I turned and fled, the light now bright enough to make out any obstacles that stood in my way. I raced around a pillar of stone expecting to see Gary, but the glow wasn’t emanating from there. It was flowing down a passageway ahead, too bright to be coming from a helmet lamp. Surely too bright, too pure, to be coming from any artificial source.
Something in my gut twisted so hard that it felt like I was being tickled by an invisible hand, and it took me a moment to realize what it was. Hope. It had been so long since I’d felt it that the sensation was like something living inside me, something wonderful waiting to break free, just like I was.
The sound of screams, and the clatter of rocks being thrown, snapped me to attention. I cast a sightless look back into the cavern, which sounded like it was home to a full-blown riot, then focused on the light, letting its warm touch pull me forward. It seemed to gain in strength as I rounded a corner, the corridor growing wider and taller as if the stone itself was being pushed back by the glow. It ended in a gnarled trunk of rock, but there was a gap large enough for me to squeeze into. When I clawed my way through to the other side I saw Zee there, pacing the identical passageway beyond and chewing what little was left of his nails. He looked up when he saw me, his expression morphing from fear to surprise to relief in a fraction of a second.
“You okay?” he said, running over. “I thought you were done for.”
I nodded up ahead to where the light seemed to stream in with even more strength, picking out every last detail on the splintered walls.
“That looks like…” I said, but I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence for fear of jinxing it. Zee managed a tired smile as he slung my arm over his shoulder and helped me stagger forward.
“What happened back there?” he asked after a couple of steps.
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter,” I replied eventually, echoing the thing that had saved me. “I’ll tell you about it when we’re out in the open, when we’re home free, okay?”
“That’s a deal,” he said. “Can’t be much farther, light’s pretty bright. Bet Gary’s already there.”
We reeled around the bend and were almost blinded. The corridor ended maybe thirty yards away, the opening blazing with so much light that the sun could have been hanging right outside. We were drenched in it, its touch like honey on our bruised skin. And it flooded inside us too, chasing away every last scrap of darkness, every last breath of cold. I’m pretty sure we could have floated down the rest of that passageway if we’d wanted to, buoyed up and brought home by a river of golden light.
We were so busy dreaming that neither of us took the time to wonder how daylight could ever penetrate so deep underground; so busy laughing that we didn’t notice the walls around us weren’t natural, that they’d been chiseled from the stone by picks and hammers. For a blissful instant we’d made it, we were free.
Then we stepped into that portal of light together, our laughter one step ahead of us, and we saw what we both knew deep down we would. There was no sky, only rock. No sun, just remorseless spotlights scouring away all but the most persistent shadow from the tombstone walls. No trees, no life, other than the cluster of grinning forms standing before us, so close that we could make out the silver eyes and black suits, the rusting masks and filthy trench coats, the glistening lips peeled back past canine teeth.
And there was no freedom, just the warden and his leather face welcoming us back with the devil’s grin.
WELCOMING PARTY
FOR WHAT SEEMED LIKE AN ETERNITY nobody moved. It was as if the entire cavern was frozen, a nightmare tableau stripped of motion. Or maybe it was just that time slowed down, my horror so profound that one single second of gut-wrenching realization would haunt me for a lifetime.
Eventually the world seemed to catch up, time snapping back into place and bringing the scene to life. The first thing I noticed was Gary, sprawled on the floor beneath a blacksuit. His face was a mess, but bubbles of air were bursting on his bloody lips so I knew he was alive. Despite everything he’d done to me I felt anger flood my veins at the sight of his injuries. Somewhere between jumping into the river and bursting into this cavern he’d become one of us.
Zee was muttering something to my side, and when I heard the scuff of feet on rock I thought he was trying to make a break for it, back the way we’d come. But when I turned to follow I saw that he’d collapsed, his face so pale that it looked like parchment, almost transparent.
