My leg gives off a painful throb at regular intervals. I still sit on the Griever and let it carry me. Instead of taking the direct route home through the scorch, we walk north. If we were lucky, we would come across a river there in two days.
On our long excursions through the barren landscape, my thoughts wander, as always, to the time in the maze. Once again I relive the moment when the others had appointed me as their leader.
We had been in this clearing for four weeks now. During the first week, the boy I had first approached cut himself on a knife while harvesting tomatoes. Two days later he was dead. Blood poisoning.
The others had become very nervous. They had never seen a dead person before. We buried him in a corner of our prison. Another boy, Nikola, made a cross for him. He laboriously scratched the boy's name into the wood. Nick. Four simple letters and yet they stood for this boy whose body now lay before us in the ground.
After we buried Nick, we all sat together around a bonfire. No one dared to speak. When the fire was out, we went to sleep. I couldn't sleep that night and lay awake among all the others. What if this was not a coincidence?
My fears were confirmed the following week. Emmy died. She had tried to climb the walls and had climbed up the ivy that towered against them. About halfway up, she faltered and paused for a long time. Then she suddenly let go of the ivy and fell down. Death by fall. Just as her tattoo had predicted. We also buried Emmy. Some of the others threw up when they saw Emmy's body with her shattered body.
For Ella it was too much, the following week she grabbed a knife and ran into the middle of the glade. She screamed loudly. She accused the builders of the maze. Is this what you want, it still rings in my ears. I and three others had tried to stop her, but we were not fast enough. Death by suicide.
After her funeral, we decided to introduce a new job. Gravedigger. Two boys, including Nikola, and a girl were from now on responsible for recovering and burying the dead, so that the others would not be too shocked by the sight of the dead.
By now we were much more attuned and tasks were found for all of us. Some take care of the fields, some take care of the animals, some cooking, some cleaning, some building.
Everyone was very nervous to the counter, a tally sheet of the past days that I scraped into the wall, today marked the end of the fourth week of our stay here. If the deaths were not coincidences, someone would probably die today. But who?
Shouting made me look up from the ladder I was working on. Two boys were beating wildly at each other. I immediately jumped up and ran toward the boys.
"Hey! Stop!", I yelled as loud as I could, but it didn't help, they kept going. In the fading light, I see something flash in one boy's hand. The next moment the knife is in the other boy's chest. Death by stab wound.
"Why did you do that?", I shouted at the living boy. He looked at me, dumbfounded.
"What... What happened?" he asked me, confused. I didn't let that bother me. He had just killed another boy. He was dangerous. If I didn't do something now, many more would be killed. So I grabbed him and dragged him to the house that stood next to the forest. Behind it was a chamber in the ground that could be closed with a door. I took the key that was in the door and locked Theo in.
While the gravediggers took care of Mike, I called the others together. We needed rules and a new job.
When everyone had gathered and sat down on the floor in a semicircle in front of me, I stood in front of them.
"Because of today's incident, it has become obvious that we need rules. My proposal is as follows:
Anyone who causes harm to another will be imprisoned. The duration will be determined by the severity of the injury." The others looked at me in silence. Therefore, I continued, "To enforce this rule, we should introduce the job of security from now on. We will decide who will do this job tomorrow. Do you have any questions?" I look around. A girl raises her hand and I nod for her to speak.
"How do we decide who is part of security?" A good question.
"Since security has to be stronger and faster than the others at best, tomorrow we will test which of us is the fastest and strongest." The others nodded in agreement. Nikola came over to us. He waited patiently until we had talked things over. The dead could wait. An older boy of perhaps sixteen came forward.
"We should appoint a leader," he announced. Many of the others eagerly agreed with him. I seemed to be one of the oldest here, exactly we don't know, which is why I was chosen as the leader.
"At least since your tattoo says you will survive, we don't have to worry about the leader dying after a few weeks as well." When Nikola uttered this, we actually all had to laugh a little. Humor of the desperate. When no one said anything for a while, Nikola took the floor again.
