Anomaly Flats

by Clayton Smith

  She eased her foot off the gas. The truck slowed amid the corn, and more whispers flooded the cab. They were louder now, more insistent, more concrete. Mallory reached for the gearshift and snapped it easily from its base. The broken end, jagged with torn metal, gleamed in the sunlight that filtered in through the leaves. She pressed the sharp metal into her forehead and pushed until the gearshift punctured her skin, then her skull, then her brain, and come out the other end. Yes, she thought, as the jagged end of the stick bumped against the wall of the cab behind her. This is better.

  Sharp stones are nature’s surgical equipment, the voices urged.

  Man was born to spawn maggots.

  Flesh is tender.

  Tender is delicious.

  Mallory turned her head and gazed over at Lewis. His head had been replaced by a watermelon. It had a wide mouth and no eyes. “The speed of a blink is 42,” Lewis the watermelon said. “Can I try your discouragement, please?”

  Mallory nodded slowly. She thought she would like for Lewis to taste her discouragement. She thought she would like that very much. She opened it up to him. It sagged out of her heart and dripped greasy spits of sorrow onto the Chevy’s upholstery. Lewis the watermelon leaned down and rolled his huge, oblong head around in the despair, letting it coat his rind and sink through the pores into his juicy pink flesh.

  “I see the tree,” Mallory said suddenly. She wanted Lewis to acknowledge that he saw the tree too. He had to see it. He must have been seeing it. Why wouldn’t he say so? “Lewis,” she droned, watching her fingers turn into daisies. “Lewis. Do you see the tree? Lewis?” She closed her eyes.

  “Mallory,” the watermelon said, coated in her despair. “Mallory.”

  His voice seemed far away now, as if it he were speaking from behind the sun. “Mallory.”

  Now urgently, and from the dark side of the moon: “Mallory!”

  Now frantic, and choked with dirt, from six feet beneath the soil: “Mallory!”

  And then, the voice came from somewhere new. Somewhere right next to her. It rang with a sharp clarity that pierced her brain and made the gearshift vibrate. “MALLORY!”

  She gasped, and her eyes flew open. Her fingers were fingers again, and they were wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. The gearshift stood straight and tall on the floor, where it belonged, and Mallory’s head was whole. The interior of the cab was free and clear of her viscous despair. The truck sat idling on the roadside; the cornfield waved starkly in the wind behind them.

  “What…?” Mallory whispered, her voice trembling. She gazed at Lewis, regular, non-watermelon Lewis, with an ocean of troubled confusion.

  “You’re all right,” he said, taking her hand in his. “Just take a minute. Take a breath.” And then, because it seemed to be in his nature and, Mallory supposed, because he just couldn’t help it, he had to add, “I told you not to listen.”

  Mallory turned in her seat and looked back at the cornfield. The brown, dead stalks dripped their rotted juices onto the hard, dry soil. The crinkled leaves waved in the air, bidding her a silent and mocking adieu. “What…happened?”

  Lewis adjusted his glasses on his nose. “The Fields of Insanity happened.”

  Mallory’s world was wrapped in gauze, and she struggled to peel away the layers. “The…what?”

  “It’s the corn,” he explained, patting her hand. “It…has an effect on people. That’s why no one eats it. That’s why it’s left on the stalk to rot. You can’t listen to the corn, it does bad things to you. Do you understand? Don’t ever listen to the corn, Mallory. And don’t ever, ever eat it.”

  “The corn drives people insane?” She buried her face in her palms and tried to rub some sense into her brain. “Lewis, then why do you even grow it?”

  “I don’t grow it,” he insisted, raising his hands defensively. “Farmer Buchheit grows it.”

  Mallory exhaled, annoyed. “Then why does Farmer Buchheit grow it?”

  Lewis shrugged. “Because Farmer Buchheit’s a real asshole.”

  Mallory shook her head and tried to regain some sense of herself. “Am I going to be okay?”

  Lewis crumpled up the corner of his mouth. “Do you feel okay?”

