Breathe (7 page)

He gives the receptionist his signature pad and a pen. She snaps the pen in half and throws it over her shoulder, then stares at him as if she is going to kill him.

‘Sign underneath …’ he suggests.

She squirts lighter fuel over the pad and sets fire to it.

‘… And, er, print your name. Or perhaps I’ll just go. It’s not a good time, is it? I’ll just go, eh.’

The courier turns and walks away fast, trying to get the hell out, but the receptionist beats him to it. As Ms Thompson stares at this man in leathers who dares to pester her with demands, her eyes cloud liverishly. She brings him down with the kind of extraordinary flying tackle that Clarke wishes his son might one day make, and for good measure twists the poor boy’s head back to front inside his crash helmet.

‘All helmets must be removed!’ she screams shrilly, before returning to her desk and collapsing onto it with a skull-fracturing thud.

Meera and Ben are descending through the building. The electricity powers down and the lights flicker as the elevator comes to a slow, grinding halt between floors.

‘Now what?’ asks Ben.

There is a metallic bang, and the elevator is plunged into darkness.

Swan has always had the capacity to become evangelical, but this is going too far. He has grabbed June’s hands and is pulling her before him, pawing her in a distinctly un-Christian manner.

‘Mr Swan,’ yells June, ‘you’re hurting me!’

‘Accept Jesus as your saviour,’ commands Swan. ‘We’ll pray to the Lord together.’

June is horrified. ‘But I’m an agnostic!’

‘Then we must pray for your soul! Oh June, ever since I first saw you, I longed for the touch of your silken skin.’ Swan falls on his knees in front of her, burying his head between her thighs.

Much to June’s own surprise, she kicks him as hard as she can in the groin, feeling his pods retreat into his pelvic cavity. Revolted, she hurries away from Swan, but he staggers to his feet and comes after her, seizing her arm. Most men would be rolling around on the floor for a while.

June breaks free and runs for the stairs, but Swan throws himself after her with abandon, and the pair crash to the edge of the landing. June is knocked cold. Swan has shattered a kneecap on the concrete steps, but this doesn’t stop him from dragging her away. His eyes are clouded over with thick, white cataracts.

‘
Vengeance is mine
, sayeth the Lord.’ He feels the power of the Holy Spirit building within him, hears the swish of blood in his ears as germs invade his soft, pink brain.

Fitch looks up from her screen to realise that she is the only one still working on her part of the floor, although on the far side of the room a woman sits typing in the nude. Two financial controllers are attempting to rape a girl from Accounts. A junior technician is pissing onto his computer keyboard and screaming abuse at it. The mail boy is masturbating into an Amazon box. If Dante’s Inferno had fire officers and a pension plan, it would have been like this.

Fitch tries to make sense of what she sees. Finally she gives up and starts pulling bottles of liquor out of her drawer. She lines up five bottles of Scorpion Vodka and proceeds to down them, one after the other. The alcohol scorches her throat and numbs her head; it’s a good feeling.

Ben reaches up and pushes back the elevator hatch, then clambers up onto the roof in the lift shaft. It’s dark, but he can see the maintenance ladder clearly. He starts climbing up to the floor above. Reaching the doors, he tries to force them open, but they won’t budge. Just then, he hears a banging noise coming from the side of the shaft. He listens, then calls out: ‘Miranda! Where are you?’

A faint voice. ‘In here!’

Ben tracks the noise to a large, aluminium grille. He searches the grille for a way to release it. ‘I can’t get you out. Wait a minute.’

Just then, the power comes back on and the lift starts moving up toward him. Ben sees a loop of electrical cable hanging down near the grille and grabs one end, threading it through the grille. He finishes knotting it with seconds to spare as the lift carries him up.

Ben is still holding the end of the cable, which runs quickly through his hands. He scrambles back down though the roof hatch of the lift to Meera, and ties the cable around himself. ‘Meera!’ he shouts, ‘take it down! Take the lift down!’

Ben hangs tight to the cable end, hoping the lift will pull the grille off. The lift stops, then starts to descend. They pass the grille. The cable pulls tight. But it doesn’t pull the grille free, because Ben’s weight isn’t enough. What it does is haul Ben up out of the lift through its roof hatch.

Meera has sent the lift all the way down. Now she is madly punching the buttons, trying to stop it.