Maybe if I’d seen him run I might have had the strength to follow, but I couldn’t go alone. I had nothing left. I had a sudden flash of how I looked right then: just as ghost-like as Zee, the only sign of color the spreading crimson stains where my life force was still draining out of me. My entire body was rice-paper frail, ready to fold and crumple. I’d only felt this weak once before, that night so long ago when Toby had been shot, when I’d been framed—running toward my mom, toward safety, but unable to reach home. I hadn’t made it then, and I wasn’t going to make it now. Both times I failed, and both times I was captured. Only this time my punishment had to be death.
I tried to take a step back but my legs refused to obey, turning so numb and insubstantial that I didn’t even feel pain when I crashed to my knees.
The sound of a pistol shot filled the cavern. A second followed, then a third, and by the fifth crack I realized it wasn’t a gun at all but the warden’s hands. He was clapping slowly, each slap of his palms echoing from the walls and making me flinch. He strolled toward us, his applause relentless, before coming to a halt almost close enough to touch.
Clap. I twisted my head, studying his pristine black shoes. Clap. A gray suit without the slightest trace of a crease or a stain. Clap. His lean body, his leathery neck so strung with tendons that it looked as if there was wire coiled beneath the ancient skin. Clap. And his face, so ordinary yet so wrong, like he was wearing someone else’s over his own.
Clap. I tried to meet his eyes, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to. I was right: just when I thought I was looking at them I realized my gaze had slipped to his clothes or to the cavern walls. Caught in the corner of my vision I couldn’t have even told you if he had eyes, just black sockets, which seemed to suck the light from around him, which seemed to drain away what little warmth was left in my bones.
Clap. I tried again, and this time I almost caught them. It was like being plunged into freezing water, my body cramping, my lungs growing so heavy I couldn’t take a breath. In that instant I witnessed things in my head that I couldn’t even begin to describe—blood, decay, screams—forced from his mind into mine, threatening to drive me insane.
Clap. And just like that they were gone, leaving only a pulsing headache where they had been probing with their filthy fingers. I shuddered, gagged, and wrenched my eyes away, the cavern swimming back into focus. The blacksuits and their dogs hadn’t moved, and the wheezers in their shadows were motionless too, save for the occasional spasm. I guess they knew we weren’t going to mess with the warden.
He clapped once more, keeping his hands poised prayer-like in front of his chest for a moment before lowering them into his trouser pockets. I just stared at the ground as if the pebbles before me could offer a way out.
“Bravo,” he said, his voice like a rasp being dragged across the inside of my skull. “I have to confess that I am very impressed.”
“Please don’t kill us,” came a hoarse cry from Zee. “We didn’t mean any harm, we…” He trailed off, his words lost in his sobs.
“Very impressed,” the warden went on as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “To find a way out of my prison, to escape from Furnace itself, it’s quite remarkable really.”
“Do we get a reward?” I whispered, but it was so quiet I didn’t think anyone could have heard it. To my surprise, however, the warden began to laugh—a ragged breath that was as dry and lifeless as his face.
“Oh yes, you’ll have your reward, Sawyer. And a fitting one it is.” He took his hands from his pockets a
nd clasped them behind his back. “Where’s the fourth?”
I shuddered, wondering where Toby was now. There was no way he could have survived, caught in the jaws of the river with no bones left to break. But maybe his body had made it out, spat from the rock and laid to rest beneath the endless blue sky. I’m not lying when I say at that moment I would have traded my fate for his without a second thought. Better to be a spirit with the earth beneath you than a corpse pinned tight by the weight of the world.
“He didn’t make it,” I replied eventually. “He was injured in the explosion, but he jumped anyway. He’s dead.”
The warden clucked his tongue as if deep in thought. He was probably trying to work out whether I was telling the truth or whether to keep looking for Toby in the sprawling guts beneath the prison. I frowned, shaking some of the confusion from my brain.
“How did you find us?” I asked. “How did you know we’d be here?”
