Lockdown by Alexander Gordon Smith
The siren blew, letting the crowd disperse, and my attention returned to thoughts of escape. I jogged up the stairs toward my cell, Zee hot on my tail and still bombarding me with crazy ideas—including stuffing my sheet into my uniform and pretending to be one of the muscular blacksuits. I ignored him as I made my way down the platform, entering to see Donovan sitting on his bunk idly picking his nose. He looked at me distastefully, then flicked something in my direction.
“Haven’t you got better things to be doing, Sawyer,” he said with a sneer, “like trying to get us all killed? Why don’t you start another fight? This time you might get lucky and bring the dogs and the wheezers up here.”
I walked up to the bed and leaned against the wall, running a hand through my hair and sighing loudly.
“I couldn’t just lie there not knowing what was going on,” I said eventually. It was a lame excuse for something that could have got us both dragged away, but at least it was the truth. “Besides, you saw that thing. It wasn’t interested in us. It knew exactly where it was going.”
“You wouldn’t be so damn cocky now if it had marked the door,” Donovan spat back. “You’d be strung up somewhere beneath Furnace having your skin ripped off or your eyes skewered or something.”
I felt my stomach turn and did my best to ignore his remarks. Donovan wiped a hand beneath his nose and sniffed loudly, looking me in the eye as if waiting for something.
“Okay, I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I really am. Come on, I’ve hardly been here any time, I didn’t know how serious it all was.” Donovan nodded gently but his eyes never left mine. “I just . . .” I paused, not quite sure what I was saying. “I just want to be doing something, something to help get us out of here. I don’t want to be curled up and cowering in the dark when those things come for me. Okay?”
“What else is there to do?” was his emotionless reply.
“He thinks we can make a break for it,” said Zee, smiling at Donovan as if he was talking about a silly child. “He thinks there’s a way out.”
“Oh yeah, there are plenty of ways,” Donovan said, rummaging under his mattress and pulling out a small wooden shank. I was surprised to see it, but I guess everybody in Furnace needs some way of protecting themselves. He started scratching the rock wall, the homemade blade not even leaving a mark. “Just pick a spot and start digging. If nobody catches you, I reckon you could make it out in, say, a thousand years.”
He tossed the shank back onto his bed then leaped nimbly onto the floor, barging past me and standing at the bars of the cell, looking down into the yard. I sat down on the bottom bunk and tried to ignore my frustration. In the relative silence I heard the sound of screaming from nearby but I tuned it out.
“Tell me what you know about the cave-in,” I asked after a while. “In Room Two.”
Donovan snorted.
“That was my reaction too,” Zee said, sniggering. I wanted to leap up and slap him but I managed to control my temper and settled for a mean glare. He mouthed the word “sorry” and let me carry on.
“Something happened in there,” I went on. “Those kids hit a fault line or something. I could smell it, Donovan, I could smell the fresh air.”
“It was your imagination, you chump,” he replied, resting his head against the bars. “Maybe someone let rip when you were standing next to them and you felt the draft.”
“You were there too, the other day. Didn’t you sense something? Anything?”
“Yeah, I sense it every time I walk into a room in here. I hope and pray that there might just be a hole in the rock and we can all make a run for it. Sometimes I hope so much that I can see the way out, I can smell the rain, I can hear the birds. But I can’t, it’s just an illusion. They say that hope can set you free, and I guess that’s what it is. A tiny glimpse of freedom to keep us sane, if you follow me.”
“It wasn’t an illusion,” I snapped. “I’m telling you, it was real. I didn’t make it up.”
I thought back, remembering the sensation of being outside, of mountains and wind and endless views. Maybe it had just been an illusion, my brain’s way of coping with the thought of never going aboveground again. I guess it made sense. I mean, I knew that Furnace could do funny things to your mind. But something deep inside me wouldn’t let it rest, was screaming at me not to give up. I knew that inner voice well, the instincts that I had followed all the time when I was robbing houses.
