The Beautiful Land

by Alan Averill

  “They already do.”

  “Okay, then this’ll help.”

  He pulls her legs out, then takes her hands and does the same with her arms, raising them above her head and slowly tugging on the fingers. It feels good, and not just because the heavy sensation is beginning to dissipate; she’s simply happy to have him touch her.

  “I told you to eat more pancakes,” he says. Samira is still staring up at the trees, but she doesn’t need to see her friend’s face to know that he’s grinning.

  “It isn’t funny.”

  “Trust me, I know. The first few times I did this, I was sick as a dog. Way worse than you, actually.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “Here, come on. Try to sit up.”

  He pulls her arms again, and Samira manages to transfer her weight from her back to her ass. The world gives a final spin once she’s upright, but then her balance returns for good. She coughs, an action that causes fire to leap up in her throat. “Water,” she says. “Do we have any water?”

  “No, but we’ll find some. Come on, get up. We need to move.”

  Tak helps Samira to her feet, holding out an arm for support. She accepts it, wobbles for a second, then manages to stand on her own. Glancing around with new eyes, she sees that they’re in what looks to be a city park, albeit one in need of major maintenance. In addition to the dead trees and dry grass, she can see a few fire-ravaged bushes dotting the ground. To her left, an old water fountain is covered in rust. Beyond that, a child’s playset rests against the cold grey sky, swings gently wobbling in the breeze. The park isn’t large—maybe the size of a city block—and past the swings she can see a sidewalk and the outline of rooftops.

  “Where are we?” asks Samira.

  Tak shuffles his feet and looks around. He looks almost guilty. “Um…I don’t really know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we’re supposed to be in this place I call Mario Land, but…we’re not.”

  “Mario Land?”

  “You remember that old video game Super Mario Brothers? It kind of looks like that. There’s this really bright blue sky and these perfectly shaped white clouds, and I thought it would be a good place to lie low. But, um…yeah. This isn’t it. I don’t know where this is.” He glances down at the briefcase and rubs it with a finger. “I don’t know if I set this wrong, or if using it while the solid timeline was being overwritten screwed it up or what. But we’re in the wrong place.”

  Samira nods. Surprisingly, this doesn’t bother her as much as she expected it to. Their current location is a dead world—or at least one on life support—but it’s quiet and clean enough that she’s not feeling the usual pangs of anxiety in her chest. “Should we…I don’t know? What happens now? Do we wait here or what?”

  “We need to get inside,” says Tak. “I don’t like being exposed like this. We’ll head for those houses over there and see if anyone’s home.”

  “What if they are?”

  “Then we run.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Oh, yeah. Ninety percent of time travel is running like hell…. I probably should have mentioned that.”

  He moves toward the roofs in the distance, and Samira follows. When she passes the playset, she sees that the slide is covered in a flaky red crust. Her first thought is that it’s rust, but as she looks closer, she begins to think it’s actually dried blood. She holds this idea for far longer than she would like before realizing that Tak is almost a block ahead, forcing her to abandon the unpleasant thought and scramble to catch up.

  The two of them walk in silence down a cracked street with large houses lining either side. This was clearly a high-end neighborhood once, but now it’s little more than a graveyard. Tall grass, the same brown color as that of the park, grows with abandon. Windows are shattered and missing. Open doors sag sadly on rusted hinges. Occasionally, they pass a house with boards nailed over the door in random, chaotic patterns. At one point, Samira glances down and sees a brown teddy bear with a single button eye. She finds this creepier than anything she’s seen so far and quickly reaches out for Tak’s hand. He takes it with a reassuring squeeze, but she can tell that he’s equally unnerved.

  At the end of the first block, they encounter a burned-out shell of what must have once been a very impressive home. Charred timbers, long since cold, poke out of the ground like weary sentinels. A large wooden sign has been staked into the ground on the side of the torched house, and on this someone has spray painted three words:

  THEY ARE COMING

  “Yikes,” says Tak. “That ain’t good.”

