Pretty soon he stopped.
He stopped because the street ahead was solid with people lined up—or, rather, just there in a solid mass—trying to get to the Infirmary. They were all hurt. Some were bleeding and some were burned and many were both. Some had no faces as such, Nora noticed, and some had bones showing through their flesh and even through their clothes. And the whole mass of them, thousands and thousands, made one loud sound like community singing. A lot of people were already on the ground, unable to move or dead, and nobody paid any attention to them.
“I’ll have to get through somehow,” Willis said.
“It isn’t possible.”
“ We can’t let her wait for her turn here. She’ll die, most likely.”
Jeff stepped out of the car. His hair started to blow and his coat Bickered and Nora realized it was very windy. That would be the air moving in to feed the fire storm and it could reach hurricane force, they had often said, and suck fire engines and even people into its center to burn. The butler took a look at the hurt people, who were all around him now, and a long look at the big torch in the sky, and he just ran, like the panicky maids.
“Smelled’ em, I guess,” Willis said.
Nora stepped out. He didn’t prevent it. She felt the coldness of the pouring air on one side and the heat of the veritable Mount Everest of fire on the other. It was about the same altitude, she thought, to its top, where big slices of fire jumped up independently, in the sky, above the summit. She drew a breath and she thought Willis was right. They smelled like hot meat, burning fat, smoking grease and burned hair.
Then a terrible thing happened.
Willis got out of the sedan, too, and Mrs. Sloan was in it alone, and Willis suddenly grabbed his shoulder. His face became distorted and he tried to say something, tried to gesture, but he fell down on the pavement of the street. Nora squatted down and shook him and said, over and over, “Mr. Willis! Mr. Willis!” But he didn’t say a word so she knew his heart had failed.