“Turn around, children,” she told the two boys. “Face the wall.”
She could not let them see that terrible drop.
She forced herself to walk to the railing and look over at the landing twenty feet below them. It was canting now, too, and littered with chunks of debris, some of them the size of a watermelon. There was no sign of Jernigan or Linda.
She felt her own landing quiver again and concrete dust came up in little puffs from where the landing butted against the interior wall.
She couldn’t stay ‘there, she realized. The platform would pull away from the wall soon, or perhaps part of the wall itself would go.
“Miss Mueller, for God’s sake, are you all right?” It was Jernigan’s voice and now he apparently had a flashlight and was beaming it up at her platform. She leaned cautiously over the railing again and glanced down. He was standing amid the debris, looking up searching for her, trying to find her in the beam of his flashlight’ Behind him, there was light coming from the stairwell door. She guessed, correctly, that firemen were working in the corridor just beyond.
Jernigan’s landing must have been the one the two firemen had been heading for.
“Where’s Linda?”
“Safe inside,” Jernigan shouted. “I saw cracks opening in the outer wall and we ducked just in time. Miss Mueller, we’ve got to get you and the children down from there. That landing won’t hold much longer.”
“How?” she called.
“Can you drop the children to me?”
She felt her breath catch in her throat. “It’s twenty feet, Harry!
And if you miss…”
“We’ll have to chance that. Miss Mueller-I promise you I won’t miss.”’ “It’s too risky!” she cried.
“It’s the only way!” Jernigan yelled back. Lisa started to protest and then felt the landing wrench slightly farther away from the holding wall. She turned quickly to Chris.
He couldn’t weigh more than fifty pounds, she thought, but what Jernigan expected her to do would tax her strength, to say nothing of his.
“Chris,” she said softly, “can you close your eyes and make yourself very stiff, as stiff as a board?”
“You’re going to drop me!” he accused.
She felt like crying. “Mr. Jernigan is very, very strong, Chris.
He’ll catch ‘you. But you mustn’t wriggle or twist.
Can you do it?”
“Do I have to?” he asked rebelliously.
She could feel the tears gathering inside her. “Yes, Chris.”
He nodded and clenched his fists and stood as erect and stiff as a soldier. “Close your eyes, Chris-that’s very good. Don’t open them until you feel Mr. Jernigan’s arms around you.” She tried to maintain the calm in her voice.
Then she picked him up as if he were a statue. She could feel his body quivering with the tension and for a moment she felt the heavy thump of his heart against her chest.
She looked over the railing to where Jernigan stood twenty feet below with his arms outstretched over the abyss. She prayed silently to herself as she lifted Chris up and over the, railing. Her arms fought his weight and she remembered the past with the Turnverein in St. Louis. Thank God for the residual strength from those grueling days. She held Chris suspended over the void, positioned him as carefully as she could, and dropped him.
He fell as though in slow motion. She saw Jernigan flex his knees and then the boy’s body struck his arms.
For a brief moment it seemed like they were both going to go over.
Then Chris was a wriggling mass of flesh, clutching frantically at Jernigan. He sank to his knees, holding the boy around the waist while Chris clung to his neck.
“He’s okay!” Jernigan shouted triumphantly. A fireman appeared behind him and led Chris away. Jernigan straightened up and rotated an arm. “Christ, I think I pulled a muscle.”
“Can you catch little Martin?”
“I think so-I have to.”
After that, Lisolette thought, the situation would become very grim indeed. She could hardly jump as the children had done and hope that Jernigan could catch her. Somehow, she would have to get down on her own.
She turned to Martin.
“No!” he screamed, wriggling out of her grasp. “I won’t! I won’t!”
She grabbed for him and he struggled hysterically. Beneath them, the concrete landing shuddered and dipped slightly farther toward the yawning core.
“Harry! I can’t drop Martin, I’ll have to bring him down myself!”
“Miss Mueller, there’s no way!” Jernigan shouted from below.
