Newt imagines 2

They chose the new girl, not me

Tap. Tap. Tap tap  tap tap... My foot drummed an untuneful beat on the floor of the metal tin. Blocked out by the noise of the whirring blades above. Janson sat next to me, his door wide open as we circled the building, beaming the helicopter's light down like a prison yard. He had a speaker wrapped round his ear, hovering before his lips.

I leant over his legs to see the building my beloved gladers were trapped inside by monstrous people. It looked like a large department building full of fairy lights, and actually compared to the desert wasteland it looked inviting and homely. That just shows how bad the endless wasteland is.

"Good evening." Janson said into the mic like we were meeting them at a dinner party, without the slightest idea of the men dressed in black running round inside with guns. "This is the World Catastrophe Killzone Department, we have your compound completely surrounded." I wanted to stop and think over what he was saying, but my concern was only for Newt. "You find yourselves, through no fault of your own, in possession of Wicked property, return them to us unharmed and we will consider this a simple misunderstanding or you can resist and every last one of you will die. Won't be long till the flare wipes out the rest of us, the hope of a cure lies in your hands. The choice is yours."

He sounded as if he had been preparing for years, each word carefully structured. And there was so much of it, as the building erupted into chaos, it was hard to sieve through each word. I only knew there was so much mention of wicked and the flare. I would have to ask questions later. Now, all that mattered was my gladers.

"Janson I've got them here, don't shoot us." The crackling voice said through Janson's walkie talkie. We heard gun fire, and my heart stopped, breath hitching in my lungs like a trapped bear. Could it have been one of them? Two bullets had been fired. Two of my boys? Newt? Minho? Was it them? Janson motioned to the pilot to fly us around, see if we could find the surge of people running away.

A song, sounded old, began to play out from the building, I looked at Janson quizzically but he wouldn't look at me. I realised this was the first song I had ever heard, it had a good tune, kinda funky. Very jazz.

We saw it a silver strip in the sky. A cable strong enough to hold serval people and it was. They were flying down it like a zip wire, I was entirely speechless we all were. They were trying to escape, why we wanted to save them. Was it me? Did they really hate me? The first was a man, I saw the whizz of grey hair rushing by. He was too old to be a glader, was he taking them hostage?
Next I recognised the hair style, it was Minho. Thank god he was safe, I could partially relax, still on edge waiting for Newt. He was straight after Minho chasing him down the wire, his legs flailing in the air as he gripped onto the strap. I was about to jump out the helicopter, fall the 30 mile distance just to be nearer to him. When Janson pushed me back into my seat pointing down where the zip wire ended. By now almost all the gladers had gone, and it was only Teresa at the end. I felt my heart behind my eyes pushing water closer to the edge of my eyelids. Newt was waiting to catch Teresa, wide open arms to pull her in close to his body. I knew I should look away but it was impossible to not watch my heart die. He caught her swinging her round in his arms and running off his hand forever remaining on her back.

I finally was able to force my neck to turn away, the music faded into the background noise of Janson on the microphone. I coughed and spluttered like a snake had coiled round my beating heart, squeezing its flakey scales into the bleeding muscle. Compressing it down into the size of a helpless mouse. To then only be eaten whole.
Water trickled down the pores on my skin, leaving moist on my cheeks. I wiped them away, blowed my nose on my sleeve and focused, forcing my brain to figure out the puzzle.

Four gladers had not taken the journey down the wire. Thomas. Winston. Alby and Chuck. Maybe they were taking a different route.
The song ended, for the first time I was hearing music the event ruined every moment of it, I hated music. Suddenly, like a nuclear bomb the centre of the building bursted into fire. The energy and heat pushing back the helicopter, and scalding my skin it was so hot. "Oh shit." Janson cursed, and I could only agree that had been an 'oh shit' explosion. I scrambled over Janson clinging onto the door, as I leant out. No! No! There were gladers still in there. The building began to creak, like an ancient man tumbling down the stairs. It feel apart in a ripple effect from the centre of the bomb to the outer edges of the building, each beam making a huge bang as it fell onto the pile.