“Fine, maybe it was just my imagination,” I said. “But what if it wasn’t? What if there is a way out? Isn’t it worth a look?”
“Feel free,” muttered Donovan. “I’m not stopping you.”
“But we need your help, D,” I added. “We can’t do this alone.”
“You mean you can’t do this alone,” Zee said, looking at me with a concerned expression. “Less of this we business, please.”
I looked at Donovan for a response but he had straightened up and was staring down into the yard with an expression of disbelief.
“No way,” he said with a laugh. “No way is he taking on the Skulls.”
I jumped off the bed and ran through the cell door to the platform. Six floors beneath me I made out a small circle of people, each wearing painted bandannas and unsettled expressions. In the middle of the circle, prowling around like a caged tiger, was the tall, calm new boy, Gary Owens. Donovan and Zee rushed to my side and watched as Gary raised his hands, inviting the Skulls to throw a punch. Some had pulled shanks from inside their overalls but nobody was making the first move.
“He is either the bravest kid or the biggest idiot on the planet,” said Donovan, his tone almost respectful. I’m not sure why but I suddenly felt a surge of jealousy that my cellmate was so impressed with him.
“Idiot, I’d say,” I muttered. “He’s going to die down there.”
I saw Kevin walking up to Gary. The new kid was almost a head taller than the leader of the Skulls but Kevin didn’t seem to care. His face was red, his expression apoplectic—all bulging eyes and foaming mouth. He grabbed Gary by the collar and started screaming at him. The acoustics in the prison weren’t great, but from up here we got the gist, just like everybody else in Furnace who had stopped what they were doing to see what was going on.
“Think you can march in here and take over?” Kevin screamed, along with a few choice expletives. He was shaking Gary, but the big boy wasn’t folding. He was studying Kevin with a look of cold detachment, a look that reminded me of a spider’s emotionless glare right before it bites into its prey. “Gonna kill you, new fish. Gonna skewer you.”
He pushed Gary back and a number of Skulls grabbed his overalls, holding him in place. A length of gleaming silver had appeared in Kevin’s hand, and he waved it menacingly in front of Gary’s face.
“Even the tough kids learn the rules pretty quickly in here,” Donovan said.
I wasn’t so sure. With a twist of his body Gary sent one of the Skulls holding him skittering across the stone floor, then smashed his free fist into the face of his other captor. The boy’s legs buckled with the impact and he fell to the floor, his landing spot already marked out by the blood gushing from his nose.
Kevin screeched like a wild animal and backed away, motioning for his henchmen to attack. But nobody moved. They weren’t Mafia enforcers, they were kids. Gary strode forward and grabbed Kevin’s arm, bending it in such a way that the shank fell from his grip. The Skull was yelling in pain, his fury replaced by fear.
“Kill him!” Kevin yelled to dead ears. “Cut his heart out.”
“This is great,” said Donovan. “Kevin’s been asking for it ever since he arrived. About time he got some himself. Hope the new kid roughs him up a bit.”
Gary kept twisting Kevin’s arm, using both hands to bend back the wrist to an impossible angle until, in horrible unison, a crack and a scream echoed across the yard. The prison had been plunged into silence, everybody watching as Kevin dropped to his knees clutching his broken arm, tears streaming down his face. Ga
“This is great!” Donovan repeated with more enthusiasm. “How the mighty have fallen, eh?”
“You think this means we’ll be free of the Skulls?” Zee asked.
“Reckon so,” Donovan replied. “Maybe he’ll take out the Fifty-niners too.”
Gary bent down and snatched the bandanna from Kevin’s head and the shank from the floor. He held them up in the air for us all to see, like trophies. Some of the other kids had gone right up to the boy, circling him as if he’d just scored the winning goal in a soccer match. One inmate had even put his arm around him and was jumping up and down.
