Lockdown

  Hard labor was hell that morning. Donovan acted like he couldn’t stand the sight of me, posting himself in the canteen serving up mush and leaving the processing to me and another couple of inmates I’d never really spoken to before. I tried asking them questions about the wheezers as we stuffed crate after crate of leftovers into the industrial blender, but they just sent back one-word answers that meant nothing.

  To make things worse, Kevin Arnold had been assigned to the trough room too, and several times throughout the morning I was ambushed by flying chunks of rancid meat and mushy vegetables and barbed comments. I remembered the way he’d pushed Monty across the cell last night, sending him to his terrifying fate without a shred of remorse. I wanted to stuff his mouth full of rotten food until he choked, but instead I turned my back on him and suffered his abuse. What else could I do?

  Umpteen hours later, after washing the slop from my hair in the showers and donning a fresh uniform, I found myself standing alone in the yard. I didn’t realize how much I had come to depend on Donovan. Without him by my side I felt completely lost, utterly vulnerable. I saw him make his way up the stairs to our cell without a backward glance but I didn’t try to chase him. Instead I picked an empty table toward the back of the yard and cursed myself for not just curling up in bed last night and ignoring the blood watch like everybody else.

  Holding my head in my hands, I didn’t hear Zee slide onto the bench opposite me until he coughed gently.

  “You look like battered crap,” he said as I lifted my head.

  “You’re no oil painting yourself, mate,” I replied, wondering if I still had the ability to smile.

  “Where’s Big D?” he went on. “You two are like Siamese twins, weird not seeing you joined at the hip.”

  “I’m not in his good books,” I replied after a humorless snort. “After last night. I wouldn’t stay in bed, had to see what was going on. He thinks I drew one of them to our cell.”

  “Seriously?” Zee asked, eyebrows practically leaping from his forehead. “You saw one up close?”

  I nodded, trying not to recall the experience in too much detail.

  “He’ll be okay,” Zee went on, cracking his knuckles. “He can be a moody lug, but I’m sure he’ll come around.”

  “I hope so. If he doesn’t then I’m a dead man. He’s pretty much the only thing standing between me and the Skulls.”

  “Don’t forget me,” Zee said with a grin. He flexed his arms, but the satsuma-sized bumps beneath his uniform didn’t exactly fill me with confidence. “Could take them all on single-handed with these muscles.”

  For a moment it looked like we might break free of the gravity of the situation, but it quickly pulled us back in.

  “What the hell were they doing last night?” Zee asked, leaning across the table so that his low voice would reach me. “What are those things with the gas masks?” I shrugged and shook my head. “I mean, they look like Nazi storm troopers with those masks and coats. I’ve seen them on TV. My folks used to watch war documentaries all the time. But why would they be here? And why do they need help breathing? I mean, it’s not like this place is full of Zyklon B.”

  “They’re attached to their faces,” I told him. “The masks. I saw it last night. The metal is sewn into their skin.”

  Zee looked like he was about to hurl.

  “No way,” was all he managed, but I could tell he believed me.

  “Whatever they’re doing, it’s bad,” I said. “Donovan told me they took prisoners to a fate worse than death.”

  “Maybe they’re using us as human guinea pigs,” Zee suggested. I laughed at the idea but he was serious. “During the Second World War the Nazis and the Japanese army used to perform all these sick experiments on innocent people, civilians and prisoners of war and stuff. They’d cut them up while they were still alive, infect them with all these diseases, biological weapons and gas, blow them up—”

  “Come on,” I interrupted, but he held up his hand.

  “No, seriously. They used prisoners as test subjects. They’d just think of things they could do to them and then they’d do them. They claimed it was all about science, but they were just butchers. I saw this on TV too, but Dad made me go to bed halfway through because it was too gross.”

  “But we’re not in a war, Zee. I mean, this is one of the most advanced countries in the Western world; you can’t even call somebody a pensioner now without it being politically incorrect. They’re not just going to let somebody open a prison where a bunch of sick freaks do experiments on kids.”

