Chapter Twenty

Everyone was talking at once, demanding to know why we had stopped. It had been a while since anyone was attacked, but we all knew we weren't out of danger yet; every second we remained in the tunnel, we risked having our heads turned into bowling balls. So why had Teresa told us to stop?

Remembering the Maze, I wondered if we might have come to a dead end. No, that couldn't be it. The whole point of the Maze was to present us with an unsolvable puzzle; that was why none of its constantly changing corridors ever led anywhere, why it had taken Rachel getting stung by a Griever and going through the Changing for us to learn that the only way we could escape was to jump through an invisible Hole. Our current situation was completely different. We now knew we were being tested and we had been given specific instructions to cross the Scorch and reach the safe haven. And how could we do that if we couldn't get out of the tunnel?

"There's something right in front of me," Teresa said when she could get a word in edgeways. "Feels like a flight of stairs."

"Leading upwards or downwards?" asked Harriet.

"Upwards. And we'd better get up them before anyone else is attacked."

None of us needed telling twice; we had no desire to stick around and wait for another of us to end up minus her head. So, as soon as we heard Teresa's footsteps clanging up the stairs, we all followed, determined not to stop until we reached the exit. We had no idea what awaited us outside, but anything seemed preferable to our current situation, which consisted of us stumbling blindly through the dark while an unknown horror decapitated us one by one. So we ran up the stairs, our footsteps echoing in the tunnel, driven on by a desire to get out of here as quickly as possible . . .

Suddenly, from the very back of the group, I heard a sound I'd already heard three times since entering the tunnel, the sound of someone screaming and thrashing about in agony. I did not allow myself to think about who it might be; I just kept on running, my mind focused solely on getting to the top of the stairs and, hopefully, finding the way out of this fuzzing tunnel. Killer metal balls or no killer metal balls, I'd had just about enough of dark places and I hoped that wherever the tunnel led would be well lit. Of course, I should be careful what I wish for, but I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

As before, the screams of the girl who'd been attacked ended in a choking gurgle; her thrashing stopped seconds later. Then came the sound of the ball containing her severed head rolling down the stairs.

Shortly after this, Teresa called another halt. "These stairs don't go any higher," she explained, as several of us demanded to know why we had stopped again. "In fact, they don't seem to go anywhere at all. There's a wall right in front of me and the ceiling's low enough for me to touch it . . ." She paused, then added: "When you arrived in your Glade, did you come up through a hole in the ground?"

"Yes," replied Neffy, who seemed to be somewhere near Teresa. "In the Box. Why do you want to know?"

"Because, unless there's a hidden door somewhere, the only way out is through the ceiling. Which means there should be something to release a hatch." I heard Teresa feeling all over the walls and ceiling, trying to find a switch or something that would open up the hatch and allow us to escape from this tunnel. And not before time. We had all had enough of feeling our way in the dark; we wanted to see daylight or at least be somewhere that wasn't pitch black. I was just wondering how long we had been down here when I heard a click which told me Teresa had found what she was looking (or, rather, feeling) for. Seconds later, light flooded the tunnel.

The light was brighter than any I could remember seeing before, even allowing for the fact that I'd grown accustomed to the darkness. I instinctively covered my eyes with my hands, but this was not enough to shield them completely; I could still see the light through my fingers. And the heat - it felt as though we were standing in front of a very hot oven. Fortunately, someone had the sense to close the hatch before we all got roasted. We then had a brief discussion, which ended with Teresa saying she would use her pack to wedge the hatch open a crack while our eyes adjusted to the light. Once there was no longer any danger of us being blinded, she would try opening the hatch all the way.

"Who put you in charge?" asked Neffy.

Teresa ignored her. "I'm opening the hatch now!" she called down to us. "Everyone, shield your eyes!"

I covered my eyes again, this time taking the precaution of closing them as well. Once more, light and heat flooded the tunnel. I waited for maybe a minute or two before I risked opening my eyes and peeking out from behind my hands; the light was still bright, but not as dazzling as it had been when Teresa first opened the hatch. And it wasn't long before my vision had cleared completely, allowing me to take stock of my surroundings.

Everything around us was metal: the walls, the stairs and the ceiling. Three glowing lines, broken only by Teresa's pack, marked the location of the hatch through which we must climb to reach the outside world. In the meantime, I looked round to see who was missing. I already knew we'd lost Bianca and, as I scanned each of the others in turn, I quickly established that Eve, Alison and Jody also hadn't made it through the tunnel, though I had no way of knowing the order in which the last three had been attacked. All I knew was that something metallic had engulfed the heads of four girls, before separating them from their respective bodies. Like I said before, horrible. I hoped we would be able to get out of here before anyone else was attacked.

