Thomas grabbed Minho by the arm, "Somehow I have to get through that!" He screamed, nodding towards the rolling pack of Grievers between us and the Cliff. It was a mass of blubber and metal. Spikes and skin. It bore a striking resemblance to a death trap.
Minho and Newt exchanged a long glance.
"They're coming!" Teresa yelled. "We have to do something!"
"You lead," Newt finally said to Minho, his voice, low, quiet, barely more than a whisper. "Make a bloody path for Tommy and the girl. Do it."
Minho nodded. He only needed to be told once. His features hardened as he turned towards the Gladers. "We head straight for the Cliff! Fight through the middle, push the shuckin' things towards the walls. What matters most is getting Tommy and Teresa to the Griever Hole!"
I pulled out my knives readying myself as Minho raised his barbwire wrapped club into the air with one hand a long sliver knife in the other, much like two I was holding. "Ready?" He yelled to Thomas before he pointed the knife at the Grievers and yelled, "Now!"
He ran forward without waiting for a response. Newt and I went after him and the rest followed suit. A tight pack of roaring boys charging ahead into a battle for their lives, weapons raised.
Once you're in battle, you focus on your enemy. You don't take in your surroundings and watch the others. We had to push them to the sides, make an opening. And that was what we were going to do. A Griever had chosen me before I had a chance to do anything. I dodged its metal arm and slashed at its body, not quite sure how exactly one was supposed to disable these things. I supposed as long as I distracted it, moved it towards the side and didn't die in the process. I was good.
So that's what I opted to do. The sounds- the screams, clashes, bangs, moaning wails, spinning saws, engine roars, snapping blades, the screeching sounds of spikes on stone, hair-raising pleas calling for help- it was all drowned out by the sound of my own heart beat as I raced around the back of the Griever, dragging a knife along its side. The thing roared, rearing and snapping at me with pincers. I jabbed my knife into its skin, praying that it hurt, that it did some damage.
It didn't.
A path was clearing as I moved my Griever to the side, as it chased after me. I barely noticed as Tommy ran through with Teresa and what looked like Chuckie. Minho yelled for us to protect them, but I was a bit busy at the moment, dodging the attacks of not one but two Grievers. On slashed at me with a spinning saw. There was blood splattered on the edge. I threw myself towards the other Griever, the one before slashing off its pincers with the metal saw.
That worked out better than I thought it would, but I had to react quickly. It was slashing at me again. I dodged it, this time running towards the Griever, heart pounding, I stabbed it at the base of its arm, hoping to cut off the arm. I slashed angrily, trying to injure it.
A boy to my right screamed in agony as pincers snapped around his waist. I gritted my teeth as something slashed across my back, piercing the skin.
Leaving my two injured Grievers for a moment, I pounced on his, stabbing at the base of the arm that held the boy. Weird yellow good spurted out at me as I did. He screamed, I stabbed and it dropped him as its other arm moved towards me. I dove to the left, the arm slicing through the air where I had been standing not ten seconds ago.
Neither of us said a thing as the boy scrambled to his feet and we took on both his Griever and my two, back to back. I pushed through the injuries, the lacerations on my back and the deep one in my right shoulder. We had to keep fighting. The boy stabbed his spear into the area where I'd been stabbing, at the base of its arm. Pushing down the Griever let out a scream from some mouth I couldn't see as its arm ripped from its socket. It collapsed, its spikes shrinking into its body. He sunk the spear into its body once again, the yellow goo that had spurted out at me bursting from the wound as the monster went berserk, its spike moving in and out of its body, its remaining arms swinging in confusion. And then it went still, slowing as it lost the… yellow goo stuff. I looked at the boy in shock.
We just killed a Griever.
"Look out!" he yelled just in time for me to see a spinning saw coming at me. Shrieking, I fell to the side, the blade passing by me with barely a scratch…though it did put a decent sized hole in my shirt. We tried the same thing on this one. I distracted it, slashing at its body and dodging its arm as he stabbed the spear into its body and ripped the arm out of its socket, digging the spear into its body again, the yellow goo spurting from the wound.
The same thing occurred, the spikes retracting into its body as it screamed before falling limp. "Rip out its arms!" I screamed, hoping that somebody could benefit from the knowledge that it hurts them, even kills them.
The boy and I were separated as a two Griever came at us at once. One advancing on him and the other on me. I hit away its stake like arm, dodging a pair of pincers, but I tripped, falling to the ground, I rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding being skewered like a kebab. I scrambled to my feet just in time to watch as the Griever stopped, suddenly pulling its arms into its body, its lights shutting off as the corridor went quiet.
The Grievers had shut down.
Tommy had done it!
The remaining Gladers stood, dumbfounded, unsure of what had just happened. Our number were significantly smaller now… almost half of what it was. It was a mess of blood and bodies. Human and machine alike. It was a mess. Minho. Newt. Where were they?
Oh, there they were… fine, alive, and good. But what about Tommy? Teresa? How did they do it?
I rushed to the Cliff edge, finding Minho had the same idea. "After you?" I huffed.
