The Scorch Trials - James Dashner [29]
He made it, could hear that the boy now lay right in front of him, his arms and legs thrashing on the concrete floor as he struggled against who knew what. Thomas carefully set his water bag and shoulder pack far to the side, then timidly reached forward with his hands to find a grip on an arm or leg. He sensed the other Gladers crowding behind him, a loud and chaotic presence of shouts and questions that he forced himself to ignore.
“Hey!” Thomas yelled at the squirming boy. “What’s wrong with you?” His fingers brushed the kid’s jeans, then his shirt, but the boy’s body convulsed all over the place, impossible to catch, and his shrieks continued to pierce the air.
Finally, Thomas went for broke. He dove forward, launching himself fully onto the body of the thrashing kid. With a jolt that knocked the breath out of him, he landed, felt the squirming torso; an elbow dug into his ribs, then a hand slapped his face. A knee came up and almost got him square in the groin.
“Stop it!” Thomas shouted. “What’s wrong!”
The screams gurgled to a stop, almost like the kid had just been pulled underwater. But the convulsing didn’t ease in the slightest.
Thomas put an elbow and forearm on the chest of the Glader for leverage, then reached out to grab his hair or his face. But when his hands slid over what was there, confusion consumed him.
There was no head. No hair or face. Not even a neck. None of those things that should’ve been there.
Instead, Thomas felt a large and perfectly smooth ball of cold metal.
CHAPTER 15
The next few seconds were beyond strange. As soon as Thomas’s hand made contact with the odd metal ball, the boy stopped moving. His arms and legs stilled and the stiffness in his twitching torso went away in an instant. Thomas felt a thick wetness on the hard sphere, oozing up from where the kid’s neck should’ve been. He knew it was blood, could smell the coppery scent of it.
Then the ball slipped from under Thomas’s fingers and rolled away, making a hollow grating sound until it thumped into the closest wall and came to a stop. The boy lying below him didn’t move or make a sound. The other Gladers continued to shout questions into the dark, but Thomas ignored them.
Horror filled his chest as he pictured the boy, what he must look like. Nothing about it made sense, but the kid was obviously dead, his head cut off somehow. Or … turned into metal? What in the world had happened? Thomas’s mind spun, and it took a moment before he realized that warm fluid was flowing over the hand he’d pressed to the floor when the ball slipped away. He freaked.
Scooting backward away from the body, wiping his hand on his pants, he shouted but wasn’t able to form words. A couple of Gladers grabbed him from behind and helped him to his feet. He pushed them away, stumbled against a wall. Someone gripped his shirt at the shoulder, pulled him closer.
“Thomas!” Minho’s voice. “Thomas! What happened?”
Thomas tried to calm himself, take hold of things. His stomach lurched; his chest tightened. “I … I don’t know. Who was that? Who was down there screaming?”
Winston answered, his voice shaky. “Frankie, I think. He was right next to me, just making a joke, and then it was like something yanked him away. Yeah, it was him. Definitely him.”
“What happened!” Minho repeated.
Thomas realized he was still wiping his hands on his pants. “Look,” he said before taking a long breath. Doing all this in the dark was maddening. “I heard him screaming, and ran up here to help. I jumped on him, tried to pin his arms down, find out what was wrong. Then I reached for his head to grab him by the cheeks—I don’t even know why—and all I felt was …”
He couldn’t say it. Nothing could possibly sound more absurd than the truth.
“What?” Minho shouted.
Thomas groaned, then said it. “His head wasn’t a head. It was like a … a big … metal ball. I don’t know, man, but that’s what I felt. Like his shuck head had been swallowed