Jess Walter - The Zero

“You got all of them?”

“All but Jaguar. They figure he got spooked by something because he never made it up to the apartment. He got on the elevator but they think he got off on two, went down the stairs and slipped out a loading dock in the back. But they don’t think he got far. I would not want to be that guy right now. It’s only a matter of time.” And then he paused. “You know, the more I think about it… maybe you can race time. But I don’t think you can win.”

Remy surprised himself by hanging up. It was as if his hand snapped the phone shut on its own – as if his hand had finally had enough of this lunacy. He stuffed the phone in his pocket. He felt the urge to leave. Find April and just go with her, wherever she was going. Maybe back to San Francisco. He edged his way through the crowd. Markham called again, but he ignored it. He moved through the station, watching the flow of people. And then Remy recalled Jaguar’s stare. All but Jaguar. And then came an awful thought: Soft target. Crowds. Major disruptions. Easy media access. Home videos and camera phones to maximize the horror. He stopped and looked around the train station.

He was here to find April-

Soft target.

– wasn’t he? His phone was ringing again. It wasn’t Markham’s number. Or April’s. He opened it and held it to his head.

The voice was slick and cold but didn’t seem angry. “Did you follow me, Brian?”

Remy looked around the station again. “Listen-”

“No. You should listen to me.” Jaguar spoke in his steady lecturer’s voice, a tone that Remy recognized from their other meetings: “For on that day there will be shining faces, blithe with joy, and there will be faces blackened with dust – the faces of the faithless and the graceless.”

“Look,” Remy said. “I swear… I didn’t-” But he didn’t know what he had done, or what he hadn’t done. “Where are you?” He scanned the crowd. “Are you here?” He spun around slowly.

A couple in matching sweatsuits, holding hands-

A woman with headphones pushing a baby stroller-

Two young men in scrubs, holding paper coffee cups-

“You know, it’s ironic,” Jaguar said over the phone. “I used to tell my students that there are a hundred ninety-two mentions of Allah’s compassion in the Koran. And only seventeen instances of his vengeance. And yet, it is always the vengeance that seduces. Just like here. You claim to follow a simple prophet of poverty and compassion and build temples celebrating riches and power.”

“Where are you?” Remy asked again.

“It occurred to me when I saw you talking to that agent on the street, when I realized that I was being betrayed-”

“No-” Remy began, but Jaguar kept talking.

“It occurred to me that I’ve been wrong all these years. Maybe power and vengeance… are exactly what we should build temples to. We marvel at the zealotry of a man who would blow himself up for a cause. But imagine, too, the desperation. The fear. And maybe even something alluring – something… primal.”

Remy continued to spin slowly.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Jaguar asked. “This?”

Two girls in Catholic jumpers-

A fat man in custodian’s coveralls-

“Let’s go somewhere and talk. You and me.”

“You and me,” Jaguar said. “Yes. We had interesting talks. Here’s something we can talk about: Does a man ever realize that he has been the villain of his own story?”

Remy wasn’t sure which one of them he meant.

“Perhaps on his deathbed?” Jaguar asked. “Does he realize it then?”

Remy looked over his shoulder:

An old couple wearing matching silk coats-

A banger in a Bulls jersey-

“All along,” Jaguar said, “I was the target?”

Remy started to say that he didn’t know. But he was tired of saying that. “I’m not sure it even mattered,” he said finally.

“And the others?”

“They all worked for us. None of them knew about the others.”

Jaguar was quiet for a moment. Then he asked “Why?” quietly, without bitterness.

Again, Remy wanted to say that he didn’t know. But that just didn’t seem true any more. “Hunger,” Remy said.

The phone went dead. “Hello?” Remy rubbed his cheekbone. “Hello!” He spun again. He was standing in the heart of the station terminal, at the center of this swirling maze of faces, all of them looking to him – and, finally, he had nothing left. His arms went to his sides and his head fell back.

And that’s when he saw April.

She was wearing a pea coat and a woolen cap, straining with two heavy wheeled suitcases, moving down a ramp toward the waiting area for the New Jersey Transit trains. And if there was nothing else, he thought, perhaps there was escape.

“April!” Remy ran toward her, jumping a railing, following the line of departing trains. But he couldn’t see where she’d gone.

He ran down the stairs toward the outdoor platforms. He caught a glimpse of her two platforms away, separated by two sets of rail lines, stepping into a shelter. She pulled her suitcases in behind her. “April!” he called again.

He ran up the stairs, back down the ramp and down the other stairs, his hand sliding down the railing. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he paused for a moment on the narrow platform. The glass shelter was fogged; he couldn’t see inside.

He looked down the track – no train yet – then made his way toward the glass shelter. The automatic doors slid open. There were only a handful of people inside, sitting on plastic chairs, reading newspapers and paperback books. One man was talking on a cell phone.

April’s suitcases were stacked in front of her. In one hand she was holding her ticket up, as if it might be collected any time. In the other hand she held a train schedule she was reading. Her pea coat was pulled up tight around her throat. She looked up slowly, taking him in with her dark, imploring eyes. The ticket slipped from her hand but she didn’t seem to notice, and her hand remained raised, graceful, half-open, as if she were awaiting a dance partner. Then her eyes shifted a few degrees, so that she was looking over his shoulder.

Remy turned to follow the path of her vision, and through the open door he saw Jaguar coming down the steps to the platform. His face was wet and lined. His gray wool coat was bunched up around him, as if he had something bulky beneath it. And there was something in his hand, a phone, maybe.

Remy turned back to April and opened his mouth to say something – but she was staring at him with such a look of… forgiveness that it took his breath away and he only wished he could stay forever in that moment.

“You came,” she said-

NOTHING MORE than air at first. And it wasn’t so bad. He’d read somewhere that buildings, too, were mostly air. Maybe that was the truly dangerous part: air. Maybe the rest was manageable, the steel and paper and people. Maybe it was the air you had to watch out for. It sucked inward, Remy with it, and then thrust out, like a bellows, the way the ocean gathers water for a crashing wave. When it came, the blast at Remy’s back wasn’t hot or cold. It had no qualities other than sheer insistence; noise filled every space, concussive and sharp, not a boom but a crack, heavy with glass, and accompanied a split second later by the deep thud he’d expected, a resounding bass thunder like someone trying to frighten him to death, and a blinding flash and then finally, when he could stand the noise no longer, the heat came – searing – and he was airborne, free, light… like paper, tossed and blown with the other falling bits and frantic sheets, smoking, corners scorched, flaring in the open air until there was nothing left but a fine black edge… then gone, a hole and nothing but the faint memory of a seething black that unfurled, that lifted him and held him briefly on the warmest current-