Ground Zero(8)

“That’s not helping,” the woman said. “Try the phone.”

There was an emergency phone behind a metal panel, and Shavinder pressed the call button and waited.

“Yes! Hello!” he said after a moment, and Brandon relaxed. If somebody knew they were in the elevator, they could come rescue them. “Yes, something happened, and we’re stuck in an elevator around the 85th floor.”

Brandon heard a calm voice on the other end answering back.

“He says there is some kind of problem on the 91st floor,” Shavinder told the other passengers. “An explosion or something. He says— Hello? Hello, are you there? He’s gone.”

An explosion? Brandon thought. What could have exploded?

The big man took the phone from Shavinder and pressed the call button again. He shook his head. “The line’s dead.”

Black smoke crept through the seams at the top of the elevator, and Brandon felt a bead of sweat roll down his back. Smoke? Was there a fire? It was getting really hot too.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” the silver-haired man cried.

“Stay cool,” the woman told him. She dug a cell phone out of her briefcase and flipped it open, but she couldn’t get a signal. Nobody else had a cell phone to try.

They were trapped and cut off from the rest of the world.

Brandon put his head in his hands and tried not to cry. He was scared and separated from the person he relied on the most—his dad.

It’s you and me against the world, Brandon. This is how we survive.

But how was Brandon supposed to survive without him?

Smoke tickled the back of Brandon’s throat, and he coughed. The old man coughed too, longer and harder. Brandon could now see the black smoke among them, curling and twisting like something alive.

The big man pulled cloth napkins from the wreckage of the cart. “Here, wrap these around your faces,” he said.

“Dab them in some water first,” Shavinder said. The overturned pitcher had a little water left in it, and he wet the napkins and handed them out. Brandon tied his napkin around his mouth and took a deep breath. It was still hard to breathe, but the napkin filtered out a lot of smoke. The old man kept coughing though, even with the damp napkin to help.

They all sat down on the floor to get as far away from the smoke as they could and went around introducing themselves. The blonde woman’s name was Marni, and she was a stockbroker from Connecticut. Shavinder was born in New Delhi, India, and lived in Queens. He had worked at Windows on the World since it opened in 1976. The old man’s name was Stephen. He was an investment banker who worked on the 101st floor and lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He’d been a New Yorker all his life. The big man’s name was Mike, and he lived in New Jersey. He was in the tower to interview for an insurance job.

“I’m Brandon,” Brandon said when it was his turn. It was weird, talking to a bunch of grown-ups like he was one of them. But in a way, he was. It didn’t matter whether they were young or old, or where they were from. They were all stuck in the same bad situation together.

“Wait, you’re Leo Chavez’s kid, aren’t you?” Shavinder said. Brandon nodded. There was no sense hiding it now. Getting in trouble with his father was the least of his worries.

“Whaddya think that sound was?” Mike asked. “That snapping sound right before the kid hit the stop button? You think that was the elevator cable?”

Nobody answered him. So far no one seemed to be outright panicking, but Brandon realized he was shaking and he couldn’t make himself stop.

He wished he could reach his dad. If only I hadn’t gone off on my own, Brandon thought. And all for some stupid Wolverine gloves. What a fool he had been, and now he was going to choke to death inside this metal coffin.

“Kid, you with us?”

It was Mike. He and the others were looking at Brandon like they’d asked him something when he wasn’t listening.

“We’re gonna try to get out of here,” Mike told him. “Can I lift you up so you can try the ceiling?”

Brandon agreed, and Mike boosted him up onto his shoulders. The smoke was heavier up there, and Brandon held his breath. He pushed and pounded on every inch of the ceiling, but nothing budged.

“Let’s see if we can get the doors open instead,” Shavinder said. He and Mike put their palms flat on the shiny metal doors of the elevator and pulled, and the doors opened a crack. Brandon felt a tiny thrill—maybe they were going to get out of here after all! He and Marni jumped in to help. Together the four of them pulled the elevator doors wide, and Shavinder jammed a metal serving tray between the doors to keep them open.

Brandon stepped back, expecting to see a hallway. Or at least part of one. Instead there was nothing but an unpainted gray wall, with the number 85 handwritten on it in pencil.

They were at the 85th floor, but they couldn’t exit onto it.

Of course, Brandon realized. The local becomes an express after the 97th floor. There were no exits from this elevator until the Sky Lobby far below them on the 78th floor.

Which meant they really were trapped. And the smoke and heat were getting worse.

“It’s drywall,” Mike said. “Sheetrock. The stuff they make walls out of.”

“Maybe we can bust our way out of here,” said Marni.

Mike lifted a big foot and kicked at the wall.