The New Distance [The Scorch Trials Book]

o n e

"Sanza, wake up!"

I heard Teresa say those three words but it seemed far away, as if spoken down a long and cluttered tunnel, my slumber came down the tunnel with it, trapping me from hearing anything further.

"Sanza!"

Teresa screamed. It pierced through the veils of sleep that covered me. I felt the first drip of fear reach me but it was more like a feeling that was never there, I disregarded that and continued to sleep. I was dreaming. Teresa was fine, I was fine; we were all fine, there was nothing to worry about anymore. I felt myself relax again at the thought.

But other sounds snuck their way into my consciousness. Thumps. The clang of metal against metal. Something shattering. Breaking. More echoes of shouts, very distant and muted but they were there. Suddenly they became more like painful screams. Unearthly cries of anguish. But still distant.

Wait.

Something started to pull me out of my sleep. This wasn't right. Teresa called me and told me to wake up. I tried to fight the deep sleep that consumed me as Teresa had previously told me to.

Wake up!

It was me telling myself to wake up. Then finally reality swept in and washed away my sleep. I was absolutely scared out of my mind when I opened my eyes and shot up to a sitting position on my bed, almost hitting the top bunk with my head.

"Teresa!" I called at the top of my voice as I scrambled off my bed and climbed it, expecting her to be on top. She wasn't there.

"No!" I cried, looking around the room. "Teresa!"

I saw something at the corner of my eye that made me stop panicking for a second. It was a window down the room to my left; the glass was broken, jagged shards leaning against crisscrossed steel bars. A man stood on the other side, gripping the bars with bloody hands. His eyes were extremely bloodshot and filled with madness, devoid of any humanity. Sores and scars covered his thin, sun-burnt face. He had no hair, only diseased splotches of what looked like greenish moss. A vicious slit stretched across his right cheek, I could see his teeth through the raw, festering wound. Pink saliva dribbled in swaying lines from the man's chin.

It was a sight I knew well but I wished I hadn't.

The panic started to rise, more intense this time, almost taking over my whole system but I didn't let it, because if I did, then I'd be useless and as good as dead. It was if the uneasy feeling I had since we got out of the Maze took a physical form and now wanted to come out. So I swallowed the bile that swelled up from my stomach and took a deep breath despite the fear starting to strangle me.

"I'm a Crank! We're all Cranks!" The horror of a man yelled. "And soon you'll be Cranks too!"

I turned around but avoided looking at any more windows. I tried blocking my ears with my hand but their inhuman shrieks and cries were still as prominent as ever. I ran towards the door and attempted to open it, twisting the handle aggressively. It was locked. I looked for anything I could hit it with but found nothing until my eyes landed on the steel bars holding the bunk beds together. I ran over to it and twisted and pulled at the metal bar until it disconnected from the bed structure. I then ran back to the door and it the handle with it.

"Thomas!" I screamed after hit after hit. "Thomas! Help! Thomas!"

After about fifteen hits, I knew it wasn't going to budge at all because my head started to hurt again. But I kept shouting. "Thomas!" And it was if God had answered my prayers, I heard familiar voices on the other side.