Loop Day — Chapter Seven
Teratorn
LOOP DAY — A SERIALIZED NOVEL
Trapped in a doomsday time loop, two burned-out White House aides must foil a presidential assassination to break free, or die again.
Previously: President Con Con Tyrump’s emergency Cabinet meeting descends into bloody chaos before nuclear missiles hit, obliterating Washington DC and resetting the time loop. Leif Oak and Dhyna Durango are desperate to stop the attack, save the day, end the loop, and begin a new life.
Leif Oak stares at the giant teratorn in the Rose Garden. The teratorn spreads its wings and glares at Leif.
Leif checks his leg. Healed like it was never shot.
The teratorn flaps its wings. Cries.
“Goddamn, I’m hopelessly immortal.”
At the Resolute Desk behind Leif, President Tyrump admires himself on the giant TV screen on the far wall. He fondles his ancestral Bavarian sword on the huge map of Texas on the desk.
A Wolfe News moderator reports the shocking news of the day. “After last night’s bombing of the historic Alamo, President Tyrump plans to invade both Texas and Mexico. Yes, you heard correctly. An invasion of the Lone Star state.”
“Is the Cabinet ready, Leif, goddamn it?!”
“Who knows, Sir?”
“Leif, did my Chief of Staff die?”
“Who cares, Sir?”
“I’ll take it.”
Tyrump watches kitchen aide Dhyna Durango approach, fixated on her shape.
“Mr. President, your diet cola.”
Dhyna sets a cola on the desk. Tyrump raises the cola, toasts Dhyna. He manages to look her in the eye for a moment.
“To my great and glorious day.”
Tyrump watches himself swagger on TV.
Dhyna goes to Leif and stands by him. She places her hand on her abdomen and nods. “It’s a family,” she says.
Then she goes to the sink in the kitchenette adjacent to the Oval Office and throws up.
Dhyna turns up the water full blast. Leif comes in. She rinses, cleans up.
“What a time to be born,” says Leif.
“Any time is ‘what a time’,” says Dhyna. “Are you at all familiar with history, Leif?”
“I thought I was. Until I met the giant teratorn. In the Rose Garden. The extinct teratorn. No time is more terminal than today.”
“We’ll all go terminal together. And if we make it to your Navajo Nation, we’ll need to go underground — together.”
“Or they will find us and kill us, I know,” says Leif.
“But we will have saved the world.”
“Maybe it’s not our world to save.”
“Tell it to the teratorn.”
Leif considers. “The teratorn knows this is our Final Chance, our Final Moment, our Final Era, our Final Day. The last day ever day. Unless—”
“We are doomed to die for eternity.” Dhyna spits into the sink. She turns off the water. “Good to know I’ll die forever while throwing up. An eternity of puke. It’s good to be a woman, Leif. Men piss on women and women muscle a new creature into being — and men keep on pissing.”
“It’s a sign of hope.”
“Puke? Babies? Piss?”
“Women are the hope that the world will not be all men.”
“That’s bullshit. Women bear the puke of the world,” says Dhyna. “What do men do? Men are the universal sign of puke. That needs to change.”
“That’s pregnancy,” says Leif. “Blame evolution — not me.”
“The teratorn won’t even let me feed it,” says Dhyna. “Maybe it’s not here for us.”
“It hates missiles,” says Leif. “It hates what the missiles represent.”
“Or maybe the teratorn hates humans. It’s here to celebrate our departure from the planet. Maybe now I’m part teratorn.”
“You are,” says Leif. “The best part. You puke like a champ.”
President Tyrump screams in the Oval Office.
Leif hurries back to the boss.
“Mr. President! Time for your meds!”
“Did you have a nice vacation, Leif! You’ll never catch her you know. She’s got her eye on bigger things.”
“I’m sure she does, Sir. Let’s get your meds going, Sir.”
Leif taps code into the side of the desk, opens the compartment, takes out a glass bottle and syringe. He extracts fluid from the bottle, injects it into a nasal spray inhaler.
“You’re so lazy, Leif. Any time now!”
“This should do the trick, Sir.”
Leif hands the inhaler to Tyrump who sprays the potion into both nostrils. Tyrump relaxes and falls unconscious in his chair.
