“In principle, you’re not too far off,” Lewis said. “Distance is relative in this part of Anomaly Flats.”
“How fascinating,” Mallory said dryly.
Lewis couldn’t help but beam. “It is fascinating,” he agreed. “If only someone else had claimed the property instead of the Branch clan.” A Claymore mine exploded to their right, as if to punctuate his point, uprooting a small tree and blasting a casing full of metal shot harmlessly into the woods. “That was a little over the top,” Lewis murmured to himself.
“Are you going to tell me what sort of farm this is or not?” Mallory demanded. “Enough cryptic bullshit. What sort of farm makes distance fucking relative?”
“That kind,” Lewis said tensely, nodding up the road. An old, weathered cabin came into view around the curve. Its once-brown planks had been stripped by decades of wind and sun and were now a dusty, exhausted gray. The cedar-shingle roof slouched in the middle and drooped over the edges of the house like petrified gelatin. A splintery rail ran along the front of the house, and half the steps leading up to the porch had broken through. A pair of tough, leathery feet were propped up on the railing. They belonged to a middle-aged woman in a pair of dirt-stained denim overalls and a dirty mesh trucker hat that said SKOAL across the front. She held a long-barrel shotgun in one hand and a small silver pail in the other. The gun was pointed toward the sky; the pail was tipped up to her lips. She drank deeply from it, and rivulets of liquid dribbled down her chin.
“It’s not your typical farm,” Lewis continued, his voice quieting. “You can’t grow fruits or vegetables up here; the soil won’t support it. There’s only one thing that will grow: wild po—”
He was interrupted by a shotgun blast from the front porch. The metal shot peppered the driver’s side of the RV, which probably should have struck Mallory as odd, since the woman had barely moved, and the shotgun was still pointing straight up in the air. Tendrils of smoke floated up lazily from its 30-inch barrel and disappeared above the porch. But she was far too busy ducking and screaming to be concerned with the particulars of physics.
“I should have left you to die at the gate!” Mallory cried from her crouched spot on the floorboards.
“You were going to leave me to die?” Lewis gasped, his face drawn.
“It crossed my mind,” she said, wondering what exactly it would take for him to realize that the only person’s survival she was wholly invested in was her own. The way things were going, she’d have the opportunity to prove it to him very, very soon.
“Thanks a lot.” He put his hands out the window of the RV so the woman on the porch could see that they were empty. “I’m coming out, Colleen. Don’t shoot.” Colleen pulled the trigger again, just to show him where he stood. She fired to the left, and the shot popped into a tree to the right. This time Mallory did notice the discrepancy, and she found it exceedingly confounding.
Lewis cautiously opened the door and slipped out onto the mud and weeds that served as Colleen’s driveway. He walked slowly toward the cabin with his hands raised as Colleen reloaded the shotgun. “Morning, Lewis,” she said, her voice calm and pleasant, and even a little chipper. “How’s the science business?” She clicked the barrel back into place and balanced it across her lap.
“It’s actually a little pernicious right now,” he said, stopping about halfway between the RV and Colleen’s porch.
“Pernicious?” Colleen snorted. She picked up the tin pail and took another drink. “You studying for the ACT?”
Lewis tensed. He desperately hoped he hadn’t offended her with his language. “It means—”
“It means the powers of Anomaly Flats are conspiring against us all for the umpteen millionth time,” Colleen interrupted him. She swirled the drink in her pail and muttered into it. “I took the ACT once.” She set the pail down on the porch. Then she picked up the shotgun and eased the barrel onto the railing so that it wasn’t pointed at Lewis…but it wasn’t far off, either. “What do you want?”
“We need to talk to you. It’s extremely important. I wouldn’t have come all the way out here if it weren’t.”
Colleen nodded toward the Winnebago. “Who’s the new kid?”
“Her name’s Mallory. She’s…passing through.”
Colleen spat a huge glob of phlegm onto the floorboards. “I remember a time when you were just passing through. How long are you gonna stay in the Flats?”
