The Glass Inferno

by Thomas N. Scortia

  He scrubbed his face with his hand; it came away, smeared with blood….

  He turned and stared down the street. A block away, a young girl and her boy friend stood by their car, watching the smoke and the flames.

  His arm encircled her waist; she snuggled closer for warmth. At the sound of the popping, she jumped. “What’s that, Rick’?”

  “The windows,” Rick said after a moment. “They’re popping out of their frames and dropping into the plaza.”

  “I’m glad I’m not there,” she said excitedly.

  A shimmer like summer heat over pavement gave little warning.

  Glass exploded in front of them. Razor shards clawed at her calves.

  Behind them the tires of their car gushed air. She cried out, “Rick!”

  Rick was silent; his arm dropped from her waist.

  She stared down at the sidewalk for a long moment; then she started to scream.

  CHAPTER 34

  The great thing about coming up to Consolidated Distributors Krost thought, was that you could really pick and choose. And the very least any good drinker should be allowed was a choice.

  He leaned back in his chair and, bleary-eyed, inspected the ten bottles he had lined up before him on the desk. He had intended only to steal a cheap bottle of brandy; it would never be missed. He doubted that they kept any kind of inventory check on their office samples. But a Whole new shipment of liquor had come in, including a number of brands Krost had never heard of before.

  Naturally, the situation needed investigating.

  He shook his head in an attempt to clear it but it wasn’t much use.

  He was drunk, he thought. Too drunk. Daisy wouldn’t let him in the front door and Donaldson would fire him. For a moment he felt tearful and mad: it was a cruel world for Michael Krost.

  The moment passed and he glanced down the row of bottles again with a feeling of anticipation. He was very pleased with himself. He reached for the water tumbler, wondering which it should be now…

  The Irish whiskey, an off brand with an intriguing amber color, a Kentucky bourbon ill a holiday decanter shaped like a log cabin, or an eight-year-old imported scotch that he bet would cost a fortune in a liquor store.

  Well, why not the Irish? He sloshed some into his glass, then realized with dismay that he had been trying it all evening, and now the bottle was empty. No matter; he could hardly put empties back in the display cabinet.

  Here’s to me, Mr. Krost, he hummed, then downed the inch or so of whiskey in a few quick gulps. If only old pink-scalp Donaldson was there to see him now…

  He had his face in his hands. Conjuring up an image of Donaldson stumbling on him right now really took the edge off the evening. He should be getting back to work; he didn’t like the thought, but Donaldson might very well be looking for him. He glanced at his watch and whistled soundlessly to himself. Donaldson probably was looking for him. Well, if he called, Krost could always think of some excuse.

  But then there was the possibility they might meet face to face.

  He abruptly felt like crying. Meeting Donaldson face to face wouldn’t be fair, the damned Scotsman would know what he had been doing. It wouldn’t matter what he said…. His mood changed again.

  Thinking of Scotsmen, he hadn’t tapped the bottle of scotch yet, had he? Well, he had, but only a little. It deserved at least equal time with the Irish. The bottle was out of reach on the table and he stood up to get it, then immediately sat back down again. That had been a mistake. The whole room had shifted sideways. He’d have to edge over, little bit by little bit.

  His fingers closed on the bottle and he dragged it back triumphantly to pour himself another shot. His hands shook so badly that some of the liquor spilled on the table top. Have to get a rag, he thought, glancing around the room. All the Christmas decorations were up and he felt his spirits soaring. ‘Tis the season, he thought.

  The one time of the year when he and Daisy declared a truce in their constant bickering. It was the best season of the year, he thought, misty-eyed.

  Snow on the ground and a crispness to the air and everybody was happy and there were half a dozen grandchildren to lavish presents on.

  And there were Christmas carols on the radio and the Salvation Army people ringing bells and the church chimes … not like the damned sirens he had been hearing half the night.

