"Please!" I shout, "please, can we. Just. Stop." I have to take frequent, deep breaths. We've been running for hours and hours on end yet we haven't stopped once. The girls at the front of the group, the runners, turn around and slow their pace. I stop, hoping the others will too and not just run off ahead.
"What?" Harriet says, rolling her eyes in exhaustion.
"Well," I breath in and out deeply, trying not to collapse, "Surely. We, we should think about this. I mean. What if. This. Is a trap?" Talking made me more weary so I stop and wait for someone to reply to what I said. Everyone looked around at each other for a few seconds, waiting for someone to say something and finally Sonya stood up and said, "She's right." Everyone looks over at her and are ready to listen. "For all we know, whoever put us in this freakin' place is just leading us to our deaths to make their little game more exciting."
"For the last time!" Rachel shouts, "This isn't a game! This is real and we are here for a legitimate reason." Rachel had been optimistic that we were here for something important since she got here but very few of us believe her. Aris, however, looked at her and nodded subtly. There had been some kind of connection between the two of them since the beginning.
"That's not what's important right now," Sonya says calmly but sternly, "How about we just prepare for whatever we find at the end of this damn maze okay?"
"But Sonya, we need to go. We have an hour at the most until those grievers come out to 'play'." One of the runners from the front said.
"Then as soon as we have a plan, we run as fast as we can." This caused at least half the group to groan.
Some of us sat down and tried to rest as we prepared for a possible attack while the rest stood and stretched so they could run even faster. However, I stand still shaking with terror. Not long ago, I was one of the runners but one time, the grievers came. I was with Harriet and the second it appeared she ran, expecting me to follow but I couldn't. My brain, my heart, my eyes, everything in my body was telling me to run for my life but all I could bring myself to do was crouch up into a ball and stay there crying and shaking. Somehow, the griever saw Harriet first and ran like a spider making large crashing sounds every time one of its legs hit the stone floor. About three minutes later, I lifted my head and saw nothing. Just the eerie stone walls with ivy hanging down. I cried again, inhuman sobbing noises came out of my mouth and I couldn't cope. If I had run, the griever might have chased me and I would be the dead one, not Harriet. And there was no way she made it alive. You don't escape a griever. I was much less important and loved in the glade, Harriet was our leader. I finally shot up and ran like never before. I followed the direction Harriet went and half way down the long path was Harriet's jumper. I bent down to pick it up but all of a sudden i heard fast footsteps from behind. I ran without looking back but in a split second I felt a hand on my shoulder. Trying to shrug it off, I suddenly remembered grievers don't have hands. I spun around to see Harriet with a large grin spread across her face.
"That's my jumper," she laughed. I gasped and hugged her without even thinking.
"What the hell!?" were the only words I could bring myself to say.
"I tricked it. It fell off the edge and disappeared. Lydia, I think I know how we can get out of here!"
Once a plan was put together, we went on running until about five minutes later Harriet stopped us.
"This is it." She says gawping at the empty, black nothingness we're all stareing at. It's the very edge of the maze yet it looks like the edge of the planet, maybe it is. Aris, Harriet and Rachel look at each other in terror, they are the ones who agree to go down but it seems as though they're all questioning whether or not to go down.
"Guys, are you okay to do this?" Sonya says sympathetically. The three of them give out shy murmurs until finally Aris says, "Let's just get it over with. This ruck place is creepy." He seems uncomfortable using glader slang, he always tensed when he said it. Like he was trying to fit in. Harriet and Rachel just nod, not saying anything.
Everyone tried to give them reassurance but clearly they just need us to let them past and get on with it. One after the other, they jump into the nothingness; Harriet first, then Aris and finally, very reluctantly, Rachel.
While the three of them are down in the nothingness, all the rest of us hear are screams, frantic shouts and grievers wailing. Beth steps out in front of the group and comes out with, "We've got to go down!" but before she could jump Sonya sticks her arm out and hits Beth in the stomach. Beth then stumbles back into the crowd of girls embarrassed.
"I've always wanted to do that," Sonya smirks. Very few of the gladers liked Beth that much, sure she has her moments, but most of the time she was mardy and self-absorbed. Apparently, she was stung by a griever hence why she was like this but I wasn't in the glade before hand so I'll never know what she was really like.
After ten minutes of shouting from below and worrying from above, we hear Rachel shout again, but this time it was to us,
"Guys! Come down, it's safe now but be quick."
Sonya lines us up, putting the most able at the back to help the ones who needed a bit of help or encouraging. I was somewhere in the middle. Girls in front of me scream as they lept off the edge but I stand there, still shaking. Without warning, wailing griever sounds come from behind. Syncronised, all the gladers spin around in complete panic. Four grievers. More behind. More surrounding them from far away. They come running, sprinting, towards us and it would only take around thirty seconds for them to reach us and ten for all of us to be killed, surely.
"Right, just jump. No bloody sissies, just jump. If you can't do it then feel free to join the greivers!" Sonya shouts as she runs towards the hole. Everyone followed, jumping into the nothingness. Closer and closer the grievers came and I could feel it happening again.
"Lydia!" Sonya and some of the other gladers shout. They all know the story of the last time I encountered a griever so Sonya came running back and grabs me by the arm. I was being dragged by Sonya while other gladers pushed me along but they all started to leave as the grievers got closer. All at once, a griever stares at me with it's non-existant eyes and I run. I run past Sonya. I run past Beth. I run faster than I'd ever ran. I run faster than the griever. Sooner than expected, I reach the edge and find myself falling but quickly land with a small crash in a small room with about three grievers, not moving, and about 15 gladers.
Swiftly, Sonya, Beth and three other gladers join us in the small box and we flee through the exit and find ourselves in the last place we'd ever expect find ourselves.
we're in the maze.
YOU ARE READING
Feels Like Home (the maze runner)
FanfictionThis is a kind of Maze Runner fanfiction I guess :) but I had to change a lot of the plot and add a few characters. Lydia has been in the glade for a year, many of the other girls have been there for more, many of them less. But they have finally fo...
