“He’s not dead,” Joe told Sandra. “But he’s out cold.”
“We need to call—”
Sandra didn’t bother to finish the sentence. The Garrett Island ambulance was outside, overturned. Calling for help was not an option.
“I’ll find some ice, a pillow, a first aid kid or something,” Sandra said. “I saw something in one of the other rooms. In the meantime, can you get into that computer?”
Still kneeling next to the unconscious Ruskin, Joe said, “Honestly, I don’t like my chances.”
Thirty-Four
For now, Archie believed he was safe.
Standing on the Discount Bonanza loading dock, looking out toward the Garrett Mall parking lot in the distance, and the assembly of Arrivals right in front of him, Archie took stock of his situation.
There was no way the Arrivals could get at him. The loading dock was a good four feet above pavement level, and the only thing leading up to it from the loading bay area was a three-foot-wide concrete set of steps with a rusted metal railing. Archie didn’t see any way the cars could use it to their advantage. Nor did he think the layout of the loading dock area was such that the Arrivals could drive over each other to reach him the way they’d done with the escalators.
He’d counted twelve Arrivals sitting out there on the asphalt beyond the loading bay, all aimed his way, watching. Archie felt like a cat in a tree with a pack of dogs hanging around the trunk. You weren’t in immediate danger, but you weren’t going anywhere, either.
Archie definitely wanted to go somewhere. Archie wanted to go home. He wanted his mom. He even wanted his sister.
He saw no upside to going back into Discount Bonanza or the attached mall. The place was lousy with Arrivals.
There was about a hundred feet of asphalt between the loading docks and a chain link fence that bordered the mall parking lot. Beyond that, trees and a drop-off to a drainage ditch that, right now, would either be bone dry or have no more than an inch of water in it. Archie knew if he could make it to the fence, scaling it would be simple, and traversing the ditch would be equally easy. Even if one or more of the cars could smash through the fence without getting tangled up, they’d never make it across the ditch. These Arrivals might be versatile little vehicles, but they weren’t Jeeps.
Once past the ditch, Archie believed he could make it safely home if he stayed off roads and sidewalks. But that hundred feet across the parking lot to the fence might as well have been a hundred miles.
You could not outrun one of these cars.
Nick was proof of that.
And yet...
Archie studied how the cars had arranged themselves. They certainly deserved points for neatness. Three rows of cars, four deep, all faced his way. If he were to leap off the loading dock and run between them, how long would it take them to turn around, all bunched up like that? How quickly could they reorient themselves and begin their pursuit?
Archie glanced at his bare arm and saw goose bumps. Maybe that made sense. He was scared, after all. But then he realized he was feeling cold. The temperature was dropping. At first, he wondered if it was because he was standing just beyond the meat department. Plenty of freezers back there. Frosty air could be drifting out.
But no, the coolness seemed to be coming from outdoors. And then he saw why.
Fog was rolling in.
It was drifting in from the left of the loading docks. It happened often on the island. Archie wasn’t exactly sure why. He’d never studied climatology. He didn’t watch the Weather Channel. But he’d heard about what happens when cold air passes over warmer water, and by this time of year, the water around Garrett Island had been warming up all summer. Every once in a while, fog rolled in, and quickly.
The low hanging cloud of mist was enveloping the cars. Before long, the fence at the far end of the parking lot had disappeared.
Archie wondered.
How well equipped were the Arrivals to handle fog? He knew there were plenty of sensors and cameras mounted all over them, even if you couldn’t actually see them. Would fog disable an Arrival’s ability to navigate? Did they have the kind of radar that big planes had? Planes landed in fog, didn’t they?
Archie was betting the Arrivals were fantastic in fog. Couldn’t they detect pedestrians at the side of the road, even at night, even if the car’s headlights were off? And how did they do that? Could the cars detect heat? The warmth of a human body? Kind of like the Predator, in those movies, when it picked up thermal images of those poor, doomed dudes trying to track it?
The fog was thickening. Pretty soon, even the cars watching Archie would be hard to see.
He had an idea.
Archie left the loading dock area and went back into the meat department. There had to be a locker. A meat locker. Where they kept everything really, really cold.
He found it in no time. He grasped the heavy metal handle on the door and swung it wide, feeling the cold air flow over him. He stepped into a room filled with sides of beef hanging on hooks like bloodied punching bags. He closed the door, careful not to let it latch. The last thing he wanted was to be locked in here. After everything that had gone down today, wouldn’t it be a kick in the head, he thought, to freeze to death?
Which was, he instantly realized, a distinct possibility if that door did lock. It was motherfucking cold in here.
He spotted a thermometer affixed to the wall, easy to find under the fluorescent lights. It had Fahrenheit on one side, Celsius on the other. Archie didn’t know anything about Celsius, but he sure knew that 33°F was downright chilly. And he didn’t need any thermometer to tell him. He was shivering.
Archie figured, if he could stay here long enough to lower his external temperature, and if the fog outside became thicker, he might be able to walk right past those damn cars without their even seeing him.
Hey, it was a plan.
The immediate question was how long could he stand it in here. He figured he would give himself five minutes. There was a wall-mounted clock to help him keep track of the time.
After ninety seconds, his teeth were chattering. He briefly wrapped his arms around himself, rubbing his shoulders to keep warm, then decided that was defeating the purpose. He needed to be cold. Don’t warm up any part of you. Who was that singer? The one who wore a dress made out of meat years ago? Lady Gaga? Yeah, that was what he needed. A cold meat outfit.
Okay, maybe he didn’t have to go that far.
But he did see, on a wall hook, a butcher’s frock — a white, long-sleeved, shirt-like jacket that went almost to the knees. Given that it was hanging in here, wouldn’t it be as cold as the room?
Shivering more violently, he took the coat off the hook and slipped it on. If the fog was thick enough, a white jacket would offer even more camouflage.
He was ready. He needed to move quickly, before his body warmed up noticeably. Archie opened the door and ran for the dock.
Aware that the cars were also sensitive to sounds — hadn’t they heard his heart beating when he was hiding atop those shelves? — he bottled up a Hooray! when he saw that the fog had, in fact, grown thicker in the last few minutes. He hoped the butcher’s coat would muffle his breathing and heartbeats.
But the cars also detected motion, so his plan was to move very, very slowly. He descended the short, concrete steps, taking about five seconds with each one.
The cars did not stir.
When he reached the bottom step, he paused. The formation of Arrivals was ten feet ahead of him, although he could barely detect their shapes through the thick mist. He inched his way forward, hopeful his movements were too slow to be picked up. Once clear of the vehicles, he would head straight for the fence, but maintain his snail-like pace.