The Maze Runner Series Complete Collection (6 page)

A large, bulbous creature the size of a cow but with no distinct shape twisted and seethed along the ground in the corridor outside. It climbed the opposite wall, then leaped at the thick-glassed window with a loud thump. Thomas shrieked before he could stop himself, jerked away from the window—but the thing bounced backward, leaving the glass undamaged.

Thomas sucked in two huge breaths and leaned in once again. It
was too dark to make out clearly, but odd lights flashed from an unknown source, revealing blurs of silver spikes and glistening flesh. Wicked instrument-tipped appendages protruded from its body like arms: a saw blade, a set of shears, long rods whose purpose could only be guessed.

The creature was a horrific mix of animal and machine, and seemed to realize it was being observed, seemed to know what lay inside the walls of the Glade, seemed to want to get inside and feast on human flesh. Thomas felt an icy terror blossom in his chest, expand like a tumor, making it hard to breathe. Even with the memory wipe, he felt sure he’d never seen something so truly awful.

He stepped back, the courage he’d felt the previous evening melting away.

“What is that thing?” he asked. Something shivered in his gut, and he wondered if he’d ever be able to eat again.

“Grievers, we call ’em,” Newt answered. “Nasty bugger, eh? Just be glad the Grievers only come
out
at night. Be thankful for these walls.”

Thomas swallowed, wondering how he could ever go out there. His desire to become a Runner had taken a major blow. But he had to do it. Somehow he
knew
he had to do it. It was such an odd thing to feel, especially after what he’d just seen.

Newt looked at the window absently. “Now you know what bloody lurks in the Maze, my friend. Now you know this isn’t joke time. You’ve been sent to the Glade, Greenie, and we’ll be expectin’ ya to survive and help us do what we’ve been sent here to do.”

“And what’s that?” Thomas asked, even though he was terrified to hear the answer.

Newt turned to look him dead in the eye. The first traces of dawn had crept up on them, and Thomas could see every detail of Newt’s face, his skin tight, his brow creased.

“Find our way out, Greenie,” Newt said. “Solve the buggin’ Maze and find our way home.”

A couple of hours later, the doors having reopened, rumbling and grumbling and shaking the ground until they were finished, Thomas sat at a worn, tilted picnic table outside the Homestead. All he could think about was the Grievers, what their purpose could be, what they did out there during the night. What it would be like to be attacked by something so terrible.

He tried to get the image out of his head, move on to something else. The Runners. They’d just left without saying a word to anybody, bolting into the Maze at full speed and disappearing around corners. He pictured them in his mind as he picked at his eggs and bacon with a fork, speaking to no one, not even Chuck, who ate silently next to him. The poor guy had exhausted himself trying to start a conversation with Thomas, who’d refused to respond. All he wanted was to be left alone.

He just didn’t get it; his brain was on overload trying to compute the sheer impossibility of the situation. How could a maze, with walls so massive and tall, be so big that dozens of kids hadn’t been able to solve it after who knew how long trying? How could such a structure exist? And more importantly,
why?
What could possibly be the purpose of such a thing? Why were they all there? How
long
had they been there?

Try as he might to avoid it, his mind still kept wandering back to the image of the vicious Griever. Its phantom brother seemed to leap at him every time he blinked or rubbed his eyes.

Thomas knew he was a smart kid—he somehow felt it in his bones. But nothing about this place made any sense. Except for one thing. He was supposed to be a Runner. Why did he feel that so strongly? And even now, after seeing what lived in the maze?

A tap on his shoulder jarred him from his thoughts; he looked up to see Alby standing behind him, arms folded.

“Ain’t you lookin’ fresh?” Alby said. “Get a nice view out the window this morning?”

Thomas stood, hoping the time for answers had come—or maybe hoping for a distraction from his gloomy thoughts. “Enough to make me want to learn about this place,” he said, hoping to avoid provoking the temper he’d seen flare in this guy the day before.

Alby nodded. “Me and you, shank. The Tour begins now.” He started to move but then stopped, holding up a finger. “Ain’t no questions till the end, you get me? Ain’t got time to jaw with you all day.”

