He didn’t know what the horn had been or who had blown it or why it was suddenly quiet outside. He didn’t want to know. But perhaps a path had been cleared for him. The only item left to settle was how to leave it with Thomas and the others. Maybe give them a little closure. He’d already written one depressing note to Tommy; might as well write another.

Newt decided that his journal would survive if it weighed less by one page. He tore it out and sat down to write a message. Pen was almost to paper when he stalled, as if he’d had the perfect thing to say but it floated out of his mind like vanished smoke. Sighing, he itched with irritation. Anxious to get out of that Berg, walk away—limp or no limp—before something changed, he scribbled down a few lines, the first things that popped in his head.

They got inside somehow. They’re taking me to live with the other Cranks.

It’s for the best. Thanks for being my friends.

Goodbye.

It wasn’t totally true, but he thought about those horns and all that commotion he’d heard outside the Berg and figured it was close. Was it short and curt enough to prevent them from coming after him? To get it through their thick skulls that there was no hope for him and that he’d only get in the way? That he didn’t want them to watch him turn into a mad, raving, cannibalistic former human?

Didn’t matter. Didn’t matter at all. He was going one way or another.

To give his friends the best shot they had at succeeding, with one less obstacle.

One less Newt.

Chapter Two

The streets were chaos, a mass of disorder shaken up like dice and spilled across the land.

But that wasn’t the scary part. The scary part was how normal everything felt—as if the world had been arcing toward this moment since the day its rocky surface first cooled and the oceans ceased to boil. Remnants of suburbs lay in scattered, trashy ruin; buildings and homes with broken windows and peeled paint; garbage everywhere, strewn about like the tattered pieces of a shattered sky; crumpled, filthy, fire-scorched vehicles of all sorts; vegetation and trees growing in places never meant for them. And worst of all, Cranks ambling about the streets and yards and driveways as if merchants were about to begin a massive winter market: All items half-price!