Ground Zero(44)

Reshmina’s family went slowly, staying with Taz and the guard. As they descended, more and more people joined them on the twisting switchback stairs that led down through the gray-and-brown stone walls of the village.

Higher above them, toward the top of the village, something exploded—P-TOOM—and Reshmina froze in fear. She turned to see the hilltop glow orange with flame. There were more cries, and more gunfire. The Taliban had arrived.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP. An Apache helicopter thundered by right overhead, and Reshmina ducked instinctively.

“That’s my people!” Taz cried, recognizing the sound of the helicopter.

Reshmina’s heart sank. Now the Americans were here too! That was good in one way: The Americans would keep the Taliban busy. But in another way it was very, very bad.

Now the village was a war zone.

Taz stopped in the middle of the stairs. “Maybe we can just flag them down, let them know where I am!”

PERRRT! PERRRRRRT! the helicopter’s machine gun erupted, and something exploded in the village with a BOOM.

“No, not now,” Reshmina told him.

“Nope! Not now!” Taz agreed, letting them hurry him along.

Reshmina suddenly heard the familiar sound of a missile hissing across the valley and turned to look. The villagers all around her knew the sound too, and they ducked, giving Reshmina a clear view of the thing as it streaked across the valley.

Shhhhh-THOOM!

The missile slammed into a house on the hillside, and the building exploded.

“No!” Reshmina cried.

“Reshmina, what is it? What’s happened?” Taz asked her.

Reshmina couldn’t answer. Couldn’t find the words.

The rocket had just destroyed Reshmina’s home.





Brandon kicked and fought, trying to get free of the people pressing in on him from all sides.

“Help!” he cried. “I can’t breathe! Please!”

More people cried out, and from below, someone shouted, “Back it up! Back it up!”

And then, mercifully, the people on the stairs did exactly that. The lady behind Brandon took a step back up, and that was enough to stop pushing him into the man in front of him. Brandon’s feet landed back on the stairs, and he grabbed the handrail as he fought to catch his breath.

“Coming through!” Richard cried somewhere up the stairs above Brandon. “I’m trying to get to my kid! Please!” The people on the stairs parted, and then Richard was there, holding Brandon while they both wept tears of exhaustion and relief.

“I just about lost you back there,” Richard said. “Promised your dad I wouldn’t do that.”

Brandon nodded, his head still buried in Richard’s chest. He’d been telling the truth when he’d told his dad he couldn’t do this alone. He couldn’t survive without Richard either.

“How did things clear up?” Brandon asked.

“The man with the bullhorn, upstairs. When he saw what was happening, he made people stop coming down for a minute. Gave us room to spread out again.”

Thank goodness for the man with the bullhorn, Brandon thought.

“I’m sorry I crushed you,” the woman behind Brandon told him. “I couldn’t help it.”

Brandon understood. So did the man in front of him when Brandon apologized for kicking him. “For what it’s worth,” the man said, “I was freaking out too.”

There were no stair exits at floors 8, 7, and 6, which made Brandon feel even more claustrophobic. What if people started pushing forward again? He couldn’t get out of the stairwell now if he wanted to. But they were so close. Just five more floors to go!

At last the stairwell dead-ended at a doorway on the second floor. There was a palpable sense of excitement from the people around Brandon as they all filed into a short, dark passageway. The crowd squeezed in more tightly again.

“Hey, watch the kid, watch the kid!” Richard said, keeping his hand on Brandon’s shoulder.

Things stayed tight but didn’t get out of control. As they inched forward, Brandon’s feet splashed through water, and he coughed from the dust and smoke in the air. If he didn’t know better, Brandon would have thought they were going toward the trouble, not away from it.

And then, at last, more than an hour after the first plane had hit the North Tower, Richard and Brandon stepped out into the tall, open-air mezzanine above the lobby. It was the same half floor Brandon had seen above him when he’d gotten his ID that morning, and he blinked in the bright, sudden sunlight coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“Keep moving!” a Port Authority policeman told them.

There were a bunch of Port Authority officers here on the mezzanine, all lined up with their backs to the windows. The Port Authority were the people who managed all the subways and tunnels and bridges and seaports in New York and New Jersey. They ran the World Trade Center too.

There were escalators right in front of Brandon that would take him straight down to the lobby and out the front doors onto the street. But the Port Authority police were directing everybody away from the escalators, toward a set of stairs on the far wall. Brandon was confused. Why couldn’t they just go down the escalators? That was the quickest way out of the building. Even if the escalators weren’t working, they could use them as stairs. Why send everybody all the way around?