"When you've been on the job as long as I have," came the reply, "you just know."
There was more, but I couldn't hear it over the sound of the retching and sobbing that echoed back at me from the stained upholstery.
WHEN THE BUS eventually stopped we were herded out like sheep. I felt like I'd thrown up a couple of vital organs as well as the contents of my stomach, and my legs were so wobbly that I thought I was going to collapse when I stood. But as soon as we were outside, the sensation of rain on my face perked me up a little. Well, it did until I remembered that this might be the last time I would ever stand in the rain.
We were right outside the main gate, in a giant cage that gave off a sinister hum and made my head throb whenever I got too close to the bars. I didn't have to know much about physics to guess that it took a hell of an electrical charge to have that effect. The entrance to Furnace was suitably terrifying-two enormous black gates topped with a plinth marked with the word GUILTY. As soon as we were lined up, the gates swung open with a sound not unlike fingernails running down a blackboard, revealing a gray room with nothing in it except two men dressed in black leaning casually against the walls and a nasty-looking gun mounted on the ceiling.
The men grinned at us and stepped forward. I felt my legs going weak again just at the sight of them, and I wasn't alone. The three other boys shuffled away in fear, and even the armed guards moved back toward the bus.
"They're all yours," said one of the guards, his voice little more than a whisper. He pulled a palmtop from his jacket and held it out with a shaking hand. "If you could just print here."
One of the giants in suits strode forward and snatched the device, pressing his thumb against the screen until it bleeped loudly. He watched the armed guards scramble into the bus, then turned his attention to us. I studied his face. With their glinting eyes and their menacing smiles the men in black all looked the same, but I recognized this one-the mole on his chin letting me know it was the man who had shot Toby.
"We told you," he said, placing his hand on the shoulder of the boy beside me but talking to us all. "You could run but you couldn't hide. And now here you are, guests of honor at Furnace Penitentiary."
The other man walked to the front of the line and grabbed the kid by the scruff of his shirt, pulling him forward.
"This way," he said, his voice like the sound of continents shifting.
We shuffled forward, our steps tiny in the hope that maybe we'd never reach the threshold. It was as the first boy passed through the doors that the second-the guy who'd been stunned at the court-suddenly made a break for it. He pounced to the side and stepped backward, all the while looking at the men guarding us.
"You framed me," he shouted, his face twisted into a mask of anger and fear. "I didn't kill anybody and now I'm spending the rest of my life in this nightmare. I won't let you do it."
The two men started laughing, their thunderous peals echoing off the stone walls. Then in the blink of an eye the one to the right of me burst across the dusty ground and with a mighty crack sent the boy flying toward the fence. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed the speed of the man. He had moved so fast he'd left traces in the air, like sparklers on a summer night. The boy hit the floor and rolled, ending in a crumpled heap perilously close to the electrified bars.
"You wouldn't be the first one to fry on that cage," said the man, walking until he stood over the boy. "But it's a shame to waste you on something as quick and painless as the Barbecue."
He reached down and picked the boy up by his collar, like a bear scooping up a rag doll, then carried him back to the line. The kid had a bloody lip and a dazed expression like he'd just been hit by a freight train, yet somehow he was managing to stand. He lowered his eyes to the floor, but I saw him flash the man a murderous look as soon as his back was turned.
"Now that little rebellion is out of the way I hope you realize just how serious this is," said the first man, walking to the front of the line and ushering us forward. "This is a private institution sanctioned by the government, which means that we now own you. You have been sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. So, short of a revolution in the country or an act of God, you will die here. Not that God would ever mess with Furnace."
I faltered as I reached the threshold, staring at the line that separated the ground outside from the polished stone of the room ahead. It was just one more step, but it was the last one I would take as a free person. With a shuddering sigh I lifted my leg and planted my foot down on the other side of the wall. It might have just been my imagination, but the sound of that footstep seemed to reverberate around the room, a death knell mourning a lost life.
"As you can see, the manner of your death isn't important to us," the man continued, guiding our group through the featureless room toward a metal door in one wall. "Of course the state has no death penalty, but any attempt at escape will be dealt with using lethal force."
The door opened to reveal a long corridor ahead, as featureless as the room we'd just left. I cast one final look behind me, catching a glimpse of dark cloud through the main gates before they slammed shut. It was a fleeting image, but one I will never forget.
"There's no one you can cry to, no one you can beg to. The public have judged you and found you guilty. As far as they are concerned, you are already dead."
The corridor ended with another door, this one guarded by a third man, also in black. He nodded to his colleagues as he unlocked the gate, and winked a silver eye at us as he waited for it to slide open. We passed through, finding ourselves in a small room with a hole in one wall.
"Line up and take your prison uniforms," the man continued. "One each. Then go through that door for purging."
We obeyed. What choice did we have? One by one we walked by the hole in the wall, and from the shadows we were passed a pair of paper shoes, underwear that felt like sandpaper, and a hunk of stiff, striped cloth that was better suited to holding potatoes than wearing. The white uniform was branded with the Furnace symbol-three circles arranged in a triangle, a dot in the middle of each and thin lines joining them. I followed the boys in front through the door to find another room, this one full of tiny cubicles.
