Jeff Long - Year Zero_玖贝云文库

Also by Jeff Long

Fiction

Angels of Light

The Ascent

Empire of Bones

The Descent

Nonfiction

Outlaw: The Story of Claude Dallas

Duel of Eagles: The Mexican and U.S. Fight for the Alamo

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s

imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or

dead, is entirely coincidental.

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Long, Jeff.

Year zero: a novel/Jeff Long.

p. cm.

ISBN: 0-7434-8231-X

1. Archaeological thefts—Fiction. 2. Los Alamos (N.M.)—Fiction. 3. End of the world—Fiction. 4.

Women scientists—Fiction. 5. Anthropologists—Fiction. 6. Messiah—Fiction. 7. Cloning—Fiction. 8.

Plague—Fiction. I. Title: Year 0. II. Title.

PS3562.O4943 Y43 2002

813’.54—dc21 2001059124

POCKET BOOKS is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Visit us on the World Wide Web:

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To my father,

who reached into my Asian midnight, and saved me.

To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates

From its own wreck the thing it contemplates.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley,

Prometheus Unbound

Prologue

False Angels

JERUSALEM

The wound was their path.

Nathan Lee Swift sat strapped in the belly of the cargo helicopter with a dozen assorted archangels,

looking down upon what little remained. The earthquake was visible mostly by what was no longer

visible. Cities and villages had simply vanished in puffs of dust. Even his ruins were gone. The map had

gone blank.

The air was hot. It was summer. There was no horizon. The sands stretched into haze. He felt chained to

the giant beside him, his former professor David Ochs. He had not wanted to leave, now he didn’t want

to come back. Not like this.

Due south from the U.S. Army base in Turkey, they flew parallel to the rift system. Like an immense raft

drifting from shore, Africa was shearing loose of Eurasia. It was nothing new in the larger scheme of

things. Satellite photos barely registered the latest geological breach. Even from the helicopter’s

scratched Plexiglas windows, the devastation appeared strangely faint. The earth had pulled open and

sealed shut.

Nathan Lee searched for his bearings. Only a few weeks earlier, he had been down there, somewhere,

sifting away at ancient Aleppo, homing in on the end of his field research. Now the ruins were gone, and

his dissertation with them. Only love—or lust—had spared him from the disaster. If not for Lydia Ochs

visiting his tent one Arabian night five months ago, he might have died in the sands. As it was, the

professor’s younger sister had accidentally saved him with her fertile womb.

She had come to Aleppo with her brother, unannounced, during the winter break between semesters.

The professor was checking up on his graduate students, anchoring his grants, a day or two here, then on

to the next, and she was just along for the ride. Nathan Lee had never seen her before in his life. He was

a catch-and-release, he figured. A desert conquest. Her Himalayan climber in the sands. But then he’d

gotten her letter. Back in Missouri, she was five-months pregnant. Now she was ten-days married, and

all his new in-laws were proclaiming he’d been miraculously spared. Miraculous seemed a strong term

for what owed less to the hand of God than to a Wonderbra, a full moon, and a bottle of old nouveaux

Beaujolais. But he did not correct the record.

He was still dazed by the sudden change. The wedding band glittered on his brown fist like some strange

growth. Twenty-five seemed so young. He still had his fortune to find, and his name to make, and the far

edges of the world to see…and see again. It wasn’t that his mirror was empty. He saw an earnest young

man in there with John Lennon spectacles and durable shoulders and a bit of hair on his chest. But he

lacked form. He felt as if his molecules were still coming together.

Maybe it was a function of working the sands in near solitude for the last two years. But it seemed like

his footprints were gone the minute he left them, and his shadow kept shifting shape. There was

something about burying his gypsy parents on opposite sides of the planet—his mother in Kenya, his

mountaineer father in Kansas, of all places—that stole his sense of direction. He could go anywhere. He

could be anyone. And what he was now was at square one with his doctoral work, up to his eyeballs in

student loans, and with a baby on the way.

He could have resented the pregnancy. But he was an anthropologist. He had his superstitions. And there

was no denying that the child had already saved him once. The name was almost too good to be true.

Lydia had chosen it. Grace.

“Tell me, my friends,” a voice interrupted. It was the demolitions engineer from Baghdad. He wore a

silver hard hat. “What brings two American anthropologists racing to a disaster zone? And with body

bags for your only luggage. Allow me to guess, forensic scientists?”

