Into the Maze

Chapter 12

Everyone was dead. Bodies were everywhere. She was the only one left. A scream broke through her lips and rang around the Glade, reverberating through the silence.
James was laying next to her, a bloody gash on his chest, dried blood covering him and forming a pool on the ground beside him.
She scrambled to her feet and looked around. Blood. Bodies. She had only fallen asleep for a minute. The scream of a Griever startled her.
The doors of the maze were closed, but it sounded like the Grievers were right on the other side of the door. They shrieked in triumph, rejoicing in the recent bloodbath. She shuddered and turned away, backing into the kitchen shack. Bumping into something, she whirled around. Newt was hanging by his neck from the ceiling. His face was purple and his body limply gruesome. He was dead, too. As she gasped in horror, another sound was brought to her attention.
A scream. A scream came from inside the maze, but it didn't belong to a Griever which had just satisfied its thirst for blood. No, it was a human scream, and it was a human in horrible pain. And she knew: it was Minho.
As another tortured scream split through the Glade, she began to run. She ran to the closed doors of the maze. She flew against them, beat at them, knowing all along it would do little, her screams joining Minho's in an agony of pain and terror.
"Jackie!"
Her eyes snapped open. A very worried Ben hovered over her. She realized that she was drenched in sweat and tears and she could only guess that she had been screaming. Ben backed away once he realized she was awake, his eyes wide.
"I thought you'd never wake up, shuck-face," he said.
In the week that Ben had been in the Glade, he had adopted Glader-slang as his second language and become far more advanced at it than she would be.
"Sorry," she gasped. The screams still echoed in her mind as did the gruesome images still swam before her eyes.
"James told me about Runners' dreams," Ben said.
She shook her head and sat up. "James is stupid, I wasn't dreaming."
Ben gave her a skeptical look, and she became very busy rolling up her mat and avoiding eye contact with the new Greenie.
James received a few dirty glares that morning, but Jackie was dragged away for a day of running before he could ask what it was about.
Being in the maze was a relief after the night full of dreaming that she was shut out of it, the sunshine on her back was warm, and Minho was in a good mood. After hearing his screams in her nightmares, hearing his laughter put her at ease.
"The first thing I'm going to do when we get out of this maze"- she said, sweat dripping off her forehead- "is drink a whole cooler of lemonade. I don't know what that is, but I remember liking it and I remember it was cold."
Minho laughed and asked, "Why not some of Gally's mystery drink?"
She stuck her tongue out in disgust. "I would be delighted if I never had to eat any of Frypan's cooking again!"
Minho thought for a second, then said, "the first thing I'm gonna do when I get out of this maze is get my hands on the shucking creators and make 'em pay for this."
Jackie didn't doubt him. She remembered the eerie burial ground behind the woods. A sudden sadness filled her when she realized that Minho knew every person in the graves by name, had spoken to them and laughed with them.
"Well." It was Minho, pausing at a fork in the maze. "Where do we go from here?"
Jackie grinned. They had run this route last week, and she knew Minho was only testing her. "Left," she replied. "Definitely left."
It was after a few hours of jogging when they finally stopped chatting, and paused for a rest, that she brought up something at the back of her mind.
"Minho, you don't have nightmares, do you?"
His head jerked up, his eyes wary. "About what?"
"About... the maze, maybe... I dunno."
"James has been talking to you hasn't he?"
She nodded.
"To be totally honest, I do have nightmares. About the maze, and Grievers, and... dying before I get you guys out." He glanced down at his boots and kicked at a crumbling bit of stone on the ground.
"I do too." She lifted her face so that the warm sunlight drenched it with heat. "I had a dream last night."
Minho said nothing, so she continued, "I had a dream I woke up, and James was dead, and Newt was dead." She realized she was babbling but didn't care. "And Ben and everyone else was dead except..." she paused, unsure about going on, then plunged ahead. "Except you. You were trapped in the maze and he Grievers had you. They were killing you, Minho!" She stopped and stared at the ground.
A stillness pulsed through the maze, not even the ivy rustled. It was a couple of seconds before she dared to look at Minho, and when she did, she saw on his face a look of inexpressible sadness, as if seeing her hurting hurt him worse than a Griever ever could.
But a second later, it was gone, and he said in a voice that was almost normal, "you chose the runner life, shank."
"I know." She squared her shoulders. "Let's go."
But running had lost its relief, and Minho had lost his good mood. Plus, reliving her dream had exhausted her all over again.
By the time they jogged out of the maze that evening, she was ready to drop from exhaustion, but when she slowed, Minho's pace quickened, as if he intended to leave her as he headed toward the map room.
She sped up as well, but every time she came close to him, he sped up, as if pushing her away. The fear and sadness from the night before, doubled with the fear of rejection, made adrenaline rush through her, and suddenly anger was flowing freely.
"Wait up!" She called after him.
"Hurry up, then!"
She once again sped up, but once again his pace quickened, and she let out a sigh of exasperation. "Are you trying to leave me behind!?"
"Maybe the map room isn't for people who don't give full effort when running!"
"I've been running all day!" She cried indignantly. She paused, then said, just loud enough for him to hear. "Slinthead."
Minho whirled around, glaring at her. There was a split second of silence, then they both began to scream their heads off at each other. One of the Slicers stepped out of the shack on their right, viewed the scene, and turned to go back inside again.
"Just because you're the keeper of the Runners-"
"Just because you think you're so all-powerful just because you're a girl-"
"Does not make you any better than anyone here!!"
"Doesn't mean you can dance around like you're the shucking queen!"
"Hey!!!!"
They stopped arguing and looked at James, who was standing slightly off to the side, between them.
"What's going on?"
"Nothing." Minho turned stiffly away from her with one last look of contempt. "What is it, James?"
"It's... it's Gally."
"Yes?"
"Gally's been stung."