The Variables (17 page)

“You burned my book?” Ainsley cried. “You burned my book!” Her lips curled into a snarl. “Do you know what that book meant to me?”

The bigger person lifted a hand and drew up the stun gun, but Darla scrambled upward and grabbed the person’s wrists, diverting the attack. With his free hand, the man knocked Ainsley to the floor, and she hit her head on the carpet with a hollow thunk.

Still in a battle for the man’s stun gun, Darla felt her body seize again and fall to the floor, but this time the buzz was short-lived. She screamed in frustration and pounded an angry fist against the floor.

“Who are you?” Darla yelled. “We don’t care about you or your life here. You’ve caused more hurt to us than we have to you. We are peaceful people...”

“Is that so?” said a voice from beyond the shadows. From the floor, Darla couldn’t place where the sound was coming from. It was muffled: deep and breathy. “You attacked my children? And yet you say you mean us no harm?”

“Your
children
attacked us first,” Darla replied, scanning the room in an attempt to place the disembodied voice.

“You were armed.”

“Yeah, and with good reason apparently,” she continued. “My right to carry a gun does not mean I plan to shoot innocent people.”

“Ah,” the man replied from the shadows with a shade of impertinence. “You don’t intend to shoot
people
with your gun? Wasn’t that always the argument? Moot now, though, I think.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t for people. I said it wasn’t for
you
,” Darla replied. Her whole body ached. Ainsley had pushed herself against the wall, and drawn her knees up to her chest; she rested her chin and let her arms dangle. Her nose was bleeding, but she didn’t make a move to stop the slow roll of blood, and it dripped on to her pants, creating a polka-dot pattern against the denim.

Dean scooted himself forward and put his hands up in surrender. “We don’t care what you’re doing here. We don’t care, okay? We are on our way somewhere and time is of the essence.”

“We hear you,” the voice replied. “You’re not prisoners here. We have no ill will toward you, honest, but we’re not going to let you go until we have some answers. There aren’t many people left, you see. So it’s important to ascertain what kind of people you are. Where did you come from? Why are you alive? You wanted us to trust you, bring you into our home with open arms? And yet you’re sitting out there with guns. Where did you come from, and who do you work for? These are the things we must find out...are you aware of what the world looks like out there?”

“They’re cannibals,” Ainsley whispered from the corner. “They’re going to eat us.”

“We have no interest in eating you,” the man answered and he laughed. It was a shallow, swallowed laugh. “No, sweet girl,” Ainsley made a face at him, “until we know if you’re safe, we plan to stay very afraid of
you
.”

“Afraid of us?” Darla tried to peer forward, but she couldn’t see anything. “What are you talking about?”

“We’re alive because we’ve used precautions and we’ve stayed safe. Maybe you’re here to kill us. Maybe you just will kill us...there is so much we don’t know about the virus.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Darla couldn’t help but laugh. “You think we’re contagious? Is that the get-up?”

“Maybe you had poison gas with you,” the voice said. “We now know you don’t, so we’ll shed the protective layer, but what if you
had
? We don’t know who you are...who you work for...what you could do to us.”

“We didn’t strike first.” Darla scratched the top of her head. She couldn’t help but roll her eyes.

The man moved from the shadow to the light. He was in his late fifties with dark hair and male pattern baldness that left a halo of hair outlining his head and nothing more. His goatee was fully gray, and he wore a pair of thin wire-framed glasses. There was nothing scary or monstrous about his appearance.
 

“Wait, wait. You think we are part of the group responsible for the virus?” Dean asked.

“Why are
you
alive?” The man turned to Darla. His question wasn’t accusatory, only prodding. The suited attackers stayed quietly in front of them. Darla could smell their fear and exhaustion.

“Because I got lucky,” she said in a quiet voice. “Because I was in the right place at the right time.”

“And
you
?” He looked at Ainsley.

“Because I got
unlucky
,” she said. And she wiped her nose, the blood smearing across her cheek.

“And you...” he looked to Dean.

“By the grace of God,” Dean answered.
 

“I see,” the man answered. Then he added, “Well, I’m alive because I’ve been preparing for this day for a long time. And I’m cautious, protective, and resilient. I’m alive because I don’t extend a gracious welcome to everyone who camps out on my property, or
says
that they can be trusted blindly. I’m alive because this house is my sanctuary.” He paused. “Perhaps you want a tour?” When Darla didn’t answer, the man made a small hum. He turned to his kids and cleared his throat. “Shed the suits. Then tie them up and bring them along. We’ll show them the house, and then we’ll have dinner.”

Lou Hales, his twin son and daughter Lyle and Lindsey, and his wife Cricket led their prisoners throughout their barricaded home with swollen pride. Candles burned and flickered on the inside, but to anyone on the outside, the house would remain dark and vacant. Every window and door and crawlspace was outfitted with an alarm and a booby-trap. Every room had been turned into an apocalypse prepper’s dream: the house had water, food, clothes, weapons, backpacks equipped with battery-operated lights, an indoor garden, and a laundry room.

Before the virus was unleashed upon the unsuspecting world, Lou had anticipated a global collapse. His obsession alienated him from his colleagues and peers, and slowly began to grate on his neighbors as well. He had a bomb shelter in the backyard, a locked shed full of supplies, and a library of books that covered home remedies, botany, and alternate power. It was all he could talk about, all he thought about. And soon those closest to him discounted him as crazy, openly mocking his hidden shipping containers filled with canned goods. Until everyone realized Lou had been right all along. By then, it was too late.

“Our plan was Vegas,” he said, his voice still muffled. “Hoover Dam can run for years without humans. Did you know that?”

