Five survive, p.14
Five Survive, page 14
He walked over to the dashboard behind Reyna, dropping to his knees, head lowered to the screen. Red watched him and something stirred in her head, switching Oliver out with someone else. Didn’t he know people sometimes died like that, on their knees?
“Press record,” he said.
Red thumbed the red button on her screen. The birdsong high-pitched beeps from her phone, answered by Maddy’s, then Reyna’s.
“Get into position.”
Red pulled the bottom corner of the mattress up, sliding the hand with the phone through to the unknown outside, her wrist pressing against a shard of broken glass, but there was nothing she could do about it. She pointed her phone in the right direction and looked away, eyes on the back of Arthur’s head.
Red held her breath, counting the seconds.
“Is everyone ready?”
“NOW!”
“Wait!” Arthur shouted back, shifting his position, wiping his spare hand down the front of his jeans.
“Arthur, now!” Oliver screamed. “Open the door!”
“Fuck!”
Arthur reached forward, slamming his hand down on the handle and pushing hard.
The door to the RV swung open, the darkness waiting for them there, gaping and black. It must be a rectangle of light, looking from the other side.
Simon raised his knees like he was running, hurrying down the steps, his teeth gritted, eyes wild and afraid and—
Crack.
The mirror shattered.
“Fuck!” Arthur screamed as the mirror jumped out of his hands, crashing back against the counter.
“Close the door!” Oliver’s frantic voice filled Red’s ears. “Simon, pull the rope!”
Simon scrabbled with it, the rope almost sliding through his hands. He fell back against the closet and he pulled.
The door slammed shut with a thump, lock clicking into place, sealing them inside once more.
“Holy fuck!” Simon said, sinking to the floor, laughing or crying Red couldn’t quite tell. “We did it.”
Arthur was bent double, breathing hard. His hands were pressed against his thighs, head hanging upside down. Was he all right?
“Who’s got it?” Oliver was standing now. “He shot! Who got the muzzle flash on their phone?”
Red pulled hers inside, slotting the mattress back into position. There was a bead of blood there on the see-through skin of her wrist, where the glass had pierced through. Her very own red dot.
She stopped the recording, phone twittering at her, the same sound from Maddy and Reyna. She navigated to the video file and pressed play.
“Get into—”
“—Get into posi—”
“—Get into position,” Oliver’s voice said three times, overlapping. Reyna’s video was playing half a second before hers, Maddy’s just after.
The sound of Red’s breath from the speaker at the bottom of her phone. Rustling as the image on-screen went from light to pitch-black, inside to out.
“Is every—”
“—Is everyone r—”
“—Is everyone ready?”
Red brought the screen closer, studying the pixelated darkness.
“N—”
“—NOW—”
“—NOW!”
Red didn’t blink.
“Wai—”
“—Wait—”
“—Wait!”
The three layers of Arthur’s voice in a frenetic rush, splicing together.
“Arthur—”
“—Arthur, now—”
“—Arthur, now! Open the door!”
“Fu—”
“—Fuck—”
“—Fuck!”
The Arthur from here and now turned; Red felt his eyes on her, but she didn’t look away from the screen because it was coming, it was—
Cr—
—Cra—
—Crack.
A tiny flash of light in all that black as the three shots split the air. But it had only been one, and she had it, right here. Red had it. She paused the video, spooled it back.
“I’ve got it,” she said, looking up at Arthur. His eyes looked drawn, mouth tight. “I’ve got it.” Louder now.
“Let me see.” Oliver rushed over, leaning to watch behind her shoulder. “Play it again.”
Red pressed the play button.
“Fuck!” Arthur’s voice said one more time.
“It’s there,” Red said. “Wait one second.”
Crack.
A pinprick flash of white light in the dark background of her screen. Small, tiny. Like the little firework in her head. She dragged back through the frames again to play it one more time. There, a quick burst of light, just right of the center.
The muscles in Oliver’s mouth twitched.
“Which way were you pointing the phone, Red? Exactly.” His eyes fixed on hers, so hard that she had to look away, and yet she could still feel them when she blinked, like they’d marked her.
“This way.” Red pointed at a diagonal, out to the right toward the back of the RV.
Oliver straightened up, his eyes following the direction of her arm.
“So, he’s over there still,” he said. “Hard to say, but maybe a few hundred yards that way. Likely where he was when he first shot out the tires and the windows. He must have gone back to the same position after planting the walkie-talkie.”
The walkie-talkie fizzed, hissing in silent agreement. Red was surprised, almost, that the sniper had nothing to say after what just happened.
The muscles in Oliver’s mouth shuddered again, but this time they broke into a wide smile that cracked his face in two.
“We did it, guys,” he said, looking around. The others didn’t react. “I said we did it!” Oliver laughed, hitting Red on the shoulder, moving to do the same to Arthur. Arthur still didn’t look right, eyes unfocused, picking at the pocket of his jeans. He was a fiddler, like Red, but maybe only when he was nervous, scared. Simon still didn’t look right either, puddled there on the floor, legs outstretched among large shards of broken mirror, staring up at the ceiling, breath heavy in his chest.