"Get in, strip, and wash," came the booming voice behind us. I picked a door, left my new uniform on a shelf outside, and entered. There were directions on the wall and I followed them, taking off my clothes and placing them into a chute where they vanished from sight. Shivering in the cold, I pressed a large red button in front of me and was instantly hit by a fist of freezing water. I doubled over, pressing myself against the wall to avoid the stream. But the cubicle was too small, and I had to endure it for what seemed like an eternity.
When the spray stopped, I followed the instructions again and held my breath while a cloud of gas was pumped in. It stung my eyes and my skin, and even after the directed thirty seconds when I took a gasping breath, the gas still flooded my lungs, making my chest feel like it was on fire.
Staggering out of the door, I put on my uncomfortable uniform and watched as the other three boys emerged from their cubicles-each one red-eyed, pale-skinned, and coughing. We looked like phantoms haunting the room where we'd died, which wasn't too far from the truth, I guess.
His malicious grin as wide as ever, the man steered us across the room to a set of elevator doors. He whispered something into his collar and seconds later the doors opened, revealing a machine gun on the ceiling of the elevator car which swung around to face us.
"This is where we part company, for now," he said. "This elevator will take you all to your cells. Don't try anything funny or you'll end up decorating the walls."
He pushed us forward with his massive hands and we entered the cabin, the remote turret following our every move.
"It's quite a ride down to the bowels of the earth," he said as the doors began to close. "So I hope none of you are claustrophobic."
Then he was gone, and with a deafening whir of
gears the armored elevator began its descent to the darkness at the bottom of the world.
THE DESCENT
FOR THE FIRST MINUTE or so none of us spoke. We didn't even look each other in the eye. It was a strange mix of emotions. There was fear, of course, so thick you could almost smell it beyond the stink of dust and oil, but there was also something else. I guess it was pride-if we acknowledged each other, then we were also acknowledging our own helplessness, our own panic, and after what we'd just been through, nobody wanted to do that.
In the end, it was me who broke the ice.
"I just want to get this out in the open," I said above the sound of the elevator's descent. "I didn't kill anyone. They framed me, they shot my friend and set me up for the fall. I'm not a killer."
Gradually, the other three boys raised their heads, and for the first time we all got a good look at each other.
"Join the club," said the kid who I'd seen in court. He was shorter than me, but wider, his body tensed like a cat that's puffed up its fur. He brushed a strand of untidy dark hair away from his face and cast a nervous gaze up at the machine gun in the ceiling before continuing. "Those guys in black drove a car into some old woman. Killed her. They knew everything about me, they got my prints onto the wheel, they knew I wouldn't have an alibi that night or any way of proving I didn't do it. Name's Zee, by the way."
"Zee?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. The question brought a brief smile to his face.
"Got four older brothers and sisters. Mom was adamant that I was the last one, so she called me Zee. What about you?"
"Alex," I replied. I looked at the other two kids. They were the complete opposite of each other-one resembled a beanpole, his uniform hanging off him like rags on a scarecrow, the other had probably eaten way too many chocolate bars in his time, but his green eyes were sharp and his gaze fierce.
"Jimmy," said the beanpole, hoisting up his trousers. "Yeah, I didn't kill nobody either. Same story as you, Alex, they murdered a friend of mine. Stabbed him, though."
We all turned to look at the fat kid. For a minute it seemed like he was going to cry, then his expression hardened and with his fists clenched he spat out two words that sent chills down all of us.
"My sister."
There was still no sign of the elevator stopping. It might just have been a psychological trick to make us feel like we were going deeper than we were, but I doubted it. It takes a long time to travel a mile underground.
"You saying they framed us all?" asked Zee, shaking his head. "Doesn't make any sense. Why would they do it?"
"Maybe they've got cells to fill, targets to reach," suggested Jimmy, but his tone of voice made it clear he didn't know. None of us did. Not then.
"Listen," I said, certain that the elevator car was bugged and motioning for the other boys to come closer. "Whatever happens in there, whatever they've got in store for us, we've got to stick together. Right?"
"I've got your back," said Zee. "I'm getting out of here no matter what."
"The only way you're getting out is in a coffin," hissed the kid who had lost his sister. "Haven't you heard about this place? There is no way out."
"Well, I'm with you guys," said Jimmy, ignoring the remark. "Ain't no way I'm spending the rest of my life in this hole."
The noise of the elevator shifted pitch and with a bone-breaking shudder it came to a halt. Before the doors could open, however, there was one last hate-filled remark from the corner of the cabin.
"We're all going to die in here."
THE MOMENT THE elevator doors opened my senses came under attack. I can describe what I saw when I stepped out into Furnace but I can't tell you how I felt. I was so overloaded by what lay before me that I'm sure part of my brain shut down just so that it wouldn't overheat. It was like a survival mechanism to stop me going insane. I took in the details but they didn't register on any emotional scale.
