It would have gone on like that forever, an eternity of hopelessness and misery, but for one instant of madness. One beautiful, crazy moment in the canteen’s kitchen.
DONOVAN AND I were on trough room duty, both of us working the processor and blending the trash to put in our meals. We hadn’t said a single thing to one another for almost two days, and I wasn’t planning to do anything to change that. Donovan, though, had other ideas.
“Remember that day?” he asked, his voice so unfamiliar that it startled me. I didn’t respond, didn’t even look up, but he went on anyway. “Monty’s big brunch? Man, I wish he was still here. That was some tasty trough.”
I couldn’t bear even thinking about it, so while he chattered I crouched down to turn on the stove. I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder pulling me back up.
“What the hell happened to you, Alex?” Donovan asked, gripping my overalls as if worried I’d make a run for it. “I thought you said you’d never let this place beat you. You were a breath of fresh air in here, man. For a little while back there I actually thought you were gonna do it, gonna get out.”
I wrenched myself away so hard that Donovan’s rubber glove came loose, sitting limply on my shoulder. Grabbing it, I threw it at him by way of response, getting down on my haunches again to switch on the gas. With a hiss it started feeding through to the burners, and I hurried to get to the lighters, cracking my head on the counter as I stood up.
“You just gave up,” Donovan spat. He was furious, I could tell from the specks of spittle crowding in the corners of his mouth. “Like some gutless wonder, some chicken.” He reached down onto the counter and picked up a handful of rancid white meat. “Yeah, this is what you are, Sawyer, chicken. Processed, dead.”
I ignored him, lifting the chained lighter to the burner and sparking it up. I heard a squelching sound and turned to see Donovan stuffing his glove full of the wet flesh, his face twisted with some strange delirium. I was about to break my silence to ask him what he was doing when he pulled back his hand and launched the disgusting missile in my direction. At that distance he couldn’t miss, and the packed glove slapped me right on the cheek, trails of chicken fat dripping against my lips.
I reeled backward, wiping my face in disgust.
“Jesus,” was about all I could splutter. The glove had fallen on the burner, and I picked it up to lob it back in Donovan’s direction, feeling the meat inside soft and cold against my fingers. But something stopped me, a flash at the back of my mind that was bright enough to blow away the shadows of the last fortnight.
I looked up at Donovan, feeling my skin prickle and tighten, feeling my blood fused once again with adrenaline. He recognized the expression straightaway and grinned.
“What?” he asked. “What brought you back?”
“This,” I replied, holding up the dripping glove.
“You planning on battering your way out with a meat-filled rubber glove?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
“Not quite.”
I picked up the lighter again and held it to the burner, watching the air around it explode as it ignited. Then I pictured the crack in the rock that led to the river, saw it packed full of rubber gloves just like this one.
Only filled not with meat, but with gas.
JUMPERS
“OH. MY. GOD,” said Donovan when I whispered the idea in his ear. “That’s genius. Why the hell didn’t I think of that?”
“You did,” I answered, rummaging under the counter and picking up a box of rubber gloves. There were a hundred pairs in each carton, more than enough for what we had in mind. “If you hadn’t splatted me with that meat missile, I never would have had the idea.”
Donovan scratched his head and looked at me apologetically.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I kinda just lost my head. Speaking of which, you’ve still got a little . . .” He pointed at my face, guiding me to a white worm of chicken tendon that had dried to my upper lip. I peeled it off and flicked it at him.
“So how do we do this?” he asked, brushing the flesh from his overalls. “I mean, it’s gonna be hard to smuggle the gloves out; we go straight from here to the showers.”
“But we’re not under guard here,” I replied, pulling a glove from the box and blowing into it. It expanded like an udder, then deflated with a farting sound. “I’ve never once seen the blacksuits watch to make sure we shower after being on trough duty. It’s not the same as chipping, no sharp rocks or mining equipment to smuggle out.”
“I guess they’re not too worried about someone getting stabbed with a carrot,” he replied. “Okay, so we smuggle the gas out and hide it in the cell. Then take it with us for chipping.”
I nodded.
“The only problem will be getting it into Room Two,” I said. “Every time we go in there we’re risking our lives. And they only have to catch us once to know what we’re doing.”
“And there’s only so many times I can threaten to bring down the roof before the guards start getting suspicious.”
I swept my eyes around the room, checking to make sure nobody was watching, then puffed hard to blow out the burner flame. Wrapping the opening of the glove around the gas vent I watched as it began to expand, the main body bloating first before each of the five fingers stretched out like an unfolding hand. When it looked like it was ready to pop, I plucked it off and tied a knot round the base, then held it up triumphantly.
“Alex,” said Donovan as he clamped his own glove around the gas vent. “I think I love you.”
I laughed, tucking the makeshift balloon into my overalls. For once I was grateful for the baggy prison uniforms—the glove made it look like I’d put on a bit of weight but it wasn’t too obvious. Donovan pulled his glove free and tried to tie a knot, but it was too full. With another rude noise it spat gas into his face, half emptying before he managed to secure the opening. Coughing, he held up the bedraggled glove.
“Not bad,” I said. “But please don’t kill yourself.”
