The Immunity Illness

CHAPTER 6

He ended up on the Cliff by himself. He wasn't sure why, but it felt right to hang his legs over the ledge and gaze at the bottom. It felt right despite having fallen from its slope so recently, despite Teresa having chosen it as a meeting spot. Perhaps the previous events on the location had a meaning he simply didn't understand yet. Perhaps everything had meanings he didn't understand.
       As he sat on the edge of the precipice, Thomas realized he needed a miracle. Minho's death framed itself on a ticking time bomb, and so did his own. Somewhere on the outside of the Dome sat Teresa as well. She'd be living in luxury out there while he suffered in here. His feelings for her morphed. The bonds of their friendship fractured, and he grasped at a word in the air for the phenomenon: loathe.
       He absolutely loathed Teresa Agnes.
       A voice summoned him from afar, growing in agitation. Thomas internally groaned. What now? He peeled himself off the Cliff and turned around, depicting the outline of Minho approaching from the field. His arms were covered in scratch marks and blood. A gash aligned the ridge of his collarbone. Once he caught up to Thomas, he rasped,
       "It's Group B, bro!" He hunched over himself and wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead. "All ten girls just went loony at the farm set up south of here. One minute they were plantin' crops and the next they attacked anyone who came close. To top that off, we lost Aris in the Woods when he went completely feral, clawed the shuck out of me. Something's happening, dude."
       "It's a Variable," Thomas rationalized, unable to meet his level of panic. "WICKED must be tampering with their brains. You should wash those wounds soon and wrap them up before they get infected."
       Minho nodded. "I don't think the Munies heard the ruckus. The farm's pretty secluded."
       "Good that. Take me there."
       He gave Thomas a double take. "You sure you wanna? Gally and Frypan bolted outta there. The girls are totally haywire."
       "I'm positive. We have to see what's going on. What if one of us wakes up foaming at the mouth next?"
       Minho grimaced, but he cocked his head for them to break into a jog. His scratched up arms cried bloody murder as they ventured far across the busy field, catching the eyes of dozens of judgemental Immunes. Yard by yard, the tallgrass thickened into a jungle of woven greenery, submerging them in a nest of sticky heat.
       He heard Group B before he saw it.
       Screeches, wails, and lunacized laughter echoed in the distance. The atmosphere became not so different from the Scorch's, and paranoidly, Thomas heightened his pace alongside Minho. They carved through the long, untamed grass on high alert.
       Occasionally a scream or giggle would startle them, but they met no true obstacle until Thomas spotted the farm's rugged shape. Damp soil scattered itself over upturned seedling crops and makeshift watering cans. The place had been deserted, but it was evident they were not alone.
       Footsteps stomped the tallgrass to Thomas's left, followed by a high pitched hoot. He froze, one foot still outstretched. Minho positioned himself into a fighting stance. Cautiously, he tapped a finger to his ear, indicating for Thomas to listen.
       Heavy breathing. A muffled cough. Thomas knelt low, letting his hands pry through the thicket. When he removed his fingers, they dripped with wet, purplish blood. Its smell hit him: rotten, sweaty, metallic.
       A twig crunched under his foot. The tragic error signaled their pursuer to emerge from her hiding place, and she stood inches in front of Thomas. She'd torn her clothes to shreds, exposing skin dabbled with grotesque injuries beneath.   
       "Harriet?" he piped out, wobbling backward.
       She laughed randomly, and a bloody trickle of drool seeped down her chin when she opened her mouth.
       "It's like she's got the Flare," Minho pronounced in his ear.
       Thomas couldn't fully interpret the reality of that information. He hissed back,
       "Move away...slowly and quietly..."
       Following his own advice, Thomas scooted in the direction they'd come. Harriet eyed them with doglike movements. Her head tilted to the side and she bit her tongue somewhat playfully—that was, if she hadn't pierced it with her teeth.
       "That's it, we're gonna make it," Thomas encouraged, but an eruption of chatter filled the desolate landscape, replacing his own.
       Each sentence possessed a varying sense of insanity or chaos. Harriet's phrase rose above them all, mocking Thomas frenetically,
       "That's it! We're gonna make it!"
       Another person wept,
       "Make it stop! My eyes, my eyes, my eyes!"
       "The Grievers are gonna killllll me!"
       An ear-splitting moan.
       A pointless argument ensued. "You're not nice anymore."
