Furnace 3 - Death Sentence (16 page)

UNDER SIEGE 

Simon followed me back to the slop room to check on the gas canisters. The bedlam in Furnace was growing more out of hand with each passing second, the kids running out of things to rip from the walls and turning on each other. We kept to the edge of the huge room,willing ourselves to be invisible against the walls and the cell bars. But it was impossible when you were taller and broader than anyone else in the yard, and wearing a black pinstripe suit to boot.

We ducked in through the crack in the rock, both of us nervously eyeing the lifeless machine guns that jutted from the walls. The canteen was still pretty full, the benches occupied by quiet kids who didn’t want any part in the madness outside. They retreated from us as we strode across the room, their skittish movements reminding me of stray cats.

‘Any of you guys want to help?’ I asked. ‘We need weapons, we’ll need slop too, if anyone feels like cooking.’

Nobody responded, even their breath locked behind tight lips until Simon and I had passed through the
doors into the kitchen. Nothing had changed, the white walls and steel surfaces like a haven compared to the flesh and smoke tones of the prison. At least it was until I looked at the metal surfaces and realised how similar they were to the operating tables down below.

‘Don’t think about it,’ said Simon, and I could almost see the same thoughts running through his mind.

‘How are you getting on?’ I asked the two Skulls who were crouching at the oven. They had pulled a leg from one of the counters and were using it as a crowbar to prise open a chain that had been looped around the base of the unit.

‘Won’t budge,’ hissed one, the crowbar slipping out.

‘Need a little extra muscle?’ I said, squatting down beside them and taking the table leg. Slotting it into the gap between the chain and the oven I pulled on it with all my strength. I know I hadn’t asked to become a monster, but it was satisfying to watch the steel links stretch like Play-Doh until the weakest one popped open. ‘Now that’s how you do it.’

The Skulls looked at the chain, then at each other, then at me.

‘Remind me not to get on your bad side,’ said one, his head disappearing behind the oven. I heard the creak of something being unscrewed and left him to it,looking up to see that Simon had vanished. I followed the sound of furious chomping and found him gorging on some cold leftovers in a pot of slop. He peered over the top and smiled.

‘Man, I didn’t think I was ever gonna taste anything
this good ever again,’ he said. The sound of his stomach gurgled across the room, making me realise how hungry I was. I walked over, ready to scrape out a handful for myself, but Simon pulled the giant pot away. ‘Not a good idea,’ he said. ‘You’ve had way too much nectar. You try eating this and you’ll only spew it right up again.’

‘You liar,’ I said, raising an eyebrow. ‘You just want it all to yourself. You had nectar and you’re fine. Come on, share and share alike.’

He started to protest then obviously thought better of it, throwing his hands in the air.

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ he muttered.

I curled my hand round the edge of the pot, my taste buds almost gushing as I scooped the cold mush into my mouth. Simon was right, after so long without food it tasted like ambrosia, better than anything I’d had in my life, better even than the steak meal Monty had cooked up for us in this very room. I was grinning so hard I could barely keep my mouth closed as I swallowed.

I was pulling out my second handful when my body reacted. It felt like somebody had jammed two fingers down the back of my throat, my gag reflex so strong that I was barely even aware I was being sick before I saw the jet of slop explode back into the pot. I retched again, producing nothing but bile, then wiped the tears from my eyes to see Simon staring at the mess I’d made.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘You think I want to eat your barf?’

‘Jesus,’ I replied, spitting a ball of acid. I walked to the tap, flushing my mouth out before tentatively swallowing
some water. I felt it trickle down my pipe, cooling the fire that the slop had started. Fortunately the water at least seemed to stay down.

‘Liquids is fine, the warden probably told you that,’ Simon said, rooting around the pots for more leftovers. ‘But the nectar won’t let you eat. It gives you everything you need. Until it runs out, that is.’

‘Then what?’ I asked. Simon’s only answer was a shrug.

Great! So when I got to the surface and the nectar finally ran out I’d starve to death. Another rosy possible future to look forward to thanks to Furnace and the warden.

If
you get to the surface, another part of my brain chimed in. And it was right, we were a long way from freedom yet.

‘If you two freaks have finished throwing your guts up, how about you take this,’ said one of the Skulls. He held up one of the gas canisters, a squat metal cylinder with a valve on the top. It was obviously heavy because his whole body was trembling with the weight. I took it from him in one hand, studying the valve.

‘Know what you’re doing with that?’ Simon asked.

‘Nope,’ I replied. ‘Only thing I know about gas is that it goes kaboom. Reckon we’ll be able to rig it up easily enough, though. Bring the others when you get them, I’m heading back out.’

