Solitary

by Alexander Gordon Smith

  “I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out for him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

  The image didn’t change, as blurred as the reflection in a disturbed puddle, but suddenly the voice became clearer, like a radio being tuned.

  It’s not too late, he replied. You don’t have to free me to save me.

  I frowned, but the phantom was dissolving like salt in water. I tried to bring him back, tried to picture his face, but I couldn’t recall it. All I could see was what he had become—the monstrous visage, the cold eyes, that face-splitting grin. And right then I knew that I’d never be able to remember him the way he was.

  I’m not sure how long I cried. Just minutes, probably, but it could have been hours. At first heaving sobs racked my exhausted body, but after a while they softened to pathetic whimpers, mewls better suited to a kitten. I wrapped my arms around myself, pretended they were my mom’s, or my dad’s, or Donovan’s, or Zee’s, or anyone’s. But they carried no warmth, no comfort. Not here, alone, at the bottom of the world.

  I straightened up, feeling my spine crack, then picked up the grille. I smashed it against the toilet pipe, the clang of metal on metal shaking the sadness from me, helping my mind pull itself back together.

  “What now?” I asked.

  There was a pause, then Zee’s muted reply.

  “Wait for Simon.”

  “And if he doesn’t come back?”

  Another pause.

  “He has to.” Even through solid rock, with staccato words, I could hear the unvoiced question at the end of Zee’s statement. I started hammering out “why” but then changed my mind, realizing that it was pointless. Instead I smacked out a question.

  “Any other ideas?”

  “Nope,” came his reassuring reply. “You?”

  The last of Zee’s echoes almost concealed footsteps above me and I held my breath, wondering if I’d been wrong about Simon. Maybe he was back after all, about to pull open our hatches and take us back to the steeple. At least that way we could die trying to do something, trying to save ourselves. I heard the creak of a hatch opening, but it wasn’t mine. There were more scuffled footsteps overhead, but none of the scratching and snuffling of a rat. I waited to hear the hatch slam back down, but nothing happened.

  “Zee?” I hammered out. There was no reply. I tried again, cursing him for having a name that began with a Z. Still nothing. I felt my heart sink into my stomach, stewed in acid.

  “Come on,” I said, smashing the grille against the pipe randomly in the hope I’d get a response. I thought I heard something from outside, a cry of pain, but the ringing in my ears was too loud to be sure. “Zee!” I yelled, knowing he wouldn’t be able to hear me. Had they taken him? Jesus, had they taken him to the infirmary?

  Something whacked against the pipe in Zee’s cell, hard enough to sound like a bomb going off in my head. It struck again, even louder than before. What the hell was he doing in there? Trying to tunnel his way into the sewer? I put the question to him in a series of frantic strikes with my own grille. No reply. Then the deafening clangs came again. Twenty-three, eight, one, twenty.

  “What?”

  My heart lifted, still adrenaline-fueled but not on the verge of giving out as it had been a moment ago. It was such a relief to hear him that I just sat for a moment smiling at the wall. Then I started hammering out another message.

  “Thought I heard something.” It took forever.

  “Nothing,” he replied, the sound of his strikes loud enough to make my brain vibrate. I wondered if maybe he’d knocked his toilet pipe loose or something, if that could explain the increase in volume. After waiting an age for him to say something else, I picked up my grille again and spoke.

  “Sure nothing’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Zee,” I struck. “You’re acting weird.”

  No response.

  “Zee?” I rubbed my palm, prepared for more blisters. “Zee?” If we ever did get out of here I was making him change his name.

  The blows from his cell began again and I listened carefully.

  “Alex,” the message started, the strikes still too loud, too powerful. “What makes you think I’m Zee?”

  CHOICES

  EVEN BEFORE THE LAST CHIME FADED I knew what had happened. Despite the heat in my cell, the sweat that poured down my face from smashing the pipe, I felt my blood run cold, gooseflesh erupting on my skin.

  Zee was gone. The blacksuits had taken him.

