Authors: James Dashner
Thomas already disliked the way things were going. “Well … do you know if any new”—saying
Cranks
didn’t feel right to Thomas—“
people
were brought here in the last day or two? Do you have a register?”
The other guard—short and stocky, his head shaved—cleared his throat, then spit. “Who you lookin’ for? A he or a she?”
“A he,” Thomas answered. “His name is Newt. A little taller than me, blond hair, kinda long. Has a limp.”
The guy spit again. “I might know somethin’. But knowin’ and tellin’ are two different things. You kids look like you got plenty of money. Wanna share?”
Thomas, daring to let himself hope, looked back at Jorge, whose face had tightened in anger.
Minho spoke before Jorge could. “We’ve got money, shuck-face. Now tell us where our friend is.”
The guard jabbed the Launcher toward them a little more fiercely.
“Show me your cash cards or this conversation is over. I want at least a thousand.”
“He’s got it all,” Minho said, jabbing a thumb at Jorge as his eyes lasered in on the guard. “Greedy slinthead.”
Jorge pulled his card out and waved it in the air. “You’ll have to shoot me dead to take this, and you know it won’t do any good without my prints. You’ll get your money,
hermano
. Now show us the way.”
“All right, then,” the man said. “Follow me. And remember, if any of your body parts become detached due to an unfortunate encounter with a Crank, I highly advise you to leave said body part behind and run like hell. Unless it’s a leg, of course.”
He turned on his heels and walked through the opened gate.
The Crank Palace was a horrible, filthy place. The short guard proved to be very talkative, and as they made their way through the chaos of the frightening domain, he provided more information than Thomas ever would’ve asked for.
He described the village for the infected as a huge set of rings within rings, with all the communal areas—cafeteria, infirmary, recreation facilities—located in the middle and then row upon row of poorly built housing encircling them. The Palaces had been conceived as humane options—refuges for the infected until they reached a point where the madness took over. After that they were shipped to remote locations that had been abandoned during the worst of the sun flares. Those who had built the palaces had wanted to give the infected one last shot at a decent life before the end. Projects had sprung up near most remaining cities in the world.
But the well-intended idea had gone very bad. Filling a place with people who had no hope and knew they were about to descend into a rotten, horrific spiral of insanity ended up creating some of the most wretched anarchic zones ever known to man. With the residents well aware that there could be no real punishment or consequences worse than what they already faced, crime rates grew astronomically. And so the developments became havens of debauchery.
As the group walked past home after home—nothing more than shacks that had fallen into disrepair—Thomas imagined how truly awful
it must be to live in such a place. Most windows in the buildings they passed were broken, and their guard explained how it had been a huge mistake to allow glass in the towns at all. It had become the number one source of weaponry. Trash littered the streets, and though he hadn’t spotted any people yet, Thomas felt like he and his friends were being watched from the shadows. In the distance he heard someone yell a few obscenities; then a scream came from another direction, putting Thomas even more on edge.
“Why don’t they just close the place down?” he asked, the first of his group to speak. “I mean—if it’s gotten so bad.”
“Gotten so bad?” the guard asked. “Kid, bad’s a relative term. This is just how it is. What else are you gonna do with these people? You can’t leave ’em hanging out with the healthy folks in the fortressed cities. You can’t just dump ’em in a place full of Cranks way past the Gone and let ’em get eaten alive. And no government’s gotten desperate enough yet to start killing people as soon as they catch the Flare. This is it. And it’s a way for us Immunes to make some good money, since no one else would ever work here.”
His statements left Thomas with a heavy dose of gloom. The world was in pitiful shape. Maybe he
was
being selfish by not helping WICKED complete the tests.
Brenda spoke up—her face had been creased into a look of disgust since they’d entered the town. “Why don’t you just tell it like it is—you let the infected run around this godforsaken place until they’re so bad that your conscience is clean enough to get rid of them.”
“That about wraps ’er up,” the guard responded matter-of-factly. Thomas had a hard time disliking the guy—he mostly just felt sorry for him.
