“For Christ’s sakes, Turn that damned thing off, will You?” Disgusted, Deirdre pulled the pillow over her head.
“Bitch,” Bigelow muttered. He stumbled against the bar, almost knocking over his trophy. Then he saw the tendrils of smoke creeping from under the door to the outer office. He turned back to Deirdre.
“Wake up, damnit! The place is on fire!”
“You’re crazy,” she said sleepily and burrowed deeper into the pillow. Bigelow set the lantern on the end table and Yanked the sheets from the bed. “Johnny,” Deirdre whined. “Lemme sleep.”
“Come on,” he insisted, kneeling on the bed and almost falling on top of her. He pulled the pillow away from her and dragged her half off the mattress. “Come on, put on something. We’ve got to get out of here!” He hopped from foot to foot, pulling on his trousers and hastily wriggling into his half-buttoned shirt. He ignored his socks and tugged on his Gucci shoes.
“What a creep,” Deirdre said, solemnly drunk, and crawled back into bed to lie there on her stomach. She had managed to put on a slip some time during the night.
There was a long tear in the rear, exposing her back and one buttock, and Bigelow wondered for a second how that had happened. He tucked his shirt half into his trousers and tightened his belt, then debated pulling her off the bed again and trying to slap her awake.
The smell of smoke decided him; he ran to the suite door and pulled it open. He staggered backward before the blast of heat and smoke and threw his hands up in front of his face. The outer office was the very substance of his nightmare.
On the far side of the storeroom, the banks of salesmen’s small offices were blazing; their thin wallboard partitions blackened as he watched. The heavy floor-to-ceiling draperies on the other side were alive with flames while burning wooden office furniture added to the shimmering heat.
In the middle of the room where the displays were neatly piled, the fire-breathing gargoyles of his dream had become a reality. It took him a moment to realize that the long ranks of polystyrene displays were melting under the heat. The elves slumped as he watched, their features sagging and growing cancerous patches, their cheeks and noses becoming long and pendulous, evil in the-orange-red light from the flames. The reindeer became frighteningly alive, their plastic coats gleaming wetly, their delicate legs and thighs oddly elongated, their tails sweeping the floor as they seemed to run swiftly forward.
The Santa Claus figures were now humpbacked and bent, their knuckles brushing the wood below, their chubby, jovial faces now hollow-cheeked and vicious.
Bigelow slammed the door, shuddering. There was barely time, he thought frantically. He ran into the bathroom and drenched a heavy towel to wrap around his face. Then he did the same with a terry-cloth robe and pulled it on. Back in the suite, he tugged at Deirdre once again. “Goddamnit, leave me alone!” She pushed him away and snuggled under the pillow again.
Bigelow’s eyes were stinging with the smoke. “Damnit, come on!”
he shouted in panic and pulled at her arm.
She rolled away from him, giggling. “All right, baby,” he muttered.
“It’s your funeral.”
He turned and ran for the door, then suddenly stopped by the bar.
The only trophy he had ever won in a lifetime of competition. It weighed a ton, but he knew he couldn’t abandon it to the flames. He tightened the towel about the lower part of his face, grabbed the trophy under one arm, and opened the door.
Outside amid the flames, the ranks of melting, threatening figures waited for him. He saw a clear path through the terror to the inner door of the office reception room and what he desperately hoped was escape It probably wouldn’t stay open long, however. Then he looked more closely at the wooden floor between the displays. It was wet with the guck of melted plastic. He suddenly remembered the story of the Roman historian forced to walk across a lava flow during an eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.
Well, his feet were a lot better protected than those of a Roman.
He walked to the edge of the slick and stuck a foot tentatively into the melted plastic. The stuff was sticky and formed thin, glistening threads when he pulled his foot back. But his shoe protected him; he felt warmth but little more.
He sucked in a breath of hot air, coughed at the smoke, and started across the deadly slick. It was slow going.
He had to be careful not to spatter his legs with the stuff; it would burn right through his pants. Step by step he walked across the pool.
He was finally beginning to feel heat through the soles of his shoes.
For a moment he considered dropping the trophy; it was too heavy and the metal was already warming from the radiant heat.
Then he realized he was only eight feet from the door.
A wild elation started to build within him. He could see nothing through the frosted glass of the door to the outer office. Perhaps it wasn’t on fire yet; the door itself didn’t seem charred. A few feet more and he would be through the door and to the elevators or stairwells. only a few more feet …
He could feel his right shoe sticking. He tugged at it impatiently and his foot slipped from the loose shoe. He was already off balance because of the trophy; for a second he wobbled uncertainly on his left foot, then, unthinking, thrust out his bare right foot to keep from falling.
It touched the pool of plastic.
He cried out in agony as the scalding plastic spread over his foot.
He pulled it back, trying desperately to master the pain; then he was off balance once again.
He fell forward, frantically clutching at the draperies that hung on the storeroom side of the partition between the outer office and the storeroom. He grabbed a handful of cloth, tried to pull himself up, then fell forward again as the draperies gave way. His trousered knee thrust through the folds of the wet bathrobe and slid along the floor as though it were on ice. Pain clawed through the trouser leg. He thrust out his left arm to keep from falling flat but his fingers found no purchase in the scalding slick as he slid face forward into the pool of plastic.