  There were more of them right now. He didn’t like to hear sirens; he didn’t like to think about them at all. They reminded him of something he had been trying to forget, something he didn,t want to remember. Sirens and the sound of people shouting far below and noises like something breaking, actually more like Fourth of July firecrackers, big ones …

  He sighed. He better take a look but he had a hunch it would mean more work and that meant running into Donaldson and if there was anything he didn’t want to do right then, it was to run into Donaldson.

  He stood up, clutching the edge of the desk for support, then weaved over to a window and looked out.

  Smoke was billowing out of windows several floors below; the street was jammed with fire engines and police cars. His hands tightened on the sill; he could feel himself sober for a second.

  Memory flooded back now, the incident he had never wanted to think about again… .

  The fire in the Melton Building , so long ago. They tried to pin that one on him, but Leroux had stepped in and saved his neck.

  He still didn’t know why, at least he wasn’t sure.

  He squinted through the smoke and falling snow; he could make out ambulances far below. He caught his breath. There had been people hurt. He started to remember more then, and the panic started to build deep within him.

  He turned away from the window and staggered to the office door.

  He had to get out, and get out fast. He hurried as quickly as he could down to the elevator bank, occasionally clutching at the corridor wall to steady himself. The smell of smoke grew as the memories that he had tried for a year and a half to repress boiled inside his head.

  Damnit, where was the elevator? He leaned against the call button, sweating, trying desperately to think of nothing.at all. Finally one arrived and he half fell into it.

  He pressed the button for lobby, then leaned against the wall of the cage, sobbing.

  He was almost sober now; the memories rushed back in force. The Melton Building fire was as clear in his mind as if it had happened yesterday. He had been relaxing in his combination office-storeroom, his feet up on the desk, reading and absently flicking the ashes from his cigarette on the floor. The storeroom had been dirty-Donaldson had been after him about it-and a streak of oily spill had ignited.

  It had gone up fast after that. Almost everybody had gotten off the floor but a . secretary and her young daughter, who was a frequent visitor to her office, had been trapped. The mother had lived; the little girl hadn’t.

  Krost had hit the bottle a lot more after that.

  Krost leaned back, watching the floor numbers light up across the indicator. The air, he noted subconsciously, was growing uncomfortably warm and the elevator was unaccountably slowing. Nineteen, eighteen-what the hell was wrong? He had punched the lobby button.

  The elevator was stopping at seventeen. The cage jarred to a.

  halt; the doors whooshed quietly open.

  Krost looked out on hell.

  Beyond the elevator doors was a solid furnace of flames filling the corridor, black streaks of oily smoke boiling through the sheets of fire. He stared in horror for a second, then frantically hit the “close” button; at the same moment the flames roared into the cage. The blast of heat struck him just as he started to inhale; the air was like hot lead pouring into his lungs. Then, abruptly, there was no more sensation.

  The elevator doors oscillated back and forth; the smoke billowed past the electric eye beam holding them open.

  Krost tried to scream but there was no air in the dried sacs that had been his lungs. He felt the skin of his cheekbones and nose bl
istering, his eyelids and lips swelling.

  Thick mucus started to dribble from his nostrils.

  He pressed the buttons on the control panel one more time, then started pawing at his blinded eyes with swelling hands as his hair and eyebrows burst into flame. He turned his back to the holocaust and sank to the bottom of the elevator, curling up into a ball of agony.

  The back of his workshirt and pants browned, then blackened, but Krost no longer felt the heat or the pain of the blisters.

  His last memory was that the little girl’s name was Bonnie and he had been very fond of her.

  CHAPTER 35

  Lex Hughes reached into the last cash drawer, deliberately ignoring the smaller bills and concentrating on the twenties. The brief case on the work ledge just below the drawers was already bulging. He had lost count of how much he had stuffed into it in his haste to skim the cream from the drawers, but he estimated he had at least thirty thousand dollars in twenties and fifties.

  He debated taking tens and grabbed a banded stack of bills but the brief case could barely be closed as it was.

