Nowhere on Earth

by Nick Lake

  She thought about that. “They’re still coming after us, though, aren’t they?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “And they’ll kill you if they catch us.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But I don’t think so. I think they want to study me. It…it has happened before. Not to me. But to one of us.”

  She held his hand firmly. “Kill you. Study you. Either way, you never get home.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “So we’re not going to let that happen,” she said.

  He squeezed her hand again.

  The sun was low as they reached the outskirts of the small town—little more than a timber mill and a road lined with houses. Telegraph poles capped with snow. A crow cawed at them from a tree. Emily’s dad told her to stash the assault rifle behind a tree, under some branches. They kept the pistol—Emily’s mom tucked it under her shirt.

  “What should we do?” said Emily. They were passing the mill and entering the main street. A sign said: COPPER CREEK: POPULATION 2,830. “Ask for help?”

  “Too risky,” said her dad.

  “Aidan could ring a doorbell…do his thing.”

  “Complicated,” said Aidan. “They might want to take me in, keep me safe inside. It’s hard to predict what people will do.”

  Animals too, thought Emily, remembering the bear.

  Emily’s dad looked at them. “We need to look for a Ford pickup. F-250, something like that. Not too new. But anything from about 2008 should be OK.”

  “But”—she glanced around—“how are we…I mean…wouldn’t that be steal—”

  “You do want to get to HAARP, right?”

  “Right.” Emily felt her head spinning, like she was in zero G, like she was in space, where Aidan came from. Her dad had once confiscated her iPod because she was listening to Eminem, and Eminem had curse words. Now he was talking about jacking a car. She smiled, a little. “What if we don’t find one?” she asked.

  “It’s Alaska. We’ll find one.”

  Five minutes later, Emily’s mom pointed down a driveway. A white F-350 sat there, on big tires. There was a MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN sticker on the back fender. Another sticker read: I HUNT BUCKS AND ILLEGAL ALIENS.

  Another had Calvin on it, peeing on the letters DACA.

  Yeah.

  Yeah, this truck would do.

  No lights on in the house.

  Emily’s dad walked past a little way, then took off his backpack. He kneeled, searching through it. “Damn,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I need a screwdriver. Flat-head.”

  Emily felt in her pocket and fished out the knife she’d taken from the cabin. Classic, red with the silver cross embossed on it. She held it out to him. “This work?” she said.

  “Perfect.”

  Emily was beginning to understand that there were doors in the world into other worlds, but not like in stories. That is, you could go through an invisible entrance into a whole other realm of experience—a place laid on the same topography, with the same landmarks, but with a different logic of possibility; a place built on the same bones but with a whole different skin—just by making a choice.

  The choice she had made was Aidan.

  And once you were in that other world, where houses and mountains and trees superficially looked the same but glistened with the potential for violence, everything moved fast.

  The cliché was: a dreamworld. But Emily didn’t feel like she was dreaming. Instead, she felt like the mood of the world had changed. Like she’d lived in a polite world, a world that wore a fake smile. And now she lived in one that didn’t have time for smiles.

  Which is to say: she thought there’d be some kind of moment of transition, some discussion, some hand-wringing before her dad did what he did next. But there was nothing. He just walked past her and down the driveway, fast and purposeful. “Liese, Aidan, wait here,” he said. “Emily, with me. Keep a lookout.”

  Emily followed him, her eyes on the house. The curtains didn’t move. The lights stayed off. A man walked past on the other side of the street, with a dog on a lead. But he didn’t even look over—Emily’s dad was keeping his stance casual, and Emily tried that too; they were just a family visiting friends. Exactly where they were supposed to be.

  When the man had gone down a side street, Emily’s dad said, “Clear?”

  She watched the house.

  No movement.

  No light.

  “Clear,” she replied.

  He flipped the biggest screwdriver head out of the knife and popped the black plastic housing of the truck’s door handle. Then he reached inside and yanked on a lever and the door opened. “In,” he said. “Scoot over.”

  Emily climbed into the driver’s seat, then slid over into the passenger seat. The truck smelled of smoke, and McDonald’s boxes were strewn on the floor. Her dad swung himself in; shut the door. He used the screwdriver again to prize the plastic covering off the ignition switch. A shiny metal slot was revealed. He slid the screwdriver head into it and turned it, and the engine started.

  He shifted from N to R and reversed out of the driveway, spinning the steering wheel so that they came to a halt by Emily’s mom and Aidan. “Get in,” he said. There was a plastic woman in a hula skirt on the dash, and she danced as they stopped.

  A light went on upstairs in the house the truck belonged to.

  Shit, Emily thought.

  CHAPTER 46

  THE BACK DOORS of the truck opened, and her mom and Aidan jumped in, her mom pulling the backpack in behind her.

  Someone came out of the house, a big man, with a gray beard. He was wearing slippers and a bathrobe. He took a couple of steps down the driveway, staring at them. He was holding a gun, a revolver.

  “Belt up,” said Emily’s dad. He pulled the lever to D, and the tires squealed as he took off down the street, engine revving hard.

