To The Shucking End

Chapter 17

The group had woken to the sound of screams.

Tanya's screams specifically.

The girl was writhing and crying in her sleep as she screamed, wailing the word, "NO!" over and over again.

"Tanya!" Minho called as he flinched awake.

"Tan! Hey, Tan! Wake up! It's alright!" Newt promised as he grabbed her fists, trying to shake her awake.

"No! Lemme go! No!" she cried out, fighting against Newt but her eyes were still closed as she remained asleep.

"Tanya!" Newt yelled as the girl jerked awake, chest heaving and tears streaming down her face from eyes that were shining with fear. "Hey! You're alright. You're safe. I've got you," he promised as he hugged her to his shoulder, and she just began crying.

"I'm sorry. I - I tried not to fall asleep," she whimpered as Newt pressed a kiss to her head, aware of everyone staring at them and wondering what could've possibly scared the girl so badly in her dream.

"Don't apologise," Newt said. "You need sleep and we needed to get up anyway. It's alright Tan."

"He's right. We have to get moving," Thomas agreed. "We may be safe for now but who knows how long that will last. Let's pack it up. Aris, Teresa, come on."

They all slowly began regaining their bearings and calm down after waking up with a start before beginning to gather their bags.

Newt was eventually able to calm Tanya enough to brush away her tears before he helped her up, always lingering close to her, to let her know he was here for her and he saw Minho do it as well, but Tanya was quick to either move to Newt's other side to steal his water or stop to tie her shoes or some other menial task that kept her away from him.

And all three of them knew why as they walked through the ruined city.

"What the hell happened to this place?" Frypan asked as he craned his neck upwards, his eyes squinting against the sun as he stared at the remaining structures of skyscrapers.

"I don't know. It doesn't look like anyone's been here in a long time," Newt answered.

"I hope the whole world's not like this," Aris added before Tanya stopped and she grabbed Newt's arm.

"What's wrong? Are you ok?" he asked quickly as he covered her hand with his, everyone stopping as they did.

Tanya's eyes only widened in horror as she asked, "Do you hear that?"

Pausing, they all strained their ears as the sound began to grow louder and Tanya realised that it was reminiscent of the sounds she heard in the helicopter.

"Everybody hide!" Thomas shouted. "Get down! In here! In here!"

He ushered everyone under the rubble, a stone slab covering their heads, before jumping under himself, just in time to hide away from the three aircrafts that flew directly overhead. One was a large ship while the other two were small helicopters.

"Nice save, Tan," Fry praised, the girl still keeping her eyes on the aircraft.

"They're never gonna stop looking for us, are they?" Minho questioned, the silence being his answer before began the climb.

First, the climb up and over various mountains of rubble just to get out of the city before they endured their second climb over an unnecessarily steep sand dune.

"Come on guys, just a little bit further," Thomas promised as he made it to the top.

The view from which was both hopeful and completely soul-crushing.

Hopeful because you could see the alleged mountains where the Right Arm was supposedly hiding and completely soul-crushing because there was still more city and a hell of a long desert between them and those mountains.

"Those mountains, that's gotta be it," Thomas said. "That's where we're going."

"That's a long way off," Newt pointed out.

"You think?" Tanya asked sarcastically, both Newt and Thomas shooting her a look, but one was of annoyance while the other was of amusement.

"Then we better get moving," was Thomas' reply but before they could take one step over the due, Winston collapsed.

"Winston!" Tanya exclaimed, as did most of the others as they all rushed to his side.

The boy was barely breathing and pretty unresponsive as they rigged up a stretcher to help them drag Winston across the Scorch, the boys taking turns in pulling it before Tanya insisted she has a turn, hoping to tire herself out by the time they made camp so she wouldn't dream tonight.

But when a sandstorm hit, Tanya had gone to undo the scarf in her hair to cover her face, silently cursing herself for tying such an intricate knot to keep her hair up.

"Here. Tan, let me help," Minho had offered, approaching her to help undo the scarf as she squeezed her eyes shut to avoid the sand, but she jolted away from him.

"I'm fine," she snapped, despite how clearly frustrated she was, everyone clearly able to see the anger she was holding back bubble to the surface.

Slightly hurt and peeved, Minho traded places with Aris pulling Winston to give him something to do as Frypan neared Tanya.

"Tan! Hey, Tanya, let me help, ok?" Frypan insisted over the roar of the wind, and she let her arms fall as he undid the scarf, her hair tumbling onto her shoulder before it blew madly with the wind as Frypan placed it over her head, the material creating a barrier around the sides of her face as she held it there, the scarf already making this trek a million times better.

A trek that was far from over and a trek that she knew Winston probably wasn't going to survive as much as she wanted to believe otherwise.

She was getting really tired of losing the people she cared about.