Ben is suspended from the cable in the lift shaft as the elevator retreats away from him. Only the grille is holding him, but it’s cheaply made, and starts to pull free. Inside, Miranda tries to kick it free with her foot. ‘That’s it,’ she shouts, ‘it’s coming!’

‘No! Miranda, no!’ yells Ben.

She smashes at the grille, helping to loosen it. She can’t see the consequences. The grille’s rivets pop out and the whole thing bends outwards. Ben desperately tries to swing back and forth in the shaft, his feet searching for some kind of foothold. The lift is a long way below him now, heading for the bottom of the shaft.

The grille is almost off. Miranda gives it a last hard kick with both feet, and it breaks free. Still attached to the grille by the cable, Ben drops like a stone.

Suddenly Miranda sees what’s happened and tries to grab the falling grille – but she’s too late.

Meera is trapped in the lift as it starts its ascent. Something heavy slams onto the roof, as Ben falls back through the hatch onto the floor. The cable and the grille follow him in and nearly decapitate Meera.

Miranda is now halfway out of the ventilator shaft when she sees the lift coming back up, and is forced to duck back inside. But she has lost her grip, and finds herself hanging on to Felix’s putrescent corpse, which is slipping out with her. Moments later they are both half-hanging out of the shaft, about to be sliced in two by the lift. As Miranda scrambles over it, Felix’s corpse slides free beneath her. The ascending lift rends Felix in half – easily slicing through the bad meat – and leaves Miranda flat on the roof.

Miranda falls into the lift in a liquid shower of guts. She lands on Meera. Ben’s knees are bleeding, Meera is badly bruised and Miranda smells awful, but at least they’re all alive.

By now, the open-plan office has become a macabre parody of its depiction in the company brochure. Two female marketing managers have been stripped and tied together, and their hair set on fire. Undercurrents of sex and violence have risen to the surface like marsh gas as workers obey their darkest instincts. Staff are wiping files, shredding papers, mutilating themselves, arguing, attempting sex, pulling off ties and brassieres, tearing at their buttons, fighting and mauling each other.

Clarke slips out of his office. He calls the lift, but then, rather than wait, decides to take the stairs. He doesn’t see that the lift doors have opened behind him, revealing the remains of Draycott’s corpse and three people coated in decaying offal. He passes Swan, who is dragging the screaming June down the stairs behind him.

Ben and Meera help Miranda out of the lift. They slip and slide, heading for the ladies’ toilets. Miranda will be the hardest to wash clean. ‘He must have been there for weeks, just rotting to bits,’ gasps Miranda.

Meera knows what happened now. ‘The system is replacing the germs with stronger chemicals,’ she says. ‘It hasn’t gone wrong. If anything, it’s just being efficient. We’ve got to shut it down.’

‘It’d be quicker to get everyone out of the building,’ Ben tells them.

‘Yeah? How are you going to do that?’

‘There must be a fire alarm box somewhere.’

‘The heat-sensors should have responded by now and turned the sprinklers on.’

‘Then we have to tell the staff what’s happening, and pull them out ourselves.’

They push open the doors to the open-plan office and find themselves in a Brueghelian nightmare of orgiastic chaos. The staff have put Meadows’ stereo unit on; it’s playing very loud trance music. The air is dense and dirty.

Miranda stands there with her hands on her hips. ‘Do you want to tell them, or shall I?’

9. FRIDAY 1:49 PM

Faced with a full-scale staff riot, Meera and Ben are trying to think what to do. ‘What about blocking the air ducts?’ suggests Meera.

‘There are hundreds all over the building.’

‘Then we’ll do it another way. Call the police.’ Meera grabs the nearest phone and punches out a number. Ear-splitting feedback causes her to drop the receiver.

She tries her mobiles – all IT staff seem to have at least three – but the signal is scrambled. ‘Now that
is
electro-magnetic interference. There’s no way of getting through to the outside.’

‘Try the computers.’

The same goes for the internet and e-mail systems. As Miranda logs on, the computer screens start rolling with static and weird images. An old episode of
Bewitched
seems to be playing on many of the terminals.

Ben sees that the directors’ offices are empty. He calls out to one of his colleagues, Jake, who is busy feeding his hard-copy documents into a waste-bin fire.

‘Where are the directors?’ he asks.

‘They’re up with Dr Samphire, preparing for the satellite presentation on the top floor.’

‘I can go downstairs and see if the lobby doors are still open,’ Miranda offers. Doing something will make her feel better.