As I stood there, waiting until someone, most likely Teresa - she seemed to be taking charge more and more, even though Harriet was our designated leader - decided to risk opening the hatch all the way, a sobering thought struck me. Our group had been reduced to twenty-five, the fewest of us there had ever been, and chances were our numbers would dwindle further before we reached the safe haven.

"I don't know about anyone else," Teresa said after a while, "but I'm not staying here to get my head turned into a shuck ball of metal." She was using Group A's slang; "shuck" and "shucking" were their equivalent of "fuzzing". Turning to the rest of us, she began to outline her plan. "We've already established that it's hot out there, so we'll need something to protect us from the sun. Our blankets. We'll wrap them around ourselves and hopefully it'll stop us from getting burned. I'll go through first with Harriet and Sonya. The rest of you, get ready to follow." She retrieved her pack from where it was holding the hatch open, plunging us into darkness once more.

I heard the sound of three packs being unzipped, followed a few moments later by Teresa's voice saying: "OK, I'm ready. Harriet and Sonya?" They both replied in the affirmative. "We're going through now," Teresa added. Seconds later, the wave of light and heat returned as the blanket-wrapped Harriet, Sonya and Teresa exited the tunnel.

Already, girls were unzipping their packs, taking out their blankets (which were designed to be very compact when folded) and opening them out to wrap around themselves. I followed suit, draping my blanket over myself so that every part of me was covered except my face. None of us failed to cover up, including those with dark skin; even though they were less prone to sunburn than fair-skinned people like Sonya or Flossie, the heat could still get them. We waited, adjusting our blankets to make sure we wouldn't trip over them, wondering what we were going to find when we stepped outside.

As it turned out, we didn't have long to wait before Harriet's face appeared above us, her head covered with her blanket. "Hey," she said. "Are you sticks just gonna hang around all day? Come on - we've got to get going."

And, one by one, we exited the tunnel - and entered a wasteland.

It was immediately apparent that the Scorch had been well named; we were in the middle of a barren desert, a vast expanse of sand and rocks that stretched towards the horizon. The sun was almost directly overhead, baking the parched landscape with its merciless heat, which meant it was already mid morning. Clearly we had been in the tunnel a lot longer than we had realised, unless . . . I remembered learning that the world was divided into time zones, though, as always, I had no memory of where I had learned this information; it was just something I knew. We must have crossed a few time zones when we went through the Flat Trans, which would explain why it didn't feel as though we had been in the tunnel for as long as the sun's position in the sky suggested. In any case, now that we'd found our way out of the tunnel, we had to trek across miles of desert to get to our destination.

"What do we do now?" asked Emily, pulling her blanket up over her face so that only her eyes were visible.

"Start walking," replied Sonya. "And hope we find shelter before it gets too hot."

And so, with our blankets to protect us from the heat of the sun, we began walking across the Scorch, heading towards the cluster of buildings (a town or possibly even a city) that we could see on the horizon. We had no way of knowing what we would find when we got there, no way of knowing who, if anyone, lived there, but it and the mountains beyond were the only landmarks we could see. So, rather than risk getting lost in the desert, we walked in the direction of the city. Well I say we walked, but, as the morning wore on and the sun climbed in the sky, the heat became unbearable and we slowed to a crawl. Already people were gasping for water, but we had to ration it, knowing it would be a long time before we could refill our water bottles - if we could find a source of water in this barren wasteland. I was just wondering what it would feel like to die of thirst when Harriet called a halt and told us we could all drink one mouthful from our bottles.

One mouthful of water did little to quench the raging thirst from which we were suffering, but, since we could not afford to waste water right now, none of us drank more than that. We were just putting our bottles back in our packs when we saw two figures coming towards us from the direction of the city, the first people apart from the twenty-five of us we had seen since emerging from the tunnel. I watched the approaching strangers warily, remembering what the woman on the bus had said about the Scorch being full of Cranks, remembering how utterly insane the Cranks I had seen so far were. As a precaution, I pulled my machete out of my belt and held it in my hand, ready to use it if I had to. Glancing round at the others, I saw that most of them, including Teresa, whose weapon was a knife lashed to the end of a wooden shaft, had also armed themselves.

As the two strangers drew level with us, I saw that one of them was male and one was female and that every part of them except their hands was covered, presumably as protection against the sun. They walked around us, studying us closely, though they kept their distance from our weapons. It was the woman who spoke first. "Who are you?" she demanded in a gruff voice. "Where did you come from?"

"Back that way," Teresa replied, pointing in the direction from which we had just come.

"There's nothing there but sand and rocks," said the man. "And, if you'd come in a Berg, someone would've seen it land. So how did you girls get into the Scorch?"