He screamed once and rolled over, trying to escape, still clutching the trophy and the handful’of drapery cloth.
The drapery rod overhead suddenly snapped under the pull. The rest of the draperies, including the folds that had started to burn at the far end, slid along the dangling rod and enveloped him. Where they touched the pool of plastic they flickered into flames that quickly danced over the surface, igniting the bundled draperies that covered Bigelow. It hadn’t worked out, something within him thought sadly. It hadn’t worked out at all.
The flames roared across the room. The walls became tapestries of fire, as the display figures slumped into the burning pool of plastic.
Near the heap of charred draperies by the door, a blackened trophy jutted up into the smoky air of the room. The metal figures of the trophy were already beginning to flow.
CHAPTER 48
Deirdre was still drunk but a sense of terrible danger was sobering her fast. She sat on the edge of the bed and fought down an almost overwhelming urge to curl up beneath the blankets again. Her arm still ached where Bigelow had pulled at it. Absently she rubbed it. She wanted desperately to drift back to sleep, but it was so warm in the room, stuffy and hard to breathe. Something must have happened to the ventilation system. For some reason her eyes had started to water.
She brushed at them, opened her mouth to yawn and ended up coughing.
The taste in her mouth made her gag. Bad liquor an something else. Smoke.
This time she managed to open her eyes all the way.
The door to the storeroom was partly ajar and through it heavy masses of hot air billowed into the room. She coughed again and stumbled to her feet, her mind clearing very fast now. Bigelow had shouted something about a fire. She had to get out, she thought, beginning to panic.
She slipped her feet into her pumps and ran to the door.
At the other end of the storeroom, almost lost amid the wax-mu
seum tableaux of melting elves and reindeer and Santa Clauses, she could see Bigelow walking slowly forward clutching his trophy. He moved with a peculiar lurch, as if his shoes were sticking to the floor.
Finally he stumbled and fell. Deirdre covered her face with her hands as he sprawled full length on the floor.
He screamed once and between her fingers Deirdre saw the falling draperies cover him as the flames danced across the room and over the mound of twitching cloth. She slammed the door to shut out the horror, leaned against it, and began to sob hysterically. Gradually a deadly calm came to’her; there was something very wrong and then she realized what it was. The door at her back was warm and getting warmer.
She ran through the living room, the electric lantern on the end table throwing terrifying shadows against the walls. She found herself boxed in the kitchen nook, frantically searching for another way out, but there was none. The hysteria had left her completely now. She turned and faced the door; the wood was browning from the beat on the other side. At the bottom, a thick stream of burning, melted polyester flowed sluggishly under it.
She ran into the bathroom looking for thick towels or another robe that she could soak and put on. Bigelow had almost made it that way.
If it hadn’t been for his damned trophy … But there were no more towels, no robes. She darted back into the living room. The door was blackening now. She was trapped; there was no longer any hope.
She stumbled around the bed and pulled back the draperies from the picture window. Outside, the snow was drifting quietly down, gathering in little mounds of cotton on the narrow sill.
An immense calm mixed with a deep sadness filled her mind. The window, she knew, could not be opened. Even if it could, they were on the twenty-first floor and there was no fire escape. She could feel the heat behind her and turned to face it. The fire had burned through the door .and flames,now blanked the entire far wall of the suite.
The smoke was thick and searing. She had to get air, she realized.
There was a paperweight on the desk near the burning wall and she made a dash for it, scooped it up, whirled and threw it at the window.
The glass shattered cleanly and fell out into the night. She ran to the window and leaned out, ignoring the pain as the tiny shards of glass left in the frame gouged the palms of her hands.
The air was cold and flakes of snow whipped against her face. Far below she could hear the muted sounds of sirens -and men shouting, their voices crisp and clear in the cold night air. She closed her eyes for a moment; somewhere from down below she imagined she could hear the faint murmur of bells and Christmas carols. It was her favorite time of year….
Then she felt the heat at her back again and turned.
The fire was halfway across the room and there was no escape now.
She stood in the window, wrapped in a protecting blanket of cold air and snow and started to sob.
In her mind, she could already feel the touch of the flames. And with that thought, her rational mind collapsed, leaving only a sheer animal urge to escape.
She whipped the thin blanket of sheets off the sofa bed and pulled the mattress from the frame, then tugged it toward the window. It was the only possibility, it had to be of some help; it would protect her to at least some degree. She stood in the empty window clutching the mattress in front of her, then hesitated. Perhaps someone would come, maybe right now the firemen were battling their way through the storeroom, knowing that she was there.
But nobody knew she was there, she remembered. She had made sure of that.
She waited a moment longer but no one came.
Only the fire came, burning the desk and scorching the carpet and crawling along the painted ceiling. The upholstered arms of the sofa bed were blazing now and the varnish on the wooden coffee table in front bubbled and browned, then burst into flame. She couldn’t stand it any more; her fingers where she held the mattress against the radiation of the fire began to blister.
