Five survive, p.19
Five Survive, page 19
Red hesitated, then placed it in his open hand.
Oliver took the walkie-talkie and bundled it up in his shirt, holding it close in the material, between his tightly cupped hands.
His voice dipped back into whispers. “It’s the classic Trojan horse,” he said. “Maybe the bug is inside the walkie-talkie, so it’s listening even when we think it’s not. We always have it around us. And Red, you brought it over when me and Maddy were doing the note. Maybe it’s listening all the time.”
“Oh, they’re clever,” Simon said, wagging one finger.
“I can check?” Red offered, voice low. She did not want to believe Oliver, follow him again, even though it made a perfect kind of sense. “I know what the inside of a walkie-talkie looks like, all the parts. I can look?”
“How do you know so much about walkie-talkies?” Oliver asked, not giving it up.
“I just do.” Red held her hand out now, waiting for Oliver to pass it back. Her memories did not belong to him. He might be the natural leader, but he didn’t know what he was doing here. Red did.
Oliver narrowed his eyes. He unbundled the walkie-talkie and passed it over.
“Shh,” he said as he did.
Red slid into the other side of the booth, placing the walkie-talkie down. She would have to be quick at this, so the sniper didn’t know they weren’t listening again, if he tried to talk. Concentrate. Red’s fingers moved to the knob on top, beside the antenna. She flicked it into the off position and the static cut out.
Silence. A buzzing kind of silence, broken up by Maddy’s breath as she leaned over Red. It was distracting, in and out and in, a faint whistle underneath.
Red pushed down and slid off the back casing, into the battery compartment. It was empty, other than the three batteries slotted into place. Next she grabbed the screwdriver from the table, inserted it into the first screw on one of the back corners and turned it around, fast as she could. She placed the small screw on the table, spinning around itself, and turned to the next.
The others were all staring, she could feel their eyes on the back of her neck, on her fingers as she unscrewed the next one and placed it down. It almost rolled off the table but Maddy caught it.
“Thanks,” Red said, unspooling the next screw.
Oliver shushed her. And was it spiteful that Red wanted him to be wrong about this? For him to be wrong and her to be right.
She undid the final screw, dropping it with the others, and pulled the plastic casing up and to the side, carefully as red and black wires connected through to the batteries. She propped it there and looked down, bringing her eyes closer.
The green circuit board she’d been expecting to see, with small metal parts soldered on. The connection to the antenna, the amplifiers and mixers on an integrated circuit. And what were those small parts called again, oh yeah, capacitors. The tuner, transformers. She remembered the diagrams, the YouTube tutorials. Words and shapes she’d learned long ago, the kind that stayed in her head because they weren’t important. Except they were now, and there was nothing here that shouldn’t be. She recognized it all, same as the parts inside her mom’s walkie-talkie.
“Is there anythi—” Oliver began.
“Shh,” Red said this time. She was concentrating.
Slowly, Red’s fingers pried up the circuit board, just a tiny bit, so she could lower her eye to the gap and see the parts beyond, sitting at the front of the walkie-talkie. She didn’t want to pull anything out of place, she didn’t trust herself to be able to put it back together. She didn’t know if she could rebuild it if it all fell apart in her hands now. The last time she’d taken hers apart and put it back together had been more than a year ago. Last February 6, just for old times’ sake.
Red could see red and black wires connecting to the circular plastic part that doubled as microphone and speaker at the front, beneath the grille in the plastic.
That was it. Nothing here that shouldn’t be. No bug that didn’t belong. Red lowered the circuit board into position, even more carefully than before, and guided the plastic casing back on.
“No bug,” she said, starting on the first screw, forgetting to whisper. Oliver shot her an angry look.
“How do you know?”
“Because everything that’s there needs to be there,” Red said, tightening the screw and moving onto the next. “There’s no independent listening device in there because there’s no separate power source. And there’s nothing connected to those batteries that shouldn’t be. He’s not listening to us. Not unless we push the button,” she added, slotting in the third screw.
