After Paradise

Chapter Nine ~ Poison

Thomas felt his heart stutter inside of his chest as the shadowed figure raced up to him. His astonished self flinched as the person nudged him with his elbow. Thomas had stayed stuck in his position, shivers creeping up his back. A sigh of relief rippled through his being to realise it was only Jorge...returning from burying a dead body. Icy blooms of air tickled the back of Thomas' neck as he swung round to perch on his hammock along with Jorge. He needed to tell someone about the poison, plus he felt so woozy now that he would happily drop to sleep right away, but maybe he could hand over his duties to Jorge.
"That was super creepy." Jorge comments, his hands visibly shaking.
"I guess we've all seen enough dead in our time here to know it's unavoidable." Thomas muttered.
"Hm, I suppose. It doesn't stop it from being weird. Cold, dead weight is never fun to carry into a forest. At night." He shuddered and ran a stuttering hand through his dark hair.
"Hey, Jorge, can you just listen to me for a minute? I've got something to say and I don't know what we should do. I say we, but I feel like I'm just going crazy. Never trust WICKED pain relief tablets." He tried a chuckle, but what he was about to reveal wasn't anything to laugh about.
"Go on." Jorge's eyes held an element of sincerity and wisdom.
"I kept one of the arrows that was fired at me in the woods, and it had this black substance all over it, it irritated my fingers when I touched some. I think it poisoned the others - one of their blood looked grey. I didn't tell anyone, I don't know what to do." Thomas blurted out. He was usually full of logical thoughts and ideas, but he couldn't think of any reasonable way to deal with this situation. This was all one colossal disaster. All hope was sure to be lost when everyone found out about this. Jorge remained in thought for a while.
"Maybe it won't kill them, just make them sick for a while. We should wait until morning and review their condition then. We have enough medical supplies to deal with them, it will be okay."
"Alright." Thomas agreed, glad someone older and wiser had given their advice and helped him decide what to do.
"You look wrecked." Jorge chipped in. Thomas ran a hand over his skin, imagining charcoal black smudges under his eyes and a drawn complexion.
"I feel it." Thomas groaned.
"Here, you've been through enough tonight," Jorge grabbed the lantern from Thomas' hands, "I'll take over, and get Gally, Aris and Fry to help. You get some rest, comprende?" Thomas felt appreciation spill from his lips as he dropped into his hammock and felt himself slipping straight into the realm of sleep.

~

He awoke much too early. Bright, splintering light had only just begun to sprinkle over his face and the first few bird calls of the morning had only just started by the time Thomas had shaken off his nightmare and peeled open his eyes. His nightmare had been awful. He had found himself back in the Maze again, eerie whirrs and clicks sounding from the passages, moans trembling from the crumbling walls. The stones keeping the Maze's infrastructure had then begun to disintegrate under his touch, once he'd pressed his fingers against the cold, hard rock, to reveal Cranks, not Grievers. One of them had crept up behind him, holding a finger over his bloodied lips in a Shh! position.
Thomas shook off the dream, hoping that the weird grey-coloured blood he'd seen flowing through one of the wounded had all been a vision too. Not many people were awake, except from the five or six people stationed around the circular space on guard (although even they seemed to be slumped in their positions), so he had to be even more careful as he crept over the cakey ground to where he remembered seeing one of the injured women. He didn't want to wake her, but she was lying in a stationary position and therefore seemed to be still heavily dosed on medication, so as he peeled her blanket away from her arms he gasped with shock, dropping the cover back onto her. What the shuck was that?
He raked a weary, leathered hand through his hair and massaged it over his forehead. So it hadn't been just a dream.
Her entire left arm seemed to be a liquid grey, the hue blooming under her plumped skin. Her veins were roped, which reminded Thomas of the horrors he'd witnessed on others' bodies when they had gone through the Changing. Thomas gently rolled her face over to the side, and choked a cry, biting down on his tongue, hard. The woman's cheek was a metallic silver, again amongst her flesh as if it were a bruise. Thomas set her head on the floor with a thunk, suddenly needing to get out of there. He felt his hands clammy against his shirt, goosebumps trickling down his arms. He had a terrible thought popping into his head. What if she was already dead? He softly pulled back her droopy eyelids, his insides churning at the sight that they had rolled into the back of her head, only the whites showing. Chilled by this seemingly dead victim of the poison, he stumbled backwards, accidentally tripping over someone's hand.
A fit of coughing began from that certain someone. Thomas spun, wanting to tell whoever it was to shut up before the whole camp was raised, but he stopped in his tracks. It was another of the victims, but less patchy poison was clumped under her skin - only a tiny square present under her neck. It was the coughing that sent fear scuttling through his veins like ice had just been injected there.
She was fairly young yet sturdy looking, perhaps twenty or so, and she was glancing up at Thomas with the pitiful gaze that one might give to a roadkill specimen, as she continued to cough heavily.
"Are you alright?" He whispered, squatting down beside her.
"I...can't stop...coughing...hurts...throat-" She was cut off by a spurting of mercury coloured blood spewing from between her lips.
"Help me...please!" She gagged as another mouthful of discoloured liquid was ejected onto the floor, seeping into the dry ground and leaving a sticky residue. Thomas was frozen to the spot, absolutely puzzled and terrified. His legs turned to jelly as he remained rooted to the ground, his feet planted firmly as if they'd sprung roots and had attached him to the floor. But all he kept thinking about was how they were all doomed. That attacker had successfully killed off four of their people, who was stopping him from continuing? Slaughtering them all?
A few more Immunes had awoken from the noise;'murmurs and interest and screaming floating into the air.
"Abigail!" One yell ricocheted through the early morning breeze with such panic that it snapped Thomas back into reality.

