Alexander Smith - Lockdown

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.

"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.