Chapter 26

As soon as our lips parted, the homestead went into chaos. I could feel the building shake we more grieves stuck their claws and metal spikes into every wall and nobody bothered being silent after the first griever made contact with the building.

Boys in every room where screaming and Teresa had stopped muffling her cries so she was furiously sobbing in the middle of the room after Thomas made her get away from the wall.

Alby, Chuck,Minho, Thomas and Teresa where all huddled in the very centre of the room while Newt and I decided to stay on the bed together. If I was going to be taken by a griever I wanted to have my last breathing moments in the arms of the only person I could truly love in the bed where I had spent my nights curled up besides him.

"Are you scared of death?" I whispered suddenly to Newt who moved his head slightly so he could look at me.

"I think I'm more scared of loosing you." He whispered in my ear then placed a soft kiss on the side of my neck.

"I think I'm gonna throw up before I see the grievers." Minho muttered in an attempt to lighten the mood.

"We'll be okay." I whispered as I laced my hand with Newts and rested them on my leg. It was a lie. We all knew that tonight was the end of someone's life. A body would be joining the other corpses in the dead heads and despite how horrible it was to think, everyone was hoping it was somebody else and not themselves.

I was hoping it wasn't anyone in the room with me but I didn't want anyone to die. Nobody in this place wanted to be here. Everyone wanted to escape and be free in the world but I had a feeling the world wouldn't be the same if we ever got out. I didn't remember a lot of my previous life before I was taken by WICKED but I knew something bad had happened.

Newt didn't say anything after my comment and even if he wanted to he couldn't because the silence that had settled around the room was interrupted by the door slamming open and a dark, brooding figure standing in the entry.

"Gally? Slim it and get over here before they hear you." Alby hissed but Gally wasn't paying any attention to him.

"I warned you. They'll take one a night before we're all DEAD!" He shouted the second sentence but whispered the first as he stared into my soul.

"Gally what are you doing?" I whispered as he walked into the room and to the closest boarded up window was.

Sweat was covering his forehead and running down his face as he started pulling at the wooden planks that covered the windows. Newt jumped up from the bed as soon as Gally took the first plank from the window and exposed us to the grievers and the grey sky.

Newt tried grabbing Gally to force him to move away from the window but he wasn't having it and swung the plank into the side of Newt's face. He crumbled to the floor, unconscious now just as a metal claw used the opening through the window to snake inside.

It was huge and undeniably threatening as it started jabbing around the room. My worst fear happened before my eyes as the mechanical arm grabbed Newt's leg and started pulling him out of the window.

I screamed and grabbed onto Newt to keep him in the room and I felt myself slipping as the griever relentlessly tried pulling him out of the room.

Gally stood to the side watching before my glare reached him and he seemed to snap out of it. He lunged at the arm and landed on top of it.

Taken my surprise, the griever released Newt and I took the opportunity to grab Newt and throw his still unconscious form under our bed where I hoped he would be safer. He had blood running down his face and a huge gash on the side of his face but other than that he didn't seem to have any other major injuries.

His leg was already bruising from the grievers harsh grip but it didn't look like he had any broken bones or been stung.

Gally was grunting as the griever arm tried throwing him off but he didn't give up and clung to the metal as if it was a life line which was quite ironic because it was actually the opposite.

Suddenly, the arm stopped moving all together and I thought it had been powered down by something or lost its power but I was wrong. I didn't expect it and I don't think Gally did either but the arm quickly retracted from the room, taking Gally with it.

He screamed as he was flung out of the window before landing on the grievers gruesome body. I watched in horror as the griever started rolling away and Gally's body came in and out of sight as it moved towards the entrance and exit of the maze.

I watched his body sink into the body of the death machine before it disappeared completely. Every griever that had entered the Glade quickly exited through the four doors in the walls but nobody exited the homestead.

I immediately went to check on Newt under the bed who still had his eyes closed. Alby left the room to go and check on everybody and got the Med-jacks to work in every room. Me being one of them was assigned to Newt, or more like I argued with everyone who tried to get me to take my eyes off of him.

He woke up after twenty minutes but looked disoriented and swayed slightly as he tried to stand up so I pushed him back on the bed.

"They're gone." I whispered

"What happened? And why are we whispering?" He whispered

I chuckled and explained what Gally had done.

"Gally saved me?" He asked sceptically

"And died for you." I mumbled

Newt nodded then lay back down on the bed for a moments silence before he asked some more questions.

"He said he warned you before I was knocked out. How?" He asked

I sighed before telling him about how Gally had escaped the slammer and talked to me in the deadheads. Newt wasn't happy when I told him about how he had found me and I hadn't chosen to tell him about the kiss while he was still suffering from the head injury.

After every injured person was sorted out, Alby ordered everyone to sleep in the homestead for the night in case the Grievers returned. I stayed with Newt, Minho, Alby, Chuck, Thomas and Teresa in our room for the night and Alby got the bed. The rest of us slept in different parts of the room.

