Anomaly Flats Read online

  She gave the flies one last swat and pushed open the door. The decorator hadn’t done much to cover up the skeleton of the old Pizza Hut. Half of the brownish-red tile floor was covered by a dark, thin, threadbare carpet. The kitchen area was closed off by a series of shower curtains hanging from a clothesline that stretched across the south end of the building. The tables and chairs had been cleared away, but the salad bar remained, though thankfully the salad and fixings had been removed at some point in the last ten years. Now the buffet was host to a litany of pamphlets on Anomaly Flats’ finest tourist traps. There actually seemed to be quite a few.

  There was even a lone travel poster tacked up on one of the walls, over by the restrooms. It boasted a faded illustration of a fast food restaurant. The big, bold lettering read, VISIT THE ANOMALY FLATS CHICK-FIL-A! YOU HAVE TO; IT’S THE LAW.

  “No wonder you never get visitors,” Mallory muttered.

  The woman behind the table was smallish in size, with curly brown hair that appeared to behave with quite a bit of autonomy; it went in every direction but down. She wore a blue Hawaiian shirt that was two sizes too big, and her bare feet peeked out from beneath the table. She was reclining as much as her hard metal folding chair would allow. Her eyes were closed, and her hands were folded against her chest.

  “Excuse me?” Mallory said, leaning her hands down on the folding table. “Miss?” She snapped her fingers, but the woman did not wake up. “I’m desperate to know about all the creepy glories your town has to offer. Preferably the ones not near main highways or sheriff departments. And also, within walking distance,” she added. “That’s important.” The woman in the chair didn’t stir. Mallory put her fists on her hips and frowned. Then she yelled, “HEY—WAKE UP!”

  The woman started. The chair threatened to tip over, taking her with it, but a quick windmilling of her arms set it back down with a thud. She blinked her eyes open, and Mallory gasped. The woman had no irises…just two pupils swimming in two pools of milky white.

  “I…like your eyes. The contacts,” she said, trying to keep her voice from trembling. “Very…something.” She didn’t know why she was letting herself be so affected by every bizarre turn her life took in this town. Shouldn’t she expect the woman behind the table to have pure white eyes? Hell, shouldn’t she be more surprised that she had any sort of eyes at all? “Rufus sent me over,” she continued, tugging self-consciously on the shoulder straps of the backpack. “He said you’d know some good sites to see…”

  The woman stared with her pinpoint eyes. Her palms rested flat on the table, and a fly landed between them.

  “So then,” Mallory said, wondering why she’d even bothered in the first place. “Got any good recommendations, or…?”

  The woman nodded. Then she opened her mouth, and her jaw fell open wide…hugely wide—so wide that it couldn’t possibly open so completely without unhinging itself. It fell and fell and fell, and her mouth stretched and stretched and stretched, until it was wide enough to fit a football, end to end, between her top and bottom teeth. She hissed, a dry, rattling sound from the depths of her throat, and Mallory heard a loud buzzing. A massive swarm of flies exploded from the woman’s mouth. They poured out from between her teeth in a black, buzzing tidal wave, crashing over her chin and gushing into the air. The office became so thick with flies that Mallory couldn’t see the woman anymore. The buzzing jackhammered against her ears. She screamed and swatted wildly, pushing against so many flies with each swing, she could have swum through them. They covered her like a blanket as still more poured out of the woman’s mouth. A thick knot of flies flew into Mallory’s own mouth, wide open and screaming. She clamped it shut, spitting and retching and clawing the insects away from her face.

  She ducked her head and ran blindly toward the door. She smashed into it, bounced hard, then lowered her shoulder and rammed it again, throwing it open. She tripped over the jamb and tumbled out onto the overgrown parking lot as the flies that broke free spiraled up into the sky, leaving her heaving and writhing on the ground.

  A pair of hands reached down and seized her under the shoulders. She screamed as hard as she could without opening her mouth and thrashed at the arms that gripped her, running her nails down them and drawing blood.

