The Beautiful Land

by Alan Averill

  The entire truck shimmies like the road is slicked with oil. The back wheels of the trailer begin to slide to the right while the cab slowly drifts left. Though still a quarter mile distant, Tak can clearly see a hairy human arm protrude from the window of the cab and grab the side mirror. It holds on for a moment, then snaps the mirror off, strut and all, before vanishing back inside. The truck makes a high-pitched grinding sound as it skids almost completely sideways, cab in one lane, trailer in the other. Then momentum continues its work and spins the rear of the truck around until the cab is facing Tak. He sees a blur of feathers and pink flesh shaking savagely from side to side before a huge gout of blood flies up and splatters against the windshield.

  Black smoke pours from the tires as the entire vehicle begins to tilt precariously toward the driver’s side. The first wheels to lift off the pavement are those of the cab, but the trailer quickly follows suit. Soon, the entire truck is skidding on one set of wheels, still spinning slowly around the road like an obese figure skater. For a brief moment, Tak thinks the truck will slow enough for the wheels to right themselves, but then physics asserts itself in the conversation once more, and the entire rig flips up and into the air.

  The truck seems to hang in the sky for an eternity; trailer sagging in one direction, cab pulling in the other. Then the front end of the truck strikes the highway with a tremendous bang. The cab crumples into itself like a used paper bag while the trailer swings up and over the top—making it look like the entire vehicle is balancing on its grill. But the trailer has no intentions of stopping there; it keeps falling through space until it finally comes crashing down in front of the cab. The force of the blow shears it off and sends it tumbling off the side of the road, where it rolls over and over, chunks of metal flying, until finally coming to a rest in a massive black cloud of smoke. Near the edge of the highway, a small fire begins to blaze merrily out of control, consuming what little scrub has managed to put down roots in this barren corner of the world.

  The noise of the crash is overwhelming, a kind of grinding, screeching wail punctuated by the heavy sound of metal being torn apart. Ahead, the cab continues to slide, grill-side down, trailing sparks behind like a mad mechanic’s fireworks. Oil and gas and various other fluids pour from the broken frame and ignite, leaving a half dozen blazing streaks along the road. After a good hundred feet or so of sliding, the cab finally crunches to a halt, wobbling in place for a moment before crashing back to earth, tire-side down.

  Tak is torn between slowing down to avoid the debris and speeding past the wreckage before the creature that caused it decides to do the same thing to him. He’s no more than a thousand yards from the crash site now and coming up fast. But before he can weigh his options, the bird bursts from the twisted shell of the cab and goes shooting into the air. It’s holding the driver in its twisted lower talons, and Tak is horrified to see that the man is somehow still alive. Alive and screaming, a terrible, high-pitched sound like a little girl with a skinned knee. The creature swirls gracefully in the air, pulls off a perfect loop, then begins soaring down the highway toward Tak.

  Tak forms a curse in his mind that his body doesn’t have time to pronounce and jerks the wheel to the left. The entire jeep shudders but somehow manages to both obey his command and stay on the road. The bird and its unfortunate victim race overhead, close enough that the trucker’s boots knock against the radio antennae. Small drops of blood rain down on the windshield, followed by a single glop of thick black tar. Then the creature is soaring up and into the sky, moving away as fast as it arrived until it’s no more than a small blur in the rearview, a blur with kicking arms and legs beneath. The last thing Tak hears is a triumphant caw followed by a heart-wrenching scream, then the moment is over, and he is alone on the road once more.

  He drives then. Past the wreckage of the truck, past the smear of red in the middle of the road, past the massive cloud of black smoke and the heat of the fire that is now spreading with fury. He drives with the pedal down and his hair flying and an unfamiliar, desperate feeling burrowing itself into his heart. For the next four hours, he drives and drives and hopes that the horror he feels will eventually go away. But it never does. This time, unlike all the other times in his life, the feeling refuses to leave.