“Come on, guys! We did it, we’re getting out of here. Alive!”
Oliver pulled Reyna into a hug, burying a kiss in her thick black hair. He wrapped an arm around Maddy and then offered a hand to Simon, to pull him up off the floor.
Maddy was smiling now, hugging her own arms.
“Woohoo, spring break!” Simon said again, stumbling to his feet.
Oliver stood in the middle, grinning at them all.
Delegate. Motivate. Celebrate. All the qualities of a natural leader, which made Red more than an unnatural one.
Oliver clapped his hands, somewhere between an applause and to get their attention. He already had it. “Right, the sniper is back that way.” He pointed. “So, if we climb out the driver’s-side window and run in that direction”—he pointed with the other arm, the exact opposite way—“the sniper won’t see us, because the RV will cover us. He won’t even know we’re gone. He won’t. And even if he does, he’s not going to be able to catch us. We have a head start, and he’s carrying a rifle.”
“You can’t shoot a rifle like that while running,” Red agreed.
“We did it,” Reyna said now, nodding, like she could only believe it if she heard it out of her own mouth.
“Fuck yeah we did!” Simon answered, a fist raised as pieces of mirror crunched under his shoes. “Although that’s seven years’ bad luck, isn’t it? Broken mirror?”
“Well, it’s good luck for us now,” Maddy replied.
Behind Simon, there was a splintered hole in the wooden base of the dining booth, where the bullet had struck through after the mirror, probably out the other side of the RV back into the dark night. Through glass and wood and wood and plastic and metal. Skin and bone would be nothing in its path.
“Right then.” Oliver rubbed his hands together, the sound grating. “Let’s get the fuck out of this RV! Don’t bring anything with you. Just essentials. Just your phones. Hopefully we will run into some service at some point so we can call the police to catch this fucker before he runs off. And call our mom to let her know we escaped.”
Would Catherine have given up the name they were looking for by now, Red wondered, mind already leaving the RV, skipping away to the next part.
Her ears fizzed, but was that just the static?
“Shall we take this?” she asked, stepping across the broken mirror to grab the walkie-talkie from the table.
“No, leave it,” Oliver said, looking over his shoulder. “We don’t need it. We’re not playing his game anymore.”
He walked over to the driver’s seat, leaning across it to rip off the duct tape securing Red’s gutted suitcase across the window. With one hard jerk he pulled it all down, dropping it in the footwell. He ripped the curtains aside, baring the pitch black of outside, waiting for them with open arms.
One windowpane was already open, smashed to pieces, but Oliver flicked the catch and slid the other panel across, uncovering that side instead. Easier to climb out of when standing on the driver’s seat.
“Will be a bit tight,” Oliver observed, rolling his shoulders. “Everyone got their phones? Yes? Okay.” He stood up on the driver’s seat, ducking as his head grazed the ceiling. “I’ll go first. Then Maddy, then Reyna, Red, Arthur, Simon.” He looked at them in order. “Get in line, get ready. No flashlights on yet, we don’t want him to be able to see anything. You drop down and just run as fast as you can in this direction.” He pointed out beyond the driver’s-side mirror. “Through the trees there. Keep going, don’t wait for anyone. We’ll regroup on that road and then get the fuck out of here. Got it?”
Red nodded, taking her place between Reyna and Arthur, Maddy shuffling to the front. Lavoys first.
“I tell you what,” Simon said, from the back of the line. “I never want to see another fucking RV again as long as I live.”
“Tell me about it,” Reyna sniffed, almost a laugh.
Fiddling, nervous energy, in front and behind Red.
“I’m going,” Oliver said, bending down and lowering one leg out the window, coming to sit on the frame, exactly halfway inside and halfway outside. He dipped his head under and out.
The static cut off, silence taking its place. Before:
“Hello.” The voice crackled to life behind them.
Oliver paused, looking back inside the RV, listening.
“Cute trick with the mirror,” it said, a bark of laughter in his dark, metallic voice. “But there’s one thing I should tell you before you make the mistake of climbing out that driver’s-side window, Oliver. I probably should have told you sooner, that’s my fault.”
Static.
Red’s chest constricted, ribs folding in one by one like fingers as she turned to look back at the walkie-talkie, glaring at them from where she’d left it on the table. Her eyes crossed each other, the bright green display doubling itself, filling her head.
“How could he—” Reyna began.
“Oliver, don’t move!” Maddy shouted as he shifted out there on the window frame, staring down at the road just below him.
Silence, prickly and heavy.
“I should have told you,” the voice cut back in, sputtering at the edges. “There are two of us.”
One gasp. One scream. One hitch in Red’s chest.
There were two of them out there, in the wide-open nothing. Two of them. Two guns. Two red dots. No, this couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
“Get back inside, Oliver!” Reyna was screaming now. “Get in!” A race between her voice and a finger on a trigger.
Oliver tucked his head and rolled back inside, falling against Maddy on the driver’s seat, and Reyna just behind. Reyna stumbled, pushing into Red. She tripped over Arthur’s feet but he caught her, arms under hers, solid and strong.
“Close the curtains,” Reyna was still screaming, the sound cutting through Red. “Close them!”
