Anomaly Flats (7 page)

Chapter 9

“Every single thing in this town is trying to kill me,” Mallory lamented an hour later as they buckled themselves into the Winnebago.

“Once you make peace with that, it’s really quite charming,” Lewis said.

“How have you lived here for 12 years and not gone insane? Or dead?”

“How have I not gone dead?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Shut up.”

The scientist smiled and shrugged. “I just keep my head down and do my experiments. And safety first, always.”

Mallory rested her head against the window. “I just want to get my car and go,” she sighed. “Is that too much to ask?”

But Lewis waved this off as if it were nonsense. “Once you go back to real life, nothing will
ever
be exciting anymore! Everything you do from now on will be routine and boring and not-at-all baffling or mysterious compared to Anomaly Flats!”

“Routine and boring and not-at-all mysterious sounds like the perfect life.”

Of course, that wasn’t true. If it were, she wouldn’t be in Anomaly Flats right now; she’d be sitting at her routine and boring desk in the routine and boring Wainwright Building in routine and boring St. Louis, responding to asinine emails and going blind from staring at spreadsheets and being verbally abused by whichever manager happened to be within shouting distance. She had rejected routine and boring and not-at-all-mysterious. That’s what had gotten her and her little purple Jansport into this mess in the first place.

And she wouldn’t go back for all the money in the world.

Though she certainly wouldn’t mind actually getting
back
to the world. Lenore’s people were expecting her later that night, but it’d be at least another 48 hours until Mallory made it out of the Flats and up to Canada—and that was barring any more trouble along the way. Lenore wasn’t exactly painted as a patient person; Mallory desperately hoped she’d keep her promise and welcome Mallory with open, if somewhat annoyed, arms. “This isn’t where I’m supposed to be,” she sighed aloud, mostly to herself.

Lewis frowned over at her from the driver’s seat. “Where
are
you supposed to be?” he asked.

Canada,
she wanted to tell him.
A safe house. A place to lie low. A place where the past is dead and the future is waiting and bad decisions are wiped clean.
She wanted to tell him this, not necessarily because she wanted him to know, but because she needed to tell
someone.
She’d always been a loner, but for the first time in her life, she was truly—and, she now feared, irrevocably—on her own. But that was part of the deal. Take the backpack, and live the life. So instead of opening up to the nerdy but kind scientist, she just shook her head and asked, “Where are we headed to now?”

“To see something
very
curious,” Lewis said happily, guiding the RV over the field and up onto the road.

“Oh, wonderful,” she said, her voice oozing sarcasm. “I was just starting to wonder when we’d stop with all this
mildly
curious bullshit and start seeing something
very
curious.”

Lewis smiled over at Mallory and gave her a little wink. “Perfect!”

They drove back toward town, then hooked north on a faded asphalt road that gave way to washed-out gravel a few miles in. The RV bumped and banged over the deep tire ruts, and even with her seatbelt, Mallory had to hold onto the handle above the window to keep from falling out of her chair. “Your Public Works Department sucks,” she pointed out.

They drove into a thicket of trees that loomed high above a forest floor overgrown with weeds and bushes and God knew what other biological horrors. Just seeing the tangled mess of growth made Mallory’s ankles itch with the phantom prickling of imaginary ticks crawling up her leg and burying their nonexistent heads beneath her skin.

Lewis pulled the Winnebago to the side of the road and turned off the ignition. “Well, here we are.”

Mallory peered out the windshield, but saw nothing but trees. “Here we are
where
?”

Lewis grinned. He straightened his bow tie and said, “Come on. I’ll show you.”

“Are you going to lock it?” she asked as they climbed out of the Winnebago.

“Why would I lock it?” he replied, pulling out a small bag of research equipment.

“Because my backpack’s in there.”

“We’re ten miles from the nearest house and three miles from a paved road. Who’s going to break in?”

Mallory gazed around the densely wooded forest. Little light filtered in through the treetops, and the whole area was eerily quiet. It did seem rather remote. “I don’t know. Bigfoot?”

“In Missouri, we call him Momo,” Lewis informed her.

“I know that,” she lied.

They left the RV and the gravel road behind and ventured out into the woods in search of the mysterious singularity. Mallory was about to point out that Lyme disease wasn’t an anomaly at all, and that she’d go wait in the truck while he made the proud discovery of tick-administered nerve damage. But just as she opened her mouth, Lewis pushed aside a low-hanging collection of branches, and she saw what they had really come to examine: a fully functional traffic light sitting atop a shiny metal pole jutting up among the trees. The whole thing seemed to have sprouted up from a family of ferns, its yellow metal casing gleaming in the shaded forest.

The light was green.

“What the hell is a traffic light doing in the middle of the woods?” Mallory asked, bewildered.

“It just appeared
three days ago. Fully functional,” Lewis said, rubbing his hands together excitedly. “Isn’t it
fascinating
?”

