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
‘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
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
