“Bear kept that barracks in order for three years. Now Thunder’s in the infirmary with a shattered elbow, Gypsy’s walking around scared out of his mind, and the rest of the inmates are looking at you like some kind of savior. I don’t like that. Disorder interferes with the timber quota.”
“I was defending my life, sir,” Alex answered calmly. “Your life belongs to the state here,” Smith cut in sharply. “And you’re making a mess of it. Still, I value efficient people.”
The captain stood and paced the office, his polished boots creaking. “That move you used on Thunder was clean. Technical. I can use a man like that.”
Smith stopped in front of Alex and lowered his voice. “I have an offer for you. In this place, men don’t turn it down. Officially, you become my man in the camp.”
“You put on an armband, become a work crew lead or supply clerk, show you’re on the path to reform. The convicts will call it betrayal. I couldn’t care less about their code. Your job is to break Bear for good and crush the criminal hierarchy.”
“In return, you get a warm room, double rations, and a solid guarantee that you’ll live to see release.” Alex said nothing. He understood exactly what that meant.
In those years, the war between the criminal elite and the inmates who cooperated with the administration was in full swing. It was a brutal bloodbath. To step into that fight on the side of the administration meant becoming an executioner for some and a target for everyone else.
More than that, it meant betraying the memory of his father, who had taught him an old-fashioned officer’s sense of honor. “I won’t be anyone’s attack dog, Captain,” Alex said firmly. “Not Bear’s and not yours. I just want to serve my sentence and survive it.”
Smith’s face hardened at once. The interest vanished from his watery eyes, replaced by the cold calculation of a bureaucrat dealing with a broken part in the machine.
“There’s no such thing as just serving your sentence here, Walker. Here, either you bite or you get bitten. There is no third option. You refused my protection, which means you chose death.”
“But I’m not handing you back to Bear. That would be too easy.” The captain returned to his desk and scribbled something on a sheet of paper. “Crew Nine. Logging detail. Remote section, Black Hollow.”
“That crew is run by a man named Carl ‘the Cannibal.’ Know why they call him that? Rumor says during an escape attempt he ate his partner. Might just be a story.”
“What we do know is this: political prisoners in his crew last about two weeks. Accidents happen. Trees fall the wrong way. A skidder rolls over somebody. Go on, Walker. Test Newton’s laws against a falling pine.”
The guards marched Alex out of the office. An hour later he stood at the camp gate in a grim column headed for the remote logging site. The cold had deepened to 50 below, and the wind cut through his thin prison coat like a blade.
Crew Nine stood apart from the others. These were hardly men anymore, just worn-down shadows. Ragged, hollow-eyed, with faces blackened by frostbite.
At their head stood a giant in a heavy sheepskin coat: Carl the Cannibal. A thick scar pulled his upper lip into a permanent predator’s grin. In his hands he held a steel pry bar, flipping it casually as if it weighed nothing.
When Alex was brought up to the line, Carl spat into the snow and grinned. “Well, look at that. Fresh meat from the captain. A student? Heard you’ve got a little attitude.”
“That’s fine. The woods cure attitude fast. I’ll give you three days, physics boy. If you don’t die on your own by then, I’ll help you along.”
The column moved into the trees. Alex trudged through deep snow, feeling every step burn away what little heat his body had left. He understood the equation had just become much harder.
Now he was up against not only the criminal hierarchy but the administration, the brutal wilderness, and this giant with the pry bar. His odds of survival were dropping toward zero. But one variable remained that no one had accounted for: the will of a man with nothing left to lose.
Black Hollow lived up to its name. It was a deep frozen ravine where the weak winter sun reached for barely two hours a day. The rest of the time, gray twilight ruled, along with a cold so severe birds dropped dead in midair.
The air rang like a stretched wire. There was no law here, no mercy. Only the logging quota and Carl the Cannibal. The crew worked to total exhaustion.
The daily quota was seven cubic yards of timber per man. For a starving inmate on a ration of barely a pound of bread, that was a death sentence. Anyone who missed quota lost supper.
And without supper, in that kind of cold, a man lasted maybe three days. It was simple, brutal arithmetic, and the crew boss knew it well. Alex Walker understood the setup in the first hour.
Brute strength wouldn’t help him here, and he didn’t have any anyway. But he had something the others didn’t: a deep understanding of mechanics. While the rest hacked blindly at frozen wood, wasting the last of their strength, Alex looked for the stress point in every tree.
He never swung at random. He calculated the angle where the frozen fibers would split most easily. He used his own body weight as a lever, conserving muscle wherever he could.
By noon, though swaying with exhaustion, he was still standing. Carl watched him closely from a high stump, chewing a piece of salt pork. He didn’t like that the skinny student hadn’t gone down yet.
He didn’t like the calm, focused look Alex gave each tree before striking. It spoiled the usual script. “Hey, physics boy!” Carl’s shout cut through the whine of the saws.
“Get over here.” The crew boss pointed with his mitten at a huge old larch standing on the edge of a steep drop. The tree was hung up, its crown tangled hopelessly in neighboring evergreens, the trunk leaning at a dangerous angle.
“That one’s a witch,” Carl said with a nasty grin, showing rotten teeth. “It’s blocking the haul route. Drop it.” The inmates working nearby stopped and stared.
Everyone knew that taking down a hung tree on a slope was suicide. Once the cut gave way, the butt end could kick back with enough force to crush a man’s chest like a cardboard box. Or the whole trunk could twist and pin anyone standing below…
