Lewis managed to catch his breath. He pulled off his lab coat, balled it up, and fanned himself with it. “No guest room,” he said, shaking his head. His face slowly drained back to a non-lethal shade of pink. “You can sleep in the bed, up in the loft. I’ll take the couch.”
Mallory looked doubtfully around the room. “What couch?” He nodded at a pile of blankets that sat before the corner of the barn that, judging by the scorch marks, Lewis liked to use as a fireplace. “Looks…comfortable.”
“The outhouse is out that way,” Lewis said, nodding toward the back of the barn over his shoulder, “if you want to use it before bed.”
Mallory made a sour face. “A quarter-mile walk in the dark? In this place? I think I’ll hold it.”
“Come on, I’ll walk with you. It’s not that dark. The lava pits do a pretty good job of lighting the way.” Lewis reached into a milk crate near the hayloft ladder and pulled out an old revolver. He loaded the chambers, cocked the hammer, and pointed the gun straight ahead as he opened the back door and stepped into the darkness beyond. “We’ll almost certainly be fine.”
Chapter 17
Mallory awoke the next morning to a familiar, sickeningly sweet aroma wafting through the stale barn air. “Oh my God,” she mumbled before even opening her eyes. “That had better not be waffles.”
“I got waffles!” Lewis called happily from below. He ducked just in time to avoid getting clobbered in the face by Mallory’s thrown shoe. “What? You don’t like waffles? Are you a monster?” He opened up the brown paper sack and pulled out a little plastic container full of thick, brown liquid. “There’s field mouse syrup, too.”
Mallory sighed as she threw off the covers and shook her fingers through her hair. “I did like waffles, before waffles were the only thing on the menu,” she said, stretching and yawning and trying to coax her limbs out of apathy. She sniffed at her shirt; it didn’t smell all that bad for being her only clothing option for three days straight now. It didn’t smell all that great, but it didn’t smell all that bad. She wouldn’t be attracting flies, at least. Not like Marcy, anyway…
She shivered as she thought of the cloud of flies swarming out of the tourism director’s mouth and decided maybe she should just go back to bed and lie there until she died.
“I’m an eggs and bacon man myself,” Lewis admitted, pulling the Styrofoam containers out of the bag and placing them on the table. He stopped and thought a moment, and a certain sadness settled over his shoulders. “Of course, that was before the chicken incident,” he said quietly.
“What chicken incident? Tell me the truth about those goddamn chickens!” Mallory demanded, half-climbing, half-falling down from the hayloft. The mystery of it all was driving her mad. Lewis was ready to respond, but just then, a speaker bolted to the wall just beneath the hayloft eaves squawked to a painful, screeching sort of life. Mallory threw her hands over her ears and said, “You have a speaker in your house?”
Lewis tilted his head and gave her a quizzical look. “There’s a speaker in every house,” he said, as if it were the most obvious and natural thing.
“Attention, Anomaly Flats,” the voice from the speaker said. “The truce between Anomaly Flats and the subterranean nation that exists beneath the overpass has been violated. I repeat: The three-year truce between Anomaly Flats and the subterranean nation that exists beneath the overpass has been violated. One of the mole-women was seen lounging in the wildflower patch adjacent to the overpass, which is a clear and aggressive violation of the treaty. The mayor is attempting a diplomatic resolution by flushing a warning bucket of boiling hot sulfuric acid into the mole-peoples’ water table, as is Anomaly Flats’ diplomatic tradition. The Mayor’s Office would like to remind everyone that poisoning the water is only the first step in a long, diplomatic approach to peace, and warns that citizens should not expect a swift conclusion. Additional diplomatic steps include, but are not limited to, colorful threats, unusually bright flash bombs, showers of inorganic waste materials, and care packages of highly explosive materials hidden inside of raw potatoes. Residents are reminded to place all of their inorganic waste materials and unused potatoes in the yellow bags that the town government has already placed in the crawlspace in their attics in an effort to aid the diplomatic process.
“Attention, Anomaly Flats: The Anomaly Bijou movie theater would like to remind you that Mandatory Monday is just two days away. All citizens are required to purchase tickets to one of three showings of Howard the Duck. Ticket discounts will not be given—especially not to the elderly. Enjoy the movie! You have to. It’s the law.”
“She really brightens the day, doesn’t she?” Mallory said after the speaker clicked off. She twisted her back, and it gave a loud pop. “Aging is bullshit,” she decided.
Lewis pulled out a stool for her at the table. “Trudy’s waffles may be the best thing for that,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. He wasn’t wearing his lab coat this morning, but Mallory saw that a fresh, clean coat hung on a peg near the front door, ready to be thrown on at a moment’s notice. He wore a pink-and-green plaid shirt and a purple bow tie with pink polka dots. His outfit looked pressed and tidy, and made Mallory’s three-day old t-shirt and jeans ensemble that much crummier by comparison. She sniffed the air near her shoulder, just for reassurance, and was almost positive she detected a hint of swamp mud this time.
“Why’s that?” she asked, climbing onto the stool with a sigh. “The secret ingredient is arsenic, and it puts you out of your misery at an unnaturally early age?”
