The Scorch Trials - James Dashner [73]
“We have to kill him!” she yelled over it.
Thomas had gotten to his knees and was looking on in a stupor of inaction. “What?” he asked, drugged with exhaustion, too stunned to process her words.
“Get the knife! We have to kill him!”
The Crank kept screaming, a sound that made Thomas want to run as far away as possible. It was unnatural. Inhuman.
“Thomas!” Brenda yelled.
Thomas crawled over to the knife, picked it up, looked at the crimson goo on its sharp blade. He turned back to Brenda.
“Hurry!” she said, her eyes lit with anger. Something told him that her anger was no longer just for the Crank—she was mad at him for taking so long.
But could he do this? Could he kill a man? Even a crazed lunatic of a man who wanted him dead? Who wanted his shuck nose, for crying out loud?
He shambled back to her, holding the knife as if it were tipped with poison. As if just holding it might make him catch a hundred diseases and die a slow and agonizing death.
The Crank, arms yanked behind him, pinned to the floor, continued to scream.
Brenda caught Thomas’s gaze, spoke with determination. “I’m gonna flip him—you need to stab him in the heart!”
Thomas started to shake his head, then stopped. He had no choice. He had to do this. So he nodded.
Brenda let out a cry of effort and fell to the right side of the Crank, using her body and her grip on his arms to make the man twist onto his side. Impossibly, his shrieks grew even louder. His chest was now there for the taking, arched and sticking up right in front of Thomas, just inches away.
“Now!” Brenda yelled.
Thomas tightened his grip on the knife. Then he put his other hand on it for more support, all ten fingers clasped tightly around the handle, blade pointing toward the floor. He had to do this. He had to do it.
“Now!” Brenda yelled again.
The Crank, screaming.
Sweat pouring down Thomas’s face.
His heart, pumping, thumping, rattling.
Sweat in his eyes. His whole body aching. The terrible, inhuman screams.
“Now!”
Thomas used all his strength and plunged the knife into the Crank’s chest.
CHAPTER 34
The next thirty seconds were a horrible, horrible thing for Thomas.
The Crank struggled. Spasmed. Choked and spat. Brenda held him while Thomas twisted the knife. Pushed it deeper. Life took its time as it drained from the man, as the light in his maddened eyes faded, as the grunts and the physical strain to hold on slowly quieted and stilled.
But finally, the Flare-infected man died, and Thomas fell backward, his whole body a tense coil of rusty wire. He gasped for breath, fought the sickening swell in his breast.
He’d just killed a man. He’d taken the life of another person. His insides felt full of poison.
“We need to go,” Brenda said, jumping to her feet. “There’s no way they didn’t hear all that racket. Come on.”
Thomas couldn’t believe how unaffected she was, how quickly she’d moved on from what they’d done. But then again, they didn’t have much choice. The first sign of the other Cranks came echoing down the hall, like the sounds of hyenas bouncing through a canyon.
Thomas forced himself to stand, pushed down the guilt that threatened to consume him. “Fine, but no more of this.” First the head-eating silver balls. Now fighting Cranks in the darkness.
“What do you mean?”
He’d had enough of long black tunnels. Enough to last a lifetime. “I want daylight. I don’t care what it takes. I want daylight. Now.”
* * *
Brenda didn’t argue. She guided him through several twists and turns and soon they found a long iron ladder leading toward the sky, out of the Underneath. The disturbing noises of Cranks lingered in the distance. Laughs and shouts and giggles. An occasional scream.
Moving the round manhole cover took some serious pushing, but it gave way and they climbed out. They found themselves standing in gray twilight, surrounded by enormously tall buildings in every direction. Broken windows. Garbage strewn over the streets. Several dead bodies lying about. A smell of rot and dust. Heat.
But no people.