Lockdown

MY DARKEST HOUR

ZEE PRACTICALLY HAD TO drag me back through the rocky labyrinth of Room Two. The sudden switch from thinking we were home free to knowing there was no way through the slit in the ground was unbearable. In the space of a second I had lost the will to carry on, and with it had fled the part of my brain that could remember how to do simple things like walk and talk. I must have bumped into a dozen rocks, scraping my shins and arms and even my face. But I didn't care. It was over.

Several wrong turns later and we found our way back into the tunnel. Zee switched his lamp off, then mine, leading the way toward the wooden planks. Beyond them the equipment room was empty, but we had no idea where the blacksuit was. He could have been right outside, waiting for us to emerge so he could pump us full of shot. The thought didn't bother me. At least it would be quicker than festering away in Furnace for the next seven decades.

I dived down onto the floor and pushed my way through the loose board, ignoring Zee's frantic protests.

"Wait, for God's sake!" he hissed, but by the time he'd repeated himself I was already out. The coast was clear, the guard nowhere to be seen. Zee pushed himself through, scrambling to his feet and grabbing our picks from where we'd left them. "Let's get back."

"What's the point?" I asked, not moving. Zee grabbed my sleeve and hoisted me forward, pulling me into Room Three. With the heat and the noise nobody even saw us enter.

"Come on," he said, his words almost lost in the hammering. "Did you really expect it to be that easy?"

We spotted Donovan hard at work and shuffled over. He took one look at our expressions and his shoulders slumped.

"No river, then?" he said matter-of-factly.

"It's there, but the gap is too narrow and the walls are too thick," Zee explained when I didn't open my mouth.

Donovan nodded then returned to work, mumbling something like "too bad" over his shoulder. Zee shrugged at me, then started hacking away at the wall. I lifted my pick halfheartedly and took a swing, but I just couldn't find the energy to make it count. I mean, why bother? If a lifetime in this sweaty room was all I had to look forward to, was all any of us had to look forward to, why didn't I just ram the pick into my brain?

I'm sorry to say that my thoughts were like that for the rest of the morning-a slide show of ways to put myself out of my misery. Not that I think I ever would have gone through with it, but I'd been so set on an escape that was now impossible, and the only form of freedom left to me was death. It was a terrible kind of freedom-one from misery and pain, yes, but also one from lightness and laughter and life. It was an absence of everything.

We walked from the chipping rooms with all the enthusiasm of death-row prisoners going to the electric chair, showering and dressing without a word. Silence followed us as we grabbed our food in the canteen and sat down at an empty bench. We all made a good job of thoroughly poking our mush, but nobody seemed to be eating it.

"So are you saying we need to lose a little weight before we fit in the crack?" asked Donovan after a few minutes, pushing his plate away and folding his arms. " 'Cause I think I can do that."

"Even a baby wouldn't be able to get through," Zee replied, holding his hands a few centimeters apart to demonstrate the size of the gap. "My cat wouldn't be able to squeeze its bony ass into that hole."

As usual, lunch was interrupted by the sound of crashing plates and yelling. I peered over Zee's shoulder to see the Skulls going to work on some kids in the middle of the room. From here it looked like the other new fish, Ashley and Toby. They were getting food poured down their overalls and rubbed in their faces, but I didn't even think about trying to help. After dreaming of escape the reality of Furnace seemed even heavier, even more claustrophobic than before. The oppressive air pushed down on me like a weight, I felt like I couldn't move a muscle.

"And we couldn't chip it?" Donovan went on.

"Even if we could all get in there it would be too noisy," Zee answered. "Besides, it would take us weeks to break through."

"Any of you guys know how to make a bomb?" Donovan went on, smiling, but he got no response. "How about the gas tanks in the kitchen? They'd blow a hole in anything if they were lit up."

"You've seen those things," Zee countered. "They're bolted and strapped and secured tighter than the gold in Fort Knox. There's no way you'd be able to get them loose, let alone smuggle them across the yard."

Donovan wasn't willing to give up.

"Come on, you get me all excited about this, then you're telling me it's impossible? That's just cruel."

"Well, boo hoo," I suddenly snapped. "Poor you. You've been wasting away here for half a decade, Donovan. Why didn't you find your own way out? What do you want from me?"

He stared at me like he was going to lash out, then his face fell and he got to his feet.

"Wait, Donovan," I said to his back as he walked away, but it was no use. The world was falling to pieces, and I was crumbling right along with it.

