Page 12 of Five Survive

“Pretty sure it’s a dead end,” Oliver decided, though none of them could see. “Reyna, it’s wide enough here, you can turn around and head back.”

“Okay.” Reyna gave in, pushing her foot against the brake.

The RV slowed, rattling against the barely-there road.

A sharper sound, like a crack, splitting the night in half.

“What was that?” Simon asked.

The RV hitched, drooping down at the front left side, Red stumbling into Arthur as it did.

“Fuck,” Oliver said, staring at Reyna over there on the sunken side, slamming his fist into the dashboard. “I think we just punctured a tire.”

11:00p.m.

Reyna turned the engine off and the night grew too quiet, only the sounds their own bodies made, Red’s breath catching in her throat.

“I’ll go first.” Oliver stood up, pushing past the others as he walked over to the door of the RV, just beyond the sofa bed. His steps were heavy, shaking the ground. He opened the door and let the outsidein.

A wash of cool night air hit Red in the face as she watched Oliver take the four steps down to the outside world.

Maddy went next, sliding out of the booth to follow her brother.

“You okay?” Arthur asked Reyna, who was standing up from behind the wheel, stretching out her neck.

“Yeah,” she said, the slightest tremor in her voice. “I don’t understand what we could have hit. There’s nothing on the road.”

“Let’s go see.” Arthur gave her a kind smile and then turned, heading out the door, Simon trailing closely behind him, slightly less steady on the steep steps.

“After you,” Red said, gesturing Reyna ahead of her. “I’m sure it’ll be okay.”

“It will be all my fault somehow,” Reyna said to her, a secret flash from her deep brown eyes. “Just you watch.”

Was she talking about Oliver? Red knew that feeling, but she didn’t know Reyna had felt it too. The two of them, Lavoy-adjacent but not Lavoys and didn’t they know it. Except lots of things were actually Red’s fault. This, even.

“No, it’ll be fine,” Red said as she scooped up her phone from the table. Oliver couldn’t blame Reyna; they were happy, they were perfect, small touches and soft voices.

Reyna’s shoes tapped down the stairs and then it was Red’s turn, her legs aching from sitting down too long as she took each step. One, two, three, four, and by the end, as her sneakers scraped against the dirt road, she was wondering whether Reyna had seen a dead body yet, as part of her studies. Maybe she could ask if they still looked like the people they once were. Or whether it was true that blood was sometimes blue, not always red.

Red followed Reyna, who followed Simon, walking around the front side of the RV, into the too-bright light of the high beams, dust from the road floating upward through them.

“Oh fuck!” came Oliver’s voice. He was already there, crouched down beside the wheel, lighting it up with the flashlight on Reyna’s phone. “Definitely punctured.”

“You sure?” Arthur asked as he stepped out of the blinding high beam.

“Yes I’m sure. I was actually downplaying it: there’s a huge fucking hole and a giant tear in the tire.”

“What from?” Maddy said, crouching down beside Oliver as Red came around the corner of the RV and saw the tire for herself. There was a large split in the rubber, about the size of her hand, the two sides peeling away from each other. No air at all, the bottom pooling out under the weight of the RV. Thirty-one feet long, but how heavy?

“I don’t know,” Oliver said, searching around with the flashlight, running his hand carefully over the road. “Maybe there’s glass here, or a sharp rock. Maybe a nail. Reyna?” He pivoted to look up at her, shining the light in her eyes. “You didn’t see anything?”

“No, I didn’t see anything,” she replied, exchanging a quick look with Red.

“Well, you must have driven over something. Why weren’t you looking?” Oliver returned to his search, a harder edge to his voice.

Reyna had been right. Well, she did know Oliver better than Reddid.

“None of us saw anything. It’s pitch-black outside.” That was Red’s best attempt at helping, but the small sideways smile on Reyna’s face showed that it was appreciated all the same.

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