Lockdown

  “Don’t have any beef with you, Donovan,” Kevin said. I thought I could hear another sound from inside the cell, the noise of running water. “Just your jerkweed bunk buddy.”

  The Skulls turned their attention to me and I prepared to defend myself, nervously eyeing the six-story drop to my right and praying that I wouldn’t end up flying over the railing. Donovan didn’t say anything, but he didn’t back down either.

  “Got our man killed yesterday,” Kevin went on. “Don’t take that offense lightly. Gotta pay, blood for blood. You know the rules.”

  “Actually, I wasn’t given a copy of the pirate handbook when I arrived, so I don’t,” I replied, cursing my voice, which trembled as I spoke.

  Kevin smiled, and I noticed that he didn’t have any of his front teeth.

  “You funny now,” he hissed. “But dead men don’t laugh so loud.”

  I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. It sounded like some terrible Sunday afternoon horror film, but I knew that Kevin would skewer me with a shank without thinking twice.

  “Soon as the warden lifts his warning, we’ll shut you up for good, new fish. You and your little girlfriend there.”

  Zee spluttered in shock at the comment but didn’t say anything. Kevin and Bodie barged past us and started walking up the platform. They were followed by a third inmate, who strolled from our cell still buttoning up his fly.

  “Sleep well tonight,” he said as he followed his friends, and I suddenly realized what the noise of running water had been. I dashed into the cell to see a dark stain spreading across my sheet.

  “No way!” I blustered. “They can’t. I mean, what did they do that for? Where am I going to sleep?” I went on like that for the best part of a minute before recovering my senses and pulling the wet mess off my bed. From the way it dropped to the floor with a splat I was pretty sure that all three boys had relieved themselves on my bunk. I dragged the sheet out of the cell onto the platform, then looked up at Donovan and Zee.

  “What am I supposed to do now?”

  “Laundry’s in a couple of days,” Donovan answered with a shrug. “Till then, I guess you’ll just be sleeping al dente.”

  “Al dente?” I asked, frowning. Zee chuckled.

  “I think he means al fresco,” he said. “Out in the open.”

  “What am I, Italian?” Donovan replied, raising his arm as if to whack Zee but giving him a gentle clip on the ear. “Al dente, al fresco, Al Pacino, it’s all the same to me.”

  The sharp tang of urine was making our eyes water, so we walked a few steps along the landing and sat down, our feet dangling over the drop and our faces pressed through the railings. The inmates looked like toy soldiers below, separated into different units that occupied various sections of the courtyard. Like oil and water, each group seemed repelled from every other, never straying into enemy territory. Some milled around like packs of dogs, looking for any sign of weakness. Others sat at the scattered tables arm wrestling and playing cards.

  There was even a group of younger inmates playing tag, yelling in excitement as they chased one another around the yard, avoiding the bigger boys. I don’t know why, but the sight of them running brought a lump to my throat—they were kids who should have been tearing across the school playground between lessons, or on their way home to a hot meal and a loving family. Some looked like they were ten years old, for Christ’s sake—they never even had a chance to enjoy being young.

  “The warden’s not going to lift his warning, is he?” asked Zee, taking my mind off events below.

  “He’ll lift it in time,” explained Donovan. “This place is like a pressure cooker and he knows it. He’ll leave the threat of the hole hanging over us for a few days, but he can’t keep it up forever or he’ll have a riot on his hands.” He idly picked some rust from the bar and flicked it out into the void. “He won’t announce that he’s lifted it, there will just be a skirmish one day and all that will happen will be a lockdown. Like I said, you never really know what’s gonna happen in this place.”

  “So what’s the deal with the warden anyway?” Zee went on after a chorus of sighs. “He’s a pretty scary guy. Those eyes.”

  “You saw it too?” I asked, remembering the way that the world had dissolved when I met the warden’s stare. “I felt like he was stripping away my soul or something.”