Roped to bolts in the floor, five cases of body bags occupied the aisle. There were twenty to a case. The

economy models were white vinyl with no handles. They cost fourteen dollars each. The body bags had

sped their journey in unforeseen ways. Their tale of a mission of mercy had become a small legend. Ochs

had seen to that. Air freight for the shipment had been waived. They’d been boosted to first class as a

courtesy. TWA had delayed its Heathrow-Athens flight so the two Americans could make the

connection. A flight attendant with very long legs had sat on Nathan Lee’s armrest for an hour. She had

always wanted to do good works. They were so brave. So humanitarian.It’s what we do, Ochs had told

her.

“We’re archaeologists,” Ochs answered the engineer. His shoulders and arms and Falstaffian belly

looked ready to burst his T-shirt. It saidRazorbacks with the size, XXXL. People in this part of the world

tended to identify the giant with the World Wrestling Federation. His voice carried above the engine roar.

“George Washington University. My field is Biblical archaeology up to and including the Hadrianic era.”

It was one of those lies that were the truth by omission. Until last semester, Professor Ochs had held a

distinguished chair at George Washington. Then his past had caught up with him. One of his boy toys had

filed a grades-for-sex lawsuit. Already freighted by rumors of smuggled artifacts, Ochs had sunk like a

rock. Thus Jerusalem, with his newly minted brother-in-law for company. Nathan Lee kept thinking he’d

gotten over the worst of his queasiness. But he hadn’t. He didn’t belong here, not this way, on this

mission. It felt like he was like being pulled under by a drowning victim.

“Biblical archaeology….” The engineer pounced at the clue. “Project Year Zero,” he said. “The search

for Jesus Christ.”

Ochs replied evenly. “We are connected. But you misconceive us. Year Zero is founded on scrupulous

scholarship. It grew out of the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls. The Smithsonian and Gates Foundation

commissioned a detailed review and collection of artifacts and organic material dating back two thousand

years.”

“Organic material.” The engineer was no fool.

“Pollen samples. Textiles. Bone. Mummified tissue.” Ochs shrugged.

“Bone and flesh,” said the engineer. “I perfectly understand.”

“Targeting the year zero was entirely arbitrary, a sop to the Western calendar.”

“A chance selection,” the engineer smiled indulgently. “The Holy Lands at the beginning of the Christian

era.” Like other Levantine Muslims, he was bemused. The Crusades had never really quit. Now the

West fought with trowels and picks.

“The date appealed to the public imagination,” said Ochs. “And to funding agencies. Stripped of all its

controversy and superstition, we are simply gathering evidence of a place in time. Unfortunately people’s

imagination ran off with it. Now we have this nonsense about a man-hunt for the historical Jesus.”

“Nonsense?” The engineer feigned surprise.

“Consider. True believers reject ‘the bones of Christ’ as a contradiction in terms. If his body rose into

heaven, there can be no remains. And nonbelievers don’t care.”

In fact, for all his and Lydia’s sophistication, the Ochs clan sprang from Pentecostal roots, snakes,

tongues, and all. Nathan Lee hadn’t known the depth of it. It was no wonder an abortion had been out of

the question. The Missouri wedding had been like something out of the Civil War, all lace, black

broadcloth, and raw bones.

“Which are you then, sir?” asked the engineer. “The believer who doesn’t believe, or the nonbeliever

who doesn’t care?”

Ochs evaded him. “Ask my student here. He claims Jesus is a sausage.”

The engineer’s black eyebrows rose into the brim of his hardhat.

In Arabic, Nathan Lee said, “My tongue runs away from me sometimes.”

“A sausage, though! What an image.”

“A human skin,” Ochs supplied, “stuffed with myths and prophecy.”

The engineer enjoyed that. “And yet you dedicate yourself to Year Zero?”

“The professor borrows me now and then,” Nathan Lee said. “My doctoral focus is seventh-century

northern Syria. I’m exploring the disappearance of Roman families from the so-called Dead Cities. They

were prosperous and deeply rooted here. Their villas had mosaic floors and windows that looked out

onto the oases. Then suddenly one day they were gone.”

“Was there a war?” asked the engineer.

“There are no signs of violence, no layers of ash.”

The engineer gestured at the landscape beneath them. “An earthquake, perhaps.”

“The villas were left standing. Herders use them to shelter their goats.”

“What happened then?”

