Overhead, a late-arriving B-29 swept past, heading for its target. Normally such a straggler would be easy prey for the antiaircraft guns but the Black Widows were watching and waiting. Streams of tracer arched up from the ground. Before they could contact the bomber, two Black Widows dived in on the source. They hosed it with gunfire, then released four objects that wobbled as they fell on the gun battery. Kristianna saw great orange balls rising into the sky and the anti-aircraft fire ceased as suddenly as it had started.
“Jellygas.” Kristianna’s father muttered, “They are dropping jellygas on the city.” His stomach squirmed with fear at the ugly orange balls and what he knew they represented. And all the time the embers descending on them were getting thicker and hotter.
There was another thunder from behind them. At first Kristianna thought it was another bomber releasing its load, but it was a house collapsing. Helsinki was made of stone and stone doesn’t burn but the wood and the paint and the fabric inside stone buildings do. The bombs had blown windows in. That let the fire inside to gut the houses. Deprived of support, the stone shells were collapsing. She risked a glance behind and realized that the house that had just collapsed was in the street she had lived in. Her own home would follow, as surely as if it were already ablaze. If that was not already the case.
Nobody said anything. She and her family broke into a run, pushing anybody who got in their way to one side. They had to head west, as fast as they could. Ahead of them was the Mannerheiminte, a wide street that would act as a firebreak. Helsinki was lucky. The snow of the great storm turned the streets into rivers. They would stop the fires wouldn’t they? Only when the family saw the Mannerheiminte, it was already crowded with people, running south.
“Go back, go back! The Ilmala is burning. The fires are coming.”
Above the yelling of the crowds, Kristianna could see the glow of fires to the north as well as the east. There was no choice and Antti Kantokari knew it. He grabbed his daughter’s hand and the five of them plunged into the stream of people fleeing the fires started by the air raid. Already, the street was littered with discarded possessions as people threw away everything in the desperate urge to flee faster, to run further. Already, the old and the young started to collapse as the run for safety exhausted them. Over the sound of the fires, the cries of the crowd, yelling, weeping and sobbing, hammered at the ears. Over on the left, the great San Nicolas cathedral was already a mass of flames. That told Kantokari the truth. The Mannerheiminte lead east. It was taking the crowds on it back into the mouths of the fires. In running down it, people were simply heading back to their deaths. He grabbed his wife and daughter’s arms and angled his family across the road. They took the first westward-leading street he could find.
“They told us to stay on the wide streets.” His wife was sobbing with exhaustion.
“Not the ones that lead east. The fires are north and east. We must go south and west.” He looked around, this street was quieter. Perhaps all the people had already run to the west. “Come, we must go.”
Head of them was a small park with people already crowded into it for shelter. Kantokari lead his family into it in the hope it would give at least a temporary respite. The snowy slush made sitting down impossible but at least they weren’t running. Overhead, the Black Widows were prowling; goading the anti-aircraft funs into opening fire. One passed directly over the little park. For a moment Kantokari thought it was going to drop its jellygas onto the crowded spot of green but it ignored them and vanished again into the darkness.
“Father, look.” Kristianna’s voice was quiet. She pointed at the buildings to the west. They were highlighted by an evil glow of red. There were fires to the west as well. They were spreading towards the park that had seemed such a refuge.
Kantokari cursed to himself but thought quickly. There were only two ways out of this park that did not lead north or east, and one of them led back to the Mannerheiminte. The other was diagonally across the square. They did not have time to waste. “Come, we must move.”
“I cannot.” His wife was crying. “We must wait.”
“If we do we die. The fires are coming from the west as well. As soon as people realize it, they will try and escape and there is only one narrow street out of here. If we wait, we will not get to it in time.”
They set off. They moved as fast as they could towards the one street that promised a hope of safety. By the time they got there, the danger had become obvious. People were converging on it, driven by the reflections of fire in the windows and the steadily-increasing rain of embers. There was a crowd of people, fighting to get on to the one road out. Antti Kantokari waded into them, kicking and punching. He threw others out of his way, dragging his wife and daughter with him. His two young sons tried to help him through. It was primeval survival. Everybody was fighting to escape from the death-trap that had so recently been a place of refuge. Antti Kantokari broke through, dragging his daughter with him. He turned to reach for his wife and sons but they were swept away and beaten down by others, equally desperate to escape the fires. He tried to get back to them. The sheer force of the torrent of people forcing through the narrow gap gave the crowd irresistible momentum. It drove him and his daughter down the street.
Kristianna realized how desperately late their escape had been. Already, the buildings down one side of the street were burning. Flames tried to reach over to the fresh fuel on the other side. She saw people who got in the way of the hungry reach of the fires just burst into flames themselves. They fell to the ground in miniature copies of the great fireballs made by the jellygas. She knew nothing, except the need to run, to get away from the fires, to escape. What if the fires were in the south as well? Her mind held a map of the city, the Americans had started these terrible blazes to the north, east and west of the city. They blocked off every way out, trapping everybody in the great fires. The road she was on led south, towards the great church of Saint John. Beyond that was the Kaivopuisto park. Surely that would be safe?
The road split. One part led west back towards the dockyard. Kristianna avoided it. She looked for her father as she did so. He had gone; swept away in the crowds or caught by the fire. Saint John’s Church was already burning. The sight dissuaded many from taking that road but Kristianna ignored the fire and took the southern path. She skirted the inferno and headed away from the great fire to the north. She was exhausted. Her legs felt dead but they continued driving her south, past the fires that closed in from the Helsinkihafen on the east and the Aker Shipyard to the west. They carried her south, through the narrowing bottleneck between the three great fires that were gutting Helsinki and into the Kaivopuisto Park. Her legs only stopped when they took her all the way to the sea. There she collapsed. She lay on the beach as the waves washed over her. The long run had left her unable to move as she watched the fires converge on the city center.
Later, much later, she managed to half-drag, half-walk, half-crawl her way over to Harrakka Island, just a few hundred feet offshore. There with the rest of the refugees who had made it, she was safe. In her heart, she knew the truth. She was the only one of her family who had survived.