17. FRIDAY 4:17PM
The directors watch as the mainframe diverts itself to keep running. They are panicked and still trying not to inhale the atmosphere, although it’s hopeless pretending you won’t breathe. ‘There must be some way to turn the damned air off,’ Dr Samphire insists.
‘Ultimately, it’s designed to reroute itself to an outside power supply if there’s a crisis. It can’t be turned off.’ This from the same smartarse director who was rude to him before. When this is over …
‘What you’re telling me is we’re f*cked. That boy. He knew what was wrong. You have to find him.’
The other director looks disgusted. What happened to ‘we’? he wonders.
The work-floor is a very different place now. The air is as thick and as murky as the bottom of a pond. The windows have automatically darkened, screening out the light. In the hazy beam of Miranda’s torch, lunatics flit past in various states of undress. The building is a heathen hell, where small fires burn on desks. The few remaining computers are smashed in. Some of the sprinklers are on. There are moans and screams in the dark. Bedlam was an oasis of sanity by comparison.
Ben is still suffering from the effects of his fall. Miranda searches for survivors. Hearing a whimpering sound from under one of the desks, she finds a battered but still-living friend.
‘June?’ She helps her out from the crawlspace. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I think so.’
They are heading for the stairwell door when Miss Fitch reappears in front of them, lurching out of the semi-gloom. Her hair is standing on end. She’s trailing a computer keyboard, and has sellotape stuck all over her, with scissors, pens, and other bits of office equipment hanging from her body. Her cut wrist flops uselessly. She’s covered in coagulating blood.
‘Where do you two think you’re going? Have you finished all your work?’
‘There’s no more work to do. It’s over.’
Fitch, with her good hand, plucks some fluff from her sweater in annoyance. ‘You know, ever since you came here, there’s been disruption and insubordination. All this is your fault. If you hadn’t started trying to upset the status quo, we wouldn’t be trapped in here now.’
June taps Miranda on the shoulder. Miranda turns around. The deranged staff from her floor are standing behind Fitch in a semi-circle, watching the pair of them. The weaker ones always wait for a leader to emerge. It pays to be on the winning side.
Fitch works the crowd. ‘You see what she’s done? She’s destroyed your careers! Why isn’t she affected? You can’t let her get away with this!’
The crowd surges forward, backing Miranda and June against the stairwell doors. The girls slip through, dragging Ben with them, jamming the handles shut on the other side with a chair leg – but it won’t hold for long.
Miranda, Ben and June intend to head down the stairs, but another group of Bedlamites, this one in the mob colours now adopted by the accountancy floor, are on the way up.
The trio are forced to go up, not down. They hear the noise of the angry mob below them. The doors are smashed apart with fire-axes. Miranda grabs the partially-comatose Ben and smacks him hard in the face, causing him to revive a little. They are forced to continue upwards as the doors below burst open, and the Workforce of the Living Dead attack.
Have you ever been in an office where there’s a hostile environment? Now imagine that times a million. And give them all weapons.
The angry lynch-mob, led by Fitch, Half-Swan and the remaining supervisors, move fast. Ben, June and Miranda whack them back, knocking them down only to see them rise again. They’re only just managing to stay ahead. Somehow they reach the directors’ floor and get inside, barricading the stairwell doors behind them. Two of the directors are still there.
‘If you’ve got any bright ideas about how to get out of here, now’s the time to suggest them,’ says Miranda. The directors look helplessly at one another. So much for executive decisions. Miranda checks Ben’s eyes. They’re clouding over. Didn’t he once have a nervous breakdown? She doesn’t like the look of him. He needs to be taken outside into the fresh air, fast.
‘What’s above us?’ asks June.
One of the directors looks at her as if she’s mad. ‘The roof, you stupid bitch. There’s no way down from there.’
‘Even if we could get back down,’ June tells Miranda, ‘we still don’t have the door key.’
‘Then we have to make our stand here.’