So when Ruskin dialed the number, he was expecting someone to pick up right away, and that whoever that person was, he or she could run some sort of diagnostic on the Arrival system and find a way to reverse what was currently happening. Or, failing that, shut the whole fucking system down.
But what Ruskin, who had slipped back into the community center through a side door, got when he called in was this:
“Thank you for calling the Arrival help line. We are here twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to answer your questions about your new Arrival automobile. We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls, but will get to yours as soon as we can.”
Cue the elevator music.
“Fuck!” Ruskin said.
He had slipped into a men’s change room just down the hall from the gymnasium, the smell of sweat and sour towels lingering in the air.
After twenty seconds of music, the voice returned. “Thank you for holding. We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls. In an effort to expedite assistance to you once your call has made it to the front of the queue, you may enter your car’s identification number, followed by the pound sign. Or you may continue to wait for one of our technicians to help you.”
“Fucking take my call!” Ruskin shouted into his phone.
There followed yet another twenty seconds of the kind of music Ruskin figured would play in hell’s waiting room. He was about to give up when there was an audible click, and then a harried, male voice:
“Yes! Arrival support!”
“Who is this?”
“Sir, you’ve reached Arrival support. My name is Denny. Can you please—”
“Denny who?”
“Sir, please, it’s a bit crazy here. Could you tell me you name and—”
“My name is Albert Fucking Ruskin, personal assistant to Lisa Carver, your late goddamn boss.”
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line while Denny, presumably, took a breath. Then, “Yes, Mr. Ruskin, sir. You’re on the line with Dennis McCardle. When you said my late—”
“Lisa’s dead. Everything’s gone to shit here on the island. The cars have all gone nuts. Go into the system and shut everything down. Pull the plug. Bring every Arrival out there to a halt. You hearing me? Kill the brains of the system. Stop the virus.”
“Mr. Ruskin, I’ve already been trying.”
Ruskin’s brow furrowed. He figured he would be the first to call in. “Has someone else from the island been in touch? Who? Who called before me?”
“No one, sir. Not from the island. But from... everywhere.”
Ruskin felt a chill run up his spine. He had not considered that the Arrival malfunction was a problem anywhere but Garrett Island. All these Arrivals, in one place, thinking as one. But it didn’t matter where the Arrivals were, they still could all think as one. The network was global.
“Tell me,” Ruskin said.
“Okay, so, in Duluth, an Arrival ran down a crossing guard and chased a pack of kids — luckily none of them were killed — right into a school. It couldn’t make it through the door, and then the police showed up and shot it like it was a wild animal or something. And then, in New York, don’t ask me how this is even possible, but one got up onto the High Line, that walkway that used to be a rail line, and tried to mow people down. In Paris, one ran up onto the sidewalk on the Champs-Élysées. In Las Vegas, at the Bellagio or Vellagio or whatever it’s called, one got right into the casino, hitting people while they were sitting there playing the slots. And in Scottsdale, four—”
“Enough,” Ruskin said. “When did all this start happening?”
“It hasn’t even been an hour. Looks like ransomware, maybe, but you said something about a virus?”
Ruskin hesitated. “Well, what the hell else could it be? Delivered into the network by some hackers.” He cleared his throat. “Keep looking for a way in and let me know the minute you make any progress. You’ve got this number?”
“Yes, sir. What... what happened to Ms. Carver?”
Ruskin figured he could find out by watching CNN and ended the call.
“There you are!”
Ruskin turned and saw Sandra Montrose marching toward him.
He put the phone into his pocket and said, “This is the men’s room.”
When she got to within an inch of his face, she said, “You seriously think I give a shit?”
Twenty-Two
Pamela had made several attempts to break into the Victoria’s Secret stockroom. The door and its surrounding frame were destroyed, so now the Arrival was hacking away at the surrounding drywall, trying to create an opening large enough that would allow it to completely enter the room and get at Archie and Rory, like that famous shark eating its way through the hull of the Orca.
The two boys had taken a defensive position behind a set of metal shelves loaded with boxed merchandise. They had tried, once more, to open the door at the back of the room that led, presumably, to a service corridor that would, in turn, lead outside. But the door was locked, and they had no key.
“If we could get to the checkout counter,” Archie said, “and check the drawers, the key might be in there.”
“Yeah, well, good luck with that.”
There was another crash as the car rammed the opening again. Chunks of wood, drywall, and plaster shot into the room.
“I’ve got an idea,” Archie said. “Next time it does that, I’ll jump on the hood, jump off when it backs up, and see if I can find the key.”
“That’s insane,” Rory said.
“No shit. But if I find some keys, I can throw them to you, and you can see if one of them opens that door.”
“Man, if you can get as far as the cash, you could run back into the mall.”
“And what’s waiting for me there?” Archie said. “Hundreds more picking people off one by one.”
Rory nodded solemnly, but then remembered something. “If Nick got to the lower level, and we joined him, we could hang with him until help came. These stupid cars haven’t got any way to get down there.”
Archie thought Rory was right about the lower level of the mall being a safer place, but he was less confident about his friend’s expectation that help was on the way. What if this shit was happening all over the island? How many cops did Garrett Island even have? There was Chief Joe What’s-His-Name, that guy who came to see them the night his dad died. And he probably had half a dozen working under him. What the hell were they going to do? They needed to bring in the army or the air force or something.
“Okay,” Archie said. “Joining Nick can be our backup plan.”
The Arrival backed out of the room. It reversed over about ten feet of debris, stopped, readied itself for another charge forward.
Archie whispered, “Get ready to catch some keys.”