Free Breathe by Christopher Fowler Page B

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