Survive the Night by Riley Sager
INT. VOLVO—NIGHT
The Volvo takes off down the winding drive like a bottle rocket, its rear tires squealing on the blacktop.
When the car nears the first turn, Charlie doesn’t tap the brakes. Instead, she lets the car keep picking up speed on the approach before cutting the wheel to the left at the last possible moment.
The Volvo fishtails around the bend before regaining a grip on the road as it straightens.
“Slow down,” Robbie says.
He reaches for the steering wheel with his left hand, getting the briefest of grips before Charlie slaps it away.
“Charlie, slow down.”
They reach another sharp turn, and Charlie does the same as before, jerking the wheel, sliding through it, on the thinnest edge of control.
The pliers slide from the glove compartment and plink to the floor.
It distracts Charlie just enough for Robbie to lunge for the steering wheel again. This time, he grabs it tight, giving it a pull. The car almost jerks off the road.
Charlie lets go of the wheel with her right hand and swings at Robbie, her knuckles connecting with his cheek and whipping his head sideways.
“Fuck you,” she says.
The Volvo approaches a third turn. The one with the stone wall close to the waterfall. They come in fast, screaming around the turn, the roar of falling water all around them. Charlie cuts the wheel a second too late and the driver’s side of the Volvo scrapes the wall, grinding against the stone wall. Sparks spray past Charlie’s window.
In the passenger seat, Robbie yells, “Are you trying to kill me?”
“Isn’t that your plan for me?” Charlie says.
Although the Volvo is now flying down a straight section of road, up ahead is the last bend before they reach the bridge. Instead of slowing down, Charlie hits the gas.
“Tell me, Robbie,” she says. “Your plan now is to kill me, right? Because I know who you are. I know what you’ve done.”
The turn is closer now.
A hundred yards away.
Just beyond it is a cluster of trees so dense that the car will be smashed to bits if it crashes into them.
“Admit it,” Charlie tells Robbie.
The turn sits before them.
Now fifty yards away.
Now twenty-five.
“Admit it!” Charlie shouts. “Or I’m going to drive this car straight into those fucking trees!”
“Yes!” Robbie yelps, gripping the dashboard for support as Charlie hits the brakes and, with a death grip on the wheel, skids the Volvo around the corner.
“Yes what?” she says.
“I’m going to kill you.”
Charlie slams the brakes. The Volvo slides to a stop.
When Robbie speaks, his voice is unnervingly calm.
“I don’t want to do it, Charlie,” he says. “I need you to know that. I love you. You might not believe me, but it’s true. And I’m sorry for what I have to do to you. We could have had a wonderful life together.”
Charlie can’t bear to look at him, so she stares out the windshield. Just down the road is the bridge at the base of the waterfall. A short rickety span crossing the ravine. Beneath it, black water churns. It’s nothing compared to the fear rushing through Charlie’s body. Her terror is twice as dark and twice as volatile.
She only thought she was scared earlier. Leaving the diner with Josh. Being tortured by Marge. That wasn’t even a fraction of the fear she feels now.
Because now she wants to live.
Really live.
The way Maddy had lived. The way she had tried to get Charlie to do. Maddy saw what Charlie couldn’t: that she had spent the past four years being an audience member to her own sad existence.
Movies are my life, she had told Josh. It should have been the other way around. Charlie should have been able to say, My life is like the movies.
And now that she realizes it, she’s terrified Robbie is going to take away her chance to do something about it.
With her fists around the steering wheel and the car humming under her, Charlie stares at the bridge over the ravine. In that moment, she understands that she’s in charge of her own destiny.
She’s Ellen Ripley.
She’s Laurie Strode.
She’s Clarice Starling.
She’s Thelma and Louise, kicking up dirt in a final fuck-you as they choose freedom over life.
Their choice. No one else’s.
Now it’s Charlie doing the choosing. Robbie can’t be the one in control.
She reaches for her seat belt, pulls it across her chest, snaps it into place.
She takes a deep breath.
Then she slams the gas pedal against the floor.
The Volvo streaks toward the bridge, shuddering, out of control. Tires screaming. Engine screaming. Robbie screaming. All of it blending into a single scream that’s part human, part machine.
The car thumps onto the bridge, roaring over it.
Halfway across, Charlie yanks the wheel to the right and the Volvo careens toward the bridge’s wooden railing.
A second later, the car smashes through it.
Wood scrapes against metal. An earsplitting friction.
The bridge beneath the tires disappears and the car seems to take flight, although Charlie knows that what it’s really doing is falling.
Arcing over off the bridge and crashing toward the water below.
Charlie lurches forward, her chest pinned against the steering wheel a moment before she’s jerked backward by the seat belt.
Robbie, on the other hand, is thrown like a rag doll against the dashboard.
When the car hits the water, Charlie’s head snaps against the back of the seat. The impact sends a shudder through her body. And as a rush of water engulfs the car, a wave of darkness does the same to Charlie until both she and the car sink beneath it.
