Page 117 of Five Survive

But the woman wasn’t looking at Red. She was looking at the dark shape of the walkie-talkie in Red’s hand.

It must have been instinct for her too.

Her gun flashed. A tiny firework.

Something stung Red in the chest, breaking through.

She stumbled back.

Another clap, another firework in the officer’s hands. A second punch, lower down, through her ribs.

Red blinked.

Her hand cradled her chest, pressed against her dark red shirt. Her fingers came away and the red came away with them.

Then the pain, a wet kind of pain, gathering around the two holes in her chest. But it didn’t stay long, a cool numbness taking over as Red’s legs buckled beneath her.

She fell back, onto the road. Legs out straight, arms beside her. A gurgling sound as she tried to breathe.

A beep. A hiss of static.

“Shots fired,” a woman’s voice said through the fuzz, panicked and high. “Ten-thirty-three. Ten-thirty-three. Requesting immediate backup!”

“RED, NO!”

Arthur was screaming, his voice strange and far away, but he must be close, Red could feel that.

“Stay back!” the officer shouted. “Don’t come any closer.”

Another gunshot.

The sound of footsteps pounding the road, running away.

“One of them is running. Ten-thirty-three. Requesting immediate backup. We have fatalities. My god. What happened here?”

Red blinked up at the sky.

Dawn was breaking, pale yellows and pinks dissolving the darkness, scaring the night away. But the stars remained, they stayed, blinking back at her.

Red couldn’t feel it, the blood burbling out of her chest, nor the road, dirt and gravel hard against her back. She didn’t feel anything, except the cool plastic of the walkie-talkie, still gripped in her hand.

She shifted her head, told her eyes to look at it. It was undone, unfinished, broken. But she blinked once, twice, and the walkie-talkie came alive, the green screen lighting up, a glow against her face.

A hiss of static that wasn’t there, because it was broken, but it was, she could hear it against her ears. That white noise. Home.

The walkie-talkie wasn’t on, except it was, and it was tuned to channel six.

Their channel.

Red couldn’t move, she couldn’t move to press her thumb against the push-to-talk button, but she didn’t need to. Because her own voice was coming through the speaker, Tiny Red, from a decade ago, hiding behind the door as she played Cops and Cops.

“Attention, attention,” Red said, voice low and serious. “Officer down. Officer down, requesting backup. Over.”

The static hissed, filling up her head.

And then she heard it, clearly, for the first time in years.

Mom’s voice.

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