  Finally, he took the bills and the brief case into the outer office, slipped into his suit coat, and stuck the bundle of tens in his inner pocket. Then he paused for a moment in indecision. There were negotiable securities in the vault, but these could be traced.

  Besides, there was no way to carry them; the case was full. Well, thirty thousand dollars wasn’t a fortune, but he could disappear and start a new life with it. He could buy a small business, and with careful management he could spend the rest of his years in reasonable comfort.

  He left the brief case on a table and walked back into the vault area, slowly swinging the huge door closed. He automatically spun the tumblers and stepped back. Then the thought struck him that he should have left it open.

  If the fire penetrated this far, it could well destroy all evidence of his theft. Well, too late to think of that now; it probably didn’t matter anyway. Once out of the building, by morning he would be far away.

  He buttoned his coat and clutched the brief case in one hand. It Was heavy, he thought, satisfyingly heavy. He hurried down the aisle of desks. At the corridor door, he paused, sniffing the air. Even with the door closed, he could smell the thick, resinous smoke oozing under the door. Alarmed, he glanced at his watch. He had spent a valuable twenty minutes in the vault; the fire may have spread too fast.

  He took a breath, braced himself, and opened the door. The corridor was thick with smoke. He coughed as s eyes began to sting.

  Fearfully he wondered if he had delayed too long. No, the smoke wasn’t that thick yet.

  He could hold his breath and make it to the elevator bank. Then he saw figures moving through the smoke and realized he had, indeed, delayed too long. The firemen had already reached this floor.

  Quietly, he closed the door, leaving it open by only a crack.

  Voices came from the stairwell; he could see that the stairwell door was open.

  More figures labored through it, three of them lugging a thick hose that dribbled water. They got as far as the elevator bank and knelt down; the one in the lead opened the nozzle and a hard column of water at full force gushed forward. The firemen were directing it at the far end of the hall.

  Hughes hesitated, then opened the door. Now he could take a quick look around the door, hopefully without being seen. The very far end of the hall was already wrapped in flames.

  He backed inside the door, still leaving it open a hair.

  A wave of fear constricted his chest. He had waited too long, much too long. There was no chance of getting to the elevators now without being seen and the stairwells Were out. He could simply walk out-but not with a brief case full of money. It depended on how much confusion there was in the lobby below. But it was risky, much too risky.

  Somebody was bound to be suspicious.

  He slowly closed the door until it latched, feeling the terrible disappointment. His grand theft had ended before it had even really begun. He turned and walked slowly back down the aisle. There was nothing to do but return the money and go out into the corridor, empty-handed.

  The authorities might be curious as to what had taken him so long in fleeing the building, but they would never know of the bulging brief case. He stopped at the vault door, feeling suddenly ill.

  He had locked it, he remembered. If it had been an ordinary lock, he could have worked the combination and reopened it, slipping the bundles of bills back into the proper drawers. But the lock was a time lock; he had set it so the vault couldn’t be opened until eight o’clock the following Monday morning.

  There wasn’t much he could do, he thought. He sank into a chair in resignation. Suddenly the lights began to flicker; abruptly they went out, leaving him in darkness.

  The fire must have cut the electricity, he thought. Well, he would just sit there until they found him-found him and the incriminating brief case. The fire probably wouldn’t get to him now since the firemen were on the scene. He coughed and amended the thought; the smoke might get thick enough that he would have to get out, leaving the case behind. He would get away with his life but he would still have to flee. Everyone knew that he and Carolyn were working late; she would tell the police that he had been the last one there with the vault door still open.

  The camera itself would have recorded that and the security men would know.

  There was one chance, he thought suddenly. Most fires didn’t last too long. When the firemen had left and the lobbies below would be relatively empty, he might make it.

  It was still risky but there was a chance. He might then make it down the stairwells to the lower lobby or the garage floor and then simply walk out.

