“I’ll take the two little ones, you help with Linda, Lisolette said, taking both of the smaller children by the hand.
Linda was still crying and Jernigan said gently, “It isn’t every day I can help a girl as pretty as you.” She tried to smother her sobs.
The two firemen were in a hurry. “Johnny, grab the woman; I’ll take care of the man.” The younger fireman picked up Evelyn in his arms as if she were a child; the older one swung Albrecht over his back in the classical fireman’s carry. “Okay, let’s get the hell out of here.
We’ll see the rest of you downstairs. Don’t take the elevators -the sky lobby is filled with smoke and the elevators aren’t operating down from there anyways. Take the stairwell; doors are open from eighteen down to fifteen, you can get out on those floors. The rescue company will take the kids from there anyways to check them over.”
They moved down the hall with their burdens, Lisolette following, and Jernigan bringing up the rear. She stumbled once and Jernigan reached out with a steadying hand.
She was, she realized, weaker than she thought The smoke seemed to have sapped her strength and left her lightheaded. Or maybe she was just growing old, she thought. She repeatedly had to tell the two children, clinging to her skirt on either side, to hold their damp pillowcases before their faces. Her own napkin had long since dried in the heat of the Albrecht bedroom and she found herself periodically coughing. She should have thought to wet it again before leaving.
The two firemen had already disappeared down the stairwell when they got to it. Jernigan pushed the door open and led the way. “Come on, Miss Mueller.” She followed him in, the two children close behind her.
Several flights down they could hear the scrape of the firemen’s boots and Lisolette prayed that they would be in time. The stairwell was smoky but the air was relatively breathable; the pressure in her lungs lessened a little.
“They’ve made some progress against the fire,” Jernigan Said.
“It’s vented on the seventeenth and eighteenth floors and they’re fighting it from the other stairwell, working their way in. It’s cut down a lot on the smoke.”
“It’s also a little chilly,” Lisolette said, then suddenly laughed at her complaint. If you could complain, she thought, everything was going to be all right.
Chris tugged at Lisolette’s hand. “Are Mommy and Daddy going to be all right?”
“Of course they are, Chris. They’re just sleeping.”
“If I say a prayer will that make them wake up any sooner?”
“I’m sure it will, Chris. We’ll both say a prayer-only very quietly, just inside your head.”
The sound of the firemen’s boots was receding even faster now.
“They’re beating us down,” Jernigan said. He was almost an entire floor ahead of Lisolette.
“I’m glad they are,” Lisolette said soberly. She was going to have to carry Martin, she suddenly realized; his slow clambering down the steps was holding them up too much. She couldn’t have done it before, but she thought she had enough of her strength back now. She leaned over and swung him up in the crook of her arm.
. The stairwell itself was strange to her, studded with pipes that jutted from the individual floors and ran underneath the individual landings.
“Harry, what stairwell is this? I’ve never been in it before.”
His voice floated back from almost a floor and a half farther down.
“You usually use the one on the north side of the building, Miss Mueller. This one’s the south one, it’s right by the utility core-the hollow core holding all the utility pipes and the inside elevators.
The scenic elevator runs right up the other side of it.”
She had more or less located herself now. A few more flights would see it. “Hurry along now, Chris, we don’t want to lag behind.”
“You need any help up there, Miss Mueller?”
“No, we can make it, Harry.”
She started to move her lips in a silent prayer then, not alone for Tom and Evelyn Albrecht, but for someone else.
It was only the second time that evening that she had had time to think of Schiller, trapped in her apartment.
CHAPTER 40
It was the first major fire for rookie David Lencho and despite the smoke and the frequently broiling heat, there was a perversely exciting quality to it. The fire had become a personal enemy to Lencho, a kind of fiery dragon whose existence had cast him in the role of St. George. He was on the nob of the two-and-a-half-inch hose, fighting his way down the corridor of the seventeenth floor. Directly behind him were two more hosemen, one of them Mark Fuchs, the chief’s son. He knew that Fuchs, too, felt the same kind of excitement.
Crouching down to avoid the layers of heat the ceiling, he slowly worked the nob back and forth, spraying the hall directly ahead of him with’ a heavy stream of water under high pressure. He wore his helmet reversed so that the long brim normally in back would protect his face from radiant heat when he kept his head down.
Visibility was poor but he could tell where the fire was by the heat.
A dozen feet behind him a secondary hose team was playing a spray of water over him and the other members of the advance team. Half the time he felt like a drowned rat or, at the very least, one that was in hot water-and occasionally scalding steam when the water from the hose struck a really hot spot.
He edged a few feet closer to the beast, glanced back briefly at Fuchs and laughed in his excitement. Fuchs returned it as Lencho crept another foot farther toward the blaze. He would-be good for about ten minutes up front and then he would have to be replaced. But that was enough for him to feel that he had gotten in his own personal licks against the fire.
He adjusted the spray on the nozzle slightly and played it over the ceiling, watching the tile Turn black and pieces of it scatter under the ‘force of the stream. Water rivulets coursed down his face from the cooling back spray. -There was a particular satisfaction in fighting fires, and a definite pleasure in working with men he respected. The men with him on the hose team he especially liked: Jenkins, the third man on the team, and Mark Fuchs, the son of the chief, would normally be on the nob in a tight situation like this but had traded with him a few minutes before to give him the experience. Fuchs was his own age and they had gone to school together. A year after Fuchs had joined the department, so had he.
Somewhere along the line Fuchs had managed to get married and now had a small son. Lencho laughed to himself. Where the hell had Fuchs found the time? He supposed one day he would settle down With a nice Jewish girl. He’d have to talk to his mother about that; she had more time to look around for one than he did.
The nob almost got away from him again and Fuchs yelled, “Watch what the hell you’re doing, Dave!” Lencho nodded, his smile gone. The hose was delivering more than 250 gallons of water a minute at a tip pressure of better than fifty pounds per square inch. It took three men to handle a two-and-a-half-inch hose and if they lost control of it, the heavy brass nozzle could whip around and brain a man.
Forty feet ahead he could make out the warped door of the utility room where the fire was supposed to have started. On his left and to the rear, the charred remains of Today’s Interiors still smoldered, although the major portion of the fire was out. Suddenly a piece of tile fell from the ceiling and landed on his gloved hand. He jerked his hand back in a reflex action; the hose sprayed erratically around the corridor walls as Fuchs and Jenkins fought it. Lencho lunged for the nob, caught it, and the three of them brought it back under control.
Fuchs leaned forward and shouted in his ear. “Do me a favor and don’t let it go again, okay, Dave?”
Lencho nodded. He peeled away his cloth-asbestos glove and glanced down at his hand. The place where the tile had hit was raising a blister the size of a half dollar.
It’d hurt for a week, he thought.- The fire was not quite so exciting any more. His face felt burned and raw and his nose was leaking mucus and his lungs had started to ache. He coughed and tried to edge’ farther forward again, making a few inches before his muscles gave out.
He suddenly felt a tap on his back and a voice shouted in his ear: “Okay, guy, you’ve had enough!”
The relief crew took over as he, Fuchs, and Jenkins dropped back to the landing. Chief Infantino was waiting for him there.