“Not at all,” Lewis said, shaking his head and taking his own seat at the end of the table. “It’s just that there’s a very good possibility that eating Nite-Owl waffles gives your body the preternatural ability to defy a standard timeline.”
Mallory stared at the little nerd on the other stool. “Which means?”
“The waffles may cause your body to automatically slow, or even selectively reverse, time.”
“Oh, come on,” Mallory snorted, popping open one of the Styrofoam containers. She prodded the waffles inside with her finger. They were crispy and fluffy, and they smelled like wonder. But a DeLorean, they were not. “You’re telling me this waffle is a time machine?”
“I’m still studying them, but the evidence is compelling.”
Mallory picked up her fork and stabbed at the golden brown delight. “Can they take me back to before I came to Anomaly Flats?”
Lewis shrugged. “Who knows?” He opened his own container and set to work cutting up his waffles. “I haven’t seen any effects on that level, but I can confidently say that my wrinkles have been smoothing over ever since I started eating them. And my bad elbow is just a regular elbow now. It’s not a trip to the past, but it’s something.”
“It’s something, all right,” Mallory murmured. She took a bite of waffle and closed her eyes as the flavor melted across her tongue. Whatever else the waffles might be, they were undeniably delicious. Completely, frustratingly, and undeniably delicious.
“Eat up,” Lewis said through a mouthful of food. “You’re going to need your strength today. And also,” he said, swallowing a lump of waffles down, “it might be your last meal.”
X
Colleen Branch lived in a house in the middle of nowhere—and considering it was situated in a nearly-impossible-to-find town in the middle of a state like Missouri, that was really saying something. Mallory reflected on this as they drove farther and farther along a long-neglected dirt road that constantly curved to the right. They drove through fields and hills and forests and, at one especially confusing point, a small ocean, and still, the road continued, disappearing around a curve ever to the right. “How long have we been driving?” Mallory demanded after what felt like half her life bouncing around through washed-out ruts and wayward stones.
“We’re almost there.”
“We’ve been through three different woods,” she pointed out.
“Just one more.”
“And a few dozen fields.”
“I know.”
“And part of an ocean.”
“It was a very small ocean,” he said.
“Lewis, where are we going?”
“Mallory, we are going to the boonies.”
Mallory snorted. “This whole state is the boonies.”
“We’re going to the boonies of the boonies,” Lewis clarified.
“No shit,” Mallory muttered, staring out the window at the sprawling woods outside. “Am I drunk, or have we been curving to the right this entire time?”
“I don’t believe anyone’s ever reported a sensation of inebriation from Trudy’s waffles,” Lewis said. He glanced at Mallory, his eyes bright with interest. “Do you feel drunk?”
Mallory rolled her eyes. “It’s an expression, Lewis.”
“Oh.” Lewis focused back on the road, unable to hide his disappointment. Discovering new symptoms, Mallory guessed, was something of an enjoyable pastime for him. “Yes, we’ve been curving to the right this entire time.”
“Then call me crazy, but shouldn’t we have eventually made a circle? Or, like, a million of them? Shouldn’t we have met our own road a bajillion times by now?”
“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” Lewis asked with a smile. “The road to Colleen’s farm is…unique. It’s sort of like a reverse nautilus. Or a regular nautilus, I guess, depending on which end of the nautilus you start from.”
“We’re spiraling into smaller and smaller circles?”
“Not smaller and smaller so much as deeper and deeper.”
Mallory ducked her head and peered out the windshield. “What are you talking about? The land is totally flat here.”
“Not deeper and deeper geographically; deeper and deeper metaphysically. This road is something of a three-dimensional representation of a five-dimensional downward spiral that leads to a new elevation of a separate dimensional aspect.” Mallory sighed and laid her forehead down against the dashboard. The world hurt a little bit less when she closed her eyes. “Try not to think about it too much,” Lewis advised. “It’s largely uncharted territory, since Colleen gets so few visitors. And besides…we’re here.”
Mallory lifted her head from the dashboard and saw a wood rail fence winding its way through the trees and across the road. A wide metal gate spanned the road between fence posts and forced Lewis to slow the RV to a rumbling halt. The gate wasn’t locked, at least not in a traditional sense; a bungee cord wrapped in the split rubber of an old garden hose snaked through the bars of the gate and looped around the nearest fence post. It wasn’t exactly a major deterrent. But what was a major deterrent was the collection of old, weather-battered signs that had been tied to the gate with barbed wire.
NO SOLICITORS.
DO NOT ENTER.
NO UNAUTHORIZED VISITORS.
SECURITY SYSTEM PROVIDED BY THE SECOND AMENDMENT.
DEAD MEN ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT.
BEWARE OF CROTCHETY OLD BITCH.
NO TRESPASSING: VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT, STABBED, BEATEN, SKINNED, GUTTED, ROASTED, EATEN, DIGESTED, AND FLUSHED.
“She seems sweet,” Mallory offered dryly.
