Ground Zero

by Alan Gratz

  Brandon took a deep breath and maneuvered himself onto his hands and knees, his whole body shaking wildly. He wanted to close his eyes but couldn’t—he was afraid to even blink for fear of falling over the edge. He kept his eyes down, ignoring the open sky and the falling papers and the dangling wires. One hand in front of the other, one leg at a time, never less than three parts of him connected to the floor, Brandon inched away from the stairwell door toward the south end of the building. His senses were alive to every little thing, every hint of danger, and he picked up on things he never would have noticed before. The grime along the baseboards of the wall. The hint of slime the carpet left on his fingers. The smell of burning gasoline in the air.

  The wind whipped Brandon’s hair in his face again, and as he twisted his head to clear his vision, a gust of wind caught him and dragged him toward the ledge, knocking him flat on his stomach. His nightmare came back to him then, the invented memory of sliding over the edge, of falling, of leaving the earth, and his heart leaped into his throat. He cried out, an indistinguishable gurgle of fear and despair, and he scrabbled at the damp carpet, desperate not to fall. And then suddenly he was being lifted, dragged—not toward the ledge but away from it. Human hands grabbed him and pulled him into the smoke-filled hallway.

  Brandon and his rescuer collapsed to the safety of the floor far away from the ledge, and Brandon tried to catch his breath.

  “Holy crap, kid! Where’d you come from?” his rescuer asked, and Brandon looked up into a familiar face.

  Reshmina’s eyes flashed back and forth between Pasoon and the Taliban fighters on the ridge. The Taliban had to have seen her brother waving his arms. But they weren’t going to come down the mountain to him. He was going to have to go up to them.

  Pasoon put his hands down and started to climb.

  “Pasoon, stop!” Reshmina screamed. He was too far away to hear her. Reshmina flew down the hill after him. She was going much faster than he was now, but she still had to cross the ravine at the bottom of the valley and climb the hill on the other side. She was never going to make it.

  “Pasoon, you idiot!” Reshmina yelled. “Come back!”

  Pasoon ignored her. Up and up he climbed, getting closer to the Taliban.

  Reshmina stumbled into the bottom of the ravine. Her brother was already more than halfway up the next hill. He was going to get to the Taliban before Reshmina could catch him.

  “Pasoon!” she cried. “Please! Don’t go!”

  She looked around desperately, trying to think of anything she could do, anything she could say, to keep her twin brother from joining the Taliban.

  Whoomp-whoomp-whoomp-whoomp.

  Reshmina felt the vibrations before she heard it—an Apache. The American helicopter thundered over the hill and down the ravine like an angry animal, swooping so low it blew dirt and rocks up in great brown swirls. To Reshmina it looked like a giant metal grasshopper: green all over, with a big nose, long tail, and folded-up wings.

  Only, underneath these wings were missiles and machine guns.

  Was the helicopter out looking for their missing soldiers?

  Fsssssssshoom!

  A rocket streaked from one of the Apache’s wings straight toward the ridge where the Taliban had been standing moments before, and—F-THOOM!—the hillside exploded. Boulders broke loose from the mountain and tumbled down toward Reshmina. She dove behind a rock and cowered as the landslide rumbled by, pelting her with dirt and bouncing stones.

  The Americans weren’t looking for their soldiers. They were looking for revenge!

  Reshmina heard the Taliban firing back, their Soviet-era rifles clanging like metal poles on a corrugated roof. Tung-tung-tung-tung.

  When the avalanche settled, Reshmina peeked out from behind her cover. Had her brother been hit by the blast? She couldn’t see him anywhere.

  Pasoon! That idiot. If he was dead, Reshmina was going to kill him.

  Reshmina watched the Apache spin, its guns never leaving their target at the top of the ridge. White-hot streaks, as bright as the sun, shot out from underneath it like fireworks. Tracer bullets. They were so fast Reshmina saw them before she heard them. Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. The helicopter descended, getting closer and closer, and the sound of bullets hitting the hillside got louder and louder. Reshmina put her hands over her ears and winced.