He jumped into the hole, disappearing. And I jumped after him.
A line of icy cold shot through me as I enter the Griever Hole. It was like I'd just jumped into freezing cold water. The world went dark around me as my feet thumped onto a slippery surface. It was strange, we were standing in a roughly ten foot high, stone cylinder. Damp and covered in grimy shiny looking oil. It stretched out dozens of yards before it was plunged into darkness. Looking up the space which we'd come through looked like a square window.
"MaC!" Thomas shouted as I tried to regain my footing, stumbling into Minho who was gulping in big breaths of air. I expected I looked much the same way, covered in cuts and sweat, gasping for air. "Are you two okay? What about everybody else?"
"We lost a ton of people…" Minho answered, "It's a mess of blood up there… then they all just shut down." He paused sucking in a really big breath of air before expelling it, "You did it. I can't believe it actually worked."
"Just be glad it did," I said. Minho nodded.
Newt came through then. And then Frypan, Winston, and the others. Before long, eighteen boys joined us in the tunnel making a total of twenty-two Gladers in all. Every last one of us was covered in Griever sludge and human blood, clothes ripped to shreds. Mine had been literally ripped in half, it was extremely uncomfortable and exposing.
"The rest?" Thomas asked nervously.
"Half of us," Newt said, his voice weak, "Dead."
No one said a word for a very long time. Newt's eyes locked with mine, looking like he was trying to make sure I was real. That I was alive.
Minho was the one to break the silence. "You know what?" he said, standing up a bit taller, "Half might've died, but half of us shuckin' lived. And nobody got stung- just like Thomas thought. We've gotta get outta here."
"Let's get outta here," Newt said, "Right now."
"Where do we go?" I questioned, looking around the area.
Thomas pointed down the long tunnel. "I heard the door open down that way," he said.
"Well- let's go," Minho answered. And he turned and started walking without waiting for a response in typical Glader fashion.
Newt nodded, pushing me ahead, "Go walk with Minho, I'll take up the back." I nodded, brushing against this arm before walking quickly to catch up with Minho, leading Newt to usher the other Gladers ahead. Thomas waiting by his side and Teresa waiting for Tommy.
Minho looked at me when I reached him, "What happened to your shirt?" he questioned with an almost smirk.
"Spinning saw," I grumbled, trying to cover up a bit. He snorted.
"You look like klunk"
"You too," I replied dryly. The both of us breaking out into grins, because we were alive. No matter what, we were alive. And we were gonna stay that way. "It's really dark down here," I muttered.
Minho nodded beside me, "Can barely see where we're going."
And the next minute our feet didn't him the ground, I let out a yell as we were now sliding down some sort of slope. I tried to grip something, anything, but the slope was covered in a slick oily goo which smelled awful by the way- like burnt plastic.
Others were screaming as they too, slid down the oily slope. I frantically groped around for something, anything. I couldn't shake this feeling that there was nothing good at the end of this. And as that thought materialized, the smell changed from that of burnt plastic to the strong stench of mildew and rot. I gagged, consciously trying not to throw up on myself.
The tunnel twisted, turning into a rough spiral, I collided with Minho his shoulder connecting with my hip. "Ow!" He grabbed onto my legs as we continued around. I was gonna be sick. I was so gonna be sick. I clung onto Minho's shoulders as we went around and around and around. Nausea burning in the pit of my stomach. The squishing goo up against my body, the circling motion, the smell, all of it.
I screamed when there was no longer a ground and in a split second Minho and I were on the ground, a tangle of limbs and hair. And then someone landed on me, pushing the air out of my lungs. Minho got the guy to his feet, just as someone else came barreling downward, again landing on me. The air I had just gotten back in my lungs pushed out. He got up with a muttered 'sorry' and helped me to my feet. Another person came down, knocking my legs out from under me, I took someone down with me. This time in getting up I hurriedly rushed as far away from the slide as possible.
Many hurriedly rushed to the sides upon reaching the bottom, just to throw up. But soon enough there was twenty-two Gladers at the bottom of the slide, covered in sludge and goo groaning as they got their bearing and began to check out the new digs.
We were a sort of underground chamber big enough to hold nine or ten Homesteads. The place was filled with all sorts of machinery, wires and ducts and computers covered everything. On the wall to my right was a row of forty or so large pods, white… though they bore a resemblance to coffins… Across from that on the other side were large glass doors, although the lighting made it impossible to see what was on the other side.
"Look!" Someone shouted, but I'd already seen it, my breath catching in my throat, I froze. A fear shot throughout me, paralyzing me. Directly in front of us a row of twenty or so tinged windows stretched across the compound, one after the other. Behind each, a person- some men, some women, all of them pale and thin, almost sickly-. All of them sat, observing us, staring through the widow with squinted eyes.
I looked over each one, my breath returning. They looked like they were dead on their feet, angry, starving and sinister shells of what a person is supposed to be. These, half-starved, skinny things without a muscle in their body were the people who'd put us in the Glade, who torn our lives away from us.
They were the Creators.
A/N: DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUU!
Seriously though! THE MOVIE! AHHHHHH!
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