  “Ow! Hey—come on! Cut it out!” It was a man’s voice, soft and gentle. He sounded genuinely wounded.

  Mallory opened her eyes and scrambled to her feet. She came more or less face-to-face with a man in a white lab coat—more or less, because Mallory was almost a full head taller than the man, even though she was wearing sneakers. “Geez. Are you okay?” he asked.

  Mallory opened her mouth to answer, but another loud, metallic screech cut her off, and a loudspeaker fixed to the roof of the tourism office blared to life. The same woman’s voice pierced the air again:

  “Attention, Anomaly Flats: Rain will begin in two minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Seek shelter immediately. Rain will begin in two minutes and thirty-five seconds.” Then the speaker went dead.

  “Whoops,” said the man in the lab coat. “We’d better get you inside.”

  “No!” Mallory yelled, throwing her hands up and clawing the air frantically, her eyes wide with fear and disgust. “I’m not going back in there!”

  But the man in the lab coat shook his head. “No, not in there. In there.” He pointed to an old Winnebago that sat idling in the parking lot.

  “Oh,” Mallory said. She bit her lip as she considered the welts already springing up on his arms where her nails had raked his skin. “Sorry about…all that.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He hurried over to the RV and opened the rear door. “Come on in. Trust me, you don’t want to be out here when the rain starts.”

  Mallory shook her head. “No offense, but I have a strict rule about strangers and vans. I’ll take my chance with the rain.” She turned toward the street and started hurrying away.

  “Your name’s Mallory, right?” he called out after her.

  She stopped cold in her tracks. How did he know that?

  “I think I can answer some of the questions I’m sure you have, Mallory.”

  Dammit, she thought. Just keep moving, just keep moving… But her brain and her mouth were misfiring, as usual, and without turning around, she hollered back, “What questions?”

  He paused for a moment, then he said, “All of them?” as if maybe he wasn’t very sure himself. But he sounded hopeful. “Definitely some of them.”

  Mallory turned and crossed her arms. “Go on.”

  The man in the lab coat gave a worried little sigh. He checked his watch nervously. “Have you seen any tentacles? I can tell you about those.” He pointed at the Pizza Hut. “And Marcy! I can tell you why Marcy shoots flies out of her mouth.” He frowned up at the darkening sky and shifted his weight anxiously from one foot to the other. “We really don’t want to get caught in the rain.”

  Mallory set her lips into a firm line. She was curious about the tentacles, and about the flies, and about a few other things. Like magnetic fields and waffle obsessions and keys and runes and the complete and total absence of Google. And chicken genocide…mostly, she was curious about that. Besides, the man in the lab coat was comically small, and she was pretty sure she could overpower him physically, if it came to that.

  And he had a good point about the rain. She hated getting wet.

  “All right, fine. I do have tentacle questions. But try anything, and I’ll make sure you shit blood for a week.”

  The man gasped. “Well…wait,” he said, holding up a hand. “Now I’m not sure I want you to come in,” he said seriously.

  “Oh, shut up,” she said, and she pushed past him into the RV.

  The inside of the Winnebago had been custom retrofitted into a mad scientist’s playground. The cooktop had been ripped out and replaced with two rows of Bunse
n burners. There were white racks bolted to two of the walls, snugly securing dozens of beakers of various sizes. A counter in the rear held three different centrifuges, and there was a blue box next to the tiny bathroom that held no fewer than five different types of scales. A small refrigerator stood next to that, the type that Mallory had had in her college dorm room, once upon a life. Microscopes were scattered all around the space, and a jumble of canisters, jars, flasks, and retorts were stowed wherever room could be found. Most of them held various liquids of bright and unusual colors. A dark blue fluid dripped slowly out of the flute of one retort near the Winnebago’s cab, and each little drip smoked and sizzled into the floorboard. A giant fume hood hung from the center of the ceiling, and a poster of a bear wearing lab goggles hung on the back wall. It read, ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT BAD SCIENCE.

  “Whoa,” Mallory said. “This is…pretty weird.”