“How many do we need, you think?” he asked, tucking his first attempt down his overalls and wrapping a second glove around the vent.
“Probably dozens,” I answered. “But we can’t take more than three or four each at a time without looking like the Michelin Man. We can’t risk giving the game away.”
“Four at a time. You, me, and Zee. We can do this in a couple of weeks if the hard labor shifts are right.”
“A month at most,” I replied, trying to calculate it in my head. Donovan sighed loudly as he pulled the bloated glove free.
“Month’s a long time in Furnace when you’ve got a secret like this,” he said, doing a better job with his next knot. “You really think we can do it?”
I pulled another glove over the burner and tried to think back through the last couple of weeks, my endless depression, the sense of utter futility. But the feelings had vanished, as if my mind had been waiting to bring down a shutter and seal them off for good.
“Yeah,” I replied, feeling like it was the first time I’d smiled in a lifetime. “I really think we can.”
WE WERE so pumped up with hope that we almost forgot all about the trough. By the time the lunch siren blasted we’d only made a handful of pots of food and were forced to serve the hungry inmates with uncooked mush. From the sounds of it there were a few violent complaints, but they were directed at the unlucky kids who were serving, not us.
We almost learned the hard way how dangerous our plan was. Once we’d stuffed our overalls with flammable gas we lit the burner again, and came very close to being blown to smithereens by a stray spark. Next time we knew to fill up the gloves at the end of hard labor, not the beginning.
Walking out of the canteen and through the trough room was the most terrifying part of the operation. I felt like the globes of gas pressed between my skin and my clothes were visible to even the most shortsighted person in Furnace, and as we crossed the yard toward the staircase I started to panic, knowing that a guard or snitch
was going to discover us at any moment. But Donovan steered me on with a firm hand on my back, and we made it to the cell without incident.
I hid the gloves underneath the mattress at the base of my bed while Donovan kept watch. I wasn’t too happy about the idea of going up in flames in the middle of the night, but we had no choice. It was either there or in the toilet cistern, and the thought of being blown up while taking a dump was infinitely worse.
Once the miniature bombs were secure we set off to find Zee, bumping into him halfway along the third-level platform. He was red-faced and sweaty with a nasty-looking burn on his neck.
“Gary,” he hissed as an explanation. “Had laundry duty with him today. He wanted me to do his share while he napped on the clean bedding. I won’t be saying no to him again, he’s a psycho.”
“Well, we’ve got something that will cheer you up,” I said.
“It must be something big if it’s pulled you out from that mother of all sulks,” was his reply. I clipped him softly on the ear then started walking, waiting until we were in the clear before we filled him in on the plan. He just about danced a jig on the spot, the excitement too much for him.
“Holy Mother of Jesus,” he said, clutching his hair in his hands. “You pair of crazy, wonderful nutters. The gloves, of course!”
I clamped a hand over Zee’s mouth while Donovan held a finger to his lips.
“Don’t want the whole prison to know,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s essential,” I went on, leaning in and whispering to Zee. “If this is going to work, then we can’t tell a soul. It’s got to be us three, nobody else. I trust you guys, no questions asked, but I wouldn’t trust anyone else in here as far as I could throw them. One word to anyone and it’s over, we’ll end up in the hole, or crapped out the backside of some dog.”
“Word of honor, boss,” said Donovan, holding out his hand palm down. Zee nodded and placed his hand on Donovan’s.
“Feels like the three musketeers,” I said, adding mine to the pile. Zee laughed.
“All for one and let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.
I know it was just my imagination, but I could have sworn there was some sort of electrical pulse charging through our linked fingers. Maybe it had been so long since I’d gripped someone else’s hand, so long since I’d felt that contact with anyone. But I sensed it, a force that united us right there and then, a bond of trust, of friendship, of hope.
I guess that’s why it came as such a huge surprise that out of the three of us, I was the one who broke the vow first.
IT WAS AS we were heading down to the yard that I heard someone shouting, pointing to the platforms above our heads. I looked up into the shadows of the upper floors, scanning the cells and the walkways. At first I couldn’t work out what had caused so much consternation, but then I spotted them—two bodies clinging to the railings on the eighth level.
“Jumpers,” said Donovan. “I wouldn’t watch this if I were you.”
There were three blacksuits in the yard, but none of them moved. They simply gazed up at the two boys as if watching a movie, their booming chuckles audible even from where I was standing. The inmates around us were similarly unconcerned, shouting and jeering as they ran from the place the boys would hit if they let go of their perches.
“Why isn’t anyone doing anything to stop them?” I asked.
“Like what?” said Donovan. “Put up a safety net? It’s their choice, just let them go.”
“No,” I whispered, then without thinking about what I was doing, I bolted back up the stairs. I leaped up the first flight three at a time, bounding round the corners so fast I nearly toppled over the side. I made it up the second and third flights in seconds, by the sixth level I was gasping for breath, and I almost didn’t make it up the eighth set of stairs, tripping on the last one and sprawling out across the landing.
I pulled myself up, desperately gasping for breath. The lights were off up here, the cells unoccupied and shut tight. But by the weak glow that rose up from the yard I saw the two pale figures twenty or so meters down the platform. They were standing on the other side of the railing, only their trembling fingers stopping them from spilling into the void.