  Movement in the rear mirror—the man who owned the truck reaching the road. “Get down,” said Emily to her mom and Aidan as she twisted around, looking through the back window. She expected bullets, waited for the back window to explode in a shower of glass shards.

  But the man in the bathrobe didn’t even raise the gun—he sort of stagger-ran, confused, for a few steps, and then stood there, watching them go. Emily realized: he had only just gone through the invisible door. His heart and mind were still in the old world—he wasn’t used to how fast things moved here. He simply didn’t know what to do, even armed as he was.

  Emily’s dad, though: he knew. He knew the rules here, the culture, the language. He knew how to move fast, how to decide quickly.

  They cleared a strip of mom-and-pop stores and were out of the town before anyone spoke, doing fifty miles an hour. Then sixty. Then seventy. The road was a good one—hard blacktop. Emily’s dad drove in silence for ten minutes, and as soon as they came to a turn, he took it, then the next one.

  “Emily,” he said. “Check the glovebox. See if there’s a satnav in there.”

  She checked. There was. There was also a bottle of water—she passed it back to her mom, before she turned on the satnav.

  “OK. Turn it on. But when it comes up with the options, choose the last one. Whatever the least obvious route is.”

  “Police?”

  “Yeah. They’ll put out an APB, but it’ll take a while to coordinate. They’ll waste time going around to the guy’s house first, asking questions. We should have an hour. Maybe more.”

  Emily did what he said. Then she stuck the satnav to the windshield, using the vacuum tab thing. The route pulsed blue on the screen, the truck a silver arrow, gliding along.

  “That was fast,” said Aidan.

  “Tell me about it,” said Emily. She was watching her father’s profile, the expression of concentration. “How di
d you know how to do that?”

  He shrugged. “You’ve only known me sixteen years.”

  “You learn it in the army?”

  “I was Special Forces,” he said. “I can’t really talk about my time in the army.” He winked at her.

  “Can’t or won’t,” said Emily’s mom from the back. It sounded like a line from an old argument, or an old joke with edges to it; a script that they both knew well—both following their parts.

  Yeah, Emily thought. She’d known her parents for only a part of their lives. More doors, she thought, to other worlds. There was the one they’d all gone through, into this place where people shot at you and your dad stole cars. But there were the ones inside her mom and dad too—that opened into their former lives, their other lives, their hidden lives; the lives they had lived before they came here; before they had her; even the parts they were hiding from each other.

  Some of those doors, she thought, would never open.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted them to.

  CHAPTER 47

  THEY CAME TO a gas station with a bar out back, a motel—neon signs flashed WELCOME and BEER and CABLE TV—and a large parking lot. Emily’s dad parked the Ford in a far corner of the lot, and they got out. “Grab the bag too,” he said. “We’re switching trucks.”

  Emily’s mom was walking down the rows. “Here,” she said.

  Emily and Aidan went over. Emily’s mom was standing next to a dark blue pickup, dented and scratched.

  “Why this one?” said Emily.

  Her mom indicated the snow on the roof. “It’s been here awhile,” she said.

  Emily’s dad did his trick with the screwdriver, and they were in the truck in under a minute, Emily sharing the back with Aidan this time. They pulled out of the lot and got back on the road, and no one followed them or shouted after them.

  “Wait,” said Emily. “Stop.”

  There was a pay phone outside a liquor store. There weren’t many of them anymore and it was beat up, covered in flyers. She got out and went over to it, and when she opened the door, there was a smell of urine, but she picked up the phone and got a dial tone. She called 911.

  “911. What’s your emergency?”

  “Mountain Rescue, please.”

  “Connecting you now, ma’am.”

  Mountain Rescue answered.

  “Hi,” said Emily. “There’s an injured man at Upper Silver Lake. He’s in the cold-storage shed behind the cabin there. He…had an accident, on the mountain, and he can’t move. The cabin is…will be…burned down. He’ll need antibiotics. In fact, send paramedics.”

  “OK, miss, can I just get your—”

  She hung up and went back to the truck.

  This one didn’t have satnav—it was an older model, and the seats were worn—but there was a map of Alaska in the document pocket behind the driver’s seat, and Emily traced their route to Gakona, the nearest town to the HAARP facility. She had only the dimmest idea of what they were going to do there—sending a message to space using state-of-the-art, ex-military, university equipment from a highly secretive research facility was one of those things that sounded easier than it probably would be.

  And it didn’t sound easy.

  “It’s basically one road, all the way,” she said.

  Her dad nodded. He cranked up the heating and turned on the radio. Rihanna came on: “Diamonds.”

  “Aidan always loved this song,” said Emily’s mom, as if he weren’t with them in the car. “He used to sing along when it came on in the kitchen. Except he couldn’t say d when he was little. So he sang, ‘Shine bright like a miamon.’ I always remember that.”

  “But—”

  “I know, I know,” said her mom. “It didn’t happen. But I remember it.”

  Emily didn’t say anything.

  “It doesn’t feel like we’re the lucky ones, is all,” said her mother.

  Emily’s dad turned off the radio.

