11: Underground
Most of the boys lived in the facility because it provided security and a reasonable amount of pay, or because they were running from someone or something and the corporation didn't ask too many questions when it hired them. This meant that there were quite a few nasty characters, and although people tried to avoid doing anything that would earn them a punishment beating from the guards, it could still feel like a very hostile situation. George counted himself lucky he had Michael looking after him, but they couldn't be together all the time, and no matter how strong Michael was, he wasn't invincible. But despite the boredom, the repetitive routines and the undercurrent of threat, George's least favourite thing about life in the facility was, by far, work.
The three of them joined a rough queue which was waiting for a rusted lift, which would take them hundreds of feet below ground to start the shift. The heat was getting stifling and George could feel sweat pooling on his back, made worse by having to cram into a steel cage with fifteen other people, but once it descended he felt his usual mixture of fear and anticipation. There was a twenty-second downward ride in total darkness before they reached the bottom, and the lift itself jerked and skidded just the right amount to make you feel like it would drop at any moment. As soon as it left the surface, the heat was replaced by cold, a breeze instantly cooling George's sweat. At the bottom, everyone filed out, grabbed head torches, steel hats and gloves, most of which were ten years old at least and covered in dents and dirt. George flipped his torch on and off to check it was working, before joining Michael in waiting for a work assignment.
Michael was sent with the older, stronger boys for digging duties, and eight hours of digging a day were the reason he'd bulked up so much. George, on the other hand, being smaller, was sent to push carts full of rock and deliver tools around the mine, since he could move more easily under the low ceilings. When the Chinese had built the mine, it had never been state-of-the-art, and health & safety regulations were non-existent in the DRC. After five years of neglect, reinforcing girders were sagging, struts were rusting away and loose chunks of rock littered the floor, blocking the cart rails. George didn't need to be an expert to know that it was a disaster waiting to happen, and every day he went down in the lift, he wondered if today would be that day.
"George!" a boy shouted, his voice echoing in the tunnel as he saw George approaching. "That time already?"
"Morning Abbas," George said, fist-bumping the other boy. Abbas claimed to be thirteen, but looked more like eleven, and a childhood of poor food had left him skinny and smaller than average. He made up for it with a can-do attitude. George peered at him through the murky darkness.
"One of those big guys from No. 1 wanted a drill, but if the shift is changing he won't care now," Abbas explained, pointing to the drill he'd dropped into an empty cart. "Otherwise, nice and quiet. See you later."
Reluctantly, George watched Abbas's skinny legs disappearing back up the tunnel the way he'd come, and he gave the cart an exploratory push to see how loose the wheels were. It responded with a rusty squeal, but moved OK, so George took a seat on a ledge of rock and waited for his eyes to acclimatise to the darkness.
Every two hours there was a water break; an old guy with a scraggly grey beard dragging round a large plastic tank with a tap which everyone took turns putting their faces under. Officially there was a meal break after four hours, but usually this just meant a Chinese official brusquely handing out opened tins without much regard for the contents. You could get tinned peaches just as often as tinned peas. There were rumours that the digging department got better food but Michael had told him it was just the same.
With no other way to tell the time, George relied on the breaks to tell him how much longer he had to go. He preferred keeping busy, rushing around answering calls for tools or shifting carts around the network, because then the time passed and the tiredness helped him sleep later. Quiet shifts were hellish: sitting on cold stone for hours, trying not to fall asleep with nothing to do except listen to distant noises echoing around the tunnels. Usually George spent this time thinking about his life on campus: his own room with comfortable, clean bed, a giant TV, Sundays spent on PlayStation tournaments or football matches. Even the endless karate drills with Takada in the dojo sounded appealing. Strangely, one thing he really missed was use of the campus pool - he'd had weekly swimming lessons ever since he became a Cherub, and now the only water he went near was the shower for a few minutes twice a day. He told himself that the first thing he'd do when he got back to campus was grab his swimming kit and swim for as long as he wanted, until he was completely knackered, and then lie on his bed and watch TV for hours.
It was during one of these daydreams, where George was about to launch himself down a water slide and go for a new speed record, that a siren went off, squealing for a few seconds. George jumped up, heading towards the siren, jogging so that he could move fast but not trip over anything. A siren meant someone had made a distress call, which usually meant there was an injury. Moving as fast as he could, George dodged around two forks in the tunnel and got hit by a blast of air being circulated around which instantly made him feel shiver. Moving on, the siren was replaced by shouting voices and the din of machinery, and George ducked out of the tunnel into a larger chamber filled with activity.
"George," a man said, grabbing his shoulder. "Get pushing."