She glanced frantically around the landing, then suddenly saw the racked fire hose. The frame was now loose in the wall. “Yes, there is!” she shouted to Jernigan. She left Martin sobbing on the floor and ran to the hose. The wind was driving snow into the utility core and she could feel dampness spread over the back of her dress. She wrenched at the rack and it came free from the wall. She pulled the hose away from its retainer rod and began to feed it over the railing.
Jernigan grabbed it from below and began to pull. In seconds, the full length was played out. Lisolette eyed the coupling that held the end of the hose and decided it would be strong enough. It had to be; she didn’t have time to devise another anchor in any case.
She began to rip strips of cloth from the. bottom of her dress.
Her nice dress, she, thought; the one she had bought especially for the dinner with Harlee. But there was no way out of it; the dress was ruined anyway. As soon as she had half a dozen stout strips of cloth, she called to Martin. “Come here, son.”
“No!” he cried.”Come over here and put your arms around Lisa’s neck,” she coaxed. “That’s a good boy. But stand behind me and do it.”
Martin dubiously walked behind her and before he could wriggle away,.
she grabbed his wrists and bound them with one of the strips. He jerked back, nearly choking her. As he struggled, she reached behind and circled his body with two of the strips tied together, then brought them around to the from and knotted them at her waist.
It was crude but when she had finished, Martin was firmly bound to her back.
She walked to the railing and ran her fingers over the rough surface of The hose. Her palms were wet with perspiration and she wiped them on the front of her dress.
Martin was struggling on her back, crying with fright. She eased herself carefully over the railing, concentrating on looking at the hose rather than at the pit that opened beneath her feet. She turned and gripped the hose, transferring their full weight to it. The first few hand over hands were an agony with the boy bucking and struggling against her.
“Please be quiet, Martin,” she pleaded. “Lisa will take care of you.”
She slowly let herself down the hose, clutching at the rough fabric with her knee. Thank God she had torn some of the cloth away from the bottom of her dress or she wouldn’t have had complete freedom to use her legs.
She was halfway down when she heard the high-pitched screeching from above; the reinforcing rods that held the platform next to the interior wall were giving way and bending. The edge of the landing dropped a frightening two feet. Lisolette’s heart pumped violently and for a moment she closed her eyes. Then the movement stopped and she started to let herself down the hose again, trying desperately to master her panic.
All the old instincts were coming back now and she could feel long-unused muscles bulging beneath her skin. She felt a sudden wave of pride.
She could still do it; she would make it.
Martin had become very still. The sense of power and competence that she now felt seemed to have been communicated to him. Then she felt strong hands on her ankles, guiding her down. The next moment she was standing beside Jernigan and a fireman who helped to free the now quiet Martin.
“Come on,” Jernigan said urgently and pulled the two of them through the door where Linda and Chris waited.
Once inside, Jernigan
looked at her proudly in the light of a nearby lantern. “You were tremendous,” he said quietly.
Lisolette smiled. “Thank you very much, Harry.” Before she could say more, there was a high-pitched rumbling sound. Lisolette darted one quick look behind her, then grabbed Chris and Martin and hastily pulled them back into the safety of the corridor.
The concrete landing she had been standing on moments before pulled away from its supports; with an almost unbelievable slowness it fell toward their landing.
It smashed with an explosion of concrete shards and then that landing, too, gave way. From the safety of the corridor, Lisolette and Jernigan watched the two concrete slabs tumble end over end down the utility core.
It was some seconds before they heard them strike the bottom, nineteen floors below.
CHAPTER 50
At the moment of the steam line explosion, four firemen were descending from the twentieth floor in one of the manual override elevators. There was no longer a dangerous fire zone on floors seventeen or eighteen; and the fire on sixteen had been knocked down for at least an hour. The men were tired and dirty and leaned against the walls of the cage without speaking. Ron Gilman, who had been lead hoseman earlier in the evening, had a badly scorched nose that was now a burned red and beginning to peel. Nick Pappas’ eyes were red and watering and every few seconds he had a fit of coughing. Sam Waters and Jake Lapides were in slightly better condition; they had served on the backup crews.
