Anomaly Flats (13 page)

Meanwhile, Mallory was having a hell of a time figuring out how to work an ICEE machine. She held a cup beneath the spout on the blue side and pulled the little white lever, but nothing came out. She tried the red side and failed there, too. She smacked the side of the machine, which chugged along happily, mixing up the slushy inside and generally ignoring Mallory’s attempts to fill her cup. The Wait – Do Not Pour light was off, and the Ready light was on, but still, she couldn’t figure out how to make the ICEE flow. “I have a master’s degree,” she hissed at the stupid thing. “Now pour me a fucking Slurpee!” She threw her cup at the ICEE maker. It bounced off harmlessly and clattered to the ground. Mallory scowled. “Fine.” She reached around to the back and pulled the ICEE mixer’s plug out of the wall. The machine lost power, and the arms stopped their incessant mixing. Mallory smiled ruefully. “I win.”

I wonder if I have anger issues
, she thought idly as she walked away from the snack counter.

The oracle turned from the locker, holding a cup of water in one hand and a small mesh bag that seemed to be full of rocks in the other. She skated breezily back onto the wooden floor and skimmed over to the center of the rink. She set down her items and pulled up a hidden latch on one of the boards. The wood came up, and the oracle placed the plank gently to the side. She picked up the little mesh satchel, untied it, and dumped its contents into the open space between the floorboards. They
were
rocks, or something quite like them; shiny, black, grape-sized stones poured from the bag and disappeared beneath the floor. Then the oracle took the cup and spilled the water down into the channel. It hissed and spat as it splashed down onto the rocks, as if they were hot coals, and a dense smoke billowed up and began to spread across the rink. Smiling, and satisfied, the oracle stood up, wiped her hands on her blouse, and swizzled her way around the rink.

The dense white cloud grew thicker, and it wafted out to the further edges of the rink. The acrid smell of frankincense stung Mallory’s nose, and her eyes began to water. Lewis seemed to be having a similar reaction; he sneezed four times and rubbed vigorously at his quickly-reddening nose. But the oracle spread her arms wide as she skated around and around through the growing mist, breathing deeply, letting the vapor fill her lungs. She closed her eyes, and Mallory thought for sure she’d plow face-first into the far wall, but she navigated the oval perfectly, with practiced, fluid glides.

“What is it you seek?” the oracle called out airily as she zipped past her visitors. “Speak, Scientist Lewis, and know what the future holds.” As she took the curve, she gasped and said, with no small measure of delight, “Lewis! I didn’t know you had an evil clone!”

Lewis nudged Mallory. “See?” he murmured. He cleared his throat and spoke louder. “That’s what we came to inquire about. What atrocities does he have planned for Anomaly Flats?”

The disco music continued to bump its way through the old speakers, and the oracle bobbed her head to the rhythm. “The well of his hatred is deep. He is small in stature, but fierce and powerful in spirit.” Mallory couldn’t tell for sure in the dim lighting, but she thought she saw Lewis’ spine straighten with pride at the sound of that…which she found a little perverse, if she were being honest with herself. The oracle continued, her voice growing hollow and cold: “He is a creature of great danger who seeks to plunge us into darkness. Mark my word, Scientist Lewis, and hear me well; I see only a glimpse of what is to be, but not how it will resolve.” The oracle skated to a stop at the wall and grabbed Lewis’ hands, this time both of them. She opened her eyes, and her bright green irises had been replaced by a milky whiteness so that her pupils were pinpoints of ink against pearls. “At sundown tomorrow,” the oracle whispered, her voice sharp and full of urgency, “the clone will endeavor to open the door.” The fluorescent lights went dark once more, and the oracle released Lewis’ hands and pushed herself back into the cloudy darkness of the roller rink. “He will endeavor to open the door,” she repeated with a hiss.

“Wait!” Lewis pleaded, leaning out over the wall. “What door?
Which
door?!”

The swarm of rainbow lights dappled the vapor mist, but the fog was so thick, it swallowed the woman completely. From within the cloud of swirling light echoed the final words of the oracle.

“Inside the Walmart. Aisle 8.”

Chapter 15

“Your evil clone is going to Walmart?” Mallory asked suspiciously as they pulled away from the roller rink. “He’s going to destroy the world with discount savings?”

“The Anomaly Flats Supercenter is much more than just great values and low prices,” Lewis said seriously, navigating onto a dark and twisting road that wound back through the woods. “It’s also a place of unspeakable evil.”

“Whoa…I know they don’t pay all that well, but are we really calling minimum wage unspeakably evil?” Mallory asked.

Lewis shook his head. “No, not that,” he said. Then he thought a minute. “Well…yes. That, too. But the evil inside the Walmart goes far,
far
beyond substandard wages.”

