“HAAAA!” she screamed triumphantly. “Did you see that? Did you fucking see that?”
Bruce hung his left arm hung over the back of the seat so that he could turn around and look out the rear window. On the way, he gave Katie a brief, admiring glance. “That was something, I’ll give you that.”
Katie was taking quick, deep breaths. She glanced in her mirror, looking for the Arrival. “Where is the little shit?”
“It’s back there,” Bruce said. “You gave him the slip, that’s for sure.” He hadn’t yet turned around to face forward.
“What are you looking at?” she asked as she eased up on the gas and continued to catch her breath.
“I don’t know that slowing down is such a good idea,” Bruce said slowly.
Katie looked in the mirror again. “No.”
“Yeah,” Bruce said. “The little shit appears to be turning around.”
Katie’s eyes went from the mirror to the road ahead and back again to the mirror. “I don’t get it!” she said. “What the hell is wrong with it? Why did it try to... to...”
“Kill us?” Bruce asked.
She shot him a wide-eyed look. “That’s insane.”
“Of course it’s insane,” Bruce said. “But that’s what happened. That car was deliberately aiming for us.”
“So its programming or sensors or whatever must be broken,” Katie said. “That doesn’t mean it was trying to kill us. Not on purpose.”
“Well, I’ll tell you this. It’s very deliberately, and on purpose, coming after us.”
Another look at the mirror proved Bruce right. The silver Arrival was in pursuit, and gaining on them.
Katie pressed down on the accelerator and the engine roared.
“It’s a fast little bastard,” Bruce said, still looking rearward.
“But not faster than this,” Katie said. “Right?”
Bruce sighed. “Hard to say. A lot of these new electric cars, they’re so light they move pretty quick.”
“I gotta call my mom,” Katie said.
“Why?”
“She’s at the thing, you know, the big event for these cars. If there’s something wonky with them, she should know. Or maybe she does know what’s happening.”
She took one hand off the wheel, dug out her phone again, held her thumb on the home button to bring it to life, and handed it to Bruce. “Go into the contacts and call up Mom. You know how to do that?”
He scowled. “No, all I’ve ever used is a string and two tin cans.”
“Okay, fine.”
Bruce tapped on the contacts, found Mom and tapped again. He had the phone to his ear. “When she answers, I’ll hand it to you.”
Katie kept her eyes forward as she nodded. The road had been flat and straight the last few miles, but there were some windy curves ahead. The car lurched as she entered the first one at sixty. Katie grimaced as the tires squealed.
“Easy,” Bruce said, phone to his ear. “These babies weren’t exactly built for cornering.”
Katie looked in the mirror again. The Arrival, lighter and more aerodynamic and built lower to the ground, rounded the curve with relative ease.
Bruce took the phone away from his ear and pressed a button to end the call. “No answer,” he said. “I hung up when it went to message.”
“Okay,” Katie said, swallowing. “Maybe it’s just as well. I’d have had to explain why Archie’s not with me. Will this road take us to the mall?”
“We make a turn about four miles up,” Bruce said. The Cadillac didn’t have a mirror on the passenger door, so he had to keep turning around to see how close the Arrival was getting. “Not giving up,” he said.
They’d come out of the curves and were back on a straight stretch again.
“You sure there’s no one in it?” Katie asked.
“Not that I can see. Doesn’t seem all that likely that someone would be having a snooze while—”
“Shit!”
Bruce twisted around. He didn’t have to ask.
Another Arrival was coming at them. A turquoise one. Just as the silver Arrival had done, it had crossed over into their lane.
“What am I going to do?”
Bruce’s head swiveled. The silver Arrival in pursuit was no more than two car lengths behind them. The one heading toward them was no more than ten seconds away.
“You can do this,” Bruce said calmly.
“Do what?”
“Wait until the last possible second.”
Without looking at him, she nodded. She got it.
The turquoise Arrival was five seconds away.
Four seconds
Three seconds.
Two seconds.
One—
Katie turned the wheel sharply. The Cadillac headed for the opposite shoulder, the back end swerving wildly.
Somewhere, behind them, an enormous crash.
But Katie’s and Bruce’s attention was focused on the Caddy, which had careened so sharply it was in danger of rolling over. The two left wheels lifted off the pavement. Katie had managed to avoid making the Caddy the meat in an Arrival sandwich, but it looked as though she might get them killed, anyway.
She turned the wheel hard the other way. Only one front tire was in contact with the pavement, and as it turned, the car pitched in the other direction, the left wheels slamming into the road.
Bruce was yelling something, but with all that screeching rubber, Katie couldn’t make out what it was.
Katie moved her foot from the gas to the brake and stomped on it with everything she had. She locked her arms to keep from slamming into the steering wheel — she didn’t have the security of an airbag in this antique — but Bruce was not as well prepared. He was launched off his seat and his head struck the windshield before he collapsed into the footwell. He scrambled back up onto the seat, but found himself slipping off.
As the car had come to its abrupt, bone-jarring stop, its front end was noticeably lower than the back. The front end was in the ditch.
“You okay?” Katie asked.
Bruce nodded, and began to laugh. “Holy shit!” he said. “That was some piece of driving!”
Katie slowly turned around, trying to look back onto the road, but all she could see was the trunk and the massive tailfins pointing skyward.
“I heard a crash,” she said.
Bruce took a moment to collect himself, then said, “Let’s go check it out.” Gravity pulled the front door forward as he opened it. He scrambled to grab the handle before the heavy door bent back the hinges. “Whoa,” he said.
“I’ll get out on your side,” Katie said, sliding herself across the broad seat. Bruce, once out, held out a helpful hand to Katie.
They climbed their way up to the shoulder, cleared the back of the car, and said, in unison, “Jesus.”
The Arrivals had collided head-on, and then, evidently, bounced off each other. The turquoise one sat in the middle of the road, on its side, the front end and hood crumpled almost to the windshield.
The silver Arrival hadn’t flipped, but it wasn’t going anywhere. It was half on the road, half on the shoulder, crumpled just as severely in the front end. The front tires had blown and the car was resting directly on the gravel.
There was no fire, but there was the occasional electrical crackle.
“Don’t get too close,” Bruce said as they approached the overturned Arrival. “At least they shouldn’t explode. There’s no gas tank on these things.”
“Please don’t let there be anyone inside,” Katie said.
Bruce got close enough to look through the shattered glass. “No one in here.”