Mallory shook her head. “Hilarious. What else you got?”
“The Nite-Owl is the only breakfast establishment in town.”
“How is that even possible?” Mallory balked.
The old woman shrugged. “There used to be a restaurant called the Blue Bottle, a few years back. It imploded.”
“It imploded?”
“Yes…sucked itself into a tight little ball of drywall and metal.”
Mallory squinted. “An entire building did that?”
“The town council warned them not to build a restaurant on a gravitational deviation. Too bad, too…the Blue Bottle served eggs—proper eggs, mind you, not the abominations that we do not speak of.”
Gravitational deviation… Mallory shook her head. “And there’s nothing else?”
“There’s a Chick-fil-A in town, out on Route 83. It doesn’t open until 10:00.”
Mallory started. “You have a Chick-fil-A?”
It was the old woman’s turn to squint. “Yes. Out on Route 83. But it doesn’t open until 10:00.”
“Right.” She sighed and stuffed her wallet back into the bag. “Well, thanks for the hospitality.” She threw the backpack over her shoulder and headed for the door. “Oh,” she added dryly, “the guest in 210 has violent tendencies. You might want to have housekeeping check for incidentals.”
The old woman cocked her head at an odd angle. “There are no other guests,” she said, following Mallory to the door and latching it shut behind her. Mallory could just hear Mrs. Roach’s final words through the glass: “No one else has been here for years.”
No one but the tentacle monsters, Mallory thought.
She groaned as she rounded the corner of Aberration Lane and saw the sign for the Nite-Owl Diner again. She considered skipping breakfast altogether, but the early morning wine wasn’t exactly sitting well in her stomach, and she had almost two hours to kill before she could get her car to the mechanic. The waffle from the night before couldn’t tide her over forever. You survived the night, she thought, continuing toward the diner. You can survive a few more hours.
A metallic screech pierced the air. Mallory screamed and leapt at the sound. Above her, fixed to a tall wooden pole, was an old loudspeaker. It was shaped like a bullhorn and had once been mint green, but now it was mostly brown with rust. Mallory clutched her heart, which thumped heavily in her chest as the speaker squeaked and crackled to life.
“Attention, Anomaly Flats.” A sharp, female voice crackled through the speaker. “Today’s Air Quality Index color is periwinkle. Be advised that breathing may cause irregular life conditions. All citizens breathe at their own risk. The Walmart is having a sale on canned tuna this week, three cans for $2.49. The Walmart would like to remind you that the canned tuna is in Aisle 3, not in aisle 8, and it is perfectly safe there. Attention, Anomaly Flats: Do not go into aisle 8 in the Walmart. Do not go into the Walmart. Do not ever go into the Walmart.”
The voice cut out, and after a few last squeaks and pops, the speaker went dead. Mallory stared at it, her mouth hanging open. Finally she sighed, shook her head, and headed down the block. “I’ve got to get out of here,” she mumbled.
On the way to the Nite-Owl, she passed her poor, broken-down Impala on the side of the street.
It was even more broken now than it had been when she’d left it.
“Oh, no no no no! What the fuck?!” Her hands flew to the front passenger door, which now bore a deep, crumpled gash that started below the mirror and continued almost all the way to the handle of the back door. The silver paint had been scraped and ground away. “What the fuuuck?” Mallory cried again for emphasis as she ran her hands along the gash. “Were you attacked by a bear?!” Her face burned red with anger. She didn’t know which inbred, meth-head, hillbilly kid in this upside-down town had done this to her car, but she sure as shit was going to find out.
She burst into the diner so hard, the door slammed against the wall and rattled the windows.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in!” Trudy beamed from behind the register. “Welcome back, honey. What’ll it be today?”
“Did you see who did it?” Mallory seethed through clenched teeth.
Trudy frowned. “See who did what?” She set a cup and saucer on the counter and trotted off to fetch the coffee.
“Some asshole kid smashed up the side of my car!”
