The Glass Inferno

CHAPTER 59

His worries about what might have happened to Chief Karl Fuchs had preyed on Infantino long enough. His first stop was at the emergency first-aid station that had been set up on the eighteenth floor near the stairwell. It was here that Infantino discovered Mark Fuchs, his clothing ripped and torn from the explosion itself and from subsequent burial beneath the resulting debris. Fuchs had been dazed and semiconscious for half an hour and was just now coming out of it.

Except for second-degree burns and severe lacerations about the face and shoulders, his chief injuries stemmed from shock.

Infantino found him sitting on the edge of a cot, staring into space.

He took one look and turned to the rescue man in charge. “Why the hell hasn’t this man been evacuated?”

“Chief, we don’t have that many men to help the injured down the stairs. And except for a few burns, he’s in far better shape than the rest of them. Besides, he refuses to go.”

Infantino turned back to Fuchs. “Mark, you’re as bad as your old man-stubborn as they come. Look, you want to go downstairs by yourself?

Do I have to order you down?”

Fuchs’s face was without emotion. “What happened to Dave? They won’t tell me.”

“Dave?”

“Lencho. He was just ahead of me hen the blast occurred. He probably touched it off when he opened the storeroom door.”

Infantino stalled, trying to figure out Fuchs’s state of mind and how much bad news he could stand. “How’d you survive?”

“An overhead beam fell over me and the rest of the debris piled on top of it. You didn’t answer my question.”

Infantino felt uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Mark. He was right in front of the blast.”

“Bad?”

“He’s dead. It killed him instantly.”

For a moment the younger man seemed on the verge of tears and then, with obvious effort, controlled himself.

“That’s too bad.” Softly, with pity: “He was a lousy fireman.”

“We’d better get you to the hospital for a checkup,” Infantino said.

Fuchs didn’t move. “They told me the old man was nosing around on sixteen after the blast.”

If he told him why, Infantino thought, young Fuchs might never leave.

“That’s his privilege,” he said gently.

“Theoretically I’m in charge but I’m not about to put a bridle on an old war horse.” He tried to change the subject. “Look, you’re in no shape to be hanging around up here. Get down to the first-aid station below and if they want to send you to the hospital, go. It’ll probably only be for a short while. Besides, it’s free.”

Fuchs’s eyes.were chilly and old. “Quit bullshitting me, Chief.

The old man came looking for me, didn’t he? And nobody’s seen him since, have they?” His voice trailed off.

“It was a dumb thing for him to dole And you’re waiting for them to bring him here, right?”

Infantino asked.

“You’ve got it.” Defensively he added: “He’s my father.”

He was wasting precious time, Infantino thought. He’d wanted to avoid talking about it altogether and if he had, to break it to young Fuchs gently. But there wasn’t going to be time for that.

“Okay, Mark,” he said coldly. “You’re right, the chief came up looking for you. He pulled rank on Miller and got on the floor.

There’s been no word from him since, and if he started with a full bottle for his respirator the air in it must be gone by now. There’s a rescue squad looking for him; I came up to help-there’s not much else I can do until the new equipment arrives from Southport. One way or the other, I’ll find your father. We had our difficulties but besides being my superior, he was also my friend. I’ll make a point of getting word to you just as soon as I find out anything, regardless of what it is.

If it’s good news you’ll be among the first to know. If it’s bad I’ll let you know just as soon.”

He stood up from the box he had been sitting on. His voice was now icy. “You’re cluttering up the rescue station here, Fuchs.

They’ve got men more seriously hurt than you to worry about. Go downstairs and let the doctors look you over-that’s an order.”

He turned to go and Fuchs suddenly said, “Chief Infantino.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t try being a nice guy. Just be professional. It’s easier on the rest of us that way.”

Infantino said quietly, “You’ve got a point.”

Fuchs let himself be led out into the stairwell and helped down the steps. Infantino followed as far as sixteen, then turned in at the stairwell door. The corridor was slippery with water and cluttered with a tangle of hoses that led from the stairwell standpipe. The smoke was light at the landing entrance but thickened rapidly a few feet farther in. Boiling clouds of smoke churning at the far end of the corridor, past the elevator shafts, marked the present extent of the fire. Occasionally the dull orange flicker of flames could be seen through the smoke. Infantino started to cough, slipped on his mask, and picked his way down the corridor until he ran into a hose crew. He knelt and tapped the rear man on the shoulder, bellowing into his ear: “Where’s the rescue team that went to look for Chief Fuchs?”