They crept through the brush to get a better look at the contraption, and as they approached, the light flickered to amber, then to red. Mallory froze. “Is it…telling us to stop?”

“Umm…it
might
be,” Lewis admitted. Then he shrugged and waved her forward. “Come on.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Mallory grabbed his wrist and pulled him back. “Lewis. Seriously? When a demonic stoplight that mysteriously appears in the middle of the forest tells you not to go closer, you
don’t go closer
.”

Lewis rolled his eyes. “It’s not
demonic
, Mallory. It’s from Ameren.” He pointed to the base of the stoplight. The words AMEREN MISSOURI were stamped into the metal plating.

“Same thing,” Mallory hissed. She was about to shoulder-tackle him into a tree to get him to stop walking when the light suddenly turned green.

“There,” Lewis said, gesturing up toward the light. “Happy?”

“Generally, no,” she mumbled.

They approached the traffic signal, which continued to cycle through its color scheme without seeming to give them any notice. Lewis set his bag on the ground and made a wide circle of the post. It was fixed to the earth with four large bolts, but the ground was soft and wet, and spongy underfoot. “That hardly seems stable,” he said. He looked at Mallory. He gave her a good look up and down. “See if you can tip it over.”

“What? No!
You
see if you can tip it over!”

“It’s probably safe to touch,” he pointed out. “Go on.”

“Uh-uh. No way.”

Lewis frowned. “I lost my last pair of leather gloves in the lava pits out on Route 109.”

“So what?”

“So I have scientist’s hands! They’re
soft
,” he cried, holding them up to show how smooth and pink and unused to manual labor they were. “They’re not made for inter-dimensional contact.”

Mallory put her hands on her hips. “And mine are?” she asked in a tone that clearly communicated that there was a right answer to this question, and an almost-infinite number of wrong ones.

But Lewis’ intuition failed him. “It’s not that. It’s just that you’re…sturdier than I am,” he explained.

Mallory gasped. “I’m
sturdier
?”

“It’s a compliment!” he insisted.

“
Sturdier?!
”

“You’re bigger than me!”

“You’re practically a midget!”

“I’m almost average!” he said defensively. “I’m just saying you’re tall!”

“And
sturdy
!”

“It’s a good thing!”

“You know what
I
think would be a good thing? If I punched your stupid face off.”

“See?” he said. “That’s a very sturdy way of thinking.”

Mallory’s vision exploded with little black stars, and she decided she was having an aneurism.
This is how I die
, she thought.
And I don’t even care.
But after a few breaths, her eyesight cleared, and she was staring once again into the hapless, square-rimmed eyes of her dopey scientist companion. “Tell you what,” she said. “You examine the demonic traffic light; I’m going to go be sturdy back in the truck.”

Lewis frowned. “I could really use your help.”

“Trust me. Removing myself from striking distance of your head
is
helping.”

“All right,” he sighed. “But I might be a while.”

“I do not care.”

“Okay. Here, take the keys.”

“It’s not locked,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, but you’ll need them if you want to listen to the radio. And also to get the hell out of the woods if I get eaten by a demonic traffic light.”

“Good point.” She swiped the keys from his hand and headed back toward the Winnebago.

“Oh, Mallory!” he called after her. She stopped, but she didn’t turn around. “If you get out to stretch your legs, don’t wander too far. And do
not
go up that ridge.” She glanced to her right and saw that the woods rose to an uneven cliff high up the hill.

If there was one thing she hated more than putting herself in inter-dimensional danger, it was being told what to do. Especially by a nerd.

“Why not?”

“It’s not safe.”

“What is it?”

“
Not safe
,” he repeated firmly.

“Now you’re just making me want to go.”

“Don’t. I’m not joking. Promise me you won’t go up to the ridge.”

“But—”

“Mallory!
Promise
me!”

“Fine, fine,” she said, irritated. “I promise I won’t go up to the ridge.”

As she headed back to the RV, she wondered what would be the fastest way to get to the top of the ridge.

X

Mallory was many things: a decent chef; a practiced eye-roller; a connoisseur of flavored martinis. But she was not an accomplished hiker.

An expert in the art of stealth was also not on the list.

As she panted her way up the hill, the underbrush snapped and crunched beneath her shoes like she had elephant feet.
Jesus, maybe I
am
sturdy
, she thought. With every rustle and crack, she stopped and held her breath, certain that Lewis would hear her plodding up toward the ridge. But he was wholly immersed in his stupid anomaly and didn’t seem to hear. Besides, what was he going to do – restrain her? Sturdy or not, she could definitely trample the little scientist if push came to shove.

“Though someone should definitely try to stop you,” she muttered to herself as she huffed up the hillside. “This is the stupidest thing you’ve done all day.”

She wheezed and moaned her way up the hill, struggling hard even though it wasn’t terribly steep.
The underbrush makes it impossible to walk
, she told herself as she trudged through downed branches and snarling vines, though in truth, it probably had more to do with the fact that she hadn’t so much as laid eyes on a treadmill since she was 26. “Exercise is stupid,” she spat.