  At the next store and gas station they reached, he stopped and handed cash to Emily’s mom. “Best you go in alone,” he said. “In case they’ve put out a missing persons alert for a teenage girl and a little boy.”

  “You think they’d—”

  “Yes. They sent men with guns after the plane. You think they can’t issue a police report?”

  “True,” Emily’s mom said. She took the cash.

  “Water,” he said. “Food. Whatever’s fresh, but get some dried stuff too, in case we can’t stop for a while. Grab a can of gas as well. Jackets, gloves—we’re fine in the car, but we didn’t have good enough clothing out there. I wouldn’t want to break down and the kids get frostbite.”

  The word kids hung in the air for a moment, like smoke. The plurality of it.

  “Or…any of us,” he said.

  Emily’s mom sniffed, then took a breath. She opened the door. She headed in, and came out again ten minutes later with some of the gear, which she stashed behind the rear seats. Then she went back for more. She handed out bottles of water and hot dogs once she was in the car again.

  Emily ate her hot dog quickly. It was the best thing she’d ever tasted, even with only mustard, because her mom never remembered that she liked ketchup and onions too.

  Aidan ate his hot dog more slowly.

  “You…eat?” said Emily’s mom. Tentatively. Sadly. Not turning to look at him.

  “It’s not the most efficient energy source,” he said. “But yes.”

  He chugged the water much more quickly—the whole bottle. Emily noticed—but her mom didn’t seem to—that he was looking tired; pale and weak. She didn’t know if it was the chase, the running, the last few days. The cold. Or if he just wasn’t made for this world.

  She feared: she feared it was the last of those things.

  “And you need water?” her mom continued, oblivious.

  “Everything that lives needs water,” he said.

  “And you have a…family?” she said.

  Emily could see the effort the words were costing her. As if each one were a piece of her, cut away.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”

  A pause.

  “And you need to get back to them?”

  “Everything that lives needs family,” he said. He turned to Emily. “Everything that lives needs to be loved.”

  Emily’s dad turned the radio back on and left it on. Nickelback. But no one complained.

  CHAPTER 48

  THEY DROVE FAST, though always within the speed limit. When they passed a dirt road with a couple of trucks parked on it, Emily’s dad pulled a U-turn and stopped. He popped off the license plate from the pickup they were driving and swapped it with another one. Fast. Efficient.

  “Have you thought about a life of crime?” said Emily, when they were moving again.

  “Too dangerous,” he said.

  “You were in the army.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “I’ve seen people die.”

  “So have I,” said Emily quietly. She was thinking about the man who had fallen when the bear appeared. The explosion. The man who had gone down on his face.

  Her dad sighed. “Yeah. sorry. This…it all sucks.”

  From her dad, that was like sharing. Like therapy.

  “It does,” she said.

  Nickelback was playing again.

  “This music sucks,” said Emily’s mom. “That’s what sucks.”

  Emily laughed—surprised. Aidan laughed too. It was a shining moment—a bubble. Gleaming. Real family—even if it wasn’t real. Just for a moment.

  They kept driving.

  Maybe an hour later, they arrived at a turning with a signpost that read: HIGH-FREQUENCY ACTIVE AURORAL RESEARCH PROGRAM—NOW A DEPARTMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FAIRBANKS.

  There was a disused mi
litary checkpoint, the windows smeared with dust. The road was clear—a plain, boring road through trees, and then the trees disappeared and it was just high scrubland, dotted with snow. They drove for several miles. Close now. Emily could feel a pain beginning in her chest. A tightness. She wanted to make it, to beat the men in black. But if they made it—and they were nearly there—then that meant Aidan would be gone.

  A whole life, without him.

  She closed her eyes, and tried not to cry.

  “It’s OK,” said Aidan.

  “Easy for you to say,” she said. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You’re going home. I’m the one who’ll be left here.”

  He touched her hand. “I’m the one leaving.”

  She rested her head on his shoulder; it was difficult, it cricked her neck, because he was shorter than she was, but she did it.

  Emily could see the lab coming for some time. There was a gray field, a clearly man-made shape, and as they got closer, it resolved itself into a huge artificial forest made of crosses taller than houses—linked together with cables. A snow-peaked mountain rose behind it.

  “The antenna array,” said Aidan as they drove past it. This wasn’t a quick process: the field was vast, with dozens of these enormous poles. But eventually they reached a turning, a T-junction, and to the left was a low white-domed building at the end of a gravel drive. No one seemed to be following them or investigating their arrival.

  A sign at the turning said: IONOSPHERIC RESEARCH FACILITY.

  Emily’s dad pulled up. “There’re all kinds of conspiracy theories about this place,” he said. “Like, they’re controlling the weather; like, they made Hurricane Katrina here.”

  “They are doing what they say they are doing,” said Aidan. “Researching the composition and behavior of the ionosphere by perturbing it with high-frequency radio waves and measuring the results. Isn’t that extraordinary enough?”

  “It’s extraordinary, sure,” said Emily’s dad. “But people don’t understand it. So they make up stories instead. I guess.”

  Aidan nodded. “Stories are powerful things. People look for them, even when they don’t exist.”