“And we just have to take your word on that, do we?” Oliver asked, also forgetting to whisper now.
“Oliver.” It was Maddy who said it this time.
“She could be wrong,” he replied. “Or she could be lying to us. How do we know we can trust what she’s saying?”
Red wasn’t wrong and she wasn’t lying, not about this at least. She slid the plastic that covered the battery compartment back and turned the knob to switch the walkie-talkie on. The fizz of static greeted her, welcoming her home. She’d missed the sound. Wasn’t that stupid? But it meant the walkie-talkie was working, she hadn’t broken it somehow by trying to be useful. Except now she wasn’t useful, she was a liar.
Like when she gave her statements to the police over five years ago. Red was trying to be helpful, to be useful, even though the world was ending around them. She described her final phone call with her mom, every hateful part of it. Over and over again, every last detail she could remember. “There was a doorbell in the background. Mom rang the doorbell at someone’s house. They answered and she said ‘Hello.’ ” But that couldn’t be true, you see, they’d explained to her. Her mom wasn’t found anywhere near a residential road, near houses. She was found inside Southwark Generating Station, that old, abandoned power station on the pier. And she was dead within ten minutes of that phone call. They didn’t say Red was lying, not like Oliver just had, they said she must have been mistaken, confused, she was only thirteen, she was in shock. Sometimes Red wasn’t really sure if she’d remembered it at all. And, now that she thought about it, was she sure about the walkie-talkie?
“What are you talking about, Oliver?” Reyna’s turn to look at him, crossing the awkward silence that had followed his words.
“The sniper knew about the note, Reyna.” Oliver’s face was reddening again, heat in patches up his neck. “He knew what was written on it. He also knew exactly where we were to trap us here. So if we’re saying there isn’t a listening device somewhere in the RV, then we have an even bigger problem. Because the only alternative is that…”
He drew off, eyes circling around the group, finally coming to rest on Red.
“One of us is working with them.”
3:00 a.m.
Red couldn’t hold Oliver’s eyes for longer than two seconds. He won. She dropped her gaze.
“What?” Simon said, voice escaping before he’d even formed the end of the word.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Oliver,” Reyna said. “No one here is working with the shooter.”
“Why is it ridiculous?” he snapped, puppet strings back, spinning his head. “The sniper knows things he couldn’t possibly know. What we’re saying in here, what our plans are, that fucking note. And let’s not forget how we ended up here in the first place.” He paused, eyes flashing under the overhead lights as he cracked the bones in his neck. “This road wasn’t on our route. We got lost. So either the sniper somehow predicted exactly which wrong turns we’d take, or he was listening through a bug he’d planted and following us, or”—he swallowed—“someone in this RV led us right to him.”
He looked pointedly at Simon, Arthur and Red, one hand balling into a fist at his side. He stretched it out, fingers ropy and long, as he studied the three of them. Something tightened in Red’s gut, twisting uncomfortably as she watched Oliver’s hand bend and flex.
“Not this again,” Simon sighed. “We were lost. No signal. None of us directed the RV down this road on purpose.”
“I’m not sure that’s true anymore,” Oliver said. “It was you three, you three giving the directions at the end. I lost the map on Reyna’s phone, so we know it wasn’t me. Maddy didn’t say anything.”
“But Reyna was driving,” Simon said. “So by your logic, she could be a mole too, right? Because she’s the one who physically brought us down here. Or is it just us three that are under suspicion?”
“She only took the turns you were telling her to,” Oliver retorted, pointing a finger toward Simon’s chest. “And if I remember right, Simon, you were the one who was most insistent.”
“I was trying to be helpful,” Simon shouted back. “I was drunk!”
“Hm,” Oliver said, with a wicked smile. “You seem to only be drunk when it suits you, though, huh? Slipping in and out of it. I thought you were supposed to be the actor here.”
“Fuck off, Oliver,” Simon spat. “I don’t have anything to do with this.”
