Survive the Night by Riley Sager
INT. VOLVO—NIGHT
Four years.
That’s how long it’s been since Charlie sat in the driver’s seat of a car.
Four long years without turning a steering wheel or tapping a brake.
That’s about to end right now.
It has to.
Charlie coughs. A sharp, stabbing hack that makes her double over. But she feels better afterward. Letting out that last bit of smoke and being in the car, where it’s calm and quiet, boosts her consciousness. She’s no longer dizzy, although the weakness remains.
But she can do this.
There’s nothing to be afraid of.
Driving a car is just like riding a bike. Her father told her that.
Charlie starts the car, flinching at the muffled roar created by the engine rumbling to life. At the same time, another deep rumble emanates from inside the lodge. Next to her, Robbie says, “Charlie, we need to get out of here.”
She touches her foot to the gas pedal, hitting it too hard. The Volvo lurches forward and smacks into the Cadillac’s rear bumper. The car shudders.
She slams down on the brakes, puts the Volvo in reverse, starts driving backward. Then it’s back to drive again. This time, when Charlie presses the gas pedal, it’s with more caution. The car eases forward, letting Charlie steer past the Cadillac and out from under the portico.
“We need to get further away,” Robbie says.
“I’m trying.”
Charlie keeps the car moving, rounding the circular drive in front of the lodge and heading toward the twisting road that will take them to the bottom of the waterfall. After that, Charlie has no idea where to go.
“I don’t know where we are.”
She hits the brakes again, puts the car in park, and reaches for the glove compartment in front of Robbie, searching for a map. The glove compartment door drops open, and a small box tumbles out, almost landing in Robbie’s lap.
He tries to catch it but is slowed by his gunshot wound. That leaves Charlie to grab it and pull it toward her.
It’s a jewelry box.
Black.
Hinged.
Big enough for a single engagement ring.
Heat spreads in Charlie’s chest. She’d suspected, back in the recesses of her mind, that Robbie might try to propose before she left. When he didn’t, she was more relieved than disappointed. Guilty and depressed and lost in her own world, she wasn’t ready for such a commitment.
But now—after this long, horrible night—Charlie wonders if she might have been wrong about that.
“Robbie, I—”
“Wait!” he says.
But Charlie’s already opening the box, excitement blooming in spite of herself, the hinge sounding out a light creak as she lifts the lid and things start rolling out of it like dice. That’s what Charlie thinks they are as she cups her hand to catch them.
Dice.
Three startlingly small dice the color of ivory.
It’s not until they’re rattling in her palm that she understands what they really are.
Teeth.
Angela Dunleavy’s tooth.
Taylor Morrison’s tooth.
Maddy’s tooth.
“Robbie, why do you have these?”
She knows the answer.
Robbie took them after killing Angela.
And Taylor.
And Maddy.
Staring at Robbie with her dead friend’s tooth still in her hand, Charlie feels something break loose inside her chest.
Her heart.
There’s now an empty space where it used to be. A void, inside of which the sound of her last heartbeat still echoes. Then it, too, is gone, and she feels nothing.
Charlie thinks it means she’s dying. And wouldn’t that be a relief? Surely better than having to endure this.
Yet she remains alive, her heart still gone but her head spinning and a stark ache in her gut that feels like the inside of her body trying to gnaw its way outside.
The nausea, when it comes, is too fast to stop. The bile rushes up and out, and soon Charlie is bent forward, vomit dripping off the steering wheel.
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and says, “Why?”
Charlie says it softly. Barely a mumble. So soft she’s not sure Robbie even heard her. So she says it again, shouting this time, the word smacking off the window and echoing through the entire car.
“Why?”
Robbie says nothing. He simply stares into the open glove compartment, looking at something else inside that Charlie had missed until that moment.
A pair of pliers.
Dried blood stains their tip.
Seeing it conjures an image of that night outside the bar. Robbie approaching Maddy, who smiles because she recognizes a friendly face. He comes in close, his head lowered, hand cupped around her lighter. Seeing it is so terrible Charlie has to close her eyes and shake her head to make it go away.
“I can’t believe I didn’t know it was you,” she says, still shocked and nauseous and waiting for her missing heart to finally stop its stubborn beating. “Did you know I was there? That I saw you?”
“Not until later,” Robbie says, as if that will make it easier for her to bear. “But by then I knew that you also hadn’t really seen me. That something else was going on in that head of yours.”
Charlie drops the teeth back into jewelry box and snaps the lid shut, unable to look at them any longer. The box itself slips from her hands as she wails, “Why Maddy?”
“Because she was too brash,” Robbie says, spitting out the last word like it’s a curse. “Always loud. Always demanding attention.”
“Is that why you killed the others, too?” she says. “Because they were too loud? Too brash?”
“No. Because they thought they were special. They thought they deserved the attention they were constantly begging for. And they’re not special, Charlie. I’ve been waiting a year for you to figure it out. Most people are stupid and useless and pathetic. And those deluded enough to think they aren’t deserve whatever punishment they get.”
Charlie recoils against the driver’s-side door, terrified. “You’re sick.”
“No,” Robbie says. “I truly am special. As are you. Remember the night we met? In the library?”
Of course Charlie remembers. It was her own personal romantic comedy, which means it was likely different from how she remembers it. Now she looks at Robbie, trying to see if she recognizes any part of the man she encountered that night.
She can’t.
He’s a complete stranger to her now.
“I thought I was going to kill you that night,” Robbie says. “Sitting with you at the library, then the diner, then walking you home. The whole time I kept thinking about what it was going to feel like to kill you.”
The matter-of-fact way he says it feels like a punch to Charlie’s solar plexus. For a few seconds, she can barely breathe.
“Why didn’t you?” she says.
“Because there was something about you I was drawn to. You were so—”
“Innocent?”
Robbie shakes his head. “Clueless. You watch your movies and you think that makes you smart. Like you know the way the world works. But all it’s done is warp your brain. You have no idea what the world is like.”
He’s wrong about that.
Charlie knows what the world is like.
Parents leave in the morning and never come back.
You fight with your best friend and tell her to fuck off and then have to live with knowing that’s the last thing you ever said to her, when what you really should have done is thanked her for being by your side and understanding you and loving you for who you are.
After seeing too much of this senseless, brutal, cruel world—far too much for someone her age—Charlie chose to retreat into other worlds. Ones that can’t hurt her.
Life has failed her time and time again.
The movies have never let her down.
“But then there was a moment at the diner when you completely tuned out—just for a minute. That’s when I knew you were different from the others. Special. Like me.”
“I’m nothing like you,” Charlie says, spitting the words.
Something takes hold of her.
Rage.
The same kind Marge had talked about. White-hot and seething.
It’s the kind of rage that makes Charlie, like Marge before her, want to do unthinkable things. The only difference is that Marge had directed it at the wrong person.
Now Charlie has a chance to do it right.
She shifts the car into drive and lets it start to roll.
“What are you doing?” Robbie says.
“Driving.”
“Where?”
“Away from here.”
Charlie glances in the rearview mirror. Sitting in the back seat, right behind Robbie, is her father.
“Remember, never drive more than five miles over the speed limit,” he says in that father-knows-best voice Charlie couldn’t stand when he was alive but misses like crazy now. “Cops won’t bother you. Not for that.”
Her father pauses, locking eyes with Charlie in the rearview mirror.
“But sometimes,” he says, “sometimes your only choice is to drive like hell.”
Charlie nods, even though her father’s not really in the back seat. Even if it was just a movie in her mind, it’s still good advice.
As her father’s voice echoes in her head, Charlie doesn’t just press down on the gas pedal.
She floors it.
