Page 88 of Five Survive

“She’s not going anywhere,” Arthur said, flanking Oliver from the other side, glasses flashing under the lights.

Oliver ignored them both, turning back to Red. “Red, listen to me,” he said, softening his voice, but it wasn’t soft at all, it was stiff, barbs and thorns at the end of his words. “You need to accept what’s happening here. There’s nothing the rest of us can do. You know it, don’t you, you know you have to leave the RV to save the rest of us.To protect Maddy. She’s your best friend, isn’t she? You’ve known each other all your lives. Save her.” His chin moved up and down with those final two words, drilling them home.

“Oliver, no!” Maddy cried. “Stop it, please. Just stop.”

“You’re all thinking it too.” Oliver cast his eyes at all of them, skipping over Red because she didn’t matter anymore. There were still two sides to the RV, but this time it was Red against everyone else. A team of one. “Don’t pretend. None of us want to die.”

“None of us want to throw Red out,” Arthur said in answer, and he must have learned it from Oliver, sharpening his words to a point. Oliver even winced, took one step away.

“I know you’re all protesting because you have to in front of Red,” he said. “Because you care about her.” His eyes spun, another circuit of the RV. “That’s why we’re going to put it to a vote. A blind ballot, so you can vote whichever way you want and no one else will ever know.”

The air had grown thorns now too, infected by Oliver’s words, pricking at Red’s skin, stabbing at the surface of her eyes. It wasn’t warm now, it was hot, sweat pooling along the line of her lip, but there was a chill at the back of her neck, hairs rising. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to die.

“A vote?” Reyna asked, shattering the silence, eyebrows pulling together across her forehead.

The static hissed, retreating into Red’s cupped hands.

Oliver nodded, just once, that was enough. “A vote on whether Red stays, or she goes.”

Vote.

Red’s mind did that thing again, a word so simple and mundane, yet it lost all its meaning on the trip across her head, unrecognizable out the other side, warped and misshapen. How did you even say it again? What did it mean? Did it rhyme withnote,andwrote,andquote? All silly little words, when you thought about them, because thinking about them was easier than thinking about what this vote meant.

“No.” Arthur shook his head, teeth bared in horror. “We’re not doing that. We’re not voting on whether Red gets to live or die. Are you sick?”

“It’s the fairest way,” Oliver brushed him off. “That’s how democracy works, how law and justice work. We each get a vote and the majority wins. That’s fair.”

Was that fair? Maybe Red’s understanding of it was skewed, because it didn’t seem fair at all, her life in the hands of five other people. But when had life ever been fair to her, why should death be any different?

“We can’t do this,” Reyna said quietly, hands disappearing up her sleeves. “This can’t be real. We can’t do this.”

“Does Red stay, or does she go?” Oliver reiterated, setting the rules, the boundaries, the two sides. Stay or go, but really he should have phrased it asDoes Red stay, or does she die?because that was what they were deciding here, wasn’t it? If she left the RV, that red dot was going to find her and she was going to die. That man outside with the rifle was here to kill her, kill her to stop her from testifying. The plan wasn’t worth all this after all, was it?

“And you’ll listen?” Reyna asked Oliver, her eyes sharpening as they met his. “You’ll respect the results of the vote? That’s the only way it’s fair.”

“Obviously,” Oliver spat, scrunching his face. “That’s the reason we’re voting, Reyna.” He said her name differently now, cold, doubtful, like it was only half remembered.

“Does Red get a vote?” Maddy asked, her voice thick as she held back tears. Red knew that voice, knew all of Maddy’s voices, but still not that strange look in her eyes from before.

“Of course Red doesn’t get a vote.” He shook his head, like that would be ridiculous.

“I’m not doing this.” Arthur folded his arms, gaze hard and disbelieving as he shot it at the back of Oliver’s head. “I’m not.”

“Then you forfeit your vote,” Oliver said without looking back at him. “Maddy.” He snapped his fingers in her direction. “Do you have any more pens?”

“Um, yeah, I do,” she said, wiping her nose as she forced her feet back toward the dining table and the booth. Her purse was tucked just underneath the table, where she’d been sitting when she and Red played Twenty Questions a hundred lifetimes ago. Maddy bent down and rustled inside. She came back up with four ballpoint pens clenched in her hand. She dropped them down, plastic scatteringover plastic, beside the pen already on the table. “Five,” she said, the word hollow in her mouth.

“Good, well done, Maddy,” he said, stifling a yawn with his fist.

“This is crazy,” Simon was saying to himself. “This is crazy.”

Red hugged the walkie-talkie to her chest, the vibrations of the static working against her hummingbird heart as Oliver approached.

“Red, you go stand in the kitchen,” he said, giving her a push on the shoulder. “You can’t see anyone’s papers while they’re voting.”

Of course not, that wouldn’t befair,would it? But she did, she moved, her legs following Oliver’s instruction before her mind had fully agreed to it.

She passed Simon and Reyna on the way to the kitchen counter, gliding past their downcast eyes. She already felt separate, somehow, her against them, even though it was Oliver splitting the RV up, no one else. She passed Arthur and he didn’t avoid her, he returned the frightened look in her eyes.

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