Furnace 3 - Death Sentence (15 page)

RIOT

I can’t imagine what we looked like as we burst from that door, but it must have been a terrifying sight. As soon as they saw us the inmates started to run, darting in all directions as they fought to get out of our way, a shoal of fish parted by sharks.

Their panic provided the distraction we needed. One of the blacksuits fired his shotgun in the air to try to control them and the other two were barking orders at the fleeing kids. They never even knew we were coming.

‘Get back in the circle, you freaks,’ bellowed one,pointing the barrel of his gun at the huge yellow ring painted on the yard floor. ‘Or next time –’

It was as far as he got. I watched Simon thump into him, sending the guard flying. He hit the ground awkwardly, his gun discharging into the crowd. Another of the suits levelled his weapon at Simon but I was on him before he could pull the trigger. I grabbed the barrel with one hand, driving my other fist into his ribs.

The blow was hard, but he didn’t seem to feel it. He retaliated like a viper, his forehead connecting with my
nose and causing the whole world to explode in white light. I staggered, desperately trying to keep hold of the shotgun as he aimed it at my head. More from luck than skill I kept the barrel vertical, even when he fired it and the cool steel turned red hot.

I blinked away the tears, ignoring the pain in my nose and throwing myself at the suit. This time I aimed a little higher, lashing out at his neck. I could see the confusion in his face, being attacked by one of his brothers.

‘You don’t have to fight,’ I tried to say, but adrenaline tied my words in knots. I don’t think he’d have registered them even if they had been spoken. The nectar was in his blood, morphing his face into a twisted mask of rage, turning his eyes to cold fire. It was either him or me. One of us had to die.

One of my punches caught him on the ear and he staggered back, dropping the gun. I didn’t relent, my blows like jackhammers. Another shotgun blast ripped through the air and I ducked instinctively, putting all my strength into my brutal attack. The blacksuit tripped on his own feet, tumbling onto the stone.

I was about to finish him off when I saw the other guards bounding across the yard. There were six of them, heading from the direction of the chipping halls, all with guns. Another four were leaping down the steps from the upper levels. Several of them fired together, not seeming to care that there were other blacksuits in the way. They were still too far away for the shots to be deadly, but they wouldn’t be for long.

I kicked the blacksuit beneath me hard, then kicked out again to send his gun skittering across the floor. Simon had bested one of the others and was wrestling with the third, his one weak arm giving his opponent the advantage. We were going to lose, be blown to pieces by the suits, unless I thought of something quickly.

I looked around at the inmates, clustered in small groups at the edge of the yard, pressed tightly on the stairs and the landings of the first couple of levels – close enough to get a front-row view of the action but with room to run if they needed to. I scanned the dirty faces and red eyes until I saw what I was looking for, black bandanas painted with crude white motifs.

The Skulls, the worst gang in Furnace, the kids who’d made my life hell back in gen pop. And right now the only thing that stood between me and a lungful of lead shot.

I backed off, running towards the side of the yard where they stood. Kevin and Gary were both gone, so I didn’t know who was leading them now, but I spotted a tall, skinny kid with a scar running from forehead to chin who I kind of recognised as one of Kevin’s lieutenants from back in the day. I aimed my words at him.

‘You want out of here?’ I asked, my voice tearing across the open yard. Two more shotgun blasts punctuated the end of my question, the blacksuits almost upon us. The Skulls were retreating, all eyes locked on me with a mixture of fear, defiance and confusion. To them I was
nothing but a blacksuit, which meant they couldn’t trust a word I said.

Another burst of fire crackled behind me, making me jump. I turned to see Simon bolt into the crowd, inmates screaming and throwing themselves out of his way. The suits were right behind him, firing wildly in his direction. They stopped in the middle of the yard, pulling together in a tight circle around their fallen comrades, their weapons never dropping.

‘Give him up,’ bellowed one, looking at the Skulls but talking about me. ‘No need for you to get hurt over this. He isn’t worth dying over.’

‘And him,’ said another of the guards, pointing his weapon at Simon, who was crouched in the doorway of one of the cells. I saw blood dripping from his nose, knew he must be hurt pretty badly. ‘Any inmate who helps bring those two in gets extra slop all week.’

