Newt’s old injury was acting up, making his limp worse than usual. He stumbled to the corner of a street and sat down heavily, leaned against a fallen pole whose original purpose would forever remain a mystery. In the oddest, most random of occurrences, the words winter market had rattled him. He didn’t understand fully why. Even though his memory had been wiped long ago, it had always been a strange thing. He and the others recalled countless things about the world that they’d never seen or experienced—airplanes; football; kings and queens; the telly. The Swipe had been more like a tiny machine that burrowed its way through their brains and snipped out the specific memories that made them who they were.

  But for some reason, this winter market–this odd thought that had found its way into his musing on the apocalyptic scenes around him–was different. It wasn’t a relic of the old world that he knew merely by word association or general knowledge. No. It...

  Bloody hell, he thought. It was an actual memory.

  He looked around as he tried to process this, saw Cranks of various stages shambling about the streets and parking lots and cluttered yards. He could only assume these people were infected, every one of them, no matter their actions or tendencies—otherwise why would they be out here, out in the open like this? Some had the awareness and normal flow of movement that he still did, early on in that infection, their minds still mostly whole. A family huddled together upon wilting grass, eating scavenged food, the mom holding a shotgun for protection; a woman leaned against a cement wall, her arms folded, crying—her eyes revealed the despair of her circumstances, but not madness, not yet; small clusters of people talked in hushed whispers, observing the chaos around them, probably trying to come up with plans for a life that no longer had plans anyone might desire.

  Others in the area were seemingly in-between the first and last stages, acting erratic and angry, uncertain, sad. He watched a man march across an intersection with his young daughter in tow, holding her hand, looking for all the world as if they might be going to a park or to the store for candy. But right in the middle of the street he stopped, dropped the girl’s hand, looked at her like a stranger, then wailed and wept like a child himself. Newt saw a woman eating a banana—where had she gotten a buggin’ banana?—who stopped midway through, tossed it on the ground, then started stomping it with both feet as if she’d found a rat nibbling at her baby in a knocked-over pram.

  And then there were, of course, those who had, without a doubt, traveled well past the Gone, that line in the sand that divided humans from animals, people from beasts. A girl, who couldn’t have been older than 15 or 16, lay flat on the ground in the middle of the nearest road, babbling incoherently, chewing on her fingers hard enough that blood dripped back down onto her face. She giggled every time it did so. Not far from her, a man crouched over a chunk of what looked like raw chicken, pale and pink. He didn’t eat it, not yet, but his eyes darted left and right and up and down, empty of sanity, ready to attack any fool who dared try to take his meat away. Farther down that same street, a few Cranks were fighting each other like a pack of wolves, biting and clawing and tearing as if they had been dropped in a gladiator’s coliseum and only one would be allowed to walk away alive.

  Newt lowered his eyes, sank onto the pavement. He slipped the backpack from his shoulders and cradled it in his arms, felt the hard edge of the Launcher he’d stolen from Jorge’s weapons stash on the Berg. Newt didn’t know how long the energy-dependent, electric-firing projectile device would last, but he figured it couldn’t hurt to have it. The knife resided in the pocket of his jeans, folded up, a pretty sturdy one, if it ever came to hand-to-hand battle.

  But that was the thing. Like he’d thought earlier, everything he saw around him had become the “new normal” of sorts, and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t terrified. He felt no fear, no apprehension, no stress, no innate desire to run, run, run. How many times had he come across Cranks since escaping the Maze? How many times had he almost soiled his pants from sheer terror? Maybe it was the fact that he was now one of them, quickly descending to their level of madness, that stayed his fear. Or maybe it was the madness itself, destroying his most human of instincts.

  And what of that whole winter market thing? Was the Flare finally releasing him from the hold of the Swipe he’d been subjected to by WICKED? Could that perhaps be the ticket to his final journey past the Gone? He already felt the most acute and abject despair he’d ever felt in his life, abandoning his friends forever. If memories of his life before, of his family, began to invade him without mercy, he didn’t know how he could possibly take it.

