Lockdown

SETTLING IN

THE KID CALLED CARL led me across to the back of the courtyard, never once turning to see if I was following. He bounded up a set of stairs and I ran to keep up with him-tripping on more than one step in my desperation not to be left behind. At one point I heard the siren again and completely missed my footing, scraping my shin on the sharp metal and crying out in pain. I looked back out over the yard to see the massive vault door swing open and the macabre group vanish into the wall-all except for the men in black suits who stalked the floor with their shotguns.

Carl leaped up five more flights of stairs without so much as panting. By the time I'd caught up with him I was breathing like a broken vacuum cleaner and sweating like a sumo wrestler in a sauna. He was standing outside our cell looking impatient, and I apologized as I walked past him through the door.

I don't really know what I'd been expecting. I knew it wouldn't be the Hilton, or even a Travelodge, but when I'd thought about my cell I'd pictured something the same size as my old room, with a bed and a wardrobe and maybe even a plant or something. As it was, I had to stop short as soon as I entered the tiny room or else I'd have banged my nose on the far wall.

The cell was little bigger than our garden shed, and most of that was taken up by a set of metal bunk beds that looked better suited to eight-year-olds having a sleepover. Aside from a toilet wedged into one corner, the only other thing in there was a bad smell.

"You've got to be kidding me," I muttered under my breath. I felt another wave of panic wash over me as I pictured the rest of my life crammed into this tiny space, and I bit my lip hard to get it under control.

"It ain't much, but it's home," said Carl, pushing me out of the way and leaping onto the top bunk. "And this one's mine."

I sat down on the lower bed and stared out of the bars, which made up one whole wall of the cell. All I could see, on the other side of the giant pit, were more cells and more prisoners, their gray faces a reflection of my own. I thought about just running out of the cell and jumping over the balcony ahead. Six floors up and hard rock below-three or four seconds and it would all be over. But there was no way, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Not yet, anyway.

"Six floors isn't enough," came a voice above me, deep but surprisingly tuneful. I raised an eyebrow, wondering if he'd been reading my mind. "S'okay. It's the first thing any of us think about. And I've seen people do it, too. Jump from pretty much every level. Well, the ones that are open, anyway. First couple of floors, you get sprained ankles and a few bruises. Levels three through six you get broken up pretty bad but you don't die. Not unless you hit headfirst, which isn't easy. You really wanna bite the dust, then you got to go up, level seven or eight. That ought to do it."

I heard the bed creak and shake as he changed position.

"Funny thing is," he went on, "you go any higher, then you don't die either. I saw one kid go from the tenth floor, but he just bounced and screamed. Died a bit later, yeah, but I don't wanna know what he went through first."

I shuddered at the thought and promised myself I'd never jump, no matter how bad things got. The bed creaked again and a head appeared from over the top bunk. I was surprised to see it smiling.

"Name's Donovan," he said. "Always thought it sounded better than Carl. You're Sawyer, right?"

"Alex," I replied, not quite ready to abandon my first name.

"Alex, right." He sprang from the bunk and landed gracefully on the cell floor before sitting next to me and looking me up and down. "You seem like a good kid, anyway. You have to be careful around here, you get some real nasty freaks. Killers, you know?" He laughed. "Well, we're all killers, but there are two kinds-the ones who did it for fun and the ones who did it 'cause they had no choice."

"And the ones who didn't do it," I added with a sad smile.

"Yeah, we been getting a few of them around here lately."

I poked my flat pillow mournfully and lifted the sheet. It was so thin I could see right through it, like greaseproof paper. Not that I thought I'd get cold. The air in here was hot and heavy, like we were sitting in an oven.

"Have you been here long?" I asked. He gave a kind of spluttered laugh that had absolutely no humor in it.

"Five years, Alex. I'm first generation. I'd already been in prison for a couple of months, miles away from here. Jeez that place was nice-spacious cells, leisure facilities, rec room. It was like a country club compared to this. They transferred everyone under eighteen to Furnace as soon as it opened so that all you other kids could see what happened when you did bad things."

"But you were framed, right? By the men in black?"

"Me, no." He paused for a minute, looking out through the bars but obviously miles away. "The blacksuits have framed a lot of the people in here, but I'm as guilty as they come. I killed my mom's boyfriend 'cause he was beating her up every night. Just couldn't take it anymore. I snapped, hit him with a candlestick. Was a lucky hit, I guess, for an eleven-year-old. Or unlucky, depending on how you look at it."

"And they put you away?" I asked incredulously.

"New laws had just come in, the ones clamping down on youth crime. That was the year of all the murders, the Summer of Slaughter as everyone calls it. Even though I had nothing to do with the gangs, the government was using all cases of juvie murder as warnings, so they gave me life. The irony is my mom… Well, she couldn't handle it. She…"

He stopped and looked away, and I swear I could feel his rage like some kind of force emanating from him.

"How do you tell the time in here anyway?" I asked, trying to change the subject. "No sun, no clocks."

"You can't," he replied, obviously glad for the new topic of conversation. "You just go by the sirens and by lockdown at the end of the day. Rhythms here are completely different, but you get used to them." He got up and walked to the cell door. "On that note, let me show you around. I could do with some grub and it's trough time soon."

I pushed myself up off the bed but not before noticing a series of gashes that ran along the wall-five lines etched into the rock from the bed to the door. He saw me looking at them and frowned.

"You'll get to know all about that soon enough," he whispered.

"What are they? They look like they were made by fingernails." I was joking, but from the way his expression hardened I realized it was true.