A murmur passed through the crowd at the thought of increased rations, and I felt the prisoners close in. If they thought they could get something out of it then they’d turn on us in seconds. And a prison full of angry kids would tear me to pieces a hell of a lot quicker than a few blacksuits. I had to offer them something more. I took a step forward, shouting up to the crowd who watched from all angles.

‘I can get you out,’ I boomed, my voice bouncing back from the walls with a strength that surprised me. ‘I can get you all out of here. Warden’s locked below, there won’t be reinforcements, won’t be dogs. Anyone who wants to escape better start fighting now.’

This time the intake of shocked breath that passed through the crowd was louder, like waves on a stony shore.

‘Serious?’ said one of the Skulls from behind me. ‘You can get us out?’

I didn’t know that for sure, but what else could I say?

‘I can get you out,’ I repeated. ‘Everyone. But only if I survive this.’

‘You better listen up,’ yelled one of the blacksuits, firing his weapon into the air. ‘And listen up good. Anyone who even thinks about siding with that traitor will die, right here, right now. Take them down, hand them over, before it’s too late.’

But it was already too late. I could feel a tension growing in the prison, like a pressure cooker about to blow,like the electricity in the air before a storm. For the first time since they’d been locked up here the inmates could sense fear in their guards, uncertainty. They knew the tide was turning – there was no siren, no dogs, no reinforcements and, above all, no warden. The prison was theirs.

In that moment all the years of cruelty and brutality that had lain festering in the blood of the prisoners began to bubble over. Every mind was one, a thousand inmates now a machine with a single deadly purpose. That shiver of raw, unstoppable power passed through them like a drug, unleashing a battle cry from behind me. One of the Skulls was howling at the top of his voice, and it spread like wildfire as everybody took up the call, becoming a chant of defiance that could have shaken the prison to its very foundations.

I saw the blacksuits’ faces fall, every trace of their usual smug smiles wiped away as the air came alive with the true song of Furnace. Part of me wanted to reach out to them, to try again to remind them that they were once kids like us. It wasn’t fair that they had been turned before this moment, that they could never share the freedom that we knew was ours.

But even if I had been able to make myself heard over the banshee wail that rocked the yard it wouldn’t have helped. Right then those guards stood for every bad thing that had ever happened to the prisoners around me. Trying to stop what came next would have been like trying to stop the tide coming in.

I don’t know who was the first to move but suddenly the prison came alive, the motion of so many people enough to make me dizzy. The suits fired into the crowd but they didn’t stand a chance, engulfed from all directions by a foaming wave of white overalls. The movement of arms and legs was like pistons, and although most of those limbs were matchstick skinny there wasn’t a creature alive that could have stood up to their combined fury.

I watched for as long as I could, until there was nothing left of the guards but wet, empty suits. Then I turned away, waiting for the bloodlust to subside.

Only it didn’t. Something had been caged inside those kids, and now that it was loose there was no stopping it. When they’d finished with the guards they stormed into the cells, their screams enough to split my ears as they ripped toilets from walls and tore their
bunks to pieces. If I hadn’t known better I’d have said they all had nectar in their veins, their strength surely too savage to be human. Then again, I guess there isn’t anything more savage than human anger.

‘That was easier than I thought it would be,’ said a voice by my side, barely audible over the noise. I turned to see Simon, still wiping the blood from his face and shivering despite the heat.

‘You okay?’ I asked, seeing his broken nose. He nodded, a smile parting his crimson mask.

‘Yeah, no biggie.’ We both jumped back as a toilet sailed down from an upper storey, taking a chunk of stone from the yard floor. A cheer rose up from everyone who saw it, which in turn caused a hailstorm of other objects to descend from the shadows. ‘What the hell do we do now?’

I didn’t have time to answer before I heard a shout from across the yard.

‘What about them?’

It was taken up by countless more voices and before I knew what was happening that tide of inmates was flooding right towards me. I felt my blood run cold, tried to back away from the approaching mob. But there was nowhere to go.

