They were now suspended over the city, a good three hundred feet below.
Early Morning The beast has been weakening, growing older and more feeble.
Water has sapped its strength and death is gnawing at its vitals.
Its life span has been short, but in that length of lime it has burned and blackened all of the seventeenth and part of the eighteenth floors. Now most of the fuel that fed the fire has been consumed. The flames on the twenty-first floor are being beaten back foot by foot.
In a few short hours, the fire grew from babyhood through adolescence to become a lusty adult. Now it’s past middle age and fast slipping into senescence.
Throughout the floors, -firemen are working their way through the debris, their pry bars and pulldown hooks ripping out walls, exposing smoldering studding, smashing furniture to reveal the wormlike sparks nibbling along . fabric seams. Whenever they are found, the sparks are deluged with water and quickly die.
But the beast is cunning; in small out-of-the-way rooms and closets it has hidden secret caches of food. One of them’ is in a storage room directly below the room in which the fire was born. It is a storage room for the executive offices of the Tops Supply Company, a large retail hardware and paint chain, and holds samples of various paints, varnishes, solvents, and the like. Many of the containers have been opened by salesmen to test the contents and then returned to the storeroom with their lids only loosely sealed. The Tops Supply Company is a recent tenant, having moved into the Glass House when a previous firm leasing the space had suddenly failed. Neither the inspectors for the Department of Building and Safety nor those for the Fire Department are aware of the new tenant or the contents of its storeroom. Both have been routinely notified, but the paperwork in each department is enormous the notices are buried at the bottom of incoming correspondence boxes. Both departments will find them about a month after the fire is over.
The door of the storeroom has not been breached during the course of the fire bat inside, the solvents, paints, and waxes have melted and vaporized in the intense heat.
The air in the room has been limited and most of the volatiles have gone through a first stage of combustion to yield hot carbon monoxide and various highly flammable breakdown products. Carbon monoxide is an extremely explosive gas and the temperature in the storeroom is well past its ignition point.
It is at this point that rookie Fireman David Lencho reaches out and opens the door. Cool fresh air rushes in to mix with the superheated fuel gases,. The reaction is instantaneous. The explosion shatters the walls of the storeroom, blowing David Lencho’s tattered corpse halfway down the corridor. It rips out the rear wall of the storeroom, which is also one of the walls of the utility core.
Directly behind the wall a massive, high-pressure steam line carries steam up to the sixty-fourth-floor machinery room to power much of the hVAC system.
The line itself has never been quite adequate to the task and tonight, the first really cold night in the city since the Glass House was opened, the line is operating over capacity. The steam in the pipe is several hundred pounds per square inch at a temperature of more than 500 degrees Fahrenheit. The line is already under strain and the sudden explosion in the storeroom hits it like a giant hammer blow. -The line buckles and a brazed expansion joint, designed to allow for contraction and expansion the pipe, abruptly fails; the line explodes.
If the blast in the storeroom was violent this is far more so.
The force of the steam explosion rips through the outer wall of the utility core at a point where the rails of the scenic elevator are secured. Rivets tear from their mounting and the steel rails curl outward as if they are made of lead. The elevator slams to a hall, its emergency brakes wedges driven between the cage and the splayed rails.
But the rails have been torn from their mountings and the braking power of the wedges is weak.
Inside the core, ductwork collapses as if a giant has stepped on its galvanized sheet metal. Electrical conduits are shredded. Power fails abruptly throughout the building, plunging the residential and the office floors into darkness.
Next to the electrical conduits and running the length of the utility core is the main gas line, carrying gas to the residential apartments and the public restaurants. It is held to the masonry walls by heavy steel strapping at the Point where the gas booster pumps are positioned. The force of the steam explosion tears the gas main loose from the wall. It does not break at this point; rather its supports fail and the pipe itself bows away from the explosion. The shock is transmitted up the pipe and it vibrates like a plucked violin string.
It is in the upper machinery floor, separated from the Promenade Room by the Observation Deck , that the pipe finally fails.
A heavy flood of gas gushes from the pipe and fills the.
machinery floor, billowing around.the emergency electrical generators. The gas is lighter than air but, because the gas is relatively cold compared to the surrounding air, a good deal of it flows down into the floors beneath. There it seeps among the stacks of asphalt tile, plywood paneling, and other building materials stored on the still incomplete floors.
Up on the utility floor a relay suddenly snaps and a standby motor starts. The spark from the relay is enough.
A low-order explosion rips through the floor. The armature of the motor is thrown off its shattered bearings and the armature begins to Smoke. The motor overheats and the insulation begins to burn.
Elsewhere on the floor, small fires have started near oil spills and in small open cans of grease. On a floor. below, the gas-air explosion starts fires in several paint cans carelessly left open near a stack of paneling.
It is a modest beginning, but the beast quickly makes the most of it.
The asphalt tile flows, chars, and ignites.
Wooden studding and plywood sheets blacken at the edges and burst into flame. It takes only a minute or two for the beast to become firmly established in its new home.
Far below, the fire has been rekindled on the twenty-first floor and quickly finds its way through utility holes and ductwork to twenty-two.