"This place isn't right," he went on, leaning in toward me so close I could feel his spit on my face. "You're never safe here because one day it will be your turn to be taken-maybe a week, maybe years, maybe tonight. Some go quietly, some don't. Adam didn't, he went screaming and clawing at the wall and fighting for his life."

He ran his finger along one of the grooves, then he turned his attention back to me.

"In the dead of night they come for you, Alex," he said. "Sooner or later they come for everyone."

THE GOOSE BUMPS stayed on my arms all the way down the stairs as I fired question after question at Donovan's back, but now that we were out of the cell his air of hard indifference had returned and he ignored me. He only started talking again as we were walking across the courtyard, but the smile was nowhere to be seen.

"Sorry about the Jekyll and Hyde act, kid," he said through a mouth of stone, his eyes glaring hard at everyone we passed. "In this place you gotta act tough all the time or else they pick you off." When I asked who "they" were, he nodded at the group of boys in the corner wearing the black bandannas. Kevin was there, but Montgomery, the fat kid, was nowhere to be seen.

"The pirates?" I asked. Donovan made a noise from his nose that I thought might have been a laugh.

"Yeah, the pirates. Otherwise known as the Skulls. They were one of the groups responsible for the Slaughter. They're not the only gang here but they're easily the worst. They all carry shanks." He noticed my confusion. "Homemade knives. They make them out of anything and everything they can find. Rock, cutlery, even bone. Not afraid to use them either."

We had crossed the courtyard and arrived at a large crack in the rock that led into a tunnel. Like everything else it blended into the red walls perfectly, which was why I hadn't spotted it before. There were two more wall-mounted machine guns here, one pointing right at us and one directed through the opening. Ignoring them, Donovan strode forward.

"Give the gangs a wide berth if you want to stay in one piece," he went on as we made our way through the tunnel. "Around here the guards don't give a crap if we kill each other, and those kids don't have anything to lose. It's not like their sentence can get any longer if they kill anyone else, if you follow me."

I did, although I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing.

"So is that who comes at night? The gangs?"

This time Donovan laughed out loud, the sound echoing off the walls and making me jump. He simply shook his head and walked on, leading me out into another chamber of bare rock. This one was full of tables and benches, most of which were currently empty. At the far end of the room was a deserted canteen, not unlike the one at school. The ceiling here was much lower, bearing down on me as we walked toward the nearest table. The fleshy walls made me feel like I was in the stomach of some giant monster-a place to get digested, not to eat.

"Welcome to the trough room," he said. "This is where you get your three tasty, nutritious meals of the day. Steak, salmon, venison, champagne truffles. The works!"

"Seriously?" I asked, a flicker of hope igniting inside me like a drug.

"Sure, I guess. Trouble is you can never be too sure what you're getting because it's blended up with about a ton of sawdust and served as a paste. I like to think that what we're eating used to be real food."

The flicker died, along with my appetite. We took seats opposite one another as the prisoners slowly made their way into the canteen, where the food was served. A few minutes later two short bursts of the siren sounded and the crowd inside the canteen started to swell.

"How did you know what time it was?" I asked as a door behind the canteen opened and a sweaty inmate emerged struggling to hold a vast container.

"Like I said, you just get a knack for it," Donovan replied. He got to his feet and started walking toward the canteen. I made to follow, but he waved for me to sit back down again, shouting over his shoulder, "Allow me."

I watched him go. The inmates were all hovering around the canteen but there was no queue-not that I really expected one in a place like this. It was more like vultures picking at a corpse. The strong ones got priority, barging past everyone else to be served first. I don't know whether it was a relief or a shock to see Donovan plow his way to the front, the smaller kids backing away from him and hovering on the outside of the throng. But even he stood to one side to let the Skulls through, never taking his eyes off them as they snatched their food and walked away.

I was distracted from the spectacle by a gentle hand on my shoulder and swung my head around to see Zee. He sat down on the bench beside me and leaned in close, his face twisted in panic.

"This place is like a death camp," he whispered. "What with the gangs and the guns and those scary guards-"

"The blacksuits," I said.

Zee shuddered. "I've even got bloodstains on the floor of my cell, for Christ's sake." I thought about the marks on my wall but didn't say anything. "What's your guy like? Carl?"

"Donovan," I answered, watching him cross the floor with two trays of food. "Nice. I was lucky, I think. What about you?"

"Yeah okay. Quiet kid. Wouldn't say boo to a goose, as my gran used to say."

"I don't blame him," I answered. "I once got chased around a park by a goose. I could swear it was trying to break my arm. They're evil."

We were both giggling when Donovan arrived back, and he looked at us as if we were crazy.

"It usually takes a few weeks for people to crack up in here," he said as he sat down, sliding my tray across the table. "Don't tell me you two have lost it already."

"Donovan, this is Zee." They nodded at each other, although both remained wary.

"Another new fish," said Donovan, shoveling his food into his mouth. "I'd get it while it's hot if I were you. Not that this crap is hot."

I looked at the mound of gray mush in front of me and instantly thought about the mess I'd made on the prison bus. They looked alike, and the smell wasn't too dissimilar either. It felt like my stomach was tying itself in knots, and I pushed the tray toward Zee.

"Help yourself," I said. But he had turned green at the sight of the food and looked like he was on the verge of chundering as well. Donovan's eyes were twinkling with affectionate humor.

"A few more days and this will seem like heavenly macaroni and cheese," he said, pulling the tray toward him. "It's surprising what you can get used to when you're starving."