Oliver righted himself, reaching up and snatching at the curtains, pulling them together. No gap. Shutting the outside away, splitting them into two separate worlds again: the RV and out there. Only a border of thin black material between them.
“It’s not fair,” Maddy cried, mouth bared, eyes clouded. “We were almost out. We were almost free.” Fat tears broke away, rolling to her chin.
“FUCK!” Oliver roared, tendons sticking out across the length of his neck, red and raw, like the puppet strings that worked his head. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He beat his fists against the steering wheel, against the dashboard, over and over.
“Oliver, stop!” Reyna lurched forward to take his hands away from him, holding them to her chest. “That doesn’t help anyone.”
“Two of them.” Simon walked backward over a large shard of mirror, doubling the sole of his shoe before it cracked. “Two fucking snipers. You know what this night didn’t need?” he called. “Another fucking sniper!”
Oliver was standing again, pushing Reyna out of his way as he stormed through. One of his feet caught on a can of beer, sending it spinning. He roared again, an ugly, scratching sound, as he bent down and wrapped his hands around the closet door. He lifted it up and smashed it back down, the wood splintering, a clean break, clattering back down in two unequal halves.
“Oliver, stop!” Maddy cried. “You’re scaring me!”
“I’m scaring you?!” He rounded on her, eyes wild, a fleck of spit foaming in the corner of his mouth. “It’s not me you should be scared of right now, Madeline. It’s the men with the fucking guns!”
“Oliver, please.” Reyna pushed him toward the booth, the side not blocked by the broken mirror. “Please just sit down and calm down.”
“We were out,” he said to himself, sliding his legs under the dining table, staring at the walkie-talkie. “We were out. I was so close.”
Red’s eyes shifted to Arthur as he dropped back against the sofa, his eyes on her but not here at all, glazed, far away.
His head fell to his hands and he buried his face in them, whitening halos of skin where his fingers pressed in.
Red reached, stretching out her fingers, each one too aware of itself and of what she was making them do. She rested her hand on Arthur’s head just for a moment, near the back of his neck. Mom used to do that to her when she was upset, and Red didn’t even realize until right now that she missed it. She shouldn’t think of her, why did she keep thinking of her tonight?
Arthur glanced up, her hand sliding off. He caught it in one of his waiting hands, squeezed, his fingers warm against the cool of her knuckles.
Too much.
Red’s arm dropped to her side.
She looked around at all of them, at their faces, and there was something new in the air of the RV. Not fear or confusion, they’d had plenty of those. It was despair, plain as she’d ever seen it. And she was an expert in despair.
Reyna was the first to come through it, bending to her knees to pick up the shattered halves of the closet door.
“What are you doing?” Oliver asked her sharply, his finger balanced on the antenna of the walkie-talkie.
“I’m cleaning up,” Reyna said, carrying the pieces of wood toward the back bedroom. “Looks like we’re going to be here awhile.”
Red watched her as she crossed the threshold into the bedroom, chucking the broken door into the gap on the far side of the bed. She returned, making a start on the mirror.
“Maddy?” she asked, gently. “Can you please help me with this? Pick up those larger shards and put them in the trash?”
“Sure.” Maddy sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
“We’re never getting out of here.” Simon slid down on the sofa, next to Arthur. “This is the worst day of my life.”
It wasn’t Red’s, though, was it? No, she didn’t think so, she’d never replace hers. February 6, 2017. It wasn’t enough just to lose her mom that way, was it? No, there had to be that last phone call too, still hurting from their argument in the kitchen the day before, about Red not concentrating in school, about her grades slipping. Mom called the home phone at 7:06 p.m., to say she’d be late for dinner. Red was the one who picked up. Red didn’t want to talk to her. Fine, she’d replied, thinking Good instead. Maybe she could go to bed without even seeing her mom tonight, without restarting the fight. But Red restarted it then, she couldn’t help it, bristling when her mom called her sweetie.
“Don’t call me that. I thought I was a disappointment.”
Mom never said that, she wouldn’t. Red was putting words in her mouth. They’d talk about it when Mom got home, that was what she said. But her voice wasn’t normal, and Red thought she must still be angry at her. Disappointed. Did part of her wish Red had never been born? Something interrupted them, a two-tone sound, trilling somewhere in the background behind her mom. A doorbell. Twice.
“Hello,” her mom said to someone else, not Red, because she could never just concentrate on Red for one fucking second, could she? Couldn’t turn the police captain off and just be Mom. That wasn’t fair but Red hadn’t felt like being fair.
“Sweetie. Before I go, I need to ask you something. Can you tell Dad to—”
And then it came, the worst part.
“No,” Red cut her off. “Stop telling me what to do all the time.”
And worse still.
“I hate you.”
Red hung up the phone, cutting off her mom’s voice as she repeated her name.
And guess what? Mom was dead within ten minutes of that phone call.
“Red?” Oliver said, saving her from the memory, but not from the guilt. That always stayed.
She looked up, just as Oliver reached her, dropping the walkie-talkie into her hand. “Keep cycling through the channels, looking for interference. It’s the only plan we have left now,” he said, darkly, turning away.