“For the rest of my life, which will be cut unnaturally short if you can’t help us,” the scientist said miserably. “Can I put my hands down?”
Colleen nodded. Lewis sighed with relief and lowered his aching arms. “What’s the life-threatening disaster this time? Mutant bears? Flesh-eating bacteria? An army of undead mules?”
“Worse,” Lewis frowned. “Much, much worse.”
Colleen smirked and considered first the scientist, then the woman in the RV. Finally, she propped the shotgun against the porch railing and said, “All right. You’ve got ten minutes before my hospitality hits its limit.”
Lewis exhaled and waved Mallory over. She clamored out of the truck and stepped her way nervously up to the porch. “Am I getting shot?” she asked.
“Time will tell,” Colleen said. “First, Lewis is gonna run inside and fetch the gin. I never talk shop without gin.”
X
Mallory leaned against the porch rail while Lewis paced in front of the rocking chair, explaining their predicament. Colleen rocked slowly and thoughtfully as she slurped from her newly replenished bucket. As Lewis began explaining their meeting with the oracle, Colleen held up the bucket to Mallory and said, “Drink?”
Lewis, clearly unhappy about being interrupted, put his hands on his hips and said sourly, “It’s a little early for us, thanks.”
But Mallory leaned forward and peered down into the pail. Somewhere between high school and undergrad, she’d learned that it was never too early for the right kind of drink. “What is it?” she asked suspiciously.
“Gin bucket,” Colleen answered.
Mallory wrinkled her nose. “What’s a gin bucket?”
“It’s a bucket. Full of gin.”
Mallory bent down and sniffed the pail. “And what else?” she asked.
“This and that,” Colleen said with a gleam in her eye. “A can of lime juice concentrate, some Fresca, a little bit of orange juice. But mostly gin.” She inhaled deeply of the bucket’s citrus-and-juniper aroma and sighed with a smile. “Better kick than coffee,” she promised.
“I usually take my gin with an olive,” Mallory said hesitantly, considering the concoction. “But hell, it’s almost 10, right? And when in the hillbilly backwoods of Rome…” She took the bucket and drank down a swallow. It was cold, and sweet, and it tingled against all the right spots. “Oh my God,” she said slowly, letting the magic of the gin bucket caress her soul. “This is my new favorite thing.” She took another huge gulp.
Colleen snatched the bucket back. “Don’t wear out your welcome,” she said testily, cradling the pail against her chest.
“Anyway,” Lewis said, his eyes bugging out of their sockets a bit, “if we can get back to the mortal disaster at hand, I’m trying to tell you that my clone is planning to release the ancient evil that lives in the Walmart tonight.”
Colleen turned her sharp eyes on the scientist. Mallory already felt a little like a fuzzy pinwheel from the gin bucket, but it didn’t appear to be dulling the other woman one bit. “I see,” she said. “You’re here for the spear.”
Lewis wrung his hands nervously. “I promise I’ll bring it right back.”
Colleen set the gin bucket down on the floorboards, and Mallory briefly debated making a grab for it. Then she remembered the shotgun, and the grenades, and the Claymore, and decided perhaps it’d be best to wait for another invitation. “Lewis,” C
olleen said, leaning forward in the chair, “it’s a mystery to me how you could’ve forgotten what happened when you borrowed the Amulet of the Distempered Wolf Priestess and promised to bring that right back.”
“That was very different,” Lewis insisted, raising his hands defensively and taking a step backward. “The chances of that particular band of cannibal gypsies having possession of the laser diamond from the treasure of Shmubla Shman were infinitesimally small. Never in a million years could I have—”
“And I trust you remember what happened the last time the sheriff’s own police came out here and tried to relieve me of my AKs,” Colleen interrupted.
