monachopsis - maze runner

chapter 24

Chapter 24
Ride The Lightning

They found refuge in the wreckage of an old ship, swept into a sand drift and trapped there by time. Shipping containers spilled from the tipped vessel - the closest thing to a bedroom the desert had to offer. Florence sat with her back against one of them, hugging her knees to her chest. A fire flickered in the middle of their circle, its warmth just barely reaching her at the outskirts of the group.

“I thought we were supposed to be immune,” Minho uttered over the crackling of the flames, turning a small chunk of wood over in his hands.

“Not all of us,” Teresa supplied. “I guess.” She tilted her head back against the bag she was using as a pillow, craning her neck to look at Florence behind her. The girl had made herself as small as she could, and though she was mostly hidden in the shadow of the container, the tears streaking her face glimmered in the flames’ orange hue. “Hey.” Teresa reached back, tapping Florence’s boot with her fingertips. “You did everything you could.” Florence nodded, but her eyes were unfocused like she wasn’t fully present. She felt like she could still hear the gunshot ringing in her ears, even though the Scorch had long since swallowed the sound.

“If Winston can get infected, we can assume so can the rest of us,” Newt said, already resigned to the tragedy of it.

“I never thought I’d say it,” Frypan said slowly, “but I miss the Glade.”

“Me too,” Florence murmured into the sleeve of her jacket. She sniffled, reaching up to tug her hood down over her eyes. She thought it would avert the pairs of eyes she could feel staring at her - Minho and Newt, most likely. It should’ve bothered her, the fact that they were still waiting for a bomb to go off, but it didn’t. She was used to it now because she could feel the time bomb, too. It was slowly ticking down in her chest, but what they didn’t know is that it passed zero ages ago. The bomb had been activated the night Alby died, gone off when they lost Gally and Chuck, and yet it was still ticking. She didn’t know what she’d do when it finally stopped.

***

The Scorch seemed to get more unbearable the further they went. The container ship was the last remnant of a dead civilization they encountered, and a few miles out the ground started to level. That should’ve made it easier, since they no longer had sand dunes to conquer, but it just felt like the endless flatlands were there to taunt them. The heat of the sun had somehow worsened, and Florence would’ve given up on her jacket if not for the thought of adding sunburns to their plethora of problems. Instead she wrapped the sleeves around her chest, keeping the hood over her head for protection.

An oval of sticky sweat had formed on her shirt beneath her backpack. Her lips were as dry as the sand, but they ran out of water about halfway through the day - or at least she thought it was halfway through. The days in the Scorch had sort of blended together into a fuzzy collection of events, none of which had any accurate timestamp attached to them.

The only solid emotion any of the children had to cling to - besides the desperate longing for food, water, and a bed that wasn’t made of sand - was the need to reach the mountains in the distance. They staggered towards them with the uneven steps of a drunkard, though no fluids had passed their lips in who knows how long. Heat waves shimmered on the horizon, and for a while Florence wasn’t altogether certain that the mountain range wasn’t a mirage.

When night fell the heat refused to break; they slept in a cluster on the hard ground, the shipping containers a blessed memory. The extreme fatigue managed to keep Florence’s nightmares at bay, but the few hours of sleep she got didn’t do her much good. Her whole body ached when she was startled awake by Thomas shouting about something in the distance. Squinting through the darkness, she saw a collection of flickering lights not far from the base of the mountain - how they’d missed it during the day, she had no idea, but it was the only sign of life they’d seen in a while.