  The rumbling sound of engines finally, mercifully, ripped him from these increasingly depressing thoughts. Three trucks had appeared around the corner of a street that led away from the city, although calling them trucks was like calling a tiger a cat. The things were massive, 40 or 50 feet long and half that in height and width, heavily armored, windows tinted black with steel bars reinforcing them against attacks. The tires alone were taller than Newt himself, and he could only stare, wondering in awe what he might be about to witness firsthand.

  A horn sounded from all three vehicles at once, a thunderous noise that made his eardrums rattle in their cages. It was the sound he’d heard earlier from inside the Berg. Some of the surrounding Cranks ran at the sight of the monsters-on-wheels, still smart enough to know that danger had arrived from the horizon. But most of them were oblivious, looking on much as Newt did, as curious as a newborn baby seeing lights and hearing voices for the first time. He had the advantage of distance and plenty of hordes between him and the new arrivals. Feeling safe in the most unsafe of places, Newt watched things unfold—though he did unzip his backpack and place one hand on the cool metal surface of the stolen Launcher.

  The trucks came to a stop, the shattering noise of their horns ceasing like a shattered echo. Men and women piled out of the cabins, dressed to the hilt in black and gray, some with red shirts pulled over their torso, chests armored, heads covered with helmets as shiny as dark glass, all of them holding long-shafted weapons that made Newt’s Launcher look like a toy gun. At least a dozen of these soldiers began firing indiscriminately, their aim fastened on anyone who moved. Newt didn’t know a single thing about the weapons they used, but flashes of light shot from their barrels with a noise that reminded him of Frypan—when he’d bang a heavy stick against a warped piece of metal they’d found somewhere in the nether parts of the Glade. To tell people his latest and greatest meal was ready to be devoured. It made a vibrating whomp sound that made his very bones tremble.

  They weren’t killing the Cranks. Just stunning them, temporarily causing paralysis. Many of them still shouted or wailed after they’d fallen to the ground, and continued to do so as the soldiers dragged them with the least amount of tenderness possible toward the huge doors at the back of the trucks. Someone had opened them while Newt observed the onslaught, and beyond those doors was a cavernous holding cell for the captives. The soldiers must’ve eaten a lot of meat and drank a lot of milk because they picked up the limp bodies of the Cranks and tossed them inside the darkness as if they were no more than small bales of hay.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  A voice, a tight strum of words, came from right behind Newt’s ear, and he yelped so loud that he just knew the soldiers would stop everything they were doing and charge after him. He spun around to see a woman crouched next to him, shielded by the fallen pole, a small child in her arms. A boy, maybe three years old.

  Newt’s heart had jolted at her voice, the first time he’d been startled since coming outside, despite all the horrors developing around him. He couldn’t find words to respond.

  “You need to run,” she said. “They’re doing a full sweep of the whole damn place today. You been asleep or what?”

  Newt shook his head, wondering why this lady bothered with him if she felt it so important to get out of there. He searched for something to say and found it in the haze that filled his mind lately.

  “Where are they taking them? I think I saw a place from the Ber—I mean, I’ve heard of a place where they keep Cranks. Where Cranks live. Is that it?”

  She shouted to be heard over the commotion. “Maybe. Probably. They call it the Crank Palace.” The lady had dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes. She looked as rough as Newt felt, but at least those eyes had sanity with a dash of kindness thrown in. The little boy was as scared as any human Newt had ever seen, eyes cinched tight and his arms wrapped around his mum’s neck like twisted bars of steel. “Apparently there are people who’re immune to the Flare”—Newt bristled at that word, immune, bristled hard, but kept silent as she went on—“people who are kind enough or stupid enough or just paid a crap-ton money enough to kinda take care of them at the Palace until they’re... you know. Un-take-care-able anymore. Although I heard the place is getting full and they might be giving up on that whole idea. Wouldn’t surprise me one damn bit if this roundup ends at the flare pits.”