“Wanna go join the celebrations?” Zee asked. But I stayed where I was. Something wasn’t right. Gary wasn’t smiling, he didn’t look like somebody who had come to save us. He eyed the crowd around him with the same dead gaze that he had given the Skulls. Then, with a flash of silver and an arc of crimson, the boy who had been holding him staggered across the yard, looking at the wound on his arm with disbelief. The inmates turned their shocked expressions toward Gary as if there had been some mistake, but the new kid slashed out again, catching another victim in the chest.
For a moment the yard was chaos as the prisoners climbed over one another to get to safety. In the center of the maelstrom Gary tucked the stained shank into his overalls and pulled the Skull bandanna over his head. I felt my heart sinking. He wasn’t a savior, he was a psychopath.
The siren blasted out across the yard, a fitting funeral dirge for the boys who lay squirming in their crimson coffins. Donovan pushed himself off the railings.
“Like I said, Alex,” he said as he watched the injured kids fold into themselves, all sobs and snot. “It’s the only thing we can do, curl up and cower and wait for death.”
ROOM TWO
THE THOUGHT OF FACING another evening locked down in our cells was almost unbearable, but a small part of me was relieved that there was a set of thick metal bars between us and Gary Owens.
As soon as the siren blew, the blacksuits had come running, one knocking down Gary with the butt of his shotgun and the rest hauling him and his victims through the vault door. After a couple of hours of restless pacing, I saw the massive portal swing open again and a couple of guards escort Gary, bruised and bloody, to his cell—which fortunately was on the second level, a long drop from mine.
Some time later Kevin was dragged back out into the yard, his arm in a rough cast that was the same shade of pale gray as his face. As soon as he emerged, Furnace’s long-suffering inmates began whistling and whooping through their cell doors, calling out insults with a vicious ferocity fueled by years of abuse. Kevin made no effort to reclaim his air of menace—he let himself be dragged up the steps, never taking his wide eyes off the floor. Looking back, I almost felt sorry for him. Little did I know then that he had far worse coming to him than a few jeers.
When all fell quiet in the yard, I tried again to get Donovan interested in escape. It was like trying to get a hippopotamus interested in ballet.
“There’s nowhere to go,” he said for the umpteenth time.
“There must be, there’s no such thing as a prison with no way out.”
“Furnace is a prison with no way out, you plank.”
“I can find a way, I know it.”
“There’s nowhere to go.”
Around and around and around in circles. Shortly before lights-out he sat bolt upright in his bunk as if he meant to strangle me, his expression so incensed that it was scary.
“What?” I asked, backing off toward the bars just in case he’d finally lost it.
“Why are you so desperate to die?” was his reply. I tried to argue but he cut me off. “There’s only ever been one escape attempt in Furnace, a couple of years ago. Was a kid a little like you, only cleverer, smarter. He spent months learning the way the prison worked, especially the elevator, you know. Nobody knows how he managed it, but somehow during a lockdown he got himself inside the air vents. He stayed in there for five days while the guards and the dogs hunted him down, then when they brought in more blacksuits from the surface he found his way onto the roof of the elevator and hitched a ride up.”
“He made it?” I asked, my heart pounding at the very thought of somebody getting out. Donovan smiled wickedly and shook his head.
“Oh no. They found him. They caught him climbing into the vents of the Black Fort on the surface. He was so hungry and thirsty he’d gone delirious, was singing to himself. Guess what happened to him.”
“The hole,” I said, sighing.
“He wasn’t that lucky. The warden, damn his soul, he brought that kid back down to the yard and tied him up good. Then he let three of his dogs loose.” Donovan faltered, his mind somewhere terrible. “They treated him like a toy, tossing him back and forth like some teddy bear until he was limp and broken. Then they ate him.”
“You’re kidding,” I said, certain that he was making the story up to scare me.
“Ask anyone who’s been here longer than two years. They never talk about it but they all remember it. Scott was his name, Scott White. You wanna end up the same way as him, then you carry on talking about escape, kid. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“So the air vents,” I went on, trying to forget everything I’d just heard. “They’re still there, right?”
