Crank Palace Page 4

  Newt almost shook with confusion. Confusion turning into an anger that made no sense. He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe. This bloody virus, he thought. He’d never know how much was paranoia and how much was the true effect of the thing on his mind. But in that moment he just wanted to scream and pound his chest like a damn gorilla.

  “Newt?” Keisha asked, looking up at him from the floor. “You forget how to talk?”

  A sudden calm washed over him. A calm he hadn’t felt in a long time. The extremes were getting to him, but for the short term he’d take that peace and take it happily. He took the few steps to where Keisha sat and sunk to the floor, trying his hardest to fake a genteel smile.

  “You’re right,” he said. “Walking around the bloody Crank Palace without a map and with the sun about to set sounds like something only a crazy person would do.”

  A brief moment of silence stretched out, the two of them looking at each other, waiting for the other to react. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, they burst into laughter, a rollicking giddiness that made no sense, which just increased the giggles exponentially. They laughed and they chortled and they even threw in a few snorts. Newt couldn’t remember the last time something had struck him as so funny as saying what he’d said. The layers and vicious cycles of irony weren’t even worth thinking about.

  Crazy person. He was a crazy person, all right. She was a crazy person. And they’d just scratched the surface. The crazy person level would just keep going up and up, and they’d be there to laugh like crazy people as it did.

  “Who needs food, anyway?” he said through the hysterics. “You can’t feed crazy.”

  “Right?” Keisha managed to respond. She was laughing so hard that Dante had fallen off her lap and lay sprawled across the floor, snoring like a little bear. This made both her and Newt’s laughter reach something that could only be called guffaws. He had tears in his eyes and couldn’t remember any of the horrors they’d experienced that day.

  God help him, going insane wasn’t so bad after all.

  Chapter Six

  In the middle of the night, someone knocked at their door.

  Newt had spent an hour or so writing in his journal before falling asleep in a corner of the small cabin, his back pressed against the joint of the walls. Keisha and Dante had been snoring softly since the sun finally sank beneath the horizon, their manner of deep breathing eerily similar to each other, despite their age gap. It had a soothing feel to it, like an oscillating fan—one of the many tiny memories that keep impeding on Newt’s mind.

  Sleep had been welcome, those soft snores of his new friends turning into the soft break of ocean waves inside a dream, Newt standing on a beach. Nothing happened in that dream, nothing but the ocean water and blue sky and heat of the sun. But then the knocks came, steady and strong, as unwelcome in the paradise of his dream as if an army of scorpion-like crabs had erupted from the sand and crawled all over his body.

  He opened his eyes to the darkness of the cabin, but it took a few seconds more for the dream to fade. The choppy surface of the water became the smooth, cheap plastic of the cabin floor, the blue sky the faintly seen ceiling tiles, the sweet ocean air the stale air of the cabin. The knocks came again and Newt was all at once awake.

  He jumped to his feet, stared at the door as if he did it long enough he’d magically see through the wooden slab. Keisha stirred from her position on the opposite wall, rubbing her eyes, still asleep. Newt didn’t want her to wake up. He couldn’t explain why. Against every instinct that screamed at him from the human depths of his former, rational, reasonable mind, he ran to the door and ripped it open, not bothering with a small crack to see who their intruder might be. Even more irrationally, before he could see who’d come inquiring, he stepped out of the cabin and closed the door behind him. The paramount goal of his life appeared to be letting Keisha and Dante sleep, a notion that made as little sense as his actions.

  He’d surprised the knocker at their door, a shadow of a person who’d taken several steps backward at his appearance. When the door clicked shut, a silence like the vacuum of outer space overtook the trees and open areas surrounding them. There was no wind, no insects, no rambunctious owls or other nocturnal creatures, no voices, nothing. Newt said the first thing that popped in his head, whispering with conspiratorial angst.

  “It was empty. We can leave if we need to. We don’t want any trouble.”