“Some small thing, probably. A gap in their rhythm. Maybe a crop went wrong. Or an irrigation canal

ruptured, or they had a cold winter or a dry summer. Maybe insects came. Or a rat with a flea with some

exotic flu. Civilizations are such fragile things.”

Someone across the aisle called out, “Damascus,” and they all looked out the windows. It was no

different from Halab and Hims and other cities along the way. From this height, except for the outer ring

of refugee camps, Nathan Lee would have guessed the city had been extinct for centuries. It resembled a

thousand other Levantinetels, one more gray pile of history and dust.“Allah irrahamhum,” one of the Iraqi

physicians declared.May God be compassionate to them.

They left the sight behind. The engineer resumed. “Why come at this time, when the catastrophe is so

fresh?” he asked. “And why Jerusalem?”

Nathan Lee shifted his eyes away. Ochs answered. “The awful truth is,” he solemnly confessed,

“opportunity. With the city turned inside out, the past lies bared. In a sense, we’re here to conduct an

autopsy.”

“You intend to go into the remains?” the engineer asked. “It will be very dangerous. The aftershocks. The

outbreak of disease. It’s been over seven days. By now, the dogs will all be rabid. It won’t be safe until

the engineers have leveled it.”

“Precisely why we’re racing to get there,” said Ochs, “before you accomplish your work.”

The engineer took it as a compliment. “Of course,” he said. “And the body bags?”

“Our small gift,” said Ochs.

“But you mustn’t feel guilty,” the engineer said to Nathan Lee.

“Guilty?”

“It is written on your face.”

“Never mind him,” Ochs said to the engineer.

But the engineer was a compassionate soul, and now he liked Nathan Lee. He gestured at the other

passengers. “Each of us bears a special talent. Some go to feed the people, some to heal, some to handle

the dead. I go to complete the destruction with bulldozers and plastique so that the rebuilding may begin.

And you are here to find meaning in the bones. Be strong, young man. It takes great love to make sense

of God’s revenge.”

Nathan Lee wasn’t sure how to respond. “Thank you,” he said.

NEARINGISRAEL, THE FLYING CHANGED. Wild thermals prowled above the desert sands. The pilots tried

in vain to evade the worst of it. Their blades chopped at the thermals. The thermals chopped right back

at them. The helicopter shuddered and bucked, pitching savagely. Far below, spontaneous whirlwinds

leapt about, writing wild, cryptic letters in the sand.

They dodged to the side, the pilots searching for a slipstream through the thermals. No dice. When the

thermals weren’t hurling them sunward, they were plunging into troughs and crawling for altitude.

Strapped tight, the passengers suffered their brutal entry into the Holy Lands. Ochs vomited on the floor.

Nathan Lee offered no sympathy. They didn’t belong here. This was the professor’s idea. Soon the floor

was slick with last suppers.

Nathan Lee pressed the wire rims onto the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. He thought of Grace.

His seasickness ebbed. Who would she take after? Honey-haired Lydia for looks, he prayed. He saw

himself as a plain man. His face was thin, his eyes were narrow. He still could not reckon why Lydia had

chosen his tent that night. Maybe it had been the full moon, or she’d just wanted to add a nomad to her

list. Even among the eccentrics camped out in the anthro department, Nathan Lee was notorious. He’d

been known to hunt and butcher game with neolithic flints.

Nathan Lee did hope their daughter might acquire something from his side of the equation, a bit of pig

iron to temper Lydia’s mercury. Or acid, as it were. The honeymoon was over. His hot-blooded desert

lover had turned cold, and modern. She required 110 volts twenty-four hours a day, it turned out, for

everything from her hair drier to her cellphone. Their wedding night had been invested in a discussion

about money. She was going for her MBA. He was going for…Jerusalem.

At last they topped the Golan Heights and left behind the desert thermals. But as they entered the great,

long trough of the Dead Sea Rift, Nathan Lee saw the destruction was only beginning. By this time every

schoolchild knew from television that 800,000 megatons of energy had been released by the quake,

1,600 times more than all the nuclear explosions in war and peace combined. Tsunamis had erased the

Gaza Strip. Like ancient Alexandria, Tel Aviv lay submerged beneath the Mediterranean. The Sea of

Galilee had emptied, flooding the Jordan River. The floor of the Dead Sea had dropped fifty feet. Its

waters reached halfway to the Gulf of Aqaba.