"It's a long story," said Teresa. And, with that, she began to explain as much as she could about WICKED and the mission they had sent us on. "I was originally with a group of boys," she explained. "But I was moved to this group . . ." She indicated the rest of us with a wave of her free hand. ". . . a few days ago, just before we were sent on this mission. We're supposed to kill one of the boys from my old group, or we won't be allowed into the safe haven . . ." She paused for a moment, looking steadily at the two strangers. "We were given a few hours' head start on the boys," she went on. "But we need to get to the outskirts of the city without being seen. Do you know a way?"

The woman nodded. "WICKED have tunnels all over the Scorch; we came through one of them." She gestured towards the man standing beside her. "Come. We'll show you."

The two strangers led us to an area strewn with rocks which initially didn't look all that different from all the other areas strewn with rocks that we'd passed since arriving in the Scorch, halting next to a flat rock. Again, there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary about this rock, until I looked closer and saw that someone had carved WICKED into the stone. The man lifted it up to reveal a metal ladder leading down into a hole in the ground. Taking a flashlight out of his pocket, he descended the ladder, followed by his companion.

We immediately began to debate whether we should trust these people and follow them into the tunnel or continue to take our chances above ground. In the end, however, the need to get away from the relentless heat won out. "We'd better pack our blankets away," said Sonya. "They'll only get in the way when we climb down the ladder. And, besides, we won't need protecting from the sun down there." And so we removed the blankets we had been using as makeshift robes, folding them up and putting them back in our packs, though, mindful of the sun's heat, none of us did so until just before we stepped onto the first rung of the ladder.

Before long, all of us were at the bottom of the ladder, looking up at the square of light which marked the entrance. From the nervous looks that were being exchanged, I knew people were thinking of the last tunnel we had travelled through, of the unrelenting darkness, of the deadly metal balls which had killed four of us. Hopefully, this tunnel would be safer, but, after everything we had been through, none of us were sure of anything any more, including the motives of the man and woman who were the first people we had met since entering the Scorch. For all we knew, they were leading us into a trap that might be even more deadly than the one we had encountered in the first tunnel.

Teresa summed it up best. As the man switched on his flashlight and told us to follow him and the woman, she folded her arms and glared at him. "I don't know about anyone else," she said, "but I'm not going anywhere until you tell us who you are."

"We're Cranks," the man replied.

I wondered if I'd heard him correctly. The Cranks I had seen up to now had been completely insane, driven mad by the virus that was destroying their brains, their bodies covered with injuries, some of which I suspected were self-inflicted. These people still had the capacity for rational thought, though, in a way, that made them potentially more dangerous than Cranks in whom the Flare had progressed to the point where they were little more than animals in human form. Being able to think rationally meant they were also capable of tricking us and luring us into danger.

"We're Cranks." It was the woman who spoke this time. "Both of us." She nodded towards the man. "Not past the Gone yet, but still Cranks. Tested positive for the Flare, got shipped out to the Scorch and here we are."

"What's the Gone?" I asked, though I had a fairly good idea what the answer would be.

"It means the Flare has eaten away at your brain until all your humanity is gone," the woman replied. "You lose the ability to feel compassion and empathy, become little more than an animal. You'll see what that's like if you ever visit our fair city."

"But you might not live long enough to remember it," the man added. "Especially if you run into any Cranks in the advanced stages. And there are plenty of them about. So, if you're planning on coming our way, you'd best watch your step, learn who to trust and who to avoid. You'd also better be prepared to use your weapons," he added. "It's kill or be killed out here. There's no reasoning with someone who's past the Gone."

Having no other choice in the matter, we elected to let the two Cranks lead us through the tunnel. Thoughts that they could be leading us into an ambush, that they could have an army of Cranks waiting for us at the other end crossed our minds, but we had our weapons to fight with if it came to that. In the meantime, we followed the Cranks as we walked through miles of underground passages, grateful that this tunnel, unlike the one we'd travelled through earlier, wasn't completely dark; the beam from the man's flashlight saw to that. We also didn't have to contend with a whispering voice telling us that we would die if we didn't turn back. And, needless to say, none of us lost our heads to anything, least of all a ball of metal.

In short, the journey through this tunnel was uneventful. We eventually reached another stairway leading upwards, the exit or entrance depending on your point of view. "This is it," said the woman. "The city is only a couple of days away if you'd care to pay us a visit, meet a few of our fellow Cranks."

"Thanks, but no thanks," said Harriet. "We've seen Cranks before and we don't want to visit a whole city of them." The rest of us nodded in agreement.

The woman shrugged. "Suit yourselves. We're heading back," she added, gesturing towards the man. And, with that, the Cranks started making their way up the stairs, without saying another word, without even telling us their names.