“Yes, of course I do,” Lewis said. “I was down at the Dive that night, I saw the National Guard go by. And the Red Cross. But listen—”
But Colleen cut him off again: “So you know I don’t like it when folks try to take my things. And you know I’ve got no reason to trust you when you say you’ll bring it back. So then you also know that when you ask me to borrow the Spear of Rad and tell me you’ll bring it right back, I’m liable to blow your jaw off just for asking.”
“I—I do know all of that—” Lewis began.
“Good,” Colleen said, with an iron tang of finality. “So long as we’re clear.” She sat back in the rocking chair and pulled the shotgun up onto her lap. She cradled it like a baby lamb as she rocked slowly back and forth. “You know you’d save yourself a big heap of trouble by just getting to the Walmart early and shooting him when he gets there, right?”
Lewis began pacing once more. “I know. I know! Showing up early and shooting him is the plan.” Mallory snorted at the mention of the word “plan.” Lewis shot her a cutting look. Mallory stuck her tongue out at him. “But I’d feel a whole lot better if we had the spear as a back-up plan.”
“All you gotta do is get there early. You want a back-up plan? I’ll lend you a spare wristwatch.” She picked up the gin bucket and glanced over at Mallory as she gave it a few thoughtful swirls. “What about you?” she asked.
“What about me?”
“What’s your part in all this?”
Mallory sighed. “I just want my car and my bag and to get out of this town.” And then she added, “And maybe some more gin bucket.”
But Colleen didn’t offer her the pail. Her eyes flashed, and her stare became hard. “Just blowing through, are you?” she asked.
Mallory shrugged her shoulders sadly. “I’m trying.”
“Yeah…just blowing through,” Colleen repeated. “Like an F5 tornado.”
Mallory’s skin pricked up along the back of her neck. She suddenly didn’t care for the way this conversation was turning. “Yeah, I guess,” she mumbled, pushing herself off the railing. She gave Lewis a look. “Maybe we should go,” she said, taking a step toward the busted stairs.
“You can take the spear,” Colleen said, and Mallory froze in her tracks.
Lewis exhaled with relief. “Thank you!”
“On two conditions. One, you bring it back. Actually bring it back.”
Lewis rubbed his jaw. “If we succeed, I promise to bring it back. If we fail, I’m not sure if it’ll make it out in one piece, but you also won’t be around long to care.”
Colleen’s eyes bore into the little scientist. “Bring it back,” she said.
“Even if it’s—”
“Bring it. Back.”
Lewis sighed. “All right. What’s the second condition?”
Colleen smiled and turned to look at Mallory. “She goes in to get it.”
“‘She’ as in me?” Mallory asked, surprised. “Goes in where?”
“Colleen—” Lewis began, but she silenced him with a glance.
“Either she goes in, or it doesn’t come out.”
“Goes in where?” Mallory demanded. Why was it so goddamn impossible to follow a conversation in this town?
And why wouldn’t Colleen give her another sip of gin bucket?!
“Into my museum,” Colleen said, snorting happily into her bucket. “You’ll find it out around back.”
X
“I feel like this is some sort of trick,” Mallory said quietly, crossing her arms and eyeing the Spear of Rad nervously. “I mean, it’s just…sitting there. In the middle of the yard. Do I just walk up and take it? What’s the catch?”
Lewis plucked his glasses from his nose and wiped them nervously on his lab coat. “Remember when I told you this farm was unique?”
“It’s landmines, isn’t it?” Mallory asked miserably. “She grows landmines.”
“Not…exactly.”
“Then what?”
Lewis turned and looked at her with somber eyes. “Portals,” he said. “It’s a portal farm.”
Mallory glanced dubiously at Colleen’s backyard. It spread for a few hundred feet in every direction, and was bordered by tall sycamores on every side. Scattered throughout the yard were the various pieces of the eccentric woman’s “collection”: a platoon of small toy army men made out of solid gold; a cardboard crown with multicolored jewels pasted onto the points; several ornately-framed velvet paintings of llamas; a large granite slab with a six-pointed star and a series of esoteric runes carved into the face; a crackling branch of energy that appeared to be a lightning bolt in stasis; clay pots and vases from seemingly every era in history; several unusually sized tin cans; and, of course, the Spear of Rad, occupying a place of honor in the center of the yard, lying upon a dry, cracked, concrete birdbath.
