The Wounded Healer

Chapter 11: There's some Good in the World

The Gladers all took turns pulling Winston in the make shift stretcher. It wasn't ideal, but it worked. Winston was still asleep, but Evelyn could hear his breath becoming ragged again, he was coughing up dark phlem.

They pulled him up the last sand hill and back down. The wind was picking up again. Now that they didn't have the buildings to shade themselves, it felt like 100 degrees outside.

"Uhg. Pretty sure we've been walkin' in bloody hell. Always thought you'd end up here Minho, but not me." Newt grumbled, shoving his sweaty hair out of his face.

Minho grinned and looked over with a wink. "Good that." He raised a hand to shield his eyes again, "my eyeballs hurt, I don't think I'll ever get used to this light "

Walking in the desert was not fun. It was a wasteland. Stretched out in front of them a flat pan of dry and lifeless earth stretched as far as she could see. Not a single tree. Not a bush. No hills or valleys. Just an orange -yellow sea of dust and rocks; waving currents of heated air boiled on the horizon like steam, floating upwards, as if any life out there were melting towards the sky.

The sand hills were behind them now. It was a straight stretch of nothing before they could reach the town.

"How far do ya think those buildings are?" Nick asked, pointing towards the shimmering buildings in the distance.

"Could be a hundred miles." Thomas shrugged.

"No way, dude. Its not even close to a hundred miles. Thirty at most. Mountains could be maybe 40 or 50?"

"Didn't know you could measure distance so well with nothin' but your bloody eyeballs." Newt said, rolling his own eyes, making Evelyn snigger.

"I'm a runner, Shuckface. You get a feel for stuff like that in the maz, even if its scale was a lot smaller." Minho puffed his chest and hooked his thumbs into the straps if this backpack.

Teresa and Evelyn made eye contact and turned away immediately, trying hard not to laugh.

"Seriously?" Thomas asked, honestly interested.

"Yeah dude." Minho nodded seriously.

"You're so full of it Min." Evelyn laughed.

They kept trudging. Taking shifts pulling Winston across the flare plans. They were running out of water. Their food supply was dwindling. Everyone was hit sweaty and cranky.

"Really does look like a nuclear holocaust out here. Wonder if the whole world is like this." Sonny said after a while.

"Let's hope not," Minho responded. "I'd be happy to see a tree right about now."

"Maybe a creek." Nick threw out, he had taken his glasses off, the sweat kept making them slid to the end of his nose.

"I'd settle for a patch if grass," Newt sighed. He had tied his long shaft hair up and away from his face.

"Minho? How the shuck dose your hair still stay like that?" Teresa asked, pointing at his still styled hair.

"Just awesome babe. Just shucken awesome."  He threw an arm around her and pulled her into his side giving her sweaty temple a kiss, while she rolled her eyes.

"Could this be any more different from what they put us through in the maze?" Jeff said between huffs. Him and Nick were pulling Winston right now.

"True. There we were trapped inside the walls with everything we needed to survive. And now we have nothing holding us in, but no way to survive." Nick pointed out.

"Isn't that irony or something like that?" Thomas asked, a frown on his sweaty face.

"Something like that " Minho rolled his eyes, "you guys are a bunch of philosophizing wonders."