Furnace 3 - Death Sentence by Alexander Gordon Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

This time the nectar poured into me like I was hollow, filling me from toe to forehead with its cloying darkness. My mouth drooped open, a weak cry like that of a dying bird the only protest I could make as the freaks left the room.

    Before I arrived in Furnace, I never would have imagined that there could be so much horror in the world. But here it was, carried from celluloid to screen by flickering light, seemingly every act of senseless violence ever to have been committed. It was a different film from the last: no animals this time, just humans. But the things they did to one another were crimes that not even the lowest beast would inflict upon its enemies.
    Again I tried to close my eyes, to look away, to think about something other than the nightmare unfolding in front of me. But I couldn’t shut my burning eyelids, I couldn’t move my head, and when your worst fears are paraded endlessly before you, how can you force your mind away?
    I don’t know how long I was in there before the images started to seep from the screen, suspended in the air as though I was wearing 3D glasses. It was like the madness of what I was seeing was too much to be contained; it overflowed its origins and polluted everything around it. I knew I was hallucinating, that the nectar was making me see things that weren’t there, but as the punches flew, the guns fired and the bodies fell all around me it was as if I was standing in a hurricane of bloodshed and cruelty, one that battered and blasted against my mind.
    And it wasn’t long before my mental defences were stripped away completely. One by one the clips of film tore through the air and into my head, pushing out all other thoughts. I fought to hold on to my name, to the memories that had returned when I’d seen Gary, andwhat he’d become. But the nectar was a black tar pasted over my old life, onto which the images on screen stuck like feathers. No scrap of memory was spared. Everywhere I looked I saw only aggression, only anger, only death.
    And if there is nothing left of you but darkness, how can you not become a monster?

    When you’re seeing things that aren’t there, there is no line between being awake and being asleep. I looked down, saw that the leather straps were now loose, and knew I must be dreaming. My suspicions were confirmed when I stumbled to the door and opened it up onto hell.
    At first I thought I was outside, but before the elation could rise higher than my stomach I knew it was an illusion. Ahead of me, stretching to a horizon lost in darkness, was a muddy field. Above it, where the sky should have been, roiled a ceiling of smoke the colour of dried blood, and so thick it could have been made of rock.
    The wet earth was littered with forms that might once have been human, like a graveyard where the dead have floated to the surface. Scattered at uneven intervals were huge craters, some half filled with water like stagnant ponds. Even as I watched, something fell from the heaving sky, exploding into a ball of burning colour as it struck the earth. Dark water fell, carrying with it a heavy hail of rock and bone.
    By the time the light from the fireball had sputtered out I saw the shapes in the mud start to move. They were crawling forward in slow motion, and past the filth that covered them head to toe I made out uniforms of worn cloth, round metal helmets and belts laden with equipment. Each of the writhing forms gripped a rifle in one bony hand, holding it up towards the distant horizon, towards a hidden enemy.
    Another explosion rocked the earth a stone’s throw away, pumping more smoke into the glowering sky. Silhouetted against the flames were three figures who marched across the mud without missing a single step. Each was dressed in a leather trench coat, a gas mask strapped to his face. Two held a stretcher between them, the third scanned the ground with beady eyes, like a vulture looking for flesh.
    They stopped by a shape in the dirt, close enough for