Page 13 of Five Survive

“I can’t find anything. Maybe it got thrown by the wheel. Or maybe it was just a piece-of-shit tire that broke over nothing.” Oliver stood up, shining the light on Simon now. “Does your uncle ever get this RV serviced?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Simon hiccupped. But, really, how the fuck should he know, especially in his current state.

“Well, how long has your uncle owned the RV?” Oliver pressed.

“I don’t know.”

“How do you not know that?” Oliver’s voice sharpened.

“Because he’s drunk,” Maddy said, an apologetic glance at Simon, swaying on his feet.

“Listen,” Arthur said, “we’ve driven over five hundred miles on the tire today, and it’s been fine.” Defending the tire or defending Simon, Red wasn’t sure.

“It doesn’t really matter how it got punctured,” Reyna said, stepping forward. “What matters is what we can do about it.”

“Someone call Triple-A,” said Maddy.

“There’s no signal, remember?” Oliver looked down at her, Reyna’s phone raised in his hand.

“The police?” Maddy tried again.

“Still need service to call them, unfortunately,” Arthur answered this time, much softer than Oliver had.

“Does anybody have any service at all?” Oliver turned to the group. “Check your phones.”

Red pulled hers out of her jeans pocket, the screen lighting up the underside of her face. No bars. No 3G or 4G or GPRS. Nothing. Except 67% battery,which, hey, was pretty good for her.

“Nothing,” she said for good measure.

“Who are you with?” Oliver asked, in a way that sounded as though Red could only give him wrong answers.

“AT&T.” She glanced down at the unchecked box scrawled on her hand.

“Shit,” Oliver said. Yep, see, wrong answers only. “That’s what me, Reyna and Maddy are on. Arthur, you still got nothing with Verizon?”

“Nothing,” Arthur confirmed, showing Oliver his home screen.

“Everyone has zero bars? Simon?”

“Yeah, I’m the same. T-Mobile. Nothing.”

“We must be in a dead zone,” Red said.

“Okay, so calling for help is out.” Reyna looked at them all. “We—”

“—Maybe not,” Oliver cut across her. “We could walk back to that small town we passed. Ruby. Find a landline there to call for help if there’s still no service. It was only a few miles back.”

“More like five miles,” Reyna said. “That’s too far.”

“Well, maybe we’ll find a house or a farm or something with a landline on the way,” Oliver said.

“It’s really dark,” Maddy said in a small voice. “And we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“Not all of us have to go,” Oliver replied. Neither of the Lavoys were volunteering for walking-in-the-dark duty, then. Red had another idea.

“Why can’t we just sleep here tonight?” she suggested. “I bet no one else will be driving this way until morning, and then we can get help once it’s light.”

“No,” Maddy said, and Red was surprised. She’d assumed Oliver would be the one to shoot it down. “If we wait till tomorrow to fix the tire, then we won’t set off in time, and we’ll be late getting to Gulf Shores. Everyone else from school will be there and we’ll miss the first night out with everyone.”