The Maze Runner Series Complete Collection (77 page)

Tom?
Teresa called to him.

Yeah
.

You remember those, right?

Yeah
.

You think Grievers are inside?

Thomas realized that was exactly what he thought, but he’d also finally accepted that he could never expect anything. He reasoned it out for a second before he answered.
I don’t know. I mean, the Grievers had
really moist bodies—it’d be hard on them out here
. It seemed like a stupid thing to say, but he was grasping for anything.

Maybe we’re meant to … get inside them
, she said after a pause.
Maybe they
are
the safe haven, or they’ll transport us somewhere
.

Thomas hated the idea, but thought that maybe she was right. He tore his eyes away from the large pods and looked for her. She was already walking toward him. Fortunately, she was alone. He couldn’t handle both her and Brenda right then.

“Hey,” he said out loud, but the wind seemed to carry the sound away before it even left his mouth. He started to reach out for her hand but then pulled it back, almost forgetting how things had changed. She didn’t seem to notice as she walked over to Minho and Newt and nudged both of them in greeting. They turned to face her and Thomas moved closer to conference with them.

“So what do we do?” Minho asked. He gave Teresa an annoyed look like he didn’t want her to be any part of the decision making.

Newt answered. “If those things have bloody Grievers in ’em, we best start gettin’ ready to fight the shuck buggers.”

“What’re you guys talking about?”

Thomas turned to see Harriet and Sonya—it’d been Harriet who’d spoken. And Brenda stood right behind them, with Jorge by her side.

“Oh, great,” Minho muttered. “The two queens of glorious Group B.”

Harriet just acted like she hadn’t heard. “I’m assuming you all saw those pods back in your WICKED chamber, too. They had to be where the Grievers charged up or whatever it was they did.”

“Yeah,” Newt said. “Gotta be that.”

In the sky above, thunder crackled and boomed, and those flashes of light grew brighter. The wind tore at everyone’s clothes and hair and everything smelled wet but dusty—a strange combination. Thomas checked the time again. “We’ve only got twenty-five minutes. We’re
either gonna be fighting Grievers or we need to get inside those big coffins at the right time. Maybe they’re the—”

A sharp hiss cut through the air from all directions. The sound pierced Thomas’s eardrums and he clamped his hands to the sides of his head again. Movement on the perimeter surrounding them caught his attention, and he watched carefully what was happening with the large white pods.

A line of dark blue light had appeared on one side of each container, then expanded as the top half of the object began to move upward, opening on hinges like the lid of a coffin. It made no sound, at least not enough to be heard over the rushing wind and rumbling thunder. Thomas sensed the Gladers and the others slowly moving closer together, forming a tighter knot. Everyone was trying to get as far away from the pods as possible—and soon they were a coiled pack of bodies encircled by the thirty or so rounded white containers.

The lids continued moving until they’d all swung open and dropped to the ground. Something bulky rested inside each vessel. Thomas couldn’t make out much, but from where he stood he couldn’t see anything like the odd appendages of the Grievers. Nothing moved, but he knew not to let his guard down.

Teresa?
he said to her mind. He didn’t dare try talking loudly enough to be heard—but he had to talk to someone or go nuts.

Yeah?

Someone should go take a look. See what’s in it
. He said it, but he really didn’t want to be the one to do it.

Let’s go together
, she said easily.

She surprised him with her courage.
Sometimes you have the worst ideas
, he responded. He’d tried to make it
feel
sarcastic, but he knew the truth of it far more than he wanted to admit to himself. He was terrified.

“Thomas!” Minho called. The wind, still wild, was drowned out by the approaching thunder and lightning now, cracking and exploding in brilliant displays above them and on the horizon. The storm was about to fully beat down its fury on them.

“What?” Thomas yelled back.

“You, me, and Newt! Let’s go check it out!”

Thomas was just about to move when something slipped out of one of the pods. A collective gasp escaped those closest to Thomas, and he turned for a better look. Things were moving in all the pods, things he couldn’t quite understand at first. Whatever they were, they were definitely coming out of their oblong homes. Thomas focused on the pod nearest to him, strained his eyes to discern what exactly he was about to face.

