Ground Zero(40)

“No, I know,” Brandon said. “I’m sorry, Dad. You were great. I’m sorry I made things harder.”

His dad didn’t answer back.

“Dad?”

There was no voice on the other end of the line. Just dead air.

Brandon hung up and dialed again, but he couldn’t get through.

The number was no longer in service.





“Ha-ha!” the guard cried, leaping through the flowers.

Reshmina threw her hands over her head and cowered, but nothing happened. When she peeked out, she saw the guard through the flowers, a few meters away. He wasn’t looking in her direction at all. That snake had been lying about seeing her, trying to get her to reveal herself!

Reshmina stayed low and quiet, watching the guard. He was Afghan and young. Older than her, but not by much. A teenager. He was gangly and thin, with a wisp of beard on his chin.

A boy-man, Reshmina thought. Like the ANA soldiers she’d seen in the village.

This couldn’t have been his field, then. He was guarding it for someone else. For the Taliban? It could be. This was the kind of job they might have Pasoon doing soon.

“Is somebody there?” the boy called again. This time Reshmina heard the fear in his voice. He was just as scared as she was. Reshmina almost felt sorry for him. He was no villain. Just a boy who needed a job.

But he still had a gun, and his job was to shoot her if he caught her.

If I could only go back in time, Reshmina thought. Just go back in time ten minutes. Make a different decision that would erase this moment. But was ten minutes enough? How far did she have to go back to avoid the situation she found herself in? Back to the decision to wrestle her brother for the rifle? To follow him from their home? All the way back to the decision to bring the American soldier into her house?

What if every path she chose was the wrong one?

The guard was getting closer. Right or wrong, Reshmina had to make a decision, and fast.

Reshmina picked up a rock from the ground and, when the boy’s head was turned, she took a deep breath and threw it across the canyon. It clattered against the steep rock wall on the other side, and the boy spun and fired his rifle.

Ka-tung-ka-tung-ka-tung!

The echo in the little canyon was explosive, overwhelming. Reshmina put her hands over her ears and ran in a crouch in the opposite direction. Poppies parted and flattened as she ran. Would the guard turn and see her? Shoot her?

Suddenly Reshmina was at the side of the field, in the narrow space next to the canyon wall where no poppies grew. She threw herself to the ground and curled into a ball. She tried to listen, but her heart thundered in her chest and her ears rang from the gunshots.

The boy didn’t come, and she couldn’t hear what he was doing. She couldn’t wait for him to find her. Reshmina looked around and saw she was sitting on a thin, sloping path that ran along the edge of the poppy field. If she followed the path one way, she’d come out where she started. If she went the other way, she would come out where the boy had been leaning against the rock.

Reshmina stood in a crouch again and moved toward where the boy had first been standing guard.

She got to the rock, but the boy hadn’t returned. Reshmina chanced a peek over the top of the poppies and saw him on the other side of the canyon, where she’d thrown the rock. He held his rifle at the ready with tight white knuckles. He looked back and forth nervously, sweat beading on his forehead. The boy frowned when he couldn’t find anything, then looked back across the poppy field, to where Reshmina had run. He must have seen the path she’d cut through the poppies, because he moved quickly in that direction to investigate.

Reshmina didn’t wait to see what happened next. She slipped around the rock and followed the path out of the little canyon. When she was finally out of sight, she ran—ran harder and faster than she had ever run before. Up a ridge she went, slipping and sliding on the loose rocks. Then down into another dip in the peaks, stumbling and cutting herself on rocks and scrub brush. She couldn’t slow down. Not until she had put as much distance as she could between herself and the boy with the gun.

At last Reshmina came to a gap in the peaks, and she had to stop. She was out of breath, and her arms and legs were shaking too much.

Reshmina collapsed against a rock and cried. She cried for herself, out of fear and exhaustion. She cried for her family, who had no idea of the terror that was headed their way. She cried for Pasoon, who was lost and gone to her forever. And the worst of it—the absolute worst—was that every single thing that wore her down now, every single cut and bruise that stung her skin, every loss and betrayal that made her sob, all of it was her fault.

It was all because Reshmina had tried to give refuge to a man who asked for help.

Reshmina wiped her eyes with her headscarf and looked out at the view. To the north and the east, beyond the white-capped mountains, was Pakistan. To the west lay the familiar river valley of her home, the houses of her village climbing up into the hills like giant stairs. Reshmina sagged. She had traveled so far in a day, and yet had gone almost nowhere at all. And now she wasn’t sure she could go on. That she should go on.

Why keep trying when every decision she made was the wrong one?

A small pebble skittered down a steep hill a few meters away, as though something had knocked it loose. Reshmina’s eyes flashed to it. She caught the slightest of movements, as though the rocks themselves were alive, but nothing was there.