  She had to know if Pasoon was all right. If he was hurt, the cowardly worm, she had to help him.

  Reshmina stood in a crouch and ran up the hill, hands still covering her ears. The Apache hadn’t seen her. It kept pounding the ridge where the Taliban had been—tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. Reshmina kept her head down, watching her feet on the broken ground as she ran. In a few breathless heartbeats, she was at the last place she had seen her twin brother. Fresh rocks from the explosion littered the ground.

  “Pasoon!” she cried. “Pasoon, where are you?”

  A hand reached out from behind a rock and yanked her to the ground.

  “Get down, you idiot!” her brother yelled.

  “Pasoon!” Reshmina cried. Her brother was alive! Reshmina threw her arms around him, then socked him in the arm.

  “Ow!” Pasoon cried.

  “I can’t believe you really left to join the Taliban! You have water for brains!”

  Bullets struck the hillside right above them, and Reshmina and her brother flinched.

  “We have to get out of here!” Reshmina cried.

  The Apache stopped shooting in their direction and roared off over the top of the hill in pursuit of the Taliban.

  Pasoon took Reshmina’s hand and pulled her to her feet.

  “Come on! Let’s go!” he said.

  The way back down into the ravine was too wide open—if the helicopter came back, it would see them, and it was clear the Americans were in a shoot-first, ask-questions-later kind of mood. Reshmina and her brother ran sideways along the hillside instead, hand in hand, away from the battle.

  “You’re not supposed to be here!” Pasoon cried.

  “Neither are you!” Reshmina yelled back.

  Reshmina’s feet slipped and twisted on the uneven ground, and she felt a twinge in her ankle. Her lungs burned and her heart felt like it was going to burst, but she kept moving. They couldn’t stop.

  Reshmina glanced back over her shoulder to look for the helicopter. There was still no sign of it.

  “Reshmina, watch out!” Pasoon cried, and she faced forward again.

  Open sky stretched out in front of Reshmina, and her heart dropped into her stomach. A cliff!

  Reshmina tried to turn, to dig her feet in and stop, and she fell down hard on her backside and lost Pasoon’s hand. She’d been running too fast, and her momentum carried her down toward the edge of the cliff. She twisted onto her belly to claw at the ground, but with a strangled scream she felt her feet and then her legs slip over the side. She was going over the cliff!

  “Reshmina!” Pasoon cried. He threw himself face-first on the ground and grabbed her hands, halting her before she slid entirely over the edge.

  Only Reshmina’s head and shoulders and arms were still on solid ground. The rest of her twisted frantically in the wind.

  Reshmina puffed and panted, swallowing a scream. She kicked and churned her feet, but there was nothing under her. Only air. In her mind’s eye, she saw herself losing her grip. Tumbling. Falling. She’d had this nightmare before, tossing and turning under her blanket as she fell through the sky, trying to grab hold of something, anything, as the ground rushed up to her, jerking awake in a sweat right before she hit.

  Only this time waking up wouldn’t save her.

  “Pasoon!” Reshmina cried. “Hold on! Don’t let me fall!”

  Her twin brother grunted and strained, trying to pull her back up. His eyes were wild with panic. Sweat popped out in beads on his forehead.

  Reshmina kept kicking her legs, trying to find something to stand on, to push herself back up.

  Then she felt it. Not a rock or a ledge
below her, but a vibration. It started in the pit of her stomach and moved up her body. The hair on Reshmina’s arms stood on end, and then, like an eagle riding a thermal, something big and powerful rose up behind her.

  WHOMP-WHOMP-WHOMP-WHOMP.

  The American helicopter.

  The Apache hovered in the air right behind her, so close that when Reshmina turned her head, she could see the pilot through the windshield. A huge machine gun, bigger than Reshmina herself, hung from the bottom of the helicopter. Wherever the pilot’s gaze went, the machine gun followed, as though one was tied to the other.

  The pilot looked left, then right. Then the pilot looked at Reshmina, still hanging over the cliff, and the machine gun aimed directly at her.

