Free Breathe by Christopher Fowler Page A

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