Elsewhere, a building or a home burning individually—and as a rule under siege by volunteers—made a big candle for this block or that.
They went farther south. Henry had the lieutenant make their first stop, so he could inspect the injured on the banks of Crystal Lake.
Torches and bonfires glared on the near terraces, glimmered across the ice. Upon the metallic surface of the lake itself, men hurried hither and thither, some pulling children’s sleds heaped with clapboards and smashed steps, balustrades, broken ladders, branches, anything combustible. In the once-elegant yards all around other men were chopping. The earth was humanity—covered—a litter of supine men and women and children, blanketed, quilted, dressed like hobgoblins, warming fires spaced between. The snow here had turned to mud. And here the roar of the fire storm was a mumble. The earth quivered only a little.
Here, the night was rent by one single shriek, one voice of a myriad in agony. Lacey crossed himself when first he heard it, as he stopped his car and switched off its siren. Henry went closer. His skin pimpled with horror, his feet felt like freight, he wanted to retch. But the fires sent a drift of woodsmoke over the bloodscape and the burned-meat smell was abruptly overridden. He saw a doctor whom he remembered from the meetings.
“How’s it going?” Henry yelled.
“Don’t be a fool, man! Oh! You, eh, Henry?” The physician straightened up. A syringe glinted in his hand. “What can you expect?” he bellowed back. “They’re still dying! Blood’s run out. Plasma was out for a while—Army got some in. Cold. Some freeze.”
“I can’t spare any more people right now.”
“We’ve got people enough,” the doctor answered, bending even as he talked, fishing for an ampule in a case slung over his shoulder. “Unless you have more medical people.”
“No more medical people.” Henry shouted.
The physician stabbed a needle into the arm of a child. Her mouth opened. She was screaming. You couldn’t hear it at all, Henry realized. It was lost in the general scream.