“But …” Thomas stopped when Alby’s eyebrows shot up. Why did the guy have to be such a jerk? “But tell me everything—I wanna know everything.” He’d decided the night before not to tell anyone else how strangely familiar the place seemed, the odd feeling that he’d been there before—that he could
remember
things about it. Sharing that seemed like a very bad idea.

“I’ll tell ya what I wanna tell ya, Greenie. Let’s go.”

“Can I come?” Chuck asked from the table.

Alby reached down and tweaked the boy’s ear.

“Ow!” Chuck shrieked.

“Ain’t you got a job, slinthead?” Alby asked. “Lots of sloppin’ to do?”

Chuck rolled his eyes, then looked at Thomas. “Have fun.”

“I’ll try.” He suddenly felt sorry for Chuck, wished people would treat the kid better. But there was nothing he could do about it—it was time to go.

He walked away with Alby, hoping the Tour had officially begun.

They started at the Box, which was closed at the moment—double doors of metal lying flat on the ground, covered in white paint, faded and cracked. The day had brightened considerably, the shadows stretching in the opposite direction from what Thomas had seen yesterday. He still hadn’t spotted the sun, but it looked like it was about to pop over the eastern wall at any minute.

Alby pointed down at the doors. “This here’s the Box. Once a month, we get a Newbie like you, never fails. Once a
week
, we get supplies, clothes, some food. Ain’t needin’ a lot—pretty much run ourselves in the Glade.”

Thomas nodded, his whole body itching with the desire to ask questions.
I need some tape to put over my mouth
, he thought.

“We don’t know jack about the Box, you get me?” Alby continued. “Where it came from, how it gets here, who’s in charge. The shanks that sent us here ain’t told us nothin’. We got all the electricity we need, grow and raise most of our food, get clothes and such. Tried to send a slinthead Greenie back in the Box one time—thing wouldn’t move till we took him out.”

Thomas wondered what lay under the doors when the Box wasn’t there, but held his tongue. He felt such a mixture of emotions—curiosity, frustration, wonder—all laced with the lingering horror of seeing the Griever that morning.

Alby kept talking, never bothering to look Thomas in the eye. “Glade’s cut into four sections.” He held up his fingers as he counted off the next four words. “Gardens, Blood House, Homestead, Deadheads. You got that?”

Thomas hesitated, then shook his head, confused.

Alby’s eyelids fluttered briefly as he continued; he looked like he could think of a thousand things he’d rather be doing right then. He pointed to the northeast corner, where the fields and fruit trees were located. “Gardens—where we grow the crops. Water’s pumped in through pipes in the ground—always has been, or we’d have starved to death a long time ago. Never rains here. Never.” He pointed to the southeast corner, at the animal pens and barn. “Blood House—where we raise and slaughter animals.” He pointed at the pitiful living quarters. “Homestead—stupid place is twice as big than when the first of us got here because we keep addin’ to it when they send us wood and klunk. Ain’t pretty, but it works. Most of us sleep outside anyway.”

Thomas felt dizzy. So many questions splintered his mind he couldn’t keep them straight.

Alby pointed to the southwest corner, the forest area fronted with several sickly trees and benches. “Call that the Deadheads. Graveyard’s back in that corner, in the thicker woods. Ain’t much else. You can go there to sit and rest, hang out, whatever.” He cleared his throat, as if wanting to change subjects. “You’ll spend the next two weeks working one day apiece for our different job Keepers—until we know what you’re best at. Slopper, Bricknick, Bagger, Track-hoe—somethin’ll stick, always does. Come on.”

Alby walked toward the South Door, located between what he’d called the Deadheads and the Blood House. Thomas followed, wrinkling
his nose up at the sudden smell of dirt and manure coming from the animal pens.
Graveyard?
he thought.
Why do they need a graveyard in a place full of teenagers?
That disturbed him even more than not knowing some of the words Alby kept saying—words like
Slopper
and
Bagger
—that didn’t sound so good. He came as close to interrupting Alby as he’d done so far, but willed his mouth shut.

Frustrated, he turned his attention to the pens in the Blood House area.

Several cows nibbled and chewed at a trough full of greenish hay. Pigs lounged in a muddy pit, an occasionally flickering tail the only sign they were alive. Another pen held sheep, and there were chicken coops and turkey cages as well. Workers bustled about the area, looking as if they’d spent their whole lives on a farm.

