and would the tenth-grade princesses , and even arrogant timmy , and most of the others , too , wind up with skull fractures and severed limbs and mangled chests and ... for a second just before he reached the top of the escalator jack saw giant chunks of plaster and metal girders showering down , heard the terrible cracking of the mezzanine floor , the screams , too - inaudible , they were still printed in the air .