  He stops in Alice Springs just long enough to gas up, then makes for the interior as fast as his jeep can take him. Every time he looks in the rearview, he sees a growing column of black smoke and fire. Eventually, he has to force himself to stop looking at it and just drive. Head down, eyes forward, hands trembling, but moving and breathing and somehow alive.

  Tak doesn’t understand why the bird spared him, or if it is even capable of making such a choice. He plans to ask Yates when he sees him next, preferably with the old man at the business end of a pistol. Where he will get a weapon is a question to be solved when the time comes—like the rest of his plan, this part is somewhat fluid. All he knows now is that he must reach the Machine at all costs. That’s the only way everything can be set to rights.

  He turns off the road and heads into the desert, teeth clattering together as his jeep bounces and scrapes over a landscape that laughs at the idea of modern, wheeled transportation. He drives by memory, turning at a rock here, going straight at a piece of scrub there, moving through the desert like a dusty metallic nomad searching for the final stop on the trade route. Speed isn’t an option on such terrain, and as he slowly crawls his way in and out of canyons and around piles of dirt that threaten to swallow his tires, he can only grip the wheel and pray he isn’t too late.

  When the pure whiteness of the Axon building finally appears on the horizon, Tak has to resist an urge to scream with delight. Instead, he breaks out into a quick, grim smile and steps on the gas. The last few miles have been smoothed by constant traffic in and out of the building, and he covers the ground quickly. As the structure comes closer, he goes over the current plan in his head one more time.

  Okay. You’re gonna ram the gate, drive into that second courtyard, and smash through the guard station. Hopefully, they don’t see you coming, and you have a few seconds there. Then you hop out and grab a rifle if there’s one nearby. If not, you break for the side maintenance door and run like hell. Once you get inside, find the elevator and slide down to the fifth floor. Lots of storage there, lots of places to hide. Then you can catch your breath and figure out what the hell to do next.

  It’s a plan. Not a great plan, or even a very good one, but it’s something. Tak doesn’t care to admit that the plan will likely end before it even has time to begin—probably with him slumped over the wheel of the jeep with blood pouring from a dozen bullet holes. But at least he will have tried. That’s something.

  However, once he gets within a hundred yards of the massive white building, he can see that his plan will need massaging from the get-go. Because the part where he rams the jeep through the gate is no longer necessary; the gate is lying on the ground in about a dozen different pieces.

  Tak rolls to the edge of the property and drops the car into neutral. He leans his head out the window and listens for a noise of any kind, but all he can hear is the unsteady chug of the engine and a soft, lonely wind. After a moment he honks the horn, an action which should bring about a dozen heavily armed guards running to his position. But nothing happens. It’s as if everyone just packed up and left.

  Or was carried off, thinks Tak. Carried off screaming into the sky.

  He puts the jeep in gear and moves forward, bumping and jostling over the wreckage of the gate. Guard towers, usually manned with a half dozen mercenaries each, stand silent and empty. The first courtyard is equally deserted. The fountain in the center, which once sprayed water nearly two feet in the air, now gurgles forth a tiny trickle mixed with dusty red mud.

  Tak drives through the yard and under an arch, where he suddenly slams on the brakes. In front of him, the second, smaller courtyard is a battle zone. Dark splotches of soot, most likely from grenade fire, cover the prev
iously pristine white walls. Spent shells casings litter the ground, thousands upon thousands of them sparkling in the sun. A couple of dozen bodies lie strewn about, most clad in the black uniforms of Axon’s private security force, all with large holes punched in their heads.

  Tak turns off the engine and climbs out of the jeep, trying and failing to still his trembling knees. The thought of discovering Samira amidst all this carnage makes him want to throw up and weep at the same time, but he only allows himself to consider this in the very back corner of his mind. All that matters now is getting inside and finding her: dead or alive. And if a certain dark creature happens to be waiting for him? Well, perhaps that will be better in the end.