They kept walking, passing row after row of houses, all of them broken, run-down and dirty.
“Where is everybody?” Thomas asked. “I thought this place would be packed wall to wall. And what did you mean earlier about something happening?”
This time the guy with the mustache answered, and it was good to hear another voice for a change. “Some—the lucky ones—are vegging on the Bliss in their homes. But most of them are in the Central Zone, eating or playing or up to no good. They’re sending us too many—and faster than we can ship them out. Add to that the fact that we’re losing Immunes left and right to who-knows-where, decreasing our ratio each and every day, and things were bound to reach a boiling point eventually. Let’s just say this morning the water finally got hot enough.”
“Losing Immunes left and right?” Thomas repeated. It looked like WICKED was tapping every resource they could for more Trials. Even if their doing so had dangerous consequences.
“Yeah, almost half our workers have disappeared over the last couple months. No sign of ’em, no explanations. Which only makes my job a thousand times harder.”
Thomas groaned. “Just keep us away from the crowds and put us somewhere safe until you find Newt.”
“That’s more like it,” Minho added.
The guard merely shrugged. “Okay. As long as I get my money.”
The guards finally stopped two rings away from the Central Zone and told the group to wait. Thomas and the others huddled in some shade behind one of the shacks. The cacophony had grown louder by the minute, and now, so close to most of the Palace’s population, it sounded as if a massive brawl was taking place just around the corner. Thomas hated every second he sat there, waiting, listening to those awful noises, wondering the whole time whether the guard would come back at all, much less with Newt in tow.
About ten minutes after he’d left, two people came out of a little hut across the narrow pathway from them. Thomas’s pulse quickened, and he almost got up and ran before he realized they didn’t look threatening in the least. They were a couple, holding hands, and other than being a little dirty and wearing wrinkled and worn clothes, they seemed sane enough.
The two approached the little group and stopped in front of them. “When did you get here?” the woman asked.
Thomas fumbled for words, but Brenda spoke up.
“We came in with the last group. We’re actually looking for our friend who was with us. His name is Newt—blond hair, has a limp. Have you seen him?”
The man answered as if he’d just heard the dumbest question of his life. “Lots of people with blond hair around here—how’re we supposed to tell who’s who? What kind of name is Newt anyway?”
Minho opened his mouth to respond, but the noise coming from the center of town picked up and everyone turned to look. The couple gave each other concerned looks. Then, without a word, they scurried back inside their home. They closed the door and Thomas heard the click of a lock engaging. A few seconds later a wooden board appeared in their window, covering it up; a small shard of glass fell to the ground outside.
“They look about as happy to be here as we are,” Thomas said.
Jorge grunted. “Real friendly. I think I’ll come back to visit.”
“They obviously haven’t been here long,” Brenda said. “I can’t imagine what that must feel like. Finding out you’re infected, being sent to live with Cranks, seeing what you’re about to become right in front of you.”
Thomas just shook his head slowly. It’d be misery in its purest form.
“Where are those
guards
?” Minho asked, impatience clear in his
tone. “How long does it take to find someone and tell ’em their friends are here?”
Ten minutes later, the two guards reappeared around a corner. Thomas and his friends jumped to their feet.
“What’d you find out?” Minho asked in a rush.
The short one seemed fidgety, his eyes darting, as if he’d lost his brazenness from before, and Thomas wondered if a trip to what they’d called the Central Zone always did that to a person.
His partner answered. “Took some asking around, but I think we found your guy. Looks just like you described, and he turned toward us when we called his name. But …” The guards exchanged an uncomfortable glance.
“But what?” Minho pushed.
“He said—very pointedly, I might add—to tell you guys to get lost.”
The words stabbed Thomas, and he could only imagine how Minho felt.
“Show us where he is,” his friend ordered curtly.
The guard held up his hands. “Did you not hear what I just said?”
“Your job’s not done,” Thomas insisted. He was with Minho one hundred percent. It didn’t matter what Newt had said—if they were this close, they were going to talk to him.
