Anomaly Flats (19 page)

Everything was working out nicely.

X

Lewis gazed up at the cloudy sky and resolutely refused to move.
If I stay here, someone will eventually run over me with a tow truck, and none of this will matter anymore.

But that would, of course, guarantee the evil clone’s success, and in no time, the demon would turn Anomaly Flats into a literal hell on Earth. Skin would be flayed, lakes would be boiled, and maggots would infest even the freshest cuts of pork. “Maybe it won’t be so bad,” he mumbled aloud, his words drying and cracking in the heat of the sunlight. He was a scientist; maggots were more of a curiosity to him than a source of disgust. But then he remembered the wood carving of the rectum poles. And rectal impalement was most certainly
not
a particular curiosity of his. “Yeah, okay. I should get up and go stop him.” He sighed as he struggled to a seat. The RV was just a few parking spots over, but something so familiar had never felt so very far away.

He tried not to curse Mallory as he ambled to his feet. She’d let him down; she’d let all of Anomaly Flats down. That much was true. But of
course
she’d let them down. That was the nature of people out there in the world. Here in the Flats, folks looked out for each other. Those folks were mysterious and complex and, yes, often troubling…but they always stood by their own. When the eerie, green glow appeared behind the Del Taco and started turning everyone who looked at it into werecows, the town’s oldest magician went into the center of the light and allowed himself to be swallowed by the source in order to sate the glow’s weird hunger. When the old ruins near Highway 95 caught vapor fire, all seven members of the Tribe of Bahamut lent their crystal fish charms to help summon the only type of deathwind that could smother the blue and purple flames. When Farmer Buchheit’s pet orca came down with a particularly bad case of sand cough, Trudy slung waffles for three days and nights straight, keeping the rescue teams nourished and fragmentally time-resistant.

And when a young, scared scientist had shown up in the middle of downtown with a suitcase of beakers in one hand and a handwritten letter from his future self in the other, the people of Anomaly Flats had treated him with all the apprehensive distrust and reluctant acceptance they could muster. He’d never felt truly integrated, but they hadn’t chased him out, either.

After all, hadn’t that been the main reason he’d stayed? Anomaly Flats was always meant to be a short diversion, a five-year experiment at most. But with each passing month, the differences between the world in here and the world out there became more and more exaggerated. Out in the real world, people gave him cautious looks and avoided him as best they could. Back at the university, his colleagues whispered and snickered about his disastrous particle acceleration experiments behind his back. Back home, his aging parents vociferously lamented the fact that their only child had dedicated his life to scientific advancement rather than something more comprehensible, like marketing, or construction, or “even community journalism, for crying out loud.” But the people in this town didn’t avoid him or jeer at him or tell their relatives they were disappointed in his chosen vocation.

It was small, and strange, and practically inaccessible to the outside world.

But Anomaly Flats had let him in.

Which was why his five-year plan had stretched into a twelve-year plan, and soon it would become a twenty-year, and then it wouldn’t be a plan anymore at all, but a life,
his
life…his life in Anomaly Flats, where things were weird, and things were dangerous, but things were never as awful as they were in the rest of the world.

Hurricane Mallory had brought that outside awfulness with it. She was rude, and she was crass, her first language was sarcasm, and she acted without concern for consequence. She’d created the greatest threat to survival Anomaly Flats had ever seen—which was truly remarkable, given the circumstances—and then she’d turned and fled as soon as she had the chance.

But of course she had. It wasn’t surprising at all. The world was full of cowards.

Which was why Lewis Burnish refused to be one.

He sighed as he climbed into the driver’s seat of the RV. He didn’t need Mallory. He had his pistol, and the Spear of Rad, and a good seven hours before sunset. He could defeat the evil clone easily enough. He didn’t need her…and not only that, he didn’t much like her, either. He could see that clearly now.

So why did he already miss her so much?

He tried to shake away the thought of her, and he reached down and clicked on the radio.

