Alexander Smith - Lockdown

Donovan slammed a hard hat onto his head, switching on the lamp fixed to the front, and held another one out for me. I took it as the blacksuit walked to the center of the cluttered space and began to speak.

"You know the drill: dig and clear." His voice was like the rumbling of some subterranean river muted by the rock. "Shaft props every three meters, hats on at all times-we want you fit to work again tomorrow. Anyone caught smuggling equipment out gets two days in the hole. Any skirmishing gets you three."

By now most of the hundred or so inmates in the room were kitted up. Some held picks or shovels and others were hoisting the ancient metal wheelbarrows off the ground. Not knowing what to do, I grabbed a pick from the wall. It was so heavy I nearly dropped it, the spike coming worryingly close to the foot of the guy standing next to me. I tensed my muscles and managed to stop its descent, but Donovan was already flashing me a concerned look.

"Levels one through three, you're through the first door," the blacksuit went on. "Levels four through six, get in the third door. Room Two is out of bounds. Move it."

Our huddle of prisoners shuffled forward with about as much enthusiasm as if there had been an electric chair waiting beyond that hole in the wall. I could almost imagine them as old-time miners, singing "Hi ho, hi ho" as they marched into darkness. Only these workers were calling out insults to one another and making threatening gestures with their picks. I kept my head down and trailed Donovan.

"Don't worry, kid," he said as we stomped through the tunnel. "Only another twenty thousand or so days of this to go."

My pick suddenly got a lot heavier, as did my heart.

We emerged into a wide cavern, the ceiling so low that I had to stoop in places to avoid the drooping rock. Everywhere I looked there were long, thin beams propping up the ceiling, a forest of twigs that didn't look anywhere near strong enough to hold up the million or so tons of stone above our heads. I pictured what would happen if gravity took over, bringing down the roof of the cave and squashing us like a boot crushing a bug. At least it would be quick.

Swallowing hard, I managed to force the claustrophobic panic from my mind.

"Better pray there isn't a cave-in today," said Donovan, his words practically turning my stomach inside out.

The rock walls of the cave had been battered and broken into weird shapes. Most looked like curtains in a theater, full of shadowy folds that stood out against the rich red surface. They might be good hiding places, and I stored the information away in the back of my mind in case I ever needed it. Then I remembered the flayed dogs and instantly dismissed the thought. Donovan led the way to a distant section of the cave and rested his pick against the rock.

"Don't need a degree in rocket science to do this job," he said. "Just keep whacking until downtime. When you can't see your feet for rubble, give a shout to one of the wheelies and they'll come clear up. 'Kay?"

"And to think my mom and dad never thought I'd hold down a job," I answered. We both fought to hide our grins, then, motioning for me to stand out of the way, Donovan swung his pick to one side and brought it forward with a cry of rage. The metal blade struck the rock with a flash of light and a pistol crack, showering us both with shrapnel.

"Ow!" I yelled, hurriedly pulling down the hard hat's visor to avoid being blinded.

"Some fun, huh?" Donovan shouted as he swung again.

Making sure there was nobody around me that I could inadvertently injure, I hoisted the pick above my head ready to swing. I'd completely forgotten about the low ceiling, however, and the move generated a shower of rock that drummed off my hat. Donovan frowned through his visor and I felt my cheeks redden. I tensed my arms again and this time swung the pick in a sideways arc. It struck the rock with a deafening clang and a vibration that traveled up my arms and practically dislodged the vertebrae in my spine. Wincing, I waited until the pain had subsided before trying again. This time I gave the rock a delicate tap that barely shaved off a whisker of dust.

"Takes a bit of time to get used to the impact," said Donovan between strikes. "But that's okay. In here time is the only thing you've got plenty of."

I tried twice more, ignoring the sensation that my spine was being ripped out with each strike. After a few minutes tiredness set in, but with it came a pleasant numbness that spread through my body.

The lamp on my helmet threw the rock face into a mosaic of light and shadow. I started looking for features in the stone that resembled faces-ridges for foreheads, scratches that might have been noses, pick marks as lips, and loose pebbles like sightless eyes-and pretended they were blacksuits. Each time I swung right for the center of the face, releasing a scream of anger and hatred that lent power to the attack. And when the faces crumpled into fragments, I felt a little shiver of pleasure.

The strength of my feelings was a little unnerving-the knowledge that, at that moment, I could have driven a pick right through the real guard who would appear in the cave every now and again to check that everybody was working. Hatred-real, murderous hatred-was an emotion I'd never really experienced before, and I wasn't sure whether it excited me or terrified me.

IT'S INCREDIBLE HOW much stamina you can find when you're fighting an enemy in battle, even if that enemy is just in your imagination. For what must have been three or four hours everyone in that cave swung their picks at the rock relentlessly, like barbarians bringing down the walls of a castle. The sound of picks striking rock, the flash of the sparks, and the screams that powered each swing made my ears ring and my blood pound. It really was like an ancient battle, and I started to wonder just how long the blacksuits would last if all of Furnace's inmates picked up their tools and turned on their captors.

Donovan and I must have cleared away a good meter of rock by ourselves. It doesn't sound like much, but we're not talking about chalk here-these walls were tough. The rubble built up around our feet and was cleared away by the guys with wheelbarrows to be deposited in some unknown place. Probably mixed with our food, I thought, eyeing the piles of dust slumped like fallen soldiers on the ground between us.

I was still pummeling the wall with a passion when the black-suit appeared again and called for us to put down the tools. It was only as we all wove our way back through the ceiling props, dragging our picks behind us, that the pain slowly started to ebb back into my body. It began as a dull throb, but by the time we'd hung up our equipment it felt as though every muscle I had was on fire.

We were told to wait until the other group marched back into the equipment room, then the blacksuit herded us out of the tunnel back into the yard. I wondered why nobody had bothered to search us-the picks may have been impossible to smuggle out, but some of the rock fragments we had chipped away were sharper than scalpels. It soon became clear when we were led through another rough-cut door to a long room full of showers.

"Five minutes," shouted the blacksuit. I watched as everybody began to strip, heaping their uniforms and underwear into a pile in the corner then drifting out to stand beneath the overhanging showerheads. I did the same, feeling extremely self-conscious as I pulled off my clothes. But we were all in the same big naked boat and nobody seemed the least bit bothered by it. I picked a spot at the far side of the room and to my surprise found that Donovan had followed me.

"Brace yourself," he said. Seconds later there was an alarming squeal followed by a hiss, then the showerheads all erupted. I flinched as a jet of freezing water hit me square in the back, forcing the air from my lungs, but thankfully the temperature soon adjusted-still cold, just not arctic. I frantically scrubbed myself down, noticing the water turn red from the dust that clung to me, pooling around the drains as if we were all being bled dry. I shook the image from my head as Donovan started talking.