“She’s…different.” Lewis unbuckled his seatbelt and popped open the door. He stuck both arms out and held up his hands so they were in plain view from the far side of the fence. “Stay here,” he murmured. Then he tumbled awkwardly out of the Winnebago and began a slow, cautious creep toward the gate.
“Colleen?” he called, his voice sinking into the thick brush that lined the dirt road and disappearing among the trees. “I’d like to talk for a few minutes, if that’s okay?”
His plea was followed by several long moments of silence. Then a small, oblong object bounced onto the road just inside the gate and bumped and skittered along the hard-packed dirt. Mallory squinted through the windshield and screamed when she realized that it was an olive green grenade.
Lewis threw himself into the ditch that ran alongside the road and tucked his head under his arms just as the grenade exploded. Mallory screamed again, and then she screamed a third time, just for good measure, because for the love of God, a bomb had just gone off thirty feet away.
But the explosion was smaller than she’d expected. It was more sound than fury, though it did leave a small crater in the dirt road. There were some small bits of shrapnel that peppered the trees, and a few bits of casing chipped against the RV, but there didn’t appear to be much major damage to the vehicle, to the fence, or to the little scientist crouched down in the drainage ditch.
A good and decent person, Mallory knew, would have sprinted out to check on Lewis, to make sure he was still in one piece and do some amateur field surgery if necessary. But her first instinct was to stay relatively protected in a giant shield of metal and glass rather than go galloping across a road that was susceptible to grenades.
So she ran with it.
She hunkered down lower in her seat and called, “Lewis? Are you okay?” through the open driver’s side door. But either he didn’t hear her…or he was dead after all, because he didn’t so much as twitch. Mallory eyed the keys to the RV, which Lewis had left in the ignition. It took almost no time at all to realize that, yes, she would most certainly leave a man behind.
Suddenly, a second grenade plunked its way down the road and exploded just a few feet away from the crater left by the first. Mallory cried out and ducked down behind the dashboard. This explosion was bigger, and it shook the Winnebago on its tires. More shrapnel and dirt rained down on the RV. “Fuck this,” she murmured, sliding into the driver’s seat. “Sorry, Lewis.”
But just as she reached for the keys, Lewis raised his hands a bit in the ditch and stood up on trembling legs. He shook the dirt off himself and called out, in a voice as steady as he could manage, “Colleen, we just need to talk!”
Mallory stayed her hand. She’d wait and see how this played out.
Lewis crawled out of the drainage ditch and, despite the fact that it was now the target of what Mallory considered a vicious and unrelenting onslaught, cautiously approached the gate. “Anomaly Flats is in danger!” he hollered up the road. “Real danger! And I think you can help!”
A spray of shotgun pellets sprayed the dirt near Lewis’ feet. Mallory didn’t hear the actual gunfire until almost two full seconds later. Something in the back of her brain tried to signal to her how strange that was, but the rest of her brain was too busy expressing a desperate desire to get the hell out of Dodge to really pay attention.
Lewis leapt back, but he didn’t retreat. “Colleen, I’m coming up! I am unarmed, and I don’t mean any harm!” He gingerly lifted the bungee cord loop from the fence post and let it hang limply from the gate. “I have a friend with me, and—”
More lead shot sprayed the air, whizzing off into the trees and exploding against the bark of a tree not far to Lewis’ right.
“She’s a friend!” Lewis repeated, sounding frenzied. “She can be trusted! I promise!” He paused and tensed, waiting for another warning shot.
But it didn’t come.
He exhaled slowly and pushed open the gate. It swung on rusty hinges that hadn’t been put to great use in the past few decades. “I’ve opened the gate,” he called out. He began slowly backing up toward the RV. “We’re going to come up now, okay?” A lone rifle slug ricocheted across the dirt, but it felt like a half-hearted shot. “Okay,” Lewis said, smiling with relief. “Okay.”
He eased his way back to the Winnebago, still not turning his back on the gate. He reached out and fumbled for the door as he backed into it, then skirted around and leapt into the RV. He mopped the sweat from his brow and exhaled hugely. “That went better than
expected,” he said.
“I am amazed that you’re not dead,” Mallory admitted.
Lewis shrugged. “The trick is to know where to stand,” he said. He fired up the RV, and they rumbled slowly through the open gate. Mallory peered up through the windshield, but all she could see in the distance was the ever-curving road and more trees. “Where’s the house?” she asked, confused.
“It’s another ten minutes or so. About five miles up the road.”
Mallory scanned the woods. “But…where was she shooting from?”
“Her front porch, I imagine,” Lewis said.
Mallory scowled. “Are you telling me this crazy old bitch can lob a grenade for five miles?!”
“I know what that sign said, but she’s not actually old,” Lewis said. “And I have to say, I know you’re the one with a shared female experience, but I really think the word ‘bitch’ is—”
“Not the point!” Mallory cried. “What are you driving me into, Lewis?”
Lewis tick-tocked his head back and forth a few times, trying to decide how best to proceed. Finally, he said, “Colleen’s farm is really quite special.”
Mallory snorted. “Is it a catapult farm?”
Anomaly Flats Page 17