Alexander Smith - Lockdown

The days rolled by with the same monotony, but for the first time since I arrived at Furnace I actually looked forward to hard labor in the morning. I'd always be awake before the siren and the first one down into the yard. The third day of our plan Donovan and I smuggled a combined total of nine gas-filled gloves from the kitchen while Toby dumped more in the tunnel and a furious Zee scrubbed the toilets. Day four we were all on trough duty and my mattress was almost falling off the bed with the sheer number of makeshift balloons beneath it. Day five Toby finally won Donovan over by stuffing ten gloves into his overalls and somehow managing to waddle to the tunnel without being seen.

Each day the stockpile grew and each day we became more confident. The blacksuits occasionally flashed us a wicked grin, but they never once stopped or searched us. The gloves were just too inconspicuous, invisible unless you knew where to look.

After ten more days we made the decision to start moving the gloves from the tunnel to the rift. Donovan and I were the only ones on chipping duty, but we'd got so used to the movement of the guard during hard labor that neither of us was worried. Well, that was a lie, we were permanently worried, but no more than usual.

We stuck to our routine, positioning ourselves by the door to Room Three and waiting for the blacksuit to start his rounds. As soon as his shadow had disappeared we ran around the corner, pulling the loose board away from the wall and scrabbling inside. Ahead of us, looking like bulbous sacs of insect eggs in the muted light from the equipment room, were the gloves. There were more than I remembered.

"Um, you didn't bring a duffel bag with you by any chance?" I asked Donovan in a whisper.

"I left my suitcase in the cell."

I swore under my breath, wondering how many trips it would take to get the gloves to the back of the cavern, then suddenly noticed that Donovan was stripping out of his overalls.

"Is there something you're not telling me?" I asked, a little concerned by the boy standing before me in his prison-issue underpants.

"Well, you know when I said I loved you…" he said, laughing quietly. "No, you dope, we can use them to carry the gloves."

He tied the ends of both legs, then began stuffing the gas-filled globes into the opening. After a while he looked up at me and nodded at my clothes.

"Come on, don't be shy."

I stripped, sealing the legs of my overalls and picking up a couple of gloves by their fingers. I could smell gas, but they all looked intact, and thankfully stayed that way as I squeezed them into my makeshift bag. By the time we'd located any strays that had rolled to the edges of the tunnel, I'd counted thirty-three gloves and Donovan had twenty-eight.

"Lead on, Macduffer," he whispered, hoisting his stuffed overalls over his shoulder.

We made our way into the tunnel, taking extra care not to trip. When the equipment room was out of sight we switched on our helmet lamps and I headed off in what I thought was the right direction. My memory may not have been great, but it was impossible to ignore the freezing air against my skin, and my goose bumps did a great job of locating the crack. We stood above it for a moment, savoring the roar of the river and the smell of the air.

"You really weren't imagining it," Donovan said quietly, staring at the fist-wide ravine as if he could see right through it to another life.

I placed my overalls on the rock, then got down on my knees. Pulling out a glove I eased it gently into the crack until it was completely below the surface, wedged perfectly between the two sides. Donovan followed my lead, squeezing his stash into the gap.

"Stick to a small area," I said. "We don't have to blow the whole thing, just a hole big enough for us all to drop through."

It took us no more than a few minutes to finish laying the gloves into a section of the crack roughly ten feet in length, layering them so that they were five or six deep.

"That enough, you think?" Donovan asked. I shook my head.

"One more lot like this should do it, then we're ready to blow."

"Which reminds me," he went on, turning and blinding me with his lamp. "How exactly are we going to light these mothers? I mean, I sure as hell don't want to be doing it with that piddly kitchen lighter. I'm attached to my beautiful arms and I want it to stay that way."

I untied my trousers and slipped back into my overalls without replying. To be brutally honest, that part of the plan hadn't even occurred to me.

"We'll think of something, D," I said as we started walking back. "It's what we do."

The blacksuit was back at his post when we returned to the tunnel, and we watched him from a distance until he walked into the first chipping room. Squeezing under the loose board we sprinted back into Room Three and started hammering at the walls with glee, trying to ignore the sparks that hit our gas-scented overalls.

I was so excited that I didn't see the figures approaching from my side until it was too late. I felt a hand grip my neck, twisting my head around, then another slap me hard across the cheek. I dropped my pick and stumbled backward, only staying upright because Donovan caught me.

When my vision had cleared I saw Gary Owens standing right in front of me, flanked by two snarling Skulls. I reached up to touch my stinging cheek and my fingers came away red, although somehow I knew that it wasn't my blood.

"Red hand," said Gary, his face impassive as always. "Time for you to get your fight, little man."

"What?" I asked, genuinely confused. Gary stepped toward me and held up his right hand, which was smeared with blood. I knew it must have left an imprint on my face.

"You been marked by the red hand, little man. Gym, this evening, when my boys come get you." He walked off, the inmates parting like the Red Sea to let him through. "Fight to the death, little man," he shouted over his shoulder as he returned to his station. "Time to die."

I WAS IN A STATE of shock for the rest of hard labor, hacking at the wall without knowing what I was doing while my exhausted mind tried to picture what was going to happen later that day. I knew all about the gym, about the bodies they dragged from there, the Skulls and Fifty-niners who came out grinning with bloody knuckles and bloodstained shoes.

I was no fighter, they'd throw me to the wolves and I'd be eaten alive. Why now? Two more weeks and maybe we'd have been out of here, riding a river to a fate other than Furnace. Instead I was going to be slaughtered by an ugly psychopath with a taste for murder.

While we worked Donovan tried to teach me everything he knew about self-defense, telling me to go for the eyes and the throat or the groin. But even the thought of it made me feel queasy. Admittedly I'd sent Ashley tumbling to his death less than two weeks ago, but that had been different. I had taken a life to save a life, and it wasn't like it had been a proper scrap or anything. Against the Skulls I'd fold like paper.

We met up with Zee and Toby in the yard. They'd both been on kitchen duty, smuggling another batch of gloves up to the cell, and were desperate to know how we'd got on that morning. They only had to ask a couple of times before they saw something was wrong.

"We lost them, didn't we?" guessed Zee. "The gloves. I know it."

"The gloves are fine," said Donovan. "Got them in place no problem."

"Well, you obviously weren't caught," Zee went on. "What the hell's wrong?"

"Them," said Donovan, nodding toward a group of Skulls heading to the gym. "They've challenged Alex to a skirmish, tonight."

Zee's face fell.

"They'll kill you," he said. "Alex, you can't do it."

"He doesn't have a choice," Donovan went on. "I've seen this happen a million times. If you don't show up when you've been marked, they come after you and stick a shank in your back."