The Zero by Jess Walter Page A

down among the cranes unloading beams and bars from barges onto dump trucks overseen by thick guys in sweatsuits and gold bracelets, all the connected guys waiting for their piece. Crushed debris dripped from the cranes and barges, and trucks paraded endlessly up to the landfill and spread their loads out on rolling hills, where it looked like a fleet of plane crashes, all of it raked and sorted by crews of twelve, under close invisible supervision by rumored officials from the Office of Liberty and Recovery. The piles themselves were hard for Remy to comprehend: tangled steel and rebar and concrete dust, and no matter how long you searched the gray mass you never saw anything normal, a telephone or a computer or a floor lamp. These things were just…gone, he supposed, liquidized into dust and endless tons of bits, indistinguishable pieces of rubble to be sifted in big construction-site shakers. Every so often he saw a truck head off to a series of big temporary buildings nearby, carrying loads of hastily stacked paper and organic material, jigsawed bits of people.
    “They found a chin yesterday,” Paul said. “Some mismatched fingers, part of a foot…got a whole head the day before. That’s the biggest piece so far, at least out here.”
    “Paul—”
    “A head,” Paul repeated. “Can you imagine, Bri? Look at my head. Can you imagine it just…showing up? Or your head. How did we miss that? Can you imagine your head bein’ out here, buried under all this, fuggin’ steel on top and shit on the bottom? What kind of look would you have on your face, do you think?”
    Remy shifted uncomfortably.
    One of the state senators, the fat one, his suit pants tucked into his work boots, was coming toward them. He had been struggling all morning, beet-faced and breathless. Twice he had started crying and his eyes and nose were lined with gray. He walked over to Paul and Remy and removed his surgical mask, red-eyed and nauseous. It was clear he’d been vomiting. “This is very difficult for me.”
    “Yeah,” Guterak said. “We really feel for you.”
    “I didn’t expect everything to be so…”
    “Raw,” Guterak said.
    “Yes,” the senator said.
    “You see the chin?”
    “No,” the senator said.
    “Got a head yesterday. Biggest single chunk I’ve seen.”
    “Really?” The senator looked around, uncomfortable.
    “Still, there aren’t enough pieces,” Guterak said, “for how many are still missing. Not even close.”
    The senator nodded and looked back at the space-suited workers. “I feel like they want me to say something,” he said. “Like I should know what to say. But I don’t have any idea.”
    “Tell them they’re doing a good job,” Paul said.
    The state senator nodded, took several breaths, wiped his brow, and said, “Thanks.” He pulled his mask back up. Remy and Guterak watched him walk away, trip on a tangle of something, fall forward, and recoil when his hands hit the debris. He got back up and picked his way over the piles of steel and rubble.
    “Go fugg yourself, fat boy,” Guterak said quietly, almost gently, when the senator was gone.
    Afterward, they drove back in silence. At the bridge Remy looked back, beyond the exhausted senators, the island receding behind them. At the toll plaza, Paul pressed his E-Z Pass against the window. Somewhere, accounts were tabulated, identities recorded, order inferred, and they passed easily over to the other side.
    “These things can read your thoughts now, when you come over the bridge,” Paul told the senators, although Remy had the feeling Paul was talking to him. “It’s new. Top secret. Very hush-hush. They just started it.”
    The senators exchanged a glance.
    “It doesn’t work very well, yet. Staffing is tough, from what I hear…All those fuggin’ thoughts of all those people crossing in and out of the city. You can’t keep up with it, all the shitty things that people think. They got six big rooms with agents sitting on wires,