‘No worries,’ he replied, his voice echoing from the pot his head was lost in. I was at the kitchen doors when the prison erupted with the sound of the siren,
the klaxon even louder than before. I gripped the canister tight and legged it, barging my way through the canteen and back out into the yard.

Zee. It had to be Zee.

The prisoners were panicking, some running back to their cells like they’d been programmed to do, others heading to ground level armed with improvised weapons. As I ran round the fire I saw that the Skulls who had been clustered in front of the elevator were now standing by the vault door, shotguns levelled at the metal. I flew the last few metres.

‘What is it?’ I yelled over the siren.

‘Not sure,’ Bodie replied, pumping a shell into the chamber of his own shotgun. ‘Heard something inside, though, banging or some such.’

Please let it be him
, I prayed, slamming the gas canister to the floor in frustration. What if the banging was the blacksuits finally getting up from the floor below? What if it was them throwing Zee from wall to wall until …

‘It might be Zee,’ I said, trying to stay positive. ‘He might have found a way.’

‘If it is him then we’ll let him through, but if it isn’t –’ Bodie’s whisper suddenly became a shout as the siren stopped. It started again, the sound faint and flat for a second or so like it was running out of batteries, then fading into its own echo. ‘What the …’

This time I heard the banging myself, although it was more of a grinding – like a distant elevator struggling up. Or a door opening.

‘Get ready,’ said Bodie. ‘Anything that comes through that door which ain’t one of us, it don’t never get up again.’

The yard was flooded with sound as the klaxon booted back up, wavering high and low and reminding me of films when the cops turn their squad-car sirens on and off. There was a deep click inside the vault door, followed by a burst of sparks from the hinges which sent everybody jumping backwards. Something else thumped into place inside the mechanism, then with the grating squeal of metal on metal it began to swing open.

‘Here we go,’ yelled Bodie as the siren cut out again. ‘Be ready. Be ready.’

With the alarm now off it was as though the entire prison was holding its breath to see what came through the door, even the roar of the fire dulling to a muted growl. A curtain of sparks exploded from the hinges as they swung out, parting to reveal the short corridor beyond and a single tiny figure bolting down it at full tilt.

Someone let off a shot, the gun flashing in the corner of my vision and a section of the tunnel wall blowing out in an explosion of rock and smoke. Zee collapsed, rolling awkwardly, and I screamed out to him.

‘Zee!’

‘Hold your fire!’ yelled Bodie. ‘It’s our boy.’

I was in the tunnel before he’d finished speaking, heading for the bundle of bones and rags on the stone floor. I dropped to my knees beside him at the same time he was pushing himself up.

‘You crazy?’ he shouted, dragging me up with him.

‘Sorry, they weren’t trying to shoot you –’

‘No, are you crazy? Run!’

I’d been so focused on Zee that I hadn’t noticed the movement from the control room, the wave of black and silver that was pouring from the elevator.

‘Run!’ Zee yelled again, bolting towards the yard. I didn’t need to be told a third time, keeping my head low as the blacksuits came after us. Then the world dissolved into noise and fire as everyone started shooting, neither side seeming to care that we were smack bang in the middle.

The war had begun.

FIRE IN THE HOLE

Momentum was the only thing that got us out of the tunnel alive. I didn’t open my eyes to see where I was going, the walls of orange flame and smoke and noise on all sides so thick they could have been solid, the air shredded by thousands of lethal pellets – two fists that slammed towards each other. I didn’t even breathe, I just ran, throwing myself back the way I’d come and hoping I’d reach the door before I was perforated.

I skidded out, tripping on a shape in front of me and tumbling to the rock, throwing my hands up to cover my head. I was vaguely aware of a stinging pain in my left leg, but I couldn’t bring myself to look.

‘Get that door closed!’ I heard somebody screaming, probably Bodie.

I looked up, the entire prison punctuated by shotgun blasts. It was like watching a film with strobe lights, every juddering moment reduced to a snapshot by a burst of light and sound. One of the Skulls flew back as if struck by an invisible hand, his dead eyes questioning the distant ceiling. Somebody else grabbed his gun,
struggling to pump a shell into the chamber.

‘Come on!’ yelled another voice, and I saw Zee above me, offering his hand. I grabbed it, scrambling to my feet and moving out of the doorway. Bodie and Simon plus a bunch of kids were round the other side of the door trying to push it closed and I ran in their direction, growling in pain as something stung my ear. I took a look inside the tunnel as I ran, seeing the blacksuits marching relentlessly forward, not slowing or falling despite the wounds that stained their jackets.

‘They aren’t going down!’ somebody yelled.

‘I’m out!’ came another scream. ‘We need more ammo.’

