Into the Whirlwind (8 page)

The night sky was illuminated only by the eerie orange glow of the fire. As they rounded the corner onto East Street, the crowds thinned. Most people were long gone, and it was easy for Mollie and Zack to jog toward the factory. The sparse traffic on the streets seemed more ominous than the surging crowds. Without the noise and bustle of the foot traffic, it was easier to hear the snapping timber and the menacing roar of the fire now only a few blocks away. The endless clanging of church bells merely added to the sense of urgency.

The moment her factory came into view, Mollie raced ahead
of him toward the metal door, but as she fumbled for the key, the door opened from within.

“I figured you’d be by soon,” a man said as he pushed himself forward on a crutch.

“Ulysses!” Mollie embraced the man and Zack noticed the empty space where there should have been a leg. “We’ve come to get the inventory out,” Mollie said.

“We’re one step ahead of you, Mollie-girl. I boxed up the watches and the lathes and they are on the train. Declan crated up the equipment, but we could use some help getting it to the train depot.”

The transformation on Mollie’s face was amazing. A smile lit her eyes as if the sun were bursting behind them. “God bless you, Ulysses!”

It was dark inside the factory, but enough of the orange-tinged light filtered through the high windows to illuminate the dark silhouettes of people inside. Zack didn’t know who these people were, but their loyalty to the 57th was strong enough for them to leave their own households vulnerable while they rushed to the aid of the company.

A balding man reached out to shake his hand and introduced himself as Oliver Wilkes. “I’ve worked at this company since I was fifteen,” he said. “This equipment won’t go up in flames while I’ve got a heart still beating in my body.”

Equipment for making watches was mostly small, and they packed up the tools quickly. Five minutes later, Zack and Oliver Wilkes carried the crated equipment to the depot. A single train remained at the station, the doors of the boxcars wide open as workers from the nearby factories stuffed the interiors with bolts of fabric, half-made furniture, and pieces of machinery. Mollie’s stash of watches and her few crates of equipment were an easy fit. It was dark inside the musty interior of the boxcar,
but Zack loaded the crates into a corner and secured them with bands. He stacked the two satchels from his parents on top.

“Do you know where this train is headed?” he asked Mollie.

She glanced over her shoulder. “Someone from the piano factory said it is going to Evanston to wait out the fire. If the tracks aren’t damaged, it should be back in a day or two. I’m not sure what I’ll do then.”

Her lip wobbled as her gaze tracked back to the empty factory. In all likelihood, there would be nothing left of her building when the train returned. Earlier this evening, he had wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled and those ridiculous braids came tumbling down, but it was hard to resent a woman who held up so valiantly as her world burned to ashes around her.

“Could someone help us?” a voice shouted. Zack sprang down from the boxcar. At the neighboring car, two men were struggling to lift a piano. Zack vaulted over to prop his shoulder beneath the heavy back end of the piano. Two mighty heaves and they hoisted the piano into place. Behind him, three more upright pianos waited to be lifted aboard. It took less than five minutes to load all three inside.

The railroad yardmaster walked along the lines, sliding the heavy doors closed with a loud, clattering rasp. “That’s it, then,” he called out.

A man came running down the platform, waving his hat. “Have you got any more space?” He was breathing so hard he doubled over, but managed to keep speaking. “I’ve got two dozen oriental rugs less than a mile away. I can get them here in ten minutes. Please.
Please
.”

The worker shook his head. “Can’t wait any longer. We just heard that Michigan Avenue is on fire. I’ve got to get this train out before the fire hits the tracks. Maybe you can catch a train on the north side of the city.”

The man shook his head. “No good. The State Street Bridge is on fire. No way out.” Zack didn’t think the news could get worse, but it did. The rug merchant breathlessly recounted how a paint factory had caught fire, spilling barrels of oily waste into the river. “It is a complete disaster,” the rug merchant said. “The river is on fire and the bridge is about to go under. The fire has jumped the river to the north side.”

Zack looked down at Mollie, her face blanched with shock. “Then it is headed for my home,” she whispered.

His heart lurched as he watched the color drain from her face. His west side townhouse was still safe, but Mollie’s north side home was not going to be spared. “Come back home with me,” he said. “It is the only place that will be safe for you.”

She swallowed hard and straightened. “I’m going north.” Picking up her skirts, she started dashing up the street before he could stop her.

“Miss Knox!” Such formalities sounded ridiculous. “Mollie! Mollie, don’t be a fool!” he yelled after her, but if she heard him, she made no indication as she ran faster. Her skirts were hiked around her knees as she bolted forward, and he watched until she was swallowed by the crowd heading north.

A group of men clustered around the rug merchant, who had a better idea of where the fire was going. The heat and wind were whipping up firestorms that careered down narrow alleys, creating columns of fire that looked like tornados, picking up burning timbers and hurling them through the air. The timbers landed on wooden roofs, igniting building after building. The fire had already leapt north of the river in two places, where the roof of a turpentine plant had caught fire. If the roof caved in, there would be another huge explosion.

And Mollie was headed straight into the center of it. Did she even realize how bad it was on the other side of the river?

He didn’t stop to think, he just ran after her.

The farther north he traveled, the worse the congestion. The street was littered with sofas, highboys, and abandoned stoves. The owners put them outside and fled, assuming things left in the middle of the street would be safer than in the wood-framed buildings. The abandoned property slowed the crowds and added to the panic. His foot caught on a bedframe, but he regained his balance and kept pushing farther north.

“Mollie!” he shouted, looking in vain. Cinders flying on the wind felt like burning pinpricks on his face. He swiped his face and squinted to see through the smoke, looking for a brave, foolhardy young woman wearing a light blue dress. He shouldered forward, past a woman lugging an iron kettle and a horse that had collapsed from exhaustion.

