“No no no no!” Nick screamed as Pamela closed in on him.
And then she hit him.
The man flew up onto the hood, crashed into the windshield, bounced over the top of the car, hit the rear deck, and then dropped onto the mall’s glistening marble floor.
The boys shrieked.
The stretch of mall where the car had entered was only half a dozen stores long. It quickly ended in a T, where the main concourse began. Dozens of retailers to the right, dozens more to the left. At the far ends, two anchor stores. A JC Penney was off in one direction, and a Costco-type store, Discount Bonanza, sat at the other. Overhead, countless banks of skylights cast sunlight over the wandering shoppers.
That was just the upper floor. Beyond a railing, the mall opened up to reveal another level of stores below, accessible by sets of escalators spaced out along the concourse.
As the Arrival entered the main part of the mall, it veered sharply enough to make the tires squeal. The moisture-sensitive, self-activating windshield wipers did several swipes to get rid of the mall walker’s blood, adding a few shots of windshield washer fluid to get the job done.
“Let us out!” Archie cried. “Tell Pamela to let us out!”
Pamela wasn’t listening to Archie or Rory or Nick. She was too busy communicating with dozens of Arrivals sitting idly in the parking lot.
Their electric engines came on simultaneously.
Slowly, they started rolling in the direction of the mall doors.
Thirteen
“So what’s the problem?” Bruce Clifford asked Katie Montrose as she followed him into his kitchen that morning.
“Archie,” she said.
“Your brother?”
“Yeah,” she said woefully. “Is there any way to get rid of a brother?”
Bruce shrugged. “None legally, that I know of.”
She grimaced. “He just took off with his dumbass friends. I promised Mom I would keep an eye on him today and, like, minutes after she leaves, he pulls a stunt like this.”
“So, what do you mean, he took off?”
“In one of the Arrivals. Looks like one of his immature and totally underage friends is somehow allowed to drive one. They might have gone to the mall.”
“Well,” Bruce said soothingly, “I don’t see how he can get into that much trouble. I mean, those cars are about the safest thing ever made, aren’t they? It’s not like Chief Joe is gonna be pulling them over for speeding or running a red light.”
“I guess that’s true,” Katie said, sounding slightly less worried.
Bruce was filling two mugs from what was left in the bottom of the coffee machine. He set one in front of her and tossed a spoon and a couple of sugar packets her way. Katie noticed the yellow M on the packets.
“You ever actually buy sugar?” she asked. “Or do you just fill your pockets every time you go to McDonald’s?”
“It’s just for company,” he said. “I don’t use sugar.”
“You get a lot of company?” she asked.
“Just you,” Bruce said. “So, your mom still seeing the chief?”
Katie nodded.
“And she still has no idea that you know all about it?”
She nodded again.
“Parents are funny,” Bruce said. “Whether they’re still together, or separated, or one of them’s passed on, they don’t want to admit to their kids that they might have a love life.”
“You mean sex life,” Katie said, and briefly shivered.
“I was trying to be delicate. Moms and dads are allowed to have a life, you know.”
“I know,” she said. “I wish she’d just be open about it.”
“So, you want to head out for another lesson tonight?” he asked. “Say, around midnight?”
Katie sighed. “I don’t know if there’s any point.”
“Come on. You’re getting better each time. That was a damn fine three-point turn you did night before last. If you can do one of those in Finny, you can do one in any car, believe me. And those little rodents they call Arrivals, they don’t even need to do a three-pointer, they’re so fucking small they can turn on a dime.” He grimaced. “Pardon my French.”
The corner of Katie’s mouth turned up. “Yeah, I’m just a fucking impressionable youngster.”
“Noted,” Bruce said. “So what do you mean, there’s no point?”
Sullenly, Katie said, “I had another huge fight with my mom this morning about taking the test and finally getting my license and she wouldn’t even consider it.”
“She doesn’t know how good a driver you already are,” he said.
“Wouldn’t matter if she did. She says the day’s nearly here where no one is going to need to know how to drive.”
Bruce’s face softened. “You know where she’s coming from on that.”
When she’d last visited, she had told Bruce, ever so briefly, what had happened to her father.
“I was going through some of my old issues of the Garrett Post and saw the story,” Bruce said. “It was up on Pelican Point?”
“Yeah. Some lady, whose grandson got his bike fixed at my dad’s place, asked if he could come out and jump her car. Like, not jump over it, but get the battery going.”
“I’m familiar with the concept.”
“He’d worked, like, twelve hours that day and was just about to come home, but the lady, Hilda Steinway, in case you know her—”
“I do not.”
“Anyway, she’s, like, seventy-five — not that that’s really old or anything.”
Bruce grinned. “It sure feels fucking old, let me tell you.”
“Anyway, she has all these health issues, and she’s always checking to see if her car will start, and when it didn’t, she went into a panic, thinking, what if something happens to me and I need to drive myself to the doctor’s?”
“She hadn’t heard about ambulances?”
“Hilda figures, where she lives, it takes them too long to get there.”
“So she thinks, if she gets a heart attack, she’s gonna drive herself to the ER?”
“We’re getting a bit off track here, Bruce. Do you mind if I finish my story?”
He raised his hands in a surrender gesture. “Pardon me.”
“My dad takes pity on her and agrees to drive out, and it’s on the way there he nods off and goes into the ditch and drives his truck right into a tree. I was out there the other day. Like, not for the first time. I go by once in a while, if I can get someone to drive. Mom never drives out that way. Anyway, there’s still no bark on the tree where he hit it. So, they did a test on him, right? Like, toxicology or whatever? And he hadn’t been drinking or anything. He wasn’t sick.” She sniffed. “I guess he was just really tired. The way Chief Joe explained it, maybe, if the ambulance had gotten there a lot sooner, they could have done something.”
Katie caught a tear before it ran down her cheek.
“Sorry, kid.” He cleared his throat. “Should I give you a hug or something?”
“No, I’m cool.”
“Good. I’m not a big hugger,” he said.
“Anyway, back to my mom. Just because my dad fell asleep at the wheel doesn’t mean I’m going to do it.”
“Your mom’s still hurting. She’ll come around, once all this Arrival horseshit is over and we all go back to regular cars. This self-driving crap is still years away, no matter what they say.”
“We’re all still hurting,” Katie said. “But Mom’s the one doing some of the hurting.”
“She wants to protect you. The road can be a dangerous place.” Bruce’s gentle smile turned into a reflective frown. “You might run into somebody like me. Or at least the guy I used to be.”