‘Forget about it,’ Bodie replied, the tendons in his neck like wires as he pushed the heavy door. ‘If we don’t get this thing closed then we’re dead.’

It was too late for another kid, a Fifty-Niner this time. He rocked back, his chest opened up, the gun clattering to the stone. By the time he followed it he was gone. The other Skulls with guns were backing off, most furiously trying to reload from empty tube magazines and the rest firing their last rounds into the tunnel.

‘Are you gonna help or what?’ yelled Zee, who had joined the group behind the door, adding his skinny arms to the push. I ignored him, scanning the ground for the dropped canister. It had rolled just outside the tunnel entrance, visible between the legs of the retreating Skulls.

Throwing my hands up to protect my head I lurched back across the open door, the gunpowder burning my lungs.

‘Hold your fire!’ I bellowed above the shots, lifting up the canister and grabbing the valve.

‘What?’ yelled the Skull closest to me, letting off another round. ‘You out of your mind.’

‘Just wait,’ I said. The kid dropped his gun to his side and dodged out of the doorway, watching me with terror in his eyes as I fiddled with the canister. The valve twisted round in a semi-circle, closed in one direction and open in the other. Even when it was turned fully it only released a whisper of gas.

Another kid fell, blood spraying from a wound in his leg. He screamed as he went down, a couple of Skulls dragging him out of the line of fire before the blacksuits could finish him off. Bodie wasn’t having much luck with the door, the huge slab of metal only scraping a couple of centimetres closer to the wall with each endless second.

It was this or nothing.

‘Cover me,’ I said, grabbing a pickaxe from where it had fallen, then running into the doorway. The guards were still advancing but their numbers had been thinned out, fewer shadowed forms visible through the smoke and the haze.

Praying that my plan wouldn’t backfire, I placed the canister on the floor with the valve pointing back into the yard. Wedging it in place with my foot, I lifted the pickaxe and slammed the point down. The metal struck the stone a hair’s width from the canister, causing a spark to dance over the valve. My heart almost stopped, but I raised the pickaxe and brought it down again
before I could think too hard about what I was doing.

This time the blade landed right where I’d aimed, at the joint where the valve met the metal. It split and the canister came alive, blasting out from under my feet with so much force that I almost fell. I kept my balance, watching as the released gas propelled it through the door and into the tunnel.

‘Fire in the hole!’ I yelled. ‘Shoot the canister!’ But my orders weren’t necessary. One of the suits must have done the job for me, hitting the missile at point blank range with his twelve bore.

There was a moment of absolute silence and stillness where the entire prison shone white, every detail embroidered with a golden thread like some heavenly tapestry.

Then a bubble of blue fire ripped from the mouth of the tunnel, bringing with it all the heat and horror of hell. The ground rocked so hard that I couldn’t tell which way was up, the shock wave from the explosion sending me and everyone else nearby soaring through the boiling air.

Even with my head pummelled by noise I knew that the feeling of being in flight lasted too long. I peeled open one eye, saw that I was lying on the floor twenty metres or so from the vault door. The yard between me and it was like a lake of sapphire flames, vaguely human forms thrashing about in them like they were drowning.

What had I just done?

I picked myself up, the prison spinning around me as
though the explosion had knocked it into orbit. Staggering across the blistering rock I reached the tunnel, or what was left of it. It looked like it had been turned upside down, massive chunks of rock from the ceiling, along with the machine gun, strewn across the floor, and what could only be scraps of blackened suit pasted overhead.

There was too much smoke blocking my view of the control room, but I didn’t need to see inside it to know that nothing could have survived the backlash of that explosion. Not even a blacksuit. In the yard, the fireball had enough space to fan out, limiting its power. But in the confined space of the tunnel and the room beyond it would have been like an atomic bomb going off.

The vault door was still intact, although a section of the rock surrounding it had crumbled, leaving it hanging limply from the wall.

I suddenly realised I could hear a voice past the ringing in my ears and turned to see Bodie by my side, his face the same but different. I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, but I could lip read well enough to know it wasn’t pretty. Behind him I could see various kids getting to their feet, all rubbing their dirty faces and jamming fingers into their ears. Apart from the gang members who had fallen during the fire fight everybody else seemed to be moving, even if it was just squirming on the ground. To my relief I saw Zee amongst them, staggering in tight circles as he tried to recover his balance.

‘… crazy … going through your head … buried us all …’ I could make out snippets of what Bodie was saying. He saw my confusion and walked right up to me, his voice cutting through the chime. ‘I said that was crazy. You could have got us all killed.’

‘Few more seconds and the suits would have been through the door,’ I replied in a voice so distant it sounded like someone else’s. ‘You saw how many there were, and that was just the first group. If they’d got the elevator working again then there would have been dozens of the bastards up here, dogs too. You think we had enough ammo to hold them off?’