“Ah,” Mallory said. “Off-brand cheese.”

Lewis peeled his eyes from the road and shot Mallory an angry, searching look. “Is this a joke to you?” he asked.

Mallory shrugged. “Almost anything can be a joke if you get the delivery down.”

Lewis returned his eyes to the road and maneuvered the RV to the shoulder. He pulled the world’s most awkward U-turn, nearly bashing the Winnebago into several trees in the process, and headed back in the direction from which they’d just come, away from town. “Where are we going?” Mallory asked.

“I’m taking you back to my place,” he said, turning down a narrow road that ran along the border of the woods and a barren field.

“You know that I’m
definitely
not sleeping with you,” Mallory pointed out. Lewis’ hands jerked involuntarily, and the RV swerved off the road and into the grass. He overcorrected, and the Winnie screeched back and forth on the pavement before settling down on a straight path.

Lewis cleared his throat. “I’m not—I don’t—” he began.

“Calm down,” Mallory said, rolling her eyes, “it’s a joke.” She thought for a second, then added, “I mean, it’s
not
a joke. I’m not sleeping with you. But you know. You know what I mean.”

They drove along quietly for a few minutes, each trying desperately not to think about what the other person might be thinking about. Finally, Mallory broke the silence: “Wait, why
are
we going back to your place?”

“It’s very important that you understand what we’re up against,” he said. “There’s something I want you to hear.”

X

Lewis’ house turned out to be an old barn that crouched at the northern edge of Farmer Buchheit’s property. “I thought you said Farmer Buchheit was an asshole,” Mallory said.

“He is,” Lewis said, pulling open the front door. “You should see what he charges for this place.”

By Mallory’s estimation, anything over $10 a month was too much. The barn’s scant renovations amounted to the addition of a gas stove against one wall, a small icebox next to it, and a mattress that was slung down onto the floor of the hayloft overhead. The only light came from three bare bulbs suspended from the ceiling and one solo bulb fastened to the wall near the door. The sink was nothing more than a pig trough bolted to the wall and fed with a garden hose, and the shower appeared to be a bucket with holes punched in the bottom. Lewis had amassed a small collection of plywood boards, and by balancing them on various stools and crates, he’d created a series of tables. Most of them were covered with laboratory equipment. One was covered in dirty dishes. “How do you do science in here?” Mallory demanded.

Lewis blushed, clearly ashamed to be showing his little home to another person, especially to a person who was a reasonably-attractive-if-wild-haired woman. Mallory would have bet the bank that she was the first pair of X chromosomes to ever step through these barn doors. “I do most of my work in the RV,” he said quietly, brushing some of the dust away from the floorboards with the toe of his shoe. “The lighting’s better in there. And the electricity’s more reliable.”

“But…where’s the bathroom?” Mallory asked, wholly unable to keep the horror out of her voice.

“There’s an outhouse.”

“An
outhouse
? Christ, are we in
Arkansas
?”

“Yes, an outhouse. It’s only a quarter-mile walk out the back.”

“Seriously? And this no-plumbing cowshed is your
home
? Who the hell is your realtor?!”

“You don’t like it,” he said, crestfallen. He tugged at the lapels of his lab coat and hugged the white cloth tightly around himself.

“I mean…” Mallory paused and tried to summon up some words of encouragement. “It’s…it’s really fine, Lewis. It’s just really
fine.
Yeah. You know? Someone could
definitely
live here. Totally.”

Yep,
she thought.
Nailed it.

Lewis’ face grew even darker red. Mallory hoped it wouldn’t explode…it would make a horrible mess, and she didn’t know how to get blood out of things. “No one really pays me for my experiments,” he said, skirting around the house, stacking up dishes and tidying up as best he could. “I make a little money, you know, from odd jobs and things, but this is, ah…well, this is what I can afford. You know?”

Mallory shook her head and held up her hands. “I’m sorry, Lewis. Really. I didn’t mean that. Don’t listen to me. It’s nice. Really. It is.” She picked up some of the dishes and set them in the pig trough. She turned on the hose and sprayed them down. Water splashed everywhere, and a piece of something hard and brown that had been dried onto one of the plates flew into her eye. She tried not to gag. “It’s cozy. Very…rustic.”

Lewis frowned and cleared off the rest of the table, dumping papers and beakers and plates into a heap in the corner. “Don’t worry about all that,” he said, nodding at the pig trough. He shimmied up the ladder to the loft, disappeared up there for a few moments, and then reemerged holding a little black rectangle. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

Mallory squinted up at the thing in his hand. “Is that a tape recorder?” she asked, disgusted. “You know they make, like, iPhones, right?”