  “Yeah,” Donovan replied, “eyes like fingers, they go right into your brain. Did you notice that you can’t meet his gaze when he’s standing in front of you?” We both nodded. “Nobody here can. None of us get it, but then there’s plenty of things in Furnace that none of us get.”

  “But what about when he was on the screen?” I said. “I mean, I thought I saw, well, planets or space or something.” I couldn’t quite remember what I’d seen, and talking about it now, it seemed ridiculous. “I saw death, I guess. Stuff like that.”

  “I just saw nothing,” Zee added. “It was like looking into a space that had once been full of stuff but that was now just full of emptiness. I thought I was being sucked in.”

  “Just take it from me,” Donovan said. “Stay well clear of the warden. Some here think he’s the devil. I don’t, I don’t believe in that religious talk, but I know evil when I see it. He’s something rotten they dragged up from the bowels of the earth, something they patched together from darkness and filth. He’ll be the death of us all, every single one of us here in Furnace. Only question is when.”

  “I know one thing,” I added. “The warden certainly brings out people’s dramatic sides.” Zee and Donovan both laughed through their noses.

  “So does he own this place then?” Zee asked. Both Donovan and I shook our heads, but I let the big guy explain.

  “There’s a reason it’s called Furnace, dumb-ass,” he said. “It was built by some guy called Alfred Furnace. Businessman or something, rich enough to pay for this place anyway. Nobody really knows anything about him, he never visits. Probably just sits on a throne somewhere counting the money the government pays him to take lowlifes like us off the streets.”

  We sat in silence for a little while, listening to the noise filter up from below. I gazed at the distant ceiling, lost in shadow at least twenty more floors above, and wondered what the weather was like, but the thought was just too depressing.

  “Well,” I said eventually, “we’ve witnessed fights, giant mutant dogs, and a warden who may or may not be Satan himself. Surely there can’t be much worse to see at Furnace?”

  “Kid,” said Donovan matter-of-factly, “you ain’t seen nothing yet. You can’t truly understand what a nightmare this place is until the wheezers come for you in the dead of night. You want horror? The sight of them outside your cell could scare you to death by itself.”

  I didn’t believe him, of course. I mean, after what I’d seen already I couldn’t imagine anything more terrifying. But I was wrong; the dogs and the warden, they were just a warm-up act for the sickest show in Furnace—a show that I would only have to wait another four days to witness.

  SLOP

  FOUR DAYS. EACH ONE longer than the last, each dictated by the sirens that cut through the prison every other hour, each plagued by the same unending sense of terror. Every time I laid my head down at night and heard the symphony of Furnace I wondered how I had managed to get through the day, and as my heavy eyes closed and the waking world dissolved I would panic that this was the night they would come, that it would be my last night on earth.

  But I was always surprised to find each new morning arriving on time and me still in it—exhausted and frightened, yes, but alive. The day after the warden’s warning the trough room reopened to a cheer from the inmates gathered outside, myself included. The stampede for breakfast had been so ferocious that the kids serving up mush had run off, telling everybody to help themselves. We did, piling mountainous heaps of the anonymous dish on our trays. I can honestly say that, after a day without food, the salty gunk was the best thing I’d ever eaten.

  That third
full day of my incarceration Donovan and I had been chippers again, while Zee had been back on cleaning duty—although thankfully for him not the Stink. Day four was my first taste of a different job, working in the hot, steamy sweatshop that was the prison laundry. We had the same shift for the fifth day, where an accident with one of the machines left me with a painful scald all along my left arm. At least I had clean sheets again after that, though.

  After hard labor Donovan, Zee, and I would hang out in the yard. Most of the time we just sat and chatted, but occasionally we’d nab a pack of cards and play pontoon or cheat or even snap. It was difficult to relax knowing you might feel a cold blade in your back at any moment, but we kept our eyes out for each other and just moved on if we saw the Skulls coming.

  I learned that downtime in Furnace was like a strange dance where each group maneuvered around the others with surprising grace and timing. I also learned not to mention this insight to anybody in case they thought I was calling them a ballet dancer.