Even though I wasn’t looking at his face I could feel his lips part like those of a cadaver, a dead smile all teeth and white-gummed. But when his voice came again, growled like distant thunder, there was anger there rather than humor. It seemed to radiate from him like a cold current in the ocean.
“We didn’t. They did. Those infected little bastards appear to have served a purpose after all.” He was muttering, apparently talking to himself rather than me. “They followed the stench of your fear and we simply followed them. Always hungry, the rats. Did you see them?”
Rats? I thought about the creature that had attacked me in the cave, its twisted mouth surely too wide to be human, and filled with rows of dripping shark teeth that seemed to stretch all the way back to its red-raw gullet. Then I thought of the other figure, the one who had saved me and guided my blind body to safety. It was too strange to make any sense of, so I simply shook my head.
“Just as well, just as well. You were lucky.” He laughed again, that soulless snatch of air. “Or maybe not.”
“Why? What are you going to do with us?” Zee asked through snot and saliva.
The warden raised his arms and the flock of dark forms behind him seemed to come to life. The dogs began to growl, the blacksuits struggling to hold them back with steel leashes. Lurking behind them, the wheezers seemed to take a single asthmatic breath, their limbs jerking like they were puppets.
“As you know all too well, obedience is the difference between life, death, and the other forms of existence on offer in Furnace,” said the warden, his voice quieter yet seeming to pulse around the cavern with even more force. “Your actions have cost me a great deal of time, money, and respect from the other prisoners—who have all been told that you died in the explosion, I should add. I would have you strung up and slaughtered like the vermin you are, only you are far more useful to me as specimens.” He said the last word with a relish that made my skin crawl, bending down so that his face was inches from mine. “Your punishment for trying to escape will be death—of a kind, anyway. But long before it comes you will be begging to be put out of your misery.”
Until that moment, none of it seemed real. Maybe I was so tired I couldn’t process it, it was all too absurd. But right then, with the warden’s decaying breath on my face, I realized that just when things seemed like they couldn’t have gotten any worse, they had. A lot worse.
“A month in solitary,” came his whisper. “If the rats don’t find a way to kill you, then the madness will. And if you make it, if by some miracle you’re not a gibbering wreck when we pull you out, then the wheezers can have you. And that’s when the fun truly begins.”
Both Zee and I were crying now. We remembered Donovan’s stories of solitary, of what it could do to you. We were going to die in there, in the most slow and agonizing way imaginable. Surely this couldn’t happen, surely the outside world had to know something bad was going on in Furnace? Except I had no idea if the outside world even existed anymore. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if it ever had. There was only Furnace. It was our world, our grave, our hell.
“Take them away,” said the warden, followed by the dull laughter of the blacksuits as they advanced. “Take them to the hole.”
THE HOLE
THE MOMENTS FOLLOWING the warden’s final command were lost to fear, blotted out by my faltering brain. I could tell you what I saw, but I don’t truly remember it. The human mind is a powerful thing in many ways, but in others it’s endlessly fragile—it takes only a single moment of pure terror to tear a hole in it, like a finger through a cobweb, leaving you forever just a shadow, a half-person. God only knows how mine was still functioning. It could only be because when things got so bad the emotional side of it simply shut down, making me a machine that could see, hear, think, but not feel. This automatic damage control had saved me from madness many times, but I knew it wouldn’t last long, not in the hole.
As soon as the warden had stepped to one side his nightmare posse moved into the space he had left. Like dark water flooding into a vacuum, they crashed and spat around us, the dogs snapping their mantrap jaws so close to our faces I could feel their hot mucus hit my skin, the wheezers convulsing with excitement as the blacksuits scooped us up effortlessly by our overalls.
My feet dragged pathetically on the smooth floor as we were taken through a massive steel door set into the rock. It reminded me of the vault door back in the prison, only this one was half the size and looked like it had been pounded by a couple hundred mortar shells. There wasn’t a fraction of its surface free from dents, and it hung off its hinges like peeling skin after a vacation. I thought for a moment that someone had broken their way out of it, only it was hanging inward, the scars covering the outside.
