Alexander Smith - Lockdown

"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."

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 patrolling the workrooms, and that was when I was going in.

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.