others, too, because no one said a word as they slipped the packs off their shoulders, sat down and began eating.

“Man, I wish she’d shut up.” It was about the fifth time Aris had said that as they ran along in the darker-than-dark night. The poor girl, somewhere out there, getting closer all the while, was still crying her fretful, high-pitched wails.

Their meal had been quiet and somber, the talk drifting toward what the Rat Man had said about the Variables and how their responses to them were all that mattered. About creating a “blueprint,” about finding the “killzone” patterns. No one had any answers, of course, only meaningless speculations. It was odd, Thomas thought. They now knew they were being tested somehow, put through WICKED’s trials. In some ways it felt like they should behave differently because of this, and yet they just kept going, fighting, surviving until they could get the promised cure. And that was what they’d keep doing; Thomas was sure of it.

It had taken a while for his legs and joints to loosen up once Minho got everyone moving again. Above them, the moon was a sliver, barely providing any more light than the stars. But you didn’t need to see much to run along flat and barren land. Plus, unless it was his imagination, they were actually starting to reach the lights from the town. He could see that they flickered now, which meant they were probably fires. Which made sense-the odds of having electricity in this wasteland hovered around zero.

He wasn’t sure when it happened exactly, but suddenly the cluster of buildings they were running toward seemed a lot closer. And there were a lot more of them than he or anyone else had thought. Taller, too. Wider. Spread out and organized in rows and in an orderly fashion. For all they knew, the place might’ve once been a major city, devastated by whatever had happened to the area. Could sun flares really inflict that much damage? Or had other things caused it during the aftermath?