I grabbed Janson by the shirt, holding my entire body weight through him. "Take me down now!" I screamed above the noise.
He shook his head. "They'll be cranks we cannot afford to go after them."
I heaved him off his arse, snapping the buckle holding him down, I held him over the edge of the helicopter so he was facing the dusty floor miles below. "Take us down or I'll take you down." That got him startled, and cross but he did it, gave the order so I returned him to his seat.

The second the helicopter was an inch off the ground I was out, running on weak legs through the sand towards the rubble of the building. "Thomas!" I screamed, pulling small chunks of brick out of the pile. "Alby! Chuck! Winston!" I kept tearing through the rubble, throwing aside anything I could. My friends were in there, somewhere. I ignored the skin being ripped off my hands, the tears staining my cheeks as my heart leaked its pain. "Newt! Newt! Shucking answer me... Please..." I wept.

I heard a stirring off to the side of me, a hand covered in black bursted through the chunks of cement. I was pulling the man out before a second had passed. It was one of the guards, our guards. His clothes were almost all gone, except for the plastic and metal that bubbled and stank of burning. His hands were only twitching, I knew he was dying even though I had never witnessed anyone die. I think...
I could see his body convulsing from the lack of air, I tugged his helmet off. Immediately regretting it. The skin was scorched with blotchy colours; black, white and red. It looked more like a stew than a face. The eyes, a hollow empty pit of oozing liquid. There was no nose, no lips no hair. The skin was peeling off in thick layers showing gaps of bone. Puss and blood spurting out of blisters.
I vomited into the helmet, then bit into my hand my stomach lurching forwards and backwards. I watched the endless vomit turning black as the liquid plastic diffused into it.

Like a curse I saw images in the sick or in my head I don't know. But I saw horrors, I don't remember. It was in the maze. Blood was splurging and splattering all over the walls, covering the ivy like rain droplets. Grievers body all ravaging on something...someone. The dark coloured hand flopped out of the squash of griever fat. Next to me I saw Newt screaming, Thomas's arms holding him back. A pair of hands round my own waist, the person resisting my kicks and shouts.

Alby was dead.

I fell back spilling the helmet of sick. I couldn't breath. That must have been a memory I lost in the operation. I had seen death before. It ached, like the aftermath of a punch or an extremely bad black eye. I squirmed in the sand, my own body convulsing and contorting form the images, of this man and Alby. Dribble poured down my chin in litres, combining with the tears. Enough to quench the desert wasteland. Every muscle in my body spasmed, as I lay in the sand, the small grains burning into my cheeks, and my gum.

I don't remember much after that.

***

I sat at a desk, papers and notebooks littered around me like a waste heap. Pages and pages of ideas for my new monster. Flicking through documents mindlessly on the laptop I had been given. It was Ava's own laptop.
I hadn't recovered from my share of the scorch. At night I would only see the guard or Alby and in the day I saw Newt, his strong arms encasing Teresa. Or I would spend hours trying to piece the fragment of Janson's speech together. World Catastrophe Killzone Deparment? It made no grammatical sense. Wicked's property? The cure? Why did Ava and Janson want the boys for the cure? Ahhhh! I wanted to tear my eyes out, why? Just why did I have to get fucking amnesia!? Again.

I started again on my design, and crossed the idea of a wolf like monster off the endless list.

I kept thinking of all the pain wicked had caused me, first the glade, now it had lead to this. Feeling hurt and abandoned in the shelter of my rescuer's. They all blamed the cranks but it wasn't them, it was people. Only humans could inflict pure agony, into my youthful heart. Most kids my age, living in a normal world, would be studying for exams, playing sports, building a cv, going to the pubs and clubs. Creating fake id. I was missing out on a life, a normal life, as I procrastinate over building a monster.

That was it. An epiphany had detonated in me. Humans. My monster need to be human like. It needed a head, four limbs and a body. A drive to cause pain and suffering. And it needed to be destructible. I could use recycled flesh from the cranks the guards shot, I could use similar mechanics to the grievers, except these were to be agile and fast to kill as many of wicked's members as possible.

Any idea what the monster is leading to yet?