Page 55 of Five Survive

A pinprick flash of white light in the dark background of her screen. Small, tiny. Like the little firework in her head. She draggedback through the frames again to play it one more time. There, a quick burst of light, just right of the center.

The muscles in Oliver’s mouth twitched.

“Which way were you pointing the phone, Red? Exactly.” His eyes fixed on hers, so hard that she had to look away, and yet she could still feel them when she blinked, like they’d marked her.

“This way.” Red pointed at a diagonal, out to the right toward the back of the RV.

Oliver straightened up, his eyes following the direction of her arm.

“So, he’s over there still,” he said. “Hard to say, but maybe a few hundred yards that way. Likely where he was when he first shot out the tires and the windows. He must have gone back to the same position after planting the walkie-talkie.”

The walkie-talkie fizzed, hissing in silent agreement. Red was surprised, almost, that the sniper had nothing to say after what just happened.

The muscles in Oliver’s mouth shuddered again, but this time they broke into a wide smile that cracked his face in two.

“We did it, guys,” he said, looking around. The others didn’t react. “I said we did it!” Oliver laughed, hitting Red on the shoulder, moving to do the same to Arthur. Arthur still didn’t look right, eyes unfocused, picking at the pocket of his jeans. He was a fiddler, like Red, but maybe only when he was nervous, scared. Simon still didn’t look right either, puddled there on the floor, legs outstretched among large shards of broken mirror, staring up at the ceiling, breath heavy in his chest.

“Come on, guys! We did it, we’re getting out of here. Alive!”

Oliver pulled Reyna into a hug, burying a kiss in her thick black hair. He wrapped an arm around Maddy and then offered a hand to Simon, to pull him up off the floor.

Maddy was smiling now, hugging her own arms.

“Woohoo, spring break!” Simon said again, stumbling to his feet.

Oliver stood in the middle, grinning at them all.

Delegate. Motivate. Celebrate.All the qualities of a natural leader, which made Red more than an unnatural one.

Oliver clapped his hands, somewhere between an applause and to get their attention. He already had it. “Right, the sniper is back that way.” He pointed. “So, if we climb out the driver’s-side window and run in that direction”—he pointed with the other arm, the exact opposite way—“the sniper won’t see us, because the RV will cover us. He won’t even know we’re gone. He won’t. And even if he does, he’s not going to be able to catch us. We have a head start, and he’s carrying a rifle.”

“You can’t shoot a rifle like that while running,” Red agreed.

“We did it,” Reyna said now, nodding, like she could only believe it if she heard it out of her own mouth.

“Fuck yeah we did!” Simon answered, a fist raised as pieces of mirror crunched under his shoes. “Although that’s seven years’ bad luck, isn’t it? Broken mirror?”

“Well, it’s good luck for us now,” Maddy replied.

Behind Simon, there was a splintered hole in the wooden base of the dining booth, where the bullet had struck through after the mirror, probably out the other side of the RV back into the dark night. Through glass and wood and wood and plastic and metal. Skin and bone would be nothing in its path.

“Right then.” Oliver rubbed his hands together, the sound grating. “Let’s get the fuck out of this RV! Don’t bring anything with you. Just essentials. Just your phones. Hopefully we will run into some service at some point so we can call the police to catch this fucker before he runs off. And call our mom to let her know we escaped.”

Would Catherine have given up the name they were looking for by now, Red wondered, mind already leaving the RV, skipping away to the next part.

Her ears fizzed, but was that just the static?

“Shall we take this?” she asked, stepping across the broken mirror to grab the walkie-talkie from the table.

“No, leave it,” Oliver said, looking over his shoulder. “We don’t need it. We’re not playing his game anymore.”

He walked over to the driver’s seat, leaning across it to rip off the duct tape securing Red’s gutted suitcase across the window. With one hard jerk he pulled it all down, dropping it in the footwell. He ripped the curtains aside, baring the pitch black of outside, waiting for them with open arms.

One windowpane was already open, smashed to pieces, but Oliver flicked the catch and slid the other panel across, uncovering that side instead. Easier to climb out of when standing on the driver’s seat.

“Will be a bit tight,” Oliver observed, rolling his shoulders. “Everyone got their phones? Yes? Okay.” He stood up on the driver’s seat, ducking as his head grazed the ceiling. “I’ll go first. Then Maddy, then Reyna, Red, Arthur, Simon.” He looked at them in order. “Get in line, get ready. No flashlights on yet, we don’t want him to be able to see anything. You drop down and just run as fast as you can in this direction.” He pointed out beyond the driver’s-side mirror. “Through the trees there. Keep going, don’t wait for anyone. We’ll regroup on that road and then get the fuck out of here. Got it?”

Red nodded, taking her place between Reyna and Arthur, Maddy shuffling to the front. Lavoys first.

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