Page 47 of Five Survive

Red’s breath stuttered, the sound of her heart too loud in her ears, too loud and too fast. And then her heart was lost to a scream, the scream of the horn piercing the night and piercing her ears. One long note, then four short bursts.

“Come on.” Oliver’s voice strained as he pressed the horn again.

Three short beeps.

One long note.

The RV wailing into the darkness.

And again.

Nothing. Not the crack Red’s ears were waiting for, not the clap of the gun. Her phone screen dark and empty.

“Come on!” Oliver tried again, ten sharp beeps, sharper, shorter.

The RV screamed and screamed again.

“Why is he not taking the fucking shot?!”

Nothing.

The screaming stopped, the ghost of the sound ringing in Red’s ears in the after-silence.

The dark shape of Oliver’s head, emerging from behind the closet door.

“Why the fuck didn’t he take the shot?” he barked.

Red’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, built a home there in it.

“I don’t know,” Arthur said, breathless, pulling his hand back inside the RV and stopping the recording on his phone. A deflated double beep. Red did the same, hooking the window shade back down to the bottom.

More double-tone bleeps, from the others’ phones as they withdrew from the windows.

The ringing in Red’s ears faded, taken over by the ever-present static.

“I don’t understand,” Maddy said, frustrated, slumping down on the booth. “He did it last time.”

The walkie-talkie crackled on the table and Maddy flinched, jumping away from it.

“Was that for me?” The voice came through, a low hiss. “You know you already have my full attention.”

A new sound through the speaker, metal grating on metal, the sound of the rifle cocking. It cut out and the static took over again.Filled the room, filled Red’s head. But the cocking gun, it stayed somehow, working its way down into her bones. She could feel it, in the turn of her elbow and the bend of her knee.

“Fuck.” The shape of Oliver stood up, resting his closet door against the driver’s seat. “That should have worked. It doesn’t…that should have worked.”

A sigh from Reyna, because Red knew Maddy’s sighs and that wasn’t it. Reyna’s silhouette floated away from the windshield.

“He’s only going to shoot now if he sees one of us try to leave the RV, isn’t he?” she said, but Red couldn’t see her eyes and didn’t know who she was talking to.

“Again,” Simon said, his voice drawing closer in the darkness behind her. “I am not nominating myself for self-sacrificing duty.” He didn’t sound drunk anymore.

“Maybe you’re right,” Oliver replied, close enough now that Red could make out his face. Well, just the glint of his eyes and the glint of his teeth. “Maybe those first shots at the RV were just to scare us, but now that we know what this is about, what he wants, he’ll only shoot to stop one of us from getting away.”

The long-winded way of saying exactly what Reyna just had. Red wondered if he did that to her a lot.

“So, maybe…,” Maddy said, uncertainly, and Red could picture the look on her face, the exact pull in her eyes and the fold to her mouth. “Maybe we make it look like one of usisleaving the RV. That’s how we bait the shot.”

Oliver nodded his head. “Just what I was going to say. We make him think one of us is escaping out the door, enough to take the shot.”