Before George could work out what was going on, he'd been shoved into a mass of people and he squeezed between two sweating bodies. A cart was slowly moving and he put his weight behind it, grabbing hold of a rusty bar and feeling his feet slip on the loose floor until he got purchase against a rail.
The mass of bodies thinned out as the cart picked up momentum, but the noise of shouting and drilling had been replaced by a feeble moaning, and George risked a look at the contents of the cart. A tall man, with close-cropped hair and cargo shorts, was lying in the cart, whimpering and cradling his arm. As George's head torch flashed over it, he caught a glimpse of white bone amidst the mass of red bloody tissue.
"Push, don't look," a voice said, pushing George's head back down firmly.
A powerful wave of nausea hit George, particularly because he could now smell the man's blood, but he fought past it and kept pushing. Further away from the noise now, he got his bearings and recognised the track the cart was on.
"This one's the empty loop," he yelled, rapping his palm against the side of the cart to get everyone's attention. "We need to change tracks to the full loop."
"Empty loop's faster," the man beside George said in heavily-accented French. "He's hurt, man."
"If we keep on this track we'll just smash into an empty one coming the other way," George said, urgently. "Unless someone's gone ahead to clear it."
"Sounds like you're that man," said another voice, and George felt someone grab the back of his shirt in a giant fist and drag him over the top of the cart so he could go in front. The carts didn't move much faster than walking pace usually, but with people pushing this one George had to run to keep ahead of it. He kept shouting "Danger!" in French as he did, wishing he knew how to pronounce it in Swahili, trying to alert people further up the tunnel.
"What's happening?" another boy said, catching George's arm as he ran past.
"Injured man coming up the empty loop, is there anything coming down?" George asked, panting.
"No, we just started lunch break," the boy replied, squinting as George accidentally shone his torch in his eyes. "At least, I don't think so."
"Thanks," George replied, setting off again. It was a stroke of luck that they'd stopped the oncoming carts to accommodate the lunch break, but rogue carts sitting at junctions were still a problem, and sometimes people used the empty loop as a storage site for full carts during breaks so they could enact repairs or clear tracks.
Luckily, everything was clear, and George found himself arriving at the lift shaft, out of breath.
"Injury?" the lift operator asked curiously. "Is it bad?"
"Look grim," George said, nodding vigorously.
"Okay man." The operator yanked a lever and the lift opened up, then he grabbed a telephone hanging on the wall and started barking into it in Swahili.
The injured man arrived a few seconds later and George joined in helping bundle him into the lift, getting another sickening eyeful of his mangled arm, then stepped back and let it leave. Once the lift clanged shut and started its journey to the surface, George looked down and saw that his shirt was now smeared with thick red blood.
"Disgusting," George said to himself, pulling it off and tossing it into a corner. He checked his bare chest but it looked clean. The other men did the same, either throwing away their clothes or wiping off their arms and hands where they'd got bloody.
"This is nothing compared to the war," a man said, noticing George's revulsion and getting a few laughs as his rag, thick with blood, hit the floor with a wet smack.
"What happened?" the lift operator asked, once he was sure the lift had arrived at the top.
"Hand in the crusher," the same man continued, with a shrug. "Dumb accident to have. Good thing it chewed his hand straight off or his whole arm would've been dragged into it." He grinned and another guy slapped him on the back.
George didn't really enjoy the black humour that a lot of the workers shared, particularly when he put together a missing hand and the shining white bone he'd seen a few minutes ago. He still felt sick, but didn't want to lose face in front of the others.
"Idiot," the operator said, spitting onto the floor. "Now he'll be begging on the streets instead of working."
There were a few murmurs of agreement before the men started shuffling back off down the tunnel to get back to work. George hung out in the lift area for a minute longer, since the air was fresher and it helped him with his nausea.
"You'll miss lunch, boy," the operator said in a nasty tone. "Get lost."
Traipsing back down the tunnels to his usual station, feeling slightly colder from the fact his shirt was gone, George reflected on just how far from campus he felt. He was only one slip away from crushing his leg under the wheel of a cart or getting his skull cracked by a falling rock, and out here the medical care was mostly painkillers and amputations. Instinctively, he slid his fingers over a slightly raised bump in his arm where the concealed transmitter was. Lewis had told them it would last for three months, which was long past, but that it could send a distress signal if it was destroyed. He didn't know whether that would work after so long, but he hoped it would. Times like this made him sorely tempted to just rip it out and hope CHERUB would storm the place with paratroops and get him out, but he knew that was his fear getting the better of him. He swallowed hard, tasting the rock dust in his mouth, and got back to work.