The Beautiful Land

by Alan Averill

  Samira turns, a scowl coming over her face. “No,” she says quietly, “that’s not what he said.” There’s a pause, then a couple of sentences in a foreign language. She raises one hand in the air, then brings it down and starts rubbing at her face. Tak takes the fingers and wraps them in his own, which seems to calm her down.

  The driver glances over at Samira with an expression that Tak can’t quite read. “What was that?” he says. “Spanish?”

  “Farsi,” says Tak. “Or standard Arabic. I can’t ever tell the difference.”

  “She an Arab?” asks the driver. He pronounces it A-rab, putting a pause in the word that causes Tak to cringe.

  “No, she’s American. Her parents are from Iran, but they left when she was two.”

  “They’re from where?”

  “Iran?…It’s the country above Iraq?”

  “Oh.”

  They drive in silence for another few miles, Tak using the time to size up his new friend. He’s a heavy man, older, with folds in his neck and stubble cropping up everywhere. The hands that grip the wheel are large and callused, the nails stained a permanent black from oil and grease. His voice is high-pitched and tinged with a Midwestern accent, which Tak takes as a good sign; folks from flyover country were usually nicer than most.

  Tak turns his attention back to the road just in time to see a sign that reads OMAHA: 114 MILES. The thought of spending all that time in silence begins to depress him, so he decides to take the small-talk plunge. “I’m Tak, by the way,” he says, extending a hand. “Tak O’Leary.”

  “Tak?” asks the driver, leaving Tak’s hand hovering in midair.

  “Yeah.”

  “Like a pushpin?”

  “…Like that, yeah.”

  “Well, all right then, Tak.” says the man, who reaches out, grasps Tak’s small hand in his own, and pumps it up and down with enough force to sprain the wrist. “I’m Dennis.”

  “Where you from, Dennis?” asks Tak. “Nebraska?”

  “Wisconsin. Little town called Ellsworth. Not much more than a spot on the map, to tell the truth. You?”

  “Oh, I’m from all over. Seattle, mostly.”

  “So, uh, your gal there. What’s her name?”

  “Samira.”

  “Samira,” says Dennis slowly, rolling the word around in his mouth like a gumball. “Samira. That’s a nice name.”

  “Yeah, well, you know. It beats Tak.”

  “You kids married?”

  “Us? No, no. We’re not…We’re not married.”

  “Dating?”

  Tak’s mind goes blank at this question. How does he even begin to explain the situation? Well, see, I was in love with her back in high school, but then I left to experiment with time travel and she went off to the Iraq War. But now we’re back, and I think there’s something going on, but our last kiss was interrupted by a giant killer bird, so I’m not completely sure.

  “Er…we’re friends,” he says finally. “Old friends.”

  Dennis nods at this, downshifting in preparation for a small hill. The truck growls in response, as if it likes the challenge. “Yeah, all right. I’ll drop it. Don’t mean to pry or nothing.”

  Tak is ready to tell him that he’s not prying, that he’s actually asking very reasonable questions under the circumstances, but he just leans back and says nothing. After a few miles, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out his final Pandonkulous bar, and starts munching. Halfway through he remembers his manners and offers a piece to Dennis, but the man waves him off with a shake of the head.

  “No thanks,” he says. “I can’t handle candy no more. Doc says I’m Type B. Didn’t used to be like that, but…”

  As Dennis trails off, an odd look passes over his face, as if he’s concerned about something far more complicated than his current poor health. Tak can see that he wants to talk about it, but also that such a conversation won’t happen until he’s ready. So instead of prying, he finishes off the chocolate bar and wipes his fingers on his jeans. After a few quiet miles, Samira mutters something unintelligible and shifts her weight, pressing one skinny leg against Tak’s thigh. The smell of her is everywhere—a pleasant combination of rain, grass, and sweat—and it’s starting to drive Tak a little bit crazy. This could get complicated, Sam, he thinks as he resists the urge to run his fingers through her hair. You’re making it awfully hard for me to focus.