Leif moves fast, dragging Tyrump and the chair backwards. He grabs the sword off the map of Texas, gets under the massive Resolute Desk and knocks out two interior side panels.
Then Leif drags Tyrump off the chair and shoves him into the long enclosed interior of the desk. Leif hangs the embroidered linen map over the opening, facing the chair. Tyrump is disappeared.
In the hallway outside the Oval, Dhyna mingles with officials gathered for the Cabinet meeting.
Navy Rear Admiral Bentcan slides his hand down Dhyna’s back to her butt. She jumps away. Then she moves back to the Admiral.
“Right this way, Sir. The President has been dying to speak with you.”
Admiral Bentcan settles for putting his hand on Dhyna’s shoulder.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
Dhyna opens the Oval Office door for the Admiral. She leads him to the Resolute Desk where Leif waits.
“Welcome, Admiral. The President stepped into his secretary’s office for a moment. I’m sure he wants to show you his big bad blade.”
Leif lifts the sword.
Behind Bentcan, Dhyna drops to the floor and crouches on her hands and knees, sideways.
Leif swings and smashes the ribs of Bentcan with the sword, slicing up through his uniform. Bentcan falls over Dhyna and lands smack on his back. He bangs his head on the floor.
Leif puts the tip of the sword to Bentcan’s chest.
“One sound and you’re dead, Admiral. You’re as good dead to me as alive.”
Dhyna grabs a plastic plum from the bowl of plastic fruit on the coffee table. She attempts to shove the plum into Bentcan’s mouth. He resists.
Leif shoves the sword through Bentcan’s uniform into his flesh. Bentcan flinches and winces and opens his mouth.
“Don’t ruin my day, Bentcan,” says Leif.
Dhyna shoves the plum into Bentcan’s mouth and wraps medical tape repeatedly around his head to secure it. She tapes together his wrists, also his ankles. She tapes his arms to his body.
Leif and Dhyna tie Bentcan immobile beneath the desk, against the President. Then they tidy the room, hide the tape.
Joint Chiefs Chairman General Krushin Karvin Kilman strides into the Oval Office, slamming the door on the Cabinet members in the hall.
“Here come the cops, Dhyna! Hands up!” says Leif.
Dhyna instead takes Tyrump’s half-finished diet cola and napkin from the desk. She moves quickly past General Kilman on her way out. Leif rests his left hand on the sword on the desk.
“Leif, my man!” says General Kilman.
“You missed the President, General. He’s gone to Camp David.”
“What! He can’t do that! He declared war on Texas! And Mexico! And Canada! And Greenland! And God knows—”
“I’m sorry, Sir. The President was furious. He cursed me. He swore at the Cabinet. He doesn’t want to see anyone right now.”
“Spit it out. Exact words,” says General Kilman.
“‘Crazy Clown Fucking Cabinet Motherfuckers.’ Sir.”
“What in Hell will he do at Camp David? Hunt bears? I hear they shot a world class black bear last fall. Wouldn’t mind getting a rifle up on that Maryland mountain myself.”
“General, the President said he plans to invade Texas and Mexico from Camp David. He went with an advisor. Wouldn’t tell me who. I don’t think he trusts me entirely, Sir. I don’t know why.”
“Those in power, Kid, they trust no one. You will never know how lonely the pinnacle of power can be.”
“Yes, Sir. I expect not, Sir.”
“The Cabinet meeting is canceled — has this been announced?”
“Not yet, General.”
“I’ll do it. Let people think I’m in charge here. It’s a great day to be alive, is it not, Leif?”
“A tremendous day, General. Like none other.”
In the hall outside the Oval Office, General Krushin Karvin Kilman holds up both hands to quiet the officials. “Listen up! President Tyrump has left the building! He has gone to Camp David. He will be hunting bears and planning the invasion!”
The high officials shout and moan, whine and complain. And then they all go and call their brokers.
Dhyna returns to the Oval Office where she joins Leif behind the Resolute Desk. They undo tape and slide Admiral Bentcan out from beneath the desk.
Dhyna hoists the sword. She loves the heavy feel of it, the gleaming mirrored blade, the rush of power in holding it by the hilt. She presses the sword tip into Bentcan’s chest. He gasps.
“You are fucking going to do what we say.”
Eyes bright with pain and terror, Bentcan nods, the fake plum taped tight to his mouth. Dhyna jabs him.