A familiar voice was just beginning its latest bulletin:

“Attention, Anomaly Flats: The time is currently 11:58 AM. The following hours will be replaced by minutes today: 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, and 6:00. Be advised: The next seven hours will each be replaced by minutes. Attention, Anomaly Flats: The time is currently 11:59 AM. In nine minutes, it will be 7:01 PM.
”

Lewis gaped at the radio. “No,” he whispered. “No, no, no, no, no! Not a time lapse! Not
now!
” He fumbled for his keys and couldn’t quite get them to jam into the ignition. “No, no,
no!
”

Time was suddenly his enemy. Just like that, he had less than ten minutes to stop his clone from releasing the ancient evil on the town.

The keys finally found their slot. He fired up the Winnebago, ground it into drive, and squealed out of the parking lot.

He had to get to the Walmart.

Chapter 19

Mallory’s eyes flashed up at the rearview mirror before she pulled out of the repair shop parking lot onto the road that led out of Anomaly Flats. There was Lewis, lying prostrate on the ground, sad and confused and probably questioning a lot of life choices. Mallory felt bad for him, but not
too
bad. Was she abandoning him in a time of great need? Maybe. Was she responsible for the great evil that was about to wreak havoc all through the town? Sure, okay. Yeah. But Lewis had a gun and a good six or seven hours to get into position. If he couldn’t stop the evil clone with that sort of head start, the town deserved to melt. Or burn. Or get anally speared. Or all of the above. Whatever it was an ancient evil did to a town of people that locked it up beneath a Walmart shelf of canned beets for a few centuries or so.

In a way, Mallory sort of felt for the ancient evil.

And she didn’t have time to deal with this particular disaster. Two days had passed; surely
someone
had noticed the theft by now. The secretary, the cleaning staff, the CFO, who Mallory was reasonably sure had siphoned off money from the accounts and stashed her boss’s cut in the safe on Friday afternoons; surely someone had noticed that something was amiss. And even if the police couldn’t bumble their way into Anomaly Flats, there was a good chance they had blanketed the rest of Missouri with an APB, and that net would get tighter every second. With any luck, the search was focusing on familiar places—her hometown, her sister’s house, the family cabin at the Lake of the Ozarks—or they probably assumed that if she wanted to leave the country, she’d be headed for Mexico. People always fled to Mexico. Mallory didn’t understand it. Mexico was hot, and dirty, and everyone spoke low Spanish. Canada was a much better choice. She just had to get there before the cops realized it, too.

Besides, who knew how long the alternator would hold out? She had to make it out of town before the magnetic field drank its coffee and starting pulsing again at full power. Being stranded for another two days in Anomaly Flats was unthinkable.

And the evil clone was a problem, sure…but he was
their
problem. A problem wholly specific to this dimensionally fucked-up town. She may have been a catalyst for the creation of the clone, but it was going to happen sooner or later. Eventually,
someone
would push
someone
into the lake, and the whole thing would have happened without her. She refused to hold herself responsible for something so inevitable. She refused to feel guilt.

Nope,
she thought as she idled at the edge of the parking lot.
Leaving is the only option.

She peeled out onto the road, thrilling at the tremble of the Impala’s engine rumbling through the steering wheel. She’d never been so happy to be behind the wheel of a car. But as she left the auto repair shop, she caught a flash of Rufus in the rearview mirror as he slunk out of the shadows of the garage. Rufus, who had once been a brilliant surgeon, now reduced to a slobbering grease monkey in oil-stained coveralls. And from nothing more than touching a can of beets.

“Don’t think about it,” she warned the Mallory in the mirror.

Lewis was going into that same canned goods aisle, armed with a peashooter and a rusty crowbar. He should be able to stop the clone, yes…but if he couldn’t? “He’ll be at Ground Zero when the ancient evil tumbles loose,” mirror Mallory said.

“I don’t care,” she replied.

If just touching a can near the evil could have such an impact on Rufus…what would the full power of the demon do to Lewis?

Stop it, brain.

She should keep driving. She knew this was her chance. If she didn’t take the road out of Anomaly Flats now, she might be stuck there indefinitely. And if she ever did make it out, the long arm of the law would be waiting.

