Lockdown

by Alexander Gordon Smith

  “I hope you’re happy,” he said.

  But how could I be? In the space of five minutes I’d broken the vow and put us all in danger. Worst of all, I’d just become a killer for real.

  THE RED HAND

  WE WERE SERENADED BACK downstairs by the sound of a hundred voices cheering and screaming, calling for us to jump as well. It was sick, the way the inmates and the guards saw Ashley’s final moments as entertainment, a performance to brighten up their day. He’d been a living, breathing kid; he hadn’t deserved his fate, even though he’d chosen it.

  “Breathe a word of this to anyone, kid, and I’ll kill you,” Donovan said for the fourth time as we reached our level. “I’m not joking.”

  He and Zee pulled ahead, disappearing into my cell. I stopped walking and turned to Toby. He wasn’t crying, but it looked like his insides had been pulled out, leaving a white, shivering shell that seemed on the verge of collapse.

  “Just ignore him,” I said. “It’s my plan and you’re part of it now. But you really can’t say anything, not if you want to get out of here.”

  “I do,” he said. “I won’t, I swear.”

  We walked into the cell. Donovan was lying on his top bunk fuming quietly, and Zee was sitting at the foot of my bed.

  “I really wouldn’t sit there if I were you,” I told him. His eyes widened and he shot up, looking at the bulge that concealed the explosive gloves. He smiled nervously, then glanced at Toby.

  “More hands means we can do this quicker,” he said eventually. “Right?”

  “No,” said Donovan without lifting his head. “We don’t tell him what we’re doing. He can come with us on the day, but the less he knows the less he can give away.”

  “I’m not going to say anything,” Toby said. “I just want out of here. I promise, my mouth is sealed. And I can help.”

  Donovan just snorted.

  “Zee’s right,” I said. “The more of us there are, the quicker we can get out.”

  “Well, why don’t we just tell everyone?” Donovan spat. I ignored him, checking to make sure there was nobody outside the cell before filling Toby in on the details of the plan. By the time I’d finished, he was grinning from ear to ear.

  “You’re all crazy,” he said.

  “Welcome to the club.”

  MY DREAMS THAT night were as bad as ever. I was back in my glass prison, only this time it wasn’t my house I was looking at but a stranger’s. The blacksuits pulled someone screaming from it, a figure I recognized as Ashley, throwing him in the cell with me. Instead of thumping the glass, I found myself banging on the boy’s face, ignoring his sobs and his pleas as his skin cracked and split. Eventually he smashed into a thousand pieces, and beneath them on the glass floor I saw my reflection, all piggy eyes and rusted mask.

  I woke with a cry to find myself encased in a darkness that was almost solid. Shivering, I crawled from my bed to the cell door and lay on the stone staring at the screen in the yard far below, the rotating Furnace logo a beacon in the night. I don’t remember falling asleep again but I must have done so, because I woke when the siren blew, my entire body aching from the hard floor.

  When the doors grated open, Donovan sprinted down to the yard to check the work chart, then legged it back up the stairs.

  “Me and you on laundry,” he said, obviously disappointed. “Zee’s chipping, Toby’s in the kitchen but I don’t think he should be doing anything.”

  “I can handle it,” came a voice from the cell door. It was Toby, and behind him stood Zee. “Just tell me what to do.”

  I told Toby how to fill the gloves while Donovan helped Zee squeeze the balloons under his overalls. We managed to get five in without him looking ridiculous.

  “I’m glad Furnace is a no-smoking establishment.” He grinned, giving us a twirl to show off his new curves.

  On the way down to breakfast we made a plan just to throw the gloves through the wooden slats into the tunnel leading to Room Two. When we got the chance, we’d go through and carry the stockpile to the crack in the floor. Doing it this way was much less risky than breaking into the tunnel every day, and so long as the gloves were out of sight it was unlikely they’d ever be found. Donovan wasn’t keen on the idea, but only because it was Toby’s suggestion. Anyway, he was outvoted.

  “Great,” he muttered as he sat down with his breakfast. “Now we’re a democracy.”

  We split up after leaving the trough room, wishing each other good luck. Donovan and I didn’t say more than a handful of words to each other as we bleached and washed the sheets, too anxious about the plan. There were so many things that could go wrong—Toby could be caught filling the gloves, Zee could be spotted pushing them through the boards into the tunnel, one of us could explode while walking through the yard, and of course somebody could just mess up and spill the beans. Each of those scenarios went through our minds a million times that morning.