The elevator had taken us to the very depths of the prison-a stretch of bare stone that was easily the size of a soccer field-and above us for as far as we could see lay its tortured, twisted interior. Furnace certainly deserved its name. The walls were made from the very rock of the earth, their surfaces rough and red, and the half-light of the room made them flicker as if they were on fire. The sunless yard was vast and circular, and arranged in rings around the outside were countless cells, the gray metal platforms and jagged staircases resembling a rib cage against the fleshy walls.
I stared at the elevator shaft, which rose in a relentless line above our heads, the top barely visible where it entered the red rock of the ceiling-broken only by a giant video screen hanging over the doors. The elevator was the only way in or out, and there was absolutely no other means of getting back up.
The hiss of pneumatics snapped my attention back to the walls beside us and I saw two more machine guns protruding from the rock like black limbs. They trained their sights on us as we staggered from the elevator into the vast chamber, each with an unblinking red eye that seemed to assess our every move. I wondered whether there was a human at the other end of the controls, or whether some dark robotic intelligence had its finger on the trigger, ready to fire at the smallest sign of trouble. I couldn't decide which would be worse.
I was so overawed by the prison itself that it took me a while to notice it was full of people. They swarmed across the courtyard in front of us, mostly kids about my age, some a little older and even a couple who looked like they should still be in middle school. Some hung out in groups, their stares and swaggers a clear message that they were in charge. Others hung back in the shadows or peered over the bars of the platforms, all sickly faces and baggy eyes. Most were staring at us, some laughing and shouting "new fish," others shaking their heads in compassion. Their gaze made my cheeks burn, and I lowered my head so nobody would see.
It didn't take long for a few of the kids to step forward, but it was pretty clear that they weren't a welcoming party. Each of the six boys wore a black bandanna with a crude picture of a skull painted on the front. It would have been laughable if they didn't all look as though they were about to make us walk the plank.
"Let me guess," I said, starting to speak before I even knew I was doing it. "You're in here for piracy."
I heard Zee snigger to my side, but there wasn't even a hint of a smile in the pockmarked faces before me. One of the boys, not the biggest but by far the ugliest, stepped right up to me, so close that I could see the dirt clogging his pores.
"Get this straight from the start, new fish," he said, jabbing me in the chest with a filthy fingernail. "You on our turf now, so you take orders from me."
My heart was pounding so hard it felt like something inside me was about to burst. I tried meeting his glare with one of my own, and was holding up pretty well until I suddenly started thinking that this was how the kids at school must have felt when Toby and I had pressed them for money-powerless, furious, ashamed. The thought washed through me like acid, and my head dropped. Looking back, that little moment of self-realization probably saved my life. I've seen the Skulls kill people for nothing more than standing up to them.
"You all belong to me," the kid continued, speaking slowly and emphasizing each word by prodding us one by one in the chest. "No getting away from that. You all Skull Fodder now."
Zee started to say something-it sounded like it was going to be a witty comeback-but fortunately for him he was interrupted by the sound of a siren. It was deafening, cutting through my head and reverberating up the steep walls of the prison until the echoes died out near enough twenty seconds later. By that time the boys had backed away, joining the rest of the inmates who were flooding toward the center of the giant courtyard. I noticed a yellow ring painted onto the floor and wondered whether we should be heading toward it too.
But it was too late to move. The siren rang out again, and a metal door the size of a bus to the left of the elevator began to hiss and rumble, mechanisms inside grinding and turning as they released a series of locks. With
a blast of steam the vault door swung open lazily on its enormous hinges, revealing a sight that I knew there and then I would take with me to my grave.
THE GUARDS CAME OUT FIRST, three of them all in black suits and all holding shotguns in their massive fists. They strolled from the steam-filled corridor beyond like they were going for a walk in the park, their silver eyes full of cold humor. They made me nervous, no doubt about it, but that wasn't what filled me with terror.
Behind them came two more figures that looked horribly familiar-their stunted bodies covered by leather overcoats, their shriveled, pasty faces concealed by ancient gas masks that wheezed noisily. They were almost lost in the shadows of their guards as they twitched and shook their way out, but their black eyes-which looked as lifeless as the lumps of coal in a snowman's face-never left us. I recalled the first time I'd met one of these monstrosities, the way it had picked Toby to die without the slightest trace of emotion. I felt anger well up inside me, but I was powerless to do anything about it.
Besides, it wasn't even these freaks who made the scene ahead so horrific. It was the man who walked out after them. At first glance he seemed like an ordinary guy in his forties-pretty tall, very lean, dark hair, and a clean gray suit. But the more I studied him the more I realized there was something very wrong with the way he looked. His face was too angular, the skin pulled tight against the bone beneath like he was a skeleton dressed in someone else's flesh-flesh that looked more like leather when it caught the light.
The weird thing was that I tried looking him in the eye but I simply couldn't do it. My gaze just bounced off, like there was some kind of force field around his face. I know that sounds stupid, but I can't think of any other way to describe it; whenever I looked him right in the eye, I found myself staring at something else instead-his chin, his suit, the wall. I mean, what the hell was that all about?
Lockdown f-1 Page 4
