Wolves.
That unfroze my limbs. I moved; I ran. As well I did; the glass exploded outwards above me. A huge fist burst through in a shower of splinters and spraying blood, clutching just where my head had been. There was no going back. I sprinted along the corridor, dived around the corner as I heard the back door of my office burst open behind me and boots come clashing out into the corridor. But I was just far enough ahead. I dashed out into the front hall, a devastated mess with nobody in sight. I skidded violently on the tiles, avoiding the overturned bookcase, and clutched at the sagging front doors. One came away in my hand, lurched sideways and fell; I sprang through the opening and out onto the landing. There were the stairs; but in four floors they’d have me. The lift – I risked a precious instant to lunge at it, jab the button. And miracle of miracles, the doors slid open.
I plunged in, slammed against the wall and just as the first of the Wolves came crashing out of the offices, I stabbed a finger at the control panel. The sudden look of relief on my face must have puzzled the Wolf, because he and the others at his heels halted, gaping, as if expecting something to happen. But nothing did. The doors stayed open. And I remembered in a sudden flood of terror that there was always a few seconds’ delay –
The look on the lumpen grey face changed suddenly to oafish triumph. Saliva gushed between the gravestone teeth, and he hurried himself forward, arms outstretched. With a soft mechanical sigh the doors clunked together in his face. Something crashed against the outside with jarring force; but the lift was moving. I sagged with relief again; but still I felt something was wrong the lift began to slow, the extra weight lifted off my shoulders – and only then did I realize what it was.
In my panic I’d pressed the wrong button. The lift had gone up. There was only one floor above, and nothing to stop the Wolves running up after me. I reached for the down button, stopped myself just in time; they’d page the lift on the way back. The cage bounced gently to a halt, and the doors clunked open. I flinched back, expecting to see tall shapes waiting, or coming spilling up out of the stairwell. There was nobody, nothing except clattering from below. I dashed to the railing and – very gingerly – peered down.
The Wolves were battering at the lift doors. One huge lout with a bristly shaven head was struggling to force what looked like a crowbar between them, bracing his huge boots against the frame and slamming his heavy shoulders against the door. I goggled, and ducked back. They weren’t even looking up or down the stairs. Daft as it seemed, they couldn’t have the faintest idea what a lift was. They must think I was still shut in that little room there, behind the metal doors.
There was a sudden screech of metal, and then an even louder howl that seemed to echo away into the distance. Then, out of that same distance, an equally echoing crash cut it short. I had to cram the back of my hand in my mouth to stifle a whoop of hysterical laughter. The Wolves had valiantly forced the doors, and at least one of them, the crowbar boy probably, had fallen a full four storeys down the shaft. Behind me the lift alarm clanged into sudden life, with enough volume to bring the whole building running. For good measure I smashed the glass of the fire alarm – I’d always wanted to use that little hammer – and thumbed it too. From the floors below came the sound of doors slamming. I turned, to see the switchboard girl from this office peering nervously out through the doors.
‘What – what’s all’a noise?’
I grabbed her and ducked back in. ‘Have you called the police yet? No? Christ, didn’t you hear –’ I heard the tinny jangle from the headphones of the walkman on the desk. ‘Never mind!’ I dived for the switchboard. ‘Are you the only one up here?’
She made a face. ‘Aye. They’re all off early wi’ the weather. I’ve gotta wait f’ me boyfriend t’pick me up’.
‘Worse luck for you! The back door – locked? Then find somewhere you can shut yourself in, the ladies’ maybe – Operator? Police, please – fast!’
And fast they were. There must have been a patrol car nearby; it was only a minute after I’d put down the phone, and I was still fighting the temptation to go and lock myself in the ladies’ as well, when I heard the approaching siren. It gave me enough nerve to snatch up a weighted ashtray stand and go cautiously back out. There was no one visible on this landing or ours, nothing to hear above the row except a rising hubbub from the street, where the fire alarm had decanted the lower floors. I sidled down the stairs, wishing my heart would steady up a little; still nothing. I reached our landing, dithered momentarily whether to go in, but showed some sense and fled hell-for-leather down the stairs. When I came back up a minute later it was with two policemen at my back, one huge, and three rugby forwards from the insurance brokerage below.
I don’t know what I expected to find. I dreaded the thought. But to my great relief the first thing we came on was Barry, blood all down his expensive shirtfront, ministering to Judy from the switchboard. She was stretched out on the visitor’s seating, with a black eye, and, by the looks of it, a broken arm; but at least they were both alive.
‘Steve!’ he said, rising and grabbing me. His nose started bleeding again, but he didn’t seem to notice. ‘They didn’t get you? It was you set off the alarms? Christ, that was timely thinking! You saved our bloody bacon! Those bastards! Kicking us round like footballs one minute, then one ring, and off like bloody bunny rabbits! Should’ve seen ’em run! Bloody cowardly maniac punks –’ I gave him my handkerchief. He dabbed gently at his swelling nose, and I saw it shift slightly, it was broken. ‘She tried to call,’ he mumbled. ‘Knocked her flat an’ tipped her desk over on her … Bastards! Utter frigging bastards …’
He ran down into shaky swearing, and I helped him to a seat by Judy. The police and the others hadn’t hung around; they’d charged swiftly through the offices, and I heard them shouting that the bastards had got out the back. Other police were arriving now, and the office staff were beginning to appear. By the looks of it they were all walking wounded, nobody actually dead or crippled, but they still made a hell of a sorry sight – a limping parade of black eyes, bloody shins, split mouths, lacerated ears and blossoming purple bruises everywhere. Some had scalp wounds, bleeding like pigs, others streaks of vomit over their clothes. It looked as if the Wolves had roughed everyone up just as a matter of course, men and women alike, especially about the head. I’d heard of muggers doing that, to disorientate their victims. Most of the typists and younger secretaries had had their clothes ripped half off, too – by the looks of it, more to humiliate than harm. Even Gemma’s PA, five years off retirement, was clutching her elegant blouse closed as she helped one of her secretaries along, green with shock.
Secretaries … There were faces I didn’t see. I leaped up and ran around to my own office. When I reached it I stopped dead in the doorless frame. The other day’s devastation was nothing compared to this. The place had been quite literally torn apart, every stick of furniture shattered. Even the partition between the inner and outer offices had been smashed down; and as for my terminal, my desk, my chair even, I was hard put to it to recognise them. They lay shattered and trampled, stamped into a shapeless pile. One of the rugger players was helping Dave up from the floor below his desk. ‘Dave!’ I shouted. He blinked confusedly at me through his unswollen right eye. ‘Dave! is Clare all right?’
He only mumbled ‘Uh – Clare? Take Clare –’