Ground Zero(22)

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.”