A misshapen arm hung over the edge, and its hand dangled a few inches above the ground. On it were four disfigured fingers—stubs of sickly beige flesh—none of them the same length. They wiggled and grasped for something that wasn’t there, as if the creature inside was searching to get a grip to pull itself out. The arm was covered with wrinkles and lumps, and there was something completely strange right where what passed for an elbow was located. A perfectly rounded protrusion or growth, maybe four inches in diameter, glowing bright orange.

It looked like the thing had a lightbulb glued to its arm.

The monster continued to emerge. A leg flopped out, its foot a fleshy mass, four knobs of toes wriggling as much as its fingers. And on the knee, another one of those impossible orange spheres of light, seemingly growing right out of its skin.

“What is that thing?” Minho shouted over the noise of the surging storm.

No one answered. Thomas was dazed, staring at the creature—
mesmerized and terrified at the same time. He did finally look away long enough to see that similar monsters were coming out of every pod—all at the same pace—then returned his attention to the closest one.

It had somehow gained purchase enough with its right arm and leg to begin pulling the rest of its body out. Thomas looked on in horror as the abominable thing flopped and wiggled until it lurched over the edge of the open pod and stumbled to the ground. Roughly human-shaped, though at least a couple of feet taller than anyone around Thomas, its body was naked and thick, pockmarked and wrinkled. Most disturbing were more of those bulbous growths, maybe two dozen total, spread over the thing’s body and glowing with brilliant orange light. Several on its chest and back. One on each elbow and knee—the bulb on the right knee had busted in a flurry of sparks when the creature landed on the ground—and several sticking out of a big lump of … what had to be a head, though it didn’t have any eyes, nose, mouth or ears. No hair, either.

The monster got to its feet, swayed a bit as it balanced, then turned to face the group of humans. A quick glance around showed that each pod had delivered its creature, all of them now standing in a circle around the Gladers and Group B.

In unison, the creatures raised their arms until they pointed toward the sky. Then, all at once, thin blades shot out of the tips of their stubby fingers, out of their toes, out of their shoulders. The flashes of lightning in the sky glittered off their surface, sharp and gleaming silver. Though there was no sign of any kind of mouth, a deathly, creepy moan emanated from their bodies—it was a sound Thomas could feel more than hear. And it had to be loud to be heard over the terrible thunder.

Maybe Grievers would’ve been better
, Teresa said inside Thomas’s mind.

Well, they’re enough alike that it’s obvious who created these things
, he said back, straining to stay calm.

Minho turned quickly and faced the crowd of still-gaping people surrounding Thomas. “There’s about one for each of us! Grab whatever you got for a weapon!”

Almost as if they’d heard the challenge, the lightbulb creatures started moving, walking forward. Their first couple of steps were lumbering, but then they recovered, growing steady and strong and agile. Coming closer with every step.

Teresa handed Thomas a really long knife, almost a sword. He couldn’t imagine where she’d been hiding these things, but she now held a short dagger in addition to her spear.

As the lighted giants stepped closer and closer, Minho and Harriet spoke to their respective groups, moving them around, positioning them, their shouts and commands torn away by the wind before Thomas could hear anything. He dared take his eyes off the approaching monsters long enough to look at the sky. Tendrils of lightning forked and arced across the bottom of the dark clouds, which seemed to hang only a few dozen feet above them. The acrid smell of electricity permeated the air.

Thomas looked back down, concentrated on the creature closest to him. Minho and Harriet had been able to get the groups to stand together in an almost perfect circle, facing outward. Teresa stood next to Thomas, and he would’ve said something to her if he could’ve thought of anything. He was speechless.

WICKED’s latest abominations were only thirty feet away.

Teresa finally elbowed him in the ribs. He looked to see her pointing at one of the creatures, telling Thomas—making sure he knew—that she’d chosen her foe. He nodded, then gestured toward the one he’d been thinking was his all along.

Twenty-five feet away.

Thomas had the sudden thought that it was a mistake to wait for
them—that they needed to be spread out more. Minho must’ve had the same idea.