“You’re a crook like your fucking uncle.”
“Stop, please!” Arthur shouted, stepping forward to place his body between Oliver and Simon, turning his head to look at both of them. “This is fucking stupid. We can’t turn on each other.”
“And what about you?” Oliver directed his voice at Arthur now. “You were the one giving those last directions, they came from your phone.”
Red shook her head. That wasn’t fair, Arthur was just the one who happened to lose signal last, on a different network from the others. She should say something. She should stand up for him.
“And I got it wrong, I’m sorry.” Arthur held up his hands. “I was just trying to follow the map.”
“Red.” Oliver’s eyes landed on her now. “I remember you were the one who told us to keep going. I wanted Reyna to turn around and you told her to keep going.”
She had, he wasn’t wrong. Her fault.
“Red didn’t do anything,” Arthur said, and that was how it felt—was it?—to have someone on your side, on your team. To stand up for you whether it was right or wrong. Red breathed out, gripping the walkie-talkie too hard, like it was Arthur’s hand and they were back there standing in the doorway, about to watch two people die. Two people were dead, remember. Right outside. And that red dot was still out there, waiting.
“She was just trying to find the way to the campsite,” Arthur continued. “Like the rest of us.”
“And in doing so, one of you led us into this ambush, to a man waiting with a fucking rifle! That was no accident!”
Maddy wasn’t saying anything. Did that mean she agreed with Oliver, was she taking his side? How many sides were there? Us versus them. Simon, Arthur and Red against Oliver, Maddy and Reyna, splitting the RV in half, and half of thirty-one feet was fifteen point five.
“Oliver, stop!” Reyna grabbed his arm, pulled him back. No, not us versus them, Reyna wasn’t taking sides. Lavoy-adjacent, but not a Lavoy, and didn’t they both know it. Red certainly did now, gaze creeping to Maddy.
“It doesn’t mean one of us is involved,” Reyna continued. “If there’s no listening device, maybe he planted a GPS tracker somewhere outside the RV and that’s why we haven’t found it. Maybe that’s how he followed us to this road.”
“Occam’s razor, Reyna,” Oliver said, shaking his head. “The simplest solution is usually the correct one.”
“This isn’t helping,” Maddy spoke up. And what did that mean? What side did that come down on? “Please, we have to work together.”
The knot in Red’s gut loosened a little. She hadn’t lost Maddy to the other side. Because they were best friends, almost sisters. Knew each other inside and out. It was in the blood, even, because their moms were best friends before them. College roommates to working side by side as prosecutor and police captain. Would Red and Maddy ever have jobs that went side by side? Probably not; Maddy was going to UPenn and Red was going nowhere. Red couldn’t stay Lavoy-adjacent forever, she wasn’t sure Maddy would even want her to. But, for now, it counted.
“Lift up your shirt, Red,” Oliver said, gesturing, an upward motion with his fingers. “You too, Arthur.”
“What are you talking about?” Maddy asked, shrinking back as Oliver returned her gaze.
“I need to check neither of them is wearing a wire,” he said.
“Oh, come on,” Simon interjected. “This is turning into Lord of the Fucking Flies. We’re going to end up killing each other, forget about the sniper.”
“I’m not wearing a wire,” Red said, tucking her arms over each other to protect her chest, walkie-talkie purring in her armpit.
“Great, prove it.”
“Oliver!” Reyna hissed.
“She and Arthur came over when Maddy and I were talking about the note. You and Simon were by the door. So if there’s a listening device we still haven’t found, it’s on one of those two.”
“Or Maddy,” Simon said, hysterical to the point of almost smiling. “Or you. Does it not count if you’re a Lavoy?” He slapped his arms down to the side of his legs. Simon got it.
“You’re taking this too far,” Arthur said, shaking his head, taking a step in front of Red, almost like he was blocking her from Oliver. A barricade. “We all need to step back and take a breather. Everyone wants to get out of here, so let’s think about what the sniper has actually asked us to do.”
