The Scorch Trials - James Dashner [97]
For the first time, Thomas noticed that Aris was acting strange. He stood just a few feet to Thomas’s right, and he kept turning in a slow circle, staring at the girls one by one as if he knew them each well. But somehow he kept his mouth shut.
Of course, Thomas thought. If this really was Group B, Aris had been with them. He did know them.
“One!” Teresa shouted.
Thomas wasn’t taking any chances. He walked forward, pushing past people until he reached the open, then went straight toward Teresa. He ignored the comments from Minho and the others. He ignored everything. Eyes on Teresa, trying to show no emotion, he walked until he stood almost nose to nose with her.
It was what he wanted anyway, right? He wanted to be with her. Even if she’d been turned against him somehow. Even if she was being manipulated by WICKED, like Alby and Gally had been. For all he knew, her memory had been wiped again. Didn’t matter. She looked serious, and he couldn’t risk having someone shoot one of his friends with a bow and arrow.
“Fine,” he said. “Take me.”
“I only made it to one.”
“Yeah. I’m really brave that way.”
She hit him with the spear, so hard that he couldn’t help but drop to the ground again. His jaw and head ached like smoldering fire. He spit, saw blood splatter on the dirt.
“Bring the bag,” Teresa said from above.
In his peripheral vision he saw two girls walking toward him, their weapons hidden away somewhere. One of them—a dark-skinned girl with hair cut almost to her scalp—held a large frayed burlap sack. They stopped two feet from him; he got back to his hands and knees, scared to do anything more for fear of getting pummeled again.
“We’re taking him with us!” Teresa yelled. “If anybody follows, I’ll hit him again and we’ll start shooting you. We won’t really bother aiming. Just let the arrows fly any old way they feel like.”
“Teresa!” Minho’s voice. “You catch the Flare that quickly? Your mind’s obviously gone already.”
The butt of the spear smashed into the back of Thomas’s head; he collapsed onto his stomach, black stars swimming in the dirt inches from his face. How could she do this to him?
“Anything else you wanna say?” Teresa asked. After a long moment of silence, she said, “Didn’t think so. Put the bag over him.”
Hands roughly grabbed his shoulder and spun him onto his back—their grip dug into his bullet wound enough to send a deep ache flashing through his upper body for the first time since WICKED had fixed him up.
He moaned. Faces—they didn’t even look angry—hovered over him as two girls held the open end of the sack directly above his head.
“Don’t resist,” the dark-skinned girl said, her face shining with sweat. “Or it’ll just get worse.”
Thomas was perplexed. Her eyes and voice held genuine sympathy for him. But her next words couldn’t have been more different.
“Better just to go along and let us kill you. Doesn’t do you any good to have a lot of pain along the way.”
The bag slipped over his head, and all he could see was ugly brown light.
CHAPTER 45
They shifted him around on the ground till they got the bag slipped entirely over his body. Then they tied the open end at his feet with a rope, knotting it tight and wrapping its ends up and around the rest of him, pinning him inside the bag, cinching another knot just over his head.
Thomas felt the bag going taut; then his head was pulled up. He imagined girls holding either end of this impossibly long rope. Which could only mean one thing—they were going to drag him. He couldn’t take it anymore, started squirming even though he knew what it’d get him.
“Teresa! Don’t do this to me!”
This time a fist hit him right in the stomach, making him howl. He tried to double over, tried to clutch his middle, but couldn’t because of the stupid bag. Nausea swept through him; he fought it, kept