“You are going to call off the missiles.”
Admiral Bentcan writhes. He is shocked to be found out. Dhyna jabs him again.
“Do it — or stay here and die with everyone else.”
Bentcan stares at Dhyna. Dhyna jabs him again. He nods.
Leif pats down Bentcan and finds his phone in his uniform. He holds it out to Bentcan and watches him type his passkey.
Leif taps the phone off then on again and tries the passkey himself. It works. With medical scissors, Leif cuts the tape and removes the plum from Bentcan’s mouth.
“Tell me how to call off this attack, Admiral. Dhyna is ready to cut off your fingers — and your face — if you don’t. So don’t fuck around.”
Bentcan explains what must be done.
Texas Governor Gassy “Tank” Wells glares at the TV screen in his office. President Tyrump swaggers and threatens in an interview to take total control of Texas and Mexico.
The Governor smashes a massive fist and forearm on the desktop, shaking the mahogany spindles on both sides off the desk. The Governor’s Chief of Staff, Petrol Geyser, jumps a little, standing to one side.
“That fucker Con Don Tyrump is going to pay! Don’t mess with Texas!” shouts the Governor.
“Old Con Don is not long for this world now,” says Geyser. “It’s a mercy killing, really.”
A text alert sounds on the Governor’s phone at the edge of his desk. Geyser takes the phone and reads the message. “Holy Shit!” Geyser hands the phone to the Governor.
“It’s Bentcan! Call it off?! What in Hell?!” Governor Tank Wells stares in disbelief at the text. “What the fuck?! How will I become President?!”
“How will you keep our good Texas oil, Sir?”
Another text arrives. The Governor is appalled. “The President went to Camp David! To do what? Hunt bears? Geyser, confirm this shit!”
Chief of Staff Petrol Geyser and the Governor of Texas both gawk at the TV as the breaking news is announced: “President Tyrump today has unexpectedly canceled a full Cabinet meeting. We have a report that he is en route to Camp David with a close advisor to, quote, ‘Hunt bears and plan the invasion’.”
“Goddamn it!” screams Governor Gassy Tank Wells. “I should be hunting bears, not the President!”
“Bears and the President,” says Geyser. “It’s okay. We can bomb Camp David instead of the White House.”
“No, Idiot! Camp David sits in fucking empty forest! With no Cabinet members! No high officials! No targets! Bentcan can’t succeed to President. I can’t be picked for Vice President. Then I can’t become President. We need to take them all out — not just Con Don!”
“Sir, by nuking Tyrump at Camp David you would save our state from invasion — you would save the oil, Sir.”
“Do you really think even Con Don Tyrump is crazy enough to attack Texas, Geyser?! It’s a pretext to bully us — to force us to surrender our loot!”
“That’s not what the Fundy Boys believe, Sir. The True Believers. And the Secessionists—”
“Fuck all those lunatics, Geyser. They’re as dumb as you are. A fake invasion is cheaper than a real one. And there is no person on Earth as cheap as Con Don Tyrump. Never has someone so rich given so little to so few for so long.”
“So now what, Governor?”
“It’s a fucking disaster! How can I hunt bears at Camp David? There are massive brutes in those woods! Nearly half a ton! Hunting is life! Get Bam. I need to call the whole thing off. We’ll do it another day. Goddamn it!”
Chief of Staff Petrol Geyser taps the Governor’s phone, then hands it over.
“Bam, this is Governor Gassy Tank Wells. It’s off. You understand? The target has moved. Yes. No — not today. Okay? Okay.”
Governor Wells slaps the phone on the desk. “Damn it all to Hell.”
Another text alert on his phone.
The Governor checks — stares. “My God. He’s spelling it out. All of it.”
“No, he’s not,” says Geyser. “Who?”
“Bentcan. He’s gone crazy.”
The Governor shows Geyser the latest text from Navy Chief Bentcan — a group text: “Governor Wells, call off the Fourth Fleet bombing of the Oval Office. This is a criminal act and I cannot go along with it…”
In the Oval Office, Leif rereads the group text he has sent from Admiral Bentcan’s phone to the Governor of Texas and the entire Cabinet. “That should do it.” Leif glances down at Bentcan. “Well done, Admiral.”