  She said the last two words as if it were something anyone with half a brain knew all about, an image that seemed appropriate for their new world.

  “Flare pits?” he asked.

  “What do you think the constant smoke on the east side of the city is?” Her response said it all, though Newt hadn’t noticed such a thing. “Now, are you coming with us or not?”

  “I’m coming with you,” he said, each word popping from his mouth without any consideration.

  “Good. The rest of my family is dead and I could use the help.”

  Even through the shock of her words, he recognized the self-serving motive in coming to him; otherwise he would’ve suspected a trap. He started to ask a question—he didn’t know exactly what yet, something about who she was and where they were going—but she’d already turned around and sprinted in a direction away from where the soldiers were still tossing lifeless but living bodies into the hold of the trucks. The wails and cries of anguish were like a field of dying children.

  Newt threw his backpack onto his shoulders, cinched the straps, felt the dig of the Launcher against his spine, then took off after this new friend of his and the little one clutched to her chest.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  The woman had more energy than a Runner from the Maze, and those guys ran the corridors, blades, and slot canyons of that beast all day long, day-in and day-out. Newt had gotten out of shape at some point, sucking air until it felt like someone had stolen all the oxygen from Denver with a magical net. His buggin’ limp didn’t help matters. They’d gone at least a mile before he finally found out her name.

  “Keisha,” she said as they stopped for a breath inside an old wreck of a neighborhood, right under the skeletal, long-dead branches of a maple tree, almost no other person in sight. Newt felt a little better when she doubled over, chest heaving, to put the toddler down so she could rest. Human, after all. “My kid’s name is Dante. You might’ve noticed he doesn’t talk a whole lot—well, that’s just the way it is. Not a thing I can do about it, is there? And yes we named him that because of the epic poem.”

  What epic poem? Newt wanted to ask. He had no idea what she was talking about, though he had a sense of memory knocking on his brain from the other side of a hidden door. Maybe he’d known before the Swipe. He tried not to wonder what might be wrong with her kid that he didn’t speak. Traumatized? Impaired, somehow? Maybe just shy? He wanted to know their stories but wasn’t sure he had the right.

  “The poem about the nine circles of Hell?” she prodded, mistaking his internal thoughts and musings. “Didn’t read too many books in your neck of the woods growing up, huh? Shame. You missed out big time on that one. It’s a doozy.”

  Newt was certain he’d read books, as certain as he knew he’d eaten food and guzzled water before they’d taken his memory. But he didn’t remember any of the stories, and the thought filled him with a heavy sadness.

  “Why did you name your kid after Hell?” he asked, really just trying to lighten the mood.

  Keisha plopped onto her butt and gave little Dante a kiss. Newt had expected the boy to be a brat, cry his lungs out in a place like this. But so far he hadn’t made a peep.

  “We didn’t name him after Hell, you moron,” Keisha responded, somehow saying it kindly. “We named him after the guy who defined Hell. Who embraced it and made it his own.”

  Newt nodded, lips pursed, trying to show he’d been impressed without having to lie and say it out loud.

  “Corny, I know,” Keisha replied after seeing his expression. “We might’ve been drunk.”

  Newt knelt next to them, still trying to take in deep breaths without making it too obvious that he needed it so desperately. “Sounds about right. Drunk and corny’s the way to go these days.” He reached out and gently pinched Dante’s cheek, tried to give the kid a smile. To his astonishment, the boy smiled back, showing a mouthful of tiny teeth that gleamed in the afternoon light.

  “Ah, he likes you,” Keisha said. “Ain’t that the cutest thing. Congrats, you’re his new papa.”

  Newt had been squatting, but that comment made him fall backward onto his rear end.

  Keisha laughed, a sound as good as birdsong. “Relax, dumbass. You don’t look like dad material and it was just a joke. Doesn’t matter. We’ll all be Looney Tunes crazy in a month anyway.”

