Three stores ahead of where the Arrival was headed, out front of the Payless Shoes, an armed mall security guard took aim. Archie, looking ahead through the blood-smeared windshield, shouted, with no hope of being heard: “Don’t shoot us!”

The guard evidently saw them and aimed low for the car’s tires. But the bullet hit the floor, ricocheted wildly, and the Arrival kept on coming, straight for him.

The guard dived blindly into the shoe store, taking down a portable rack of marked-down sandals with him. The Arrival whizzed past, missing him by inches.

The boys, heading back in the direction from which they’d come, had their first glimpse of the other cars invading the mall.

“Oh, fuck, look what they’re doing,” Rory said.

The Arrivals were filing into the main concourse with orderly precision. First, they came in a straight line, like elephants in a trunk-to-tail formation. But then they broke apart and regrouped, side by side like a row of soldiers, barely an inch between them.

“We have to get out!” Nick said. “We have to—”

A phone started ringing.

“Whose is that?” Rory yelled.

Archie patted his thigh. He’d tucked his phone down into the front pocket of his jeans. “It’s me!”

He dug his hand in, pulled out the phone, and looked at the name on the screen.

lisa carver.

Who the hell was that? But so what, Archie figured. Even a wrong number, at this moment, might be helpful if whoever it was could call the cops. He steadied his thumb over the phone and prepared to accept the call.

CRASH.

“What the fuck!” Nick screamed.

Rory screamed, too, but without words. Just a primal cry of pure fear.

Archie got tossed sideways in his seat and lost his grip on the phone, which hit the floor and slid under the front seat. He looked around to see what they’d run into.

It turned out to be something that had run into them. The back side window was shattered.

“What was that?” Archie asked.

Nick said, “Some guy just threw a fire extinguisher!”

It struck Archie as pretty dumb to think you could stop one of these cars by doing that, but as it happened, an opportunity had presented itself. He shifted himself around until his back was on the seat, and his feet were in position to hit the glass, just as soon as Rory got out of the way.

“Watch out, Rory!” he said.

Rory scrambled into the front seat as Archie drove his feet, together, into the already shattered glass. The glass buckled outward, sprinkling the interior with a few shards. Archie brought his knees to his chest a second time, and pounded the glass again with the soles of his runners.

The entire pane shattered. Glass crystals showered the seat and the mall floor as the car continued to move toward one of the two banks of approaching cars.

“Yes!” Nick cried.