Rory nodded, eyes wide.
The Arrival suddenly sped forward. There was a deafening crash as it made a larger hole. A couple more runs and the entire car would be in the stockroom.
Archie came running out from behind the shelves. He leapt onto the front of the Arrival, grabbing the edge of the hood just below the windshield, where the wipers were tucked away, and held on tight. He stayed down low, pressing himself up against the glass, so he wouldn’t hit anything when Pamela backed out.
The car reversed. Once it had cleared the damaged wall, Archie leapt off and ran to the space behind the long checkout counter. It was narrow enough that Archie thought he’d be safe there, at least for a couple of minutes.
The car stopped, but instead of charging into the back room again, it sat. Archie had the sense it was watching him. The cars had tiny, invisible-to-the-naked-eye sensors mounted all over them, so even though Archie was off to one side, there was every reason to believe the car was monitoring his movements.
Archie opened the first drawer, where he found price stickers and scissors and rolls of receipt paper and pens, but no keys. He went to the next drawer. More of the same.
The Arrival was turning its front wheels, a clear indication it was going to try and squeeze its way behind the counter.
There was only one drawer left. Archie pulled it out so quickly he yanked it off the track. The drawer, and its contents, rained onto the floor.
“Shit!” he said, dropping to his knees to sort through the scattered contents.
Pamela started pushing against the end of the counter. Archie heard wood splintering as he sorted through more price stickers and slips of paper and—
A set of keys.
“Yes!” he said, snatching them up and standing. There were at least half a dozen on the ring. One of them had to open that back door.
Pamela had buckled the end of the counter, forcing it up over the hood. The front wheels were spinning, looking for traction.
Archie looked through the ever-growing opening into the stockroom and waved the keys at Rory. “Got ’em!”
He threw the keys. Rory had his hands in the air, waiting, but fumbled the catch. The keys bounced off his palms, hit the floor, and slid under the shelving unit.
“Oh crap oh crap oh crap!” Rory screamed. He got down on all fours, putting his head sideways to the floor to peek under the bottom shelf. “I see them!”
The Arrival, having seen the keys fly through the air, abandoned its short-lived efforts to get to Archie, and turned its attention back to entering the stockroom. It backed up several feet, then took another run at the opening.
“Rory!” Archie screamed.
The car’s front bumper came to within a foot of Rory’s butt. The boy scrambled out of the way at the same time as he pulled his hand out from under the shelf, keys in hand.
Rory got to his feet and scrambled to the locked door. “Which key?” he shouted.
“How should I know?” Archie shouted back.
Rory got the first key into the door and tried to turn it. “Not this one!”
Archie sighed. “So try the next one!”
The Arrival had adopted a new tactic. Instead of backing up again, it was pushing its way into the room, its front tires spinning, the smell of burning rubber filling Victoria’s Secret.
“Hurry!” Archie cried.
Rory continued to fumble with the keys. “I’ve tried them all! None of them — oh, wait, I think I tried one twice!”
We’re all going to die, Archie thought.
Rory found the right key, and shouted, “I got it!”
He opened the door. Archie had a glimpse of gray cinder-block walls. He was right. The door accessed a service corridor.
The Arrival suddenly burst forward, charging toward Rory and the door.
Rory, glancing wide-eyed over his shoulder for a millisecond, jumped through the open doorway just as the car slammed into the wall on either side.
The door closed.
Rory was gone.
With the keys.
Even if Archie could find a way to that door, which appeared impossible now that the car was there, it had probably relocked when it closed.
“Rory!” he shouted.
His friend would come back, right? He could be waiting in the service corridor. Maybe Pamela would head back into the mall to look for other victims, and when she did, Archie could reach the door and tell Rory it was safe to open the door. If he shouted loudly enough, Rory would hear him.
If Rory was still there.
The Arrival whined. It was trying to back up, but its front fenders were now so badly crumpled they were pinching the front tires. The car couldn’t move, which meant that even if Rory was out there, that door wasn’t going to open.
Archie had to find another way out.
From where he stood, he could see out into the mall, where the occasional Arrival rolled by. The few cars he saw had not sped by. They were not driving erratically. It seemed to Archie that it was almost as if...
It was almost as if they were on patrol.
Archie knew, from his many visits to the mall, that the distance from the front of Victoria’s Secret to the escalators was not far. Thirty, forty feet, he reckoned. The escalators were right by the Foot Locker, where his mother always bought him his running shoes, always jabbing her thumb into the toe to make sure there was enough growing room to get a year out of them.
If he could reach the escalator, get to the safer lower level, he and Nick could catch their breath while they came up with a plan.
So Archie worked his way to the front of the store, darting from one rack of underwear to the next — at least those that were still standing — just in case any of the passing Arrivals happened to spot him in their peripheral vision. He got to the front of the store and tucked himself around the corner of the entrance so that he could scope things out.
“Oh no,” Archie said, looking up the mall to the escalators. He whispered to himself: “I don’t believe it.”
He was going to have to come up with another plan.
When Nick had became separated from Archie and Rory, he’d made a dash for the escalator, figuring the lower level would be a good place to ride out the storm. He wasn’t alone in thinking that. Dozens of shoppers were running for the down escalator, and when it became overloaded, others chose the up escalator, running down it at a faster rate than the steps were ascending. The kind of thing Nick used to do when he was much younger.
Before long, the open area of the upper mall was clear of people — at least those who were still alive. Corpses were scattered everywhere. But luckier ones had made it to the bottom level, and while they might have felt momentarily relieved, no one was feeling particularly secure. Most were looking up, gazing into the open atrium, watching the Arrivals zipping around above them beyond a decorative glass and metal railing.
Thank God the escalators were too narrow for them to use.
Several of the adults around Nick were on their phones, calling for help, warning family members to be careful, and letting those same folks know they were okay. A girl about seven years old was crying, her mother kneeling down, trying to comfort her.
“The police aren’t picking up,” said one.
“Where the hell are they?” asked another. “They’ve got to stop them!”
“Look,” said another very slowly, pointing to the top of the two escalators. “They’re trying to figure it out.”
Indeed, they were.
A red Arrival had nosed up to the down escalator. The constantly moving rubber grip rails skimmed by the nose of the car. The Arrival, with its eye-like headlights, seemed to be studying how the escalator worked, the way a raccoon might look at the latest, supposedly tamperproof garbage can.