  Overhead, the sky has turned a foreboding grey. Soon a flash of lightning lights up the sky, followed seconds later by a loud peal of thunder. Tak glances up, tightening his grip on Samira’s hand. “Come on,” he says. “We need to pick a house.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” she says, her eyes opening wide. “Tak, I’m not going in any of these houses.”

  “Sam, we don’t know what happens when it rains here. It could be acid rain, the water could be infected, anything. Plus, if we get wet, we have to worry about hypothermia. We need to get inside.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she mutters.

  “Look, some of these are definitely abandoned, so we can take one of those if you want. But I think something that’s boarded up is probably a better bet. I mean, at least it’s been sealed from the elements. There could be people inside, but I’m guessing they’re probably…”

  “Dead,” finishes Samira. “This whole place is dead. I’ve seen towns like this in the war. I mean, not exactly like this, but I’ve felt this kind of stillness. The people here either left, or they’re dead.”

  Tak nods, glances around, and points at a faded blue house a little way down the block. The windows and front door have been boarded over, and unlike many of its neighbors, it appears to be structurally sound. As they hurry toward it, Samira finds herself looking from window to window, waiting for someone to pop out and start firing. The calmness she felt about the place at first glance fades, and she feels a familiar tightness start to well up in her chest.

  The blue house is a single-story number, standing in sharp contrast to the massive structures on either side of it. A few ragged pickets of what was once a fence lean drunkenly in front of the driveway. Tak and Samira move past those and up onto the porch, where Tak begins examining the boards nailed over the door. As he does, Samira moves around the side of the house. Most of the windows have been sealed up, but by tromping through a backyard garden, she finds a small basement window that the owners neglected to cover. As she’s inspecting the glass, she hears footsteps approach. Panic rears its head again before she realizes that it’s Tak.

  “I dunno,” he says, approaching her. “I don’t think I can get the boards off without a hammer or dynamite or…Oh, hey, look at that. A window.”

  “Yeah,” says Samira. “Look at that.”

  “Shit, that’s tiny,” says Tak as he bends down and sticks his face inside the opening. “I don’t think I can fit in there, and I’m a skinny-ass Japanese dude.”

  “I can.”

  “Yeah, but…Come on, Sam. I don’t wanna send you into the creepy haunted house all alone.”

  “It’s okay,” she says, leaving out the part about her jackhammering heart. “Really. I’ll be fine.”

  He makes a face at this but eventually shrugs his shoulders and holds out his hands toward the window like a showroom model. She hesitates for a moment, but not because she’s scared of what might be waiting for her inside the house—she hesitates because there is a long, dusty cobweb hanging across the window.

  “Hey, listen,” begins Tak. “This is dumb. I’ll just find a—”

  “No,” says Samira, shaking her head hard enough to make her curls bounce. “No, I got this.” She gets down on her belly, forcing away her disgust at the damp and dirty ground, and peers inside the home. Her nose warns of stale water and mold, but the
darkness is complete enough to prevent even a cursory look. She tilts her head and listens for minute or two but hears only the sound of raindrops falling behind her.

  Finally, she clamps her mouth and eyes shut and wriggles through the opening. She twists to avoid the cobweb, but feels something brush across her face at the last moment. As Samira clears the window and drops to the concrete floor below, her fingers begin to itch. She starts to brush her hands through her hair, moving them faster and faster until friction makes them burn. She’s sure that there are cobwebs in her hair—cobwebs and dirt and all manner of unclean things—so she tilts her head down and begins rubbing furiously, trying to shake out the army of phantom particles that have no doubt taken up residence. She can feel her breath begin to quicken as she tugs at her hair with renewed fury.

  “Hey!” says Tak, peering through the window frame. “You okay? What are you doing?”

  Samira freezes in place, then slowly stands and drops her arms to her sides. It takes all of her willpower not to start shaking out her hair again. “What do you mean?”

  “It sounds like you’re…I don’t know. Scratching yourself.”

  “I’m…Yeah, don’t worry. I’m fine. Do you have a flashlight or something? I can’t see a thing.”