       "Yeah, well you're not nice either!"
       "Wrong, wrong, wrong! It's you who's not nice, not me."
       "No, no, no, you're not nice!"
       "Wrong!"
       The bickering went on in an endless repetition of the latter term. Thomas was mortified. He gestured to Minho, having to shout over the uproar,
       "Run!"
       As if it was a code, it brought all of the Group B girls racing through the thicket in one synchronized sprint. Somehow, Harriet took order of them, waving her hands this way and that to certain individuals. Thomas couldn't escape. The ragged and lunacized ten person assembly cornered them on all sides. Beth had a large patch of her brown hair missing. She itched at the area, which was nothing more than an infected underlayer of skin and vein.
      Cranks. They were Cranks. Yesterday they were normal, and today they were Cranks. There was no denying it any longer despite the impossibility. Minho gripped onto Thomas's elbow to stabilize him while Sonya stumbled into arm's length. Her eyes were bloodshot like Aris's. She staggered in front of him, so close that he could see the murder in her eyes and smell her blood. A minute passed in one second. It swiftly occurred to him then that he wouldn't be able to dodge the pair of bruised knuckles aimed at his face.
       "Watch out!" Minho blurted to him.
       His hands slammed into Thomas's chest and thrust him sideways. Thomas grunted as his spine made contact with the squishy soil. His head collided with a rock-solid object, and the concussion, which had been improving, tripled in agony.
       He stared at the sky. The beautiful blue sky. All at once, colors danced across it in a blurry, throbbing aurora borealis which disappeared when he looked directly at it.
       Thomas tilted his neck to the side. Fuzzily, he concentrated on Minho fistfighting with Sonya. While he was all fist, Sonya preferred to use her nails. Scratch upon scratch scattered its way across Minho's bloodied skin, oozing scarlet. He powered through what must have been an awful sting, targeting his opponent with concentrated blows. Sonya avoided such tactic and lunged forward, grabbing his lacerated arms. She held him in place and kicked him in the shin; Minho howled, crumpling to the ground. The Crank brought its muddy boot into his torso. Then again, even harder. The others organized themselves with the guidance of Harriet, forming a circle around Minho's battered body. Kicks rained down on him repeatedly.
       Get up. Get up. Thomas wasn't sure if he was motivating Minho or himself.
       He fought against the wave of dizziness that accompanied sitting vertically. He dug his sneaker into the wet earth to boost himself to his feet and moaned. One lumbering step, then another. His head capsized under nonexistent water. Floaters danced across his vision. He kept going for Minho. He wouldn't give up on him.
       Three girls jumped in the way, shielding Thomas from his destination. They wore devilish smiles of bloodlust. While the Earth spun in anti-gravitational spirals, he sluggishly jabbed his elbow into one of their jaws. The girl plummeted, whimpering before she hit the ground. The other Cranks squealed like children. A holler exploded from within the group attacking Minho, and it belonged to Harriet, who pushed her way through her gang like they were rag dolls. Her focus locked on Thomas.
       He acted a moment too late. Two sets of fingers connected with his shoulders and roughly swung him around. He lost his balance as a shoe struck his lower back, planting him flat into the damp soil. He screamed. Harriet loomed over him, and he planned to put up a fight. He could take her.
       She contradicted that thought by pressing her shoe onto the back of his neck, pinning his face in the mud.     
       Instant darkness. The wild thud of his heart. Thomas thrashed under her grip.
       The slightest burn in his lungs grew to be massive, and the overwhelming urge for air came with one of the greatest fears that Thomas had ever felt. He was going to suffocate.
       "Time to sleep, pretty boy," Harriet crooned from above.
        He shuddered, tried to shout. No air. He couldn't breathe. He'd never taken into true consideration the pure torture it took to die. All he could think of was getting oxygen into his airway. It became his one and only need.
        Thomas gave in to his last ounce of strength and rotated his body to the left. He rammed himself into Harriet's free leg and quickly, blindly, pounded his foot into her ankle. It would have to falter if he hammered at it enough. She wheezed in pain, which made the boot to his head press on him with twice the strength. His skull seared with excruciating pain.
       Kick. Strike.
       Each time he slammed his heel into Harriet's leg, that rabid need declared its name: oxygen.
