More of the insects were finding their way to the woman’s last perch. She went after them with an atavistic violence, crushing and mashing to death whatever her foot could find. Dimly but thankfully she recognized that at least none of these roaches seemed to be the flying type. They were not reaching her face or eyes, only trying to climb her legs—and coming too thickly for her to handle for long. She cried out in anguish to the firemen again.

Peter Hubbard broke from the truck and rushed to the now-­extended ladder, which was beginning to rotate toward the roof railing. Hubbard lunged for the bottom rungs and started up. Firemen yelled at him and tried to pull him down. Despite his bandaged hand, he kept climbing desperately, while holding tightly to a dry-­ice tank he had grabbed.

Burdened as he was, Hubbard kept slipping, once nearly fell off altogether. All he heard was Elizabeth’s cry for help. He saw the insect swarm around her and realized the ladder would not close on the building in time. The only possible chance was to throw the tank across. It was heavy and his perch precarious on the swaying ladder. If the tank did not reach Elizabeth, she was doomed.

Holding tightly with his bandaged hand, Hubbard swung the clumsy fire extinguisher in an arc with all his muscle.

The tank hit the roof railing, teetered for a moment as the rotten wood broke, and started to drop away. Reaching with all her strength, Elizabeth managed to catch hold of the hose. The weight of the tank nearly pulled her off her platform, but she braced herself and managed to hang on. With the surging strength of ultimate desperation, she tugged the heavy extinguisher up toward the roof by its red tube, only to blink in terror as she saw the hose threatening to pull loose from the metal body. Taking the final chance that she might fall off the roof, Elizabeth made a lunge for the container itself. Her hands closed on it, and she grabbed it up to her chest like a salvaged child.

At once, she started the icy spray at the attacking roaches, making a circle of dead insects around her bleeding feet.

The very smallness of the trap she had led herself into proved a help now. The roaches were unable to converge on her from many directions. They could come only from the walls—which the firemen were now spraying heavily—or from under the roof door, which she could now control.

Relief and prayer tingled through Elizabeth body and soul. She was still in deadly peril, but she had assistance and she could hold the roaches at bay until the rescue ladder touched. She could hear it bumping against the roof behind her, and she heard Peter calling her stoutly to its safety.