He saw her angling through the crowd. “Mollie!” Unencumbered by the bags and cases that most people carried, she was making quick progress.

He bolted after her. “Are you insane?” he said as he drew alongside her. “The bridge is on fire and it’s dangerous out here. Come back home with me.”

She barely spared him a glance. “I’m heading for the Rush Street Bridge. I heard it’s still open.”

He grabbed her arm, and she skidded to a stop. “Mollie, it’s not safe. The roof of the turpentine plant is on fire. It is only a matter of time before it blows, and you are heading straight into the worst of it. You can’t save your home. You need to accept that.”

“Don’t you understand?” She was practically screaming. “Frank Spencer is at my apartment
.
He is
blind.
I can’t leave him there.”

Understanding hit him like a kick in the gut. There was total anarchy in the streets, and it was hard to stand upright in the
crush of surging bodies. Children were crying, a horse that had thrown its rider galloped in a panic. And every few minutes a downburst of wind brought a shower of sparks and ash down from the sky. No blind man, no matter how capable, could navigate this chaos.

Rather than come with him to safety, Mollie was heading into the path of the fire. He didn’t know if he should hug her or strangle her. “Then I am going with you.”

Mollie didn’t trust Zack Kazmarek any further than she could throw him, but at this moment, he was a good man to have at her side. He looked angry enough to spit, but he said nothing as he grabbed her hand, took the lead, and began clearing a path for her. He was at least a foot taller than she and made better progress barreling through the dense traffic and abandoned wagons. A sharp pain in her shin from hitting a potbellied stove almost sent her to her knees, but Zack hauled her upright. Why had people been so foolish as to dump their belongings in the middle of the streets?

Every bell in the city must have been ringing. From the courthouse, the schools, and even the churches, every bell was clanging. Could anyone possibly still be asleep? Mollie reached for her father’s watch. It was an hour past midnight, but it seemed every person in the city had flooded into the streets.

If she was this frightened, how terrified must Frank be? Would he even still be in his apartment? The southern skyline was ablaze with an unholy red glow, but the fire still seemed to be about a mile from her apartment. At the end of the street, a handful of firefighters battled the blaze, grasping hoses as jets of water arched toward the flames.

A bearded man carrying a typewriter jostled her forward,
driving her to her knees and causing her to scrape the palms of her hands on the gravel. Zack’s strong hands encircled her arms and hauled her upright. “Take it easy,” Zack bellowed at the man.

The street was chaos. A young boy clutched a struggling puppy, while his father balanced an oversized family portrait on his shoulder, unaware a spark had landed on the canvas and it was burning. Wagons piled with belongings snarled the forward momentum. Mollie clutched Zack’s hand, terrified of getting separated from him.

It was getting hard to breathe, every lungful hot with smoke. Two men loitering outside by the broken window of a tavern took swigs from a bottle of whiskey. One man tossed the half-full bottle into the air, and the other took out a pistol and shot it, shooting a spray of whiskey over the crowd. “Whoo-hoo!” the shooter howled in delight. A drenched bystander lunged at the drunken shooter, landing a fist in his face and knocking him out cold.

These people were turning into animals. Mollie stared in horror. Was this what became of people confronted with losing everything?

Zack tugged her forward. “He did us all a favor,” he said. “Drunken idiots firing into a crowd will make this stampede even worse, and we’ve got to hurry. The turpentine plant is about to blow.”

He was right—it made no sense to get distracted by the drunken fools. She needed to rescue Frank, but traffic had slowed to a crawl. The intersection of the street was blocked by a fire engine angled at the base of a grand church. A crew of firefighters manned the engine, cranking the pistons and holding the canvas hoses to shoot streams of water in high arcs over the fire.

Lines of fatigue were carved onto the firemen’s faces. These
brave men were manning their engine while their own homes were probably burning, but here they stood, laboring in the scorching heat to save the city. “God bless you, sir,” she said to the exhausted fireman holding a hose as the crowd pushed her forward.

For every drunken idiot, there were a dozen people who lifted a fallen woman to her feet or carried a child to safety. Men who sacrificed their own homes to keep the fire hoses functioning. She glanced up at Zack. There was a man who helped a woman reach the other side of town to rescue a blind attorney he barely knew. Had she been wrong about Zack?

The ground shook and a deafening boom sounded from behind. She fell to the ground, clasping her hands over her ears. The weight of Zack’s body covered her back, protecting her from the catastrophe behind them.

Heaven help them all, the turpentine plant had just exploded.

Please, God, I’m sorry. I wish I had been a better person.

Screams and shrieks filled the air, and a wave of blistering heat scorched her skin. The stench of burning chemicals seared her throat, and a wind so fierce it whipped her hair from its moorings pummeled them.

Please, God, don’t let me to burn to death
. She turned in Zack’s arms, clasping him around his back and pressing her face against his chest. She didn’t want to die alone.

Sparks showered down. Was a wall of fire coming next? She squeezed her eyes shut. If the flames were next, she didn’t want to know.

She clung to Zack tighter. Was this man going to die because he’d tried to help her? “I’m sorry,” she whispered against his neck.

“I’m sorry, too.” His arms tightened as another massive roar filled the night air, a different noise than before. She glanced
across the street just in time to witness the bell tower of the church collapse, the massive stones tumbling down, bringing the rest of the building down. Within seconds the grand church was a pile of bricks and shattered glass.

An eruption of limestone dust burst from the rubble of the church. Mollie buried her face in Zack’s jacket to protect against the onslaught of chalky powder. It was hard to draw a proper breath. Zack hauled her upright and propelled her forward.