Page 28 of Five Survive

The horn screamed, rupturing the quiet of just-past-midnight. One long note, then four short bursts.

“Maddy?” Red said. She didn’t like her standing so close to that bullet hole in the driver’s seat. On the other side, the shade over the smashed window swayed in the wind, like a silent threat from the outside world. No, not Maddy.

Maddy leaned the heel of her hand into the horn, as though she could make it louder that way.

“Maddy,” Arthur said, a tension in his jaw as he eyed the broken window. “Maybe we shouldn’t—”

Three loud beeps cut him off.

“Someone will hear!” Maddy shouted, determined. “Someone will—”

Red felt it more than she heard it. A rush of air to her right. The shade shuddering, dancing against its fixings, a new hole ripped through it.

Maddy screamed.

“No, Maddy!” Red screamed harder.

The small window on the driver’s side must have blown out, a clinking of broken glass as it cascaded out onto the road, out of sight.

There was a hole in the black curtain hanging across it, at the top, only a foot above Maddy’s head. But she still had a head, eyes blinking at them all. It had missed her.

“Are you hit?” Oliver bounded forward, dragging his sister back from the cockpit.

“No, I…no,” Maddy said, shaking her still-there head.

Red took her hand, held on to it. If Maddy had been standing up straight, or a few inches back…well, it didn’t bear thinking about. And Red was good at not thinking about things like that.

“He really didn’t like you doing that,” Simon said, another wet patch on his shirt, the glass empty as he placed it back on the counter.

“No, he did not,” Red agreed.

“Right, okay, everyone,” Oliver said, pushing Maddy down to sit on the booth. “New rule. No one does anything without checking with me first. Not one thing unless it has been discussed with the whole group, okay?” He looked around at each of them for confirmation.

Red nodded.

“I won’t even take a piss without preapproval,” Simon said,holding up his hands. Red should refill that glass for him. She wasn’t sure there was a worse time to be drunk than right now.

“Right.” Oliver pushed himself up, half sitting on the table as the others gathered around him. A determined set to his jaw, like he knew he was the only possible leader here. Twenty-one years old, prelaw, a sister and a girlfriend to protect, a mom who would soon be DA. “We’ve already lost two windows, which is not good news. So, the first thing I want us to do is to board up those broken windows, for extra protection.”

“With what?” Reyna asked, shrugging her empty arms.

“We must have something. Everyone, check around the RV and in your bags and suitcases. Look for any resources we can use and bring them back to this table.”

“Resources?” Arthur asked.

“Things to help us survive. Something to cover the windows. Anything that could be used as first aid. Or as a weapon.”

“A weapon?” Simon snorted. “Yeah, that sniper won’t know what’s hit him when I slowly charge at him with my Gillette razor.”

Oliver ignored him. “Now. Five minutes, guys.”

No one protested, shuffling away from the table in various directions, knees bent, keeping their heads low. Simon and Arthur headed toward their bunk beds—Simon on the bottom, Arthur on top—and the bags they’d dumped there this morning. Oliver and Reyna pushed past them, drawing to a stop outside the closed bedroom door. The queen-sized bed beyond it, where they were supposed to be sleeping tonight. Red wasn’t sure anyone would be sleeping tonight.

“The window at the back is still exposed,” Oliver said to Reyna. “You crawl into the room, take cover against the back wall and lower the shade. I’ll hit the lights and close the door so the sniper can’t seeanything.”

He wasn’t speaking to her in that soft voice anymore. But that was the first rule of leadership, wasn’t it: delegation. Still, Red couldn’t believe he hadn’t asked her or Arthur or Simon to cover the window for them instead, or gone ahead and been the hero himself. Reyna stared back at Oliver, like she couldn’t believe it either.

“Fine.” She swallowed.

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