  “Just gonna take a look around,” he mutters to himself as he steps over and around the shredded remains of his former coworkers. “Just gonna go inside and see what I can see.”

  The sun turns red as it begins to dip under the horizon. Tak takes a final glance behind him and considers waiting for it to vanish completely. But instead, he opens the maintenance door with a trembling hand, takes a breath scented with death, and descends into darkness.

  chapter twenty-four

  The hallway is dark. Even the emergency lights are out, and those should have enough battery power to last for years. Tak fumbles around in his pocket for his lighter, pulls it out, and strikes flint to steel. He’s prepared to see something horrible—bodies or skeletons or blood-painted walls—but when the flame flickers into being, all that stands before him is a long corridor ringed with insulation-wrapped pipes. It’s almost as if the devastation in the front courtyard was a dream.

  Maybe they contained it, he thinks as he moves toward a large, steel door at the end of the hallway. Or hell, maybe they killed the thing.

  Tak momentarily kicks himself for not examining the bodies in the yard. At the time, he didn’t think he could handle seeing people he knew in such a state, but now he finds himself wondering exactly when the massacre took place. Was it before that bird attacked the truck? Or after? Of course, all of this assumes that it’s the same creature. What did Judith say? She thinks they’re multiplying? Man, that would be a fucking awesome piece of news right there.

  But despite the courtyard’s being a mere hundred feet behind him, he’s not about to go back. It’s taking all of his not-inconsiderable nerve just to keep pressing forward; if he goes back, he might not convince himself to return. So he stumbles through the door and down a second identical hallway, the flame of the lighter hot against his thumb. The place is almost silent, but not quite—if Tak listens closely, he can just make out the deep, familiar hum of the Machine.

  “At least something works around here,” says Tak, his voice echoing off pipes and back to his ears in a creepy fashion. Snapping his mouth closed, he exits the second maintenance tunnel and finds himself in the Axon Corporation’s main lobby. Tak had never understood why Axon built a visitor’s lobby in a top secret building with a security force that shot strangers on sight. Perhaps it was force of habit, or a way to make the employees feel less like they were working in a bunker. At any rate, someone, somewhere had decided that what the building really needed was a fancy front lobby, and on this they had spared no expense.

  The front doors of the room are cold steel, but the unnamed architect thoughtfully placed a set of windows above them, allowing a few fading beams from the setting sun to filter in. Tak releases his death grip on the lighter and allows himself a few moments to look around. Imported Italian marble lines the walls and floors. Leather couches that cost more than Tak’s life rest against the walls and beg for someone to come along and plop their ass cheeks down. At the far end of the room, a massive wooden desk holds two computer monitors and a sad bowl of candy. A crooked nameplate on the desk reads sandra darci.

  “Sandra Darci?” mutters Tak as he crosses the room and makes for her desk. “I don’t remember a Sandra…. God, I really should have gone out more.”

  He pops a piece of candy from the bowl and begins sucking on it, which causes his hunger to roar. The computer seems dead, but he flips the switch a few times just to make sure. When nothing happens, he picks up the phone and is greeted by silence. Putting it back in the receiver, he dumps the rest of the candy into his pocket, straightens Sandra’s nameplate, and begins opening drawers.

  He finds what he’s looking for in the bottom drawer: an emergency flashlight with plenty of juice. Flicking it on, he turns his back to the lobby and makes for a set of massive hydraulic doors to the left of the reception desk. They don’t want to open with the power out, but by leaning against them and shoving with all his strength, Tak finally budges one enough to wiggle through and into yet another darkened hall.

  When he turns on the flashlight, the shock causes him to briefly inhale his candy. Blood, thick and red, is splattered on the wall and ceiling. Unidentifiable chunks of flesh and bone litter the floor in a random, haphazard way. In the far corner of the hall, a pile of guts lies in a series of ropy coils. There are no bodies, or at least not anything that could be identified as such. Just the remains. It’s like he’s walked into a blender.