       Her ankle gave out with a pop and a scream. When her shoe slid off of his neck, Thomas tore away from the loose soil and gasped unhealthily for air, filtering out the fire in his lungs. Mud cemented onto his face. The bright sun gouged his eyes, but he was so grateful for its rays.
       He kicked Harriet weakly as she whined on the ground, assuming it would have to keep her down. He wiped as much mud off himself as he could.
       The remaining members of Group B had ceased their downpour on Minho. He was barely recognizable underneath the blood, bruises, and mud, and for all the sanity the Cranks lacked, he was probably dead to them. Thomas hoped that wasn't the true case.
       But something was odd. The girls had not only abandoned their mission; they were unmoving. The group was best compared to robotic, lifeless without command. He didn't question it. He crept past their statues and glanced down—Minho's chest rose with steadily wavering, exerted breaths. Thomas crashed to his knees. Sure, he was tired and seeing double, but his every concern aimed at Minho. He reached down and clasped his friend's palm into his own. It gave him a form of reassurance that he couldn't explain. It was a firm, confident statement that they were not going to die today. He held onto that.
       Brown and green weeds poked through Minho's dark hair. Thomas wouldn't be surprised if he'd been dragged through a hedge by the looks of him. His usual olive skin took on a lighter shade too, and that was the embodiment of his worries. He didn't know if Minho could hear him, but he spoke into his ear as if he was listening,
       "I'm going to bring you back to the Woods, all right? You hold on, shank."
       He wrapped his arms under Minho's shoulders and hefted him up from behind. He groaned in his sleep. Panting, Thomas attempted to drag him while walking backward, but that proved to be a strenuous chore. He made slow progress, carrying Minho a yard or so every minute before having to stop for a break or collapse from the vertigo.
       Finally, he reached the trees. He lay Minho in a soft patch of leaves and called out into the empty woodland hoarsely,
       "Gally! Brenda! Frypan!"
       At first, nothing. Then there were shouts far off, progressively becoming audible as: "Thomas, Minho?"
       "Yeah, it's us! Please...get over here!"
       Brenda came racing from the west along with Jorge, while Frypan and Gally came from the east. Jorge was with them? They must have gotten needy in their search for Aris.
       "What's going on? Who did this to you?" Gally demanded.
       "I'll explain it all...after we get Minho some...help. He's over there," Thomas slurred, pointing to where his limp body resided. His eyes watered and he fought to talk through the pain.
       "Oh shuck," Frypan cried when he saw Minho.
       Jorge's eyes widened at the scene. Deciding to take charge, he administered,
       "Brenda, rush and get a strong bandage material. Gally, find that rainwater pail we stored somewhere around here, and Frypan, clear the ground of any sharp twigs or rocks. Thomas, you're not going anywhere. Turn around. I need to see something." Thomas opened his mouth to argue, but Jorge continued cooly, "Now."
       With no alternative options, he staggered one-eighty degrees.
       "Yep, right as I suspected," the man muttered. More forcefully, he instructed, "Brenda, bring extra bandages!"
       She nodded and ducked out of sight.
       "What's...wrong?" he asked Jorge groggily. Straight-faced, he flicked Thomas on the back of his head. "Agh!"
       Jorge held out two fingers in front of him that were coated in blood. "This. This is what's wrong, muchacho."
       He eyed Jorge and grappled for an excuse.
       "So, maybe I got...a little battered up, but I'm fine. What can I do to help Minho?"
       The older man laughed pitifully. "I'm surprised you're still awake. That's a nasty bump you..."
       Thomas tried to keep paying attention, but his stomach turned in on itself. He hobbled a few paces away, bent over, and threw up his insides for the second time in the past twelve hours. Jorge patted him on the back, but it didn't alleviate anything.
       Thomas's adrenaline died down to a dull low. The determination that had energized him drained completely, and he became intimately aware of the fact that his head hurt badly. A wave of fatigue and lightheadedness blanketed over him. There were multiple 'woah's that followed, and Jorge was sharp on his feet, wrapping his arms around him so there was something for him to lean into as he buckled. Thomas mumbled as clearly as he could,
       "Make sure...Minho's...okay."
       "We'll do our best. Right now, you need to sleep. Explanations can come later, but who did this to you?"
       "Harriet," Thomas droned. It became difficult to keep his eyes open.
       "And to Minho?" Jorge drilled impatiently.
       "All...of...them." Thomas understood that he was being draped over a tree root, and then the Woods fell away, distorting into a sunless vacuum.