Images of Lewis flashed before her eyes, dark, flickering views of a simpering, brain-dead scientist, writhing on the ground, gaping hollowly at the fluorescent lights above as dented cans of beans fell from the shelves of aisle 8 and bounced off his useless head one by one.

“Is that what you want?” mirror Mallory asked.

A loud hiss and pop from the car radio made her jump, and she lost control of the car for a split second. The radio had been off, but the voice on the other end insisted on being heard:

“Attention, Anomaly Flats: The time is currently 11:58 AM. The following hours will be replaced by minutes today: 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, and 6:00. Be advised: The next seven hours will each be replaced by minutes. Attention, Anomaly Flats: The time is currently 11:59 AM. In nine minutes, it will be 7:01 PM.”

“Don’t think about it,” she said again. “Think about being rich and mounting a Mountie.”

Even mirror Mallory couldn’t argue that either of those was a bad thing.

She gripped the wheel and pressed harder on the gas, flooring it toward the city limits.

X

Lewis took a deep breath and tried to will his hands to stop trembling.

His trembling hands suggested that he mind his own business.

He had never been inside the Walmart before. It was practically suicide to pass through the automatic doors, no matter how chipper the Rollback Prices signs seemed. But avoiding the superstore was no longer an option. The sun was setting, and the clone would be here any minute, if he wasn’t here already. Lewis took a deep breath and stepped up to the doors.

They slid apart with ease and grace, exhaling a gentle
pfffft
that set the scientist’s nerves on fire. Doors weren’t meant to go
pfffft
. They were meant to go
creak
and
slam
and
thunk.
Pffffft
was all wrong. It was an abomination, even in a town filled with abominations.

He took one step into the entryway, and an impossibly old man lurched forward from the wall. Lewis hadn’t noticed him; he had blended in so perfectly with the plastic bubble toy dispenser and coin-operated rocking horse behind him. He reached his papery, yellow hands out toward the scientist. Lewis screamed as the elderly man rasped, “Welcome to Walmart. Need a cart?”

“Get away!” Lewis shrieked. He leapt to the far side of the foyer and hoisted the Spear of Rad high above his head. “I’ll smash your skull!
Get away
!” The old man hissed and retreated to the camouflage safety of the entertainment machines. Lewis skirted him and ran through the second set of automatic doors, giving the spear a good swing for emphasis, and to keep the old man at bay.

How could he have forgotten about the greeter?
Stupid, stupid
, he cursed himself. He’d have to be more careful.

Much,
much
more careful.

He crept backward away from the doors until they slid themselves closed again. He peered through the glass, holding the spear at the ready, in case the greeter decided to follow him in…but the old man seemed content to prop himself up in the foyer.

Lewis relaxed a bit and lowered the Spear of Rad. He glanced nervously over his shoulder and got his first good look at the inside of Walmart. It was clean—much cleaner than he had imagined. The linoleum floors sparkled under the bright, cheerful lights. A line of spick-and-span cashier stations spanned the front of the store to his left, but they were all unmanned. Lewis looked around the store and realized there wasn’t a single Walmart employee in sight, other than the mummy in the foyer.

They’re not used to customers
, he realized.
They’re probably on eternal break.

Even so, something about the row of quiet cash register sentinels unnerved him, and he stepped cautiously to his right, into the produce section, so as to avoid the checkout lanes. He pulled the pistol from his lab coat pocket and tiptoed carefully through the impeccably stacked pyramids of apples. Honey crisp, gala, red delicious, Granny Smith—they all shone in the illusory fluorescent lights, as if they’d been polished to a high sheen with the most expensive name brand furniture polish the Walmart had to offer. Next to the apples sat the lemons and limes, bright and pleasant and genetically mutated to a few sizes larger than was natural. The pomegranates sat with their crowns pointed perfectly up; the avocados were all the exact same dark shade of green. The bananas were organized into an orderly pile, and their peels were just this side of yellow, prompting Lewis to wonder how the Walmart received such perfectly ripe produce. No delivery trucks ever entered Anomaly Flats. They couldn’t if they wanted to. And yet, the produce was pristine.