  More silence. Newt was emerging from the grogginess of sleep, felt refreshed but mortally hungry. His stomach growled, the first sound since he’d spoken. Staring at the dark figure before him, he decided to wait it out, use patience as a weapon. A solid minute passed.

  “Is it true?” the stranger whispered, the harsh, gravelly voice of a man who seemed to have chunks of rock stuck in his throat.

  Newt didn’t know what he’d expected—maybe a raging Crank who stabbed him as Newt heroically fought him off, even as he took his last breath, to save the kid—but someone asking him if it’s “true” was not on the list. He decided on a little more patience and didn’t respond.

  “Well, is it?” The stranger was not one for proper introductions and the exchange of pleasantries.

  “Is what true?” Newt finally asked, rather needlessly, he thought.

  “Are you... ya know. One of them?” The bloke desperately needed to clear his throat or get emergency surgery.

  A testy annoyance overwhelmed Newt’s curiosity. “Can you please just ask me whatever it is you’re wanting to ask me?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Sorry.” An apology was yet another thing Newt hadn’t expected—the man was full of surprises. “It’s just a rumor that’s running wild all over the Palace. I had to know. I... have reasons. Are you one of the kids that WICKED has been testing? You wanna talk about rumors—there’re all kinds of rumors about that, now.”

  Newt felt a chill. His entire hopes for safety in this place had depended on anonymity, staying quiet, off the beaten path. He also had no idea that the general public knew about the things WICKED had been doing to him and his friends.

  The Gladers. The thought made him so overwhelmingly sad in that moment that he almost abandoned his visitor and went back inside.

  “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it,” the man said into the awkward moment of silence. “It’s just that I had a nephew taken by those bastards almost 20 years ago. Never heard from him or about him ever again. I don’t know what I was hoping for. I’m sorry.”

  The man’s kindness and gentle ways brought Newt back from the abyss of his feelings. He wished he could see the stranger’s face but it was too dark.

  “No, it’s... it’s okay. I’m just a little shocked is all. For one thing, how on Earth do people know that about me? We just got dumped here today.”

  “I think the higher-ups leaked the information so that you’d have some protection. Most people here are in the early stages of the Flare, so they’re still smart enough to know not to mess with someone like you.”

  “What? Why? And what was your nephew’s name, by the way?” Even as the words came out of his mouth he knew the answer wouldn’t mean anything. They hadn’t known each other’s real names inside the Maze.

  “Alejandro. Did... did you know him?” His voice broke on the last word, coming out as part of a hitched sob.

  The name rang a bell for Newt, even though it shouldn’t have. He’d heard that name before. Maybe. He now found himself wishing and hoping for just one day with all of his memories—each and every one of those suckers, no matter how heart-wrenching it might be—before he was past the Gone.

  “I think I knew him,” Newt answered quietly, unsure of what answer would help the most. “I’m sorry... they took my memories. But yes. I’m sure he was there.”

  The shadow before him collapsed to the ground, first to his knees and then bowing forward on his elbows, as if he were about to pray to Newt like a priest. He let out his sobs, then, crying as hard and loud as a grown m
an possibly could.

  Newt looked around, sure that the sounds would wake Keisha and Dante, not to mention anyone within a half-mile. “Listen, I can tell you what it was like. Maybe that’ll help.” He couldn’t think of anything that would possibly help less. “There’s a good chance he’s still alive, out there somewhere—some of us escaped. I have friends who’re trying to make good things happen.”

  The stranger looked up sharply at this; Newt saw the briefest hint of reflected light in the man’s eyes. But he didn’t—or couldn’t—speak. He dropped to his elbows again, shaking with his cries.

  Newt didn’t know if he’d ever had patience in his life, but he certainly didn’t have any now, and sadly one thing weighed heavily in his mind.

  “Listen,” he said. “We can talk about it more. But... do you have any food?”

  Chapter Seven

  Newt had never been so thankful for the arrival of a complete stranger in the middle of the night inquiring about his long-lost nephew. Food. Glorious food. The man’s name had finally been revealed as Terry—the most unlikely name Newt could imagine—and it turned out he did have a reason for his rock-salted voice. As a young man he’d had throat cancer, and surgery to fix it. Before the apocalypse. Newt and Keisha found this out and much more as they had their first neighborhood cookout in the Crank Palace.

