GladerWolf 2 (Newt X Female!Reader)

BERTHA!

Newt and I gathered our jackets and a bag of supplies: torch, pocket knife, rations, matches, and bandages. Frypan joined us in the corridor. "Y'all are going too?"

"I know what Tommy's like," Newt said, smiling. "He's not takin' no for an answer."

We made our way to the garage to wait for Thomas. Frypan sat at the driver's seat of a truck.

Before long, we heard the zip and the footsteps and in the light from the ship in the harbour, we saw Thomas.

"Where do you think you're going, then?" Newt asked. He flicked on the light, illuminating our faces with an orange glow. I was lying on top of the truck, my face in my hands.

"Guys..."

"Don't be a twat about it, we're already here," Newt said. He picked up his bag and nodded to Thomas. "C'mon."

"No, not this time," Thomas said. "Even if we find them, there's no guarantee we'll make it back."

"You'll need all the help you can get, then," Newt responded. I reached down and opened the door of the truck. The yellow light flickered on, allowing Thomas to see Frypan in the driver's seat. He chuckled.

"We need to stay together," I said to Thomas as I slipped off the roof of the truck and opened one of the passenger doors. I wouldn't get used to the feeling of not having Minho or Faelan joining us. There was a pang in my heart when I realised I'd gotten used to the feeling of not having Gally here.

Thomas agreed to come with us and sat in the front beside Fry to give directions. We drove out of the temporary haven and into the night.

~

"Who knows what they're going through right now," Thomas said.

"In the Scorch, us wolves were tricked with time perception," I began. "We could have been there a week and wouldn't have known it from a day."

"But we could tell when we were hungry," Newt replied.

"That was about all the perception we were allowed. And Teresa was on their shucking side, after all that," I lamented.

I couldn't complain all night. I fell asleep on Newt's shoulder and well into the morning, we drove through an abandoned area that was closed off by loose metal gates, with faded yellow signs that read 'MANDATORY INFECTION CHECK ON ENTRY' and stopped in front of a gaping black tunnel.

We piled out of the car and Thomas looked at his creased map.

"I don't wanna come across as too negative, but if I was a Crank, that's exactly where I'd be," Newt said.

"I don't think we have a choice," Thomas responded. He was right. There was no other way around, not with the truck, anyway.

"Then I get shotgun," Newt said. He climbed into the front of the car.

Somehow, the tunnel's lights were still on, kept powered by some distant generator we knew nothing about. Newt held a torch out the window. "I can smell rotting flesh," I said.

"Gee, thanks for the heads up," Frypan said dryly.

"Well, if I smell something, you'll see it sooner or later."

We had to weave around abandoned cars that were coated in thick layers of dust. Frypan slowed to avoid the wreckage. That's when we saw the Cranks. They stared at us, their bodies half-withered as they barely held themselves up. One of them coughed; a nightmarish wheeze. Newt turned off his torch and warily rolled up his window.

The crazed face of a woman and a pair of hands appeared at Thomas' window. Her teeth looked rotted together by some sickly paste. "Please, help me!" Her voice was muffled outside the window but she didn't quite look afraid. She was somewhat grinning.

I screamed in surprise when someone appeared at my window; a man with no hair, bulging eyes and broken fingernails.

Within seconds, more cranks were crawling around the truck. "Floor it, Fry!" Thomas shouted. He sped forward, leaving most of the cranks behind. One of them had jumped up onto the bonnet and grinned wildly as he launched his fist at the windscreen. Within two hits, a crack webbed out. Another hit and there would be no difference between inside and outside.

We clutched onto what we could and Frypan turned the car side to side, trying to shake off the crank as though he were a feral creature. Thomas and I were thrown around in the back of the truck. "Hang on!" Frypan shouted, before driving the crank into the framework of something I could barely see. But he was off.

After an unseen ledge and various canisters of shuck-knows-what, the entire truck flipped and we landed upside-down. What just happened? I thought I'd hit my head. Everything was blurry for a moment. We coughed as the dust reached our lungs and took a few moments to get our bearings. Newt unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to me. "Are you okay, love?"

"Ow, ow," I whined as I tried moving my elbow. I turned it to see what was hurting me and I found that my window had broken. I must have used my hands to block my face and ended up with a yucky shard in my arm as we toppled over. I gritted my teeth, pulled out the glass and tossed it away. The wolf part of my immune system would stop it from getting infected.

Thomas told us to close our eyes before he kicked out his window and crawled out. I followed after him. Newt and Fry were stuck inside; the front door wedged into the ground and not opening further than an inch. Thomas tried pulling it but it wouldn't budge.
"Step aside," I said. "Here." I planted my feet in the ground and pulled the door off its hinges, bending it downward so they could climb out.

"How the..." Thomas looked at me, dumbfounded.

"Wolf strength." I flexed my muscles. Newt climbed out of the car and picked me up in his arms.

"Well done, darlin'."

But we still hadn't evaded the cranks. One started running toward us and Frypan hadn't come out of the car yet. "Come on, we gotta go!" Thomas shouted. But he was struggling with something inside. "Transform?" Thomas asked me.

"Ew, I don't want to fight that."
I covered my ears as a response to a shotgun firing. So that's what Fry had been looking for!
The crank lay still at our feet.

"What has this world gotten to?"

We ran but had to stop within seconds. Another horde of cranks stood waiting for us on the other side of the tunnel. Frypan kept firing but he didn't have enough ammo for all of them and we didn't have anywhere to turn.

As was often the case, we were saved by the rumble of a car engine.

"BERTHA!" I shouted as I saw the bovine horns attached to the grill.

Brenda was sitting on the windowsill on the passenger side of the truck. She aimed her pistol at the cranks and shouted at us to get inside. With the lack of space, I was sat on Newt's lap. "Go, Jorge, Go!" Brenda shouted.

Newt nuzzled the back of my neck and softly kissed as his hand rubbed my thighs. With the cranks unable to keep up with Jorge's driving, we sped out of the tunnel and into blissful daylight.

"I'm impressed," Jorge began sarcastically as the adrenaline died down. "You guys almost lasted a whole day."