  “Hey,” said Brandon’s rescuer. “You’re that kid from the escalator this morning!”

  Yes! That’s where Brandon had seen him before. The bald Black man with the beard who had almost spilled his coffee all over Brandon and his dad. It seemed like forever ago, but it couldn’t have been more than an hour.

  “Looks like it turned out to be a bad day anyway,” the man said, helping Brandon sit up. “Name’s Richard.”

  “Brandon.”

  Richard pulled Brandon to his feet. “What the heck were you doing out there?” he asked. “You could have died!”

  Brandon shivered. “I’m trying to get up to Windows on the World. To my dad. He works up there.”

  The swirling smoke around them made Brandon cough. Richard held a damp T-shirt up to his own face with one hand, and reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a wet handkerchief for Brandon.

  “Here. I brought this in case I found somebody,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  They held on to each other as they made their way, crouching, down the dark, smoky hall of the 89th floor. It didn’t feel weird at all to Brandon to be clinging to a stranger right now. It was reassuring to connect with someone else who was sharing in the struggle to survive. It was the kind of feeling Brandon had with his father, he realized. Like they were in this fight together.

  They couldn’t see more than a few inches in front of them for the thick black smoke, and Richard felt his way along the wall. It smelled like a gas station up here, and the sharp odor bit at Brandon’s nose and throat and made him a little dizzy. He held the wet handkerchief Richard had given him closer to his face.

  They came to a steel door that was bent like the door from the stairs had been, still hanging on its hinges but folded down on itself like a crushed can. A sign on the door said JUN HE LAW OFFICES.

  Richard tried the door. When it wouldn’t budge, he pounded on the door. “Mr. Chen!” he called, his voice raspy from the smoke. “Mr. Chen! Are you in there?”

  Richard rattled the door handle again, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Through the gap in the door, Brandon could see steel beams and ceiling tiles and drywall piled up behind it.

  “I don’t think anybody can get through all that,” Brandon said. “Not until the fire department comes to help them climb out.”

  “If he’s still alive,” Richard said quietly.

  Brandon felt a chill run through him. So far, he hadn’t seen anyone seriously injured by the accident. He knew people had to have been hurt. Maybe even killed. There were whole offices missing right behind them. But to think that there might be a dead man right behind this door, buried in the rubble …

  “Worked on the same floor as that guy for seven years,” Richard was saying. “Every day I’d see him going in his office I’d say hello, and not once did he ever say a word back to me. Only thing I know about him is that he swings his tie over his shoulder when he stands at the urinals to pee. Now he’s probably dead. Crushed when the ceiling fell in on him.”

  Brandon stared at the bent door, wondering what it would be like to have the roof fall on him. To be crushed under the weight of an entire floor. Had Mr. Chen died right off? Or was he still alive under there somewhere, trapped and choking to death on the smoke from above?

  “Come on,” Richard said. “There’s nothing we can do for him, and we’re dying out here.”

  They kept walking, and Brandon saw the door to Stairwell C. Richard went right past it, but Brandon stopped.

  “Wait!” he said. “I have to go upstairs! I have to get to my dad!”

  “Listen, kid, I don’t think you’re getting up to the 107th floor,” Richard said. “Something bad happened somewhere upstairs. A bomb or something. You saw—the whole east side of the building is gone.”

  “It was an airplane! A passenger jet hit the tower,” Brandon said. “That’s what someone said.”

  “Jesus,” said Richard, looking stunned. “Come on back to the office with me. We called 911, and they told us to sit tight until the firemen get here. I’ve just been out collecting up any other survivors on the floor.”

  “No! I have to get to my dad!” Brandon protested. He opened the door to the stairs. It was filled with the same kind of debris Brandon had struggled up in Stairwell A, and the clear liquid coming down was a gushing waterfall. But at least the stairwell was still there. The way down was blocked, but Brandon thought there was room to scale the wreckage.

  “Whoa!” said Richard. “You can’t make it up through all that stuff.”

  Brandon climbed into the stairwell. “I did it before to get up here!” he called over his shoulder.