  “What about a prison where mutant dogs chew up the inmates?” he asked. I didn’t have an answer. “Everything changed that summer, Alex, all those gangs on the rampage and all those people who died. People got scared of kids, that’s why they got away with building a prison like this, that’s why those freaks can take us and butcher us and nobody gives a crap. Did you see who they took, anyway?”

  “Monty,” I replied. “They took Monty. I didn’t see the others.”

  Zee swore beneath his breath and stared out across the yard. I thought I saw his eyes filling up for a minute but then he wiped his hand across his face and was back to normal.

  “Do you think anyone on the outside has any idea?” he asked.

  “I don’t think anyone on the outside cares. We did the crime, we’re doing the time. In their eyes we’re just as bad as the kids who went around killing everyone. What was it that blacksuit said? As far as the outside world is concerned, we’re already dead.”

  Somebody in the yard shouted and I looked over to see two inmates pushing each other, faces red and angry. But it died out after a couple of shoves, one of the boys walking away with his hands held up in submission.

  “I’m not going to just wait here until I get taken, Zee,” I said. “I can’t just lie down and let them come for me, let them jab me with their filthy needles and haul me off to some butcher shop.”

  “Alex, what choice do you have? Throw yourself off the eighth floor? That’s about the only way out I can think of, and it isn’t pretty.”

  “I’m just not ready to give up, that’s all I’m saying. There’s always a way.”

  “There’s a mile of rock in every direction, and those dogs will chew you up if you even piss the wrong way.”

  I slammed my fist down on the table in frustration.

  “Didn’t you tell me on the first day that you were getting out of here no matter what?” I asked, ignoring his guilty shrug.

  “That was back when I had a little hope,” he muttered.

  “Well, don’t lose it just yet,” I said, leaning over the table and once again thinking of mountains, of fresh air. “I’m telling you, there’s a way out.”

  ALL GOOD PRISON breaks need a plan. I’d seen them in films so many times—learning the guard rotation, bribing somebody for blueprints of the sewer system, getting your girlfriend to smuggle in a file so you can get through the bars of your window. One good plan, perfectly executed, that’s all it would take to get us out of here.

  But I had nothing. There was no guard rotation here, the monsters in their pinstriped suits seemed to patrol when and where they liked. The sewer system just led farther down toward the abyss, dumping its filth in the center of the earth. And even if I’d had a girlfriend, which I didn’t and probably never would, we weren’t allowed personal visits or letters. Hell, we didn’t even have windows. None of the things I’d seen on-screen were going to work in Furnace, but that shouldn’t really have been a surprise. I mean, television isn’t real life.

  On the plus side, my short career as a criminal had programmed my mind to find escape routes wherever I could. From the second I arrived at a target house I’d be scoping out emergency exits just in case I was found out. Which door would offer the quickest getaway, which second-floor window was a leap away from a tree branch or drainpipe, which bush in the garden would offer the darkest, safest hiding place if everything went wrong.

  Inside, my min
d worked in the same way. I’d take a mental snapshot of the house I was in, the layout, the location of furniture, how many locks were on the door. That way, even if the lights went out I’d know where to run to avoid tripping or crashing into a wall. There’s no greater shame for a burglar than cracking your shins on a coffee table or doing cartwheels over a footstool that you’d forgotten was there.

  The times I’d almost been caught, and there had been a handful, I’d only escaped because my brain had programmed in its routes and guided me to safety without me having to think about it.

  It was like being on autopilot—the adrenaline would kick in and I’d fly along the safest possible route until I was outside. I could almost see the thread of silver light leading me to safety, a trail that I had to follow or my life would be over, a trail that led from the unbearable confines of an unwelcoming house to the utter relief of fresh air.