The shorter guard shook his head adamantly. “No way. You asked us to find your friend and we did. Give us our money.”
“Does it look like we’re with him yet?” Jorge asked. “No one makes a dollar until you get us all together.”
Brenda didn’t say anything, but she stood next to Jorge and nodded to show her support. Thomas was relieved that everyone was on board to go to Newt despite the message he’d sent.
The two guards didn’t look happy at all, and they whispered back and forth, arguing.
“Hey!” Minho barked. “If you want that money, let’s go!”
“Fine,” the guard with the mustache finally said. His partner gave him an exasperated glare. “Follow us.”
They turned and headed back in the direction they’d come. Minho was right on their heels, and then everyone else.
As they made their way deeper into the compound, Thomas kept thinking things couldn’t get worse, but they did. The buildings were shabbier,
the streets dirtier. He saw several people lying on the sidewalks, their heads resting on filthy bags or wadded-up pieces of clothing. Each one of them stared at the sky with a glazed expression, a look of oblivious glee. The Bliss was aptly named, Thomas thought.
The guards marched ahead, sweeping their Launchers left and right at anyone who got within a dozen feet of them. At one point they passed a ravaged-looking man—his clothes torn, his hair matted with some kind of black goo, skin covered in rashes—as he fell on a drugged-out teenager and started beating him.
Thomas stopped, wondering if they should help.
“Don’t even think about it,” the short guard said before Thomas could get a word out. “Keep moving.”
“But isn’t it your job to—”
The other guard cut him off. “Shut up and let us handle things. If we meddled in every squabble and catfight we saw, we’d never be done. We’d probably be dead. Those two can sort out their own problems.”
“Just get us to Newt,” Minho said evenly.
They continued, and Thomas tried to ignore the gargled scream that suddenly rose behind them.
Finally, they reached a high wall with a big archway that led to an open area full of people. A sign at the top of the arch proclaimed in bright letters that this was the Central Zone. Thomas couldn’t quite make out what was going on inside, but everyone seemed busy.
The guards stopped, and the one with the mustache addressed the group. “I’m only going to ask once. Are you sure you want to go in there?”
“Yes,” Minho answered quickly.
“Okay, then. Your friend is at the bowling alley. As soon as we point him out, I want our money.”
“Let’s just get moving,” Jorge growled.
They followed the guards through the arch and entered the Central Zone. Then they stopped to take it all in.
The first word that popped into Thomas’s mind was
madhouse
, and he realized that it was almost literally true.
Cranks were everywhere.
They milled about in a circular area several hundred feet across that was bordered by what had apparently once been shops and restaurants and entertainment venues. Most of them were run-down and closed. The majority of the infected didn’t seem quite as gone as the matted-hair fellow they’d seen out in the streets, but there was a frenzied air about the groups of people. To Thomas, everyone’s actions and mannerisms seemed … exaggerated. Some people were laughing hysterically, a wildness in their eyes, as they slapped each other’s backs roughly. Others cried uncontrollably, sobbing all alone on the ground or walking in circles, faces in their hands. Small fights had broken out everywhere, and here and there you’d find a man or woman standing still and screaming at the top of their lungs, faces red and necks corded.
There were also those who huddled in groups, arms folded and heads snapping left and right as if they expected to be attacked at any second. And just as Thomas had seen in the outer rings, some of the Cranks were lost in the haze of the Bliss, smiling as they sat or lay on the ground and ignored the chaos. A few guards walked around, weapons held at the ready, but they were vastly outnumbered.
“Remind me not to buy any real estate here,” Minho quipped.
Thomas couldn’t bring himself to laugh. He was filled with anxiety, and he desperately wanted to get this over with.
“Where’s the bowling alley?” he asked.
“Over this way,” the shorter guard said.
He headed to the left, sticking close to the wall as Thomas and the others followed. Brenda walked beside Thomas, their arms brushing
with every step. He wanted to take her hand, but he didn’t want to make any move that would call attention to himself. Everything about this place was so unpredictable he didn’t want to do anything he didn’t absolutely have to.