the awful acrid smell of black smoke rising from the remains of fires that the recent rains had extinguished-the other smoke , white and piercing , curling upward out of basements still ablaze-the stains on everything-the bodies in the streets , twisted in their final agonies-the look of madness in the eyes of those few lingering living people who now and then peered out from the remains of their homes- all glory vanished .