Page 32 of Five Survive

She left the threat empty and dangling.

There was a flush in Arthur’s face again, a warm pink. He swiped at his cheeks like he could wipe the blush away, hide it from her.Well, that was fine if he was embarrassed; he’d probably seen her old unicorn underwear anyway.

Arthur busied himself pulling a length of duct tape free and cutting it loose with Maddy’s scissors, and Red positioned the unfolded suitcase in front of the curtain, over the gaping hole into the wide-open nothing out there. In the dark, where the red dot lived.

Arthur rested one knee on the driver’s seat and pressed the tape along the top edge of the suitcase, cutting off more to secure it.

“Are you okay?” he asked her, moving on to the next side, his hand accidentally brushing past hers.

A tiny firework in her head. What a stupid little fucking firework. Maddy should tell it that now was not the time or place.

“Everything will be okay,” Red said, staring forward, losing her eyes to the minute details of the suitcase fabric, crossing over and under, so she didn’t think about how close Arthur’s face was to hers right now, both leaning across the driver’s seat.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I don’t know,” she answered, honestly for once. “Are you supposed to be okay when someone’s trying to kill you?”

“I don’t think you are.” And, somehow, Arthur’s voice did away with the hard syllables, smoothing them over, gliding one to the next. Someone else might call it mumbling, but Red wasn’t someone else. Arthur pressed a long piece of tape down across the width of the suitcase and onto the part of the window that had survived, withdrawing his hand quickly from the curtain and back into the safety of the RV.

A sound interrupted them. The flushing of a toilet. Red checked over her shoulder to see Oliver closing the bathroom door behind him.

“Right, everyone, over here,” he called, another loud clap. Red flinched. Someone should tell him to stop doing that.

“Go on,” Arthur said to her. Had he noticed the flinch? As longas he hadn’t noticed the firework. “I can finish up here.” He splayed his hand against the suitcase, taking its remaining weight from her, ready with the last few pieces of tape.

“Thanks.” She stepped back, grabbing the scissors and the roll of duct tape, taking them with her back to the dining table. Someone else had already replaced the knife.

Maddy was leaning against the refrigerator, and Red went to lean against her.

“Looks like Arthur is just finishing up with that window,” Oliver said, right as Arthur was done, wiping his hands off down the front of his jeans and walking over. The six of them, gathered in and around that tiny kitchen.

“Okay, now that we’ve secured the RV,” Oliver continued, though who could say how secure it really was, against that rifle. They couldn’t see outside anymore, the RV was their own little world, but a bullet could come in anywhere, through the wall and anyone in the way, out the other side before they even had a chance to scream. That didn’t feel very safe, not as Red understood the word.

“Next, we need to work out what our plan is.”

“Plan?” Maddy asked.

“Yeah, so that we all get out of here. Alive,” he added, and with that one word, the air grew thick, a strange buzzing in Red’s ears as she did that thing where she tried to imagine what it would be like to be un-alive.

Reyna cleared her throat, and Red was grateful for the distraction. “Well, listen.” She glanced down at the time on her phone. “It’s been like twenty-five minutes now since he last shot at the RV. Maybe he’s…I don’t know, maybe he’s gone?” Her voice went up at the end, turning it into a question.

“What, you think he got bored and went home to jack off?” Simon said.

“Maybe.”

“Unless he’s waiting,” Maddy said.

“Waiting for what?” Reyna asked her.

“For us to think he’s gone, and to walk out the door right into his crosshairs,” she said, darkly.

“It is a fair point,” Oliver said, and Red wasn’t sure who he was siding with, until he drew closer to Reyna. “How do we know if he’s even still out there?”

He wasn’t going to make one of them go outside and check, was he? And what were the chances it would be either Red, Arthur or Simon he gave those instructions to? The expendables.

“I’m not volunteering to go see,” Simon said. He must have had a similar thought, still annoyed about the glass-sweeping.

There was that fizzing in Red’s ears again. Could anyone else hearit?

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