The cargo bay had no air conditioning. They steadily descended below sea level between raw limestone

walls. To their right and left, roads and pathways terminated in midair. It was spring. The trees were

budding green. Lambs bounded to their mothers. Finally they turned west and climbed out of the depths.

The wreck of Jerusalem lay before them. Unlike the Syrian cities, it was still in its death throes. Inky

smoke hung above the ruins. Where gas lines had ruptured, columns of flame lanced the sky.

Ochs thumped Nathan Lee’s knee with an immense bear paw. He was elated. Nathan Lee was shocked.

“Haram,”murmured Nathan Lee. The term was universal in this part of the world. It meantforbidden

orpity. More classically, it meant tomb.

The engineer heard him. Their eyes met. For some reason he gave him a blessing. “Keep your heart pure

in there.”

Nathan Lee looked away.

The ship flickered from place to place along the wracked perimeter. White tents flashed beneath them

bearing Red Crosses and Red Crescents. Roofs of baby blue U.N. plastic fluttered in the rotor wash.

Abruptly the helicopter spun to earth. Ochs clutched his arm. They touched down hard near the south

summit of the Mount of Olives.

No one waited to greet them. The samaritans simply dismounted into vast heat upon a road that ran

above the city. You could barely see Jerusalem for the layer of black petroleum smoke. Israeli

commandos in desert camouflage and berets rose up from the yellow dust to herd them to Camp 23.

The cases of body bags were off-loaded. Ochs opened one box and took several of the bags. He left the

rest in the road, and led Nathan Lee away from their Trojan Horse. The trick had worked. They were in.

WHILEOCHS SLEPT OFF HIS JET LAG, Nathan Lee roamed the larger Camp 23, orienting himself, hunting

down rumors, harvesting information. Sunset was only hours away.

Six days ago there had been no Camp 23. Now it lay sprawled and shapeless upon the slopes of Olivet,

a Palestinian collecting point. Before the quake, locals drove up the meandering road to picnic and gaze

upon their city. Now 55,000 ghosts occupied an overlook of vile black smoke. The unwashed survivors

were coated white with cement dust. The lime in the cement made their eyes blood red. Their massed

voices buzzed like cicadas in the heat.Allah, Allah, Allah, they wept. Women ululated.

They reached out with filthy hands. Nathan Lee knew better than to meet their eyes. He felt desolate. He

had nothing for them. Some would be dead soon. The ground was muddy, not from rain, but from their

raw sewage. Cholera was going to rampage through them. All the aid workers said so.

A team of skinny rescue rats from West Virginia loaned him two hardhats. They were gaunt. One had a

broken arm in a plastic splint. They didn’t mark their calendar in days, but in hours. For them, time had

started the minute the first quake hit, 171 hours ago. It was a rule of thumb that after the first 48 hours,

the chances for live rescues evaporated. Their work was done. They were heading home. Nathan Lee

asked for any advice.

“Don’t go down there,” one said. “Why mess with the gods?” He had a combat soldier’s contempt for

the civilian. If you don’t belong, don’t be there.

His partner said, “How about the lions; you been briefed on the lions?”

“Seriously?” said Nathan Lee. It had to be an urban legend.Here be dragons.

The man spit. “From the zoo.”

The first man said, “They found a body in the Armenian quarter. Mauled to rags. One leg missing. That

means they they’ve tasted us. They’re maneaters now.”

AT SUNSETthe smoke turned bronze.

Nathan Lee found Ochs on a cot in a tent, stripped to the waist. He’d seen pictures of the linebacker in

his 400-pound bench-press days, an Adonis on steroids. Nathan Lee looked down at the wreckage of

beer fat. Sweat glistened on his salt-and-pepper chest hair. “Wake up,” Nathan Lee said.

Ochs came to with a groan. The canvas and wood creaked as he pried himself from the cot.

“We made a mistake,” said Nathan Lee. “It’s too dangerous. There’s a curfew, dusk to dawn. Shoot to

kill.”

“Give me a minute,” Ochs growled.

“It’s a war zone. No one’s in charge over there. They’re at each other’s throats. Hamas and the

Hezbollah and the SLA and Israeli army and kibbutz militias.”

Ochs glared at him. “Suck it up, Swift. What did you expect? Nine-point-one on the Richter scale. From

here to Istanbul, it’s scrambled eggs.”

“I don’t like it.”

“What’s to like?” Ochs tossed his head side to side like a boxer warming up. The vertebrae crackled.

