Page 101 of Five Survive

There was something dangling from Maddy’s left hand. The keys. She had the keys. This was going to work. Red was wrong, she was wrong and she didn’t need to have said any last words at all, because it was working.

Her heart was in her throat, beating so hard she couldn’t hear the static anymore.

She was wrong, it was going to work.

Maddy was just a few feet from the truck now, movement in her neck, ponytail swinging as she glanced up.

“Go on,” Oliver whispered, guiding her forward.

Maddy stopped.

She reached out for the door handle.

Crack.

5:00a.m.

Maddy folded forward.

She dropped to the road, like her puppet strings had been cut all at once.

“NO!” Red screamed, ramming her elbows down to push Oliver away. “No, Maddy!”

She slammed her fingers and forehead against the cool glass of the windshield, eyes circling the lump of her clothes out there, Maddy’s darker ponytail.

Reyna was crying. Arthur too, hands covering his face.

Oliver didn’t say a word. Not a fucking word.

Red screamed again, her breath fogging up the window, a cloud to take Maddy away. She screamed, and the glass threw it back at her, echoing around the RV.

No, wait. Red swallowed the scream, forced her mouth shut. The fog receded, but the echo didn’t go, muffled, muted, from a different world. Someone else was screaming. Outside.

It was Maddy.

“She’s alive!” Red shouted, watching as the lump outside shifted, ponytail falling to the other shoulder. “She’s alive!” Red screamed,turning back to the others, to Oliver and his pale face, no longer golden.

The five of them stared at each other, eyes wide, for half a second, the sound of Maddy’s scream hammering at the windows. She was hurt. She was shot. Someone had to go get her. Red’s eyes locked on Oliver’s, but he looked away.

“I’ll go!” Red said, shoving Oliver and Simon out of her way. Move, for fuck’s sake. She’d been out there for three minutes and the sniper didn’t take the shot. Like Oliver said, she was immune for some reason. She was the one who had to go get Maddy. Her Maddy.

Red charged down the RV to the front door. As she reached out for the handle, that small voice of doubt piped up, whispering in her ear. But Maddy was dressed like Red, and he’d taken the shot. Maybe she wasn’t immune after all, or maybe the sniper somehow knew it wasn’t her. But it didn’t matter either way because Maddy was out there, screaming. She needed Red and Red would go. No time for doubts.

She slammed the handle down and pushed open the door. It crashed into the metal side of the RV as Red tore down the steps.

“HELP!” Maddy’s scream had found its shape, lingering beyond the edges of the word. “HELP ME!”

“I’m coming, Maddy!” Red screamed back, the soles of Maddy’s sneakers beating against the dirt road as Red sprinted toward her and the headlights.

She jumped over the crumpled form of Don.

It was a race. Her against that red dot. Don’t think of it, don’t think of it now.

“I’m here!” Red shouted, crashing to her knees beside Maddy, dust hovering around them both, held there by the headlight beam.

Maddy was lying there, pitched up by one elbow, face creased in agony. Red looked her over and she saw. The new stain on her jeans. Growing and growing. Around that huge hole there, in Maddy’s thigh. A gurgle of blood gushing out, pooling through the material around it. So much blood already, dripping to the road, pouring out in time with Red’s heart, battering in her ears.

“Fuck,” Red hissed, her hand hovering over the wound, bright red overflowing, darkening as it spread through the jeans. “Fuck.”