The Deadliest Generation: The Desert of Death

Chapter Eight: The Flat Trans Journey

Thomas felt it getting late and knew they had to get sleep that night and be ready for the morning. So he and the Gladers spent the rest of the evening making crude packs out of bedsheets for carrying the food and the extra clothes that had appeared in the dressers. Some of the food had come in plastic bags, and the now-empty bags were filled with water and tied off with material ripped from the curtains. No one expected these poor excuses for canteens to last very long without leaking, but it was the best idea anyone could come up with. 

Newt had finally convinced Minho to be the leader. Thomas knew as well as anybody that they needed someone to be in charge, so he was relieved when Minho grudgingly agreed.

Around nine o'clock, Thomas found himself lying in bed, staring at the bunk above him once again. The room was strangely silent even though he knew no one had fallen asleep yet. Fear surely gripped them as much as it did him. They'd been through the Maze and its horrors. They'd seen close up what WICKED was capable of doing. If Rat Man was correct, and all that had happened was part of some master plan, then these people had forced Gally to kill Chuck, had shot a woman at close range, had hired people to rescue them only to kill them when the mission was complete ... the list went on and on.

Then, to top it all off, they gave them a hideous disease, with the cure as bait to lure them to continue. Who even knew what was true and what was a lie. And the evidence continued to suggest that they'd singled Thomas out somehow. It was a sad thought―Chuck was the one who had nearly lost his life. Teresa was the one missing. They clearly had it worse than him. But taking those two away from him ...

His life felt like a black hole. He had no idea how he would muster the will to go on in the morning. To face whatever WICKED had in store for them. But he'd do it―and not just to get a cure. He would never stop, especially now. Not after what they'd done to him and his friends. If the only way to get back at them was to pass all their tests and trials, to survive, then so be it. 

So be it.

Every Glader had set the alarm on his digital watch for five o'clock in the morning. Thomas woke up well before that and couldn't go back to sleep. When beeps finally started filling the room, he swung his legs off the bed and rubbed his eyes. Someone turned on the light and a yellow blast lit up his vision. Squinting, he got up and headed for the showers. Who knew how long it'd be before he could clean himself again.

At ten minutes till the time appointed by Rat Man, every Glader sat in anticipation, most holding a backpack full of water, the bedsheet packs at their sides. Thomas, like the others, had decided he'd carry the water in his hand to make sure it didn't spill or leak. The invisible shield had reappeared overnight in the middle of the common area, impossible to pass through, and the Gladers settled just on the boys' dorm side of it, facing where the stranger in the white suit had said a Flat Trans would appear. 

Chuck sat next to Thomas, bravely forcing a wobbly smile.

Aris was sitting right next to Thomas, and spoke for the first time since ... well, Thomas couldn't remember the last time he'd heard the boy's voice, apart from arguing back at Minho.

(Thomas was relieved that Minho had the decency to not touch Aris, who seemed only comfortable with physical contact with River.)

"Did you think you were crazy?" The new kid asked. "When you first heard her in your head?"

Thomas glanced at him, then paused. For some reason, up until that moment he hadn't wanted to talk to this guy. But suddenly the feeling vanished completely. He knew that it wasn't Aris's fault that Teresa had disappeared. "Yeah. Then when it kept happening, I got over it―only I started worrying about other people thinking I was crazy. So we didn't tell anyone about it for a long time, of rather, I didn't. They already all kind of disliked me."