“What now?” he asked, hating how the whine in his voice gave away his fear. “Go back?”
“Definitely go back,” Teresa answered. “Maybe this was just a test to see if we’d do what we were—”
Minho shushed her, holding a finger to his lips. He looked down, listening. In the dim light coming from behind them, he looked like a phantom.
“Something’s coming,” he said. He pointed at the bars to the left of the brick wall. “From back there.”
Thomas turned to face where Minho indicated and stared into the darkness beyond the fence. He strained to hear. And there it was. Although the four of them weren’t moving, barely even breathing, the scrape of footsteps echoed throughout the tunnel. Thomas thought he heard it coming from behind as well, and he spun around to look. But now the sound was everywhere, seeming to come from all directions. Getting louder.
“Cranks,” Alby whispered. “They throw them in a creepy jail under their own building. Nice.”
Shapes were coming into view to match the scuffing of footfalls. Bodies.
“I think they must keep them somewhere else, actually,” Minho said. “Or they would’ve been pressed against the bars while we walked down here. I think they just released them like wild animals to pay us a visit.”
Moans and indecipherable murmurings broke out among the crowd of oncoming Cranks, increasing rapidly. Thomas and his friends had definitely been spotted.
And then, like a switch had been flipped, the room filled with thunderous sound, deafening. Screams and cries of anguish. Roars. Slapping footsteps as they rushed toward the bars. Thomas shook with a drowning fear as all around them, Cranks crashed against the fence, bodies upon bodies pressing against those who’d made it first. Arms reached through the bars, hands clasping and unclasping as they tried in vain to grab Thomas and the others.
Thomas stood in the very center of the passageway, Teresa right beside him—Alby and Minho were a few feet away. Alby had his back to the brick wall, jerking his head left to right, left to right, trying to take it all in. Minho was in front of him, in a fighting stance, as if that would do any good if the bars gave way to the press of the crowd.
Thomas looked at the Cranks, all of them so far past the Gone that he felt equal parts terror and pity. The creatures’ eyes emanated an emptiness like he’d never seen, and scratches and torn flesh covered their faces and arms. Their clothes were filthy, bloody, ripped. Some screamed, some sobbed, tears streaming down their faces. Others spoke, harshly and rapidly, the words impossible to make out. All of them reaching, reaching, as if Thomas and the others were their only hope to escape the horrific disease that had ruined their minds.
One woman suddenly appeared, having fought her way to the front. Her face relatively clean, she stared straight at Thomas, her lips working as if she was trying to figure out what to say. And then she was speaking, her voice hitching with tremors.
“My babies my babies my babies my babies my babies my babies.” Those two words, over and over. She wept the entire time, then abruptly attacked the bars like a rabid gorilla, throwing her body against the fence viciously until she finally fell down. It looked like she’d knocked herself out. Other Cranks stepped on the woman as they took her place. Thomas felt a crushing sadness, a black despair that filled his chest.
“I think we’ve learned our lesson!” Alby shouted. “Head back, now!”
Thomas shook his head. The horror of their surroundings had hypnotized him in a way, frozen him in disbelief. And that was what it was. Even after watching his dad degenerate into an angry shell of a man, even after all the stories he’d heard over the years, nothing could have prepared him for this. He couldn’t possibly believe it until seeing it for himself right now.
“Thomas, go!” Minho shouted. They were lined up next to him, all of them standing in the center of the path, staying well out of the way of the outstretched arms of the Cranks.
Thomas nodded, not as afraid as he’d been. Just sinking ever deeper into that black feeling. Had this happened to his mom? Had she cried for her baby over and over in her madness? His feet felt attached to the gravel under him. He couldn’t move.
“Thomas,” Teresa whispered into his ear. “It’s okay. This. This is why we’re here. We’re going to help them find a cure. Save people from this.”
Her voice lit a fire in him. Made him feel something. He turned, started walking back the way they’d come. He didn’t need to look to know that Teresa was right behind him. Her hand was on the small of his back as if she alone were pushing him forward. Cranks filled the tunnel on both sides, a never-ending mass of them, the iron bars the only thing keeping them from tearing apart their next meal.
