There was a distinct rumbling of stomachs but I couldn't tell whether it came from Donovan, Zee, or my own gut, which was still churning. It probably emanated from all three of us, a chorus of protest at a day without sustenance.
We marched in silence through the hole in the wall, past a blacksuit whose silver eyes promised a world of pain if we stepped out of line. It was only my second day, but I felt like an old hand at chipping, donning my visor with a world-weary sigh, flicking on my helmet lamp, and hefting the pick onto my shoulder to avoid piercing anybody's foot. My muscles complained at the effort, but it was only a halfhearted gripe. They knew what had to be done.
Zee had been put with us today, and he stuck close by, following my lead and selecting his own tools. The blacksuit split us into teams, and once again we marched into the third room. Donovan and I staked out the same spot at the far end of the half-finished cavern, and I filled Zee in on the job description.
"Pound and clear, that's it. Oh, and watch your head!"
The steady percussion of metal and rock began again in earnest. At times the noise sounded exactly like what it was-a load of kids smashing a rock wall. But occasionally a rhythm would start up, some mysterious force of coincidence turning the relentless plinks into a staccato tune. It would only last for a few seconds before once again fading out of sync, but it always brought a smile to my face.
It was only after ten minutes or so of painful chipping that I felt like I was being watched. I put the sensation down to the fact that people were still scowling at me, but it was so powerful it felt like something boring into the back of my neck. I swung around and scanned the inmates before me. Most were hidden behind visors and a layer of red dust, but there was one familiar face that turned away as soon as I saw it. It was Montgomery.
I laid my pick down on the ground and walked over, weaving my way carefully around the wooden posts holding up the ceiling. He tried to back away, then stopped, then turned, then lifted his pick as though to start work, then let it drop. Finally, he slumped his shoulders and acknowledged me with a nod. Behind the shine on his visor I made out bruised cheeks and a swollen lip, but his expression was as hard as ever.
"How are you?" I asked softly. He fixed me with a glare that caught me by surprise, like I'd been the one beating him up.
"I guess you want me to thank you," he spat. I raised my eyebrows and opened my mouth, but I had absolutely no idea how to respond. "I didn't ask you to help me. I'm not some charity case. What? You want a big reward for rescuing helpless little Monty? Well, you're not getting one." Flecks of foam dotted the plastic screen in front of him. "Now we're not even allowed any food. A whole day. It's your fault."
He lifted his pick and waved it at me. It reminded me of an old man shaking his cane at a group of kids. I held up my hands in surrender, my eyebrows refusing to return to their normal position.
"Jeez," was all I could manage. I felt the familiar burn of anger flare up inside my chest, but I swallowed hard and it faded. Monty's face was creased in hostile determination, but I could tell that it was fear making him react this way. I hoped it was, anyway, otherwise he was an ungrateful little wretch.
I opened my mouth to try to reason with him, then thought better of it, turning my back on him and returning to my pick.
"He didn't look like he was bursting with gratitude," said Zee, pulling up his visor and wiping a gloved hand across his brow. The move left a trail of wet dust on his forehead that looked like blood in the half-light of the room. "Did he even say thanks?"
I shook my head and Zee scowled over at Monty.
"That's so out of order. We could have died yesterday saving his fat ass. We should have just left him."
"Told you so," said Donovan between swings. I ignored him, but they were both right. It had been a stupid thing to do. I'm no hero, no action star. I'm a villain, not a saint. I should have abandoned Monty to lick up after the Skulls, then we'd never have got on the warden's bad side and we'd all have had breakfast. I took one last look at him-standing by himself, still holding his pick up like a weapon and staring at the floor-then started pummeling the wall again. I'm a little ashamed to say that this time, when I saw faces in the rock, I imagined they were his.
DOWNTIME
NOBODY IN FURNACE KNEW exactly how long work duty went on for. Donovan claimed that it was five or six hours-from breakfast to lunch-but that second day of hard labor felt more like a full twenty-four-hour stretch.
With no fuel to keep us going, we all quickly began to falter. The oppressive air of Furnace beat down on us like dragon's breath-hot, stale, and at times stripped of oxygen so we felt like we were choking. It was the lack of water that really took its toll, drying us out like prunes and forcing us to lay our picks down every couple of minutes to avoid blacking out. I even found myself eyeing the sweat on Donovan's forehead in the hope it would quench my thirst.
There were a couple of times I felt the world spin uncontrollably, the rush of vertigo like I'd just fallen off a cliff. I had to clamp my eyes shut and lean on my pick to avoid losing it completely. Other kids weren't so lucky. Two passed out that morning, the second midway through a swing. He fell forward like a dead weight, landing face-first on a jagged strip of rock. The sight of gushing blood usually would have turned my stomach, but I'd already seen far worse than that here in Furnace. His prone body was dragged from the room by a blacksuit, a slick crimson trail betraying his route.
By the time the siren sounded-half a lifetime later-the rhythm of picks against rock had dwindled to a sorry tapping from the couple of inmates who still had the strength to lift their tools. We were so desperate to leave that we all pushed our way through the door before the echoes of the siren had faded away, and in less than a minute we'd dumped our stuff and were waiting in the equipment room for the order to move through to the showers. Obviously another group had beaten us to them, as the blacksuit showed no sign of letting us pass.
To avoid the growing sense of frustration, which could explode into violence at any moment, Donovan, Zee, and I drifted to the back of the room. For some reason it seemed calmer here, cooler, but I couldn't work out why. The other guys felt it too; it seemed to relax them, loosen their tense limbs, and tease a smile from the corner of their lips. I found myself thinking of mountains, of all things, snow-tipped and windblown, as high above the world as we were below it, drenched in light and air.
All three of us took a deep, shuddering breath in unison, then laughed at the fact it had happened. Something about this spot was euphoric, and we all had to pinch our noses to avoid giggling helplessly. Fortunately at that point the blacksuit gave the order to move out, and the noise of our spluttered laughs was lost in the clomp of feet.
It was only as we made our way out of the room that I fathomed the source of our bizarre rapture. Looking back I saw the splintered black hole in the rock that led into Room Two. It was still sealed off with heavy wooden boards because of the cave-in, but there was no mistaking the nature of what was emanating from that portal.
It was fresh air.
AFTER THE HEAT and hardship of the chipping room the showers were like paradise. For once the cold water was a blessing, not a curse, and we all stood under the flow letting the icy blast cool and cleanse our bodies and gulping down as much liquid as we could. I swear more water went down our throats than down the drains that afternoon.
I thought the abundant supply of cool liquid might have kept things civil in the showers, but I've learned that in Furnace you can't have more than a few minutes without cruelty of some kind. Behind the roar of the flow I heard jeering again, wolf whistles and laughter that seemed to be both muffled and amplified by the vapor in the air.