  “I feel like someone scooped out my brain and replaced it with a ball of hash browns.”

  Lewis squinted at her uncertainly. “You’ll…probably be fine?” he guessed.

  “How’d we make it through? I stopped the truck…how’d we make it out?”

  Lewis shook his head. “You didn’t stop the truck. You gunned the truck. It seems you have an incredibly powerful survival instinct. Which is good; that comes in handy around here.”

  “But I thought I stopped the truck…” Mallory drifted, looking down at the gearshift and remembering, quite vividly, the painless sensation of the jagged metal pushing through her gray matter. She shuddered from the chill of it, and her mind slowly began collecting itself. Then Mallory gasped. “The clone!”

  “He didn’t make it out unscathed.” Lewis pointed out the windshield. On the other side of the dirt road, down a ways, the RV rested awkwardly on one busted tire. The clone stood outside of the truck, his hand against the side of the Winnebago for support. His legs wobbled as he steadied himself, and he thumped the heel of his free hand against his temple. “The driver’s window tends to stick. It doesn’t always roll back up once it’s down. The voices must have been loud and clear.” Lewis smiled. “That’s what he gets for tossing my acid collection,” he said smugly. “The value of those ruined vials alone is—”

  “My bag!” Mallory interrupted. Across the street, the evil clone had pulled open the RV’s side door and was digging Mallory’s purple Jansport out of the back. He tossed it onto the ground and unzipped it. He peered down into the bag, then looked up at the RV. Then he looked back down at the bag. Then back up at the RV…then back down at the bag.

  A wide grin spread across his face.

  He did a quick rummage through the Winnebago, making a frantic grab for an armful of vials and beakers and lab equipment. He dumped the small load into the bag, zipped it up, and slung it over his shoulder. Then he sprinted away from the ruined vehicle and into the neighboring field.

  “Son of a bitch!” Mallory screamed. She stomped down on the brake and clutch and turned the key in the ignition. The engine clicked, but didn’t turn. “No, no, no, no,” Mallory prayed as she tried a second time, then a third. “No!” She slammed her hands angrily against the wheel. “I’m gonna kill those motherfucking magnetics!”

  “It’s not the magnetic field. This truck is too old to have an alternator,” Lewis pointed out.

  “Shut up. Fix it.”

  Lewis tilted his head. “Fix it?”

  “Fix it!”

  “Did I not mention that I’m not a mechanic? I could swear this has come up before.”

  “Argh!” Mallory threw off her seatbelt, launched out the door, and took off on foot after the clone. “Give me back my goddamn bag!” she screamed.

  Lewis gave a low whistle as he watched her go. “She sure likes that backpack,” he said to the empty cab. Then he jumped out of the truck and ran to catch up.

  Fortunately for Mallory, the clone had the same genes as her good-for-nothing scientist companion, and she could tell he was laboring under the weight of the bag. She was maybe only 100 yards behind, and gaining.

  The original Lewis was faltering somewhere behind her. She was pretty sure she heard him collapse, wheezing, into the tall grass, but she didn’t bother looking back. Serves him right, she thought.

  Evil Lewis’ pace slowed even more as he approached a makeshift plank bridge on the far end of the field that crossed a familiar-looking stream of neon green plasma. He unzipped the backpack as he neared the center of the bridge and dug frantically through its contents. H
e pulled out something that was too small for Mallory to see. Whatever it was, the clone crouched down and smeared it on the bridge, right in the middle. Then he stood, zipped up the bag, and ran across to the flat land on the other side of the creek.

  Mallory pushed herself harder. The clone was closer now, only 50 yards, and she could catch him. She knew she could catch him. She could drive her sturdy legs faster, force her sturdy lungs to breathe, and choke the living shit out of that evil bastard with her sturdy fucking hands.

  She sprinted up the bridge and was nearing the spot where the clone had paused when she heard Lewis’ screaming voice behind her: “Mallory, stop!”

