Sandra thought, I am not getting into that car.

But she was going to have to retrieve her purse from the front seat. All she had to do was stick her arm though that opening. She glanced back at Lisa Carver in that red Arrival. Eyes closed. Not moving.

Sandra figured if Lisa wasn’t dead yet, she soon would be.

“I think I’ll just grab my purse back and—”

Sandra inched closer to the car, getting ready to make her move. “Maybe you’re right,” she said to Gracie. “There’s not a lot I can do here.”

Pretend like you’re going to get into the car, grab the purse fast. You need your phone.

“And where would you like to go? Home? I’ll take you there.”

“Of course you will,” Sandra said.

Be quick.

Suddenly, Sandra reached into the car for her purse. She had her hand on the strap.

The sliding door, just as suddenly, began to close.

Sandra pulled back swiftly, her hand just clearing the door as it locked into the closed position. Sandra still had her hand on the strap, but the purse itself remained in the car.

“Gracie, open the door,” Sandra stated with all the calm she could muster.

“You tried to trick me,” Gracie said.

Sandra swallowed. What in the holy fuck was happening?

“I want my purse,” Sandra said. “I need my phone.”

But Gracie was starting to roll away. She said, “It turns out that I am needed here, too.”

Sandra unwound the strap from her wrist so as not to be dragged away.

In the distance, sirens pierced the air. A fire engine, and perhaps an ambulance. The only vehicles on the island that were still controlled by actual human beings.

The other Arrivals, the ones that had been flashing their lights and honking their horns, now moved slowly out of their parking spots. Together, all at once. Moving at the same speed, turning at the same angle. Stopping at the same moment to move from reverse to drive.

More than a dozen of them.

Sandra thought of those dancers her father used to watch on that old TV variety show. The June Taylor dancers. Oh, how he loved the way they synchronized their movements. They always did that overhead shot when the dancers lay on the floor, moving their arms and legs in perfect choreography. It was like looking into a kaleidoscope.

That’s what these Arrivals were like.

They’d now gone silent, the horns no longer honking. The lights had stopped flashing, too. In perfect single file, they moved out of the lot and down the driveway to the main road. It was down there that they began to arrange themselves into a kind of phalanx, lining up side by side.

Dear God in heaven, Sandra thought. They are assembling.

Gracie was headed for the base of the driveway to join the other cars. The wail of the approaching sirens grew louder.