Trudy chuckled a bit. “Oh, I doubt that very much.”
“See for yourself.” Mallory pointed a vicious finger out the window toward her car.
Trudy returned to the counter with a pot of coffee, craning her neck to get a good view. She nodded slowly. “That’s a dinger, all right. Caffeinated okay? We don’t brew the unleaded ‘til about 10 or 11 most days.”
Mallory was in no mood for coffee talk. “A dinger? A fucking dinger? It’s practically a trench! I’m going to find the kid who did it and run him over like a dog,” she growled. “Once the fucking car is fixed.”
Trudy paused, coffee pot in hand, as if she wasn’t quite sure Mallory needed an extra jolt of caffeine today. “You run over dogs?”
Mallory collapsed onto the stool and buried her face in her hands. “It’s a figure of speech,” she said.
Trudy planted her free hand on her hip. “I’ve never heard it.” She poured the coffee. “You take it slow with this, hear?”
Mallory rubbed her hands down her face and slapped some life into her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she sighed. “It’s…been a long 24 hours.”
“Seems like it,” Trudy agreed. “I don’t know how your car got scratched, but I can promise you it weren’t no kids.”
“Oh yeah? And how do you know that?”
“’Cause there ain’t no kids in Anomaly Flats. We haven’t had any births in almost thirty years.”
Mallory started. “How is that possible? Don’t people—you know…” She made a strange looping gesture with her hand. It wasn’t biologically accurate, but the point was clear enough.
“Course we do. But everyone in Anomaly Flats is sterile.”
Mallory choked on her coffee, and a fine brown splatter of thick globs shot onto the counter. She wiped her mouth with her arm. “Everyone?”
Trudy smiled as she grabbed a towel and mopped up the coffee. “Oh, don’t worry, hon, it’s all voluntary.” She thought for a minute, then asked, “Do you not want to be sterilized?”
“No!”
“Hmm...” She picked up Mallory’s coffee cup and dumped its contents into the sink. “Better wait for the decaf, then.” She picked up a menu and slid it beneath Mallory’s downcast eyes. “Now, what’ll it be for breakfast, sweetie?”
Mallory glanced up at the waitress. “Are you serious?”
“Well, sure. Ain’t you gonna eat?”
“Sure, Trudy. I’ll have the country fried steak and eggs over easy, with a side of hash browns and a bowl of fruit.”
Trudy frowned. “We don’t serve eggs. Not since—”
“I know, I know. Not since ’93.” Mallory laid her palms flat on the counter and resisted the urge to ball them into fists and smash them straight through something. “Guess I’ll just have the waffles, then.”
“Good choice,” Trudy winked. She whirled away and handed the order through the kitchen window, leaving Mallory alone at the counter to die a little more inside with each passing second.
X
“I have to get out of this town,” Mallory said to Rufus, the mechanic. “Do you think you can fix it?”
Rufus was a tall man, lean and wiry, and his age was impossible to determine. He was completely bald; he had no hair on his head, or on his arms, or anywhere else Mallory could see. He had smooth ridges where his eyebrows should have been, and it creeped Mallory right the hell out. He pulled the lever on the antique tow truck and lowered
the Impala down to the asphalt. The mechanism whined. “I can fix it,” he replied. His voice was deep and hollow, a voice that would have been right at home in a cartoon about bored ghosts.
“You haven’t even looked at it yet…are you sure?”
Rufus nodded. “I’m sure.”
Mallory breathed a sigh of hopeful relief.
A little line of drool spilled over Rufus’ jaw and dribbled down onto the parking lot below. If it bothered him, he didn’t show it. “Your alternator’s out.”
Mallory looked disgustedly at the stream of spittle as it continued flowing from Rufus’ mouth. “Umm…oh. Good. Wait—is that good?”
Rufus shook his head. “No. It’s bad.” The tow truck’s high-pitched whirring stopped, and the Impala settled on the parking lot as he went to work unhitching the car.
