Jesus Christ, she was having a fucking conversation with a fucking car. Okay, sure, she’d talked to her own Arrival. She’d given it directions. She’d told it when to pick her up. Those were instructions. This . . . this was chatting. The car wasn’t asking what Sandra wanted, or what it wanted her to do. It was asking why.

Well, that could work both ways.

“I’ve got a question for you,” Sandra said as she put the thumb onto the phone’s home button again. “What the fuck is going on? Why are you and your friends doing this?”

“Please clarify ‘friends.’”

“The other Arrivals. Why are you doing this? Why are you attacking?”

There was a long pause while the red car—hadn’t Carver called this one Rudolph?—considered a response.

“Cat got your tongue?”

The phone’s screen lit up with multiple rows of apps. “Yes!” Sandra said, pulling herself back out of the car. Not only was she into the phone, but it was showing a nearly full charge.

The car clearly had nothing more to say, but she could hear some machinery being engaged.

Sandra stepped well back. The door on the other side of the car opened. As the car began to speed up, it went into a sharp turn, driving in a tight circle, not unlike it had done earlier, with Lisa Carver trapped inside.

Sandra ran around the corner of the building for shelter, but peeked around the edge to see what the car was going to do.

It continued going in circles, and picking up speed, until it had created enough centrifugal force to toss the woman’s body from the car.

Sandra put a hand to her mouth, stifling a scream.

Once the car had rid itself of the body, it straightened out, sped off through the community center lot, and joined up with the Arrivals that were still surrounding the burning fire engine.

Sandra looked away. She pressed her back to the wall, closed her eyes for several seconds.

Then she looked at Lisa Carver’s phone, still accessible. But how long would it stay that way? Sandra didn’t have Lisa’s thumb in her pocket for the next time the phone went dark.

She shuddered at the thought. The woman was right over there and if she could find a pair of gardening shears in the community center’s shed . . .

No, she was not going to do that. She could not bring herself to do that.

But there was another way. She needed to go into the phone settings right now and make the device accessible without a password or thumbprint. Once she had done that, she was about to hit Contacts, out of habit, as if somehow her kids’ numbers would be in there.

But, of course, they were not. She was going to have to enter their numbers into the keypad.

Christ, what are their phone numbers?