Better still after I get the body and head into plastic trash bags and onto a rolling metal cart from the supply room, throw up in one of the half baths on the first floor, and scrub my hands twenty times. I feel a hell of lot worse when I get off the service elevator in the basement. So this is the dragon’s dungeon. CREMATORIUM has been marked with signs and arrows. I quickly find myself walking through a no-frills prison. Chillingly modern. Antiseptic. Most cells are empty. I count about forty people, teenagers mostly. A third or so in their early twenties. From their mutterings, I can tell that maybe half are immigrants or “imports.” Each has been allocated a numbered pen — I’m guessing seven by fourteen feet — with steel bars, white rock walls that match the rest, and gray concrete floors. A sleep platform (no mattress) is mounted to each side wall. Every unit is equipped with a small sink and toilet. The prisoners are barefoot, dressed in paper-thin light-blue hospital gowns.