“Now!” their leader yelled, a bare and distant bark because of the storm’s sounds. “Charge them!”

A slew of thoughts spun through Thomas’s mind in that instant. Worry for Teresa, despite the changes between them. Worry for Brenda—standing stoically just a few people down the line from him—and regret over how they had barely spoken since being reunited. He imagined her having come all this way only to be killed by a vicious man-made creature. He thought of the Grievers, and his and Chuck and Teresa’s charge back in the Maze to get to the Cliff and the Hole, the Gladers fighting and dying for them so they could punch in the code and stop it all.

He thought of all they’d gone through to arrive at this point, once again facing a biotech army sent by WICKED. He wondered what it all meant, whether it was worth trying to survive anymore. The image of Chuck taking that knife for him popped into his head. And that did it. Snapped him out of those nanoseconds of frozen doubt and fear. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he wielded his huge knife with both hands above his head and rushed forward, straight for his monster.

To his left and right, the others also charged, but he ignored them. He had to, forced himself to. If he couldn’t take care of his own assignment, worrying about others wouldn’t amount to anything.

He closed in. Fifteen feet. Ten feet. Five. The creature had stopped walking, bracing its legs in a fighting stance, hands outstretched, blades pointing directly at Thomas. Those shining orange lights pulsed now, flaring and receding, flaring and receding, as if the hideous thing actually had a heart somewhere inside. It was disturbing to see no face on the monster, but it helped Thomas think of it as nothing more than a machine. Nothing more than a man-made weapon that wanted him dead.

Right before he reached the creature, Thomas made a decision.
He dropped to slide on his knees and shins and swung the swordlike weapon in an arc behind and around him, slamming the blade into the monster’s left leg with a full and powerful two-handed thrust. The knife cut an inch into its skin but then clanked against something hard enough to send a jolt shivering up both of Thomas’s arms.

The creature didn’t move, didn’t retract, didn’t let out any sort of sound, human or inhuman. Instead it swiped downward with both blade-studded hands where Thomas now knelt before it, his sword embedded in the monster’s flesh. Thomas jerked it free and lunged backward just as those blades clattered against each other where his head had been. He fell on his back and scooted away from the creature as it took two steps forward, kicking out with the knives on its feet, barely missing Thomas.

The monster let out a roar this time—a sound almost exactly like the haunted moans of the Grievers—and dropped to the ground, thrashing its arms, trying to impale Thomas. Thomas spun away, rolling three times as he heard metal tips scraping along the dirt-packed ground. He finally took a chance and jumped to his feet, immediately sprinting several yards away before turning around, sword gripped in his hands. The creature was just getting to its own feet, slicing at the air with its stubby bladed fingers.

Thomas sucked in huge gulps of air and could see the others battling in his peripheral vision. Minho jabbing and stabbing with knives in both hands, the monster actually taking steps backward, away from him. Newt scrambling across the ground, the creature he fought lumbering after him, obviously injured. Slowing. Teresa was the closest to him, jumping and dodging and poking her foe with the butt of her spear. Why was she doing that? Her monster seemed to be badly hurt as well.

Thomas pulled his attention back to his own battle. A blur of silver movement made him duck, a wisp of wind in his hair from the swipe
of the creature’s arm. Thomas spun, crouched close to the ground, stabbing at anything he could as the monster pursued him, barely missing him with several more attacks. Thomas connected with one of the orange bulb growths, smashing it in a flash of sparks; the light died instantly. Knowing his luck had to be running short, he dove toward the ground, tucking and rolling again until he sprang to his feet a couple of yards away.

The creature had paused—at least as long as it had taken Thomas to make his escape move—but now it came after him again. An idea formed in Thomas’s mind, and it grew to clarity when he looked back at Teresa’s fight, her creature now moving in jilted, slow attacks. She kept after the bulbs, popping them as they exploded in that same display of fireworks. She’d destroyed at least three-fourths of the odd growths.

The bulbs. All he needed to do was destroy the bulbs. Somehow they were linked to the creature’s power or life or strength. Could it really be that easy?