Lewis stepped carefully down the ladder and motioned for Mallory to join him at the table. “Magnetic fields,” he reminded her. “Have a seat.” He placed the recorder on the flimsy plywood surface and perched on a stool at the head of the table.

Mallory joined him, balancing precariously on a stool of her own. She felt the thin wood shift under her weight, and she silently cursed Chick-fil-A.
One bag of waffle fries, and now I’m fat.
She wondered if there was a yoga studio in town. Probably not. And if there was, she reasoned, it was probably run by vampires.

“The threat posed by my clone is…significant,” Lewis began, fiddling nervously with the recorder. “I knew he was evil, obviously, but
this
evil? The Walmart…aisle 8...Mallory, it’s not just bad. It’s potentially world-ending.”

Mallory looked at him skeptically. “You mean, like, your own personal world? Or literally the whole world?”

Lewis set his mouth in a grim line. “Both, I’m afraid. The destruction will start with us here in Anomaly Flats, and spread quickly, wiping out the whole of planet Earth.”

“Huh.” Mallory couldn’t argue; that
did
sound significant. The very idea that an abomination of
her creation
could bring about the end of the world…well, it didn’t exactly seem
feasible
, but it
did
seem significant. It also made her kind of proud, in a macabre sort of way. A strange question occurred to her then: “Hey, what about Mars?”

“Mallory…” Lewis began, sounding unbelievably tired.

“No, I’m serious! It’s a whole other planet, but it’s
also
part of Anomaly Flats. Do you think Mars will get destroyed too?”

Lewis sighed heavily. “I honestly don’t know,” he said. “And I’m hoping not to find out.”

Mallory shook her head and, in doing so, nearly toppled off the flimsy stool. “This is ludicrous,” she said, grapping the table for support. “I’m as socially anti-Walmart as the next upper-middle-class white person, but the destruction of the entire planet? Maybe
two
planets? Come on. Sam Walton wasn’t Hitler.” She thought for a moment, then added, “But some of the greeters
are
pretty awful. I’ve met a few front-door retirees who have attitudes like A-bombs.”

“It’s not the Walmart itself that’s the problem,” Lewis said. “It’s what’s
inside
the Walmart. In aisle 8. It’s this.” He nodded down at the tape recorder. It sat there, matte black and unassuming. Lewis picked it up and hovered his finger over the play button. “About ten years ago, one of our citizens went into the Walmart. They were having a special on canned beets that day. Two for thirty-nine cents. It was an incredible deal. He just couldn’t resist.”

“Who could?” Mallory mumbled sarcastically. Lewis ignored her.

“We told him not to go in. We begged him. We
pleaded
. But a man’s love for beets can be stronger than reason,” he said seriously. Mallory tried hard to stifle a laugh, but she didn’t do a very good job. Once again, Lewis ignored her. “He came out…changed.”

Now
that
piqued Mallory’s attention. “Changed? Changed how?” she asked, leaning gingerly forward.

“Listen for yourself. This interview took place about an hour after he was deposited outside the Walmart.”

“Deposited?” Mallory asked, raising an eyebrow.

Lewis nodded gravely. “We’re not sure who—or what—escorted him out. But he was ejected rather forcefully. He skidded along the parking lot for almost ten feet. He had to have three different skin grafts.” Lewis clicked the play button, and the microphone whirred to life. The speaker popped, and a scratched, faded version of Lewis’ own voice came through: “This is Dr. Lewis Burnish. The date is September 25, 1993, 10:37 pm.”

“1993?” Mallory asked, confused. “I thought you said ten years ago…” But Lewis shushed her with a wave of his hand, and the Lewis on the recorder continued:

“Post-trauma interview with Subject R, who entered the Walmart at approximately 8:45 pm and was ejected roughly 45 minutes later, at approximately 9:30 pm. Subject has severe lacerations extending from his neck to his ankles, caused by rough and prolonged scraping with asphalt. He also appears to be physically and mentally altered. His posture has slackened, and all hair seems to have been removed from his body. Not shaved; literally
removed
. Prior to this trauma, Subject R was articulate and roundly considered to be of high intelligence. His profession was medical surgeon at Anomaly General. I say ‘was’ because the subject no longer appears capable of performing complex medical procedures, or even simple ones. This is untested; however, his speech is slow, and he is having trouble connecting ideas. His movements and reactions are delayed. There is a five-inch scar running horizontally across his scalp along the frontal lobe. I don’t know if this existed prior to his experience inside the Walmart or not, but it appears to be a recently-healed incision. We will begin the interview now.

“Do you consent to the recording of our discussion here today?” the Lewis on the recorder asked someone on the other side of the microphone.

