The Scorch Trials - James Dashner [53]
Sharp pains stabbed at his stomach, which groaned, aching for food. He glanced around to see most of the other Gladers still asleep, but Newt lay with his back against the wall, staring sadly at a blank spot in the middle of the room.
“You okay, there?” Thomas asked. Even his jaw felt stiff.
Newt slowly turned to him; his eyes were distant until he seemed to snap out of his thoughts and focus on Thomas. “Okay? Yeah, I guess I’m okay. We’re alive—guess that’s all that bloody matters anymore.” The bitterness in his voice couldn’t have been stronger.
“Sometimes I wonder,” Thomas murmured.
“Wonder what?”
“If being alive matters. If being dead might be a lot easier.”
“Please. I don’t believe for one second you really think that.”
Thomas’s gaze had lowered while he’d delivered the depressing sentiment and he looked up sharply at Newt’s retort. Then he smiled, and it felt good. “You’re right. Just trying to sound as miserable as you.” He could almost convince himself that it was true. That he didn’t feel as if dying would be the easy way out.
Newt gestured wearily toward Minho. “What bloody happened to him?”
“Lightning strike somehow caught his clothes on fire. How it did that without frying his brain I have no idea. But we were able to beat it out before it did too much damage, I think.”
“Before it did too much damage? I’d hate to see what you think real damage looks like.”
Thomas closed his eyes for a second and rested his head against the wall. “Hey, like you said—he’s alive, right? And he still has clothes on, which means it couldn’t have burned his skin in too many places. He’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, good that,” Newt replied with a sarcastic chuckle. “Remind me not to hire you as my buggin’ doctor anytime soon.”
“Ohhhh.” This came from Minho, a long, drawn-out groan. His eyes fluttered open, then squinted as he caught Thomas’s gaze. “Oh, man. I’m shucked. I’m shucked for good.”
“How bad is it?” Newt asked him.
Instead of answering, Minho very slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position, grunting and wincing with every small move. But he finally did it, legs crossed beneath him. His clothes were blackened and ragged. In some places where skin was exposed, raw red blisters peeked out like menacing alien eyeballs. But even though Thomas wasn’t a doctor and had no clue about such things, his instincts told him the burns were manageable and would heal pretty quickly. Most of Minho’s face had been spared, and he still had all his hair—filthy as it was.
“Can’t be too bad if you can do that,” Thomas said with a sly smile.
“Shuck it,” Minho responded. “I’m tougher than nails. I could still kick your pony-lovin’ butt with twice this pain.”
Thomas shrugged. “I do love ponies. Wish I could eat one right now.” His stomach grumbled and gurgled.
“Was that a joke?” Minho said. “Did Thomas the boring slinthead actually make a joke?”
“I think he did” was Newt’s response.
“I’m a funny guy,” Thomas said with a shrug.
“Yeah, you are.” But Minho obviously had already lost interest in the small talk. He twisted his head around to take in the rest of the Gladers, most of them asleep or lying still with blank looks on their faces. “How many?”
Thomas counted them up. Eleven. After all they’d been through, only eleven were left. And that included the new kid, Aris. Forty or fifty had lived in the Glade when Thomas first arrived, just a few weeks before. Now there were eleven.
Eleven.
He couldn’t bring himself to say anything out loud after this realization, and the lighter moment only seconds earlier suddenly seemed like pure blasphemy. Like an abomination.
How could I be part of WICKED? he thought. How could I have been any part of this? He knew he should tell them about his memory-dreams, but he just couldn’t.