  There wasn’t too much violence in those few days. Every now and again tempers would fray and a skirmish would be on the verge of breaking out, but fear of the hole meant that it was always kept under control. There were a couple of punches thrown, a shank or two waved in somebody’s face, and Monty and a few of the other kids suffered kicks and shoves and numerous humiliations, but I didn’t see much blood. Occasionally somebody would stagger from the gym with various cuts and bruises, but they’d be grinning through their wounds. I guess organized fights didn’t count as a breach of the warden’s rules.

  On day six Donovan and I traipsed down the stairs after the wake-up siren to see that we were on slopwork duty, along with Zee. I was actually a little excited to finally be able to see the inside of the kitchen, and when we pushed through the double doors at the back of the canteen I wasn’t disappointed.

  Unlike the rest of Furnace—which was all red rock and bruised shadows—the kitchen was a haven of brushed aluminum drenched in white light. The walls here had been plastered and painted, presumably for health and safety reasons. Not that Furnace was too concerned about the health and safety of its inmates, of course, but I guess even this hellhole must have had to pass a few inspections before being allowed to open. Walking through those doors into the illuminated interior was like walking from a garbage heap into a church, and I felt oddly uplifted.

  It didn’t last. As soon as I saw what we’d be doing, I realized that the kitchen was just a different sort of garbage heap. In one corner lay crates full of what I could only describe as leftovers—onion peels, chicken bones with scraps of meat clinging to them, bread with unmistakable green spores, cheese that was dripping from the bottom of the crates onto the floor, fruit that had already started to liquefy and rot, even a bag that looked like it was full of hair.

  Worst of all were five or six boxes stuffed full of wet flesh. I swear I saw some things in those boxes that put me off meat for life—intestines, hooves, and even a bloody cow’s eyeball staring up at the ceiling as if in deep thought. The glistening mess reminded me of the warden’s dogs and I almost added my own guts to the mixture.

  “Now you know why they call it slopwork,” said Donovan, pulling on a paper apron and some sturdy rubber gloves from a box under the counter. “This is stuff from above that they wouldn’t even give to pigs.”

  “Yeah but these are going out, aren’t they?” Zee asked, picking an apron for himself and throwing one to me. “They’re rubbish?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” was Donovan’s reply. “If by ‘out’ you mean ‘in’ and by ‘rubbish’ you mean ‘ingredients.’ What do you think is in that gunk they feed us? Salmon soufflé?”

  The best thing about slopwork was that you only needed a few people to work a shift. Ten inmates were posted to the kitchen at a time—four went to serve the sty outside, and the rest mopped up the mess and prepared the next batch of gunk. That morning Donovan, Zee, and I gave ourselves the job of cooking up slop, and we retreated to the massive industrial stove at the far end of the kitchen. I noticed that Monty had been posted on slopwork duty too. He picked up a mop and kept his distance, but repeatedly glanced up at the stove as if it contained some hidden secret.

  “Don’t suppose either of you know how to cook?” Donovan asked, lifting one of the crates from the floor and dumping it down onto the counter beside the stove. With a tug he broke the crisscrossed strings that kept the vile contents inside. We both shook our heads. I could just about manage toast and cheese at home, but even then I tended to burn the bread.

  “Well, it isn’t exactly cordon bleu,” he went on, making Zee snigger. “Grab one of those pots and put it on the burner.”

  I looked beneath the counter to see rows of giant pots, each resembling a witch’s cauldron. It took both me and Zee to heft it onto the burner. Donovan grabbed a massive bottle of oil and poured about half of it into the pot, then he opened up a panel on the side of the stove and reached inside. I heard something pop gently, followed by the hiss of gas.

  “Grab one of those safety lighters,” he said, nodding to one of three long, thin lighters chained to the other side of the oven. Zee lifted it and held it beneath the pot, pressing the button to produce a pathetic flame. I noticed the pungent smell of gas hanging in the air and took a step back. “Gotta get this right or the whole prison will go kaboom,” Donovan went on, fiddling with the gas supply inside. “Hold it closer.”

