Bruce smiled. “You’re right. I would have liked him.”

“He’d have hated these self-driving cars,” Katie said. “Even if they weren’t trying to kill us. He’d probably have—”

“Up ahead,” Bruce said, taking his foot off the gas and letting the car coast.

Katie looked. A bald man was emerging, tentatively, from the woods, scanning the road in both directions. When he saw the Cadillac, he ran out into the road, standing in the center, waving his hands back and forth in the air, signaling them to stop.

“What do you want to do?” Bruce asked.

Katie shrugged. “I don’t think it’d be right to run him down.”

“I concur,” he said, hastening the car’s stop by putting his foot on the brake.

As they got closer to the man, he came into focus. Late forties, early fifties, probably, with a mustache, bit of a paunch. His eyes were wide with fear.

“Oh my God, thank you,” he said, running to Bruce’s open window as he brought the car to a full stop. “I can’t believe it! A real, live car!”

The man was panting and his shirt was soaked almost everywhere with sweat except, strangely, not on his rounded tummy.

“You okay?” Bruce asked.

He nodded furiously. “I was making my way through the woods. Roads aren’t safe. Those crazy cars, they’re everywhere. Have you seen any of them?”

Katie spoke up for the first time. “Oh, yeah. Back there, a couple of miles.”

The man stopped panting long enough to ask, “You mind taking on a passenger?”

Bruce and Katie exchanged a quick look. After a second, Katie shrugged, as if to say, We can’t just leave him here.

Bruce looked at the man and said, “Yeah, sure. I’m Bruce, by the way, and this here is Katie.”

“Glad to meet you,” the man said as Bruce opened the door and leaned into the steering wheel, allowing their hitchhiker to tip the driver’s forward and access the back seat. “I’m Ben. Ben Stapleton.”

“Welcome aboard, Ben,” Bruce said, putting his seat back into place and closing the door.

“I was here for the big Arrival event, if you can believe it,” said the man calling himself Ben Stapleton.

Katie spun around. “Did you see my mom? Is she okay?”

“Your mom?”

“Sandra Montrose? She organized the event! I can’t get hold of her!”

The man slowly nodded. “Right, right, yeah, I did see her. She gave out the press kits. Last I saw, she was okay.”

“You’re sure?”

“Pretty sure. So . . . if you were thinking of heading to the community center, I wouldn’t bother. And most people are trying to get away from there, anyway.”

“We’re headed to the mall,” Bruce said. “Looking for Katie’s brother.”

“Oh,” said the man. “I was wondering, you think you could drop me off at the ferry on your way?”