  Dawn had crept in by the time Newt roused Keisha and her son, explained the situation, and then followed Terry to his shack of a home, which was identical to the hut they’d just left. But it was a little more lived-in. Some worn-out old chairs, a few pictures of people nailed to the walls, the lingering smell of body odor. Luckily they ate outside, in the cool air of morning, with Terry and his wife, Maria. She was quiet and fidgety and said stuff that didn’t quite make sense—she liked the word purple, of all things. The poor woman was obviously farther along the Flare track than her husband.

  “We thought they’d given up on this place a few days ago,” Terry said through a bite of grilled beef. Their neighborhood cookout consisted of a campfire with pieces of meat placed on the ends of sticks and roasted over the flames. Beef and chicken by the looks of it, although Newt never asked. He also didn’t care. It tasted delicious—he was on his third piece and had no plans to stop anytime soon.

  “What do you mean?” Keisha asked as she broke off a chunk of blackened cow innards and fed it to Dante.

  Terry shrugged. “You know. This whole getup was originally meant to be a civic service, back in the days when the higher-ups had time to worry about anything but saving their own hides. But once we got full, they stopped dropping people off. Word is they’re just burning them in massive pits on the east side of the city. Maria says it’s over there because the wind tends to come from the west. They don’t wanna smell burning bodies all day long in the city.”

  “They’re purple,” Maria said in response, her mouth full. “They’re all purple. Purple when they go in, purple when they come out.”

  Keisha’s eyes widened. “Damn, woman. What’s your—” She stopped before saying something she’d regret, as if she’d temporarily forgotten that this was what happened—people lost their minds. “Sorry,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Purple.” Maria said it wistfully, staring into the fire. She was a strong woman with calloused hands and leathery skin, her hair turning fast to gray. Terry actually looked just about the same, his hair just a little shorter with a balding patch on the upper deck. If he hadn’t introduced her as his wife, Newt might’ve thought them siblings.

  “But then you came along,” Terry continued, ignoring Keisha’s comment. “We saw the truck, saw you get out, saw them acting like jerks. Saw them drive off. That’s when we ran into town to tell people but somehow they already knew. Knew who you were, too. Strange times, getting stranger.”

  Newt thought about that, chewing his food like such a thing might never happen again. “I don’t know why they’d give a crap about me. I’m not immune like most of them. They just had me along for the ride, nothing but a bloody control subject. Once I caught the Flare, my days of being important were long gone. Who knows. They probably just need to know how I end up so they can finish off some stupid report that no one’ll ever read.” He wondered about this town Terry mentioned, and what such a place would be like.

  Keisha spoke up. “You guys seem pretty early in the game, like us. What about all the people further along, especially past the Gone? Where are they?” She shot a quick and sheepish glance at Maria.

  “Things can get... pretty brutal,” Terry replied. He looked at a piece of charred beef that he’d just been ready to plop in his mouth, lowered it with an expression of disgust. Newt didn’t really want to know what knowledge or memory had brought on that transition. “Some are around, and you gotta be careful. Some get taken care of. Some take care of themselves. And once a week or so there’s a group—of people like us, not the higher-ups—who round up some of the worst ones and sneak them out of the Palace. I don’t know where they take them or what they do with them. Don’t want to.”

  He tossed the uneaten beef back onto his plate. For a few seconds he fought back tears.

  “We live in Hell,” Keisha said quietly, barely heard over the crackling of the flames.

  Newt was tired. Terry had come a-knockin’ at their door at least a couple of hours before dawn, and it wasn’t as if Newt had slept like a fat and fed baby until that point, what with the bare wooden floor and unfamiliar surroundings. He closed his eyes, wanted nothing more than to crawl closer to that fire, curl up, and sleep the day away. Mainly, the world of dreams seemed a better prospect at the moment than hearing more from Terry. The look he’d given that meat... The lost tone in his voice when he said a group of them rounded up Cranks past the Gone and took them someplace. It was all so ominous. So depressing. His future.

