Five survive, p.21
Five Survive, page 21
Maddy shrank in the booth.
“I’m sorry.” Reyna hugged herself tighter. “I wish I could have told you at a better time, just you and me.” She shook her head, strands of black clinging to her cheeks, wet with tears and sweat. “No, I wish it never happened in the first place. If I hadn’t been such a coward, if I had just…” Her words failed, lips pressing together while she tried to get them back.
“If you had just what?” Oliver pressed, and Reyna winced, like he was pressing down on her neck.
“Broken up with you.” She said it quietly, almost a whisper, staring at Oliver like there was no one else in the RV. And there wasn’t, not really. Red’s mind was quiet for once, watching the scene, a strange feeling in her gut. Not guilt, or shame, or hunger, it was something older. Ancient. A primal instinct telling her to keep out of Oliver’s way. There was danger outside the RV, and now there was danger inside it.
A low bark of laughter from Oliver as he slapped his hand on the table, making the kitchen knife jump and the flashlight roll toward Maddy. “What?” he said, a deep smile splitting his face, crinkling the skin by his eyes. “You would have chosen him over me?” Another quick burst of sound from his throat, halfway between a laugh and a shout, the smile across his face twisting in at the ends, turning cruel.
“I’m sorry. I loved him,” Reyna whispered, a pair of silent tears. Red backed up another step. Maybe Reyna shouldn’t have said that, not right here right now, but clearly she’d been holding this in for a very long time. It only took a man with a rifle to bring it to the surface.
Oliver was still smiling. Why was he still smiling? “We’ve been together two and a half years,” he said.
“I know,” Reyna cried. “And I do care about you, Oliver. A lot. But it was different with him. It was easy.”
“Easy, huh?” Still smiling. Hand resting on the table where he’d smacked it, fingers splayed, just a little too close to that sharp knife there. Red tensed.
“Different,” Reyna said, with a wet sniff. “Jack didn’t feel right about it, what we were doing. I told him I was going to break up with you, I said I’d do it any day now.” Her breath hitched in her chest. “I didn’t know we were going to his bar that day. If I had I would have tried to get us to watch the game somewhere else. I know that’s not the problem here, it’s me, what I did…” She trailed off, taking a new breath to come back stronger. “That’s what he was saying to me in the parking lot. He said he’d waited long enough and I had to choose. I had to break up with you because it wasn’t fair to keep doing this.”
Oliver didn’t speak yet, just that same smile, blinking for her to keep talking.
“And then you came out and saw us, and I panicked. It wasn’t how I wanted everything to come out, with both of you there. But I knew it was the moment, whether I wanted it or not, and I had to make a decision, there and then. I had to decide. And, I don’t know…” She wiped her nose on the other sleeve this time. “I loved Jack, I knew that, but in that moment my head was telling me he wasn’t the smart choice, the practical choice, because he worked in a bar and that’s all he ever wanted to do. Whereas you…” She paused, daring a glance at Oliver.
“I’m going to be somebody,” Oliver said, showing too many teeth on that last syllable. “So what, Reyna, it was a battle between your head and your heart, was it?” he mocked her, but Reyna nodded, slowly, up and down.
“I was a coward.” She bit her lip. “I made my choice and I pretended not to know him, that he was a random guy bothering me in the parking lot, like you thought. And then everything happened.” Reyna winced, like she was seeing it all again, playing just below the surface of her red-raw eyes. “I couldn’t find the courage to do it, to choose him. And he was so hurt after, he texted me that night, saying he couldn’t believe I’d pretended not to know who he was. And then I didn’t hear from him, until…until…” She didn’t need to finish, they knew the rest. “He’s dead, and it’s my fault, because I was a coward and let it all happen.”
Red shuffled, flinching as she made a rustle that drew Oliver’s eyes, thinking over it all, sifting through. Reyna hadn’t killed Jack, though, had she? It was Oliver who hit him, who caused the slow bleed in his brain. Neither of them meant for him to die. But no one could say Reyna was the one who’d killed him, right? She loved him, and she blamed herself, and that must be a terrible weight to carry. Almost like—
“Yes, Reyna, it is all your fault,” Oliver replied after a long pause, voice clipped and flat. “It’s all your fault. You made me do it.”