  It had been them trampling above my cell, Zee’s hatch opening. It was probably one of the guards in there right now. I could picture them grinning as they led me on, their dull laughter fading into the passageway as they carted Zee off to his fate.

  I tried to think. Had they heard anything that could give us away? Anything to indicate we were planning to escape? No. We’d been talking about Simon but that was before the footsteps above me. I doubt they’d heard our plans, and even if they had they probably wouldn’t have decoded it. Still, it wouldn’t be long before Zee was forced to talk. It was difficult to keep secrets when the freaks of Furnace were asking the questions.

  Maybe it would be better if they knew. Maybe I should even tell them, try to make a deal with the blacksuits. Would they let us live if we told them about Simon and the other lost boys? They wouldn’t release us, but they might send us back up top, to the relative luxury of gen pop with its daily slop and comfortable beds and cool showers. They might let us go home.

  Home. I was stunned by the fact I’d thought it, but there was nothing outside anymore, nothing for me. Furnace was my home now, and I wanted to be back there.

  “Hey!” I shouted, pounding on the hatch. “Don’t hurt him. I’ve got information you want.” It seemed like the first time in years that I’d raised my voice and my throat was instantly raw. It didn’t stop me. I smashed my fists against the metal even harder, knowing that the sound would barely even reach the floor above.

  Nobody came. I punched the hatch one last time and screamed with frustration. Why had they taken him and not me? It didn’t make any sense. Not that anything did here. I knew well enough that there was no system to the atrocities in Furnace, no logic. The warden and his monsters did what they wanted whenever they wanted, anarchy disguised as regimented control.

  I felt like crying again but forced the emotion away. Zee was in trouble, and me blubbing my eyes out in my cell wasn’t going to do him any good at all. I needed Simon. I needed him to come back, to let me out.

  “Come on,” I said, trying to project the thought through the stone, down the tunnels and up the slope to where the lost boys were hiding. “Come on, don’t leave me here.”

  I kept saying it, kept thinking it, kept picturing it being transmitted right into Simon’s head. There’s no such thing as psychic power. If you ask me, it’s all a load of horse crap. Which is why, when I heard the lever of my hatch grind open, I couldn’t quite believe it. Crimson light flooded in like blood and I peered through the mottled glow to see a familiar face above me, teeth like broken piano keys in a goofy grin.

  “You look surprised,” the kid said softly, offering me his giant hand. “Think I was gonna leave without you?”

  “Never,” I replied, feeling the muscles in his arm tense as he hoisted me out. Zee’s hatch was still open, and a quick glance inside told me what I already knew. Simon saw the look in my eye and shook his head.

  “I couldn’t get back in time,” he whispered. “I was on my way, the suits nearly caught me. They were coming here, coming for him.”

  “But the warden wanted us in here for a month,” I said, eyeing the passageway warily. “They shouldn’t have taken him.”

  Simon shrugged, walking down the corridor toward the junction that led to the infirmary. He hadn’t bothered to close my hatch this time and I didn’t either. I wasn’t coming back, no matter what.

  “Never enough specimens,” he muttered sadly. “Wheezers are always after fresh blood. Can’t believe
they let you live this long.”

  “But the warden…”

  “Doesn’t always get his own way,” Simon replied. “Now we’ve gotta move.”

  “We’re going after Zee, right?” I asked, trotting to catch up and knowing what his answer would be. He spun around, silver eyes burning into my own.

  “You’ve got a choice to make, Alex,” he said, the voice too old for his face. “And you’ve got to make it right now. You either go after your friend, and you die—die inside, anyway—or you cut loose and come with me. We’ve got a shot at this, a real good one I think. Once you’re outside you can come back, with the police, the army, everyone. But if you try to help Zee now, or Donovan, or any of them, then you’re as good as dead.” He looked over his shoulder, ear cocked. “We need to go right now, so make your choice.”

  I felt like I’d gone back in time, promising feverishly to Donovan that I’d come back, bring the authorities before the warden could do anything to him. I’d failed, and if I went with Simon, who’s to say I wouldn’t fail again, leaving Zee to rot?

