“Just shut up,” he said.
Another theory occurred to her. “Orrrrr,” she said again, more slowly this time, “you have something to do with it.”
Kyle blinked and twitched his cheek, but still said nothing.
Katie noticed.
She said to Bruce, “What’s it mean, when they say someone has a tell?”
Bruce glanced her way, gave her a look that asked, What are you talking about? But what he said was, “Like in cards. When someone’s lying, or bluffing, they do something. Lick their lips, or touch their nose, or something.”
Katie nodded. “I thought it was something like that.” She trained her eyes on Kyle again. “So, you do have something to do with what’s happening.”
Bruce, hands at ten and two, kept the car moving at sixty as he glanced into the rearview mirror to gauge the hitchhiker’s reaction.
“That’s ridiculous,” Brandon Kyle said.
Katie continued to stare. “What did you do?”
“I did nothing.”
“What did you do?” she asked again.
“Stop looking at me.”
“I’ll stop looking at you if you tell me what you did.”
“I told you, nothing.”
“Then why do you have to get off the island?”
“Because people are getting killed here!” he snapped.
“You’re trying to get away before they catch you,” Katie said. “You have to get off Garrett Island before the army or whoever arrives.” She shook her head. “They’re probably on the ferry. You’re basically going to hand yourself over to them.”
That gave Kyle something to think about. “No...” he said slowly. “We won’t be the only ones heading to the ferry. There’ll be others. Dozens, maybe hundreds. When the ferry arrives, they’ll evacuate us. They won’t be stopping to ask questions. If... if the National Guard’s on the ferry, they’ll charge off, and islanders, they’ll get on. That’s how it’ll work.”
“You better hope,” Katie said. “But what if we—”
“Katie,” Bruce said.
“Huh?”
Bruce did a tiny shake of his head, a subtle warning. Don’t go there.
“What if you what?” Kyle asked.
“Nothing,” she said. Katie had gotten Bruce’s message.
“What if you tell? Is that what you were going to say? When we get to the ferry, you’ll point me out? Is that your idea?”
“No,” Katie said. “That’s not what I was going to say.”
Bruce slowed. There was a stop sign ahead, and an arrowed sign reading FERRY 2 MI, pointing to the right. Bruce rolled through the stop and cranked the wheel. “Soon,” he said, turning his head so Kyle would be sure to hear him.
“We’ve been lucky so far,” Katie said. “We haven’t seen any more of them.”
Bruce said, “Hmm.”
“What?” she asked.
“I’m kind of wondering why we haven’t.”
They’d left the forested part of the island behind them and were now driving parallel to the shore. Beach houses and a strip of sand were the only things separating them from the sea.
“Ha!” Kyle shouted, pointing. “There it is! I told you! Didn’t I tell you?”
What Kyle was looking at was, at first, hard to see. There was a growing cloud cover, and about a mile out, a haziness that signaled a thickening fog. Coming through it, a vague, looming shape.
“The ferry!” Kyle said.
He was right. The ferry was only a hundred yards or so out from the island. The docking facilities were beyond the oncoming hill that was little more than a shallow rise in the landscape.
Katie shifted in her seat so that she was now looking forward. Bruce reached over and touched her shoulder, a gesture meant to reassure and comfort. “It’s going to be okay,” he told her. “We drop him off, we turn around and head for the mall.”
She nodded, head up, jaw forward, trying to look strong.
The car crested the hill. From here, they could expect to see the broad expanse of pavement where cars would, in normal times, line up for boarding, the ferry headquarters building, the wide, metal ramp that would link to the ship once it reached the dock.
But the sight that greeted them included much more than that.
“Jesus,” Bruce said as he slammed on the brakes.
The first thing they noticed was the fog. A low cloud had settled over the dock area. But it wasn’t so thick that Bruce and Katie and Kyle couldn’t see what was happening.
There were people. Hundreds of them, all running. Young and old, men and women, some bearing children in their arms. One man had slung an elderly woman over his shoulder.
Everyone was fleeing the ferry boarding area. Some headed up the hill, others went for the beach. The only thing that seemed to matter to them was that they get away.
It was clear what they were running from.
Arrivals.
Lined up in two perfect rows, all pointed where the ferry, still not visible because of the fog, would appear in seconds.
Bruce scanned the cars, wondering how many there were. Fifty? Sixty? Possibly more. But there was something particularly startling about these Arrivals.
Every last one of them was ablaze.
“Mother of God,” Kyle said. “They’ve set themselves on fire.”
“What?” Katie said.
“They must have deliberately short-circuited themselves.” He said it with a sense of wonder. “This is amazing. This is stunning. They sensed a threat, pinpointed what it was, and decided to do something about it.”
“Why the hell would they do that?” Bruce asked. “And how would you know?”
Kyle was too transfixed by the spectacle to answer.
Bruce persisted. “What are they going to—”
But then they saw.
The ferry materialized out of the fog. The convoy of flaming Arrivals suddenly sped forward, heading for the ramp, going faster with every passing second.
They launched themselves off the end of the ramp, like arrows set aflame and fired skyward by some medieval army. They sailed through the air, one after another, the first few missing the ferry altogether and going into the water, but the following waves of flaming vehicles reached the ferry deck, crashing into what looked like, from where Bruce and Katie and Kyle watched, jeeps and other military vehicles.
A man engulfed in flames leapt off the ferry and into the water.
The cars continued to sail through the air, bombarding the ferry. There was one explosion, then another. Fire began to spread across the deck, huge black clouds billowed out. Flames licked the upper levels of the ship.
“Son of a bitch,” Kyle said. “Is there no way to get off this fucking island?”
Thirty-Two
After leaving his place, his mother safely tucked away upstairs, Joe Bridgeman pedaled first to Sandra’s house. She’d had no luck reaching her kids by phone, and he’d promised to see whether they were there.
The streets of Garrett were largely deserted. Word obviously had gotten around that the safest place to be — if you couldn’t get off the island altogether — was inside. The cars were deadly, but getting into buildings presented a challenge. At one point, he saw a woman standing in her front yard, clearly scanning the street to see whether it was now okay to be outside.
“Get back in your house!” Joe shouted at her as he cycled past.
“Where are they?” she shouted.
“Just get inside!”
It was a good question, though. He’d encountered not one Arrival since leaving his mother’s house. He guessed the cars had gone where they expected to find the most people. The town’s center, most likely. Maybe the mall, although that struck him as probably a safe place for people to hang out until the crisis had passed.