  “What, and lose my fingers? I don’t think so,” Zee retorted. But he inched the flame closer to the burner until, with a roar and a splutter, the gas ignited.

  “And we have liftoff,” said Donovan, getting to his feet. I glanced through the panel and saw three or four vast canisters of gas inside, bolted securely to the wall. Donovan wasn’t kidding—if one of them were to explode then we’d all resemble the meat in those crates, only barbecued.

  Donovan began pulling handfuls of leftover food from the crate and dropping them into a sink embedded in the counter beside the stove. He motioned for us to do the same, and after pulling on the uncomfortable rubber gloves Zee and I lifted a couple of crates and began chucking slops into the sink, trying to ignore the smell of rot and decay. When Donovan’s crate was empty he threw it to the floor, picked up a stick, and began prodding the disgusting mixture down the drain.

  “Stand back,” he said, reaching across the counter and punching a switch. A sound not unlike a chain saw in mud rose up from the sink and the slop slowly began to disappear.

  “Is that a garbage disposal?” I asked, speaking over a series of gargles and wheezes from the spinning blades down the drain.

  “Nope, this is Furnace’s patented flavor mixer,” he replied, ramming the stick down the drain to clear a blockage. “Guaranteed to blend ingredients in just the right order to produce a scrumptious meal.”

  We forced a couple more crates of food into the sink, watching as it was sucked into the hole. Donovan even risked a carton of meat, holding it upside down until the flesh inside gave in to gravity and plummeted earthward like so much pink porridge. I thought I glimpsed a number of pale forms wriggling their way free of the rotting guts, but I put it down to my imagination. Surely even this place wouldn’t feed us maggots.

  Donovan switched off the machine and opened a door in the counter. Beneath the sink was a huge bucket, practically overflowing with the brown goo that dripped from the pipe above. Grunting, he picked it up and tipped it into the cauldron. There was a brutal hiss as the gunge met the boiling oil.

  “Another couple of bucket loads and you’ll have made your first batch of trough slop,” he said as he repositioned the bucket. “Leave it to boil for an hour or so until it loses all taste and color, add in some filler and salt, and bingo, perfection on a plate.”

  “Doesn’t seem so bad,” I heard Zee mutter.

  “Well, let’s see if you’re still saying that when you’ve made your thirtieth pot of the day,” Donovan answered. “Got a lot of bellies to fill in here.”

&nb
sp; Like everything in Furnace, slopwork was a dirty and draining duty, but being with Donovan and Zee made it feel a lot less like a chore. We chatted and joked as we processed the stinking crates, filling each other in on our histories, our likes and dislikes, our proudest moments and most embarrassing memories. I doubt any of us were really telling the whole truth—I know my boasts about captaining the school soccer team and getting a story published in Sci-Fi Monthly were a far cry from reality—but the simple act of bragging about ourselves and remembering a lost world took some of the crushing weight from our chests, let us breathe a little easier.

  “That’s one thing I really wish I’d done before I came here,” Donovan said when the topic of conversation eventually came around to food. “I’d do anything to know how to cook a decent meal.”

  “With you there,” I replied. “Never even thought twice about cooking. Mom and Dad did it all.”

  “I used to bake a few cakes and things with my gran,” Zee added. “But I wouldn’t have a clue how to start that now. Never really paid attention, just did what I was told.”

  “Yeah,” Donovan went on as if he hadn’t heard us. “What I wouldn’t give to be able to rustle up some meatballs and pasta, a bacon cheeseburger, a little sausage casserole.”

  We all licked our lips and nodded, lost in the memory of good food.

  “I used to cook,” came a voice from behind us. I swung around to see Monty standing at our backs, holding his mop and staring at the remaining crates. His voice was soft and distant, and when he carried on speaking, his shining eyes never left the floor. “Me and my sister made up our own recipes. Garden-gnome spaghetti. We had a vegetable patch in our back garden and it was guarded by this gnome. We had to try to dig up what we needed without him spotting us, otherwise we had to do the dishes after dinner.”