Year Zero Read Online Free

racing from one moon shadow to the next. Ochs followed, grunting, boots slugging for purchase. Nathan Lee saw the gun in his fist, a silvery toy. He reached the top of the debris, and stopped.
    The Church of the Holy Sepulcher stood beneath him. They had reached the Christian quarter.
    Nathan Lee had been here before. The place actually housed many places. Crusader towers crowded against Byzantine domes built upon the ruins of a Roman temple of Venus. Here, contained under one roof, were the legendary landmarks of Christ’s death, from the rock of Calvary to the tomb of His resurrection. Some of the outer buildings had fallen, but most of it was intact, even the little crosses on top of the domes.
    Ochs reached him, and saw the church. He gasped. “See?” he said. “See?”
    Then Nathan Lee heard voices below. Without a word he lowered himself into a hollow where the rubble had sagged. Ochs squeezed in beside him.
    “Untouched!” said Ochs. “Just like we saw on CNN.”
    Nathan Lee drew back into the shadows. He lay his cheekbone against a concrete slab and rested his fingertips along a prong of rebar sticking from the rubble. The footsteps drew closer. He could feel the tremors gaining strength. Ochs’s sweat stank.
    Then they appeared, or their shadows did. He saw shapes, not men, huge shadows streaming against what walls still stood. He saw the glint of rifles. They trampled the ruins like quiet machinery.
    Ochs’s eyes were huge and white in the dark recess. His jowls were tiger-striped with black and olive paint. He lifted his gun.
    The killers passed.
    Ochs stood. “Come on.”
    Nathan Lee stayed on his hands and knees. “There’s something down here,” he said. Next to Ochs’s boot toe, the thing jutted up.
    Nathan Lee thought at first it was a tiny potted tree growing out of the wreckage, ten inches high, no more. He leaned closer to see what it was. The shock of recognition made him grunt.
    It was a hand.
    The twigs were fingers, wilted. The wrist was thin. It held a woman’s watch. The long plastic fingers had nails laquered ruby red. The gold wedding ring was shiny and new. A mannequin’s hand, that’s what he wanted it to be. He knew it was not.
    “Look,” said Nathan Lee.
    Ochs shined his light.
    “It’s a woman.”
    They had been smelling the dead all night. The odors seeped up from the ruins. Nathan Lee had started to think they might just escape without seeing any bodies.
    “Okay, you found one,” said Ochs. He kept his voice flat. “Let’s get going.”
    Nathan Lee stayed kneeling. The flares illuminated their ridge top with electric reds and greens. The hand hung limp, forefinger slightly pointing as in Michelangelo’s picture of Adam taking the mortal spark from God. The beautifully painted fingernails were broken off at the tips, and packed underneath with dirt. She had clawed her way out of the tomb. That spoke to him. She had refused to surrender.
    “Do you hear that scratching sound?”
    Since entering the city, the sounds had been rising up to them from underground. Murmurs, cries, knocking, scratches. They’d done a fine job pretending it was just the city settling in on its own rubble. Nathan Lee couldn’t pretend anymore.
    “You’re hearing things,” said Ochs. He drew taller. “She’s dead. The city’s a write-off. Come on.”
    Nathan Lee set his ear against the ground. Something was scraping under there. It could be stones whispering against one another. Or nails gently stroking at the dirt.
    “Dogs,” said Ochs, “trying to dig their way in. Or house cats. They’re worse, I hear. They go for the face muscles.”
    Nathan Lee began lifting stones away.
    “What are you doing?”
    “It could be her child down there,” said Nathan Lee.
    “Have you lost your mind? Her child?”
    “It could be.” Nathan Lee pried up one block, but another slid into its place. He tried another stone, and the debris shifted again. It was like a puzzle that refused to be undone.