Nothing here can be trusted
, he thought as he skirted the vegetables.
This is the devil’s playpen.

He crossed around the onions and shallots and was sneaking past the leafy greens in the wall cooler when a crack of thunder sounded, and a flash of lightning ripped through the store. Lewis yelped in surprise and slipped on the polished floor. He landed hard on his back, and the pistol went off, blasting a bullet straight through the artichoke stand and into the soft loaves of bagged Wonder Bread in Aisle 1. The crack of the gun rang through the empty store, but not even the greeter came to see what had happened.

Lewis struggled to his feet, panting and sweating and waving the pistol around like a madman, searching desperately for whatever sorcerer had opened up the ceiling and caused a thunderstorm in the lettuce section. He was equal parts embarrassed and relieved when he realized the thunder wasn’t
real
thunder at all, but a recorded sound effect. The lightning was just a flash of the small produce lights. Little water sprayers set into the cooler sputtered to life, sending a fine mist down over the cabbage and kale. The fake thunder and lightning were just for kitschy effect.

You were right, Rufus,
he thought.
Getting misted is horrifying.

He took a deep breath. If any store employees were lurking in the freezer section, waiting to pounce, at least they knew he was armed now.

At the very least, there was that.

He tiptoed past the cilantro and finally reached the far side of the store. He peeked his head around the freezer case and peered down the eternally long side aisle. Rows of soft drinks and outdoor barbecue supplies lined the right wall, even though outdoor barbecues were highly illegal in Anomaly Flats…as were soft drinks. And on the left side of the long walkway, the line of numbered aisles loomed, cold and silent, their number markers boldly and bluntly stating their horrible-but-standard grocery store contents: COFFEE, TEA, SOUP, TOMATO SAUCE, LARVAE, JELLY, STARFISH LEGS, COOKING OIL, SPICES, POND WEEDS, CHIPS, and, of course, CANNED GOODS.

Lewis took a deep breath. Soon, he’d either be a hero, or he’d be dead. There was no middle ground.

Well, there
was
a middle ground, but it involved rectum spikes, so it was best not to think about that.

As he crept toward the canned goods section, he became aware of gentle music playing above him for the first time. It was light, instrumental music, the piano-washed version of a song he knew but hadn’t heard in many, many years. He couldn’t remember the name of it. It was something by Lionel Richie.

It was nice.

He tilted his head in time with the gentle beat, and the tension melted away from his step. He passed the soup aisle, and he thought,
A can of tomato bisque would be good, with the chilly weather that’s coming in.
He swayed gently toward the stack of Campbell’s cans as the homage to Lionel tinkled serenely overhead.

He was reaching for a can of bisque when he looked up and saw a Walmart employee gaping at him from the other end of the aisle. She was middle-aged, with bleached-white hair frizzing out over an unnaturally tan face. She wore khaki slacks and a pink blouse beneath a blue Walmart vest with a smiling yellow face beaming out from the chest. She stared at Lewis with wide eyes, probably more surprised to see him than he was to see her. It had surely been years since she’d seen a customer. Many, many years.

“Can—I help you?” she croaked, her voice dusty and dry with disuse.

Lewis looked at his hand. It was in mid-grasp, just inches away from a can of soup. He gasped and yanked his hand back. “What am I doing?” he whispered, cursing himself internally. “
Grocery
shopping? What am I
doing?
”

The woman at the far end of the aisle cleared her lungs and smacked her lips together, trying to work up some saliva to lubricate her throat. “Special on Great Value-brand chicken noodle,” she rasped, pointing awkwardly at the white and blue cans to her left. “Buy two, get one free.”

But Lewis’ soup spell had been broken. He staggered backward into the side aisle, holding his hands up as if in protection against the Walmart employee. “I’m not here for this!” he cried, working to convince himself as much as he wanted to convince her. “You’d like to get me off track, wouldn’t you? You’d like me to lose myself down your plaintive aisles,
with your Lionel Richie music and your bright lights and your well-stacked soups! You’d
love
me to grocery shop instead of saving the town! Stop weaving your magic on me, Walmart!” he shrieked, turning and jogging down the aisle, spear and pistol still in hand. “Stop weaving your horrible black magic!”