Texas Governor Gassy Tank Wells screams at his phone. “I am royally fucked! Bentcan copied everyone!”
The Governor holds out his phone to his Chief of Staff Petrol Geyser. Geyser won’t touch it. He backs away terrified.
“Bentcan must have been found out, Governor. It’s been nice working with you, Sir.”
Petrol Geyser runs out of the office.
Governor Gassy Tank Wells slams his fist on the desk. The TV screen taunts him as it continues to play interview clips of President Tyrump swaggering and threatening to invade Texas and Mexico. “If only,” he says.
He takes aim then throws his phone through the video screen.
Leif prepares a new bottle of medicine. He sprays it into Bentcan’s nose.
“A good man is hard to find, Admiral. But you did great today. You would be a good man if there was somebody to hold a sword to your neck every second of your life.”
Soon Bentcan is limp — unconscious. Leif and Dhyna shove him back beneath the desk. They drape the map of Texas again over the Admiral and the President.
Leif hangs Tyrump’s ancestral Bavarian sword on the wall.
He keeps Admiral Bentcan’s phone.
Then Dhyna and Leif walk calmly out of the Oval Office and the White House.
Leif and Dhyna travel by car on the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Dhyna is driving. She pulls off onto a scenic overlook by the Potomac River.
“Your phone. My phone,” says Leif. He sets Admiral Bentcan’s phone on the dashboard, while puts his phone and Dhyna’s into a plastic bag. Then he gets out of the car and finds a rock on the edge of the woods. He smashes both phones to pieces. He drops the smashed phones into a National Park Service trash can. “Our tax dollars put to good work,” he says.
Dhyna steps out of the car. She stares toward DC. “The city is still there.”
“Not for us it isn’t,” says Leif.
Dhyna grabs her stomach, bends over, and pukes. Leif retrieves napkins from the car. He thinks it might be a long trip West.
Dhyna insists on driving. They circle the beltway to the eastern side of DC.
Leif wipes Bentcan’s phone free of fingerprints, then slips it into a prepaid cardboard mailing envelope.
Using letters of silly design, Leif addresses the envelope to a Wikilooks legal contact.
Dhyna exits the beltway east of DC, and drives to a USPS dropbox. They mail the phone. Dhyna re-enters the beltway.
“Let’s get to West Virginia. I’ve got a good friend there,” says Leif. “We can hole up for a few days.”
“All I need is a place to puke,” says Dhyna. “Good that Bentcan’s phone is on its way to Wikilooks. And what you sent electronically to their SecureDrop—”
“Puts it all in context. Told them exactly what happened and how. Minus the time loop.”
“Maybe they know. Giant teratorn and all.”
“Seems like no one knows but us.”
“Maybe everyone knows, you know, deep in their bones.”
“Only us. Lucky us.”
“Do you think the cops will catch us before we make it, cross country?”
Leif shrugs. “We drugged the President, took him hostage, shoved him into the coffin that we made of the sacred Resolute Desk. We stabbed the Navy Chief, forced him to comply, left him comatose tied to the President. Other than that — I think we’re good.”
“Bentcan blew up Washington DC repeatedly. For the power and the glory. To become President.”
“And no one knows that but you and me. No one.”
“Well, they’re both maniac war criminals. The President wants to conquer the world but the law will come down hard on us. I mean, say what you want about justice in America—”
“We have the wrong skin color, Dhyna. And the wrong financial position.”
“Our skin is the same color as the teratorn. And we are somehow not extinct. No yet. In fact, pregnant.”
“We have the wrong politics too.”
“Puking all the way.”
“Pregnant with new life.”
“What a fucking day,” says Dhyna. “This day feels like has lasted my whole life.”
Days later, Leif Oak and Dhyna Durango drive at last to the edge of the Navajo Nation.
The pull into a parking lot at a remote intersection. Leif exits the car and walks to a Navajo repairman who works in front of an open bay by his garage.
The repairman sprays the inside of a tire, then lights it on fire, and twirls the flaming tire around a fixed metal spoke. The fire melts the interior rubber of the tire thereby sealing a hole. The repairman keeps spinning the tire as the big open flame burns in the canyon of the tire walls and tread.
The repairman douses the fire. The tire cools as he keeps turning it for an even melt and seal.
