The Immunity Illness

CHAPTER 14

Droplets splattered onto his face. When he stirred, the stormy night sky greeted him above. Thomas gripped a fallen log to sturdy himself and swayed upright, disoriented and drowsy.
       Stop knocking me out! he complained to Teresa. She had hallucinations, telepathy, and the ability to make him pass out. That was a dangerous power over him.
       He wasn't sure where Minho was. Or Aris. Thomas wobbled through the underbrush and lost himself in the darkness. He scurried under an ancient tree for protection from the harsh rain and cupped his hands over his mouth.
       "Minho!" he shouted.
       He peered into the gloom, discouraged, and clutched his arms around his torso. Fortunately, a shadow moved in the distance. Its husky, bitter yell traveled through the wind.
       "What the shuck did you do, Thomas! Why did I pass out?"
       Oops. He didn't account for an explanation until Minho arrived in plain view.
       "I talked to Aris," he said.
       "And you didn't signal me?"
       "He was in a rush and I never got the chance to."
       "What did he say? How're you still standing?"
       Thomas anxiously bounced on the balls of his feet. "Teresa got into his head. He was trying to warn us about something before she made us faint. I gotta go find him."
       He pinpointed a clearing through the trees. His knowledge of direction wasn't so perfect at night, but he saw a dot of firelight and charged after it; it would lead him right out of the Woods.
       "Thomas, wait!" Minho disputed, but he didn't break his stride.
       Thomas bolted through the heavy rain, blinking droplets out of his eyes. He cut himself on twigs and branches, spiny leaves and bark. The firelight he'd tracked resulted in not being firelight at all—it was the twinkling embers of a lit cigar, smoked by a leathery older man who had sought shelter underneath the trees. After escaping the prison of the Woods, he navigated the Horizon with much less difficulty.
       Thomas scurried into the camp, consulting strangers in tents if they'd seen a scrawny, disturbed teenager running amuck.
       "No."
       "Nope."
       "Sorry, hun."
       "I ain't seen nothing in this weather, boy."
      On approaching his fifth person near the Cliff, a woman educated him,
      "I heard one kid running past who was talking mad things to himself. I poked my head around and saw him going down there." She pointed to the slope leading to the beach.
       Thomas thanked her and jogged out of the tent city, onto the face of the rocky protrusion. "Aris!" he hollered out.
       It was pitch black all around. The wind rabidly whipped at him, watering his eyes to the point where he stopped trying to wipe at them. Far below, the rising tides rampaged the false ocean. Something bad was brewing in the weather forecast—something signed with a kiss by WICKED. He bellowed once more, but Teresa probably didn't want Aris to be found. What was Thomas doing? He'd left Minho in the middle of the Woods to fend for himself. A powerful shriek of air rocked him forward. No going back. The man-made whiplash grinded at his ankles, constantly knocking him off balance. The rain's thin sheets developed into hail, and as sharp chunks of ice pelted onto his skin, he sprinted.
       He slipped down the slope and clumsily guided himself across the beach by extending one hand against the cliffside. Yards away, the outline of the cave came into visibility. Only a dozen more feet and he could take cover. He trudged a few more steps before pitching forward over something large and solid.
       A rock. It had to be a rock.
       But when he looked back, it was a body. Coated in sand, curled up against the Cliff wall. Dark hair, lean figure. Thomas scooped his hand over his mouth, releasing a strangled gurgle.
       "Not you too. Why you too?" he whispered to himself.     
       He shrank lower to the ground.
       Dead. Aris was dead.
       He didn't know how or why and he hadn't been able to save him. He couldn't save anyone. Crying would have felt right, but he couldn't bring himself to. Only numbness.
       Hail the size of quarters pricked at his skin, giving him no choice but to wrench his eyes from the crippled body and bound for the cave. He went inside, limping until his groping hands slammed into the back wall. That was where he collapsed.
       A neutral voice blended with the drip of the water falling from the ceiling. "Who's there?"
       Thomas buried his head in his knees, irritated that he couldn't be alone after a spectacle so awful.
       "Hello?" the voice continued, growing fearful.
       "You go first. Name?" Thomas's words flowed out deep and gruff.
       The unseeable figure spoke almost too quietly to hear. "I'm Luke. Luke Freeman."
       "Luke," Thomas said, testing the name on his tongue. "I'm Thomas."