  To Samira’s extreme relief, Tak says nothing more about her unusual behavior. Instead, he reaches into his pocket and produces a long, thin piece of metal. There’s a hole at the top through which a string is threaded, and a hard stone tied to the other end. “Here,” he says. “It’s my flint. It won’t hold a flame, but you can at least make sparks with it.”

  She takes the proffered tool without another word and scrapes the rock across the steel. As she does so, bright white sparks leap up, briefly illuminating the room around her. She strikes the steel again and again, each time learning a little more about her surroundings. Spark. That’s an old box. Spark. Metal pipe. Spark. Bicycle without any tires. Spark. Lantern.

  “Hey, Tak!” she yells excitedly. “There’s a lantern here! Hold on a sec!” Scrambling around in the dark, hands extended, she bumps and stumbles her way over to where she saw the lantern. After a few more sparks to get her bearings, she manages to open the small glass door that protects the wick. Her first few attempts at lighting it do nothing, and for a moment she thinks it’s out of fuel, but on the fifth spark it finally catches. She holds it aloft, enjoying the cheerful yellow glow, and takes a moment to make sure there’s nothing hanging from her hair.

  “Hey, what’s up?” yells Tak from the window. “What do you see?”

  “It’s a basement,” she says, holding a curl in front of her face. “It’s full of…basement stuff.”

  “Do you see a hammer anywhere? Preferably a big one?”

  “Yeah, hold on. I’m looking.”

  She drops the hair and lets her eyes roam across the room. She spots a set of stairs leading up to a wooden door, a couple of sagging shelves holding old cans of paint, and a battered washing machine covered in mold. Finally, she turns around and finds a Peg-Board holding a set of old, rusty tools. Uttering a cheerful cry, she shuffles over to the board and removes a hammer and a pry bar, both of which she passes through the window to Tak.

  “Dude, Sam, you’re a fucking rock star!” he cries as he takes the tools. “Okay, I’m gonna go open the front door. Do you need me to help you out?”

  “No, I see a door. I’m just going to head upstairs.”

  “Cool. I’ll be there in two shakes.”

  He scampers away, leaving a pair of footprints in the soft dirt beneath the window. Samira feels her body trying to move to the moldy washing machine and forces it toward the stairs instead. If she spends any more time in this room, she’ll likely never leave—there’s so much to clean that her head is spinning.

  She hears Tak pulling nails as she ascends the stairs and opens the basement door. Holding the lantern in front of her, she finds herself standing in a small kitchen. At first glance, it seems utterly unremarkable, but then she notices the sink. Where there should have been one faucet, there were three. Moving closer, she can see a set of symbols etched on each one:

  % Å ∑

  Samira is so engrossed by this discovery that she doesn’t hear Tak until he’s standing behind her. Wordlessly, she reaches out and points toward the faucets. He moves in for a closer look, then begins nodding as if he expected this all along.

  “Kinda weird, huh?” he says. “You see a lot of stuff like this in random timelines, where something’s almost normal, but then it’s not. This house probably has little stuff like this everywhere.”

  “What happened to this place?” asks Samira, as Tak takes the lantern from her hand and begins rummaging through cabinets. “I mean, where is everyone? This house seems fine.”

  “I’m not sure,” he says, as a plastic cup falls from a cabinet and goes bouncing across the floor. “Maybe there was a war or a plague or something. Maybe they just all went to the movies.”

  “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “Well, it could have been a good movie.”

  “Tak!”

  “Sorry! Sorry. Look, I don’t know where they went. I haven’t ever landed in a place like this before.”

  He pulls a small, metal box out of the cupboard and pries open the cover. With a grin, he hands the find to Samira, holding the lantern so she can see inside. The container is filled with what appear to be candy bars covered in shiny silver wrappers. The word PANDONKULOUS! is scribbled across each one in a bright red font.

  “I don’t want to eat something called Pandonkulous,” murmurs Samira.

  “I bet they’re pan-tastic,” replies Tak with as much of a straight face as he can muster.