  The room reeks with a sweet, almost pleasant smell, and Tak suddenly finds himself wishing for the familiar scent of decay. Pulling his shirt over his face, he steps gingerly around the larger chunks, grimacing once when he crunches down on something hard and brittle. I think that was a tooth, he thinks. Ah, Christ, this is too much. It’s all just too much.

  There’s no way for Tak to know if Samira is in this hallway: there’s simply not enough left to identify a person with. But he doesn’t think that’s the case. If Yates really brought her here, she would likely be locked in the security hold…. Unless he had other plans for her, which is an option Tak doesn’t really want to consider right now.

  He shines the flashlight forward and stumbles down the hall, focusing all of his attention on the small white dot of light. His plan had been to take the elevator down to the lower floors, but with the power out, that’s no longer possible. It would be the stairs or nothing, and this is a depressing thought—the Machine is located almost a mile underground, and that means a hell of a lot of stairs.

  “Be glad you’re not going up,” says Tak as he tries to ignore a stray chunk of red in the corner of his vision. “Up would really suck. Hell, maybe you can just slide down the railing the whole way…. Whee.”

  He finds the stairway door and moves through, happier than he thought possible at leaving the blender hallway behind him. The stairwell is dark, but a few passes with the flashlight show it to be untouched by any kind of gore. Tak utters a brief thanks to whatever gods might be listening and begins his long descent.

  There are about a hundred stairs between each landing, but as Tak continues down, this number starts to increase. After twenty minutes, he’s traversing nearly four hundred stairs between landings, and the doors leading out are becoming much more ominous. Signs with messages like authorized personnel only, radiation protocol in effect, and deadly force allowed start to sprinkle the walls. At one point, he passes a neatly typed sign that reads no one fears the reaper here. Tak would have taken it as a joke if the font wasn’t so damn serious.

  Finally, the signs disappear altogether, replaced by drawings of stick figures being electrocuted, chopped up by large blades, and dripping some kind of caustic substance onto their exposed digits. A few flights down, the graffiti becomes almost incomprehensible. One figure appears to be dancing on a table filled with wedding cakes while another rides on the back of what looks to be a rabid giraffe. But Tak’s winner for the most disturbing image is found on a door marked B-14, where someone has spray painted a huge face that seems to be both laughing and screaming at the same time. The paint has dripped down from the eyes of the face, making it look like the owner reached up and clawed them out of his own skull.

  Tak starts down the stairs with new haste. Soon, he’s taking them two at a time, racing down and around the darkened stairwell like a man possessed. Something i
n the back of his mind screams at him to stop, to take his time before he goes tumbling ass over teakettle and lands in a broken heap on one of the steel-grated landings. But fear is driving him now, and the voice of reason is lost in its roar.

  Just as he starts to think he might have died and been thrust into a level of hell set on a never-ending staircase, the steps end. Tak is so surprised, he actually turns to continue down and slams his stomach into a metal railing. The force of the blow knocks the flashlight from his hand and sends it tumbling into the darkness below, and for a moment Tak threatens to follow suit. But then balance returns, and he manages to flip his weight back onto his feet. He stares mournfully at the small speck of his flashlight beam as it grows smaller and smaller before finally being swallowed by the black. Then he fumbles the lighter from a pocket yet again and shines it on the nearby door. Though dim, he can barely make out a single marking: B-44.

  He pulls away from the door and rubs his eyes, then leans back in to make sure he’s seeing it correctly. “B-44?” he says. “Wait, there is no floor B-44. This building ends at B-40. And 38 is security, 39 is the Machine, and 40 is that secret level that Yates thinks I don’t know about…. So what the hell is this?”

  Tak knows that this is a different Axon Corporation in a different timeline, but the discovery still catches him off guard. Both Yates and Judith had talked to him about how the Machine would make the building immune from the change, how it would act as a kind of life raft that allowed everyone inside to surf over to the new timeline instead of being overwritten by it. Clearly, this had been a miscalculation.