  “Wait, wait! You can’t go alone.” Richard hesitated, clearly trying to decide what to do. “All right, dang it. I’ll come with you.”

  It was easier going with two of them. Richard held onto something and pulled Brandon up, and then Brandon did the same for him, working their way through the wreckage like mountain climbers. They didn’t talk during the ascent. They were both huffing too much from the effort and from the thick smoke roiling in the air.

  Up they went past the closed door to the 90th floor. And the 91st floor. The rubble was its thickest yet at the landing to the 92nd floor, where they paused to catch their breath. The door to the 92nd floor was bent too, and behind it Brandon could see another mountain of debris. It was so hot that sweat poured from Brandon’s hairline, and he dragged a dusty sleeve across his face.

  “Ever been to New Orleans?” Richard asked him.

  Brandon shook his head no.

  Richard mopped his neck with the end of the wet T-shirt. “It’s like this in the summer,” he said. “Only without the smoke. Like you live on Mercury.”

  Brandon hoped it wouldn’t get any hotter. But every hope he had was dashed when they got to the 93rd floor. There was no way up this set of stairs. The landing was completely filled with drywall and metal and concrete, all packed down like a landslide.

  Brandon tried the door to the 93rd floor, but it was hot to the touch. Through cracks in the walls, he could see swirling orange flames inside. The heat burned Brandon’s face like a sunburn, and black smoke poured through every opening. The whole 93rd floor was on fire.

  Richard coughed through the wet T-shirt he’d pressed against his mouth. “We can’t go any higher, kid. I’m sorry. We have to go back down.”

  “No!” Brandon cried. “My dad is up there, and this is the only way up!”

  Brandon slipped and scrambled up the rubble. He pulled at pieces of drywall until they snapped. He tried to dig his way up. But there was just more drywall and steel behind that. And behind that.

  There was no way up to his father and Windows on the World.

  Brandon felt empty inside. Like the life had been sucked out of his body.

  “No no no no no!” he cried, kicking and beating at the wall of debris.

  Richard picked him up from behind, and Brandon thrashed in his arms.

  “We can’t go up, kid. I’m sorry,” Richard told him. “That plane must have hit the floor right above this one. Look. It smushed the whole floor. There’s no getting past that in this or any other staircase.”

  “But I have to!” Brandon said. Tears streamed down his face. “We’re
a team! Me and my dad. We’re a team and I left him and now he’s trapped up there and I’m all alone down here!”

  “I’m sorry, kid,” Richard said. “I really am. But we gotta get out of here before we breathe in too much of this smoke.”

  Richard carried him down, his feet slipping and scrambling, back to the 92nd floor. When they got to a flat part on the landing, Richard finally let him go, and Brandon slid down against the wall and buried his head in his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” Brandon said, sniffing. Richard had only been trying to help, and Brandon had thrown a temper tantrum like a two-year-old.

  Richard sat down wearily next to Brandon and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s all right, kid. I understand,” he said. “Look, there’s a dozen floors between here and your dad. That floor where all the smoke was coming from, that had to be where the plane hit. So your dad, everybody in Windows on the World up on the 107th floor, they’re all right.”

  All right maybe, but trapped, Brandon thought. Above a fire that’s burning up.

  “The firemen will put the fire out, and then they’ll hack their way up through that mess and save them. If they don’t take them off the roof by helicopter first,” Richard told him. “He’s gonna be all right, kid.”

  Brandon hoped so. But what about him? He and his dad needed each other to survive. How was Brandon supposed to handle all this without him?

  Richard stood and tried the door to the 92nd floor. “Jammed,” he said. “No telling if anybody’s alive in there, and no getting through. Let’s check the other doors on the way back down though, make sure everybody’s okay. Then we’ll go back to my office and wait for the firemen. All right?”

  Brandon nodded. Richard started to pick his way down through the rubble toward the 91st floor, and Brandon gave one last look up the stairs. The 93rd floor was the cut off. No one below it could go higher, and no one above it could go lower. That was the line that separated Team Chavez.

  From now on, Brandon was a team of one.