‘Yeah,’ Bodie said, staring down the tunnel. ‘I mean no. But that was a little drastic, don’t you think?’

‘And some warning would have been nice,’ added Zee. ‘You singed off my eyebrows.’ He looked up at me and tried his best to smile. ‘Looks like I’m not the only one.’

I raised my hand to my forehead, felt the smooth skin above my eyes, painful to the touch. A quick look at Bodie and I realised that’s why he hadn’t looked like himself.

‘You both look like eggs,’ I said. ‘I could paint –’

‘You think this is the right time for beauty tips?’ snapped Bodie.

‘We’re alive, aren’t we?’ I replied, checking my leg to see a couple of tiny holes in my skin from the lead shot. They must have been ricochets, I’d been lucky. ‘Come on, let’s get this mess sorted, find out if everyone’s okay.’

I ignored Bodie’s muttered comments and turned to the first boy I could see, struggling to extract himself from a pile of dust and debris. Aside from a little bruising and a lot of shock – and the absence of his eyebrows – he seemed to be okay. I told him to head to the canteen,saying someone would be in there soon to give him a proper examination. The next kid was the same, traumatised but in one piece, and gradually there was a ragged line of Skulls and Fifty-Niners weaving unsteadily towards the slop room.

Minutes later everybody had migrated to the cooler air on the other side of the yard, leaving Zee and me alone with the remaining Skulls and two broken bodies by the door. Bodie had covered their faces with scraps of overalls and was kneeling beside them speaking under his breath. I stood there awkwardly until he had finished.

‘They were good kids,’ he said, standing up and wiping a tear from his eye. ‘Good men, I mean. Knew them both from the street, soldiers then and always. They would have wanted to go fighting.’

Zee and I shared a look but Bodie didn’t catch it. He tapped his fist over his chest twice, imitated by the small crowd, then turned back to the tunnel.

‘We should check it,’ he said. ‘Make sure it’s clear.’

‘Need to barricade it too,’ I added. ‘There will be more suits where that lot came from, and the more we take out the madder they’ll get.’

‘No doubt,’ said Bodie. ‘After you.’

I stumbled over the twisted metal door frame, almost
slipping on a pile of loose rock as I walked into the tunnel. The only light was a bulb from the control room which blinked on and off like it was giving a secret signal, that and the tireless glow from the fire in the yard. Zee grabbed my arm, using it to keep his balance as he followed. Together we slipped and stumbled through the flickering darkness, half expecting a blacksuit to rise from the ashes to take revenge for his brothers.

‘What the hell happened back there?’ I asked, hoping my voice would keep the shadows at bay. ‘How did you get the doors open?’

‘I hotwired the master controls,’ Zee said, stepping round a mound of what might have been shotgun barrels or splintered bones. ‘The doors were on a fail-safe circuit, and once I’d rerouted the wires I managed to trick the main door into thinking the inner door was closed. Trouble was …’

Something moved up ahead, not seen but heard, and we stopped. The bulb winked on, the weak light struggling, and we saw more debris fall from the ceiling.

‘Trouble was,’ Zee continued as we started up again, ‘I had to switch some of the electrical connections round as well. And the second I’d split the power to the door circuit I realised I’d diverted it back to the lower elevator as well.’ He laughed, although I could tell it was strained. ‘Man, you should have seen my face when I heard it coming up. Those doors swing so damn slow that by the time I’d got them both open the suits were almost on me. And you know the rest of the story.’

We stepped out of the tunnel into the control room.
The door at this end had fared less well, pulled completely from the wall and resting against the elevator. I could see that the cabin hadn’t quite made it to the top,the layer of debris we’d thrown stopping its progress when its roof had reached knee height. But there had been enough space for the suits to crawl out.

‘Jeez Louise,’ whistled Zee. ‘This place is messed up.’

He was right. The control room was completely black, as if quarried from coal. The bank of electronic equipment was nothing but a puddle of melted plastic and metal, only a handful of wires still visible. I turned to Zee, saw him chewing his lower lip, knew he was chewing on his thoughts as well.

‘What?’ I asked. He turned to see Bodie and the Skulls enter the room, then leant in towards me.

‘You want the good news or the bad?’ he whispered, not waiting for an answer. ‘Good is that the warden can’t control much of anything without a control room. Bad is that neither can we.’

I looked at him, shaking my head to show I didn’t get what he meant. He flashed another look at the Skulls before directing more soft words into my ear.

‘I’m saying that this was the only place we could have accessed the controls for the main elevator. And without them …’ I felt my heart sink, turning to Zee as we finished his statement together:

‘We’re trapped.’