“Why won’t you do it, then?” Oliver glared. “If you have nothing to hide.”
“Okay, fine, see.” Arthur grabbed the hem of his baseball shirt and pulled it up over his chest, the muscles in his bare back heaving and bunching as he did. “See, nothing. This is getting out of hand.” He dropped his shirt.
“Now Red.”
“No.” There was a growl to Arthur’s voice now. “She does not have to.”
“I’ll do it too. Look.” Oliver stepped forward, fingers moving quickly down the buttons of his shirt. He reached the bottom and pulled it open, covering his arms like wings. There was nothing on his chest, nothing but the sharp lines of his abdomen. “See. I don’t have any secrets. I’m clean.” He dipped his head at Red, redoing his buttons. “Your turn.”
She didn’t want to. Of course she didn’t want to. But she also didn’t want the others to think she was hiding anything. That would be worse.
“Fine.” She gritted her teeth. Her shirt was loose enough that she didn’t have to undo it. She gripped the ends, walkie-talkie still in hand, and pulled her shirt up over her bra, flashing the pale skin of her chest and stomach to the rest of the group. She didn’t have any secrets either, not on her skin at least. Arthur didn’t look; Red saw that. He must not like her like that after all.
Red dropped her shirt, tucking the front tails into her jeans. “Are we done now?”
“I’m sorry, Red,” Reyna said quietly, like it was somehow her fault.
“No wires,” Simon said, a jagged edge to his voice as he smoothed down his own shirt. “No listening devices. Can we move on, now?”
“Not yet.” Oliver shook his head. “Just because there’s no wire, doesn’t mean someone here isn’t somehow communicating with him outside.”
“Oliver, come on,” Maddy pleaded. “No one here is working with the sniper. He would kill any of us. He killed that innocent couple.”
Oliver’s eyes were busy, working on some thought alone. Red dreaded to know what it was.
“Phones out,” Oliver said, striding to the kitchen and pulling out the bottom drawer, too hard, juddering against its hinges. He selected the biggest saucepan, with a matching glass lid, pulling it out as the other pans shifted and clattered around it. “Come on, I said phones out, everyone. We’re going to seal them all in here.” He raised the pan.
“There’s no signal,” Simon said. His phone was out, but his hand tightened around it, like he didn’t want to let it go. “How could any of us be communicating with the shooter without a signal?”
“I don’t know,” Oliver said, brandishing the pan. “Maybe there’s still a way to communicate, some kind of app. Or maybe one of them has been hacked and is listening to us. Either way, if you want me to trust any of you again”—his eyes flickered and it was obvious which half of the RV he was talking about—“we are shutting our phones away. All of us. It’s not a request.”
To prove the point, Oliver pulled his phone out of his back pocket and dropped it inside the saucepan with a dull thud.
“Reyna?” He held the pan out to her. She nodded, not returning his gaze, but she pulled out her phone and placed it inside the pan, on top of his.
Maddy stepped up, dropping hers inside next.
“Simon.”
Not a request.
“This is fucking stupid,” Simon said, taking two angry steps toward Oliver, letting go of his phone, the device sliding against the others to find its own space.
Oliver didn’t need to tell Arthur; he was already leaning forward, phone in hand, placing it vertically in a gap inside the pan, standing guard over the others.
“Red.” Oliver held the pan out, everyone’s eyes turning to her. She could feel them, every single one of them, like heat on her skin, too long and she might burn. Were they looking at her harder than anyone else? That wasn’t good. She reached behind her, hand dipping into the loose back pocket of her jeans, fingers alighting around the cool edges of her phone. She pulled it out and held it in front of her eyes, phone in one hand, walkie-talkie in the other. The home screen lit up. No service. 38% battery now. 3:13 a.m. Strange, how she didn’t feel tired at all.
“Red.” Oliver prompted again. Not a request, remember? He was the leader and he was leading. Where to, Red didn’t want to think about. She hesitated and then slid her phone in on top of the pile.
