“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.
Lenore stepped carefully on the stub of her cigarette, thought how crazy that was and hurried back to her car, carrying the heavy counter.
Half an hour later, the first of more than three thousand men, women and children began climbing from ladders along River Avenue, from the new sewer where earlier that day Nora had walked. It was the biggest single mass exodus from the fire area.
The people who managed to reach Simmons Park got away easily along Willowgrove.
The people who made it to the reservoir, were safe.