After a moment of silence once the doors had closed, Lapides said, “Christ, I hope all the tenants got out.”
“They didn’t-they never do,” Gilman said sourly. “The smoke Was too heavy, even with the ventilation system on reverse. When we start going through the apartments on the south side of the building, that’s when we’ll start finding them.”
“I don’t think I’d care to be part of the cleanup detail,” Waters said slowly.
“Weak stomach?” Pappas accused.
“You’re absolutely right,” Waters’ agreed sarcastically.
“I’ve been in this business for ten years and I’ve still got a weak stomach. The day I don’t, I’ll’ The steam explosion came at that moment. It must have been close, for the elevator cage shook violently and plunged downward. The lights went out abruptly. “Oh, my God!”.
Lapides yelled. A few feet farther down the wedge brakes jammed between the side rails and the cage.
and the elevator screeched to a halt. In the silence that followed, they could hear the thud of falling masonry as it hit the bottom of the elevator pit far below. Overhead, something that sounded like gravel rattled against the top and sides of the cage.
“For Christ’s sakes, somebody got a lantern?” There was a fumbling in the back of the cage and then a glow from a lantern held by Pappas.
“What the hell happened?” Lapides asked. His voice was shaking.
“Explosion,” Gilman said softly. “I think it snapped some of the hoist cables-did you hear that thudding sound? It sounded like the counterweight hitting the bottom. The rattling could’ve been caused by the steel ropes brushing the cage as they fell.”
Waters automatically punched the call board, with no response.
“We can’t stay here,” he said after a second.
“If the ropes are gone, we can’t depend on the brakes holding forever. Who wants to take a look around?”
“I’ll need a hand,” Gilman said. Pappas gave his lantern to Lapides and stepped under the escape hatch at the top of the cage. He thrust a knee forward and made a sling of his hands. Gilman placed his right boot in the cupped hands and held onto Pappas’ shoulders for support.
Pappas grunted and heaved upward while Gilman fumbled with the overhead panel, finally pushing it aside.
He clung to the edge of the access port. “Give me a boost, Nick.”
Pappas pushed upward and Gilman muscled his way through the opening.
There was a long silence from above and finally Waters shouted, “What the hell’s wrong up there?”
“It’s a mess,” Gilman yelled back. His face appeared in the opening.
“Four of the hoist ropes have been snapped and the counterweight’s blown off the other two.
There must have been two explosions-five or six floors around us are blazing and about a hundred feet up it looks like half the outside wall is gone.”
“What the hell are we going to do?” Lapides asked.
He was the youngest man of the four and close to panic.
Gilman hesitated, then called down: “Everybody up here.”
“You’re crazy,” Pappas said.
“You heard the man,” Waters grunted. “You want to stay here and roast?” The temperature in the cage was already noticeably warmer.
Lapides stepped in Pappas’ locked hands and jumped upward at the same time Pappas heaved him toward the port. Gilman caught his hands and a moment later he scrambled out on the roof of the cage. Waters followed almost immediately. Then they both leaned through the port and caught Pappas’ hands and sWung him up when he jumped. They pulled him through and he looked around and muttered, “Jesus Christ!”
Two of the hoist ropes lay coiled like black snakes on top of the cage; several more hung limp over the side. Two floors above them, flames roared from a breech in the utility wall while bits of crumbled mortar and construction block dribbled down from the shattered wall.
Flames were spraying directly from the floor in front of the cage and shooting up over the edge of the elevator’s roof, while opposite them and perhaps a hundred feet above, a mammoth break in the outside shear wall exposed the core to the cold air and snow. Bits of flaming debris were falling past their stalled cage, with an occasional piece landing on the ‘ roof itself.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Gilman said quietly.
Waters smiled sardonically in the fire-lit gloom. “No shit-you got any ideas?”