“I didn’t, I didn’t…” Reyna puffed out her cheeks to control her staccato breath. “I’m sorry for everything. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” She looked away from Oliver, eyes skipping from Maddy to Red, as though seeing them for the first time, stepping away from that horrible dark memory into the horrible dark here and now, in this RV. “He had four brothers,” she explained. “I never met them, but it could be them. He said one of them liked to hunt deer. Maybe they found our messages on his phone, wondered why I never reached out, or went to the funeral. Or maybe they suspected there was more to the story, about how he’d hurt his head, about that last message he sent me. That’s the secret they want: how Jack died.”
The static seemed to grow louder then, in Red’s grip, even though it couldn’t have. She was keeper of the voice, and did they now know whose voice it was? Waiting for them on channel three.
Oliver brought his hands together, like a crack of thunder or the clap of a rifle. Twice. Two shots. The sound burying itself inside Red’s bones.
He pushed up from his booth. “Well, Reyna, you don’t have to worry about finding the courage now.” He coughed, a smile still stretched across his lips, splitting the near-red flesh into seams. “You and I are over. I could always do better than you.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry, Oliver. I really am.”
He brushed off her apology, looking away before she was finished. Reyna was no longer welcome on his side of the RV, in the us of us versus them. A cold shiver passed up Red’s spine, even though it was hot in here now, sweat prickling by the seams of her shirt where they pressed into her armpits. The six of them cooking inside this tin can. But the shiver meant something, a realization that Red could put into words. Now there was no one left who could control Oliver. Unless Maddy…Red tried to catch Maddy’s eyes, but she wasn’t looking, picking at the loose skin by her fingernails.
“If that’s why we’re here”—Reyna was speaking, looking between Arthur and Simon now—“I will face the consequences. I’ll tell him what happened, what I did. I’ll end this.”
“Oh no you won’t,” Oliver snapped. The smile was gone now, but his mouth wouldn’t close, hanging open between words. Pupils still too large in his once-golden-brown eyes. “You’re not the one who hit him, I am. If they’re looking for a killer, then it’s me they’re looking for, not you. And I’m not dying because you decided to fuck a bartender, Reyna.” A globule of spit flew out with her name. He pointed at the walkie-talkie in Red’s hands. “We’re not telling him anything. This is your fault, Reyna, no one else’s. If anyone should have to walk out of this RV it should be you. But I am not, are you listening?! We don’t tell them a thing.”
“We have to,” Reyna said, a quake in her lower lip. She bit down on it. “It’s the right thing to do, tell him what he wants to know. He said he’d let the others go. He might let us go too, if he knows it was all an accident, that Jack wasn’t supposed to die.”
“I don’t know,” Simon said, uncertainly. “He killed Don and Joyce out there for nothing. I don’t think he’s the forgiving type.”
“No,” Oliver growled. He moved past Red, toward the kitchen, glancing at the timer on the oven. “It’s three-forty-five now. We are going to sit here until sunrise, until six a.m., and then his game is over. That’s what we’re going to do.”
“I can’t, Oliver,” Reyna said, keeping her tone steady, treading around the explosion again. “Someone might get shot. I can’t live with that. Red, can you pass me the walkie-talkie, please?”
“No, Red,” Oliver barked. “Give me the walkie-talkie.” He stretched out his hand, open and waiting.
Red looked, from Reyna to Oliver, the walkie-talkie hissing in her cupped hands, like a coiled snake, like a warning.
Here she was again, standing in the middle of them, trapped in both lines of sight. She clutched the walkie-talkie to her chest.
“Red, don’t be an idiot,” Oliver hissed, trying to lower his voice. “Give me the walkie-talkie. I’m in charge here. You know me. You don’t know Reyna. None of us do, apparently.”
“Red, please.” Reyna’s voice in her other ear. “I’m trying to do the right thing. To save us.”