“But how do you know it’s the alternator if you haven’t looked?” Mallory prodded.
“It’s always the alternator.”
“Always?”
“Yup.” Rufus drooled on the bumper, but was polite enough to wipe away the little puddle of spit with the hem of his shirt.
Mallory waited for more information, but none seemed poised to sally forth. “And…why is that?”
Rufus opened the car’s door to pop the hood. “Magnetic fields.” Mallory cringed at the thought of his drool pooling on the floorboard. He circled back and opened the hood, then went into the tow truck and came out with a little yellow box with a circular dial. Two cords snaked out of the bottom, one black and one red.
“Magnetic fields,” Mallory repeated. It became abundantly clear that the mechanic wasn’t going to give up any information without a fight. “You have them? Or you need them?”
Rufus tucked himself into the engine and started clipping the little red and black cords to a big block next to the battery. “We have them. Strong. Way too strong for computers.” He fiddled with the yellow box for a few seconds before unclipping the cords and closing the hood of the car. “Yep…it’s the alternator,” he confirmed.
Mallory stuck her hands in her pockets to avoid having them splashed as he swung his head around. “Okay. So how long will it take?”
Rufus rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. His hand came away wet. “Shouldn’t be more than two or three days.”
Mallory started. “Two or three days? No, no, no, no, no…I have to get out of here now—like, today!” She noticed that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and considered flirting her way to faster service. But historically speaking, her attempts to come across as coquettish and sexy usually ended up with her tripping and falling, and that was unlikely to help. So instead, she clasped her hands beneath her chin and said, as sweetly as she could, “Please can you fix it faster than that?”
Rufus shook his head. “Takes a while to build one. Two, three days.”
“Build one?” Mallory was no mechanic, but she was a reasonably good Capitalist. “Couldn’t you just buy one?”
Rufus slurped at the drool spilling out through his bottom teeth. “No one delivers out here. Got to make one.”
“Come on,” Mallory said. “No one?”
“No one.”
“Surely someone does. You get mail, right? And UPS? And FedEx?”
Rufus tilted his head to let a small lake of spittle run out the side of his mouth. “You-pee-what?”
“UPS! I love logistics! What can brown do for you! Ultimate Package Service! UPS!”
Rufus shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“But you get mail at least,” she insisted.
Rufus shrugged. “Nope.”
“What do you mean, ‘Nope’? You don’t get mail?”
“Not since the 90s.” He scratched his ear. “We do get messages by government-sponsored drone.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You have government drones?”
Rufus nodded. “For messages.”
“How do they not get their alternators scrambled?”
“Don’t know,” Rufus shrugged. “Part of what makes the government so terrifying.”
Mallory’s brain felt like it was developing a stutter. “This is ludicrous,” she said. “No outside mail or deliveries since the 90s? How do you get things?”
“We don’t get things,” he said, stowing the little yellow box back inside the tow truck. “We make them.”
Mallory shook her head and started pacing the parking lot. “Insane,” she grumbled. “Buy an alternator online—Amazon Prime or Google Express! Have them send it by drone!”
Rufus whipped a greasy handkerchief from behind the seat of the truck and used it to wipe off his hands. It caked his hands with more dirt than it removed. “What’s that?” he asked.
“What’s what?” Mallory wondered if anyone had ever died from total exasperation, or if she’d be the first.
“Amazon Primer Google Express.”
Mallory gaped. “Are you kidding me right now? You don’t know what Google is?!”
Rufus wiped his wet lips on his shoulder. “Nope.”
“Do you even own a computer?”
“No. No computers in town,” he said. “Magnetic fi—”
“Right, right,” Mallory waved him off. “Magnetic fields.” She stopped pacing and leaned against the fender of her poor Impala. “So no one ever comes through here? No one drives into town and says, ‘Whoops, made a wrong turn, now I’m in weirdo hell’?”
Rufus shrugged. “You did. Other than that…”
A thought occurred to her. “What about emergency vehicles?” she asked. “Fire trucks or ambulances? Or police?”
