"He is either the bravest kid or the biggest idiot on the planet," said Donovan, his tone almost respectful. I'm not sure why but I suddenly felt a surge of jealousy that my cellmate was so impressed with him.
"Idiot, I'd say," I muttered. "He's going to die down there."
I saw Kevin walking up to Gary. The new kid was almost a head taller than the leader of the Skulls but Kevin didn't seem to care. His face was red, his expression apoplectic-all bulging eyes and foaming mouth. He grabbed Gary by the collar and started screaming at him. The acoustics in the prison weren't great, but from up here we got the gist, just like everybody else in Furnace who had stopped what they were doing to see what was going on.
"Think you can march in here and take over?" Kevin screamed, along with a few choice expletives. He was shaking Gary, but the big boy wasn't folding. He was studying Kevin with a look of cold detachment, a look that reminded me of a spider's emotionless glare right before it bites into its prey. "Gonna kill you, new fish. Gonna skewer you."
He pushed Gary back and a number of Skulls grabbed his overalls, holding him in place. A length of gleaming silver had appeared in Kevin's hand, and he waved it menacingly in front of Gary's face.
"Even the tough kids learn the rules pretty quickly in here," Donovan said.
I wasn't so sure. With a twist of his body Gary sent one of the Skulls holding him skittering across the stone floor, then smashed his free fist into the face of his other captor. The boy's legs buckled with the impact and he fell to the floor, his landing spot already marked out by the blood gushing from his nose.
Kevin screeched like a wild animal and backed away, motioning for his henchmen to attack. But nobody moved. They weren't Mafia enforcers, they were kids. Gary strode forward and grabbed Kevin's arm, bending it in such a way that the shank fell from his grip. The Skull was yelling in pain, his fury replaced by fear.
"Kill him!" Kevin yelled to dead ears. "Cut his heart out."
"This is great," said Donovan. "Kevin's been asking for it ever since he arrived. About time he got some himself. Hope the new kid roughs him up a bit."
Gary kept twisting Kevin's arm, using both hands to bend back the wrist to an impossible angle until, in horrible unison, a crack and a scream echoed across the yard. The prison had been plunged into silence, everybody watching as Kevin dropped to his knees clutching his broken arm, tears streaming down his face. Gary placed a foot on Kevin's shoulder and sent him sprawling, and at once a huge cheer broke out from the inmates.
"This is great!" Donovan repeated with more enthusiasm. "How the mighty have fallen, eh?"
"You think this means we'll be free of the Skulls?" Zee asked.
"Reckon so," Donovan replied. "Maybe he'll take out the Fifty-niners too."
Gary bent down and snatched the bandanna from Kevin's head and the shank from the floor. He held them up in the air for us all to see, like trophies. Some of the other kids had gone right up to the boy, circling him as if he'd just scored the winning goal in a soccer match. One inmate had even put his arm around him and was jumping up and down.
"Wanna go join the celebrations?" Zee asked. But I stayed where I was. Something wasn't right. Gary wasn't smiling, he didn't look like somebody who had come to save us. He eyed the crowd around him with the same dead gaze that he had given the Skulls. Then, with a flash of silver and an arc of crimson, the boy who had been holding him staggered across the yard, looking at the wound on his arm with disbelief. The inmates turned their shocked expressions toward Gary as if there had been some mistake, but the new kid slashed out again, catching another victim in the chest.
For a moment the yard was chaos as the prisoners climbed over one another to get to safety. In the center of the maelstrom Gary tucked the stained shank into his overalls and pulled the Skull bandanna over his head. I felt my heart sinking. He wasn't a savior, he was a psychopath.
The siren blasted out across the yard, a fitting funeral dirge for the boys who lay squirming in their crimson coffins. Donovan pushed himself off the railings.
"Like I said, Alex," he said as he watched the injured kids fold into themselves, all sobs and snot. "It's the only thing we can do, curl up and cower and wait for death."
ROOM TWO
THE THOUGHT OF FACING another evening locked down in our cells was almost unbearable, but a small part of me was relieved that there was a set of thick metal bars between us and Gary Owens.
As soon as the siren blew, the blacksuits had come running, one knocking down Gary with the butt of his shotgun and the rest hauling him and his victims through the vault door. After a couple of hours of restless pacing, I saw the massive portal swing open again and a couple of guards escort Gary, bruised and bloody, to his cell-which fortunately was on the second level, a long drop from mine.
Some time later Kevin was dragged back out into the yard, his arm in a rough cast that was the same shade of pale gray as his face. As soon as he emerged, Furnace's long-suffering inmates began whistling and whooping through their cell doors, calling out insults with a vicious ferocity fueled by years of abuse. Kevin made no effort to reclaim his air of menace-he let himself be dragged up the steps, never taking his wide eyes off the floor. Looking back, I almost felt sorry for him. Little did I know then that he had far worse coming to him than a few jeers.
When all fell quiet in the yard, I tried again to get Donovan interested in escape. It was like trying to get a hippopotamus interested in ballet.
"There's nowhere to go," he said for the umpteenth time.
"There must be, there's no such thing as a prison with no way out."
"Furnace is a prison with no way out, you plank."
"I can find a way, I know it."
"There's nowhere to go."
Around and around and around in circles. Shortly before lights-out he sat bolt upright in his bunk as if he meant to strangle me, his expression so incensed that it was scary.
"What?" I asked, backing off toward the bars just in case he'd finally lost it.
"Why are you so desperate to die?" was his reply. I tried to argue but he cut me off. "There's only ever been one escape attempt in Furnace, a couple of years ago. Was a kid a little like you, only cleverer, smarter. He spent months learning the way the prison worked, especially the elevator, you know. Nobody knows how he managed it, but somehow during a lockdown he got himself inside the air vents. He stayed in there for five days while the guards and the dogs hunted him down, then when they brought in more blacksuits from the surface he found his way onto the roof of the elevator and hitched a ride up."
"He made it?" I asked, my heart pounding at the very thought of somebody getting out. Donovan smiled wickedly and shook his head.
"Oh no. They found him. They caught him climbing into the vents of the Black Fort on the surface. He was so hungry and thirsty he'd gone delirious, was singing to himself. Guess what happened to him."
"The hole," I said, sighing.
"He wasn't that lucky. The warden, damn his soul, he brought that kid back down to the yard and tied him up good. Then he let three of his dogs loose." Donovan faltered, his mind somewhere terrible. "They treated him like a toy, tossing him back and forth like some teddy bear until he was limp and broken. Then they ate him."
"You're kidding," I said, certain that he was making the story up to scare me.
"Ask anyone who's been here longer than two years. They never talk about it but they all remember it. Scott was his name, Scott White. You wanna end up the same way as him, then you carry on talking about escape, kid. But don't say I didn't warn you."
"So the air vents," I went on, trying to forget everything I'd just heard. "They're still there, right?"
Donovan collapsed down on his bunk with a cry of frustration.
"Warden sealed them off the week after White was killed, replaced the tunnels with pipes so narrow you couldn't fit your hand inside. Why do you think the air is so thin down here? We're all suffocating 'cause of the last idiot to think of freedom."