‘How do we know you ain’t with them?’ somebody said, the cluster of kids in front of me so thick, and their expressions of rage so similar, that I couldn’t tell one from another. They pressed forward, their fists and shoes bloody from what they’d done to the blacksuits. I should have seen this coming. It didn’t matter that I had
been the one to light the fuse, it didn’t matter that I’d promised them freedom. I wasn’t one of them, and that meant only one thing.

‘He’s wearing a suit,’ said another.

‘Do him!’ screamed a Fifty-Niner.‘Do them both!’

They surged across the stone and I closed my eyes, feeling Simon’s body against mine. So, after everything we’d been through it was going to end here. At least it would be quick. Nobody, no matter how much nectar was in him, could withstand molten fury like this.

A shotgun went off and instantly the storm of cries and shouts dwindled to a low murmur. I opened my eyes to see a Skull standing between me and the crowd, the smoking weapon held up towards the distant ceiling. It was the one I had earlier identified as their leader.

‘This here might be our ticket out,’ he said, his voice a lazy drawl that nevertheless carried an icy authority. The inmates glared past him at us, their feet scuffing on the rock like bulls ready to charge. ‘I know yous’ve all got the bloodlust, but anyone lays a finger on him before he shows us the door gonna have me to answer to. Got it?’

A hundred or more heads nodded reluctantly, like a breeze rippling across grass. The Skull kept his eyes on them for a moment longer then swung round to face Simon and me.

‘Looks like I got yous two a temporary stay of execution,’ he said, bouncing the shotgun barrel up and down in his palm. ‘But that only gonna last if what you say is true.’

I knew what was coming, and I knew I didn’t have an answer. Not yet.

‘How we crack them gates?’ the kid asked. ‘How we get out of Furnace?’

BATTLE PLANS 

We sat at a table in the slop room, every square centimetre of space around us packed tight with inmates. The Skulls occupied the benches closest to Simon and me, the kid with the scar – his name was Bodie – resting the shotgun barrel on his legs as he digested what we’d just told him.

‘You’re telling me that the blacksuits are …
us
?’ he asked eventually.

I nodded, wondering if I was going to have to go through the whole thing for a third time. I’d already told them everything about the warden’s procedure,everything about the nectar, and everything about Furnace’s plans to turn us into monsters, blacksuits. Well, almost everything. I hadn’t mentioned the part about the warden being alive almost a century ago, about their experiments during the Second World War. I figured nobody would believe that if they hadn’t seen the evidence with their own silver eyes.

‘Every one of them,’ I replied. ‘Me and Simon included.’

‘Yeah, I know you,’ said another of the Skulls. ‘You used to bunk with Donovan. You’re the one who made it out through the river. You’re supposed to be dead.’

I pointed at myself to prove him wrong.

‘That’s what the warden told you. Didn’t want anyone else trying to break out. We made it, most of us anyway. But only as far as solitary. That river didn’t lead anywhere but right into the arms of the wheezers. And you can see what happened after that.’

‘Yeah, they tried to turn you into one of them,’ said a voice from the back of the room. ‘But they couldn’t.’

‘Because you remembered your name?’ added Bodie, with more than a trace of disbelief.

‘Look, you’ve seen the evidence, you’ve seen the blood watch come, the wheezers. Those creatures they bring back, they’re us, halfway through the procedure. That’s what the nectar does to them.’

‘Figured that,’ said another Skull. ‘Remember what happened to Kevin?’

Bodie chewed on his lip, then nodded. Everyone remembered what had happened to Kevin, slaughtered in his cell by the beast that had been brought up from below, the beast that had once been Monty.

‘We don’t have much time,’ said Simon. ‘We can sit here and talk about this all day, but unless we make a move soon the warden’s gonna find a way up.’

I thought of Zee, still trapped inside the control room. I hoped he was close to bypassing the doors, and that the blacksuits were still trapped in their hole. The first thing Bodie had done after the crowd had calmed
down was station two of his boys on lookout by the vault door, which had swung shut after we’d entered gen pop, and two more by the elevator to prevent any surprises from the surface. Not that I was expecting any.