Thomas looked at the ones on the left. The ones on the right. They were all different, and he tried to focus on one thing that made each an individual: a face, hair color, body type. Because in all other ways, they’d become one. A raving mass of lunacy, completely unaware of their own actions.
Thomas looked straight ahead and saw someone standing in his path just a few feet away. He gasped, stopped. Teresa bumped into him from behind. Fear lodged in his throat, choking him.
It was a man. He looked nothing like the Cranks behind the bars, but he also didn’t appear to be well. His blond hair was dirty and uncombed, his clothes rumpled, his eyes bloodshot. But he had no wounds that Thomas could see, and he stood straight and still, calm. The strangest thing of all, though, was that he held a small chalkboard in the crook of one arm. Without speaking, he pulled it out and used the piece of chalk in his other hand to write on it. Then he held it up for the group to read. The three words seemed to glow in the dim light:
WICKED is good.
224.10.20 | 3:14 a.m.
The stranger pointed at the chalkboard and nodded solemnly, his lips quivering as if he might cry. He brought the board back down to rest in his arm again.
Thomas was just about to speak when the man turned around and began to walk. Thomas didn’t know what else to do but follow—the only other choice was to go deeper into the Crank pits again. To each side, the Cranks wailed and screamed and gnashed their teeth, arms reaching, reaching. They’d almost become background noise to Thomas, his focus was so riveted on the stranger in front of him.
Thomas followed the man, passing through the gated tunnel, until he realized the awful sounds of the infected had faded. Finally the man reached the gate leading back into the main tunnel, opened it, and stepped through. He waited for Thomas and the others to do the same, then closed it. The guards, still where they’d left them, watched the whole sequence of events transpire; then one of them stepped forward, picked up the chain, and locked it back up. The sounds of the Cranks were now distant echoes that could have been almost anything.
Thomas and his friends stood packed closely together, an instinctive circle of protection. Alby and Minho were quieter than they’d ever been, and Teresa looked as shaken as Thomas felt. He couldn’t take his eyes off the man with the weird sign. WICKED is good.
As Thomas pondered it, the man walked closer to his little group until he stood only a couple of feet from them. He took a second to gaze into the eyes of each of them in turn; then he spoke for the first time.
“You’re probably wondering who I am,” he said. His voice was unsettling. Too…cheerful to fit the circumstances. “As well you should. You’ve seen the burden that I must bear, the weight that I must carry around with me. Three words, my friends. Only three words. But I hope tonight has taught you that they are the most important three words in the world.”
“Who are you?” Alby asked, the question they were all thinking—certainly Thomas was. “Do you…work here?”
The man nodded. “My name is John Michael. I…” He paused to cough, pressing his hand to his chest. “I was so…essential to this organization. Once. Once upon a time. It was me. It was…I…who gathered the survivors. The leaders. Gathered them here. I had the idea, my friends. I…had the…idea!” The last word came out in
a shout, spit flying from his mouth.
Thomas took a step backward, the others moving right with him.
“But then, you see,” John Michael continued, his eyes a little wilder, his demeanor a little more ruffled, “then I caught the Flare. The…damned…Flare. I fought so hard to help our fellow humans.” His head drooped and tears trickled down his cheeks. “It’s not fair that I should be the one to catch it. Soon I’ll be living with…” His gaze found its way past them, through them, and focused on the cages on the other side of the tunnel. The pits.
“But then…No,” he said. “No, we won’t allow such an undignified ending for me. Not for me. Not for the man who started the Post-Flares Coalition, fought for its survival, preached its importance. Would you throw someone like that into those pits? I ask you, now. Would you?”
The man was becoming hysterical, staring straight at Thomas. “Would…you?”
Thomas shook his head adamantly, finding himself more afraid now than he had been all day.
John Michael moved a half step closer to the group, a shuffle that was slightly off balance. His whole face glistened with tears.