The man turned slightly-and shouted back: “Second feeder corridor off is one. They’ve covered the others and have been working their way in.”

There were two ways of doing it, Infantino thought, and that was the wrong way. They had assumed that Fuchs had started searching the feeder corridors closest to the stairwell landing, which was easier and quicker but hardly logical. Chances were the old man had gone directly to the farthest corridor, the one at whose end the explosion had occurred. He had probably been knocked out or pinned by falling debris, or else …

Infantino turned and ran back to the stairwell landing.

“Who’s got a spare respirator? Any bottles with pure oxygen?

Okay, give them to me.” -He ran back in past the hose crew, cutting off into the feeder corridor just before the fire itself, catching the spray from the nob full against his side before the crew could Turn the hose away. Then he was past it and into the no-man’s land that was the battlefield for the wars fought between fire and men, the burned-out areas that were desolate marshlands of ash and water.

It was a land of charred wars:and studding, of thick, greasy smoke, of burned-out offices, of twisted, half-melted skeletons of fire-blackened typewriters and adding machines, of shredded draperies dripping water on smoldering carpeting. Farther down the corridor, the fire had consumed most of the combustibles, and the active blazes had ‘been extinguished.

He passed a salvage crew pulling apart the smoking remains of a pile of office furniture. The offices in the area had been completely gutted, sagging metal wastebaskets and half-melted hangers drooping from warped coat hooks indicating how intense the fire had been. The smoke was considerably ‘heavier now.

At a cross corridor, Infantino hesitated, considering his next move.

He could hear the salvage crew moving up behind him, dampening down the last of the smoldering debris. To his left, an entire section of acoustical ceiling had collapsed as its supporting walls had buckled.

Here the debris was surprisingly free of the touch of fire. The collapse had apparently denied air to the fire in this section and only occasional tendrils of smoke drifted up from the heavy mass of wreckage. He was about to Turn to the right-hand corridor when his eye caught a gleam of rubber and canvas.

He knelt and scrabbled away at some of the fragments of tile.

What he had seen was the tail end of a fireman’s slicker. He heaved a section of the debris to one side and uncovered a booted foot.

He started to work feverishly now, tugging desperately at the hot wreckage and prying away hunks of plaster and tile and lengths of partially burned two-by-fours. In a few minutes he had tunneled part way underneath the pile, exposing the man below up to his waist.

Suddenly the stack of debris he had pushed to one side began to slip.

He grabbed a length of metal pipe that had fallen from the ceiling area and used it to prop Up the wreckage. It was some minutes before he could grab the man about the waist and gently ease him out from under the remaining mass of tile and charred studding.

He turned him gently over on his back. Chief Fuchs.

For a moment, -Infantino thought the old man was dead.

His respirator mask was lying to one side and his skin was acyanotic blue. Then he noticed Fuchs’s chest moving slightly. He quickly removed his own mask and tried giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

After a moment, the chiefs chest heaved spasmodically and settled into a more normal breathing cycle. Infantino scrambled back into the corridor where he had left the spare respirator and the tank of pure oxygen. He had forgotten to put his own mask back on but that could wait a minute. He accidentally took a lungful of acrid smoke and started coughing.

He forced himself to stop while he tightened the mask on Fuchs’s face and carefully adjusted the oxygen flow. Then he quickly strapped his own respirator back on and tried to lift Fuchs to his shoulder.

Jesus, what was wrong, a little smoke and some exertion and he was dizzy as hell…. He tried to half carry, half drag Fuchs down the corridor.

Suddenly he felt other hands taking the chief from him.

The salvage crew had abandoned their hoses and ran to help him.

Two men carried the chief down the corridor and the third put his arm around Infantino and helped him down The hall toward the stairwell.

Once on the landing, he took off his mask and sat down on the steps for a moment to let his head clear. He started coughing again but it wasn’t too bad, not serious enough to require attention. A moment’s rest and some fresh air …

He craned his neck and watched the salvage crew carry Fuchs down the steps. He hoped desperately he had found.

the stupid, obstinate, brave old bastard in time.

He watched a moment longer and automatically started to move his lips in the old familiar litany: Holy Mary, Mother of God.