Solitary

by Alexander Gordon Smith

  We had two twenty-meter coils of surgical tubing. It was thick stuff, but even so Simon had doubled it up and twisted it into a spiral. The bulk of it would hang between us, and we both had a shorter length to hammer into the rock at regular intervals. Whoever was ahead would fix one strand of makeshift rope every fifteen meters or so, ensuring that if either of us fell we wouldn’t go far.

  Not unless the tube snapped or the pins slipped out of the wall or the rock came loose or our knots failed.

  “Ready?” Simon asked, scaring the doubts from my mind. I looked at him, at his lopsided smile, and wondered why I had ever questioned his motives. He’d come back for me, risking his life even though he could have scaled the wall alone.

  “Nope,” I said, my voice trembling. I took a deep drink of water from the IV bag they had brought with them, relishing the strength it lent to my muscles.

  “Me neither,” he replied, his silver eyes flashing. “So let’s do it.”

  He handed me a pair of clamps and I toyed with them. They were like scissors, only with a wide, blunt end instead of blades. They were sprung so that when you squeezed the handles the two prongs expanded—designed to keep wounds and ribcages open during surgery, but equally useful for wedging into small cracks in the rock. Next came a handful of long, tough bone pins and one of the hammers with a hooked end which I looped onto my overalls.

  Simon took a minute to say goodbye, hugging the other two kids, the three of them sobbing. I stood by awkwardly, then waved a farewell once they had parted.

  “We’ll see you again,” said Ozzie. “Real soon.”

  “Not too soon, though,” joked Simon.

  They laughed, wishing us a final good luck. Simon tied the flashlight to his overalls with a small section of tube, and for a moment we stood side by side, heads craned back as we stared at the steeple—the rough, red rock disappearing into an endless night above us.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said.

  “Here goes everything,” he answered.

  And we started to climb.

  * * *

  IT WAS HARDER THAN I’D IMAGINED. Much harder. The fissures in the pinnacle were jagged and uneven, and before I’d climbed a couple of meters blood was threatening my grip. My muscles, weakened from lack of food and stripped bare by adrenaline, struggled to lift me, and each time I straightened a leg or tensed my arms I thought they were going to fold. The only thing that gave me any comfort was the fact that the rockface angled inward rather than hanging out over the gulf of darkness below. This meant that when I felt myself losing strength I could rest my body against the slope without fear of tumbling off.

  Simon had already taken the lead, his massive arm pulling him up while his smaller limb wedged him tightly in place. Each time he moved, the flashlight swung, making the shadows on the wall dart and stretch so that it was impossible to work out which holes were big enough to support me.

  One of my feet slipped from a narrow scar and for a moment I thought I was a goner. We weren’t yet ten meters off the ground but that was plenty far enough to break a leg or two. I grabbed the rock like it was my best friend, cheek pressed flat against its warm touch. My heart was trying to thump its way out and I didn’t blame it. I mean, how many meters are in a mile? There was a long, long way to go.

  But I wasn’t complaining. We were climbing, we were escaping. I pictured the blacksuits coming to pull me from solitary, the shock on their faces as they realized I was gone. They’d probably assume I’d been eaten by a rat, but they’d never know for sure—not until I stormed back in with a rocket-propelled grenade and blew the bastards to pieces.

  I shuffled up another few meters, Simon pausing as he waited for me to catch up. I glanced down, saw that the light from his flashlight no longer reached the ledge. But there were two silver pennies glinting up at us that I knew belonged to Pete. I would have waved if I thought I could do it without killing myself.

  “We should start roping,” he said as I drew level, and I was relieved to hear that he was panting too. “High enough now to do some serious damage if we fall. I’ll plug while you climb, then when you reach the end of the rope you plug, I’ll pull loose and we’ll step up. That make sense?”