Donovan collapsed down on his bunk with a cry of frustration.
“Warden sealed them off the week after White was killed, replaced the tunnels with pipes so narrow you couldn’t fit your hand inside. Why do you think the air is so thin down here? We’re all suffocating ’cause of the last idiot to think of freedom.”
He said something else but it was lost beneath the siren. With a snap the lights cut off, and I felt my way across the tiny cell to my bunk. Stripping to my underwear, I crawled under the rough sheet and tried to ignore the brutal images that paraded past my open, sightless eyes. A kid like me, being chewed and dismembered by beasts with bloody breath while the whole of Furnace looked on. It was almost enough to make me forget about escape, to resign myself to a lifetime behind bars.
Almost. Surely doing nothing was the worst kind of death imaginable—endless days rotting in the guts of the earth, dying piece by piece by piece. As sleep blotted Scott White’s violent end from my mind, I resolved to find out what lay in Room Two, even if it cost me my life.
AS IT TURNED OUT, I didn’t have too long to wait. The next morning’s work chart put Donovan and me back on chipping duty, giving me the perfect opportunity to scope out the abandoned cave. After a hearty bowl of gunk we walked across the yard toward the crack in the wall, Donovan giving me concerned sideways glances practically every other step.
“I don’t like that look you’ve got,” he said as we reached the entrance to the chipping rooms. There was a blacksuit on duty, as always, his shotgun locked, loaded, and aimed directly at our heads as we filed past. Donovan waited until we were out of earshot before continuing. “Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
“As if I would,” I replied, beaming at him with a kind of wild-eyed insanity. He looked at me, openmouthed, then shook his head and started selecting his equipment. I did the same, lifting a pick from the racks and slapping a hard hat onto my head. Switching on the lamp and pulling down the visor, I snatched a look across the hall at the entrance to Room Two. It was sealed up with thick planks, but they were just wood. I gripped the pick, wondering how quickly I could hack my way inside.
“Levels one to three, Room One,” bellowed the blacksuit, pointing his shotgun at the black hole on the other side of the room. “Rest of you get into Room Three, now.”
We shuffled forward with the same lack of enthusiasm we always did, and I let myself drift to the back of the crowd. The blacksuit was watching us go, his silver eyes never blinking, but I knew from experience that he wouldn’t stand there all morning. Sooner or later he’d start patrolli
Once we’d passed through the cracked portal into Room Three, I stationed myself as close to the door as possible. At this angle I could see back into the equipment room, where the long shadow of the guard sat heavy and motionless across the rock. After refusing once again to help me out, even by providing a distraction, Donovan swaggered over to the far end of the room and began hammering the rock. I added the sound of my pick to the familiar percussion, but there was no strength to my swings. I was saving my energy for when it counted most.
The snakelike shadow didn’t budge for the better part of an hour, by which time my brow was dripping and my overalls were drenched despite my lack of effort. The adrenaline shot that rocked my body when I saw the guard move almost made my legs buckle, but I embraced the boost. I checked the room to make sure nobody was watching, then edged my way toward the door.
I could hear the blacksuit’s footsteps growing fainter as he strode into the first chipping hall, but even when the sound had stopped it took me a good few minutes to build up the nerve to peek around the corner. With a shuddering sigh I saw the equipment room was empty, and I dashed across the stone floor to the wooden boards that sealed off Room Two.
There were eight long planks in all, each fixed to the wall like a ladder. They didn’t do a great job of concealing what lay beyond. Through the gaps I could see a tunnel stretching out into blackness, and my heart soared as once again I sensed the wind blowing through the cracks, the fresh air making me euphoric after the long days spent in Furnace’s stale passages.
I breathed deeply, feeling like the sensation could lift me off the ground. Then I remembered what I was doing. I checked the entrance to the first room, but there was no sign of the blacksuit returning. I jammed the head of the pick behind the plank closest to the ground then leaned on the handle, using it as a lever. The bolts securing the plank to the stone didn’t budge.