The Death Cure - James Dashner [65]
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