A hissing pop sounded just to her left, and she screeched in surprise. She clamped a hand over her mouth as her brain fought itself over which threat to hide from first: the sudden sound, or the scientist’s awareness. Fortunately, both threats resolved themselves almost instantly as the pop was followed by a loud static buzz that was cut with the female voice that had fizzled out of the loudspeaker back in town. Mallory was somehow not terribly surprised to see that one of the boulders sticking out of the mossy earth was actually a fake rock with a speaker built into it. Judging by the repeating squeal reverberating through the woods, the forest was full of hidden speakers. The all-enveloping hissing and popping masked Mallory’s cry from the scientist’s ears.

“Attention, Anomaly Flats,”
the voice droned. “
A family of rabbits has escaped from the Anomaly Flats Zoo. The rabbits were in transit from the laboratories at Complexxus Industries, where they were undergoing specialized isotope injection testing. A gender-indeterminate spokesperson from Complexxus released the following statement: Quote, ‘We urge the inhabitants of Anomaly Flats to remain calm. We are determined to find, imprison, and execute the escaped rabbits before Wednesday. The search team would like to remind us that we should be grateful that the rabbits did not escape on a Wednesday.’

“‘The effects of the gentle, organic, non-violent, non-GMO, gluten-free tests Complexxus ran on the rabbits will not be known for another three to seven hours. The possible effects of the tests include, but are in no way limited to: severe pet dander; erratic behavior; foaming at the mouth; bleeding from the tips of the fur; hunger for human tissue; shocking and exponential levels of growth; flight; a complex mastery of the English language; time travel; and a penchant for baking complicated French pastries. If you come into contact with one of these rabbits, do what you do when you come into contact with any rabbit: Lie down and wait for the end, because rabbits are superior to humans in almost every conceivable way, and your death is assured. Complexxus Industries has worked hard to make it so.’ End quote.

“The Walmart would like to remind you of its sale on canned tuna this week, three cans for $2.49. The Walmart would like to add that canned tuna is a natural rabbit deterrent, which we all know is not true. Attention, Anomaly Flats: If you go into the Walmart, you will be drawn into aisle 8. Do not go into the Walmart. Do not approach the escaped rabbits. Do not approach any rabbits at all.”

The speaker squeaked off, leaving Mallory alone with her reeling thoughts, the thick brush of the woods, and a town filled with escaped, mutant, murderous rabbits. She promised herself that if she ever made it out of Anomaly Flats, she was never, ever,
ever
coming back to Missouri.

She peeked out from behind a tree and saw that Lewis hadn’t skipped a beat in his examination of the traffic light. As she watched, he plucked a penlight from the chest pocket of his lab coat and clicked it on, shining the light directly into the glowing green bulb. He moved the light slowly from one side to the other, apparently giving the stoplight a vision test.

Mallory shook her head and continued her rugged climb to the top of the hill. She couldn’t see the sun through the canopy of leaves above, and as she drew nearer the top of the ridge, the sky behind it began to take on an orange-ish glow.
No way is it sunset already,
she thought, checking her watch. This, of course, was pointless, because her watch had ceased its usefulness, and she didn’t even know why she was still wearing it. Old habits die hard, she reasoned. She shook the broken watch anyway, and the hour hand spun wildly around, making six full turns of the dial in the span of two seconds. “Perfect,” she murmured.

Watch or no watch, she knew it was nowhere near dusk.

A hard wind blew up on the far side of the ridge, and a storm of red sand whipped up behind the hill, spitting grit down on Mallory as it dusted the woods.

A forest butting up against a desert?
she thought.
This place is so fucking weird.

She reached the top of the ridge and found that the land fell away sharply after the forest rocks. She crouched above a sheer cliff that dropped straight down for at least 300 feet before opening up to a wide, desert plain. “Oh my God,” she whispered. Her heart seized up in her chest, and a sickly whirlpool spun itself out of control in the pit of her stomach. Her head swam with the lightness of vertigo. If the swoon made her faint, she would pitch forward into the hellish landscape below. So she pulled herself back from the edge, gripping her fingers into the divots of the forest rocks.

The desert that stretched as far as the horizon was a deep, reddish orange. Mallory had never seen sand quite that color before. It was as if an entire empire of iron had rusted over, crumbled to dust, and coated the Midwestern plain with its red ashes. A fierce dust storm had brewed up in the center of the desert, over an outcropping of angry orange rocks that jutted up from the sands. It whipped the red-orange dust into furious dirt devils that blasted across the desert floor and spiraled up into a swirling mass of rust-red clouds above. Mallory shuttered her eyes against the blowing sand that shot over the ridge, but despite the onslaught and her dizzying fear of heights, she found she couldn’t look away from the desolate landscape. The desert below was so raw; so uncivilized; so
primal
. The sun blazed down from above, pale, but still hot behind the roiling red clouds. Mallory couldn’t help but notice that something looked off about that sun.