The Zero Read Online Free PDF Page A

the graycloud drawing them down, passing beneath people on banisters and fire escapes, leaning out windows, cameras following them. The Yankees were staring out the windows in the backseat, quiet and respectful. Every few minutes, Paul chirped the siren to clear the traffic but Remy could tell he wasn’t into it.
    “Something else,” Paul said to the car, and Remy sensed danger and closed his eyes. “You notice how the number keeps dropping? Eight thousand. Seven thousand? Six. It’s like the swelling going down. I was thinkin’, maybe it’ll go back to zero. You know? I mean, where are the bodies? Maybe it’ll turn out that everyone was at home that day. Maybe we’ll actually gain people when this is all over.”
    As usual, no one knew how to respond to Guterak, so he just kept talking. “How would they explain that? More people than we started with? Wouldn’t that be some trick, huh?” As they approached The Zero, Paul began to fidget, the words struggling to get out. Remy could see him getting ready. Everyone who took tours had his own version of this place, names for different landmarks. Remy saw a firefighter and a welder get into it one time over whether the deep part was called The Pit or The Hole. Among the guys who took tours—and especially on The Boss’s detail and staff—it was acknowledged that Guterak’s names were the best. A few of them had even become standard: The Ribs, Cathedral, Spears, The Void, Big Peach, Dry Falls . Maybe this was Paul’s art: He couldn’t stop talking about the things that so many others had trouble talking about. Guterak always started his tours on West Street, where he and Remy had come in that day. He’d circle below to east, then north, and finally back south, and always end right across from the hole, where Remy’s car was still visible, its windows shattered, up to its axles in grit and paper. Even though they’d only gotten two Yankees and no Sarah Jessica, Remy knew that Paul would set aside his disappointment and do what he always did. Talk.
    “So this is where we came in,” Paul said to the Yankees as they approached the West Street checkpoint. “I was on a mission in midtownfor The Boss—there’s this frozen yogurt he likes—when I got the call. Brian was on his way down, so he stops and gets me and we run his car down the West just like we’re going now, smoke everywhere, and we get down here, on the south end, and we’re just standing around, watching all this shit, and bang, the second one comes in, and then we’re running around—and here’s what you didn’t get on TV, it was so far up there, it didn’t seem real, not until someone jumped, arms flapping crazy like they could change their minds, but of course, they couldn’t…and you’d watch ’em grow as they came down…hitting like fuggin’ water balloons, but deeper, you know—thumping and…and…bursting…and then Brian wanders off and I’m alone, just walking along, lookin’ at all these people and this kid firefighter, I’ll never forget his little face, some probie starin’ up at the sky and I don’t even have to look at what he was seeing because I hear this groaning noise and this pop and then it’s so quiet— eerie quiet, you know, just for a split second, not even long enough to think, Oh shit, it’s quiet—but I can tell by the look in this kid’s eyes that it’s not good, and then comes this horrible grinding and a roar, like thunder in your head, ten fuggin’ seconds of hard thunder as the floors pancake, and as soon as it starts, this firefighter does the crazy bravest thing I ever seen, he starts running toward the thing, as I start goin’ in the other direction, toward Brian’s car, and throw myself against the car and then it’s like we’re in the middle of a hurricane of shit, and this wave crashes all around us, black and thick, pushes me under Brian’s car and all the way through to the other side and I know I’m gonna get buried with all