Page 68 of Five Survive

“I don’t think we’d make it,” Maddy replied. “At least not all of us. He shot them both so fast.”

Simon went on, like he hadn’t heard her. “The old man had the keys in his hand, I saw before…I don’t know if I’ve ever seen blood like that before. Too much. I didn’t know, I didn’t think it would look like that.” His hands were shaking, pressed against the glass. “It doesn’t look real.”

Was he in shock? Maybe Simon needed to go back there and scream into the same pillow, trap it in there with hers. Red walked around the others to the front of the RV, coming to stand beside Simon, her arm brushing against his.

He flinched, and Red could now see why.

Out through the windshield, glowing in the white headlights, was Joyce. Right in front of the hood of the truck. She’d almost made it to the open passenger door. Almost. Simon was right, she didn’t look real, folded there like an unfinished mannequin, one hand open and reaching. Her head undone, leaking out and soaking into the road. It didn’t look red from here, the blood, it looked almost black.

That was what Mom must have looked like, right? Inside that wooden box draped in the Star-Spangled Banner. Had the bullets gone all the way through, like with Joyce? Was part of her face missing too?

The sound of static grew behind her as Oliver approached. He rested the walkie-talkie on Red’s shoulder, wordlessly passing it back to her. Hers, her responsibility, keeper of the voice. Her fingers closed aroundit.

Oliver stared out the windshield too. “Maddy’s right,” he said. “Wewouldn’t all make it. He’d be able to take at least two or three of us out before we got the truck moving.”

And there were three people Oliver cared about in this RV, so that was a risk too far.

“Especially as the sniper somehow seems to know exactly what we’re doing every time,” Oliver was still talking. “I can’t work out how he knew about the note. There was no way he could even see it, let alone see what was written on it. He…”

Oliver’s head whipped around, eyes overstretched, too much white showing above and below. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then stopped himself, gritting his teeth.

“What?” Red asked him.

He shushed her, head pivoting on his wide shoulders as he looked around the RV.

He charged forward, toward the dining table, grabbing his phone from the surface. He unlocked it, tapped at the screen.

Red walked over, Simon on her heels.

“What are you—?” Reyna began, silenced by the deadly look in Oliver’s eyes.

They gathered around him, and Red leaned over to see what he was doing.

On the screen, on a fresh page in the Notes app, Oliver was typing.

There’s only one way he could have known about—

“Fuck this,” Oliver said, irritated, swiping out of Notes, the phone’s fault for taking too long, not his. Oliver’s eyes flicked to the bottom of his screen, and his thumb followed, pressing onto the music app.

“Oliver, what are you doing?” Maddy asked.

“Wait,” he told her, scrolling through the screen, finger landing on a random playlist.Christmas Songs,it said. Oliver pressed play on the first song and dragged the volume bar right to the top.

The song began, choral voices singingah,and a high-pitched strum on the guitar. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” In April. Deafening as Oliver held the phone in the middle of the group, speaker facing up. He beckoned them all closer.

Red stepped in, shoulders pressing into Reyna and Simon. The drumbeat of the song ticking half as slow as her heart.

Oliver flashed his eyes at them all.

He started to speak, not loudly, only just audible over the sound of the music. Red had to concentrate, but now she was thinking about the lyrics, and dancing around the tree with Mom before there were two holes in her head.

“There’s only one way he could have known about the note,” Oliver said, looking at each of them in turn. “The window, yeah fine, his guy on the other side could have seen us climbing out and told him about it. But not the note. There’s no way either of them could have seen. So, there’s only one way he knew.” He paused.

Everyone dancing merrily in the new old-fashioned way.

The saxophone burst in, too loud, screaming in Red’s ears.

“Heheardus talking about it,” Oliver said. “Because the RV isbugged.”

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