  “Glad you like it,” the small man grinned. He hopped inside, closed the door, and wiped his hands nervously on his lab coat. She took a good, long look at him. He wore a green-and-yellow-checkered shirt under the lab coat topped with a pale blue bow tie. His shirt was neatly tucked into a pair of pressed khakis, and a pair of old Keds tennis shoes covered his feet. His light brown hair was short and a little hectic, and his square-rimmed glasses seemed to not quite want to stay on his nose where they belonged. Sizing him up, Mallory guessed that he wasn’t used to having company…especially company of the female persuasion.

  “Would you like something to drink?” he asked.

  Mallory looked doubtfully at the brightly colored liquids in the beakers. Some of them seemed to be bubbling of their own volition, even though they were nowhere near a direct heat source. “I’m fine,” she said. “I had breakfast wine.”

  The man in the lab coat looked at her strangely and shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He picked up a beaker from the Bunsen burner counter and filled it with an amber liquid from a canister marked with a giant X. He took a long sip.

  “Um…what is that?” Mallory asked, preparing herself to be disgusted.

  “What? This?” The man nodded down at his beaker. “It’s tea.” Then he sniffed the liquid. Then he sniffed it again. “I think it’s tea…” He sounded genuinely concerned.

  Mallory rolled her eyes. “All right, Dr. Honeydew. Let’s hear those answers.”

  “Mm! Dr. Burnish,” he corrected her, swallowing another sip and extending his hand. “Dr. Lewis Burnish. You can call me Lewis,” he added with a little blush. He looked away shyly, becoming suddenly very interested in his beaker of tea. “So what would you like to know?”

  “We can start with the flies.” Mallory’s arms prickled with goose bumps at the memory. “What is that all about?”

  “Well…” Lewis said uneasily. He cleared his throat and hemmed and hawed a bit. “I…may have lied. I mean, I did. I did lie. I have no idea why she shoots flies out of her mouth. But isn’t it fascinating?” he beamed. “Everything in Anomaly Flats is fascinating!”

  “Okay,” Mallory said, throwing up her hands. “It’s been fun.” She moved for the door, but just as she reached for the handle, something solid pinged off the roof of the Winnebago. Then a second something struck, then a third, and a fourth, and soon the RV was being positively pelted from above. “What is that? Hail?”

  “No; it’s rain,” Lewis said. He set down his beaker of tea and rubbed his hands together excitedly. “You’re going to love this.” He reached over and pulled the cheap curtain that covered one of the windows. “Look!”

  Mallory peered out. What she saw made her gasp.

  “Is that…metal? Falling from the sky?”

  Lewis nodded excitedly. “It’s nickel!” he said. “It rains nickel here! Isn’t it wonderful?”

  Mallory shook her head in bewilderment as the world outside was pelted with a cascade of hard metal bits. “What is this place?” she shouted over the din.

  “Ah!” Lewis shouted back, pointing a finger into the air triumphantly. “Now that, I can answer!”

  Chapter 7

  “Anomaly Flats is…well, it’s an anomaly,” the scientist said, clearing a family of test tubes from an overturned milk crate and gesturing for Mallory to have a seat. “Or a series of anomalies, to be exact. Let me ask you; how did you arrive here?”

  “I drove,” Mallory said dryly.

  “Yes, of course, I understand that. But what I mean is, how did you find Anomaly Flats?”

  “I followed the road.”

  “And how did you find that road?”

  “What, are you serious? I saw a road, I turned onto it. How does anyone find a road?”

  “Hmm…very interesting.” Lewis pulled out a notebook and pen from one of the crates and began scribbling some notes. “Why did you turn onto that particular road?”

  Mallory exhaled with exasperation. “I don’t know! I saw a sign, I turned.”

  Lewis’ eyes grew large. “You saw a sign?” he asked. “What kind of sign?”

  “A road sign.”

  “Yes, but what sort of road sign?”

  “Look,” Mallory yelled over the sound of the raining metal, “what the hell does it matter what sort of road sign? I was on the road, I saw a sign for Anomaly Flats, I turned, and here I am—and absolutely adoring every second of it,” she said sharply.