‘And you’re sure they won’t send the police?’ asked Bodie. ‘SWAT or the army crawling up in here? I mean,this is a pretty big deal, us taking over the prison. Six o’clock news and all that.’

‘They won’t,’ I said. ‘The warden wouldn’t dare let anyone else down here, he wouldn’t risk them finding out about the experiments, about what they’ve been doing to us. No, he’s screwed himself with his own sick plans. I bet you the world doesn’t know anything about this.’

‘The world’ll find out soon enough when we break outta here,’ said Bodie, causing a riotous cheer from the rest of the room. ‘Ain’t gonna know what hit it.’

‘It doesn’t mean were safe, though,’ I went on. I’d been trying not to think about the phone, about Furnace’s message. But it had been engraved on my memory.

I am coming for you
.

‘My guess,’ said Simon, ‘is that Furnace will send his own reinforcements, from outside.’

‘More blacksuits,’ said Bodie. ‘Makes sense.’

‘But the only way in is using the elevator,’ I added, a spark of hope igniting in my head with enough brightness to make me think a crack had opened up in the ceiling. I remembered the blueprint, pulling it out of my pocket and smoothing it down across the table. The gangs leant in to get a better look, some whistling at the
sheer size of the prison laid out in blue and white before them. I ran a finger up the long line of the main elevator shaft, the only connection to the outside world.

‘So if Furnace wants to get in then he gotta pull the lift up first,’ said Bodie. ‘And if we already in there when it reaches the top then he’s gonna have a nice little surprise when the doors open.’

‘True that,’ said Simon, imitating Bodie. ‘You know if the cabin is up or down?’

‘We never know,’ said one of the Fifty-Niners. I recognised him from the gym where I’d almost been beaten to a pulp. It felt like decades ago. ‘Sometimes goes back up, sometimes stays down. Only way to know for sure is to open it.’

‘But those doors are reinforced steel,’ added Bodie. ‘Ain’t no one ever been able to break through them.’

‘That’s because nobody’s had the time to do it before,’ I said with a grin. ‘You so much as looked at them and the blacksuits would haul your ass off to the hole. But there isn’t anyone to tell you what to do now.’

I stood up, causing the Skulls to jump to their feet, fists and guns raised in unison. I held up my hands in surrender, sighing with frustration.

‘I might look like one of them,’ I said, trying to make eye contact with everyone in the room. ‘But I’m not. My name is Alex Sawyer, I’m a prisoner just like you. And if you want me to find a way out of here then you’d better
get those guns out of my face!
’

My calm tone had become a shout by the last seven words, the anger swelling up inside me. I lashed out,
smacking the barrel of Bodie’s shotgun and sending it spinning to the floor.

‘Easy, chief,’ he said, motioning for his lieutenants to back off. ‘I hear you. One of us. Ain’t no thing.’

I pushed past him, heading back out to the yard. Furnace had looked like hell before, but now it was literally an inferno. Some of the inmates had stripped the sheets from the beds, building a huge pile in the middle of the prison floor which had somehow been set alight. It gave life to the walls, the red stone reflecting the flickering light and creating the illusion that we were all standing inside a living pyre. Although most of the smoke drifted upwards, joining forces with the shadows of the highest levels, black tendrils snaked around the room,making the cloying heat even more unbearable.

‘Just our luck if we all end up burning to death,’ coughed Simon, pulling his tattered overalls across his mouth. ‘The warden would think Christmas had come early.’

Most of the inmates were still trashing their cells, the rooms and anything else they could get their hands on. I saw gym equipment being thrown onto the fire, and pickaxes too, their wooden handles causing the greedy flames to lick even higher. Somebody lobbed a bottle of cleaning fluid from the laundry and it vanished in a muffled explosion, a fountain of purple fire jetting upwards before fizzling out.

‘You think you can stop them from burning everything useful?’ I said as Bodie and his crew walked out behind me.

‘If you wanna try calming them down then you go ahead,’ he replied. ‘But if I was you I’d let them get it out of their systems, else it’ll be you burning up in there.’