  But what would happen if I went after him? I pictured myself walking into the infirmary, trying to find Zee, trying to fight off the wheezers as the blacksuits laughed at me. Feeling them lift me up, the darkness flooding my veins even as they strapped me to the mattress.

  And I made my decision. Not because I knew I could escape and return with the cavalry. Not because I thought it was the best—the only—way to help Zee. But because I could still smell the stench of the wheezer on me, and I couldn’t go back.

  Some hero.

  “Let’s go,” I said, the words barely making it out of my mouth I was so ashamed of them. “Let’s get out of here. We’ll come back, with help.”

  Simon nodded, then sped down the corridor. We reached the junction, the path leading off to the main prison dead ahead, the infirmary off to our left. We’d have to pass it to get out, and for a moment my brain pictured Zee inside, staring at the plastic curtain as we ran past, calling out silently to our backs. It was almost too much.

  “Clear,” said Simon, running again. I didn’t look as we sped past the door, closing my ears to the sounds of screaming I could hear from inside—so high-pitched that I couldn’t tell if it came from the wheezers or their victims. I didn’t think about anything other than putting one foot in front of the other, and somehow I managed to stay upright, to keep Simon in my line of sight. The sound of the blacksuits seemed to be everywhere, deep voices that chuckled from inside the rooms we passed. But by some miracle they didn’t see us, didn’t hear us.

  I just kept running. Because surely if I didn’t look back I didn’t have to think about what I’d done.

  It was the sound of a phone that stopped me. The shrill, old-fashioned ring was so out of place here that I almost tripped over my own feet and had to brace a hand on the wall to stop from falling.

  We’d reached the junction that led up to the vault door. To our left was the final stretch of tunnel before the cavern. To our right lay the access to the warden’s quarters. The phone was ringing from that direction, the same place where I’d sensed something wrong before, where I thought I’d seen … what? A cloud of something, something bad. Simon had bounded ahead, skidding to a halt only when he noticed I wasn’t with him.

  “Come on!” he hissed. But I couldn’t move. The phone was like an invisible hook that kept me in place, that tugged on my mind, threatening to reel me in. Every time it rang the corridor seemed to grow darker, the walls pulsing and stretching like a living thing, some vast intestinal tract. A pain was growing right in the center of my forehead, but inside my skull, not outside. With each shrill cry the sensation spread, as though beneath my skin I was crumbling into dust.

  There was a door in the rock halfway down the corridor, the phone’s ring emanating from there. It seemed like it had been going on forever, a siren that had become an entity inside my own head. Simon was behind me, I could feel his hand on my arm, but I couldn’t hear him. The only thing that existed was the phone.

  Then it stopped, and the pain exploded. I made out a voice and I knew it straightaway. The warden. It was faint but at the same time it was like he was screaming in my ear.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. Two syllables like dynamite. “I understand, sir. It will be done.”

  I couldn’t hear who was on the other end, obviously. But I could feel it. After everything I’d witnessed in Furnace, the horrors I had endured, this was so much worse. Because whatever it was didn’t scare me, it called to me. And even though I knew it was rotten, evil, I found myself moving toward it, my limbs jerking like a puppet’s, something coiled around my brain, soft and rancid.

  Then I felt the corridor flip upside down, felt Simon’s misshapen body beneath me, felt the wind rush past my ears as he fled. Each clumsy step carried me farther from the voice, from its dark call, until all that was left was a gentle whisper that echoed like the last breath of a dying man.

  We flew through the vault door, the cavern ahead deserted. Simon didn’t put me down until we reached the cracked rock where the ceiling dropped to the floor, and then only because we couldn’t squeeze through together. He let me go first, hand on my head to make sure I didn’t bang it, then he was in after me.

  He waited, panting, the harsh light of the halogens following us through and giving his scarred, patchwork skin a weird translucent sheen. I stared at him, wanting to thank him but unable to quite recall how to talk.

  “Just give it a minute,” he said. “The first time you hear it you feel like you’re going to die. It takes a while for the sickness to go.”