Sally, one of the office assistants, is lying across her desk, being licked and fondled by two work mates. ‘Don’t do it, Miranda,’ she pleads. ‘Some of us don’t need the outside world anymore.’ Her eyes are rolled over into the whites – no pupils at all. ‘I’m sick of being told what to do every working day of my fucking life. Ask yourself what’s better; invoicing or a really good orgasm?’ One of her lickees takes Meera’s mobiles away from her and smashes them. Sally laughs hysterically.

‘It almost seems a shame to spoil the fun,’ says Ben.

‘Nevertheless, I think we’d better spoil it before someone else gets killed, don’t you?’ Meera snaps back. ‘There are over a thousand people in this building, and right now, most of them are going insane.’

‘We’re not.’

‘You’ve been here less than a week. Miranda temps, and I had a holiday. None of us has worked through the whole night. It’s the ones who have had prolonged exposure that worry me.’

Miranda is prepared to set off alone. ‘I can look after myself,’ she tells them. ‘I know my way around this place. I’ll meet you back here. If I can get away, I’ll call the police.’ She kisses Ben. ‘When we get out of this place, I’m going to show you how to relieve stress. Horizontally.’

10. FRIDAY 2:07 PM

Ben and Meera make their way up, but progress is slow, as burning pieces of furniture are being thrown down the centre of the stairwell. The air is acrid with smoke. The security guard who whacked him earlier rises from the steps in front of Ben. His eyes are white, too.

‘Fucking hell, not you again,’ Ben complains. The guard takes out his Taser and fires it up.

‘This is going to hurt you more than it hurts me,’ he promises. A blue arc cracks between the weapon’s points. Behind him, Meera detaches a fire extinguisher from the wall and brings it down hard on the guard’s head.

‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’ Meera would like to take the extinguisher with her, but it’s too heavy. She’s hitched up her sari to an undignified, but rather fetching, height.

Ben pockets the guard’s Taser. Incredibly, the guard gets to his feet behind their backs and comes after them again. Ben swings around the stair-pole and kicks him hard in the face. The guard goes down –

– and gets back up.

Ben wonders what they’re feeding him. The guard grabs Meera around the neck and starts choking her. Ben remembers the Taser and powers it into the guard’s groin. The guard screams and collapses –

– and gets back up.

‘He’s got balls.’ Meera and Ben nod to each other, then drop to the guard’s legs and tip him over the stairwell. This time he hits his head on every landing, spinning madly. He won’t be coming back again. They continue upwards.

‘I’ll do the directors,’ Ben suggests, ‘you do Room 3014.’

‘Got it.’ They split up when they hit the top floor.

11. FRIDAY 2:16 PM

Meera runs to Room 3014 and uses Clarke’s key to open the door. Inside, she goes to the air-con system’s master control box and tries to open it. She gets the razor-sharp doors apart, but is dumbfounded by the maze of electronics before her. She doesn’t see Clarke coming up behind her, raising his cricket bat. The bat has steel edges that look as if they’ve been sharpened for some purpose other than hitting sixes.

‘You disappoint me, Miss Mangeshkar,’ says the supervisor. ‘A bright girl like you stepping out of line, tampering with company property, jeopardising your career advancement.’

Ignoring him, Meera turns on the Taser. She applies it to the machinery, causing a small explosion that shorts out the system. But, as she watches, the system’s electronics neatly reroute themselves.

‘That’ll be the tamper-proof protection system. I’ve been watching you for a while, Miss Mangeshkar. Your spelling is atrocious.’ Clarke slowly lowers the cricket bat. Instead, he snatches the Taser from Meera and hits her in the stomach with it. Meera convulses in shock.

‘As a consequence of your inattention to detail, your employment here is officially terminated.’ Clarke hits her with the Taser again. Another violent shock.

‘Kindly empty your desk and see the human resources officer.’ He hits her with the Taser a third time.

‘A suitable reference will be forwarded to you.’

Meera’s body is wracked by electrical activity, and she collapses, almost losing consciousness. Clarke lifts his raised boot and swings a vicious kick at her. ‘We hope your time with us has been enjoyable and instructive,’ he concludes.

Meera rallies for a last-ditch attempt at stopping the man who employed her. She rises painfully to her feet with arms raised, ready to put her kickboxing lessons into practice, but she’s small and slender, while Clarke is heavy-set and demented. The supervisor’s eyes slowly cloud over, the pupils simply fading away. Meera sees the change and flinches, preparing for the worst …