“I’m not here to ask you any favors,” he said. “I’m here to tell you there’s no choice in the matter. It’s your…obligation to help people like me. Help future people like me. Do you understand?” He emphasized the last sentence with a heart-wrenching sadness.
The guards nearby did nothing, just stood like they’d been carved from wax. The shadows made it impossible to see their eyes.
“We…understand,” Teresa said in a far steadier voice than Thomas would have been able to muster. “We’re sorry you’re infected. Most of our parents got sick also, so we know what it’s like.”
The man’s face suddenly transformed into a hideous trembling red mask. His eyes bulged as he erupted into rage and began to spew a tirade of anger.
“You have no idea what it’s like!” he screamed, his voice cracking. “How could you be trying to escape, running away from our chance to cure!”
The man was barely holding it together. Thomas didn’t know how much more he could take of the meltdown. Minho stepped past Thomas and put himself directly in front of John Michael. Shockingly, the guards did nothing to interfere.
“We weren’t going anywhere,” Minho said, trying poorly to steady his voice. “And it doesn’t seem right to treat us like this.”
“Who do you think you—” In midsentence the man sprang forward with arms outstretched, reaching for Minho’s throat. He caught him before Minho could move, both hands clasping the boy’s neck as they fell to the ground. John Michael quickly scrambled on top of him, then put all his weight on Minho’s throat, pressing him down.
Minho kicked, arched his back, tore at the man’s hands. All the while making a strangled choking sound. Thomas had started moving to help even though he had no idea what to do, but Alby knocked him out of the way and dove, crashing shoulder-first into John Michael, knocking him off Minho, who sat up, heaving for breath.
Thomas watched as Alby and John Michael rolled over a couple of times, each struggling to be on top. Then the man was straddling Alby just as he had Minho. Thomas was unable to move before Minho was on his feet, running to rescue his friend. Minho toppled John Michael, his momentum slamming the man to the ground.
The guards broke out of their stupor and moved in to stop the sudden violence.
“All right,” the female guard said, her voice calm. “That’s enough. He’s obviously not well.”
Neither Minho nor Alby made one move that suggested they’d heard a word she said.
The guard cocked her gun, then yelled in a much louder voice, “Stop! Everyone!”
Thomas and Teresa managed to grab their friends around the chest and drag them away from the fallen man. Soon they were all standing there, working to catch their breath, looking down at the grown man who now lay on the ground weak and childlike, bleeding from the nose with a swollen lip. Then, shocking everyone once again—even the guards, by the looks of it—he pushed himself onto his knees and clasped his hands together, held them out in front of his chest, fingers intertwined so tightly they shone white.
“Please,” he said in a trembling voice. “Please don’t judge me. Please save me. If not me, those who come after. Please, I’m begging you. Please, please, please.” His every word was a whimper now, tears streaming from his face as if a faucet flowed behind his eyes. His shoulders shook, his arms and hands shook, his chest lurched with heavy sobs.
“Please, please save us. Please find us a cure.” Almost a whisper now. His eyes slowly closed; he slumped back to sit on his haunches. “Please, please, please, please.” Each word came out between sobs, tremors quaking his body.
Then, out of the darkness, Randall appeared, as if he’d been watching the whole thing from deep in the shadows. He walked forward, not saying a word until he stood directly over John Michael.
“This is what the world has come to,” Randall said. “Unless you’re immune, of course, and until we have a cure. Otherwise, there are two choices. Become one of those…things you saw in the cages, or end it all before you reach the Gone, end your life. Which this good man has asked me to do when the time seems right. I hope you can appreciate the effort it must have taken him to put together a few coherent sentences tonight.” He jerked his head at the guards. “Take them back in. I think our old friend has reached his end date.”
Randall pulled a gun out of his waistband and cocked it.
“What’re you going to do?” Thomas asked.
Randall didn’t reply, which was answer enough.
224.10.20 | 4:01 a.m.