Red’s eyes jumped to Maddy’s, but there were no answers for her there, only fear, widening, widening.
“Red?”
“Red?”
Left or right.
Move or don’t move.
Reyna or Oliver.
“Red?”
Oliver’s eyes burned into hers, past them, into the unknowable things behind, like he could see her thoughts racing back and forth, trying to pull them his way.
The static from the speakers fizzed against her too-tight fingers, tongue pressed against the back of her teeth.
Which one?
She had to choose one of them. Had to make a decision, now, down to her. Two outstretched hands, waiting. Reyna or Oliver?
Red’s heart thudded against her ribs, trying to break free, to take no part in this. Red had known Oliver forever, he was right about that. And she’d chosen him once already, four hours ago, coming back to the RV when her gut and her mom told her to run. Should she have run? Where would she be by now? Would Don and Joyce still be alive?
“Red!” Oliver shouted, impatient now, flexing his fingers and taking one step toward her.
The hairs stood up on the back of her neck and her gut told her to move, to peel away from him because there was danger behind his eyes. And this time, Red listened to it. She backed up, eyes still on Oliver, moving two steps toward Reyna by the front door. Quickly, before she could regret it, or double- or triple-think it, she turned on her heels and pushed the walkie-talkie into Reyna’s warm hand.
Reyna’s fingers closed over it, catching Red’s for a moment. A shared blink.
“No!” Oliver barked, charging forward, the RV juddering with his heavy steps.
Arthur darted into Oliver’s path, his body blocking them from him, a line of sweat rolling down his temple.
“Stop,” he said, voice spiking, his mouth grim and tense as he held one hand up to Oliver’s shoulder, pushed against it. “It’s Reyna’s decision if she wants to tell.”
Simon hurried over too, joining the barricade beside Arthur, arm to arm. The Lavoys on one side of the RV, Reyna and Red by the door, Simon and Arthur in the middle. Maddy had gotten to her feet now, watching, chewing anxiously at her thumb.
“It’s not!” Oliver stopped in his tracks, spraying the words into Arthur’s face. “It’s my decision. I’m in charge here. I don’t care what Reyna tells him, I am not leaving this RV! No one is leaving this RV!”
A flutter in his voice, hidden just beneath the rage. He was frightened, wasn’t he? That was what this was. Underneath those too-wide shoulders and golden-brown eyes, and red-flushed skin, Oliver was scared. By the time it reached the surface, though, it had twisted itself into anger, for cover.
“We have to do what he wants,” Reyna called across the barricade. “There’s no other way.”
“Don’t you dare tell him, Reyna!” Oliver shouted back, peering through the gap between Simon’s and Arthur’s heads. “Don’t you dare tell him what I did.”
The barricade jostled back as Oliver pushed against them.
Reyna sucked in a deep breath and let it out, the air playing through Red’s tied-back hair. She raised the walkie-talkie to her lips and held down the button.
The static cut out.
“Hello?” Reyna said, the word shaking only at the edges.
Static.
“Hello,” the voice crackled from the speaker. “I’m here.”
Static.
“Reyna, don’t you fucking dare!”
“It’s Reyna Flores-Serrano,” she said, holding down the button, pressing her eyes shut. “I think I have the secret that you’re looking for.”
Static.
“You do, do you?” the voice hissed, dark and deep, giving nothing away. “Let’s hear it, then.”
“Reyna!”
Arthur dug his heels into the floor as Oliver pushed against him.
“Oliver, stop!” Simon said from the struggle.
“It’s about what happened to Jack Harvey, in Hanover, in January,” Reyna said, her chin bunched and trembling, eyes still closed. “How he died.”
Static as she let go of the button, eyes flickering open, backing away against the door as she looked up and saw Oliver’s face, the silent threat in his eyes.
The static stretched on and on. Universes bloomed and died in the seconds they waited, listening to the empty hiss. Red willed the voice to come, like she had countless times before, different voice, different reason, but it never worked before either.