She turned, her back to the flame; she felt a gentle tug at the bottom of her slip and something warm caressed the nape of her neck. She gripped the mattress tightly. In the next instant she was falling through the blessedly cold night, her only emotion one of a terribly deadening sorrow.
. Her hair had caught fire in the last moment on the window ledge, as had the bottom of her slip. She didn’t realize this as she Plummeted the long, long distance down.
Her fall traced a long, flaming arc through the night sky.
CHAPTER 49
“Miss Mueller, are you all right?”
Lisolette looked over the railing through the narrow space between the flights of steps. She could just see Harry Jernigan on the landing below. “We’re coming right away, HarrY-little Martin fell down and his shoe came off.” The three-year-old was busily trying to wedge his foot back into the tied shoe while five-year-old Chris looked on in disgust.
“Lisa, please hurry up.” It was Linda’s voice. Lisolette peered down over the railing again. Linda was holding onto Jernigan’s hand, looking up at them, her mouth pursed in impatience. How like the very young, Lisolette thought-to so recently have been in danger of their lives and to have forgotten it already. “He’ll try to put it back on by himself,” Linda continued primly. “He always does and he’s too young.”
Jernigan’s voice had a note of urgency in it. “Better hurry him along, Miss Mueller. We’ll wait until you catch up.”
Chris, quite unconcerned with all that was going on, was investigating the folds of fire hose locked in a frame bolted into the concrete wall. He started to play with the lock. Lisolette told him to stop and then knelt to help Martin put his shoe back on.
She was off balance when the explosion came. The blast threw her over little Martin, who cried out in sudden terror. She lay there for a moment, slightly dazed; then there was another blast several stories above her and all the lights in the stairwell abruptly went out. She heard a steady roaring sound for a moment and the concrete landing rocked beneath her. The roaring gradually stopped and she struggled to her knees. Chris was tugging at her skirts and crying, “Lisa! Lisa!”
The air was filled with masonry dust. She couldn’t see but fortunately she had her hands on little Martin. As she stood up, she felt the concrete slab that formed the landing quiver and cant slightly away from the wall behind her. She felt for both Chris and Martin in the darkness and hung on to them.
The slight movement of the landing stopped. There was no sound but that of falling debris and little Martin, who was wailing at the top of his lungs.
“My God,” she whispered to herself. “My God, what happened?”
“Miss Mueller!” Jernigan shouted up at her from the darkness.
“Miss Mueller, are you all right?”
“I think so!” she shouted back. Her voice sounded odd; it didn’t sound as it had before in the stairwell. There was, she realized with an abrupt sense of alarm, a lack of echo. “Harry, what happened?”
His voice was urgent. “The children-how are the children?”
“Frightened, but no one’s hurt. My God, Harry, what happened?”
“High-pressure steam line explosion. When one of those goes, it’s like a bomb.” There was sudden fear in his voice.
“Miss Mueller, don’t walk too near the edge of your landing.”
The dust was settling now and where the wall had been on the other side of the stairwell was blackness. Air was blowing in at her, an odd mixture of cold air and drops of hot water. The condensing steam, she thought. But the cold air?
Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness now and she realized it wasn’t completely dark. The wall that had stood between the stairwell and the utility core itself had vanished for a distance of three or four floors around her.
The building wall remained behind her but in front there was …
nothing.
It was then that she realized the explosion had shattered the flight of steps that led down to Jernigan’s position.
&nbs
p; The stairs were concrete risers cast on a central “I” beam and for several floors the steps had disappeared, the beams themselves half torn from the wall. Lisolette, for all practical purposes, was suspended on a concrete platform some twenty feet above the one where Jernigan stood.
In front of her there was a sheer drop to the bottom of the core-itself.
“Take me down; I want to go down!” Chris screamed.
She held them both close to her. “Hush now. In a minute, Lisa will take care of you.” The platform beneath her trembled again and she gasped involuntarily. Below her she could hear Jernigan say, “Linda, go into the corridor. I’ll follow you in a minute.”
“No, no,” Linda sobbed. “What about Chris and Martin?”
“Do as he says,” Lisolette shouted. “I’ll take care of Chris and Martin.”
She could see now by the flickering light in the well and looked around her. Behind her was the fire door leading into the building proper. She tugged at it and realized it was still locked. Then she thought with a feeling of panic that the fire must be just beyond; the doorknob was hot to the touch.
There was an ominous rumbling; she grabbed the two children and huddled against the wall. Just opposite her, part of the shear wall of the utility core seemed to shake itself. As she watched, it suddenly dissolved and great chunks of masonry tumbled down into the shaft.
Dust rose from the very bottom of the well and she began to cough.
The children clung to her tightly, too frightened to even cry.
She stood quietly for a moment, then realized she had closed her eyes the moment the wall had started to fall in toward her. She opened them and gasped. Part of the external shear wall had collapsed for several floors and she was looking out into the night sky, her little landing platform now canting dangerously out into the void. Only the steel reinforcement rods that threaded through the platform into the inner wall saved them from plummeting down eighteen stories to the bottom of the well. And Jernigan and Linda?
The Glass Inferno Page 33