  Newt smiled, hoping it didn’t look as forced as it felt. Leaves scattered across the pavement of the street as a breeze picked up, making the branches above them go clackety-clack as they banged against each other. He could hear voices and shouts in the distance, seeming to ride on that breeze, but not close enough to panic. They were safe enough for a few minutes, anyway.

  He got up his nerve and asked the question that had been on his mind. “You said your family was dead. What did you mean? Did you lose a lot of people?”

  “That I did, my fine-haired friend.” Keisha had a unique way of saying light-hearted things very sadly. “My hubby. Two sisters. A brother. My old man. Uncles. Aunts. Cousins. And my other... my other…” Here she lost any pretense that the world was still a place where you called people your fine-haired friend. Her face collapsed into despair, head literally dropping toward the ground along with it, and tears dropped from her eyes onto the cracked pavement of the sidewalk. Though silent, her shoulders shook with a hitched sob.

  “You don’t have to say,” Newt said. It was as obvious as the sun being hot and the moon being white. She’d lost one of her children. Poor Dante had not been an only child. “I’m... I’m really sorry I asked.” I’m such a turd, he chided himself. He’d literally known this woman for all of an hour at most.

  She sniffed hard, then brought her head back up to look at him, wiping away the tears that had managed to stick to her cheeks. “No, it’s okay. ” She said these words in a distant monotone, somehow wistful and haunted at once. “Just do me a favor. Don’t ever ask me—never, ever—how I lost them all. No matter how long we survive or if I know you one day or one month. Never ask. Please.” Her eyes, glistening wet, finally met his, the saddest eyes he’d seen since Chuck gave him one last look right outside the Maze.

  “Yeah, I promise,” he said. “I swear. We don’t need to talk about that stuff. I shouldn’t have started it.”

  Keisha shook her head. “No, stop being a worry-wart. Just as long as you don’t ask me... you know. We’ll be good.”

  Newt nodded, selfishly wishing he could vanish into thin air and end this awkward, horrible conversation. He gazed down at Dante, who was sitting still and quiet, looking at his mom as if he wondered what was wrong with her. Maybe he wasn’t old enough to remember all the bad things that had happened to those who shared his blood.

  “What’s your plan, anyway?” Keisha asked after a minute or so of silence. “You don’t have to tell me your story or anything—fair’s fair—but what were you doing lying there like a spent popsicle stick, just waiting for those A-holes to come get you?”

  “I...” Newt had absolutely no idea what to say. “I found out recently that I’ve got the bloody Flare and I couldn’t stand the thought of my friends seeing me degenerate into a raving lunatic. Or take the chance that I might hurt them. So I left. Didn’t even say goodbye. Well I left a note tellin’ them I was gonna go live with the infected—that Crank Palace, I guess, the one you told me about. Oh, and I left another note asking my best friend to kill me if he ever saw me going completely bonkers and—”

  He cut off when he realized she was staring at him with giant eyes, no trace of tears left to shine against the fading sunlight.

  “Too much?” he asked.

  She gave a slow nod. “Too much. I don’t even know where to begin. Do I need to be worried, here? You’re not gonna try to eat my arm, are you? Or my kid?” She coughed out a fake laugh that made him cringe.

  “Sorry. I just... I don’t know. I’m not in a good way, I guess.”

  “Yeah, none of us are. But... what the hell. So many questions. I mean, first off, your friends didn’t catch the Flare from you? What, did you escape from inside Denver or something?”

  He shook his head. “No, no, it’s a long story.” He wasn’t ready to tell anyone anything about all the crap he’d been through and that he’d cruelly been thrown in with a bunch of people who were immune to the virus. What would be the point? He and all these people would be dead or past the Gone soon enough.

  “Okay,” Keisha said slowly, acting now as if she humored the tall tales of a child. She must’ve had plenty of practice with such a thing. “Then let’s fish another fry—”