Both boys were eyeing me nervously, and I could finally see who they were. It was the new kids, Toby and Ashley.
I stepped slowly toward them, hands up to show I didn’t mean any harm. Ashley shuffled on the ledge, looking ready to leap at any time. Toby was a little more secure, his eyes locked on mine, pleading for me to help. Behind me I heard two more sets of footsteps and knew that Donovan and Zee had my back.
“Toby, right?” I said. “And Ashley?”
The first boy nodded, the larger of the two marking out his landing site eight stories below. I stopped walking when I was an arm’s length away, and realized I had no idea what to say.
“Don’t jump,” was the first thing that came out of my mouth. What a great help that was—I should have been a Samaritan. “I know it’s bad down there, but you don’t have to do this. There’s people who’ll look after you, you can get by.”
I reached out toward Toby but quickly pulled back when Ashley started screaming at me.
“We can’t get by. Every day it’s the same, every day we’re pushed and punched and spat on. Some guys even wet my bed the other day.”
I laughed, which only seemed to incense him further.
“No,” I explained hurriedly. “It happened to me too, not long after I got here. It probably happens to everyone.”
“I didn’t even kill him!” the boy screeched. “I shouldn’t even be here.”
He leaned backward, his arms straining with his own weight. Donovan and Zee rushed to my side, ready to grab for the boys if they jumped.
“Come on, Toby,” said Ashley. “Let’s do it.”
“Wait, Toby,” I said, turning my attention to the smaller boy. He was young, maybe eleven. He looked nothing like the Toby I’d known, but when I stared into his sad eyes I saw the same boy, the friend I’d let down, whose death I’d caused. He looked like he was going to jump, and I didn’t blame him. I’d been thinking the very same thing until this morning.
I thought about our plan, our way out. I thought about our promise to keep it secret. I thought about my friend Toby, lying dead on a stranger’s floor. I thought about this kid, the way he’d soon be lying in a pool of his own blood as well. I couldn’t let it happen again, not when I had the chance to save him.
“Look, there’s a way out,” I said as quietly as possible. I felt a hand grip my arm and turned to see Donovan staring at me, the tendons in his neck strained with anxiety.
“Don’t,” he said. “We made a deal. One word, remember. That’s all it could take.”
“There’s a bunch of us,” I went on, ignoring him. “We know how to escape.”
Both boys jerked their heads in my direction.
“Really?” said Toby. It was the first time I’d heard his voice, a musical lilt with an accent I couldn’t place. “A way out of Furnace?”
“It’s a lie,” spat Ashley. “He’ll lure us down and then they’ll kill us, turn us into one of those things. There’s only one way out.”
I extended my hand again and nodded at Toby. He returned the nod, and his dark eyes suddenly glowed. He started to climb back over, but Ashley loosened his grip from the railing and snatched his clothing.
“I can’t go on my own,” he snarled, then with a noise halfway between a snort and a sob he fell. Toby lurched out over the yard and I threw myself toward him, grabbing his outstretched hand an instant before he dropped. The weight of both boys pulled me into the railings but I held on tight, refusing to let go.
The pain in my arm was unbearable. Looking down I saw Toby holding on to my hand with everything he had. Clinging to his waist was Ashley, wailing and tugging on his captive to try to pull them both loose. Far below, several hundred inmates were watching from the yard, cheering for us all to drop.
 
; I screamed to Donovan and Zee to help, but they didn’t move.
“Just let them go,” Donovan whispered. “They know about the plan, they could ruin everything.”
I screamed with the pain. Zee took a step toward me but Donovan stopped him.
“I’m telling you, Alex, let them go. We don’t know anything about these guys.”
“You can trust him,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’ll lay my life on it. You can trust Toby. Now help me!”
“You’ll lay all our lives on this,” Donovan said, then both boys ran forward, Zee grabbing me and Donovan gripping Toby’s arm. We all pulled together and managed to shift them up a fraction. But Ashley was still throwing himself around. If we couldn’t dislodge him, then we were all going over.
“You got him?” I asked. Zee threw his arms over the railing and grabbed Toby’s wrist. I let go of the boy and ducked behind Donovan so I had a better view of Ashley.
“Let go,” I said, but he showed no sign of hearing me. “I said let go.”
Ashley just looked at me with unrestrained contempt, then doubled his efforts to pull Toby loose.
“I can’t die on my own!” he screeched.
“Quick,” hissed Zee. “I can’t hold on much longer.”
“Last chance,” I said, leaning over the railing, my fist bunched. Ashley spat at me, the gob arcing up then landing back on his own chin. He thrashed around, eyes wild, and I knew I had no choice. I lashed out, my fist connecting with his cheek. His head snapped back, his arm slipping. I punched him again, and this time he let go, seeming to fall in slow motion as if his endless scream was a parachute.
I staggered back from the balcony before he hit the yard, collapsing against the wall as Donovan and Zee pulled Toby onto the walkway. We all sat in silence for a while, trying to understand what had just happened, then Donovan threw me a cold look.