Katie slipped the key into the ignition on the lower part of the dash to the right of the wheel. She turned it and brought the rumbling engine under the hood to life. She placed her hands on the wheel. “Ten and two,” she said, displaying the proper positioning. “My hands are so far apart, it’s like holding a garbage can lid. This steering wheel is ginormous.”
“More like a Hula-Hoop,” he said.
She threw her right arm over the seat and looked into the back. “That’s, like, nearly as big as my bedroom.”
Bruce slowly nodded. “Many a child was conceived in the back of a Caddy,” he said.
Katie made a face, like she’d caught a whiff of bad cheese, then turned her attention back to the task at hand.
“Door,” she said.
Bruce opened the cavernous glove box. He dug under a can of window cleaner spray, a micro cloth, and a map book of the island until he found a small remote garage door opener. He gave it a click, and the door before them rumbled upward. When it stopped its climb, Katie put the car in drive.
“I kinda wish this beast had some seat belts,” she said, her fingers wrapped so tightly around the wheel that her hands hurt.
“Cadillac didn’t offer seat belts until 1962,” Bruce said. “In fact—”
“No more history lessons, okay?” Katie said. “We’re on a mission to find my asshole brother. We need to focus.”
Bruce nodded, and waved his hand slowly toward the windshield. “Please proceed.”
Katie feathered the accelerator, and the immense conglomeration of Detroit steel and glass and rubber emerged from the garage, rumbled slowly down the driveway, and turned onto the street.
“We are gonna get in such shit,” Katie said.
Bruce harrumphed. “We’re just taking a nice Sunday drive.”
“It’s Friday.”
“If I’d known what a smart-ass you’d turn out to be, I would have called the cops on you when I found you peeping in my window.”
Fourteen
Brandon Kyle had known it would be a shit show. But what a glorious shit show it was turning out to be.
Who could have guessed that the first victim would be none other than Lisa Carver? It was wonderful, and a little disappointing at the same time. Wonderful because there was a delicious poetic justice about it. The woman who’d destroyed his company — and who had effectively destroyed him in the process — was the day’s debut casualty. But disappointing, too, because Lisa would not live long enough to see the scale of his retribution.
It wasn’t enough that she die. He had hoped for her to experience a fraction of the humiliation he’d endured. She could die later.
Whatever. If Lisa Carver had to die, she could not have gone out more splendidly. Her leg hacked off, her body trapped inside one of her Arrivals as it spun like a top before the world’s assembled media.
You couldn’t buy that kind of publicity.
He had not known, once he’d downloaded the virus into the Arrival network, just how quickly the results would be evident. Turned out to be pretty goddamn instantaneous. It wasn’t even lunch yet and Carver was dead. Other Arrivals were starting to mobilize on their own. He’d caught a glimpse of them moving out of the community center parking lot.
Kyle could only guess where Arrival’s share price would be by the close of the market. It had been soaring that morning — there had been considerable early buzz about today’s news event and the Garrett Island press conference — but Kyle was betting anyone holding Arrival shares would be dumping them as fast as they could the moment they heard about what had happened here. They might even halt trading on the company if it went into a total free fall.
It had only been moments since Lisa’s leg had hit the pavement but news of the catastrophe was already trending on Twitter. Kyle had slipped around the corner of the community center to call up the app on his phone and he smiled broadly when he saw how quickly the story was getting out there. There was already a hashtag that suggested the company’s end was near: #latearrival.
CNN had posted a Breaking News item on its app, but details were sketchy. There was a few seconds of blurry video of Carver’s Arrival spinning around in circles, a sentence or two about how a demonstration of the company’s autonomous vehicle had gone horribly wrong. More details were promised as they became available.
Kyle dropped the phone back into his coat pocket and peered around the corner.
Beyond the entry off the highway to the community center, a red-and-white Garrett Island fire engine, lights flashing, was barreling up the road. The wail of its siren had been audible for the last couple of minutes, but now everyone could see it coming.
And now there was a second siren, a veritable symphony of distress. Hot on the tail of the fire engine was an ambulance, a boxy, white vehicle with an orange stripe and the words garrett island rescue emblazoned on the side.
It was beginning to look, however, as though the truck and the ambulance were going to have some difficulty coming up the drive and making it to the asphalt apron out front of the building, where the Arrival with Lisa Carver’s body in it now sat motionless, the door still firmly in the closed position.
The other Arrivals he’d seen starting up moments earlier were now lined up, side by side, at the road’s edge, blocking the entrance. Kyle did a quick count of how many of the cars had moved into position. Fifteen. A significant blockade.
The driver of the fire engine, close enough now to see he couldn’t make it up to the community center, blew his horn. And this was no ordinary horn. This was a from-the-depths-of-hell blast that Kyle could feel in his bones.
Anyone born with the common sense given to a spruce budworm would know that it would be smart to get the fuck out of the way. But there was not anyone in the Arrivals, and so, driverless and passengerless, they stood their ground.
The fire truck slowed to a stop about thirty feet from the Arrivals. The driver of the truck stuck his head out of the window and shouted at the cars.
“Get out of the way!”
The cars did not respond.
The driver brought his head back into the cab and was conferring with the firefighter sitting up front next to him. No doubt, Kyle conjectured, about how to deal with the situation. It must have felt foolish to yell at a collection of vehicles with no one in them. There had to be someone they could call, someone who could move those cars.
The ambulance had come to a stop, too, and the door on the passenger side opened. A paramedic got out and ran forward, going as far as the cab of the fire engine, and calling up to the driver. Words exchanged, arms waved.
Kyle wished he could hear what they were saying.
The paramedic, a fit-looking man in his thirties, pointed in the direction of the community center, proposing, Kyle surmised, that he get to the scene on foot if they couldn’t get their vehicles up there.
Now the driver was saying something to two of the firefighters sitting in the cab behind them. A nod or two. One of the two opened a door and climbed down from the cab and onto the road. Big guy, decked out in full firefighter regalia. Boots, helmet, fireproof jacket. Imagine having to wear all that stuff for work, Kyle thought. Not just unfashionable, but so goddamn heavy.
The firefighter and the paramedic exchanged a few words, nodded, and then started walking toward the phalanx of cars.
The firefighter started yelling at them. Kyle could make out what he was saying.
“Move the fuck out of the way!” he shouted. “Let’s go! Fuckin’ move or we’ll knock you out of the way!”
Although it looked incredibly silly, there was really nothing silly about it. The cars were designed, of course, to respond to verbal commands. They could hear, they could see, and they could recognize. They knew what a fire truck was. They knew what an ambulance was. And based on what they heard and saw and recognized, they could evaluate. And once they evaluated something, they could decide how to respond.