“What do you mean by portals?” she asked. “All I see is a bunch of crap.”
“A portal is a gateway of sorts that—” Lewis began.
Mallory held up a hand to cut him off. “I know what a portal is, Lewis. What do you mean she grows them?”
“I mean just that: she grows them. Out of the ground. Like tomatoes.” He held out his fist, palm up, opened his fingers, and raised his arm to simulate either agricultural growth or a severe aneurysm. Mallory decided it was probably the former. “They sprout up all over this part of the land naturally. They’re almost impossible to detect; they’re perfectly transparent. If you step into one, you come out somewhere completely different. Some of the portals lead to other spots on the property; that’s how Colleen’s able to sit on her porch and lob grenades five miles away. Others lead to different locations altogether. Outside of Anomaly Flats. And beyond.”
Mallory didn’t like the hollow way he said “beyond.” It sent a chill across her shoulders.
She surveyed the field. It seemed like a perfectly normal lawn that was hosting the world’s weirdest yard sale. There wasn’t even a hint of anything besides grass and weeds growing out of the earth. “Why can’t you see whatever’s on the other side?” she murmured.
“That’s a different varietal,” Lewis said, shaking his head. “She grows those too, out on the eastern slope.”
Mallory crossed her arms as she gazed across at the Spear of Rad. “So let me get this straight: the spear is right there, but there are God knows how many invisible portals between here and there, and stepping through them sends you to somewhere else entirely.”
“That’s about it,” Lewis said with a shrug.
“Is anything easy in this goddamn town?”
“Nothing I’ve seen so far.”
“Well?” Colleen hollered from the back porch, swirling the gin bucket. “You going in or not?”
Mallory frowned. “I don’t suppose you have a map,” she said.
Colleen snorted and spat. “Are you kidding? Some of them portals lead to places I wouldn’t send my worst enemies. And I hate my worst enemies. Of course there’s a map.”
Mallory’s stomach churned. She guessed there wasn’t a whole lot that a woman who lobbed hand grenades at friends might not wish on her enemies. “Well, can I borro
w it, or…?”
Colleen took a sip of her cocktail. “No,” she said, wiping her lips. Then she tapped her temple. “It’s all up here.”
“Wonderful,” Mallory grumbled. She turned back to Lewis. “All right, I’m sorry about what I said about your ‘show up and wait’ plan not being a real plan. It is a plan. It’s a great plan. It’s so great, we don’t even need a back-up. Let’s just go there now and wait. That gives us, like, eight hours to go inside and practice shooting things. We’ll get really good at it.”
Lewis set his mouth into a hard line and frowned a bit at the edges. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. We can go back to town and hope for the best. But I’d feel much better about our chances if we had the spear. And I think I can help guide you through.”
“How’s that?” Mallory scoffed. “With the magic of science?” She arced one hand through the air like a sparkling rainbow that dripped with fairy dust. It was a very nuanced hand gesture, and she wasn’t sure Lewis picked up on that.
“No…with the magic of sticks,” he said. He bent down and picked up a few from the grass and handed them to Mallory.
“I didn’t peg you for a druid,” she said dryly.
“Just hold one out straight in front of you while you walk. If you hit a portal, the stick will disappear into it, and you’ll know you need to change your course.”
Mallory hefted the sticks. “That’s actually a surprisingly decent plan,” she admitted. Colleen cleared her throat impatiently from the back porch. “Okay, okay,” Mallory said irritably, “I’m going.” She gave Lewis a minor death stare. “This spear better be worth it.”
“It will be,” he assured her. “I promise.”
Mallory waved him off and turned to face the portal field. She tucked three of the scrawny twigs in her back pocket and held the fourth in front of her with both hands. “Here goes nothing,” she muttered. Then she took a step toward the Spear of Rad.
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