  “You look like you could use a nap,” Keisha said.

  Newt just nodded, mumbled something unintelligible on purpose.

  Maria screamed.

  Newt jolted awake, looked up at her. She’d jumped to her feet, eyes wide with terror, letting out hysterical shrieks as if someone had poured a family of spiders down the back of her shirt, waving her arms about like a gorilla on the rampage.

  “Maria!” Terry yelled. He crawled over to her, grabbed one of her flailing hands, tried to pull her back down to the ground. But she brushed him off, smacked him in the forehead.

  “She was purple, don’t you get it!” She stilled herself, stood rigid with fists at her side like a child demanding something from her parents, took each of them in with a glare. “I didn’t even have a chance to raise her! How could I? In this mucked-up world? How could I dare? Better purple than crazy! Better purple than eaten by some damned Crank! Better purple than taken by WICKED and thrown in a cage! Like an animal!”

  The words had spilled out of her, one on top of the other, until they blended into a long slur of madness. She sucked in a breath, now, then belted out one last roar, her face reddening and swelling up like a cooked grape.

  “PUUUUUUUURPLE!”

  Maria dove into the fire. Screaming now from pain more than rage, she slapped at the burning logs, the glowing-hot coals, the ashes turned to gray but still smoldering with intense heat. Newt could see the burns melting her skin, right before him, too frozen in shock to help. Her face grew taut, the pain evident, the indifference plainer.

  Terry tackled her with such force that both of them tumbled and rolled out of the fire and several feet away. Newt had to lurch to his left to avoid getting smacked by their bodies. When he looked over his shoulder Terry swatted with open palms at any lingering flames that had sprung up on her clothes. Her hair, too. Singed and sooty. It smelled terrible.

  Keisha held tightly to Dante, smothering his face into her chest, her own eyes squeezed shut as if not seeing would make it all go away. Terry had stopped pounding on his wife, now just cradled her body and stared down at her, breathing heavily; tears streamed down his face, but he said
nothing. Maria lay still, silent, somehow sobbing without noise.

  Newt’s stomach had turned sour, his weariness gone. He didn’t know how badly she’d been burned, but something told him there wasn’t a Crank Palace Hospital up the street, right next to the grocery store and bowling alley.

  Terry finally slouched to the side of Maria, crossed his legs pretzel-style, shoulders slumped, forearms on his knees, hands dangling like ornaments. He gave Newt a look that said it all.

  Don’t ask.

  Not that he needed to. The window onto Maria’s life had cleared a bit, some of the grime washed away. The only thing left to wonder was which had come harder. The madness it took to kill your own child or the madness that resulted from killing your own child. And at what stage did the Flare creep its way into the affair? Newt had no right to know, and swore to himself he’d never ask.

  Newt got to his feet and walked around the fire to where Keisha and Dante huddled together.

  “You okay?” he asked lamely.

  Keisha nodded but didn’t say anything. Dante was quiet as a church mouse, a phrase that popped into Newt’s head unbidden, a thing he’d heard a hundred times in the past from someone he loved but couldn’t remember. But it was coming back. An image was starting to form. An image of a woman who looked a lot like him.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  This got Keisha’s attention. She looked up at him. “What? Go where?”

  “I won’t be long,” was all he gave her in return.

  He expected her to argue, but she seemed to understand. “We’ll be okay.”

  Newt had already turned around, was already walking away.

  Chapter Eight

  He walked 10 minutes before he saw another soul, and the stroll calmed down his nerves. Seeing a lady with so much grief that she jumped into a hell-hot fire, swatted at burning logs and coals like flies on a picnic table... Well, that was enough to make a person wanna take a walk. The morning air had warmed a bit, the sun shining through the leaves of the trees to dapple the ground with dancing light. He took three deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. He felt better.