There was a long pause, then a second male voice said, “Yes.” He slurred his
s
a bit, so that it almost sounded like he ended the word with a slurp.

“Why did you go into the Walmart?”

Another long pause as the recorder hissed and popped. “Cheap beets,” Subject R finally said.

“And how often do you eat beets?” Lewis asked.

A third voice piped up from somewhere in the background, a female voice. “How is that relevant?” the voice snapped.

“I’m curious!” Lewis hissed back. “Who would risk Walmart for beets? Beets taste like dirt!”

“Some days I eat beets,” Subject R answered, seemingly heedless of the sniping back-and-forth going on around him. “Some days…not.”

“It’s just weird,” Lewis continued quietly, harping at the unseen woman who hovered in the background. “I’m trying to establish that it’s weird.”

“Just get on with it,” the woman hissed back.

Mallory gave Lewis a questioning look. The scientist shrugged. “I stand by it. It’s weird.”

“Who’s the woman?” Mallory hissed. She didn’t know why she was whispering. It wasn’t like she was going to interrupt the conversation in the recorder.

“The mayor,” Lewis replied.

“
That’s
the mayor?” Mallory asked. She thought for a second. “I like her,” she decided.

Lewis shook his head and motioned back down toward the microphone. His digital voice continued.

“Let the record show that Dr. Lewis Burnish advised Subject R against entering the Walmart, as did several other friends and acquaintances, but the subject went in anyway and is solely responsible for the effects of his decision.”

“I hardly think this is the time or the place—” the mayor cried, and tape-recorded Lewis acknowledged this with a quiet, agitated, “All right, all right! Now, then. Subject R. Tell us what happened when you entered the Walmart.”

The directive was followed by several long moments of silence. The other man seemed to be moaning, maybe in fear, or maybe in frustration, as if he were having trouble remembering the scene, or reliving it, or both. Finally, he said, “Bright. Lights…bright lights…on the ceiling. Made the produce look…real pretty. But it wasn’t pretty. It was…horrible. All the produce was horrible.”

“Yes, good. Go on,” recorded Lewis urged. “What else?”

“There was a…monster. At the door. A…mummy. Old, and…white. Chalk. Skeleton mummy. I could see…all his bones. I…pressed myself against the wall…closed my eyes and…went past. The skeleton mummy reached out…said, ‘Hello’…almost grabbed me…but I got away.”

“That was the greeter,” Lewis explained. “You were smart to keep your distance. What next?”

“I saw the peppers…and the broccoli…and the raw beets. I…wanted to…the beets…I wanted to buy them…not go to aisle 8, but…raw beets…were not on sale.”

“So you went past the produce section?”

Here, Subject R began to sniffle a little, and Mallory thought she could hear a gentle, muffled sob. “Yes,” the voice sniffled.

“What’s wrong? What is it?” the mayor asked gently.

“In the produce…by the cilantro…I was…I was…”

“Yes?” the mayor urged. “You were what?”

“I was…I was…”

“It’s okay,” Lewis said. “This is a safe space.”

“What happened?” the mayor asked.

There was more sniffling from the subject. “I was…misted.”

“Misted?” Lewis and the mayor asked in unison, both sounding equally confused.

“The sprayer,” Subject R sobbed. “It misted me.”

Lewis cleared his throat, and the mayor gave an unmistakable sigh. “Let’s…get back on track here, okay?” Lewis asked.

“I don’t like water,” the subject explained through his tears.

“Okay. So you made it through the produce section. Then what?”

“I…I went through the…through the…through the…make-up,” he finally said, sounding unsure.

“Cosmetics,” Lewis said helpfully. “You went through cosmetics.”

“I saw a woman…in a blue vest…I asked her where to find…canned beets.”

“What did this woman look like?” the mayor interrupted.

Subject R made some low, guttural noises as he struggled to remember. “Red hair,” he spat out, grasping for memories. “Curly. Nice. Cheap Trick tattoo on her arm.”

“My God,” the mayor breathed. “That was Sandy Sullivan. My former deputy assistant! We lost her to a Walmart job fair
years
ago.”

“Sounds like she’s still in there,” Lewis said. “Go on, what did she say?”

“She…she…pointed toward aisle 8. I went.”

“You went to aisle 8?”

“Yes.”

“What was it like?”

There was more sniffling on the other end of the recorder. “It was…cold. Colder and colder. Aisle 2 was…warm. Aisle 4 got…colder. Aisle 8 was…like ice. So cold. So cold.”

“Listen to me,” Lewis said. “This is important. Okay?” There was some sort of muffled response from the subject. “Did you get a jacket from menswear?”

“Lewis,” the mayor snapped.

“What?”