Ground Zero(48)

“I speak Mandarin Chinese,” Taz said.

“You speak Chinese?” Reshmina asked. She couldn’t believe it.

“Shì de,” Taz said. “Army Special Forces have to learn a second language, and I was taught Mandarin.”

“Because so many people in Afghanistan speak Chinese,” Reshmina said wryly.

“I guess they figured there was life after Afghanistan,” Taz said. From the way he said it, it sounded like Taz wasn’t so sure that was true anymore.

The ground and walls shook, and Reshmina felt her insides shake with them. She knew that feeling—a helicopter was flying by.

“Apache,” she said.

Taz shook his head. “Sikorsky HH-60 Pave Hawk,” he told her. “Modified Black Hawk. Apaches are more like pppppppp,” he said, blowing out through his lips. “Sixties are more like ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. The Sixties are for me, I guess. They’re search-and-rescue birds.”

All this was for Taz, Reshmina thought. And all because she’d led him back to her house.

Her house that wasn’t there anymore.

Toom.

Something big exploded on the ground above the cave, and the interior shook harder than before. A woman cried out as a piece of one of the walls broke off and tumbled down into the metal junk on the floor.

Reshmina watched Taz, who was suddenly alert.

TOOM.

The next explosion was bigger, closer. This one knocked them all to the ground. Reshmina’s eyes went wide, and she put her palms against the dirt, as though she could command the earth to stop shaking. It didn’t work, and she began to think that coming into the caves was a very, very bad idea.

What if this place became their tomb?

A chunk of the ceiling fell on an old man toward the front of the cave, and the people around him cried out and tried to unbury him.

Taz put his hand to the wall and slowly stood, a look of fear on his face.

“What is it?” Reshmina asked, still on the ground.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell down here. But to shake us like that … it feels like Reaper drones. Laser-guided bombs!”

No sooner had Taz said it than—K-TOOM!—a bomb hit right on top of the cave, and the whole ceiling fell in.





Brandon’s eyes fluttered open, but he couldn’t see a thing. He was lying on his side in three inches of water, arms and legs splayed out and pieces of metal and wood on top of him. The darkness pressed in on him, like he’d been holding his breath in a pool for too long and the water was trying to push its way in. The air was a solid thing that surrounded him. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hear. He tried to move his arms, but they didn’t want to move. His legs were like dead lumps attached to his hips.

Brandon’s heart hammered in his chest, and he gasped for air. His mouth and nose were full of dust and little bits of debris, and he coughed and spat and retched until most of it was gone. Slowly, dully, the feeling in his arms and legs came tingling back. But his eyesight didn’t.

Panic welled up inside him. I’m blind, Brandon thought. I’m blind and I’m lost and I’m alone and the air is closing in on me and I’m never going to get out of here.

“Richard?” he called. “Richard? Are you there?”

No one answered, and Brandon sobbed. He couldn’t see and his ears were ringing and he was all alone.

“Richard!” he called again. But Richard was gone.

Brandon curled up into a ball and cried. The world had exploded, and now he was totally, utterly alone. All his life, a parent had been there for him. First his mother, who had loved him and laughed with him and cared for him when he was little. He remembered her face—her blonde hair and pale skin and blue eyes—more from photographs now than his own fading memories. But the idea of her was still there—a tall, warm, embracing figure who picked him up and sang him lullabies.

When his mother had died, Brandon had thought he couldn’t go on. He had stopped talking, stopped caring. Every night he had cried himself to sleep.

It was his father who brought him back. His father, who had probably been losing sleep too, and who might have wanted to withdraw from the world when his wife had died but hadn’t, for Brandon’s sake. His father who had read comic books with him and taken him to the skate park every weekend. They had been a team.

And now Brandon was alone.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t go on. It would have been better if he had never run away at all and stayed trapped in Windows on the World with his father, with the smoke choking them. He needed his father to make the decisions, to guide him through the danger.

Without his father, Brandon thought, he was better off dead.

But eventually his tears dried and the sprinkler stopped and the ringing in his ears faded, and Brandon was still there. He wasn’t dead. He was battered and sore, but his head, his face, his arms, his body, his legs and feet—they were all still there, still working. He had little cuts and bruises all over, but he was alive, and in one piece, and he couldn’t just lie here in the dark forever. What was it his father had told him?

You’re strong, Brandon. You can survive without me.

Brandon was strong. And he had survived, all by himself. He didn’t want to, but he could when he needed to. And he needed to now.

Brandon put a hand down into the water to push himself to his feet and felt the razor-sharp burn of a broken piece of glass cutting into his palm. He pulled back with a hiss and squeezed his hands together. The mall shops all around him must have been destroyed in the blast, which meant there was broken glass and debris everywhere now. He couldn’t see, and now he was lost in what was left of the underground mall after it had been nuked.