The beast has a new lease on life and sends triumphant tongues of smoky flame up into the snow-filled night sky.
It roars its rage and glares down at the city below it.
CHAPTER 46
The sound of a muffled explosion startled Barton. He looked over at Shevelson and was about to ask “What was that?” when there was a louder, sharper explosion.
The makeshift table on which they had spread the blueprints trembled slightly; a second later the lights in the lobby went out.
There was dead silence for a moment, and then the comm station in the cigar stand broke into an excited babble of transmissions. In the lower lobby, some of the women began to scream. Barton blurted, “What the hell happened?” Somebody turned on a portable electric lantern in the cigar stand. Shevelson was dimly outlined in the glow. He shook his head tensely and said, “Quiet.”
Barton strained his ears and then heard it. A steady rain of debris falling down the elevator shafts, and then, suddenly, louder crashes thudding from the core bottom.
“The core walls are going,” Shevelson said quietly. “The explosions must have ripped right through them.” Barton could imagine the chaos within the core itself: pieces of cinderblock and Pyrobar tumbling to the bottom from the floors far above, joined by crumbling bits of mortar, calcined plaster, lengths of cable and conduit, strips of piping, pieces of burning wood… .
“Let’s get outside,” Barton said, “we can’t tell anything from in here.” He ran for the door, followed by Shevelson and Garfunkel, who had groped his way up from the lower lobby. On the plaza, the wind cut through his suit coat like a scalpel. He shivered and turned up his collar, debating whether he should go back inside and borrow a turnout coat. Then he saw Infantino standing by the CD communications van and ran over.
“What The hell happened, Mario?”
Infantino seemed dazed, as if he w
ere just coming out of heavy shock.
“I’m not sure; there were two explosions I don’t know what caused them.” He stared up at the building and Barton followed his eyes to the sixteenth floor. Flames flickered behind the windows almost the total length of the floor. He could see flames through the gaps in the Curtainwall where the windows on seventeen had been. They were stronger on eighteen through twenty-two. There was probably little fuel for the fire on seventeen, Barton thought; most of it had been consumed. But the fires on the other floors looked serious.
“I don’t know what caused the first explosion,” Shevelson said slowly, “but I’m fairly sure the second one was the steam line going; it probably ruptured somewhere between the sixteenth and twentieth floors.”
The steam line must have ripped through several floors and spread the fire upward, Barton thought. There was, as yet, no telling the extent of the damage to the utility core but all the main electrical and gas lines ran up it.
There was no immediate way of knowing if their security had been breeched, but he couldn’t risk it. He turned to Garfunkel. “Get hold of Donaldson and tell him to shut off all the main electrical circuits and the gas line. Right now.”
“You’re cutting all the elevators,” Infantino said grimly. “I’ll need them to get men up to the fire floors.”
Barton slowly shook his head. “Mario, you’re the boss here. But if the main gas line has been breeched, the upper floors will become a bomb, and even the flicking of a light switch could set it off.”
“Do you know what a length of two-and-a-half-inch hose weighs, Craig?
More than seventy pounds. Do you think you could carry one up sixteen or eighteen flights -or be of much use once you got it there?”
“Forget it,” Shevelson interrupted. “The elevators are already out.
The board was dead when we left. And I don’t think-you have to worry about the gas line being breached. I’m afraid it already has been, but you won’t like where.”
“What are you driving at?” Barton asked. He started to shiver and jammed his hands in his pockets to keep them warm.
Shevelson didn’t get a chance to answer. There were faint popping sounds from far above and a second a sailing pane of glass shattered in the street a hundred feet away. It hadn’t come from the, twenty-first or the twenty-second floors, Barton realized with a shock. It had come from higher, much higher. He craned his neck and could make out the faint flicker of flames at the very top of the building, a few floors below the roof. The fire was in the machinery room, the point where the gas line had probably ruptured.
He looked at Infantino, who shook his head. “There’s no way to reach that. It’d be murder to climb the steps and even if we got there, with the electricity off, there’s no way of operating the booster pumps so we would have a water supply.”
Barton glanced back at the building and was shocked to see the scenic elevator stalled a little below the middle. It was difficult to tell because of the swirling snow, but it looked like the tracks a few floors beneath the elevator had been torn away from the side of the building. Then he could make out the dark shadow behind the twisted rails and realized that part of the shear wall itself had been blown out.
My God, Jenny….
Behind him he was vaguely aware of Infantino talking to the communications officer in the van. “Call for ambulances; there’ll be casualties coming down. And we’ll need-” He cut off. Fuchs was running across the plaza toward them. Infantino waited until he got there, then Started talking again, as much to Fuchs as to the comm officer.
“We’ll need additional companies-a lot of them-Call the department in Southport and ask for shape charges and Primacord and a man who knows how to use them. Also ask them if they can send a detachment of men with proximity suits.” Barton said automatically: “I know how to use explosives.” ‘ , Infantino didn’t take his eyes off Fuchs, who had remained silent throughout his orders to the communications officer.
“Forget it, you’re not a fireman, Craig.” Then it suddenly occurred to Barton what Infantino was talking about.