  He forces his eyes to move up and over her head until they are once again staring out the window. The world passes in a blur, fields and fences and the occasional small farmhouse all rushing together to become a single landscape—America’s heartland at seventy miles an hour. Once he sees a pair of green eyes flash out from the darkness up ahead, and he’s sure that it’s the creature from the random timeline. He has a vision of its leaping onto the top of the truck and tearing open the roof with a long, serrated beak, but then the truck pulls even with the eyes, and he realizes it’s only a deer. The animal gets smaller and smaller in the rearview until finally vanishing into the night.

  “You mind if I ask something?” says Dennis. He moves one hand to the radio and starts flipping though channels as he speaks. “Like I said, I’m not the prying sort, but…”

  “Uh, no,” responds Tak, distracted. “No, that’s fine.”

  “What are you doing out here? I drive this part of the country a fair bit, and ain’t nothing back where I found you but farmland and dust.”

  “Our car broke down,” says Tak lamely. “We…uh…we were driving to Wyoming to visit her grandmother, and the radiator died.”

  “It died?”

  “Yeah, well, you know. Maybe not the radiator. It could have been the carburetor or the…uh…that other thing.”

  “Don’t know much about cars, do ya?”

  “Not a damn thing,” says Tak, who suddenly realizes that playing the idiot card is probably the way to go here. “It just stopped working. But hey, we’re really glad you came along.”

  “Mmm,” says Dennis.

  Tak lets the silence hang for a bit as he works on a way to figure out if the timeline swap had been successful. He thinks of a dozen ideas, rejecting them all out of hand, before finally settling on throwing caution to the wind. “So, say. You mind if I ask you a question now?”

  “Sure.”

  “Who’s the president?”

  Dennis turns his head to the side and stares. Tak smiles weakly, gripping Samira’s hand a little tighter as he does so.

  “The president?”

  “…Yeah.”

  “Of the country?”

  “Yeah, you know what? Never mind. Just forget I said anything. I’m tired, it was a stupid question, and I’m just…I’m going to stop talking now.”

  Dennis turns his eyes back to the road, but not before Tak can see that he’s seriously troubled. Nice one, idiot. Now he’s gonna dump you off at the next rest stop because he thinks you’re a crazy person, and you’ll have to start this stupid trip all over again.

  The next rest stop ends up being less than five minutes away, but to Tak’s surprise, the truck roars past without a second thought. Dennis fiddles endlessly with the radio knob over the next handful of miles, occasionally opening his mouth as if he wants to say something only to close it a couple of seconds later. As they motor past the outskirts of a one-horse town called Battle Creek, he finally gives up the hunt for music and clicks off the radio, apparently content to let the dull rush of tires on asphalt serve as their sound track. The two men continue in this way for nearly half an hour, not speaking, not looking at each other, the silence broken only by occasional bouts of frightened chatter from a sleeping Samira. Once she even screams, a breathless, terrible sound, but Tak reaches over and places his hand on her shoulder, and the fear dies as quickly as it started.

  Eventually they pass a green sign informing them that Omaha is only fifty miles away. This seems to trigger something in Dennis, because he finally stops opening and closing his mouth and moves on to actual speech. �
�Why did you ask about the president?” he asks with eyes pointed straight ahead.

  “Just trying to make conversation,” says Tak, acutely aware of how stupid his answer sounds. “You know?”

  “You sure that’s the reason? You sure you didn’t ask because it doesn’t feel…right?”

  Tak perks up at this. Dennis’s question could mean a thousand different things—that he doesn’t like the president’s political party, or that he doesn’t think the election was fair, or even that he is just trying to see what the hell would make his passenger ask such a ridiculous thing. But it could also be an indication of something much more important. “I guess that’s as good a way to put it as any,” says Tak slowly. “What about you?”