"We are ready," he said only briefly and went ahead to the cemetery. Everyone rose slowly and followed Nikola silently. In front of Mike's grave we stopped. For several minutes we stood silently in front of his grave and then went to the bonfire. Only when the fire was extinguished did the first ones begin to speak again. I knew that I would not be able to sleep now, so I remained seated and pushed the ashes in front of me back and forth with my fingers, lost in thought. Will everyone else really die? What will happen then? Will I be able to leave this place? An unburned splinter of wood cut my sooty finger. I winced and wiped the wound out of habit. However, I only smeared more ash into it. Who cares, nothing will happen, after all I am the survivor.
The next morning, everyone gathered after breakfast.
"Are there any volunteers who want to join security?", I asked the group. Several came forward and stepped up. There were too many. If everyone belonged to security, there was no need for security.
"I'm glad so many of you are willing, however, for now we will designate only five people for security. Let's start with a race." I had the volunteers line up at the wall. The target was the wall on the opposite side. There I waited with the rest of the youth. I gave the agreed hand signal and they charged toward us. Immediately I noticed how fit most of them were. It didn't take long for them to reach the wall. I now had the fastest ten compete against each other in three rounds. The opponents were chosen at random. Many of the bystanders had favorites and cheered them on loudly. The whole thing almost made us forget where we were. Maybe we should hold tournaments more often. It would do a lot of people good to see their minds move in a more positive direction.
Just as the last fight was ending jubilantly and I was about to designate the people for security, a loud signal sounded. Everyone looked around in confusion. This had never happened before. In the middle of the clearing, a flap opened in the floor. We all ran to it and stood around the hole. Inside the hole was a metal cage. Inside the cage were weapons, cans of food, blankets, and other useful things. A girl next to me wanted to jump into the cage, but I stopped her.
"Let me go inside," I told her. She nodded in understanding. I didn't remember what her cause of death was, but I didn't want to take any chances. Slowly, I lowered myself into the cage. It held my weight. One by one, I handed the things from the cage up to the others. Why would we need all these weapons? What would come next for us?
When everything was out of the cage, I also climbed back up.
"As of now, security includes Isaac, Pauli, Marie, Radday and Max. We will now meet in the house and discuss things. The others will go about their jobs," I said in a stern voice. The others obeyed my orders without hesitation. They were all uncertain because of the new situation. I let my eyes wander over the weapons once more before I also made my way to the house. An uneasy feeling came over me.
The meeting was not going well. No one knew what to do with the new situation. So we decided to just lock up the weapons for now so that there wouldn't be any more deaths. We also could not agree on the length of Theo's punishment. He had killed another boy. Could we risk letting him go again? We agreed on four weeks for now and then we would negotiate again. We needed everyone to take care of eachother. We couldn't afford to lock up a boy.
After the meeting, I went with Pauli to the dungeon, as the lockable room would be called from now on, to inform Theo of his punishment. What I saw made my breath catch. Theo had hanged himself with his belt. He was dangling from a beam. His face had turned blue, his tongue was hanging out strangely.
"Bring Nikola!", I ordered Pauli. Grateful to escape the situation, he ran away. A little later Nikola came sauntering over. He glanced only briefly into the dungeon.
"At least no one has to be afraid of dying this week. I'll tell the other two to dig another hole." I nodded weakly.
"Okay. You do that. I'll bring in wood for a bonfire."
It was the first time that not everyone attended the funeral. During the fire, Cassey sat next to me. She was crying.
"I can't understand why he killed Mike. It wasn't him! It was this place. It made him go crazy. Just like Emmy and Ella," she sobbed quietly. I clenched my hands into fists to keep my composure. They had made me their leader. I couldn't lose my temper. A twinge in my hand made me look down. The cut from yesterday had healed almost completely. The new skin had trapped the ash, so now I would wear a permanent line on my finger. An idea occurred to me.
"Cassey...you work with the beasts, right?", I asked hesitantly. She nodded weakly.
"Are you good with a knife?", I asked now. Again she nodded. I showed her my finger.
"I want you to carve their names into my back. If I am indeed the only one who can leave this place, then I want to take you with me." She nodded resolutely.
As I often do, at the thought of my family, for that was all of them from the glade, I stroke my back, which was adorned with forty-nine names.