  When I’d first arrived in Furnace the escape artist in my mind had set to work right away, taking a snapshot of every room in the prison, poking and probing everything I knew about the place in search of the path of least resistance, the best possible way of escape. It had drawn a blank every time—except one. Just once I’d imagined that silver thread, one occasion when I’d sensed fresh air and freedom beyond Furnace’s impenetrable walls.

  Room Two.

  Zee wouldn’t stop talking as soon as I mentioned a way out. He practically leaped over the table, grabbing me by my collar, his eyes wide with desperation. I clamped a hand over his squawking mouth before the entire prison heard him, then we walked to the most isolated part of the yard we could find and I told him what I was thinking.

  “You hear anything more about the cave-in?” I asked, speaking as quietly as I could. There was nobody nearby, but in a place like this you never knew if the walls had ears.

  “Just that it happened a couple of months ago,” he whispered back. “I heard some kid talking about it in the laundry. Roof came down, killed thirty guys and sent a load more through the vault door, to the infirmary. They haven’t come back, though.”

  I nodded. Donovan had told me the same. It had been the worst disaster in Furnace, apparently, but the blacksuits just acted like it never happened. The room was sealed and anyone caught talking about it got a day in the hole.

  “Didn’t you notice the smell when we were standing outside the room the other day?” I went on. He shook his head, confused. “Not so much a smell, just a sensation. Something different, like a breath of fresh air.”

  “It smelled less like sweaty teenage boys, I guess,” was all he could manage. “Why, is that your way out?”

  I didn’t say anything, and he raised an eyebrow.

  “Come on, Alex, think about it. For starters, we’re who knows how far underground. Even the biggest cave-in in history won’t have opened up a path to the surface. You’d need an earthquake measuring like a million on the Richter scale. It just isn’t going to happen.”

  I opened my mouth to argue but it was no good, Zee was on a roll.

  “Two: you think that if by some freak of nature and blessing of God a giant crack in the rock opened up to lead us to salvation, that the guards in here would let us hammer away with picks in the very next room? I mean, there isn’t even a proper door on Room Two, just a few planks of wood. That’s kind of like tempting fate if you run a prison, don’t you think?”

  I chewed my lip, my brow furrowed. Zee had caught me off guard. He was right, of course. What was I expecting? A miracle exit that nobody had spotted yet? But my mind kept circling back to the silver thread.

  “I don’t know what’s in there, Zee,” I replied, casting my eyes across the vast yard to the crack that led to the chipping rooms, guarded as always by an armed blacksuit. “I just know we need to find out.”

  NEW FISH

  MY HEAD WAS BUZZING with possibility as we made our way back across the yard, but Zee was doing his best to undermine my escape fantasies.

  “What next?” he asked, grinning. “The hand of God poking through the ceiling and offering us a lift to the surface?”

  “Zee,” I said, trying to ignore him.

  “No, a magical escalator that the guards use to nip up and get their shopping. It probably leads to the local supermarket. We could just hop on and get some dinner for the walk home.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “A transporter!” he cried out, then: “Beam me up, Scottie.”

  “Give it a rest!”

  “I know, why don’t we just find one of Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machines and soar up the ventilation pipes?”

  “What?” I asked, turning around and raising my arms. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m just trying to show you how ridiculous the thought of escape is,” he said, quietly this time. “I mean, you stand a better chance just running into the elevator as the doors are closing and hoping that nobody sees you.”

  I grimaced. That idea had occurred to me too. I was about to reply when, as if on cue, a gentle rumble came from above us, like distant thunder. The shouting and laughing and chatter in the yard instantly died away as the noise increased in volume, making the ground shake and dropping clouds of dust from the ceiling far above. The elevator was on its way down.

  “Well, now’s your chance,” said Zee, walking toward the yellow circle in the center of the yard. I followed him, keeping my eye on the elevator doors as the lift lowered to our level. We’d seen it drop a couple of times now, twice with blacksuits wheeling in massive trolleys of supplies and once with five ordinary Doberman dogs that were dragged squealing through the vault door. Other than that the elevator had remained sealed.

