Alexander Smith - Lockdown

"Bet your arms feel like they're made of putty," he said, his voice raised above the spray.

"Yeah. What were we doing in there anyway? I never heard of guards encouraging their prisoners to tunnel through the walls before."

"Well, most prison walls aren't several miles thick," he replied, wiping water from his eyes and spitting red. "We're carving out new rooms. We chipped out this very room here, stone by stone. Took three years. Before then we washed in our cells. Buckets and sponges. Like some shantytown."

I tried whistling to demonstrate how impressed I was at the sheer size of the room, but all that came out of my wet lips was a bubbly farting sound.

"To be honest, though," he went on, "I think they just make us hammer away for a few hours every day so we're exhausted. It gets something out of our systems. Knackered inmates are a lot easier to control than pumped-up ones." He paused for thought. "And sometimes there are cave-ins, like in Room Two the other week. And dead inmates are even easier to control, if you follow me."

I wasn't sure if he was joking or not, but given what I already knew about Furnace, I was guessing that he was deadly serious. I gave my hair a quick rinse just as the showers shut off, and we all marched back across the room. While we'd been washing, someone had taken away our dirty clothes and there was a pile of new uniforms, underwear, and paper shoes by the door. Donovan slapped his way past several pink, shivering bodies and scrambled into his duds, but I was happy to wait. It's not like there was a variety of sizes and colors-the jumpsuit I eventually put on hung off me with the same disregard for my body shape as the last one.

We traipsed back out into the yard, which was a flurry of activity as the various groups of workers returned from their jobs. It was weird, but as we crossed over to the trough room I actually started to feel like I was getting into the swing of Furnace. This place was dangerous, yes, but there was a routine here that was almost comforting. Sleep, work, and relax; sleep, work, and relax. The system was like a heartbeat that kept us all functioning, a rhythm that made me feel like maybe things wouldn't be so bad here.

Of course, it was right at that very moment that all hell broke loose.

DONOVAN AND I ENTERED the trough room to the sound of jeering. At first I couldn't pinpoint precisely where it was coming from above the general chatter-the hall was half full of inmates who had obviously beaten us to the showers, their cheeks glowing above starched collars. As we strolled across the floor, however, it became clear that the noise was emanating from behind the canteen.

Four Skulls were standing on the other side of the counter, each wearing the trademark black bandanna. Two of the kids were dishing out bowls of slop to the huddle of waiting inmates, but the others were looking at something at their feet, something hidden behind the stainless steel canteen counters. From the way they moved, it looked like they were kicking out at whatever it was, and the evil glint in their eyes stripped my appetite away in seconds.

I couldn't face getting any closer to the Skulls, so I let Donovan go ahead while I scanned the hall for a familiar face. Zee was sitting on his own in the middle of the room, poking his slop forlornly with a spoon. I walked over to the other side of his bench, doing my best to ignore the pain in my legs as I sat down. He barely even raised his head to acknowledge me, and his expression told me something terrible had happened.

"Something terrible has happened!" he said when I uttered my thoughts out loud. "Y'know, I thought I could take it here, put up with anything they threw at me until I found a way out. But I just don't know anymore."

"Did someone attack you?" I asked, alarmed. "The blacksuits? The Skulls?"

He shook his head, then looked up at me as if about to reveal the most shameful secret of all time.

"They made me clean the toilets, Alex," he whispered. "Every single bowl on the first level. That's nearly one hundred crappers, for your information, most of which still had evidence of…" He looked like he was about to gag. "I've had a shower but I can still smell it on me."

I did my best to hold it in but I couldn't help myself. The laugh bubbled up from deep inside me like a fountain, and I howled so loudly that practically the entire hall turned and scowled in my direction. It was a good few seconds before I managed to plug it, but by that time Zee was struggling to maintain his mask of distaste. The lines around his eyes eventually relaxed and his face opened up like a flower.

"I thought you'd been in a fight or something," I said, his grin letting me know it was safe to go on. "You looked like you were about to jump."

"Well, let's see how you feel when you're cleaning someone else's crap out of your fingernails," came his response.

The jeering was still ongoing from the far side of the room, but I couldn't face turning around to see what was happening. Instead, I asked Zee.

"Some poor kid," he answered. "They've had him pinned to the floor for the last quarter of an hour. As far as I can tell, they're making him lick up anything they drop. It's horrible, but what can you do?" He looked sheepishly at his lunch. "I mean, better him than us, right?"

Luckily I was saved from having to answer as Donovan crashed down onto the bench beside me and tucked into a massive bowl of slop.

"How was your first morning?" he asked Zee as he chewed. "What job you get?"

"The Stink," he hissed.

Donovan pulled a face that was half grimace, half grin. "Tough break for a new fish. Still, we all gotta do it."

"Well next time you do it, can you try to miss the seat?"

This time we all laughed, but it was short-lived. I heard a crunch behind me and a peal of ugly laughter. Beneath it all was a quiet sob that seemed to claw its way into my chest and burrow right inside my heart.

"Did you see who it was?" I asked Donovan. He was lifting a spoonful of food to his mouth and paused to consider the question.

"No one you know, kiddo," he said eventually. But his hesitation had already given away too much.

"It's Montgomery, isn't it?" I said. Donovan let the spoon fall to his dish and nodded. "Christ, I saw him in his cell this morning. Kevin made him sleep on the floor, as far as I could see. They're going to kill him at this rate."

Both Donovan and Zee were staring at the table like there was an escape plan written on it.

"This place is full of unwritten rules," whispered Donovan without looking up. "There always has to be someone to take the punches. That's how it works. It isn't fair, it isn't right, but that kid licking slop off the floor over there means that we get to eat in peace. If there was no scapegoat then we'd all be in danger, if you fol-"

"I follow you," I barked. My anger surprised me; it didn't make any sense. Back in school Toby and I had always picked on the weaker kids, guys just like Montgomery. They didn't fight back, they didn't argue, they gave you what you wanted, then went and cried in the corner. I wasn't sure why I felt such a burning anger inside me at the thought of Montgomery getting picked on now, such rage at the idea that nobody was going to help him. "So we just leave him until he can't go on anymore then hope the next scapegoat isn't one of us, right?"

"Listen," spat Donovan, his fraying temper obvious from the way he glared at his bowl. "You've been here one day and you think you can change things. I've been here five years and I know how the system works. You try to be a hero then you'll get a shank in the back, you try to help that kid then tomorrow it's gonna be you both licking crap off the floor. Let me know if you're going to do something stupid, kid, 'cause I'll ditch you like that." He snapped his fingers.