Then he looks at Leif. “Yá’át’ééh”
“Yá’át’ééh. You’re a magician with that tire.”
“I’m known for it. The roads around here are shit.”
“Got any beater pickup trucks?”
The repairman points across an expanse of sand.
“That piece of shit. The doors are falling off. It’s rusted through.”
“Trade you.” Leif nods back to Dhyna’s midsize sedan.
“Is it stolen?”
“Not the car.” Leif shakes his head. “The people who own it maybe, me and my partner. We’re stolen from our rightful lives.”
“I may know what you mean.”
“We’re running.”
“So the car is hot.”
“Couldn’t be any hotter.”
“I know an old man deep on the rez. He could use a reliable car for an emergency. With new plates. Maybe a paint job.”
Leif nods. “We’re looking to buy a little time is all. A few months maybe.”
“That truck won’t give you two weeks.”
“We’ll take it.”
Dhyna stops the old truck on a red sandstone ledge. The evening is brilliant — lit by the red and orange hues of the setting sun. News on the truck radio comes through faint, crackly:
“The world holds its breath. A nuclear near miss. An apocalyptic assassination attempt against the President by ultra-right-wing Texas militants and the nation’s own military was miraculously stopped at the last second today, according to reports. The Governor of Texas has been arrested, along with the US Navy Chief. The Governor’s Chief of Staff is on the run. Apparently, a presidential aide and a White House cook, yes, a cook, uncovered the plot to kill President Tyrump who threatened military action against our own Texas and Mexico. Officials have yet to release the names of the aide and the cook. Unconfirmed reports are that they are both on the run and that they are a couple. In fact, the President called them ‘Lovebirds.’ It remains unclear how these two low-level White House workers learned about the impending nuclear attack, let alone how they managed to stop it. NSA Director Allspy says he is ‘totally and completely and entirely baffled.’ CIA Director Cutthroat announced ‘A security review of unprecedented proportions.’ FBI Director Pillory states he will ‘interrogate’ the apparently heroic couple ‘to within an inch of their lives.’ The couple has not yet been found.”
Dhyna turns off the radio. She and Leif gaze into the sunset.
“Over there!” says Dhyna, pointing through the windshield.
On a burning sandstone ridge, in the glow of sunfall, crouches the giant teratorn.
It appears to look directly at Dhyna and Leif.
It spreads its wings, cries out. Its cry echoes over the mesa, across the valley and high desert, into the evergreen forest in the mountains beyond. It cries to the sand and stone, the pines and firs, the spruce and the junipers, the wind and sky.
The giant teratorn lifts up and flies across the horizon. The teratorn loops and swoops. It turns and wafts directly at Leif and Dhyna. Then it cuts and sweeps fast past the windshield of the old truck.
The teratorn cries once more then wings into the sunset.
THE END
THE END OF THE END
Leif and Dhyna slowly become aware of faint but increasingly loud police sirens behind them. Suddenly an FBI helicopter roars in front of them, reminiscent of the final scenes of Thelma & Louise.
Police cars skid and stop in the dust. Officers spill out, guns aimed. Leif and Dhyna climb out of the truck. They don’t even bother to hold up their hands. They stand side-by-side and face the police at a distance. Then they clasp hands and raise their arms in triumph above their heads.
“Don’t shoot,” says Leif.
“Don’t shoot,” says Dhyna.
They are shot dead.
What a police state does.
The FBI helicopter hovers over their lifeless bodies, the hard wash of its rotors cutting and bashing them with sand and high velocity rocks.
Then the helicopter flies off into the setting sun. It follows the same path as the teratorn.
A fierce cry.
The giant teratorn swoops low and lands by the bodies of Dhyna and Leif. The teratorn spreads its wings. It hisses at the police who close in on foot, guns drawn.
Leif finds himself again back in the Oval Office, staring into the Rose Garden.
The teratorn lands with a thump and returns Leif’s look — with a glare.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” says Leif.
Man and beast — they each shed a tear.
Leif sees a reflection of Dhyna in the window. He turns and meets her gaze. She stands still inside the entrance to the otherwise empty Oval Office.
Her cheeks are wet. She puts her left hand to her abdomen.
“Someone released a virus,” says Dhyna. “It’s killing everyone. We need to stop it.”
“Fuck that,” says Leif.
The teratorn screams.
It begins again.