A string of curse words cascaded from his open mouth as he sloppily brought Abigail a mug of lukewarm water and pressed it firmly to her lips, ordering her to drink, as an older lady sat sobbing into Abigail's shoulder, mumbling for her to stay with her and not to give up. The whole thing saddened Thomas: watching Abigail bring the water straight back out from her stomach with a mixture of lead-hued poison, the combination choking her, almost to death. He could practically feel the life draining out of her, seeping out of her limp body as her condition worsened, the spluttering more chesty and scratchy, bringing up congealed blood.

He did the only thing he knew how to do, what his instincts insisted he should do. He took off, ran away from the problem instead of trying to deal with it like Minho and Jorge seemed to be doing, covering over the other bodies after checking for pulses or any signs they could be saved. He spun and fled into the foliage, branches crackling under his racing feet, early dew drops smattering against his ankles. He carried on, the only thing present in his mind the refreshing sound of his feet thudding against earth, the huffing of his breath as it poured from between his lips. He realised how dangerous this ordeal was once he'd been gone for twenty minutes, and headed back, now at a slower pace. He hadn't realised how lethal this had been - what if the hunter had companions, now scouring the forest for other Immunes? The hunter and their friends could see them as rivals, competition even! Traps could be set everywhere, just waiting for a signal to send a poison arrow embedding straight in his heart! His breathing had calmed, but his nerves certainly hadn't.

Returning to the clearing, the first thing he noticed was the atmosphere he'd just wandered into. The air spacing him from everyone else was like fragile glass just waiting to be shattered. The tension in the ambience was palpable - people seemed to be chewing down on it as a side serving with their breakfast. Misery was written everywhere, and Thomas saw with a shock that the four bodies had disappeared. He presumed Jorge had taken them out for a burial, before the entire camp had woken up.

"Jeez, Thomas, are you okay, dude?" Minho came up to him reproachfully, "You're shaking like a shucking leaf!"
"That gave me a huge shock," he admitted, shaking his head stiffly.
"It's dealt with now, though," Minho placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing the sunburnt, tender area, "We need to get cracking," he paused to glance up at the mountains, which were looming several kilometres away. A look of sincerity had glazed over his eyes again.
Thomas nodded in confirmation. Getting away from this place would definitely improve his mood.
Minho's eyes crinkled upwards at the corners. "Don't you worry, Thomas, things will be just fine in a couple of days. Just fine." The sides of his mouth quivered as he curved them into a smile.
"I bloody hope so." Thomas blurted out, and winced at the words. It sounded exactly like something Newt would've said, and the sentence felt bitter in his mouth. He saw Minho's smile plummet into a frown, before the moment passed and his expression clouded over.
"I'll round everyone up then, get ready to go soon." He instructed, and the emotional second had passed. Minho was back in a businesslike trance.

The next half an hour was packed with filling up every water and food container possible, washing in the stream whilst everyone had the chance and packing up the few essentials everyone had to carry. It took Thomas all of two minutes to bundle his few belongings in his hammock and blanket, before shoving it in the rucksack he had hoisted over his back.

The day pressed on rapidly, just the same as the day before, except the air was less humid and didn't clog Thomas' throat. The journey was easier, because the route to the base of the mountains was more direct; the only difficult part was dodging through the thick-set trees. An unspoken sadness lay heavy between all of the Immunes: a limp burden carried by all of them, that maybe the mountains and beyond weren't as safe as they had once hoped. Thomas was sure there was some sort of reasonable explanation; that perhaps there was a lone survivor living in the mountains or something, but that didn't settle the uneasy feeling slathered in his brain. Within a few days, they'd know whether Ava Paige had been right or not. Whether this truly was a land untainted by evil, or that she'd been wrong - there were dangers out here too. Because how could anywhere escape from the Flare? It was everywhere, and unless this country, wherever it was, hadn't been inhabited at all, then it must be lurking amongst anyone who hid here, unless of course they were Immune too.
It always hurt Thomas to think how many Immune lives had been wasted. Of course, as WICKED proposed, the lives cut off during the Trials and the experiments upon these other Immunes had been for a 'worthy cause', and those, perhaps, could be justified to a tiny extent...but it was all the Immunes killed off by starvation or Cranks that drove Thomas mad. Whether the human race went extinct lay on the shoulders of these two hundred or so individuals, and it scared Thomas to the bone. It truly did.