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Thomas found the journal three weeks after the world ended. It still baffled him. How? When? When and how? When had his friend written all those pages and how had it gotten inside one of several boxes sent through the Flat Trans before Thomas and his friends made the trip themselves? Ava Paige had done it, of course, as she had done everything. But again. How? When? Those words occupied his mind like two guests refusing to leave, well after the party has wrapped.
He sat upon his favorite ledge on his favorite cliff, looking out at the vastness, the forever, the endless void of the ocean. The air was clean and fresh, bitten with the tang of fish and the sweetness of decomposing life. Small wisps of spray tickled his skin, cool against the heat of the sun directly overhead. He closed his eyes, blanking out the horizons that daunted him, made him feel as if he’d been stranded on the moon. Mars. Another galaxy. Heaven. Hell. What did it matter? He shifted on the jutting edge of rock to get more comfortable, his legs dangling over the roar and splash of depthless water, black-blue, as far away from the world as he could fathom.
Of course, that was a good thing. Right? Yes, it was. But escaping disease, madness, and death did nothing to replace the sadness at what had been lost. Which brought him back to the journal.
He opened his eyes and picked up the warped, tattered, muddied book from where he’d set it earlier, atop a single shelf of sandstone that appeared as if it had been sculpted by time’s chisel to house a sacred artifact. Sacred. Artifact. That sounded about right.
He opened the book in his lap, casually but with care, and flipped through its many pages, every last one of them filled top to bottom with the scrawling penmanship of a child. The slant of the words, the urgency of the ink—pressed and dark with increasingly thicker strokes—the size of the letters . . . Each passing page vis
ually represented what the actual content revealed in heartbreaking starkness—his best friend descending into utter, complete, savage madness. The journal ended with about thirty empty pages. The last one to contain writing had only one word, its letters filling the entire space, scrawled with violence: PLEASE.
Man, Newt, Thomas thought. Wasn’t it bad enough? Wasn’t the end the peak of our awfulness? Why in the hell did you have to let this book exist, let it get into the hands of Ava Paige? Why?
But even as those harsh considerations stomped across his mind, Thomas knew they were empty of meaning. He loved this journal. This book. These words of his friend’s. Any pain they brought back only served to frame the bigger picture—the canvas upon which a piece of Newt’s life had been painted, for them to have forever. For their kids to have. For posterity. A museum piece of memories, the good and the bad.
Thomas thumbed through the pages of the journal and chose one at random, though he cheated and erred toward the front, when Newt’s symptoms had only begun to blossom. No one knew exactly when he’d started writing because there were no dates and not a lot of references to specific events. But the passage that Thomas read now had to be the day they’d left their friend behind, in the Berg, while they stole their way into the city of Denver.
Thomas breathed in each word, savored it, pondered it:
I feel like a dick saying this, but I gotta get out of here. Can’t take it anymore. I love these people. I love them more than I could’ve possibly ever loved anyone. And I obviously say that because I can’t remember my mum and dad. But I imagine it would be like this. Family. That’s what they are. Thomas. Minho. Everyone. But I can’t be with them one more day. It’s killing me, and that ain’t some bloody joke. I’m done. For them, I’m done. Gone. And that ain’t a joke, either. I guess these words just come naturally. Killing. Gone. Gotta put this diary down, now. I have another note to write.
Thomas closed the book and placed it back on the shelf above his head. Then he lay down on his side, legs curled up to his body, head on forearm. And he stared at the wet fields of ocean that stretched to every limit of thought and sight. Beneath that rough, wavy, sketched-icing surface, he knew that billions of creatures lived, oblivious to things like Cranks and deserts and mazes. They swam and they ate, their world probably hurt by the sun flares that had ravaged the lands above, but just as likely healing all the faster. Someday, surely, the order of things in the natural world would do just fine.
But what about us? he thought. What about the humans?
And then, despite his eyes being wide open, staring at the fathomless reach of the ocean, all he could see were images of people. Newt. Teresa. Alby. Chuck. So many lives, lost.
Man, you’re depressing, he chided himself. Somehow—for today, at least—he had to stop thinking about all this crap. He got up, grabbed Newt’s journal, and headed down the path that wound its way along the cliff and through the sandy grasses, finally leading to the new Glade. It wasn’t much as of yet, but someday it might be. Give the humans a chance, right?...