“Come on,” Simon said, daring a glance back, eyes focusing on the walkie-talkie in Reyna’s grip.
A crackle.
The static died.
Silence. It felt strange in Red’s ears, after all this time.
“Sounds like a touching story,” the voice said. He cleared his throat. “But it’s not the one I’m looking for.”
A gasp. From Maddy; Red knew without looking.
Reyna’s eyes darkened, shadows cast by her eyebrows drawing together, lines of confusion across her forehead. “What?” she whispered to herself, staring down at the walkie-talkie, hissing again.
The struggle in the middle of the RV stopped, Oliver pulling back, straightening up, a new look rearranging his face, red patches slowly receding under his collar. His eyes did the opposite: they lightened.
“It’s not about that,” he said, voice almost returned to normal, croaking only on the lowest notes. “It’s not about what we did, what happened. It’s not about me.” And as he said that last part, the smile was back playing across his face. Not cruel this time, just unapologetic and there, he didn’t try to hide it. He didn’t have to be afraid anymore.
The barricade broke apart. Arthur bent forward, breathing hard, wiping the sweat from his hands against the front of his jeans. Simon stretched up, burying both hands in the mess of his dark hair as he said, “Fuck me,” followed by a low whistle.
“Not about what happened to Jack?” Reyna said, her voice climbing up at the end, but it wasn’t really a question, not one that needed an answer. She couldn’t believe it, that was why. She had been so sure; Red could tell by her eyes, by the fall of her mouth.
“It’s not about me or Reyna,” Oliver said through the smile, turning to look at Arthur, Simon and Red in turn. “We aren’t the ones with the secret. It’s one of you.”
The breath caught in Red’s narrowing throat as she studied Oliver’s smile. Was the RV getting smaller around them, tighter? It was supposed to be thirty-one feet but they’d never measured. What if it was twenty-nine and shrinking? Oh no, Oliver was watching her as she looked around. It couldn’t be her. She had one secret, but no one knew about it, that was the entire point. She didn’t even want to think it, in case Oliver could somehow read it in her eyes. Not him. Especially not him.
Simon shuffled, and Arthur hid his hands in his front pockets, glancing up at the ceiling. Was the RV shrinking around him too? Squeezing them all together. Too hot. Too stuffy.
Reyna handed the walkie-talkie back to Red, the weight of it against her skin a small comfort, until the static cut out again.
“I’m starting to lose my patience.” The voice crackled back into life. “I have twenty-four more rounds with me.” He paused, let that number sink in. It did, sinking right into Red’s gut, where it churned with that other, yawning feeling. Twenty-four. Four deadly holes in each and every one of them. “If I don’t get my answers soon, I will start shooting at the RV randomly.”
Static.
Crack.
The microwave exploded.
Maddy screamed.
Simon dropped.
Glass rained down, sparks flashing around the new hole in the back of the machine, a glimpse through into the night beyond.
There was a matching hole in the bathroom wall. Walls, metal, plastic, glass, it went through them all, in less time than it took for Red to blink, to flinch and hold her hands up to her ears, the walkie-talkie hitting the side of her head.
“There’s one,” the voice said, whispering right into Red’s ear. The next second, it refilled with static.
“Fuck!” Simon said, pushing himself up from the floor, brushing off his legs. Patting his chest like he was checking for holes. But he wasn’t in its path, none of them were. Oliver had been the closest, and the shot had taken something from him: his smile.
Crack.
Red’s hands were ready by her ears.
A splintered hole lower than the last shot, in the wall just above the stove, a few inches closer to where the six of them stood. Oliver darted away, knocking into Arthur as he did, the RV shuddering with his feet. He came to stand by Maddy at the dining table, one hand on her shoulder.
“We should take cover!” he yelled.
“Where?” Simon shouted back. “There is no cover. The bullets go through everything!”
Simon was right; there was nowhere to hide. The RV wasn’t a shield, it wasn’t safety, it was only an illusion, a false barrier between here and the red dot outside. A hot tin can, shrinking, filling with holes. The night punching new eyes through the walls to watch them squirm.