  “Yes,” I lied, wishing we’d gone over it on the ledge below. I figured I knew what he meant though, and while he pushed a bone pin into his end of the tube and started hammering it into the rock I kept on climbing. It was tricky without the light, but I took it slowly, feeling my way up the steeple and testing every nook and cranny twice, three times, before trusting it with my full weight. After a few minutes I felt the length of rope connecting me to Simon go taut and I braced myself against the rock, slipping loose the section that dangled from around my waist and pushing a pin through it. A couple of hammer blows later and I was secured to the wall. As secured as I was ever going to be, that was.

  “It’s in,” I yelled, looking down at Simon in his bubble of golden light. He pulled his tube free, knowing that if he fell now my length of rope would hold him, and clambered up. His breathing was ragged when he reached me, but he was still smiling.

  “Great idea for the ropes,” he panted.

  “Great idea for the climb,” I replied. Then he was off again, overtaking me and scuttling up at speed. I made the most of my rest, relaxing my muscles and stretching my neck, hearing everything crack in protest. There was a tug on my waist as the rope reached its limit again, then the chime of metal on metal.

  “Your turn,” he called down.

  I rammed the hammer’s hooked handle into the crevice where I’d wedged the bone pin. It was pretty tight, but after a couple of twists the tube popped free and hung limply by my side. This was actually working! I started climbing again, buoyed up by our success. And it was only when I lifted my head to throw Simon a grin that I noticed something was wrong.

  “Turn your light off,” I yelled. He looked down at me, shadow throwing his face into a frown.

  “What?”

  “Just do it, turn it off. Look.” I couldn’t point but I nodded, gesturing further up the steeple. He grumbled but clicked off the flashlight, plunging the entire chasm into darkness.

  Well, almost the entire chasm. Maybe ten meters or so above Simon’s head I could make out a soft glow emanating from the rock. It would have been easy to mistake it for daylight, the warm glow of a sunset, but I wasn’t going to fall for that again. We were still way too deep. I carried on climbing, taking care not to make any noise. Simon obviously sensed my fear, waiting for me to reach him before speaking.

  “What do you think it is?” he asked.

  I shrugged, the motion knocking loose a pebble from the wall. It seemed to take a long time to hit the ledge below. The light could have been something from the prison, as we must have reached the level of the yard in general population by now. I pictured it on the other side of this slab of solid rock, the inmates running around inside like ants with no idea that we were scaling the wall, that we were gunning for freedom.

  “Maybe they knocked a hole in one of the chipping rooms,” Simon went on. “Maybe your explosion blew out the wall.”

  Maybe, but not likely. Whatever the light was, it didn’t look strong enough to be coming from any of the rooms in Furnace, and even as I watched, it seemed to flicker like a cinema projector.

  “Let’s take it slow,” I said. “And keep it quiet.”

  We did, easing up the wall together, too nervous of drawing attention to ourselves by hammering in the pins. We’d covered maybe five or six meters by the time we noticed the gap in the rock ahead. The steeple was broken: a massive chunk of it was missing. The pillar of rock rose up again above the gaping crack, but there was no way we were getting past it unless we could scale the walls inside the cave.

  That’s where the light was coming from. And not just light, I realized, but noise—a wet snuffling that could have been a vacuum cleaner held under water. I felt my stomach turn as I recognized the sound, but I refused to believe it.


  We eased up toward the split, the noise getting louder every second. The light was shaking now, trembling up and down and back and forth. I heard something tear, and the beam vanished altogether for a second before snapping back on, gold tinged with red.

  Three meters, two, one. We were there.

  It sounded like there was a party going on just above our heads—stamping feet, grunts, snaps like somebody tearing chicken wings. I looked at Simon, grateful that I couldn’t see his expression of fear and wishing that he couldn’t see mine. We didn’t speak, just nodded, tightened our grip on the wall and peered up over the lip of rock.

  The first thing I noticed was that the light came from a flashlight, being held by an arm clad in black. But the arm itself wasn’t attached to anything. It was being eaten by a naked, grotesquely muscled creature that looked like it might once have been a monkey or a chimp. It was squatting on its haunches in the middle of a small cavern, too engrossed in its meal to notice us.