  When it seemed it would never reach its destination there was a crunch and the rumbling stopped. Half a minute later the huge doors grated open revealing three kids almost lost in the enormous interior. They hesitated when they saw the hundreds of unfriendly eyes glaring at them from the guts of Furnace, and one of them started crying. I couldn’t hear him from this distance, but the way his shoulders shook was unmistakable.

  “More new fish!” came a shout from the crowd that was gathering in the yellow circle, followed by a series of whoops and whistles. I noticed the Skulls making their way toward the elevator door, one pulling a nasty black shank from the inside of his overalls.

  “Looks like they’re getting the same warm welcome we did,” said Zee, thrusting his hands in his pockets and shuffling uncomfortably on the stone. “Poor bastards.”

  One of the new arrivals walked calmly from the elevator. He was tall and well built, and the way he stood in front of Kevin and his posse made it clear he was no stranger to a fight or two. The Skulls stared him down for a few seconds then dismissed him, spreading out in front of the lift door to pick on the easier targets inside.

  “Come on, you chickens,” screamed Kevin at the top of his voice. “Get out here and get on your knees. I’m your boss now.”

  Two of the Skulls leaped into the lift and grabbed the inmates, pulling them out and throwing them to the stone. One rolled and tried to get back to his feet before getting a kick to the chest that sent him sprawling. The other, who had been crying, just lay there and howled. The Skulls laughed and imitated the sound. I felt my entire body burning with the desire to help, my muscles so tense that I thought they were going to snap. But what could I do? Charge in like an idiot again and risk someone else getting chewed to pieces?

  Fortunately the horrible scene was cut short by the siren, which sounded for a good few seconds while everybody crowded into the yellow circle in the yard. Kevin saw me scowling at him and rubbed his eyes as if he was pretending to cry. Then he ran a hand across his throat and pointed to me before turning his attention back to the elevator. The two boys who had been dragged out were getting to their feet, the weeping lad being helped up by the other. Their faces were creased in agony and fear, and I shuddered, knowing that’s what we must have looked like when we arrived.

  With a hiss a
nd a roar the vault door swung open to reveal the same horrendous group that had welcomed us a week ago. They prowled into the yard all growls and wheezes and muffled screams, and even though they were some distance away every single inmate in the prison shuffled backward.

  Once again I found that I couldn’t focus on the warden, my eyes slipping off him each time like two opposing magnets held next to one another. Frustrated, I turned my attention to the gas masks, who shuddered and shook like rag dolls as the warden introduced the three boys to Furnace. It was impossible to tell if the wheezers were feeling any emotion because their faces were covered with metal and scars, but I thought I could make out a gleam of excitement in their piggy eyes as they studied the fresh pickings before them.

  “Maybe one of the new fish is a tunneling expert,” Zee whispered to me as the warden gave his speech about rules. “That tall one looks like he might have already escaped from a couple of prisons.”

  I laughed inside, not wanting to draw any attention from the freaks as the warden read out a series of names and numbers. The tall kid was Gary Owens, the weeping one was Ashley Garrett, and I had to choke back a sob as the name of the third kid was read out—Toby Merchant. I didn’t know him, but the name Toby was almost too much to bear. I was assaulted by the memory of my best friend lying on the carpet, his head blossoming, the same shade of red as a valentine rose. It could have so easily been him here, and me decomposing in a quiet graveyard. I guess we were both dead and underground.

  One by one the boys drifted off with their cellmates, and as the warden and his ghastly crew vanished behind the massive door, the shouts of “new fish” and “fresh meat” rose up again from the crowd, serenading the terrified inmates to their new home. It was terrible seeing even more new faces shoveled into Furnace, more fuel for the horrors to devour in the dead of night, more innocent victims, no doubt, forced into their rawest nightmares.