Philip Wylie - Tomorrow!

Hook and Ladder Company Number 17 pulled hack to Broad Street, according to plan. The sea of fire began at Washington, to the north. Nothing could be done to stop a fire storm. It had to burn itself out, leaving just ash, the Hiroshima effect. The temperature inside it would rise to six thousand degrees or better. Any people alive, under that circle of one flame, would crisp and cremate, or, escaping that in some deep cellar, suffocate. For all the oxygen of the atmosphere near by would be used by the fire. Everything that could be oxidized would burn. The “air” would be CO and CO 2.

They reeled in their hoses and backed and filled until the equipment was turned around, the hook and ladder, the chemical engines, the pumps, the hose wagons, the chief’s car. Then they got aboard and went. It was their second major move. The first had been made in Condition Yellow—when they’d rendezvoused in Edgeplains and waited. It was a good tactic: the firehouse had been wrecked.

They thought maybe they could save the Police Station and everything from there south.

So they came over from Sunset Parkway again, cast, to the station. They noted, on the way, that the CD people were on the job. They’d dynamited clear through from the parkway to River Avenue, where a row of wooden houses had caught. Two bulldozers, sweating it out in the heat, had knocked down a scrabble of advertising signs, a house, and some miscellaneous junk that would otherwise have carried fire deeper into Green Prairie.

The chief, going past, cut his siren and tramped on his horn and waved, and one of the men on a dozer waved back.

When they got to the station, they piled out. There were lights in the windowless building and even the green lights outside were burning again. An auxiliary plant. Over toward Bigelow and Cold Spring, it looked comfortingly dark, though the firemen knew brands and sparks would be raining down there and probably clear to the city limits. The CD people would have to take care of that. The business of Number 17 was the big stuff, like the row of stores blazing on Broad. Fortunately, the wind blew toward the center of town from every compass point, feeding the fire storm; it made peripheral fire-fighting practicable. If it hadn’t been for that in-sucked wind, all Green Prairie would have gone.

The trucks fanned out. The growling sirens fell silent. Caps fell from fireplugs, hoses were screwed on, streams of water traversed Broad and crashed into the seething row of stores, sending up inverted spark-rains that could not be seen against the central city, the solid background of flame. Now, it vanished at the top—an unbelievable fire mountain that pierced a downreaching, outspreading pall of smoke. Smoke, with the dust from the bomb, canopied the Sister Cities.

Lieutenant Lacey, looking military neat, came out of the Police Station and pointed at a huge lump of debris in the street—a tangle of metal, half-melted, unrecognizable, and as big as a small house. “It fell,” he yelled in the fire chief’s ear, “right after the blast. Think your men are safe around it?”

The chief stared. “God knows! Around it is where they gotta be, anyhow, if they’re going to keep this fire from spreading.”

“I phoned the school,” Lacey said, “for one of those radiation people. They haven’t got many. And Christ knows we need ’em in a million places!”

The chief nodded. A roof fell across the street and he ran from the station steps to deal with the changed circumstances. This conflagration would have been a three-alarmer, in ordinary times; it was a mere match-sputter now, which the Green Prairie company would have to deal with alone.

The Ford came fast, considering the condition of the streets.

Somebody had stuck CD flags on both sides, so Lacey ran down and yanked open the door. “Big gob of metal dropped in the street,” he said. “I’ve kept my men clear of it, but the firemen have to work beside it.”

“I’ll check.”

Lacey stepped back and stared. It was a woman.

She piled out, wearing some sort of plastic thing that made her look like an Arab, and carrying a box with dials and wires. He followed her.

She didn’t even glance at the fire engines or the men swarming in the street or the blazing buildings. She went through the puddles, in boots, to the girder or rail mass he’d pointed out. She held a shiny metal rod out at it and began walking slowly around it. Because it was a woman, Lieutenant Lacey went right along with her. He could see, in the heaving firelight, that the dials on her gadget were jumping. But that didn’t make her hack away from the big slag heap, so he didn’t back away.

“It’s hot,” she said. “Plenty.”

“We’ll hose it down,” he answered.

“I mean—radioactive. Looks like something blasted from a building. Steelwork and wiring. Balled up in the air and hurled out here.”

“Is it killing the men?” he asked.

Lenore chuckled and shook her hooded head. “No. They’d be safe even sitting on it, for a matter of a few hours. But I wouldn’t want it in my dining room for good.”

“Cigarette?” Lacey asked.

Lenore unzipped her transparent face protector. “I’d love one! Heaven knows when I had my last one, and I’ve got a list of calls to make”—she jerked her head toward her car—“as long as my arm.” She threw back her hood, inhaled, and said, “Thanks. You look spic and span, Lieutenant.”

Lacey grinned. “This is the third uniform I’ve had on tonight. First one caught fire.

Second one got—bloody….”

“Sorry.”

He said. “Sorry? The devil! Rugged night!”

Lenore took a long look at the seething fire storm. “It is that.”

“You’re the Bailey girl, aren’t you?”

“I am. Why?”

Lacey answered, ‘Thought you might like to know something. My men have searched from Broad, here, to Ash. Your mother was pretty badly cut up. Or did you know?”

Lenore shook her head. “Dad?”

“Nobody else in your house, that we found. Your mother’s up at the Crystal Lake Church. She’ll live, I guess. Maybe she’s on the lawn, though, so no use looking. The church is crammed with the ones worst off.”

“I haven’t time,” Lenore answered. She said, “Poor Mom!”

A man ran up the street toward them. “Hey!” he yelled. “Hey!”

“Another loony,” Lacey muttered. He reached out with one arm and stopped the man.

He wasn’t out of his mind; he was merely burned badly and having trouble seeing. “I came across Broad on Bigelow from the cemetery,” he said, choking. “Place is loaded and the people can’t get any farther. Broad’s too hot. Look at me!”

“Have to blast a way to ’em,” Lacey said. He stared toward the fire chief.

“They’re cooking in that graveyard!” the man said. He added, “Cooking alive. Thousands of them. Oh, my God, my face hurts me terrible.”

Lacey stared at him. “Go up in the station. Say I sent you. Lacey’s the name.” He freed the man. He’d need another uniform, now, Lenore thought. And she thought of the cemetery, long and wide and open, back behind the fire that was raging along the north side of Broad.

Something stirred in her mind and receded and came to the fore. “Doesn’t that new sewer, under River Avenue, cut close to the cemetery?”

“My Lord!” Lacy answered.

He left her. He ran to the chief.

Lenore saw them talking briefly, a two-man pantomime against the flames. Then the chief tapped some men, piled into his car, and it turned. Its red eyes glowed as it headed for River Avenue—and a manhole: there were manholes near Restland, too, and emergency exits; if necessary, they could also dynamite a hole.