“We don’t have any fire trucks or ambulances. You get injured or burned down in Anomaly Flats, you’re on your own. We do have a sheriff. But I reckon he’s unconnected from outside police, what without a phone and all.”
Mallory furrowed her brow. “Your sheriff doesn’t have a phone?”
“Wouldn’t do much good.”
“Magnetic fields,” they said together. Mallory crossed her arms and considered that. “Huh.” If the sheriff lived in an informational bubble, maybe Anomaly Flats wasn’t such a bad way station after all…
But still. It was no Saskatchewan. It was no Lenore’s. She’d stumbled across the town; surely a motivated police force could do the same. “Listen, Rufus: I’ll pay you a million dollars for your tow truck,” she said.
“Nah. Couldn’t find a new one old enough.”
“That…doesn’t make sense.”
“Does too.” There was practically a river of drool streaming down the asphalt and spilling into the street now. “The only vehicles that work with any reliability are the ones made before computers, like ol’ Fanny here.” He patted the antique tow truck and left behind a handprint of mucous. “I sell her to you, I got to buy a new one that’s old enough.”
“I don’t care about any of this,” she sighed quietly. “I was joking, anyway.”
“Sounded pretty serious.”
“About the million dollars, I mean.”
Rufus shrugged again. “Don’t matter either way.”
Mallory couldn’t argue anymore. “No. I guess it doesn’t.”
“I can probably have it running for you day after tomorrow,” he told her. “I’ll try, anyhow. I can fix that door, too. Pop it out, touch it up, if you want. Won’t cost no million dollars, either. You want me to do that?”
Mallory rolled her eyes. “No, thanks…I like it like that.”
Rufus grimaced. “You do?”
“No, obviously I don’t like it like that. Who am I, Jed Clampett?”
“Jed who?” Rufus asked.
“Never mind…just add it to the punch list,” she said, swirling a finger through the air.
“Will do.” Rufus tipped his he
ad back, and Mallory could hear the soft gulping as he swallowed a bucket of his own spit. “Anything else I can do for you?”
Mallory sighed. One way or another, she was going to have to face it: she was stuck in Anomaly Flats, at least for a little while.
“Yeah,” she said, closing her eyes and shaking her head ruefully. “Got any tips for killing time in this town?”
Chapter 6
The building had been a Pizza Hut in some former, failed life. It retained all the telltale signs: sad, brown, clapboard siding accented by sad, brown brick; red wooden shutters, at least half of which had fallen off and rotted away; a wide parking lot of faded blacktop that was more weeds than asphalt; and, of course, the uniquely-shaped red tile roof that looked like a giant fedora designed by a troll. But time had marched on, and it had left stuffed crusts and P’Zones behind. The Pizza Hut had long since gone out of business, and the signage had been taken down and replaced with a hand-painted banner that read, “Anomaly Flats Department of Tourism.”
The structure sat back about a quarter-mile off the main drag, surrounded by nothing but the vacated lots of similarly-doomed chains—the husk of a Del Taco; the crumbling shell of a Circuit City; the collapsing ruin of what might have once been a Chuck E. Cheese. It was in a prime location for being completely ignored, which Mallory supposed was probably fine, since tourism didn’t exactly seem to be a booming enterprise in Anomaly Flats.
It was hard not to notice the flies as she approached the building. They buzzed around the entrance in a small, black cloud. She swatted her way through them, her stomach turning a bit as she felt their little bodies bump up against her hands. They scattered a bit, but didn’t seem too intent on going far from the tourism office. There was a smell in the air, too, something a little sweet…and also a little sour. “If something’s dead in here, I’m going to napalm everything,” she swore.
She stepped up to the door and peered in. Florescent lights buzzed and flickered, and a woman slouched behind a folding table that served as a makeshift desk. For a second, Mallory thought she might actually be dead. But then her chest rose and fell with breath, and she decided that the woman was probably just bored.
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