"Um, do you mind…?"
He raised an eyebrow, then cottoned on to what I meant, his head disappearing as he lay back down.
"Sorry, Alex," he said as I went about my business. "That's the other thing you never really get used to. Pooping in public."
"Well, it would be a lot easier to relax if you'd keep quiet for a second," I scolded. The bed creaked as he laughed, but fortunately he didn't say another word until he heard the flush.
"My turn," he said, jumping from the bunk.
"All yours."
Doing my best to ignore the noises behind me, I stared through the bars at the cells directly opposite. Inmates were climbing from their bunks, all pasty faces and crumpled uniforms. Judging by some of their expressions, I wasn't the only one who'd had nightmares.
My eyes fell on one cell, on the next level below. It was pretty far away, and sat at a strange angle, but I thought I could make out Montgomery curled up on the stone next to the bars. I saw a pair of legs on the upper bunk, which no doubt belonged to chief Skull Kevin. From the looks of things, the bottom bunk was stripped bare. I wondered if poor Montgomery had spent the whole night on the floor.
"So, you ready for some hard labor?" asked Donovan, flushing the toilet. He had an apologetic look on his face and was wafting the air with both hands. "That mush plays havoc downstairs, you know?"
"You're not kidding," I replied, holding my nose and wishing-not for the last time during my stay in Furnace-that we had separate bathrooms. "Anyway, what do you mean, 'hard labor'?"
He grinned as he pulled on his shoes, then offered the same infuriating reply I'd already heard so many times.
"You'll find out soon enough."
HARD LABOR
TEN MINUTES OR SO after the lights had come back on the siren cut through my head a second time and the cell doors rattled open. With a series of whoops and cheers the inmates on every level crashed along the platforms and down the stairs, filling the prison with the sound of thunder.
"When you're locked up in here for life, you learn to welcome the little freedoms," explained Donovan as we made our way from our cell. His face was once again a mask of defiance, challenging anyone to mess with him, but his tone was light enough. "Getting out of our cells every morning feels a little bit like we're breaking free, if you know what I mean."
I didn't. Not then. But I soon came to understand. Part of you soon forgets about the outside world. There is just lockdown and out there, and out there-in the yard, in the trough room, at hard labor-feels a hell of a lot freer than a two-meter-square cell.
As we made our way down to the yard Donovan explained about the jobs. Mornings were spent working. Slopwork was in the kitchen. Greaseup meant cleaning duties, which sometimes included the Stink, or mopping the toilets. Bleaching was in the laundry. According to the duty roster-displayed in crisp white letters on the giant screen above the elevator-Donovan and I were chippers for the day.
"It's the hardest of hard labors," he said as we followed the crowd through to the trough room. We picked up a couple of bowls of mush from the canteen and found an empty bench-close enough to the scene of yesterday's incident that I could make out a weird rust-colored stain on the floor. I focused on my breakfast to try to take my mind off the fight. It was a pile of sawdust-colored paste that looked identical to yesterday's dinner.
"The same thing?" I asked, feeling my stomach grumble. I wasn't sure if it was because I was hungry, or because my gut was warning me not to go near the dish.
"Yeah," Donovan replied, lifting a heap of paste up with his spoon and eyeing it suspiciously. "Exactly the same. They make it in batches, each lasts a few days. You have it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner."
"Great," I muttered. I knew I was going to have to eat something sooner or later, so I scraped a thin layer off the top of my breakfast and touched my tongue to it. I was expecting the flavor of vomit, or crap, or something equally nasty, but to my surprise I couldn't taste anything. Taking a deep breath, I closed my mouth around the spoon and felt the runny mixture drop onto my tongue. For a second I gagged, but then I managed to control the reflex and noticed that the goo was completely flavorless, except for the pleasant tang of salt.
"The texture is the worst part," Donovan explained, scooping the last dollop from his bowl. "Just think of it as salty porridge and it isn't too bad."
I remembered how my dad always put about a kilo of salt in his porridge-as opposed to honey or sugar or jam like sane people-and the thought made me feel better. My appetite took over and I wolfed down the paste with a passion, almost sucking the plastic from the spoon in my eagerness. The gunk was lukewarm, but it settled in my stomach and radiated a pleasant, comforting heat.
The morning's third short siren blast saw everybody making their way out of the trough room back into the yard, where the crowd gradually split into a number of groups. I followed Donovan to the other side of the huge space toward a cavernous fissure in the rock guarded by a blacksuit and his shotgun. I felt my legs go weak at the sight of him, but the sheer density of the people around me held me up as we stomped past.
The short tunnel ahead led us to a room filled to bursting with mining equipment-picks, shovels, wheelbarrows, and dozens of hard hats that clung to the walls like yellow fungus. Around the outside of the room were three more cracks: gaping black mouths in the rock. Two were open but a third, in the center, was sealed off with enormous wooden planks bolted into the rock.
Donovan slammed a hard hat onto his head, switching on the lamp fixed to the front, and held another one out for me. I took it as the blacksuit walked to the center of the cluttered space and began to speak.
"You know the drilclass="underline" dig and clear." His voice was like the rumbling of some subterranean river muted by the rock. "Shaft props every three meters, hats on at all times-we want you fit to work again tomorrow. Anyone caught smuggling equipment out gets two days in the hole. Any skirmishing gets you three."
By now most of the hundred or so inmates in the room were kitted up. Some held picks or shovels and others were hoisting the ancient metal wheelbarrows off the ground. Not knowing what to do, I grabbed a pick from the wall. It was so heavy I nearly dropped it, the spike coming worryingly close to the foot of the guy standing next to me. I tensed my muscles and managed to stop its descent, but Donovan was already flashing me a concerned look.
"Levels one through three, you're through the first door," the blacksuit went on. "Levels four through six, get in the third door. Room Two is out of bounds. Move it."
Our huddle of prisoners shuffled forward with about as much enthusiasm as if there had been an electric chair waiting beyond that hole in the wall. I could almost imagine them as old-time miners, singing "Hi ho, hi ho" as they marched into darkness. Only these workers were calling out insults to one another and making threatening gestures with their picks. I kept my head down and trailed Donovan.
"Don't worry, kid," he said as we stomped through the tunnel. "Only another twenty thousand or so days of this to go."
My pick suddenly got a lot heavier, as did my heart.
We emerged into a wide cavern, the ceiling so low that I had to stoop in places to avoid the drooping rock. Everywhere I looked there were long, thin beams propping up the ceiling, a forest of twigs that didn't look anywhere near strong enough to hold up the million or so tons of stone above our heads. I pictured what would happen if gravity took over, bringing down the roof of the cave and squashing us like a boot crushing a bug. At least it would be quick.
Swallowing hard, I managed to force the claustrophobic panic from my mind.
"Better pray there isn't a cave-in today," said Donovan, his words practically turning my stomach inside out.