  “Hmm…” Lewis clicked his pen a few times as he let his hidden thoughts tumble about in his brain. “And how do you feel now that you’re here?”

  “Goddamn irritated!” Mallory cried.

  Lewis nodded. “Subject shows signs of emotional distress,” he mumbled as he wrote. Mallory swiped at him and knocked both the book and the pen from his hands. “Hey!”

  “I’m about to give you all sorts of emotional distress…I will drown you in it. Why are you asking me all these questions?”

  “Because you’re the only other outsider I’ve been able to study!” he said excitedly. “Er, meet. I meant meet. You’re the only other outsider I’ve been able to meet.”

  “With your social skills, that’s an incredible surprise,” Mallory snorted.

  The scientist shook his head. “It’s not like that. I mean you’re literally the only other outsider I’ve met. I’m curious about the town’s effects on you. You see, Anomaly Flats is a sort of nexus of oddities. One of those oddities is that most people can’t find it. Even if they look.”

  “And lucky me, I just stumbled across it,” she said.

  “Yes, exactly my point. The chances of that are so slim as to border on impossible. The town seems to use its geographical secrecy as a sort of defense mechanism.”

  Mallory rubbed her forehead. The beginnings of a headache were throbbing to life somewhere in there. “I thought you were just going to answer my questions,” she sighed.

  “I’m trying to,” the scientist insisted. “It’s all part of it. Don’t you see? A town that camouflages itself is, in my experience, highly irregular…and it’s one of the least irregular things about Anomaly Flats. I’ve been working out the ‘whys’ of its unique properties for some time now, and I’ve only cracked the surface. At first, I thought the strange things that happened here had to do with the area’s peculiar magnetic properties. The magnetic fields in this area are…extraordinary.”

  “I’ve heard,” Mallory sighed over the sound of raining metal. She shrugged out of her backpack and shoved it beneath her knees. “My alternator paid the price.”

  “Yes, exactly!” Lewis cried. “Not just your alternator, but every computer! I don’t have to tell you how difficult it’s been to carry out experiments without the help of a computer,” he said with a little chuckle.

  “Does this truck have an alternator?” Mallory asked, looking around the Winnebago. It was a complete scientific mess, but it looked to be fairly new.

  Lewis smi
led shrewdly. “It does. I constructed a superconductor casing of iron oxyarsenide for the RV’s computer systems. It blocks out nearly 98% of all magnetism,” he said proudly. “That was my Year Three project.”

  “Year Three? How long have you been here?”

  “Let’s see,” Lewis said, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “I guess it’s been…geez…over twelve years now.” He seemed genuinely surprised by this. “Time does fly,” he said, shaking his head. “Here more so than most places.”

  “You’ve been studying this place for twelve years, and you don’t know why the Director of Tourism vomits flies?” Mallory said, raising an eyebrow. “That’s one strike for scientific progress.”

  Lewis waved off that little insult. “There is so much of Anomaly Flats to explore—so much to analyze and discover—that Marcy’s esophageal aberrations haven’t been high on the list. But they are on the list,” he assured her. He rifled through a pile of notebooks on the floor of the RV behind the passenger seat and came up with a spiral-bound journal with a holographic lizard on the cover. Mallory remembered having something like it when she was in grade school, almost three decades ago. Lewis flipped the book open to a marked page and held it out for her. “See?”

  The page showed a long list of items, written in four columns. About a fifth of the items—including magnetic properties, sharp snow, hypno-stars, and mutant cornfields—were crossed off. Others—Clone Lake, volcanic activity, drones, and aisle 8 among them—were not. There were similar lists on several pages, each with four full columns. Marcy’s flies was among the items on the third page, and it was not yet crossed off.

  “I’ll get to it eventually,” he promised. “What were we…oh! Magnetic fields! I thought those were to blame for the strangeness at first, but they’re just a symptom, not the sickness. The root cause of Anomaly’s anomalies seems to be something more…dimensional.”