Free Into the Whirlwind by Elizabeth Camden

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 thecrush 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