Wicked Promises

✵14✵

In was like he was watching a sickeningly realistic film play out before him. Or watching something from behind glass, like he was seeing it but not really there.

Thomas grabbed Minho by the arm. "Somehow I have to get through that!" He nodded toward the rolling
pack of Grievers between them and the Cliff-they looked like one big mass of rumbling, spiked blubber,
glistening with flashes of lights off steel.

They were even more menacing in the faded gray light. Thomas waited for an answer as Minho and Newt exchanged a long glance. Ryan stood to the side, not knowing how he felt. The anticipation of fighting
was almost worse than the fear of it.

"They're coming!" Teresa yelled. "We have to do something!" She stood among them as the only girl, and one of the main reasons they were getting out, her and Thomas. Her tar black hair and pale skin and bright blue eyes looked so unnatural in contract to the bleak palette of the Maze.

"You lead," Newt finally said to Minho, his voice barely more than a whisper. "Make a bloody path for Tommy and the girl. Do it."

Minho nodded once, a steel look of resolve hardening his features. Then he turned toward the Gladers. He was the new leader. Alby had died and Nick had died. Both at the hands of the vile creatures they were about to face.

"We head straight for the Cliff! Fight through the middle, push the shuckin' things toward the walls. What matters most is getting Thomas and Teresa to the Griever Hole!"

The blood rushing in his ears muffled and quieted the horror that went on around him. Adrenaline rushed through his body and drove him on. Fear, blood, and machine oil weighed down his sore and battered body. Fights broke out everywhere. A boy per beast.

A blade came down on Ryan from behind, the burning scrape of skin being torn and blood coating his skin.

"Ryan!" Minho hollered over the shrieks and cries of Gladers as they were picked off by the Grievers. Bulbous, moist bodied creatures with a dozen deadly appendages each, all thrashing and jousting the group of boys.

Ryan collapsed under the weight of the creature as it threw itself onto him. His head hit the cement with a loud thud that sent searing pain in his head and down his neck. His word tilted on its axis and his eyelids grew heavy. Sleep, he wanted to sleep.

"Get up you bugging shank! Fight it off!" Newt parried off a Griever a few meters off with a sharp piece of metal attached to a stick like a spear.

Ryan could barely hear him. He could die there. Would die there. Nick, Alby, Ben, Scott. They were all dead. So many were dead. He'd be dead too.

The Griever on top of him lurched and lost its grip slightly, it's pincher snapping off with the sickening sound of metal and machinery being hacked at with dull metal.

Ryan struggled and flailed to get his arm free from under him to grasp for the blade he had dropped.

The Greiver screeched and lashed out at him with a blade appendage. Ryan managed to roll out of the way just as the creature picked itself up off him. It spun and lashed and slashed at the boy who had saved him.

Drenched in sweat, blood and oil was Drew, armed with a club made of a wooden plank with bits of metal and nails protruding from it and a rusty machete in his other hand.

"Run!" Drew heaved.

Ryan didn't think twice. He ran. Passing by boys and beasts caught in life or death fights all around the Maze corridor as he neared the exit.