Alexander Gordon Smith - Solitary: Escape from Furnace 2

From School Library Journal

Gr 7-10Alex Sawyer, 14, is in prison for a murder he didn't commit. He tried to escape the horrors of the underground prison known as Furnace in Lockdown (Farrar, 2009), and now he must battle the nightmare that is solitary confinement. The cells open from the top through a sort of manhole cover, and they are more like coffins standing on end than cells. Alex must fight the monsters and mutants that are his captors and tormentors, including the dreaded wheezers that have gas masks sewn to what should be their faces and the vicious rat and doglike creatures that spoiled their escape attempt. Alex's friend Donavan was thought to be dead, but as it turns out is part of the horrors going on in the infirmary. There are several disturbing episodes when Alex is alone with his thoughts in his cell, and his fatalism or depression leads him to contemplate suicide. The rest of this story is fast paced and packed with nail-biting scenarios, and the gross-out factor is high in many sections. Alex is coaxed into a leadership role by some of the creatures and his friend Zee, who occupies an adjoining cell, and through their attempt at another escape, discovers what is really happening to inmates in the infirmary. This is a dark story with a dark ending, but the gritty action and compelling characters will have reluctant readers enthralled.Jake Pettit, Thompson Valley High School, Loveland, CO. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

From

In a sequel to Lockdown (2009) that is just as breathlessly paced and soaked with blood, mucus, and less savory substances, teen jailbird Alexs escape from the futuristic underground prison and experimental lab called Furnace leads first to recapture and then to a second flight that involves frantic chases through dark caverns and tunnels, face-to-face encounters with flesh chewing human-rat hybrids, and visits to a gruesome Infirmary, in which prisoners are modified into hideous monsters. Readers who relish lurid imagery and melodramatic prose will continue to be riveted and left eager for the next disgust-o-rama episode. Grades 6-9. --John Peters

TO DAD,

the architect of, and the inspiration for,

so much of what is good in my life.

I told you this was a proper job!

Contents

CONFESSION

I HAVE A CONFESSION.

Im not a good person.

I always said that I only stole from strangers, that I only took stuff theyd never really miss: money and electronics and the sort of things you cant cry over.

But that was a lie. I didnt stop there; I couldnt. I stole from the people I loved, and took the things that meant the most to them. I didnt just break into their cupboards and drawers, I broke into their hearts and ripped out whatever I wanted, anything that would get me some easy money down at the market.

So dont go fooling yourself that Im a good person, that Im an innocent victim, someone who didnt deserve to be locked up inside the hell on earth known as Furnace Penitentiary. Im not. Dont get me wrong: I didnt kill my best friend Toby when we broke into that house. No, the blacksuits did it, they shot him then they framed me for his murder. But Ive done things that are just as bad. Ive killed little parts of people; Ive cut them up inside, hurt them so much they wished they were dead.

There isnt time to confess everything, but I have to get this off my chest. If I dont do it now then I might never get the chance. Deaths coming up fast. I can feel its cold fingers around my throat.

Two years ago, when I was twelve, my gran diedhad a fit in the middle of the night and swallowed her tongue. Mom was devastated, like any daughter would be. She cried for weeks, she didnt eat, she hardly spoke to me or Dad. Shed just sit and hold the little silver locket that Gran had left her, gently stroking the scarred and crumpled photos inside.

I guess I dont really need to tell you what I did. But Im going to anyway. I need to.

I waited till she was asleep one night, ten days or so after Gran had been buried. Then I sneaked into her room and pried that locket from her hand. Ten quid. Ten lousy quid is what I got for it. A handful of dirty coins for the only thing my mom had left of her mom. I watched the man Id sold it to rip the photos out from inside and chuck them in the bin, and I didnt feel a shred of remorse.

Mom knew I was the one whod taken it. She never said anything but I could see it in her eyes. There was no warmth there anymore, no love. It was like she looked right through me, at a phantom over my shoulder, at the son she wished she could have, the son shed lost forever.

See what I mean? Im not a good person. Dont forget that. Itll make my story easier to stomach if you know that I deserved to be punished for Tobys death, even though it wasnt me who pulled the triggerthat I deserved to be sent away for life in Furnace, deep in the rancid guts of the planet.

And that I deserved everything that happened to me there. Because Furnace is no ordinary prison, its a living nightmare perfectly designed for people like me. A place where freaks in gas maskswheezers, as we called themstalk the corridors at night and carry boys screaming from their cells. Where those stolen kids are brought back as monsters, all rippling muscles beneath stitched skin. And where the same poor wretches are eventually turned into blacksuits, the wardens soulless guards.

I saw it happen with my own eyes. I saw it happen to Monty. I saw what hed become, right before he died.

So, never let yourself forget that Im a bad person, that all us cons are, even the good guys I met inside like Donovan and Zee and Toby (no, not my old friend Im supposed to have killeda new friend with the same name). The four of us thought wed found a way to escape, blowing a hole in the chipping room floor with gas smuggled out of the kitchen. But nobody can run from their own demons. Donovan was taken by the wheezers the night before we broke, and as for the rest of usme and Zee and my new friend Tobywell, maybe even Furnace was too good for us. It was certainly too good for Gary Owens, the hard-case headcase who discovered our plan and followed along like a bad smell.

No, maybe our fate was to find out what horrors lay in the tunnels beneath the prison.

Because that was our way out: the river that runs deep underground below the bowels of Furnace. We didnt know where it led to. We didnt care. Anywhere that wasnt Furnace was good enough for us.

Or so we thought.

Oh yes, beneath heaven is hell, and beneath hell is Furnace. But the horrors that crawl and feast beneath that now thats a truly fitting punishment for someone like me.

So there you have it, my confession. It may not seem like the best time to share it, but its funny what races through your head when youre plummeting into the darkness with only razor-sharp rocks and rapids to break your fall.

THE RIVER

FALLING INTO THAT RIVER was like falling into death.

The first thing it stole was my breath, knocked from me as I plunged into liquid ice. I felt my lungs shrivel, every last scrap of oxygen forced out. I tried to snatch in another breath but all I got was cold water, dead fingers forced down my windpipe and filling me with darkness.

The current was too strong, grabbing my body and tossing it from rock to rock like a rag doll. I felt pain tear up my left leg, then my head exploded into light and white noise as I was hurled against the jagged stone. I tried to swim, tried to grab the walls of the tunnel, tried to do anything other than be pounded into a bloody mess of flesh by the sheer force of the water.