  “Never do that again,” says Sam, trying and failing to hold a giggle at bay. She stuffs two of the bars in her pocket, then follows Tak as he wanders out of the kitchen and into the front room, where they discover a faded green couch, an old rocking chair, and a fireplace. Crumpled-up newspapers lie everywhere, as if someone had unpacked the furniture, then split before cleaning up. All in all, the house is in better shape than Samira was expecting. It’s musty and could use a good dusting, but she thinks she’ll be able to handle both of those things for a little while.

  She kicks at a piece of paper as Tak picks up the boards he tore off the front door and starts hammering them across the inside frame, knocking over a small umbrella stand in the process. “Just in case,” he says between thumps. “I mean, I’m with you. I think this place is deserted. But you never know.”

  As he works, Samira explores the rest of the house. She finds a bathroom—faucets marked with the same odd symbols as those in the kitchen—two bedrooms, and a small closet. The closet door is open, revealing blankets, pillows, and a box of something called Beam Brite Cleaner. She picks up the box and flips it over; on the other side, a smiling bald man holds a mop in one hand and a sponge in the other.

  “My hero,” murmurs Samira to herself.

  She drops the cleaner somewhat reluctantly and moves back to the bathroom. There’s a tub-and-shower combination that’s a bit grimy but could probably be made to work with a little help from Mr. Beam Brite. She turns the nozzle, hoping to see a spray of clear blue water, but doesn’t get so much as a drop. Maybe I can go stand in the rain and clean off, she thinks, listening to the sound of drops pelting the bathroom window. I mean, as long as it’s not poison or whatever the hell Tak was talking about.

  This thought of Tak makes her realize that he hasn’t been hammering for a while, so she wanders back down the hall and to the living room. She finds him facing the fireplace and staring at an unfolded piece of newspaper. As she walks up behind him and places a hand on his shoulder, he flinches slightly.

  “Hey,” she says. “What’s up?”

  Tak says nothing, so Samira cranes her head around to look at her friend; the expression in his eyes is one of frightened confusion. “Tak?” she asks, suddenly nervous. “Tak, what is it? What’s wrong?”

&nb
sp; In response, he hands her the front page of the newspaper, something called the River Rock Gazette. The headline reads simply ALL IS LOST. The rest of the page is taken up by a blurry black-and-white photograph of something standing in the glow of a streetlight. At first she thinks it’s an extremely tall, thin man, but then she notices how it’s covered here and there with shaggy black feathers. Looking closer, she sees a pair of twisted talons where its feet should be, as well as what appears to be a beak protruding from its head.

  Samira grabs Tak’s arm, digging her fingers into his flesh, as they continue to stare at the photo. After a minute, Tak flips the paper over and holds it out toward the warbling yellow light of the lantern. On the back, printed in tiny font, are hundreds and hundreds of names. The list runs raggedly up and down the page before finally careening off the edge halfway through a name, as if the person operating the press had run out of time.

  “Tak,” asks Samira softly, “what happened here?”

  “I don’t know,” he replies. “But I think we better get the hell out of Dodge.”

  chapter fourteen

  Samira is curled into a ball in the corner of the couch and enjoying the warmth of a fire. Tak had been hesitant to spark a flame at first, and Samira didn’t need to ask why: flames lead to smoke, and one glance at the thing in the newspaper photo was enough to convince her that lying low was a good strategy. But it was cold in the house, and, more important, they needed water. The rain might be clean, and it might not—putting it over flame for a long boil was the only way to be sure. Tak had used a pan from the kitchen to collect the rain, then hung it over the fire with a series of bent coat hangers. Samira was really impressed with his creativity; all that time spent in the wilderness had clearly paid off.

  “How long do we stay here?” she asks. “I mean, can’t we just use your magic briefcase to hop back?”

  “I don’t think physicists would appreciate your calling this a magic briefcase,” Tak says, chuckling, as he breaks off a thin piece of wood from a cabinet door and pokes at the fire.