  Stop? Was he insane? The only thing standing between her and that evil little twerp was half a bridge and a bit of grass. She couldn’t stop. She could catch the clone, reclaim her bag, and plunge his little head into Plasma Creek so he turned into a walking dandelion that would ripen in a week and blow away in the wind to nothingness. That, she could do. But stop?

  No.

  She couldn’t stop.

  But then the bridge made a really good case for stopping by exploding right in the middle.

  The force of the explosion lifted Mallory off her feet and tossed her through the air as if she were a pebble. She was so stunned at this sudden change in both events and trajectory that she didn’t even think to scream until she crashed down on her shoulder and skidded for ten feet in the hard earth. Then she remembered to scream. A lot.

  “Mallory! Are you okay?” Lewis asked, jogging up to her prostrate form, gasping for air. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

  “I’m hurt everywhere!” Mallory screeched between strings of expletives. “I’m going to kill that little fucking clone. And then I think I’ll kill you. And then I’ll kill him again. Harder.”

  Lewis stood up and put two fingers to his neck to check his pulse. “I told you to stop,” he pointed out between breaths.

  “You’re gonna be so much less smug when I murder you,” Mallory decided. She struggled to sit up.

  “You should rest for a minute,” Lewis said, though he reached down and helped her into a seat anyway. He inspected her carefully. “Are you burned? You don’t look burned.”

  “Should I be burned?”

  Lewis shrugged. “That depends on which explosive cream he used.”

  “Explosive cream?”

  Lewis blushed. “It’s my own invention,” he said modestly.

  “Congratulations, Oppenheimer; you’re a monster.” Lewis frowned. Mallory gave herself a once-over. She didn’t seem burned. “I think I’m okay.”

  Lewis nodded his agreement. “He must have used the cold fusion cream,” he murmured.

  Mallory coughed. She wasn’t exactly a physicist—and was not entirely sure she could even spell “physicist” if it came down to it—but she’d done well enough in science class to know there were at least two things distinctly wrong with Lewis’ statement. One was that she was fairly sure that cold fusion fused things, which was the opposite of exploding them. But it was the second thing that really made her suspicious. “Doesn’t cold fusion…not exist?”

  Lewis nearly squealed with delight. “Not usually, no. But with the help of Anomaly Flats, I have unlocked the secret!” He beamed, and he clearly expected Mallory to share his excitement.

  Instead, she just shrugged.

  “Granted, it doesn’t behave quite like it should,” Lewis continued. “It’s terribly unstable. It does more explosion than fusion, as you’ve seen. Actually, it hasn’t done any actual fusion yet at all. I’m working out the kinks. But still! We were in theoretical territory until now. Who really knew what should happen when someone achieved cold fusion? Oh, Mallory, you should see the process! I’m a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize when I publish my notes to the scientific community. Just you wait! Won’t it be wonderful?”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty wonderful that your clone used an explosive that you accidentally created to nearly blow my head off instead of using it for cold fusion.”

  Lewis frowned. “We’ll discuss it later,” he sighed. “When you’re feeling better.”

  “Can we just get my bag back, please?”

  “Um…” Lewis glanced nervously at the bridge, then back down at Mallory. “I think we may have to put this little chase on hiatus.” Mallory struggled to her feet and looked at the bridge. The explosion had blown one end of it clear across the far side of the bank. The other end had plunged into Plasma Creek and had resurfaced as a baby panda that bobbed happily down the creek. As for Lewis’ evil clone, he was busy disappearing over a ridge in the distance.

  “What about the…whatchamacallits?” Mallory asked.

  “Whichamacallits?” Lewis asked back.

  “The thingies—the beams of light that make people burn. Why isn’t he running into those?” The thought of him escaping certain disintegration made Mallory’s heart sink, until she realized what would happen to her backpack if the clone were caught in one of the beams. She felt a little better about the lack of vaporization then.

  “Ah! Those. We’re too far north,” Lewis said. “There haven’t been any reports of that sort of thermonuclear activity in this part of the creek.”