  He was right, something was sitting in my gut like a spiked ball, as if all the pain that had been in my head moments ago had sunk there, waiting to be digested. I rubbed my stomach, trying to settle it, and only when the nausea had ebbed away did I dare speak.

  “What was it? The warden?”

  Simon emitted a laugh, but there was no humor in it.

  “Him? No. He looks the part but he’s nothing. He’s just another employee.” He stopped as the sound of rocks hitting the ground seeped through the crack. It could have been anything, but we were still a little too close to the compound for comfort. I could just about see him scuttling up the rough slope ahead of us like a spider. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Let’s get up to the steeple.”

  I followed, far less graceful than him but able to manage the handholds easily enough despite the dark. We emerged in the tunnel at the top, taking a few jagged turns to get back to the cave. It was empty.

  “They’re waiting for us there,” Simon explained, leading the way through. I questioned him about the voice again but he didn’t respond, and it was only when we squeezed through the last crevice and found ourselves back in the immense gorge that he answered me. “Maybe it’s best you don’t know, okay? At least until we’re out in the open. We need to focus on this, or we’re all gonna end up dead. And we’ve sacrificed too much to mess it up now. Forget about it, Alex. Forget about everything you’ve ever seen down here. Just think about getting out.”

  He turned away, called out softly into the darkness. Almost immediately a torch blinked into life. It did nothing to illuminate the cavern, but it did pick out two dirty faces huddling by the wall.

  “You made it,” said Ozzie. “What about the other one?”

  “Suits got him,” Simon replied bluntly. “We got Alex though.”

  Both Ozzie and Pete nodded at me but I didn’t acknowledge them. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d felt outside the warden’s quarters. The phone, the voice, the hooks in my mind. Even when I noticed the equipment piled up beneath Pete’s crooked body—the clamps that had been twisted into hooks, the thick tube pierced by pins—I couldn’t clear my head. All I could focus on was the warden, and the person he had been talking to.

  And the fact that I’d left Zee in there alone.

  “He okay?” I heard Ozzie ask, a small voice right on the edge of my consciousness. I fe
lt their eyes on me but didn’t look up. Not even when I heard Simon’s whispered response:

  “I don’t know. He just heard the warden on the phone. He just heard him speaking to Alfred Furnace.”

  THE ONLY WAY

  IS UP

  SIMON WAS RIGHT. I couldn’t afford to be distracted. I’d made my choice, I was here, so the only thing to do was make the best of it. If somehow the vast steeple of rock that towered over our heads led to the surface, or at least to a higher set of tunnels that connected to the outside world, then I could get help. I could come back for Zee and for Donovan. It wouldn’t be too late.

  And however crazy the idea sounded, however much I doubted it could work, it felt good knowing I’d never have to return to the hole, or to the infirmary. Not without a goddamned army behind me. No, it was either climb to heaven or plunge to our deaths. There was no other way this was going to play out.

  I soon discovered I wasn’t the only one who had to leave a friend behind. Pete’s spindly legs and arms could never hope to drag his overstuffed torso up the wall. He could barely even walk. The kid cheered us on, talked us up as we got our kit ready, but his voice was cracked and filled with desperation.

  “I’m coming back,” Simon must have told him a dozen times in the space of a few minutes. “I promise you, you have my word. I won’t leave you here.”

  It was like a mirror image of my life, and for the first time I wondered how many other people had tried to break out of Furnace, saying the same words to their cellmates and friends and brothers. I’ll bet it was far more than I realized, far more than the warden and the blacksuits ever revealed. It was a strange recognition, and even though I knew that nobody had ever made it out, that nobody had ever kept their promise and returned, it filled me with hope.

  Maybe we could do this.

  The plan was that Simon and I would make our way up the steeple, Ozzie keeping watch below with Pete. The younger kid had wanted to go, but he was more scared of heights than he was of the nightmares in the prison and knew he’d never make it. Besides, he didn’t have the heart to leave Pete on his own.