  After showering we practically sprinted back to our cell to see Toby sitting on the bottom bunk, pale but happy. Making sure we were alone, he lifted up the mattress and proudly displayed eight fresh gloves, all bloated with gas.

  “Holy crap,” I said. “How’d you get so many?”

  “There are certain advantages to being so skinny,” he replied, pulling on his overalls to display just how baggy they were. “You could fit an elephant in these and there’d still be room for little old me.”

  Donovan made some comment about not pushing it, but he was obviously impressed. Some minutes later Zee came running into the cell looking just as pleased with himself.

  “Massive. Piece. Of. Cake,” he said. “Just pushed them through the boards when the guard did his rounds. I checked, it’s so dark in there you can’t see a thing. Nobody will find the gloves unless they’re looking for them.”

  I felt some of the anxiety leaving me—like a bit of the black cloud that had obscured my thoughts for so long just breaking off and floating away. The whole thing seemed like a dream, but it was real—the plan was actually coming together.

  For the rest of the day we wandered impatiently through the prison, dreaming wordlessly of what we’d do if we ever reached the surface. We must have looked like giddy kids, and several times we had to warn each other not to grin so hard for fear of someone getting suspicious.

  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 i
n 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.”

  THE ARENA

  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.”

  “Well, we’ll hide you then.”

  “Where?” I snapped. “The garden shed?”

  We held our tongues as a blacksuit strolled past, his eyes glinting with an evil smile as if he knew I was toast.

  “Whatever happens,” I said when he had moved on, “the plan goes ahead. Even if I die in there, you know what to do, right?”

  All three boys looked reluctant, but they nodded.

  “You never know,” I added. “I might win.”

  This time, nobody responded.

  IT HAPPENED so quickly. I thought that time would slow down, the seconds so heavy with fear that it would take each one hours to pass. But one minute I was sitting in the yard talking to the boys, the next I was yanked off my seat and practically dragged across the stone toward the gym. I fought against the two Skulls who held me, but they didn’t even flinch from my pathetic blows. What good was I going to be in the arena?

  I heard a familiar voice by my side and saw Donovan walking with me, telling me just to go with it. We reached the door, manned by a Skull and a Fifty-niner, and I was shunted inside, tripping over my feet and landing hard on the floor. I thought for a minute that they were going to stop Donovan from entering, but I soon felt his hand under my arm, lifting me back onto my feet.

  Ahead of me lay the gym, roughly half the size of the trough room and filled with various pieces of rusting equipment—weights, benches, even an ancient-looking exercise bike. The kit was arranged in a rough circle around a ring of bare floor that looked a much darker shade of red than the rest of the room.

  What shocked me most about the scene was the sheer number of people packed into the small space. Most had Skull bandannas or painted cheeks, and were sitting on the equipment waiting for the show to begin. Others had no gang markings and crowded aro
und the back of the hall, nudging each other for the best view. There must have been fifty people in there, all waiting to see my blood spill.

  I spotted Gary when he jumped off a bench into the circle, his arms raised as he addressed the crowd.

  “Little man come to show us how tough he is,” he shouted, then he turned to me. “Get in here.”

  “Eyes and throat,” whispered Donovan. “Just don’t go down. If you stay on your feet you might get through this.”

  Easily said, but my legs already felt on the verge of giving out. I walked slowly to the edge of the circle, trying to ignore the whistles from everyone around me. Gary walked up until my eyes were level with his chest. He bent his head toward me, his quivering blond lip-hair spattered with spittle.

  “Poor little man,” he said. His face was expressionless, as it always was, but when I looked him in the eye I saw something moving in there, something primeval that swirled and swooped in the darkness of his pupils. He turned away, back to the audience. “Who called this challenge?”

  Three Skulls leaped into the ring. I recognized them immediately as the ones I’d fought before in the canteen, the ones whose friend had been chewed to pieces by the warden’s dogs. For a second I managed to snatch a ray of hope. If it was just these three, then maybe I did stand a chance. I’d given as good as I’d got the last time I faced them.

  “All yours,” Gary said, starting to walk away. Then, without warning, he spun around and punched me square in the jaw. I felt like my head had exploded. Fireworks burned my vision as I fell back, their color giving way to shadow as I fought to stay conscious. The blow had been like a sledgehammer, I could barely even remember where I was.

  Somehow I managed to stay on my feet. I shook my head, clearing my vision in time to see Gary walking back to the edge of the circle. The three Skulls moved quickly to fill the space, the first running at me with his fist raised, ready to strike.