“Yeah, we’ll have to make it down the hard way.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Pappas demanded.
“A couple of guys from the East Coast did it once,” Gilman explained.
“We go down one of the cables.”
Lapides began to stutter. “Hand over hand? Those ropes are covered with grease!”
“We’ll take a couple of hitches around them with our belts,” Gilman said. “And we can wrap our legs around the rope. But we’ll have to get rid of our coats and helmets and any binding clothing.”
There was a moment of silence. Then Waters took off his heavy turnout coat and dropped it over the edge of the elevator cage. It billowed open as it fell and then disappeared into the chasm below.
Lapides backed away from the, edge of the roof. “You’re nuts, Gilman; it’s a good eighteen floors to the bottom of the pit.”
“Pappas, hand me your pulldown hook,” Gilman said.
He took the tool and lay flat on top of the cage. He extended the hook, sagging one of the steel ropes that was free of its counterweight. There was sufficient slack in the rope so he was able to haul it close to the cage.
‘Okay, who’s first?”
“I don’t think I can make it,” Lapides said in a frightened voice.
“Then you’ll have to go first. If you go last and slip, you’ll take the rest of us with you.” Gilman shook his head sadly. “Sorry, kid, you. didn’t leave yourself an out-it’s got to be you.”
Lapides edged close to the rope and looked over the side of the cage.
The core below was smoky and lit with, flames from the burning floors.
Below that, it was pitch black; he couldn’t see the bottom.
Waters said, “Well, shit or get off the pot, Jake. We haven’t got all day.”
Lapides could feel the sweat drip off his upper lip.
“Don’t rush me.”
“Wait a minute,” Gilman said. “Tie the lantern to your waist so we can see.” He added, “Don’t slip-the rest of us are depending on you.”
“Take a do
uble hitch with your belt around the rope,” Pappas said.
“I’ll help you down.”
“I can do it,” Lapides said, suddenly angry. The front of his pants felt wet. He wiped his gloves on his trousers and pulled hard at the belt he had looped around the rope, then lowered himself over the edge of the cage roof. He slipped a few feet, then clutched the rope with his legs, his turnout pants acting as a further brake. He started to lower himself down the rope.
“Don’t look down,” Gilman warned, then noticed that.
Lapides had closed his eyes.
“It’s slippery as hell,” Lapides said in a strained voice “but I think I can do it.”
As soon as Lapides had cleared the lower edge of the cab, Pappas followed, then Waters, and finally Gilman.
Above them, flaming debris rained down from the ruin floors.
“Remember, don’t look down!” Gilman yelled once more. He let go of the hook and grabbed the rope as it swung out from the cage. He slipped a foot before he could clutch the rope between his knees.
“It’s a piece of cake!” Lapides yelled. His lantern was bobbing twenty feet lower down the rope.
“Some cake,” Gilman grunted. Of the four men, he was the one who suffered the most from a fear of heights.
CHAPTER 51
“Get a vertical shot past the hose trucks!” Quantrell yelled.
Kimbrough, the cameraman, broke into a shambling run toward the street.
Quantrell held his breath. If the bastard slipped on the water-covered ice five grand worth of camera equipment in the pod on Kimbrough’s shoulder would go all to hell. Kimbrough got into position and Quantrell turned to Zimmerman, the young reporter.
“Al, see if you can get a short interview with the cop who was standing near the young couple when the kid got hit by the flying glass. Don’t let it get too clinical-play the youth-on-a-thrill-trip angle.”
“Right,” Zimmerman said and was gone. Good man, Quantrell thought briefly; at least he knew who was in charge. He looked back at Kimbrough; he was in the middle of the street behind the hose trucks, using them to frame the building for the shot. He knelt down and pointed the camera up to get more of a tower effect to the building; Quantrell automatically followed the angle of the camera, trying to imagine what the shot would look like on screen. It was then that he spotted the thin streak of fire tracing its way across the night sky.
The Glass Inferno Page 34