Someone had broken in.
It had to have been the creatures I’d seen in the cavern, the rats as the warden had called them. If they could do that to a meter-thick metal door, what would they have done to me?
We turned corner after corner, the footsteps of the guards echoing down too many corridors to count. These passages all seemed to blur into one another, a labyrinth of mottled, flesh-colored rock brought to life by the flickering lamps embedded in the ceiling. There were openings in the walls too, shadowed portals that led to nothing but darkness—eyes that seemed to watch us pass with disapproval. I ignored most of these just as I did everything else, but there was one time when I snapped out of my numbness and managed to focus on the world around me.
I was being pulled past an opening in the rock much wider than the others, the word “Infirmary” stenciled in faded white paint. This one was emanating a fierce crimson light that turned the blacksuits and their dogs into blood-drenched ghosts. I peered around the body of the brute who held me, trying to get a better look at where the doorway led, but it was sealed off by a curtain of thick plastic strips—the same kind you see in a butcher’s workshop.
The wheezers split off from the rest of the group here, walking one by one through the drooping slats like some nightmare factory line. Last to go was the blacksuit carrying Gary, the boy’s body sliding through and vanishing into the light.
And then we were past it, reaching a T-junction in the corridor and turning right. It was here that the guard dropped me unceremoniously to the floor, rolling me onto my back with his giant foot and pinning me there.
“The hole’s just down there,” he said through a grin as wide as any I’d ever seen, his eyes glinting like a cat’s caught in the moonlight. “You killed two of us in that explosion, you know that?”
I thought back to the moment the explosive gloves in the ceiling detonated, the two blacksuits who had inadvertently shielded us from the blast. They had both survived, for a few moments, one trying to take my life and the other saving it. Monty, turned into a monster, stripped of everything human.
If they catch you, just don’t forget your name.
“I said, did you know that?” the guard repeated, pressing down harder. I nodded, watching my misshapen head bob in the polished black leather of his boot. “If it was up to me w
e’d feed you to the dogs right here, but the boss says we’re keeping you. Still, accidents happen, especially when prisoners try to escape a second time.”
I nodded again, then frowned, wondering what he meant. He lifted his foot, dragging me up, and from behind him Zee was thrust forward. He slammed into me and I held him, two trembling forms before a wall of blacksuits and skinless dogs.
“Solitary’s down there,” the guard repeated, his grin never faltering. “I’d say, what, fifty meters?”
“ ’Bout that,” came a gravel-voiced reply.
“So, a five-second head start seem right?”
Again the voice behind him answered. “Yeah, that sounds fair.”
“Then if I were you, I’d start running,” the guard said. “Because as far as the warden needs to know, you made a break for it and the dogs got you.” I didn’t move, wondering if it was a trick, but two of the blacksuits suddenly appeared beside the one who had been holding me, each trying to restrain a monstrous canine. The foaming beasts thrashed against their leashes, the solid metal links looking as if they were about to snap like cotton thread. “Five.”
I didn’t need any more of a hint than that. We let go of each other and turned, bolting down the corridor as fast as our legs would let us. Seeing us run, the dogs started to bark—bullets of sound that tore after us.
“Four … Three,” came the count, almost lost beneath the hammering of our feet.
“Did he say fifty meters?” wheezed Zee. “We’ll never make it.”
There was no sign of anything up ahead, just bare walls that didn’t even offer a shadow to hide in.
“Two.”
How far had we run? Twenty meters, maybe thirty? The dogs would cover that distance in a heartbeat.
“One.”
I didn’t hear it so much as know when it had been uttered. With a twin howl of delight the dogs were unleashed, the screech of their eight clawed feet on the rock so much faster than our own labored steps. I wanted to turn around but forced myself not to. One slip, one scuff, is all it would take.
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