No one spoke. Not a word. They walked into the WICKED complex and got checked in. Thomas and his friends remained stone silent. The two guards accompanied them to an elevator and they rode it up several floors, then walked down a few halls. Eventually they got to another elevator and took that up as well. Minho and Alby were escorted off the elevator first by the male guard. They exited the car with barely more than a nod of goodbye each, their eyes filled with sadness. Thomas and Teresa nodded back and waited quietly for the doors to close. Thomas rode the remaining floors consumed with his own thoughts.
Finally, after what seemed like an endlessly long journey, Thomas and Teresa stood in front of the doors to their rooms, the female guard next to them.
“Here we are,” she said, the first words spoken since the tunnel. And they were lighthearted enough to anger Thomas.
“How could he do that?” he said, cringing at how loud his voice sounded in the confines of the hallway. “Just shoot a man in the back of the head?” And slap a kid who’s barely five years old, he wanted to add, but didn’t.
The woman sighed, out of some deep frustration that seemed too complicated to understand. “Mr. Michael himself, the man who made it possible for all of us to be here today, asked him to.” She opened Thomas’s door. “Come on, now. Bedtime. It might be a while before you and your friends can have another get-together, okay? Now get some shut-eye.”
“How long?” Thomas asked, surprised by that sudden announcement. In all that had happened, it hadn’t occurred to him that he might not see his friends again anytime soon.
“Couple years, they tell me” was her response. “There’s plenty of work to do, and everyone needs a full night’s sleep. Just…no more parties for the time being. It’s for your own safety.” She turned away and left in a hurry.
Thomas went into his room and closed the door, then leaned back against it, staring at the dull interior in which he’d lived since coming to WICKED. Despite all the horrors of the night, the guard’s parting had been the toughest to bear.
Couple years, the woman had said. Then his earlier worry came back to hit him. What if they took away his meetings with Teresa? Or the job that had been dangled in front of them, building the maze? Ms. McVoy had said WICKED could use all the help available to them. Surely tonight didn’t change that.
He went to his bed and
lay down, but he couldn’t sleep. His clock told him it would soon be time for breakfast, and his mind was churning with all he’d seen that night. He closed his eyes and thought through all the goods and evils of this place they called WICKED. Thought of the Cranks he’d been forced so close to only hours earlier—their empty eyes, their torn clothes, their hollow cries of misery. They were human, but at the same time the furthest thing from it. He thought of John Michael and the pitiful end to his life.
He thought of the Flare. The stupid Flare.
And WICKED wanted to find a cure for it. Wanted him to help them. Shouldn’t he want to? His head throbbed by the time the knock came for breakfast. It was Dr. Paige.
Thomas asked her if she knew about the night’s events.
She only smiled a very sad smile.
225.05.11 | 6:13 p.m.
A few months later, Thomas had one of the worst days ever.
It started with more medical tests than he’d had in a while. Blood taken, of course, but plasma also, followed by a full forty-five minutes on the treadmill with what seemed like hundreds of sensors attached to his body. Throughout the whole experience his stomach hurt. It felt like he was being stabbed there with knives, and it only got worse as the day wore on. A headache joined in the fun shortly after, and forced him to excuse himself from Mr. Glanville’s class early. He didn’t appreciate the disapproving glance that earned him. Then Ms. Denton had sent him a note saying she’d been sorry to see him miss his session, the underlying message clear.
Ever since the supposed “escape” attempt, his teachers and the staff members had seemed a little more distant. Even Dr. Paige, who’d always been so nice to him—her smile didn’t feel as genuine. And her eyes always had something behind them, like she knew a thousand things that he didn’t, and that part of her wanted to share.
But Thomas would’ve gladly accepted stomach cramps and a splitting headache every day if he could only see his friends again. His chest felt tight every time he thought of their names. How much fun he’d had on those precious few nights together, when the loneliness of being a subject of WICKED had receded, just for a while. Even the meetings with Teresa had stopped lately, really worrying him that the job inside the cavern was off also.