  Behind it, on the floor, was the rest of the blacksuit. What remained of him, anyway. Even that was rapidly disappearing. Six or seven shadowed forms just as twisted as the first were stooped over the carcass, taking it to pieces like some living food processor. Every now and again one would turn to the walls and growl at the constellation of stars assembled there—silver eyes blinking on and off as they watched the carnage. Twenty of them, thirty maybe.

  Rats. A whole nest of them. Smack bang between us and the way out.

  RETREAT

  IT WAS ALL I COULD DO not to let go of the wall. I sank back down, Simon still by my side. We didn’t speak. We didn’t dare. One word might be all it took to bring the horde down on our heads.

  I took another look at the steeple, which rose on upward toward the roof of the cave. It was too far away to reach. It curved around to either side of us, the rock as smooth and slippery as ice. We had a choice between charging into the nest, climbing to the ceiling then somehow angling back around to continue our ascent, or retreating. It wasn’t a choice at all.

  Something shrieked in the cave, halfway between a monkey’s cry and the howl of a kid in pain. We slipped and scrabbled in the dark, our fingers barely able to hold us in place as we desperately searched for footholds beneath us. Only when we’d put some distance between us and the rats did Simon risk clicking on the flashlight. With its soft glow enveloping us the descent was much easier, but we still kept our thoughts to ourselves until the ledge appeared from the black tide. As soon as we were close enough I dropped, my legs and arms cramping the moment I struck solid ground. I cried out, slumping against the wall.

  Simon fell beside me, his face twisted into an expression of agony—although whether from pain or from our failure I wasn’t sure. Moments later I heard the scuffle of feet and Ozzie and Pete were there, small hands on my shoulders and their shrill questions too loud.

  “Dead end?” asked Pete. “I knew it. I knew it was too good to be true.”

  “Keep it down,” said Simon, sucking down air between each word. “Not a dead end. Rats.”

  Both the other boys swore in unison, looking up into the darkness. From here the flashlight wasn’t visible. Either that or the rat had finished its sick meal and had tossed the bones away. We sat in silence for a while, heads back and eyes on the sky for any sign of the creatures. My entire body was a wreck, my hands locked into cruel talons that wouldn’t straighten out no matter how much I pressed on my fingers.

  “So it’s no-go?” asked Ozzie eventually. Simon shook his head, his face expressionless.

  “There must have been dozens of them in there,” he muttered. “No wonder the blacksuits haven’t been able to find them.”

  “Can’t we wait for them to go, wait for a breach?” the younger kid went on. “We could tell the suits where they are, let the guards deal with them.”

  “Feel free,” Simon said.

  “It wouldn’t do any good, I don’t think,” I added. “There’s a massive section of the steeple missing. Even if the cave was empty I’m not sure we could pass it.”

  “And we don’t even know if it goes all the way to the top,” said Pete with a weary sigh. “Well, I guess it’s back to our apartment for now.”

  “It would have worked,” snapped Simon. “It still could work. What, one little hitch and the whole thing goes up in smoke?” He looked like he was going to say more, but the volume of his voice dropped and all that came out was a string of muffled curses. I didn’t listen. Something was nagging at the back of my mind, something important.

  “What do you think, Alex?” asked Ozzie, but I shut him up with an impatient wave.

  “Give me a minute,” I said, scratching at my fragmented thoughts in order to try to find whatever it was that had called for my attention. Something in what Simon had just said. I almost had it, an idea flashing before my eyes so fleetingly that it was gone before I could identify it.

  “You got something?” asked Pete, and this time it was Simon who told him to be quiet, his silver eyes wide and impatient.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I thought…” There it was again, like one of those stupid 3-D pictures where you have to squint to see the pattern. It seemed to focus, then shimmered out of sight. I thumped my head in frustration, going back over what Simon had said.

  It still could work. What, one little hitch and the whole thing goes up in smoke?

  Then it hit me, the image like a sledgehammer, impossible to miss. It exploded in my head with such force that I bit my tongue, the sting seeming to clarify the thoughts even more. The lost boys must have noticed something in me change as all three crowded in.

