“What are you talking about?” Nick asked.
Archie shifted in his seat so that he could see forward. The entrance to the mall parking lot was up ahead.
“It was nothing,” Archie said. “Forget about it.”
Except Archie was not sure that it was nothing. It was true that he’d had only a fleeting glance of what was going on in the other car. A tenth of second, maybe? A hundredth?
And yet, he had a vivid image in his mind of what he thought he’d seen.
Couldn’t be.
He considered getting Nick to ask Pamela to abort the trip to the mall, turn around, and go after the silver Arrival to determine whether he’d really seen what he’d thought he’d seen. But then he would have to tell the guys what that was. And if, upon catching up to the silver Arrival, it turned out to be nothing like that at all, well, they’d have something to make fun of him for the rest of the day.
Except, wouldn’t that be okay? Wouldn’t it be okay to be the object of ridicule if it meant that some woman in the front seat of that silver Arrival was not on fire, and there were not two screaming children in the back seat, that the interior of the car was not filling with smoke?
“Was it people making out?” Rory asked.
“What?” Archie asked. He’d been so fixated on the memory of what he thought he’d seen that he’d zoned out for a second.
“In the car? Was it, like, a couple of people going at it?”
“No,” he said slowly.
“Well, then who cares?”
“You really have a problem,” Archie told him. “You know that? You’re like one of those, like, sex addicts or whatever you call them.”
Rory nodded, seemingly unaware that this was not a compliment.
Nick said, “Ahoy, mateys! The mall doth approach!”
Pamela turned into the parking lot for the Garrett Mall. There was no shortage of parking spaces. The mall had only just opened for the day, and there couldn’t have been more than fifty or sixty Arrivals in the lot.
Rory said, “Has anybody got any money?”
Archie shook his head. “I’ve got, like, maybe eight bucks.”
Nick said, “I’ve got a card.”
Good ol’ Nick. He was the first in their group to sneak beer out of the house, the first to have his very own cell phone, the first to have his very own credit card, and today, well, the first in their group to have wheels. There were times when Archie thought it would be cool to be Nick instead of himself, but not for the beer or the phone or the credit card or even the chance to use this goofy self-driving car.
Nick still had a dad.
Not that Nick’s dad worked that hard at being a dad, Archie thought. He was away on business half the time, and when he was home, he spent most of his free hours on the golf course. But hey, at least he was alive.
The kid Archie definitely did not want to trade places with was Rory. He liked hanging out with him and all, but Rory was not, as Archie’s dad used to say, “wired up right.” The red wires and the green wires got crossed somewhere along the way. Yeah, sure, they were all curious about girls and sneaking onto the Internet to look at porn and, frankly, scared to death about actually talking to the opposite sex and someday going out with them, but Rory seemed a little too obsessed.
The Arrival wound its way through the parking lot and came to a stop next to the sidewalk out front of the main doors to the mall.
“Where to first?” Nick asked his crew. “We can get out here and Pamela will park herself.”
“Go park yourself!” Rory said, making it sound like a foul-mouthed insult.
Archie said, “First stop Cinnabon. I want a cinnamon roll with extra icing. I’m starving.”
Nick, gazing toward the dash, said, “Pamela, open the doors.”
The doors did not open.
Nick scowled. “Hey, Pamela, we’re here. Open the doors and go park yourself.”
The doors did not open.
“Uh, Pamela,” Nick said, “we’re here. Can you let us out?”
“Open the pod bay doors, Hal,” Rory said with mock seriousness.
“What’s wrong?” Archie asked Nick.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Must be a glitch or something. Maybe if—”
“Please state your destination.”
Nick brightened at the sound of Pamela’s voice. “Ah, Pamela, we’re at the destination, bitch. I just want you to open the doors.”
“Please state your destination.”
Archie didn’t like the sound of that. He ran his hand along the door, looking for a handle, thinking he’d find his own way out. There had to be a manual backup, right? In case you were in the car and the battery went dead and you had to escape?
Or in case it was on fire.
No, no way. There was no way he saw that. His fingers found what felt like a handle on the backside of a piece of trim. Archie gripped it and pulled.
“Yowzer!” Archie shouted.
Nick spun around. Rory said, “What?”
“I got a fucking shock!” Archie said.
“What are you talking about?” Nick asked.
“I grabbed the handle so I could open the door myself and I got shocked. What the hell?”
“Pamela,” Nick said, his voice getting shaky, “I really need you to open the door. Was it the bitch thing? If so, I’d like to apologize.”
“Please state your destination.”
Nick looked upward, rolled his eyes, and sighed with exasperation the way he might have had a teacher assigned homework just as the bell rang.
“Pamela, the fucking destination is the mall. The Garrett Mall.” He tipped his head toward the massive building next to the car. “Right there.”
“The Garrett Mall. Calculating the shortest route.”
Rory said, “Uh, you think she’s got PMS or something?”
Archie shot him a look. “Do you even know what that—”
The car was starting to move.
“Pamela!” Nick said. “Just stop and open the—”
Pamela turned sharply and sped out into the parking lot. As the car gained speed and momentum, it circled back, making a wide turn, finally straightening out when the main doors to the mall were dead ahead.
“Stop!” Nick shouted. “Pamela, stop!”
The car accelerated, adjusting its aim slightly, so that it would not connect with the right-angled curb, and very possibly put the front wheels out of commission. It was aiming for the ramped edge designed for wheelchair access.
The Arrival mounted the sidewalk and was now closing in on the mall entrance.
“Holy shit!” Archie cried. “Holy shit! Holy shit!”
The motion detectors above the doors picked up the car’s approach and the double glass doors parted.
The Arrival raced through the opening.
Nick continued to scream. “Stop! Pamela, stop!”
Pamela did not stop.
As the car barreled into the shopping center, right past Cinnabon and Aunt Annie’s Pretzels and the Best Buy Mobile outlet, shoppers dived out of the way. At least, they dived out of the way if they saw the car coming. Its electric drive system meant it did not make a lot more noise than a golf cart.
But an Arrival was considerably heavier than a golf cart. There was significantly more mass. And a hell of a lot more speed.
“Look out!” the three of them, waving their arms frantically, screamed from inside. But the windows were up — they were effectively cocooned — and no one was going to hear them any more than they were going to hear the car.
Sixty feet ahead, a man in his seventies, sneakers on, arms pumping, his back to them, was doing his mall walk. Trailing down from his ears were two white wires.