       "Thomas." The boy hesitated. "Are you from Denver?"
       He considered tossing Luke a wry comeback, but he decided against it. "No. I'm what you guys call a 'WICKED kid'. Maybe you remember me. Where're you from?"
       "Salt Lake City." Luke's breath caught in his throat suddenly, like he'd made a major inference. "I think I do remember you. Didn't you trade off your watch on the first day with some other kids?"
       "Yup."
       A silence lapsed between them. Finally, Luke quizzed him,
       "How old are you?"
       "Sixteen, allegedly."
       "Nice. I'm seventeen."
       Thomas snorted amidst his shaken stupor, seeking out humor to free himself from a deep cavity of despair. "You're not gonna question the 'allegedly' I threw in there?"
       "Birth certificate screw-ups happen. I figured you had your reasons."
       Thomas wished he could read the stranger's face. He mumbled back,
       "Too many reasons to count, pal."
       A wet splash echoed against the cave's entrance. Another one. Louder. Larger. Thomas rotated toward the noise as the sound of an incoming wave rumbled outside. The sand vibrated beneath his feet, reacting to a powerful force building up its height and vehemence. It muted all else, pushing closer. Thomas barely emitted a warning before the wave hit.
       The impacting smack was the worst. A curtain of water invaded the skinny entrance, rushing up to his knees in the blink of an eye. Scrambling to his feet, he quickly realized that he and Luke would drown if they didn't escape to higher ground. The Chancellor's Board would do anything to keep Thomas on his feet, filled with adrenaline.
       "Move! We gotta get out of here!" he screamed, pressing against the flow of the belting water. Luke found him in the darkness and clutched onto his arm, replying,
       "Is the beach gonna flood over?"
       A second wall of the ocean crashed into the cave, slapping them backward in a calculated punch. Thomas landed flat in an icy puddle of water, bruising his tailbone on a rock. He retook Luke's wrist and hauled him along. They swam partially to get to the entrance.
       "This whole place is going under, man!" he exclaimed, passing them through the arch and out of the death trap cavern.
       The glow of the moon illuminated the shore, showcasing the mammoth waves brewing on the horizon. The two of them fought to stay afloat like bobbing toys in a giant's bath. Luke started for the cliffside.
       "The slope's all muddy," he calculated, becoming distraught. He turned to Thomas. "It'll be no cakewalk to climb."
       "I'll take a hard climb over drowning!"
       Behind Luke, the body of Aris flopped against the rock wall, morbidly dancing in the water. Thomas had an abrupt urge to gag. They were going to have to pass him up. There was no way to avoid him.
       A massive wave soared high in the distance. They half sprinted, half swam in the opposite direction, fleeing toward the slope. Thomas inched around Aris without looking at him. He held his breath the entire time. Luke obviously saw the body, yet he didn't question it. They waded in gritty water slightly over their waists.
       The slope's loose soil absorbed their shoes when they tried to scale it. Luke ripped a foot out of the brown gunk and cussed. He aimed for a different tactic by stomping flat on the mud and speeding forward. The use of compression battled the quicksand's reaction time, and Thomas did the same. Together, they tediously climbed out of the water.
       It was a miracle in itself when Luke lifted them both onto dry land. The befriended stranger looked so confident in that moment that Thomas almost forgot about Aris, left down below for the ocean to consume. Luke inhaled a rough breath and bent over himself, commenting,
       "We did it."
       Thomas moved to give him a fist bump. "That's the last time we take cover in a cave, huh?"
       A bit delirious, Luke laughed, nodding with him. He said,
       "I'm never going near the ocean again."
       They scanned the landscape before them and made personal deductions about how to proceed. Thomas eventually confessed,
       "I've got a friend who's probably looking for me. Do you have somewhere to go?"
       Luke brushed his thick curls off his face. "I don't know. Uh, Thomas?"
       "What?"
       "You didn't...kill that person on the beach, did you?"
       "No."
       "Oh. Did you know him?"      
       Thomas didn't want to answer. Saying it would make it true. But then his mouth moved.
       "His name was Aris Jones," he said. "He was a decent guy, but I don't think the trauma from WICKED ever left him."
       "I'm sorry," Luke expressed sincerely.
       "Me too."
       His new ally frowned. He glanced past Thomas. "Are those your friends?"
       He pivoted to spot a pair of silhouettes running toward them from the camp—Isaac and Iris.