  “What?” asked Simon. “You know what to do? How to get rid of the rats?”

  “No,” I replied through a smile. “I know how to get us out.”

  “What?” he repeated, his own face opening up into a grin. “Another way? Tell us for God’s sake or I’m gonna throw you over the bloody edge.”

  “Going up in smoke,” I said, picturing a trail of burning vapor rising up through the fractured rock, curling free from a vent on the surface. “We can get out through the incinerator.”

  * * *

  FOR WHAT SEEMED LIKE FOREVER, nobody said a word. Two pairs of silver eyes and another of watery blue blinked at me as if I’d grown a four-foot beard in the last second.

  “You think the chimney goes to the surface?” said Simon after a while.

  “I know it does,” I replied, remembering the day I’d been taken to Furnace, the view from the bus window of the Black Fort, shrouded in smoke that seemed to rise from the ground behind it. “It has to. Where else are they gonna put it without choking everyone to death?”

  “Yeah, it makes sense,” added Ozzie, his voice accelerating with excitement. “I’ll bet you anything they placed the incinerator beneath another section of the gorge, saves drilling down through solid rock. And it would have to go to the surface. This place must have been inspected before it was opened, and an incinerator of any kind would need proper ventilation.”

  “You reckon this place was inspected?” asked Pete, an eyebrow cocked.

  “Of course,” the younger kid went on. “Every new prison would be inspected to make sure it was up to scratch. Obviously nobody’s ever been back since to check, but they wouldn’t have blocked off the incinerator chimney. What would be the point?”

  “It’s not like any of the inmates would ever find it,” said Pete.

  “Not alive, anyway,” Ozzie added. “And even if they did, who would think to climb it?”

  “They’d have to be crazy,” I said.

  “The only problem is getting to it,” sighed Simon, standing up and loosening the tube tied around his waist. It coiled to the floor with a slap. “We gotta go through the infirmary.”

  I knew we’d have to go back into the prison, but I hadn’t consciously acknowledged it until Simon had spoken. No, something in my head shouted. You can’t return. You’re out now. Just stay out. You’re not free, but you’re no
t their prisoner either. You can survive out here. If you go back now, then you face the wheezers, the blacksuits, the warden.

  And whoever had been on the other end of the phone.

  But I had to return. I was being forced back because of what I’d done to Zee. That’s why we hadn’t been able to make it up the steeple. That’s why the rats were up there. Because I wasn’t allowed to leave without him. I know I was delirious, my mind so exhausted that it couldn’t think straight, but right then it made a perfect kind of sense. And it was that crazy logic that gave me the strength to stand up, because I knew what I had to do.

  “So what are we waiting for?” I asked, resting a hand on the wall until my head stopped spinning, then squeezing back through the gap. “Let’s make like a tree and leaf.”

  “Make like an atom and split,” said Ozzie behind me.

  “Make like diarrhea and run,” came Pete’s muffled voice, making us groan. Simon was the last one in, and we were halfway back to the cave before he suddenly chirped up.

  “I’ve got one: let’s make like a hockey player and get the puck outta here.”

  We were still laughing as we skidded down the slope that led back to the main cavern. I don’t know why, I mean we were dead on our feet, and chances were that we would be dead on our backs within the hour, murdered by the blacksuits or the rats or worse. Maybe that was why. Maybe we were trying to laugh as much as we could before we met our dismal end. Because you never know which laugh is going to be your last.

  It faded as we reached the low ceiling, replaced by the panicked cry of a distant siren. We dropped down onto our knees to scan the cavern ahead. At first I thought it was empty, and I was about to crawl under a rock when Simon grabbed my arm.

  “You insane?” he whispered, using his other hand to point toward what I’d thought was a layer of darker rock against the fleshy red. Squinting into the merciless halogen beam, I saw a line of blacksuits standing motionlessly by the vault door, each holding a shotgun in one hand and a leashed dog in the other.