‘Thanks,’ I muttered, trying to see past the exhaustion, past the smoke, past the fear to look for a plan. ‘We should grab anything that we can use as a weapon. Pickaxes, shovels, and you must have shanks. If the suits do get in then we’re going to need all the help we can get.’

Bodie leant towards a couple of Skulls and gave an order, watching them as they ran towards the chipping rooms. The rest of us headed for the elevator, steering well clear of the fire. There were inmates everywhere, some running wild, some cowering in empty cells as if hoping to be locked back in, others in brutal skirmishes – rivals finally getting a chance to beat on their enemies without risking a lockdown.

‘Only thing worse than a prison with guards,’ said Bodie,‘is a prison without ’em.’

I did my best to ignore the mayhem, trying to focus. We were under siege, and sooner or later the warden would figure out a way to get back in. When he did, we had to be ready. The thought of it caused a sudden rush of vertigo, the room spinning like a gyroscope. I felt like a tree that had been felled, suddenly toppling to my left. Luckily Simon was there, wrapping his arms around me before I could hit the floor.

‘You okay?’ asked Bodie.

‘He’s fine,’ Simon answered for me. ‘It’s the nectar in his system, it’s running out. Hang in there, Alex, you’ll be okay in a minute.’

‘I’m fine now,’ I said, shrugging him off and easing myself up. ‘I just tripped.’

I didn’t need to see his face to know he didn’t believe me, but there was no time to feel ill. I wiped a hand across my brow, feeling the heat radiating from my skin, then I set off again. The two Skulls by the elevator doors raised their guns when they saw me but Bodie was quick to wave them back down.

‘Top priority is getting this open,’ I said, looking at the elevator, the massive screen above it black and silent. The gap between the reinforced steel doors was thinner than a hair, the joint sealed tight to protect it from attack. It was going to take a hell of an effort to get through there. But if we could blow a hole in a rock floor to get to the river beneath then we could do anything. I smiled, the memory giving me an idea. ‘Send some of your boys to the kitchen,’ I said, turning to Bodie. ‘Get them to unscrew the gas canisters from the oven. They’re still there, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Bodie replied, nodding at two more Skulls, who sprinted back the way we’d come. ‘Under some serious lock and key since you guys escaped, but they’re there. You thinking of exploding your way out again?’

I shook my head. The gas in the gloves had demolished a rock floor, but steel was a different matter. It didn’t shatter, and it didn’t crumble. I doubted those canisters would even make a dent.

‘We should be able to get in with the pickaxes,’ I said, before looking to my side where the vault door stood closed and silent. ‘But if the warden does poke his ugly
mug through there then we can be sure he gets a warm welcome.’

Bodie laughed, clapping a hand down on my shoulder.

‘I like the way you think, big man,’ he said, and for a second I remembered Gary, the former head of the Skulls. He’d have killed me if I’d given him orders like I’d done to Bodie, even if I did know a way out. I had no doubt that Bodie was a nasty piece of work – he was a Skull, after all – but at least he wasn’t a psychopath.

I saw the first two gang members racing back across the yard, each with a couple of pickaxes slung over their shoulders. They skidded to a halt by the elevator doors, passing one of the tools to me and another to Bodie.

‘You want more?’ wheezed one.

‘Nah, this ought to do it,’ I replied, gripping the wooden handle and remembering the countless blisters it had brought out on my hands. I’d have a few more by the time we got these doors open. ‘Stand back.’

The Skulls obeyed, backing off as I swung the pickaxe round in an arc. It struck the elevator doors a good metre or so from where I’d intended, causing a clang that thundered through my eardrums as well as a jarring impact that almost separated my spine from my skull. I dropped the pickaxe to a round of whoops and cheers from the Skulls.

‘Looks like someone needs some chipping practice,’ laughed Bodie. ‘You want another shot or you wanna let the professionals do it?’

I stood out of his way, nodding. My strike hadn’t
even scratched the surface of the elevator, but it had almost torn me in two.

‘Yeah, it’s all yours,’ I said, grimacing. ‘I’ve got a bomb to make.’