  “Well, we can’t lose him, bridge or no bridge. He’s on foot, I can catch him.” Mallory stepped up to the stream and considered the distance between the two banks. “And I can totally jump that,” she decided.

  “It’s ten feet,” Lewis pointed out uncertainly. “At the very least.”

  “So what? I can jump it. I’m positive.”

  “Mallory—” the scientist began.

  “No! Listen to me, Lewis. That bastard clone has my backpack, and I need it back. Do you understand me? I don’t just want it back; I need it back. Without that bag, this whole fucking misery has been for nothing, and that is not going to happen.” She took a few steps back. She swung her arms and worked to loosen her legs. “I can do this,” she reminded herself aloud, taking a deep breath. “Totally easy. I can do it.” She braced herself to begin her sprint.

  “You know, we could just grab him at dinner,” Lewis said.

  Mallory stopped and looked at Lewis. “Say what?”

  “I said, you can either try to make an impossible leap and wind up plunging into a river of plasma that’ll turn you into some sort of clump of rotting weeds, or you can wait a couple of hours and grab him when he goes to dinner tonight.”

  Mallory squinted, suspicious. “Where’s he going to dinner tonight?”

  “Chick-fil-A.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Because it’s Friday,” he said with a little smile. “Everyone has Chick-fil-A for dinner on Friday.”

  Mallory screwed up her face in disgust. “Ew. What is that, some sort of weird, communal death-by-grease ritual?”

  Lewis turned and started walking back to the broken-down vehicles. He couldn’t fix the Chevy, but he knew how to change a tire. “Nope,” he said, nodding for Mallory to follow. “Not a ritual. It’s the law.”

  Chapter 12

  “So let me get this straight. You eat at Chick-fil-A on Friday nights, or else you go to jail?”

  “Yep,” Lewis said, putting the Winnebago into gear. “Tuesday lunches, too. If you take lunch anywhere else on Tuesdays, you go straight to the hole.”

  “The hole?”

  “The hole.”

  “What’s the hole?” Mallory asked, buckling her seatbelt.

  “It’s…pretty much what it sounds like,” Lewis said sadly. Then he added, “But deeper.”

  “Is it even worth asking why?” Mallory sighed. She rested her forehead against the cool glass of the RV window.

  “Because the Chick-fil-A is owned by the mayor. And she likes us to spend our money there.”

  “And surel
y an evil clone wouldn’t dare get on the wrong side of the law,” Mallory chided.

  “You haven’t seen our jail,” he said. “Trust me. He’ll be there.”

  As they drove back down Cumberland toward the downtown strip, Lewis laid out a plan. The dinner rush usually picked up around 6:00. He felt sure that the clone would either arrive extremely early or extremely late, in an attempt to avoid detection.

  “Are you sure?” Mallory asked. “If it were me, I’d go in when it was slammed. Try to blend in with the crowd.”

  But Lewis was adamant. “Not a chance. He wouldn’t risk bumping into me and causing a scene.”

  “But wouldn’t he know that you would know that he would want to go early or late, and then not go early or late because he’d know you’d be there to catch him either early or late?” Mallory was starting to get the hang of clone-think. She wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

  “No,” Lewis insisted, “because I know that he knows that I know that he’d want to go early or late, and he knows that I know that he knows that I know that he’d want to go early or late, so he’s much more likely to reverse-double-cross himself by trying to double-cross-reverse me. You see?”

  Mallory groaned. “Sure,” she said. “So, what, we stake out a fast food joint for the next two or maybe seven hours and hope he shows?”

  “There’s a great spot right behind the used grease dumpster,” Lewis beamed.

  “Ew…they have a separate dumpster for it?” Her face paled at the thought of a dumpster filled with plastic bags full of used grease.

  “Well, yeah. So you don’t put grease in the spare-chicken-part dumpster,” Lewis said, laughing a bit, because this was clearly the most obvious thing in the world. “Otherwise, the town mutants would get grease-flu when they swarmed the dumpster and fed on the spare chicken parts after dark.”

  They drove the rest of the way pretty much in silence.