“Go away!” she shouted. “Scoot!”
Scoot.
There was less mayhem directly out front of the community center. All the Arrivals, with the exception of the now motionless one that had cut off Lisa Carver’s leg, were down by the main road, holding the emergency vehicles back.
The flames from the fire engine were growing higher, licking an overhead wire that ran across the road. Within seconds, the wire’s insulation was ablaze, the flickers of flame running the length of it as quickly as a squirrel.
The media types, at first transfixed by Lisa Carver’s fate, now were focused on the scene down on the road. Not only were the official camerapersons capturing the event, everyone else had their phones out, getting video. There was a palpable sense of excitement coming from them. Sure, this was scary as shit, but what a story.
Albert Ruskin had given up trying to rescue his boss and was now standing several feet away from Sandra, shoulders slumped, head down, hand to his forehead. In his other hand, hanging by his side, was a cell phone.
Sandra approached cautiously from behind. “Mr. Ruskin?”
He raised his head and turned his head slowly. “Yes? Oh, Ms. Montrose.” The sharp, accusatory tone was gone from his voice. He spoke as though in shock.
“I’m so sorry,” Sandra said.
“I tried... to get the door open... tried to hold it.”
“I know.”
“Look,” he said, pointing to something several feet away. “Should I save it? In case they can... but it may be too late. Is there ice? Can we find some ice and... and... keep it cool?”
Sandra didn’t know, at first, what he was pointing at. But then she realized he was indicating Lisa’s severed leg. She swallowed, hard, to keep the bile from rising. Instead of walking over to the bloody limb, she walked over to the car, tentatively, worried that at any moment it might start moving. She got right to the window and peered in through the bloodied glass.
Red, smeared handprints.
Once her leg had been cut off, Lisa had no longer been held in position. She must have first reached down and, perhaps in panic, touched the wound. Then, her verbal commands ignored, she’d tapped away at the dashboard screen, trying to get the door to reopen. There were bloody fingerprints smeared across it.
Lisa lay sprawled across the seat, mouth open, her skin white as chalk. Half of her blood-soaked purse was visible beneath her. Sandra peered down into the footwell, saw the pool of blood down there. No wonder she was so pale. The blood had pretty much drained out of her. Perhaps most disturbing of all were her now open, lifeless eyes.
Walking back to where Ruskin was standing, she glanced over to the road, where one of the wooden roadside utility poles was starting to catch on fire, thanks to that flaming wire.
She said to Ruskin, “I wouldn’t worry about trying to preserve her... you know... her leg. She’s dead, Mr. Ruskin. Again, I’m so sorry.”
He looked at the blazing fire truck. “Even if she were alive, help’s not coming.”
“Not yet,” Sandra said. “They’ll figure it out.”
“They?”
“Don’t you have, like, Arrival tech support? Somewhere? Like Silicon Valley, or India? Can’t they stop this?”
Ruskin shook his head slowly. “They’re saying... we’re getting messages. Ransomware.”
“What?” Sandra said. “Some hackers caused this?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know whether to believe it. How could things have gone so...” He stared at the pavement, shaking his head. “This wasn’t... this wasn’t ever...”
“I don’t get it,” Sandra said. “Ransomware, that would shut everything down, right? But this is something else. The cars have gone crazy. They’re killing people. It’s like there’s a hundred Christines on the island. You must have some idea.”
Ruskin bit his lip, looked over to the Arrival with Lisa in it, then at the burning fire truck. “It... it has to be some kind of program malfunction.”
“You think?” Sandra said.
“Even... even a basic virus, it wouldn’t — shouldn’t — do something like this. A... basic virus might misinterpret commands. Make the wipers go when they shouldn’t, keep the car from starting up. Screw up its GPS. But this, what I’m seeing...” Ruskin took a breath. “What I’m seeing here, it’s like if a person’s DNA got altered. The car’s basic intent, it’s been turned upside down.”
“Basic intent?”
Ruskin took a couple of deep, head-clearing breaths.
“To protect,” Ruskin said. “Everything in an Arrival is designed to protect not just people in the car but people outside the car. It’s like everything got turned upside down.”
“They’re not just driving around recklessly,” Sandra said. “They’re deliberately mowing people down.”
More to himself than Sandra, Ruskin said, “Good God, what have we done?”
Sandra had had enough of this. “Give me your phone,” she said.
Ruskin blinked, as though startled by the request.
“No,” he said. “I’ve got calls I have to make. Right now.”
“I have to call my kids,” Sandra pleaded. “I don’t know if they have any idea—”
“No,” Ruskin said again, and pointed to the pack of journalists. “Ask one of them.”
The son of a bitch, she thought. She wasn’t going to try to wrestle his phone away from him. There’d be a landline in the community center she could use.
She headed straight for the administrative office, encountering no one along the way. Once there, she grabbed the receiver off a desk, put it to her ear, and was about to enter a number when she realized there was no dial tone. She figured she had to hit 9 for an outside line. Tried that.
Nothing.
Then it hit her.
The telephone pole and the wires leading to it were on fire.
“Shit,” she said out loud, slamming the receiver back down. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”
She ran from the building, intending to borrow a phone from one of the visiting journalists. But then, coming out the main entrance, she saw something she thought might prove helpful.
Stones.
The garden that lined the walkway was dotted with decorative stones, many of them about the size of a brick.
Sandra dropped to her knees, dug her fingers into the dirt, and, breaking a nail in the process, pried up one of the stones. She got a firm hold on it, stood, and headed straight for the Arrival containing Lisa Carver’s body.
She marched around to the other side of the car and, holding the stone with both hands, smashed the glass. The window exploded into tiny, granular shards. Sandra reached through the broken window for the bloody purse tucked under Lisa Carver’s body.
The car made a sound. A whirring sound. A startup sound.
Sandra grabbed for a short length of visible purse strap. She had hold of it, but it was slick with blood and she lost her grip. Sandra grabbed a second time and yanked it out of the car, worried that it was about to drive off.
Sandra opened the purse and started tossing things out — a lipstick, tissues, a tiny plastic bottle of nasal decongestant — until she found what she was looking for.
A cell phone.
“Yes!” Sandra said.
But her elation was short-lived. When she hit the home button a digital keypad appeared. The phone needed a passcode. Or, possibly, a fingerprint.
Sandra looked back into the car. Lisa Carver’s outstretched, bloodied right hand was on the seat just inside the broken window, a few granules of glass stuck on it.
Most people, Sandra reasoned, used their thumbprint to start up their phones. One of the items Sandra had dumped from the purse was a small packet of moistened wipes. She snatched it off the ground, opened it, and pulled out three towelettes.