  He sat back in his chair and waited with rising hopes, ignoring the dead Eye overhead that no longer saw anything.

  CHAPTER 36

  Barton fought his way into the lobby past milling tenants.

  Firemen grimly pushed through to the elevator banks while a scattering of policemen ineffectually tried to bring order out of confusion. The lobby itself had changed drastically from when he had seen it a few hours before. Salvage covers, spread over the marble floor, were now slick with dirty water and lumps of melting ice. The chill air of the lobby held the faint, acid odor of something burning Against the far wall by the doors to the bank, an ambulance team was bending over a stretcher’ covering the figure on it with an army blanket. Barton stared for a moment before he realized what it meant.

  He could not tell whether it was a tenant or a fireman.

  A few feet away two young parents held a sobbing boy while farther on, a woman cried hysterically, ignored by everyone around her. Only the crackling of a radio communication system cut through the general babble. He searched the crowd, finally locating several firemen standing by a comm system they had set up in the lobby cigar stand.

  Barton hurriedly threaded his way over.

  “Who’s in charge of the operations here?”

  One of the firemen looked at him curiously. “Who are you, Mac?”

  “Craig Barton-I was - chief architect of the building; I’m also representing Mr. Leroux down here. Check it out; he’s having dinner in the Promenade Room.”

  The fireman looked faintly impressed. “Division Chief Mario Infantino’s the man you want-but he’s too busy to talk to civilians now.”

  So Mario was running things, Barton thought; a sense of relief flooded through him. The building was in good hands. “Just tell him I’m in the lobby. If he gets a moment I’d like to see him-any way I can help, I will.”

  “Sure thing.” The fireman nodded out at the lobby.

  “You might try doing something about that mess-the cops can’t seem to.”

  “I’ll give it a try.” He turned back to the lobby. He saw Garfunkel and Jernigan, standing by the security desk in deep conversation; both looked haggard and worn.

  Garfunkel broke off the conversation when he spotted him, the strain in his face abruptly easing
.

  “When’s Mr. Leroux coming down? Christ, we could use him right now-people are asking me fifty million questions and I don’t know how to answer any of them.”

  “He’ll be down later; you’ll have to put up -with me until he gets here.” Barton pointed at the blanket-covered figure being taken out the front entrance by the ambulance team. “How many casualties?”

  Garfunkel’s face tightened. “One that we know of. The man they’re taking out is Sol Jacobs, the seventy-year-old bachelor in 3214. The smoke got him.” His voice dropped a notch. “And then there’s Griff Edwards. He tried to help us when we first went up to the fire floor.

  Stroke-he’s in intensive care. There probably are others.”

  To Barton, Jacobs was only a man. Griff Edwards he had met several times and liked; he assumed that Garfunkel was a close friend.

  “How’s Edwards doing?”

  Garfunkel’s voice shook slightly. “I talked to the doctors; they don’t think he’ll make it to morning.”

  There was no time for tears, Barton thought, either for himself, Garfunkel, or anybody else. He glanced back at the lobby; little clumps of tenants wandered aimlessly around or stood guard by their small heaps of possessions.

  “Dan, open up the lunchroom downstairs. See if we can get volunteers to make coffee and sandwiches, then circulate among the tenants and tell them it’s open. It will pug them out of the lobby.

  And detail one of the guards to call nearby hotels for rooms-it’s the holiday weekend; chances are they’ll have a lot of vacancies.

  Have him make reservations for the tenants who want one, either for the night or until such time as they can contact relatives or return here. Get hold of the night managers and explain the situation; tell them Curtainwall will pick up the tab.” They’d have to make good with the lunchroom owner, too, he thought, but that would be a minor expense. It would also be in Leroux’s bailiwick; let him worry about details. Then something else occurred to him. “Better call a cab company, too; have them send over all their free units … use the north entrance, so they won’t interfere with the firemen. We’ll have to use them to get the tenants to hotels. Then report back here.”