  Dennis reaches into the overhead visor and produces a toothpick, staring at it for a moment before placing it between his front teeth. “I’m gonna tell you something,” he says, the toothpick moving up and down in his mouth like a conductor’s baton. “I ain’t told no one this yet, but I figure you don’t know me and I don’t know you and that makes it about as safe as anything…. I don’t think things are right.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Tak, leaning forward.

  “I’ve been driving this truck damn near my whole life. I remember my daddy teaching me how to run a rig. I remember getting my license. Hell, I can tell stories about trips I took up and down this entire country. I’m near fifty years old, and this is the only thing I’ve ever known. But then I’ve got these other memories too, and I know they couldn’t possibly have happened, but I remember ’em just the same. It’s like I got double memories of my life.”

  Dennis reaches up and flips the toothpick around so he can worry the clean side a little bit. “I used to work in a big East Coast city. I think it was Boston, but it coulda been Hartford or Bangor or something. I had an office in a skyscraper, and I wore a suit and had a lot of people reporting to me. Had a family, too: wife and three little girls. And I don’t mean that I did this before I drove the truck. I mean that I did this instead of driving the truck. I remember a whole different life.”

  Tak sits very still and tries not to freak out. He remembers the solid timeline. So that means the Machine worked. It worked, and Yates managed to overwrite the solid timeline, but this truck driver can still remember it. And if he can remember it, that means that other people probably remember it. Hell, maybe everyone remembers it. And that’s not how it was supposed to be…. That’s not how it was supposed to be at all.

  “I know I sound crazy,” continues Dennis, “but I don’t care anymore. I don’t know if it’s some kinda government mind-control thing or if we’ve been poisoned by the water or what, but I feel like I’m about to lose my goddamn marbles!”

  He emphasizes this point by slamming his hand against the dashboard, an action that causes Samira to bolt upright with a scream in her throat. She looks around the cab wildly for a few seconds before slowly curling into a ball as far back against the door as she can go. “Oh, crap,” she whispers. “Freaky.”

  “Ah, hell,” says Dennis. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “Um, it’s okay,” says Samira as she rubs the sleep from her eyes before beginning to crack her knuckles. “I’m just a light sleeper.” She finishes the pinky knuckle and seems ready to go for the toes, but then a smudge on the window catches her eye, and she starts rubbing it absentmindedly.

  “Go on,” says Tak, glancing over at Dennis. “What else do you remember?”

  Dennis looks from Tak to Samira and back again, then shakes his head. “I dunno,” he says. “I probably shouldn’t talk about it anymore.”

  “No, keep talking. I want to hear what you have to say, because…because we’ve been going through the same thing.” Tak feels a brief flash of guilt at the lie but quickly pushes it to the back of his mind; there will be plenty of time to feel like an ass after he figures out what the hell is going on.

  “You have? I thought…I thought I was the only one.”

  “No, both of us have strange memories, too,” says Tak. Samira looks up at this, eyebrows raised in a confused expression, but he holds up a single finger and shakes his head. She shrugs halfheartedly before starting to scrub furiously at the window.

  “Well, I’ve got these other memories,” begins Dennis. “You know how sometimes you have a nightmare, and when you first wake up you’ve got a kind of tightness that eventually goes away? Well, that’s what this is like, only it ain’t going away. Every time I think about it, I get this terrible pain in my chest like I can’t breathe. And if I think about it too long, I start worrying that I’m just gonna…”

  “That you’re going to what?” asks Tak. Keeping his eyes focused on Dennis, he snakes a hand behind him and closes it around Samira’s wrist, pulling her away from the window. She makes an exasperated noise and tries to break free, but he smashes it to the seat and holds it firm. “You worry that you’re going to what?”

  “It’s like, if I keep thinking about it, I’m gonna die.”

  Dennis’s lower lip trembles as if he means to cry. Behind him, Samira is breathing heavily and trying to get herself under control, but Tak can tell that it’s a losing battle. He finally decides that having her clean the window is better than dealing with a meltdown, so he releases the hand; she immediately attacks the smudge with renewed fury.