There was me and Newt curled up together on the side furthest from the door, Minho was in the corner closest to the bed and Chuck, Thomas and Teresa where sleeping in a small group in the centre of the day.

Sleep didn't find me easily but when it did I wished it hadn't for I was greeted with another memory.

I was running through blindingly white corridors. There where large windows in most of the walls that revealed different people sleeping in beds but they didn't look peaceful. I was running but wasn't getting tired, relying on mostly adrenaline to push my legs forwards so I could turn the next corners of the never ending corridors.

Loud footfalls of boots where gaining on me from behind but I just pushed myself to run faster. U had to see him one more time. I had to try and escape one final time.

I got to his door. It was locked shut but that didn't surprise me. I shoved my elbow into the small window in the door that I could see him threw and pulled it back out again before the glass could sink into my skin. The heavy boots behind me where getting closer so I had to act fast and hope he would open the damn door quicker.

Suddenly, a pair of dark brown eyes where staring straight at me and without a word we both pulled down on the door handles on either side of the door. We had learnt that doing that was the only way to get the doors open without a key.

The door sprung open and Newt quickly pulled me inside but we didn't talk. He ran to his bed and dropped onto his knees so he could grab something from underneath while I went to a corner of the room, removed a tile from the white walls and found a small hole where a hammer and five nails where hidden.

I grabbed the hammer and nails as Newt ran to the door and covered the broken window with a wooden plank. I put the nails in place and started hammering them into the door in the same places as we usually did this.

Once the board was secure we both backed away from the door, I returned the hammer to the hiding hole behind the tile and he sat on the bed in the corner of his room.

"They're taking me for testing tomorrow." I said as I sat on his bed next to him.

"They've been talking about Caleb more often. They wouldn't shut up about him during my testing today. He's been acting up again you know." He said

"I don't know why he still fights. He's been here for six years now, he should just give up." I sighed as I thought about what the other doctors had been saying about my brothers latest escape attempt.

"We aren't going to stop fighting them. Why should he?" Newt asked

Before I could answer the door broke down and a guard grabbed my arm to pull me out of the door. I didn't even struggle as they pulled me out and stared at Newt. My best friend winked at me and before I was taken out of the room completely I shouted over my shoulder,

"Same time next week!"

Then I was back to reality. I woke up breathing heavily and my eyes wide and alert but everyone was still sleeping in the room. Newt was holding my waist lightly and muttered something in his sleep as I tried to get up but his hold tightened as I tried to move away.

Eventually, I managed to remove his arm from around my waist so I could look outside through the badly boarded up window to see the damage the grievers had caused the previous night. Some of the crops in the garden were smoking and the wooden boards near the builders workspace was on fire but it didn't look like it was spreading.

All thoughts of my dream went out of my head as I accessed the damage and started thinking of plans that would protect us from the grievers that I was sure would return at night again.

'They'll take one a night before we're all DEAD.'

Gally's warning rang around in my head while I stared at the destruction. Somehow I knew, despite how crazy he had seemed while saying them, his words where true and that was what was scaring me the most. Instead of waking all of the boys up while there was nothing to do for them, I decided to wake Alby and ask him what he thought we should do about the situation we where in.

"I think we should work on enforcing the homestead so that it will be harder for the grievers to get in. It might also be a good distraction for the boys." I said as we walked through the Glade and started putting out the fires and clearing the smoke from the crops.

"We can get the builders and bricknicks to do add more protection to the walls and roof and get the slippers to get supplies from the trees." Alby offered.

"We should probably start collecting food as well, seeing as the grievers are programmed to kill us, ruining our food supply could be a part of that. The track-hoes and slicers could collect the food in while the others are building." I said as I threw water onto a smaller fire.

"We should probably get the runners up so they can get to the maze, now seems like as good a time as any to get them working hard." I said

Alby nodded and we both went back to the homestead as some people were waking up. Alby started waking everybody up on one floor and I went to the one above. The last room I reached was the room I had slept in and everyone was still sleeping soundly, everyone looked peaceful while they slept which made my job a little bit funnier.

"GET UP YOU LAZY ASSES WE'VE GOT WORK TO DO AND MAZES TO SEARCH!" I shouted.

Everyone jumped up, startled by my yelling and Minho groaned as he saw me laughing my booty off at their annoyed expressions. Alby wasn't any nicer to the people downstairs and made everyone start working immediately so everyone was in a bad mood as they worked.

Alby told me and the other med-jacks that only one of us should work at our actual jobs since every hand was needed for reinforcing the homestead. I didn't complain, happy that I could be more productive so we left Clint to the homestead since he was the Keeper.

Minho gathered all of the runners to start searching the maze again and they packed their bags with more supplies since Minho decided staying in the maze at night didn't make a difference when the grievers could still get to us in the Glade. Alby hadn't liked the idea but Minho was persuasive and made him allow the runner to stay out over night.

We could all feel the nerves and tension the grievers visit the night before had left behind but all of us where prepared to do everything we could to make sure we survived.