“You set off a high-level explosion in there and you could damage the building structurally.”
“What do you think has happened already?” Infantino said curtly.
“There are no longer any chances that aren’t worth taking.” He was still looking steadily at Fuchs- “If you want to countermand my orders, you’ll have to do it now,” he said quietly. Fuchs shook his head and turned to look back at the building. He looked small and old, Barton thought. And beaten.
“Chief?”
A runner had dashed out of the building to report to Infantino.
Barton listened intently. It was worse than he had imagined. The fire was raging on the twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-third floors.
There were also reports that the upper machinery floor was on fire.
Infantino silently pointed at the top of the building and the runner turned, stared for a moment, then continued with his report.
“The explosion was on sixteen, sir-a storage room for a paint company.
It blew out part of the inner wall of the utility core and apparently broke the steam line, or caused it to explode in turn.”
“What about the salvage team on that floor?”
The runner licked his lips nervously, glanced quickly at Fuchs, then back to Infantino. “Most of the men are all right, sir, but rookie David Lencho and fireman Mark Fuchs are unaccounted for. We’re trying to get a rescue squad in there now but it’s pretty hot.” His eyes flicked over again at Fuchs, who turned without a word and walked back toward the building.
“Anything else?” The runner shook his head and Infantino said, “Okay, report back to your company.” After the runner had left, Infantino turned to Barton. “The Chief had three sons; Mark’s the only one who followed him into the department.”
“It’s a rough night for all of us,” Barton said quietly.
Infantino looked at the side of the building where the scenic elevator hung suspended halfway down. “Yeah, I guess it is.” He started back toward the Glass House.
“You coming, Craig?”
“Right behind you.” The wind whipped around his trouser bottoms and he was suddenly acutely aware of the cold, not only on his face and hands, but pressing against his back and legs. He began -to shiver uncontrollably as his teeth started to chatter. There were more popping sounds from above, and he and Infantino abruptly broke in a run for the lobby doors. Behind them, falling glass slashed onto the plaza.
At least, Barton thought, most of the tenants had been evacuated and lodged elsewhere for the night, except for those in the downstairs lobby and luncheonette. And those who were still in the Promenade Room or trapped in the scenic elevator. But there was no point in thinking about the latter; there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.
Shevelson had found an electric lantern and set it on one end of their table so they could see the blueprints.
Barton walked over and leaned his knuckles on the table, staring blindly at the prints. He felt choked with a sense of futility, a feeling that there ought to be something he could do and the knowledge that there wasn’t.
For a moment the lobby was silent except for -the crackle of messages at the building’s comm center behind them-the occasional thud from the elevator banks as more debris cascaded into the bottom of the utility core.
The calm before the storm, he thought. In another few minutes, they would begin bringing down the injured from the upper floors and relief companies would start showing up.
“Barton?”
. “Yes?”
Shevelson had an unlit cigar in his mouth and Barton noticed there were tears in his eyes.
“Our pretty building’s a goddamned mess, isn’t she?”
CHAPTER 47
John Bigelow was having a nightmare. He was being threatened by some terrifying danger. He struggled from sleep and lay half awake.
The drea
m was lost; he couldn’t remember What it was. He lay in bed, fuzzy from sleep, his mind still fogged by alcohol. He rolled once on his side and brushed against Deirdre. Automatically he nuzzled her hair, spitting out some stray strands that held the acrid taste of perfumed hair spray. Still half asleep, he could feel the press of love and pushed his face down on hers, then turned away, disgusted by the sick-sweet odor of her breath. After that, sleep came easy and he dozed off again.
The faint sounds of sirens far below pulled him back to a half-intoxicated consciousness. He coughed lightly, ignoring the faint, smoky taste to the air. The smoke from the grill was still light, thanks primarily to the heavy north wind that penetrated small chinks in the building and pushed most of the warning haze to the south end.
In addition, he had smoked a great deal before they had gone to bed for a few desultory hours of mechanical lovemaking. His lungs were still filled with the biting tobacco tars and his mouth felt raw and seared.
His nostrils were completely blocked and his breath rasped from his mouth as he wavered between a light sleep and heavy snoring.
It was minutes before his mind equated the sound of the explosions with reality. For a long time they seemed a part of the nightmare he had been having. Then he sat up, his mind still fogged, and stared about the darkened bedroom. It was another minute before he realized that he smelled smoke. The room, he realized with vague alarm, was getting warm. He was still very drunk but the sudden combination of the odor of smoke and the feeling of unexplained warmth sent a prickle of fear through his body. He fumbled for the lamp by the sofa bed and snapped the switch. Nothing happened. Unplugged, he thought. He threw back the sheet and staggered from the bed to the wall, groping for the overhead light switch. He found it but still nothing happened.
He was wide awake now. The electricity must have failed. He couldn’t remember if they had a flashlight in the suite; he knew they didn’t have candles. Then he remembered the electric lantern that Krost had left behind on the counter. He fumbled his way over to the counter, felt along it, and found the lantern. He turned it on and came back to the bed.
The Glass Inferno Page 32
