Ground Zero(20)

Brandon’s eyes jerked open. His heart thundered in his chest and every inch of him quivered, like when he woke with a start from a nightmare. He was still sitting on the floor. He hadn’t moved. Hadn’t fallen.

But he was going to, if he stayed out here much longer. The wind was a living thing up here, pushing and pulling at him like a cat playing with a toy. Brandon had to get up, get out. The whole 89th floor wasn’t gone. He could see that now as his senses returned to him. There was still part of it, off to the sides and behind him. If he crawled along the broken hallway, he could make it around the corner, try to find the other stairwell. But his arms and legs were lead. He couldn’t make them move.

Whoomp-whoomp-whoomp-whoomp. Air pounded against Brandon and the floor juddered underneath him. Suddenly a blue-and-white helicopter rose up right in front of where he sat. The helicopter hovered, rotating back and forth to hold its position, and Brandon saw the letters NYPD written in white on its side. How often had he seen a New York Police Department helicopter flying by overhead and wondered what trouble they were headed for?

Now he was the trouble.

Brandon put a hand up to keep the wind from his eyes, and as the helicopter blocked the sun, he saw two people inside it, a man and a woman in dark blue uniforms wearing helmets and sunglasses. Brandon’s arms came to life, and he waved them over his head like someone stranded on a desert island trying to catch the attention of a passing ship. The helicopter pilot put a hand to the microphone that bent around from the side of his helmet, like he was talking to someone, telling someone about Brandon. They had definitely seen him! They were going to help! Brandon almost laughed for joy.

But the longer the helicopter hung there, the longer Brandon smiled and waved his hands, the more he realized that there was nothing the police helicopter could do. It wasn’t like they could land anywhere here on the 89th floor, or even get close enough to lower him a rope or a ladder. There they were, safe in their helicopter, and here he was, on the edge of a broken, burning building, with a thousand-foot-deep gulf between them.

Brandon lowered his hands and slumped against the door. He might as well have been on the moon for all they could do to help him.

The people in the helicopter must have been thinking the same thing. The woman pulled off her sunglasses, and Brandon could see the anguish in her eyes. She knew Brandon couldn’t hear her, not through the window of the helicopter, not over the thundering blades and the roar of the wind, but she said something anyway.

It might have been “I’m sorry.”

The helicopter turned and flew away, and Brandon lifted a hand goodbye. Maybe they could help someone else. Maybe they could help his father get off the roof—and Brandon too, if he could get up there.

Brandon’s arms and legs obeyed him once again, and he knew he had a decision to make. He had to move from this spot, get off this ledge. But which direction should he go? The easiest thing to do, the sanest thing, was slip back through the door behind him into the safety of the stairwell. But the only way that stairwell went anymore was down, and his father was up. There were two other stairwells though, and if one of them went up from this floor, Brandon might still be able to get to Windows on the World.

He had to try.

Brandon wiped tears from his eyes. The ledge he was on extended all the way along the interior wall to the south side of the building, which was still intact. Black smoke poured from the open hallway, but all Brandon had to do was crawl ten or fifteen feet along the ledge and he would be on solid ground again.

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.