Page 113 of Five Survive

“Shit,” Simon hissed. “I was just thinking, if you had a way of communicating with him, you could tell him to stand down, that we’reall getting in the truck. Oliver, would you let us leave that way? If Arthur had to come with us, before he could tell his brother everything.Then you could think about your plan while we’re on the way, getting Maddy to a hospital to save her.”

Oliver narrowed his eyes, thinking it through. He raised his chin, nodding his head just once. He would allow that.

“But I don’t have a way of communicating with him,” Arthur said. “I could go outside and look for the remote but I’d never find it in the dark.”

“No.” Oliver’s chin dropped again, eyes flashing. “Arthur does not leave this RV.”

“Oliver!” Reyna was crying now, her arms shaking at the elbows. “We have to save Maddy!”

Maddy’s eyes were closed now, they hadn’t reopened since the last time Red checked.

“Maddy?” Red shrieked, stepping toward her, shoes cracking against something.

“I’m awake,” Maddy croaked, and her lips were so pale, blending in with the rest of her face. “I’m awake,” she said. “Just resting them, I promise.”

The knot loosened in Red’s chest, but not all the way. Maddy was dying, Red was going to watch her die if she couldn’t get her out of here. Maddy knew, she’d known all along what happened to Red’s mom, but she was her best friend, her Maddy, and Red had had enough of guilt and blame. She had to save her.

Her eyes trailed over to Oliver. Could they overpower him? Could she, Simon and Arthur get that knife out of his hands, restrain him? The knife flashed in the overhead lights, pulling in her eyes. It was so sharp. So jagged and sharp. That knife could make someone bleed out too, another person dying on the floor beside Maddy. And Redhad no doubt that Oliver would use it; he was backed up against a wall, fight or flight, and she knew which choice he would make there.

Oliver Lavoy was the danger, he had been all along. And now he wouldn’t let them save Maddy, not unless they found a way to communicate with the sniper, here, from the RV.

Red shifted and something crunched beneath her shoe, Maddy’s shoe. She looked down. It was the walkie-talkie. Smashed to pieces. Plastic and metal and wires. Red’s eyes narrowed, skipping over the pieces, slotting them together in her mind, fixing them. Her job, her responsibility.

“I can do it,” she said, and she knew she could now, no room for doubt, no time for it. She’d done it so many times before, it was etched there, in the pathways of her mind. Useless, like a lot of things in her head, but not now, right now it might save a life.

“What?” Simon asked her.

“I can rebuild the walkie-talkie.”

It was a puzzle, that was all it was. Not like Don’s head out there, one Red could fix, one she’d done and undone before. For Mom. Now she could do it for Maddy. She bent to collect them, the pieces of the broken walkie-talkie, dropping them into her open hand.

She took the bundle over to the dining table, passing Oliver as she did. He let her by, but his grip tightened on the handle of the knife as she did. There was heat around him, following him, the smell of stale sweat. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck as she got too close, telling her to stay away.

Red let the pieces slide out of her hands, onto the table, scattering there. She studied them.

“Can you do it?” Simon asked her.

Red breathed out. “If anything’s broken, I could take out the RV’s stereo system, the radio. They have a lot of the same parts.”

She leaned closer to the disassembled walkie-talkie. The green circuit board was cracked down the middle, still holding itself together at the soldered connections. There was a chunk missing from the black casing at the front, by the speaker grille, but that didn’t matter. The plastic disk of the speaker was shattered, unfixable, the part that turned radio waves into voices. But that was okay, Red couldmake a new one out of the paper Maddy had brought. Nothing else looked broken, not the capacitors, or the amplifiers, the tuner, the transformers, not the magnet or the coil inside the broken speaker. She just had to put it all back together again, remake the speaker, reconnect the wires.

She nodded. “I can do it.”

“Do you need the stereo?” Arthur asked her, moving toward the cockpit.

“No.” She swallowed. “I can do it without.”

Red sidled onto the booth and along it, coming to sit beside the window. The same place she’d been sitting almost eight hours ago, staring down at the tiny cars outside on the highway, Maddy chattering opposite her.

“Stay awake, Maddy.” Reyna’s voice floated over. “You have to stay awake.”

“I am.” The words rasped out of Maddy’s throat. Dry and frail. That sound scared Red more than the screams had. They were losing her.

“Simon, get her some water.”

“Sure.” He ran to the kitchen.

Red reached across the table, for the scissors, strands of Maddy’s light brown hair still clinging to the blades. She pulled a fresh sheet of paper from the pad and sliced into it, moving the paper around as she cut a complete circle, about the same size as the broken plastic part of the speaker.

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