The Hindenburg Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,71
theirs. Screams and whimpers and howls and moans resounded, and men with bloody burns, clothes in charred tatters, wandered vacant-eyed like zombies, looking for friends and loved ones. The wounded cried out, in German mostly, for their mothers, their wives, their husbands, their priests. And a priest was threading through the carnage, delivering last rites like a postman does the mail.
The smell of burned human flesh and burned clothing hung like a foul curtain; odors of alcohol and Lysol added to the nasty bouquet. Charteris began to cough—apparently he’d inhaled more smoke than he realized—and suddenly a gentle hand was on his arm, as a nurse shuffled the dazed author into an examining room and onto its white-papered table.
A fleshy, bespectacled, kindly-faced doctor in his thirties gave Charteris a quick exam.
“You’re one of the luckiest I’ve seen,” he told Charteris, who was putting his scorched shirt back on. “The nurse will apply some picric acid to your hands—couple of nasty little burns.”
“Is everyone being brought here?”
“To the first-aid station? Yes, but we immediately shuttle the worst cases to Paul Kimball Hospital—it’s close by in Lakewood.”
“Does anyone have a list?”
“Of who’s injured and who’s survived?”
“Yes.”
A commotion in the hall, accompanied by louder howls, signaled the arrival of more injured, who were still being carted over from the crash site by ambulance and auto.
“No list I’m afraid,” the doctor said, already halfway out the door, “much too early for that… if you’ll excuse me.”
Almost immediately a nurse came in with a small bottle of picric acid and some gauze and wet down his palms. She was a brunette of perhaps twenty-five, with a gentle plain face.
“Nurse, do you remember treating or even just noticing a pretty German girl with braided blonde hair, blue eyes?”
“Why yes—I didn’t deal with her personally, but I’m fairly sure she’s fine, just minor burns, like yourself. Your wife?”
“Is she still here?”
“I’m not sure. As negligible as her injuries are, she was probably discharged… is that better?”
“It’s fine. Where did you see her?”
“Down the hall to the left—she was standing next to a boy on a stretcher who was very badly burned, comforting him, sweet girl. He may have been taken to Paul Kimball Hospital, or… he may have died.”
Then she produced a clipboard and asked Charteris if he could sign his name; either the burns weren’t bad or he was in shock, because he had no trouble.
In the hallway he ran into Leonhard and Gertrude Adelt; their clothes were scorched rather worse than his, Leonhard’s nearly in tatters. Both of them had severe burns on their arms and faces, and Leonhard’s scalp looked to be burned to the bone.
“Thank God you’re all right, Leslie!” Leonhard said, over the moans around them.
“Have you seen a doctor yet?”
“No. We’re just on our way out—getting out of this madhouse!”
“You two need to see a doctor.”
The journalist shook his head. “My brothers are just outside and they’ll take care of us.”
Gertrude reached out, not touching him—her hand was too burned for that. “We’ll be fine, Leslie. Did you see Hilda?”
“No, I was just looking for her.”
“She’s barely scratched.” Smiling wearily, Gertrude gestured with her head. “She’s down at the end of the hall. Go to her—I think she’s in shock.”
As if the Adelts weren’t.
He told them good-bye, said, “Get to a doctor!” and made his way down the corridor, lined as it was with burn victims on stretchers, weaving around nurses, doctors, orderlies.
Shoulders slumped, head down, she was standing next to an empty, bloodstained, smoke-grimy stretcher. Her braids had come untangled and blonde locks dangled alongside her soot-smudged heart-shaped face, her white crepe dress torn here and there, new dabs of black added to its red-and-pink-and-black floral pattern.
“So they took him away, huh?” Charteris said.
She glanced up sharply. “Leslie… thank God!”
“You’ve been looking for me, then? Frantically?”
Wincing, she said, “What is it?”
“Good-bye, Hilda.”
Soon he was standing in the cool, rain-misted evening, his back to the small hospital, where ambulances and autos were still bringing in more wounded. Across the airfield the wailing sirens of fire trucks and police cars and ambulances had mostly died. The voluminous plumes of black smoke were beginning to get lost in the darkening dusk, and—from this distance at least—the orange flames were little more than a campfire, smoldering in the twisted glowing skeleton of the ship, around which the cops and firefighters could warm themselves. The hook-and-ladder trucks had dispensed their water and were disinterested onlookers, now.
“Leslie…”
Hilda’s husky voice.
He didn’t turn. “My condolences.”
Then she was next