“This time tomorrow, we’ll be on our way home. Think of it as starting the college fund. Grace’s,” he

added, “not yours. It’s time you moved beyond your academic ambitions.”

The unborn child had become Ochs’s hostage. Nathan Lee didn’t know how to stop it. The conspiracy

between sister and brother was beginning to scare him. “You don’t need me,” he said pointblank.

“But I do,” said Ochs. “Don’t let it go to your head. You’re younger. You have abilities. Come on.

We’re on the same team, slick.”

“This isn’t a bowl game,” said Nathan Lee. “We’re trespassing on history. Legends. Everything we do

could alter the record. It could bend religions.”

“Since when did you find God? Anyway, you’ve got responsibilities.”

“It was you who taught me about the integrity of the site.”

“Those were the days.”

“You just want revenge,” said Nathan Lee.

“I just want money,” said Ochs. “What about you, Nathan Lee? Don’t you get lonely in there?”

They went to the mess tent. It was crowded with relief workers in various states of fatigue. They spoke a

babel of languages. They were fed much better than the survivors. In place of protein bars and bottles of

water, they got lamb stew and couscous and candies. Ochs made a beeline for the caffeine.

Nathan Lee went outside with his paper plate and sat on the ground. Ochs found him. “No more seesaw.

It’s yes or no.”

Nathan Lee didn’t say yes. But he didn’t say no. That was all Ochs needed.

AT MOONRISE, they cast loose of Camp 23.

They wore cotton masks, Red Cross bibs, the borrowed hardhats, and jungle boots from the Vietnam

era. The soles had metal plates to protect against punji stakes. Ochs had spotted them in an Army

surplus store outside of Georgetown.

In theory, the camps were locked down between dusk and dawn. But for all the razor wire and sandbags

and ferocious Israeli paratroopers at the entrance, Nathan Lee had learned there was no back wall to

Camp 23. The gate was all show. Nathan Lee and Ochs simply strode downhill and the camp dwindled

into darkness.

They left the klieg lights and diesel generators and food lines behind. On the dark outskirts, they passed

the mad and dying. Nathan Lee imagined the final circle of hell as something like this.

The hillside sloped gently, cut by terraces. Nathan Lee took the lead downwards. They carried

headlamps, but did not use them. He was reminded of climbing in the Himalayas and above Chamonix

with his father. Mountaineers called it an alpine start. You kicked off at night while the mountain is asleep.

Other senses emerged: night vision, different kinds of hearing, a feeling for the movements underfoot. The

world lost its margins, it ran loose out there. Deep joints in the earth snapped like bones. The underworld

beat within your skin. That’s how it felt tonight. Ochs’s heavy footsteps drummed on the earth. Even the

stars were vibrating.

Nathan Lee looked out across the top of the vile smog. The enormous white moon had finished sucking

free of the distant desert. He’d never seen it so large and explicit.

“Slow down,” Ochs said.

Nathan Lee could hear him back there, laboring…downhill. That was not good. They’d barely started

the night. The man sounded like horses breathing. Nathan Lee didn’t wait, but at the same time he didn’t

let their spacing grow too wide.

They plunged on, lights off, Nathan Lee ahead. Ochs was clumsy. He demanded a rest. Nathan Lee

made him demand it three times, then reined himself in. Ochs caught up and sat on a rock. He blamed his

football knees and Nathan Lee’s pace. “I know you’re trying to wear me down. It won’t work,” he said.

They continued down through fig and pistachio groves with clusters of ripe buds. The branches of olive

trees looked frozen and convulsed. Through his cotton mask, Nathan Lee could smell the blossoms

glittering like Christmas tree ornaments. Their scent could not hide the smell of spoiled meat, even at this

distance.

They penetrated the layer of oil smoke. The moon shrank and turned brown. Deeper, they passed

through a Christian cemetery with toppled gravestones and crosses. They reached the underside of the

cloud. Suddenly the walls of the Old City stood before them.

It was a different world under the canopy. Green and orange flares cut the low sky. You would see them

rocket up through the black smoke, then slowly reappear from the murky heavens. By night, the gas

flames resembled Biblical pillars of fire. Nathan Lee looked at Ochs and the snout of his white mask was

caked with soot. He looked like a hyena nosing through the ashes.