Why do I remember these animals?
Thomas wondered. Nothing about them seemed new or interesting—he knew what they were called, what they normally ate, what they looked like. Why was stuff like that still lodged in his memory, but not
where
he’d seen animals before, or with whom? His memory loss was baffling in its complexity.

Alby pointed to the large barn in the back corner, its red paint long faded to a dull rust color. “Back there’s where the Slicers work. Nasty stuff, that. Nasty. If you like blood, you can be a Slicer.”

Thomas shook his head. Slicer didn’t sound good at all. As they kept walking, he focused his attention on the other side of the Glade, the section Alby had called the Deadheads. The trees grew thicker and denser the farther back in the corner they went, more alive and full of leaves. Dark shadows filled the depths of the wooded area, despite the time of day. Thomas looked up, squinting to see that the sun was finally visible, though it looked odd—more orange than it should be. It hit him that this was yet another example of the odd selective memory in his mind.

He returned his gaze to the Deadheads, a glowing disk still floating in his vision. Blinking to clear it away, he suddenly caught the red lights again, flickering and skittering about deep in the darkness of the woods.
What
are
those things?
he wondered, irritated that Alby hadn’t answered him earlier. The secrecy was very annoying.

Alby stopped walking, and Thomas was surprised to see they’d reached the South Door; the two walls bracketing the exit towered above them. The thick slabs of gray stone were cracked and covered in ivy, as ancient as anything Thomas could imagine. He craned his neck to see the top of the walls far above; his mind spun with the odd sensation that he was looking
down
, not up. He staggered back a step, awed once again by the structure of his new home, then finally returned his attention to Alby, who had his back to the exit.

“Out there’s the Maze.” Alby jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, then paused. Thomas stared in that direction, through the gap in the walls that served as an exit from the Glade. The corridors out there looked much the same as the ones he’d seen from the window by the East Door early that morning. This thought gave him a chill, made him wonder if a Griever might come charging toward them at any minute. He took a step backward before realizing what he was doing.
Calm down
, he chided himself, embarrassed.

Alby continued. “Two years, I’ve been here. Ain’t none been here longer. The few before me are already dead.” Thomas felt his eyes widen, his heart quicken. “Two years we’ve tried to solve this thing, no luck. Shuckin’ walls move out there at night just as much as these here doors. Mappin’ it out ain’t easy, ain’t easy nohow.” He nodded toward the concrete-blocked building into which the Runners had disappeared the night before.

Another stab of pain sliced through Thomas’s head—there were too many things to compute at once. They’d been here two years? The
walls moved out in the Maze? How many had died? He stepped forward, wanting to see the Maze for himself, as if the answers were printed on the walls out there.

Alby held out a hand and pushed Thomas in the chest, sent him stumbling backward. “Ain’t no goin’ out there, shank.”

Thomas had to suppress his pride. “Why not?”

“You think I sent Newt to ya before the wake-up just for kicks? Freak, that’s the Number One Rule, the only one you’ll never be forgiven for breaking. Ain’t nobody—
nobody
—allowed in the Maze except the Runners. Break that rule, and if you ain’t killed by the Grievers, we’ll kill you ourselves, you get me?”

Thomas nodded, grumbling inside, sure that Alby was exaggerating. Hoping that he was. Either way, if he’d had any doubt about what he’d told Chuck the night before, it had now completely vanished. He wanted to be a Runner. He
would
be a Runner. Deep inside he knew he had to go out there, into the Maze. Despite everything he’d learned and witnessed firsthand, it called to him as much as hunger or thirst.

A movement up on the left wall of the South Door caught his attention. Startled, he reacted quickly, looking just in time to see a flash of silver. A patch of ivy shook as the thing disappeared into it.

Thomas pointed up at the wall. “What was that?” he asked before he could be shut down again.

Alby didn’t bother looking. “No questions till the end, shank. How many times I gotta tell ya?” He paused, then let out a sigh. “Beetle blades—it’s how the Creators watch us. You better not—”

He was cut off by a booming, ringing alarm that sounded from all directions. Thomas clamped his hands to his ears, looking around as the siren blared, his heart about to thump its way out of his chest. But when he focused back on Alby, he stopped.