IT WAS OVER the next few days that I started to understand how people survived knowing they'd never again be free. It was as simple as just switching off, forgetting that you were alive, that you'd ever existed outside of Furnace's red walls. You just made your way from place to place, did what they told you, ate and slept, but you stopped thinking of yourself as human. We were robots, automatons who had every appearance of humanity but who were dead on the inside.

By some twist of fate, it was Zee and Donovan who did their best to keep the idea of freedom alive. Every time I saw them they talked about ideas they'd had-trying to melt the rock with laundry detergent, trying to chip their way down to the river in Room Three, greasing themselves up with canteen fat so they could squeeze through the gap. I just scoffed at their plans the same way they had scoffed at mine, the idea of getting out now laughable to me.

But there must have been a part of my mind that still dreamed of escaping, because the image of the river never truly left me. I'd find myself thinking about it while working, while my conscious mind was engaged with chipping or bleaching the laundry or cleaning the filth off the toilets. I'd suddenly notice that I was trying out different scenarios in my head, testing escape plans without even knowing I was doing it.

I tried to stop the images because they were so painful-like wishing for something you knew you could never have. But they just wouldn't go away. My body and my mind were confined here, but my soul, or my imagination, or whatever, wouldn't rest until I was breathing surface air.

A week passed since Zee and I broke into Room Two, a week where I barely said a word to anybody, barely even made eye contact. Donovan and Zee started spending more time alone without me, giving me cautious glances whenever I approached. I didn't blame them, I was a shadow of my former self and my dark eyes were haunted by something that scared my friends. As if my resignation were a plague that would spread to anyone close by.

Two weeks passed, another visit by the blood watch, five more kids dragged into the vault, their veins pumped full of darkness and death. I didn't watch, just lay awake in bed-half hoping they wouldn't take me, half hoping they would. Anything to break the monotony. None of them returned this time, and there was no further sign of the creature that had once been Monty.

It would have gone on like that forever, an eternity of hopelessness and misery, but for one instant of madness. One beautiful, crazy moment in the canteen's kitchen.

DONOVAN AND I were on trough room duty, both of us working the processor and blending the trash to put in our meals. We hadn't said a single thing to one another for almost two days, and I wasn't planning to do anything to change that. Donovan, though, had other ideas.

"Remember that day?" he asked, his voice so unfamiliar that it startled me. I didn't respond, didn't even look up, but he went on anyway. "Monty's big brunch? Man, I wish he was still here. That was some tasty trough."

I couldn't bear even thinking about it, so while he chattered I crouched down to turn on the stove. I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder pulling me back up.

"What the hell happened to you, Alex?" Donovan asked, gripping my overalls as if worried I'd make a run for it. "I thought you said you'd never let this place beat you. You were a breath of fresh air in here, man. For a little while back there I actually thought you were gonna do it, gonna get out."

I wrenched myself away so hard that Donovan's rubber glove came loose, sitting limply on my shoulder. Grabbing it, I threw it at him by way of response, getting down on my haunches again to switch on the gas. With a hiss it started feeding through to the burners, and I hurried to get to the lighters, cracking my head on the counter as I stood up.

"You just gave up," Donovan spat. He was furious, I could tell from the specks of spittle crowding in the corners of his mouth. "Like some gutless wonder, some chicken." He reached down onto the counter and picked up a handful of rancid white meat. "Yeah, this is what you are, Sawyer, chicken. Processed, dead."

I ignored him, lifting the chained lighter to the burner and sparking it up. I heard a squelching sound and turned to see Donovan stuffing his glove full of the wet flesh, his face twisted with some strange delirium. I was about to break my silence to ask him what he was doing when he pulled back his hand and launched the disgusting missile in my direction. At that distance he couldn't miss, and the packed glove slapped me right on the cheek, trails of chicken fat dripping against my lips.

I reeled backward, wiping my face in disgust.

"Jesus," was about all I could splutter. The glove had fallen on the burner, and I picked it up to lob it back in Donovan's direction, feeling the meat inside soft and cold against my fingers. But something stopped me, a flash at the back of my mind that was bright enough to blow away the shadows of the last fortnight.

I looked up at Donovan, feeling my skin prickle and tighten, feeling my blood fused once again with adrenaline. He recognized the expression straightaway and grinned.

"What?" he asked. "What brought you back?"

"This," I replied, holding up the dripping glove.

"You planning on battering your way out with a meat-filled rubber glove?" he said, raising an eyebrow.

"Not quite."

I picked up the lighter again and held it to the burner, watching the air around it explode as it ignited. Then I pictured the crack in the rock that led to the river, saw it packed full of rubber gloves just like this one.

Only filled not with meat, but with gas.