Timeless Jerusalem lay squashed flat. Because it was built on a rising hill, they could see over the walls,

into the upper neighborhoods. At first glance, the city looked fused, one single melted element. Then

Nathan Lee began to discern details in the ruins. In place of streets, there were arteries, and in the

arteries moved lights. Hatreds older than America were in motion. Here and there streamers of tracer

bullets arced between the pancaked apartment buildings. It was every man for himself in there, militias,

sects, rebels, and predators.

Nathan Lee was afraid. This wasn’t like the controlled adrenal hit you got climbing a long runout on rock

or ice. It was more insidious, more consuming. And there was another difference tonight. He would have

a daughter soon. For some reason, that mattered to him. His life counted for more.

In the distance, poised above the shredded skyline, the Dome of the Rock was still standing. The sight

had a peculiar effect. It was an oddity of quakes in very old cities that modern structures will collapse,

leaving the ancient buildings intact. The National Cathedral in Mexico City was one example, the Hagia

Sophia in Istanbul another. The mosque atop the Temple Mount was clearly another. The dome gleamed

in the flare light like a golden moon fallen to earth.

They descended into the Kidron valley, then trekked up and reached the base of the wall. It soared

above them. Hardin slapped the big, squared blocks of limestone. “We’re in the zone,” he said. “Can

you feel it?”

They followed the wall to its southern edge, then skirted west, on the outside of the worst fighting. The

Muslim and Jewish quarters rumbled and thundered inside the wall. No rest for the weary. They were

fighting right through Armageddon. Bullets and shrapnel sizzled overhead from the platform of the Temple

Mount.

After twenty minutes they reached a collapsed abbey. Not much further, they reached the end of the

south wall, and took a righthand turn along the original Byzantine wall.

The suburbs were in utter collapse. Disemboweled high-rises teetered above mounds of debris. The

bulldozers had not visited this part of the city yet. Every street lay buried. Instead, Nathan Lee followed

slight traces that threaded between the mounds of wreckage. It was little more than a game trail. Worn

by feet or paws, the path glowed faintly.

Through the archway of the Jaffa Gate, they entered the Old City itself. First they shed their disguise.

Inside the walls, relief workers would just be sniper bait. Off came the Red Cross bibs and their cotton

masks. Underneath his mask, Ochs had daubed his face with camouflage paint.

Modern rubble gave way to ancient. The pathways wound back and forth through the twisted

devastation. There were dozens of forks in the trail. Ochs offered opinions, but always deferred to

Nathan Lee’s instincts.

Nathan Lee felt at home here. He had a theory that the stranger always has an advantage in chaos. The

stranger can’t lose his way, only find it. People born and raised here would naturally depend on familiar

street corners and shopfronts and addresses. He had no such landmarks. Ruins were their own city, the

same worldwide, old or modern. The key lay in your mind.Begin in the beginning. …It was a trick

learned from his father, the mountain guide.

The rest he got from his mother, the ape lady. Instead of brothers or sisters, he’d grown up with baboon

troops in the wild.If you want to know a thing, she would say,go inside it. She and her mountain-man

husband were products of their generation, brimming with wanderlust and little Zen sayings and being

real. They’d raised him to see worlds within the world.

Ochs kept stumbling. Phone lines and checkered keffiyahs tangled their feet. Blocks of limestone shifted

underfoot. Twice the professor nearly speared himself on pieces of iron rod and copper pipe. He needed

more frequent rests.

They passed the old and the new. Beside a squashed Toyota lay the remains of a horse stripped by

predators. Minarets blocked their path like toppled rocket ships. Five-and six-story apartment buildings

had dropped straight down and Nathan Lee found himself walking between small forests of TV antennae

fixed atop the former roofs.

An old woman appeared from the shadows, startling them. That was the first time Nathan Lee saw

Ochs’s pistol. It was a little Saturday night special. He pointed it at her. She cursed them in Russian, then

wandered on.

“Where did you get that thing?” Nathan Lee whispered.

“We should stop her,” said Ochs. “She’ll give us away.”

“She’s crazy. Didn’t you see her eyes?”

“You’re taking us in circles,” Ochs snarled. Low on blood sugar, jet-lagged, he was becoming

dangerous.

Nathan Lee held up a hand for quiet.

Ochs pushed him, then he heard—or felt—it, too.

The vibrations traveled up the long bones in Nathan Lee’s legs. The ruins were trembling. Someone was

approaching, a patrol or gang or militia. Killers. Night angels. Their footsteps shocked the earth.

Nathan Lee wasted no time calculating their distance. He started up a hillside of mangled debris, racing

Jeff Long - Year Zero

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