The Walmart employee sighed with relief. She feared customers and counted herself lucky that she had narrowly survived the encounter.

Lewis pushed on down past the rows of soft drinks, blinking hard and trying to keep his focus. The music, the lighting, the design, the layout…everything about this store was working against him, working to make him lose himself in a siren song of forgetfulness and consumer goods. “Just get to aisle 8,” he whispered to himself, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his pistol hand. “You just have to make it to aisle 8.”

But then…all at once, it seemed…he
was
at aisle 8. It was as if the canned goods section had rushed up to meet him, and there he was, hesitating at the end cap, trying not to lean too close to the specially discounted and oddly-flavored K-Cups. His heart pumped diesel fuel through his veins, and his chest heaved and fell like a volcano ready to erupt. This was it. This was where it would all come to a head.

This was aisle 8, and it was where goodness would make its stand against the gruesome designs of a prehistoric evil.

It all suddenly seemed pretty high above his pay grade.

“There’s no one else,” he reminded himself, though his feet were practically screaming to run away. “It’s up to you…your clone has to be stopped, and it’s wholly up to you.”

He took one more breath, held it, turned the corner, and fired blindly into the aisle.

The bullet whizzed through the canned goods section and buried itself somewhere in women’s sleepwear. Aisle 8 was empty. “Look first, then shoot,” he reminded himself, whispering harshly over the mellow piano. “Look first,
then
shoot!”

Everything in aisle 8 appeared to be in order; which was to say, there was no portal to hell, no primeval blood demon slithering across the linoleum floor. He had gotten there in time. He had beaten the clone.

He exhaled relief…but that relief was short-lived. The clone may not have been there yet, but he would be, and very soon. It was starting to really sink in that Lewis would have to kill another human being—and yes, he did believe the clone was classified as a human being—which is something he’d intrinsically decided he would never do, somewhere along the way. And this human being just happened to be a perfect genetic replica of himself, which didn’t make things any easier. But he had to; there was no way around it.

Evil Lewis had to be put down, and Regular Lewis was going to have to be the one to do it.

He decided that Evil Lewis was likely to approach from the center aisle. The direct approach. Lewis had tiptoed through the produce section to the
side
aisle because he didn’t like the look of the cash registers, but he doubted they would give his clone much pause. Evil Lewis had a job to do, and he would head straight to it.

But so did Lewis. He had to make it to the other end of aisle 8.

He glanced nervously at the canned goods before him. Green beans stood on his right; pineapple towered on his left. The red Del Monte labels seemed to roil with blood, though he knew that was just his mind playing tricks on him. But he also knew there was an ancient evil living behind those cans, and that just touching one was likely to render him a brain-dead, slobbering mess. He could
feel
the hateful energy radiating from the aluminum as he looked down the aisle to the far end. It seemed that both rows of shelves were pulsing with anger.

No, not anger; breath…actual
breath
.

Aisle 8 appeared to be alive.

Maybe I’ll just go around,
Lewis decided.

He hurried to his right and jogged down Aisle 9, trying to avoid looking at the baking powder and cake mixes, even though the Lionel Richie song had melted into a jaunty Michael McDonald tune, and Michael McDonald was extraordinarily powerful baking music, and Lewis had a sudden and desperate craving for funfetti cake, and it seemed once again as if the whole world were conspiring against him. He kept his eyes down and hurried through, holding the Spear of Rad before him like a shield, lest any of the sacks of powdered sugar got any bright ideas.

But the sugar held its composure, and Lewis made it through the aisle safely. He peered around the corner, back down toward the entrance, but the way was clear. There was no clone.

“Phew,” he sighed. His shoulders relaxed, and he lowered the Spear of Rad. He walked in front of aisle 8…and saw the clone out of the corner of his eye, sneaking up on the far end of the row, the end he’d just come from. In one choppy motion, he whirled to his left, gave a warrior’s scream, raised the gun, and fired.