The shelves above ground level were stacked with more skidloads of goods, shrink-wrapped in industrial-grade Saran Wrap.
As Archie ran toward the shelves, he scanned them the way a mountain climber might assess a cliff face. What was the safest way up? Where were the best footholds? What route offered the best chance of reaching the top in the least amount of time?
Archie had to make his assessment with considerably more speed than a mountain climber might. The latter didn’t usually have a car on their ass.
Archie did.
The Arrival that had killed Nick was now in pursuit of Archie. He allowed himself only one glance back, enough to determine that the vehicle was a good eight to ten Arrival-lengths back, which he hoped would give him enough time to pick a shelf and start climbing.
He made a sharp turn down an aisle of cleaning supplies and spotted a sliver of space between products that led to the next aisle over. He darted in just as the Arrival squealed down the aisle, scrambled through, and came out the other side.
The Arrival, realizing it had been given the slip, stopped to recalibrate.
In this next aisle over, Archie looked up, as if from the bottom of a canyon. The shelf he’d snuck through looked promising. He grabbed a vertical metal railing with one hand, a horizontal shelf with the other, and got one foot solidly on an open crate of Swiffer refill pads. He hoisted himself up to the second shelf, then planted his foot on an immense, sealed skid of Mr. Clean antibacterial floor kitchen cleaner.
The Arrival on the other side emitted an electronic whine as it backed up. When it reached the end, it turned, shifted into drive, crept past the end of the massive shelving unit, and entered the aisle Archie had escaped to.
It stopped for a moment. Its various screens and sensors, designed to recognize human beings, determined Archie was not in this aisle, either.
The car sat there, as though puzzling it out. He had to have gone somewhere, it seemed to be thinking. His prey couldn’t just vanish.
Archie, having successfully reached the third shelf, paused for a moment to assess his progress. His gaze went to the end of the aisle, his heart pounding.
Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.
The car began to inch forward.
Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.
Archie was barely breathing and not moving a muscle. But the car was slowly and silently moving in his direction.
Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.
Jesus, was it possible? Could the car hear his heartbeat? Or did it have some kind of built-in heat sensors?
The car stopped directly below Archie. The front wheels began to turn sharply, squeaking on the shiny, cement floor. Then, ever so gently, it nudged the shelf with its front bumper. Just enough to send a small shock wave through the metal bracing.
Archie felt the nudge.
The car, he concluded, was sending him a message.
I know where you are.
Okay, fine, Archie thought. You know where I am. Big fucking deal. What are you going to do, come up here after me?
Archie resumed his climb until he was sitting on the very top of the shelving unit, almost close enough to reach up and touch one of the hundreds of fluorescent tube fixtures that bathed the store in artificial light. No goods were stacked on this top shelf. It was like standing on a hundred-foot-long, ten-foot-wide runway. From this perch, Archie could see the tops of all the other towers of shelving. The aisles were, Archie guessed, eight to ten feet wide, allowing plenty of room for shoppers to maneuver their massive shopping carts in both directions, with room to spare. There would be no jumping from the top of one set of shelves to the next. Archie hadn’t been bad at the long jump in gym class, but you had a running start for that. This shelf was hardly wide enough to work up much speed.
But that was okay. He’d wait up here as long as he had to. And if he got hungry, he’d drop down to the shelf below and see what he could find. Maybe a chocolate bar the size of a two-by-four, or a can of Libby’s baked beans big enough to feed a platoon, assuming it had a pull-top. Archie had not thought to bring along a can opener on today’s outing.
He nearly allowed himself a chuckle. If he ate enough baked beans, he’d end up making noises a lot louder than heartbeats.
If Nick were here, he’d try to break the tension with a good old-fashioned fart joke.
But Nick is dead.
Archie would have to grieve later. Right now, he had to worry about his own situation. Find a way out of here. Get back home to his mom and Katie.
He figured Katie was safe. He’d left her at their house, and unless she was dumb enough to go looking for him, she was still there. But his mom was at the big Arrival event.
Archie felt a wave of fear wash over him. He’d had a few of those already since he’d arrived at Garrett Mall. But this was different. He wasn’t scared about what might happen to him. He was scared about what might have happened to his mom.
I can’t lose my mom...
Too.
He couldn’t help notice that, as best he could tell, he was the only person in the warehouse-like store. When the Arrivals had come streaming in, Discount Bonanza staff and customers must have run like hell for the back rooms. Archie seemed to remember, from trips here with his mother, that there were other access points to the store, in addition to the mall entrance. There had to be a way to the outdoors. A loading dock, maybe.
But how safe was it out there? He’d told Nick he thought most of the Arrivals were in the mall, but was he right about that? At least right now, atop this set of shelves, Archie felt safe.
Had Rory made it? Did he find a way out of the mall after fleeing out the back door of Victoria’s Secret and abandoning him?
“Asshole,” Archie muttered under his breath.
After walking the length of the shelf and back again, he decided to sit and dangle his legs over the edge. In the time he’d taken to scope out his new surroundings, the Arrival that had given the shelf a threatening nudge had vanished.
“Yeah, take a hike, dickhead,” he said.
He kicked his feet back and forth, wishing he had a phone so he could check in with his mom or his sister. Archie, for the first time, felt guilty about the way he had treated his sister, tricking her so he could make his escape. And then he felt a second pang of guilt. His mother had wanted him to be on his best behavior today. Don’t get into trouble, she’d said. This is a big day for me, she’d said. Don’t fuck it up, she’d said.
Okay, maybe she hadn’t said that, but it sure was impl—
Hello.
Archie heard the familiar squeaking of rubber on cement. The same sound that Arrival made before it had bumped his shelf. But this wasn’t just one squeak.
It was a symphony of squeaks.
He stood back up and ran to the end of the shelf, where he could see all the way to the entrance from the mall. A convoy of Arrivals was coming his way.
Heading for his shelf.
And they were picking up speed as they got closer.
The lead car — the same one that had killed Nick, judging by the red streaks on its hood — was doing probably thirty miles an hour when it rammed the end of the shelf at a forty-five-degree angle.