  “See, in one of my memories, I’m driving this truck through a cold stretch of the Dakotas,” continues Dennis, seemingly unconcerned about his passenger’s obsession with his window. “And in the other memory, I’m sitting in the office building and staring out over the city. But in both of ’em, I hear this noise. It’s kinda like a jet engine, but real low—almost like you feel it in your bones more than hear it with your ears. So I hear this noise, and I look up at the sky, and it’s like it’s just not there anymore. Instead, there’s this big dark hole. It sits there, black as night, until these…things come rushing out of it. They have big wings and huge, black eyes, and they eat the sky until there’s nothing left.”

  He tosses the toothpick on the floor of the cab and exchanges it for a cigarette, which he lights with a trembling hand. “That sky is the only thing that appears in both my memories, and whenever I think about it, I get a fear that clamps around my heart and won’t let go.”

  “That’s rough,” says Tak. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well, I shouldn’t burden you with it, but I dunno who else to tell.”

  “Does Axon know about this?” asks Tak.

  “Who?” replies Dennis.

  Tak tilts his head sideways and looks at Dennis quizzically. “The Axon Corporation? They’re in control of everything…. Right?”

  “Sorry, kid. I’ve never heard of ’em.”

  “That’s not right,” says Tak, his mouth working before his brain can tell it to shut up. “They’re supposed to run everything.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe it’s your memories that are messed up, because I’ve never heard of ’em.”

  Tak slowly sinks into his seat and stares straight ahead. To his left, a large, nervous man pulls on a cigarette, while to his right, a pretty young woman struggles to remove an ancient stain from a window. Tak sees all of this and yet none of it, because his mind is racing with terrible thoughts. Jesus Christ in a jug band. This is the wrong timeline. Axon is supposed to rule the world, but they aren’t in charge of anything. That means either Yates made a mistake, or he never intended to use that timeline in the first place…. This is bad. This is really, really bad.

  “You all right?” asks Dennis as he tosses the filter of his cigarette out the window. “You look a little pale.”

  “No, I’m not all right,” replies Tak. “Nothing is all right. I don’t think we’re supposed to be here.”

  chapter seventeen

  The Kearney Regional Airfield is hardly what Tak would call a world-class joint, but surprisingly enough, he doesn’t mind. In fact, an airport like this, with its small runway, dimly lit parking lot, and limited
hours of operation, was exactly what he was hoping to find for the first leg of their journey. He was still a stranger in this timeline, but what little he knew had convinced him that keeping a low profile was a very good idea. Whatever Yates had done, whatever timeline he had substituted during the exchange, there was a good possibility that he was now in charge.

  Currently, Tak and Samira are standing outside the airport in ankle-deep snow, waiting for someone to come along and open the doors. Dennis had dropped them off an hour prior with a hearty hug that nearly broke Tak’s ribs. More helpfully, he’d also forked over a twenty and told him to buy Samira breakfast. Tak didn’t really need the money—he had almost ten thousand dollars stashed in a hidden pocket of his suit coat—but it gave him a chance to examine the bill and make sure his own money would still be good in this strange, new world. If Dennis’s gift had contained the scowling visage of President Nixon or the words THERE IS NO GOD, they could have been in serious trouble—so the face of Andrew Jackson had been a welcome sight indeed.

  “So explain this to me again,” says Samira, stamping her feet to stay warm. “’Cause I’m confused.”

  “Okay,” responds Tak. “So when they swapped the timelines, the reality that we know was erased and overwritten by this new reality. You with me?”

  “I’m with you.”

  “But in the timeline I found for them, the one they were supposed to use, Axon was in charge of everything. They were like the US government and Halliburton and the Catholic Church all rolled into one. Everyone should know about Axon. Especially an American citizen who spends his time driving and listening to the radio.”