Ground Zero(47)

How many afternoons had Brandon and his dad spent watching Batman and Superman and Looney Tunes cartoons? They were both big fans, and they loved going in the Warner Bros. Store and looking at all the superhero T-shirts and stuffed cartoon animals and movie posters.

All of it was drowning in sprinklers now.

As the water poured down, Brandon pictured his dad trapped up in Windows on the World. Smoke pouring in, and no water to put out the fire climbing up from below.

“Brandon, we have to go,” Richard told him. “We’re almost out.”

“They have phones in the store,” Brandon said, wiping his eyes. “We could try my dad again.”

“Not exactly the best place to stop,” Richard said, squinting up into the water coming down from the sprinklers. “Come on. We’ll call from a pay phone out on the street.”

The ground underneath Brandon’s feet suddenly began to vibrate, and Brandon threw his arms out to steady himself. It felt like a subway car rattling by beneath them.

But this was no subway car. The rumbling grew and grew, and Brandon and Richard just had time to look at each other in horror before something exploded above and behind them. It was like the whole mall collapsed in on them at once, and with a roar like a garbage truck, a blast of smoke and dust lifted Brandon off his feet and hurled him into darkness.





It was cool and damp and dark inside the cave, and eerily quiet. Reshmina could still hear the pops and booms of guns above, but they were muted here. Muffled by the meters of rock that Reshmina hoped would keep them safe until the battle was over.

Reshmina took a step forward and banged her shin on something metal. She yelped in pain.

“What is it?” Taz asked. “What’s wrong?”

Reshmina forgot he still couldn’t see. “We’re in a cave now. We’re safe,” she told him. “But it’s dark. I ran into something.”

“Here—use my flashlight,” Taz said.

She heard the rip of Velcro, and Taz fumbled to lift the burqa he wore.

“Here, I think we can liberate him now,” Anaa said, and she helped Taz out of the burqa.

Reshmina took the flashlight and clicked it on. The cave was smaller than she remembered. But the cave would have looked bigger to her back then, she realized. The last time she’d been here it had just been her and Pasoon and a few other kids, playing hide-and-seek. Now she was taller, and a dozen or so families from her village were squeezed inside with her.

“I wish your baba was here,” Reshmina’s mother said. She had Zahir in one arm and held Marzia’s hand with the other. “I hope he’s safe.”

Reshmina hoped he was too. He had made it to the ANA base, at least, and they had gotten his message to the Americans that Taz was in the village. The soldiers fighting up above them were proof enough of that.

Reshmina used Taz’s flashlight to lead Taz and her family to the back of the cave, as far away from the entrance as they could get. The cave was full of rusty old Soviet-era junk they had to step around. Propellers, engine parts, spare tires, electronics with wires sticking out like wild hairs, big pieces of metal from trucks. And parts of old weapons too—the metal bits of rifles, RPG launchers with no rockets, disassembled land mines.

“Be careful!” one of the older men from the village said. “Some of these weapons might explode if you kick them the wrong way!”

Their parents had told them the same thing when they were little, of course. Told them in no uncertain terms not to play in the caves beneath the village. That it was too dangerous. All that had done, of course, was make Reshmina and Pasoon and the others want to come down here and explore. Besides, how was it any safer to play aboveground, when there were Americans and Taliban running around shooting at each other?

Reshmina remembered wandering, amazed, through all the old Soviet-era machines. They had been so foreign, so mysterious.

Now they just looked sad.

Taz put his hands out, frowning as he tried to feel what was around him. “I hate being blind,” he said.

Reshmina turned off the flashlight, saving the battery. “We’re all in the dark,” she told him.

“I’m scared of the dark,” Taz confessed. “I was lost in the dark once and couldn’t see. When I was a boy. It was very scary. I’ve been afraid of the dark ever since.”

Reshmina wasn’t afraid of the dark. Lantern fuel was expensive, and they burned the lantern in their house only when they had to. She got up just before dawn every day and went to bed every night after the sun went down. Darkness was just another part of her world. Not something to love or fear. But whatever had happened to Taz as a boy, being in the dark was making him sweat with panic now.

Poom. Poom. Dirt and rock misted down from the cave ceiling as muffled explosions struck nearby.

“M320 grenade launcher,” Taz said.

“How do you know?” Reshmina asked.

“The sound. The feel,” Taz said. “I’ve been here a long time.”

“How long?” Reshmina asked.

“Ten years, off and on,” Taz told her.

“Ten years, and you speak no Pashto?” Reshmina asked.

Taz didn’t answer right away. Perhaps he was ashamed. Reshmina would be. After all, she had spent the last few years of her life learning English.