Darla couldn’t muster genuine excitement.

“Who would imagine that Sin City would become a Mecca for travelers in a post-apocalyptic world? Of course, the stench. All those people dead in the casinos, it would be a prime breeding ground for disease. A cesspool right now is what I’m imagining. Of course, away from the Vegas Strip might be enticing, but I don’t know. Isolation is the key. And if you stay isolated, they won’t get you.” Lou talked fast and quick, eager to share his knowledge.

“Oh yeah?” Dean questioned, shuffling along. “
Who
wouldn’t get you?”

“I’ve called them the Sweepers. Don’t know who they are or where they are coming from, but they’ve been hitting cities, suburbs.”

“How do you know?” Darla asked. She slid through the hallway lined with framed pictures of her attackers unmasked. Lou and Cricket’s wedding day: he wore a powder blue tuxedo and the lace on her dress stopped just below her chin and fell shapelessly around her body. They grinned widely. Cricket’s bouquet was mostly baby’s breath with a few red roses. Darla hesitated for a moment before feeling a push against her back, the hand of Lyle prodding her forward.

“There was an AM radio channel some man was broadcasting on a couple of weeks ago,” Lou said. He stopped and turned back to the group, put his hand against the wall and leaned his weight against it. “Figured it was some East Coast locale from the sound of him. He was out and about a bit during the day and the night, then just reading his events out there into the ether like a diary.”

“Spooky,” Ainsley replied. “He didn’t think anyone was listening?”

“Soldiers,” Lou continued, ignoring her, “were coming into his city and trying to flush people out.”

“How?” Dean asked.

“Fires, mostly. They’re letting entire cities burn. This guy was broadcasting when they got him. Yelling and then gunshots, and after that? No radio. It was like there had been an oversight and this guy found it, then they swooped in and cleaned up the mess.”

“Any others?” Darla saw a picture of the twins in high school. Baggy jeans and flannel shirts; Lindsey had thick blonde hair and curled bangs. The brother-sister duo posed with their backs together and their arms crossed, pure joy evident on their faces. These adult children had been silent from the moment they had nabbed them off the store porch. Their family pictures told a story of typical middle-class life in a mountain town: pictures with matching denim shirts; Lindsey on a volleyball team; Lyle playing football.

“No. He thought he was the only one left until the Sweepers came through. We thought we were the only ones left, too, until we heard his voice.”
 

“You think we’re Sweepers? You think we discovered your little hideout and came to flush you out?” Darla asked.

Lou narrowed his eyes. “Where were you headed?”

She stared, unblinking, in the dark.

“Exactly,” Lou continued. “Secrets mean I can’t trust you. So, until you’re willing to divulge your plan...you’re a potential threat to me and my family.”

“You seen anyone else?” Dean asked, changing the subject.

“The diary boy, from the radio, he had seen others. A family on their way south. Mom, dad, baby. All alive. He had hope of following them, but...” Lou’s nostrils flared.

“He asked about
you
,” Darla said.

“No,” he answered after a beat. Lyle shifted behind her and Cricket looked to the floor. It felt like the air had been sucked out of the hallway; everyone remained rooted to their places, trying to remember their lines.

“Right.” Darla was unconvinced.

“Well, then, we both have secrets,” Lou answered. “What, exactly, am I supposed to think about you? Gun-toting survivors in a hurry in an empty world? You didn’t know anyone else was alive, but you have somewhere to go?” He narrowed his eyes. “You think I’m stupid,” he whispered.

Darla wanted to concede that he had a point. It was the way Lou’s voice trembled as he spoke to her, or how he couldn’t hold eye contact for longer than a second that made her realize that this family feared them in a powerful and visceral way.

“You don’t make any sense,” Darla whispered back. “Let us go. I’m asking you as a fellow human being.”

“No,” Lou replied. “Not yet.”

With a burst of anger, she pounded the wall with her fist, dark hair from her bun came loose and tumbled into her face, and she wiped her hand across her eyes. A picture tilted and then threatened to drop, and Lindsey scooched past her brother to put it back into place.

“Tomorrow morning, we would have packed up and left,” Darla said. Everyone had paused. They stared at her like she was a bomb about to go off. “No harm to you and this little system you have going for yourself. If we’re so dangerous, why not just kill us? If you thought we were Sweepers, or whatever you want to call them...and I get that, I get making up arbitrary names for things and attaching meaning to them...”

“She was a
Raider
,” Ainsley added with a nod.
 

“Yeah,” Darla replied. “Thank you, Ainsley.” Then she turned squarely toward Lou and took a tentative step forward. “A Raider, right. No, I wanted to feel
important
. Like I had a purpose in all of this. It wasn’t just looting, it wasn’t just trying to trade what I had for what I needed...it was a
job
. It gave me fewer hours in the day to dwell on all my losses. But you have to understand something... I’m sure you are well intentioned, but if you think you can get people to tell you what’s going on out there by coercion, and then things will be better, they won’t. You’re just someone else who has hurt us.”

“You’ve suffered a lot,” the man stated. He brought up his hand and adjusted his mask.

“Lou, you’re nothing but a roadblock to me.”

“And you are potentially dangerous to me.”

“Yeah,” Darla nodded. “If you don’t untie us, put your weapons away, and let us walk outside of this home tomorrow morning, then there’s no potential about it. I will be dangerous. Count on it.”

Cricket made rabbit and mashed potatoes and gravy. The whole kitchen smelled gamey and sweet; the prospect of a warm meal usurped their anger and exhaustion. It was difficult to be simultaneously angry and grateful. Darla picked at the white rabbit meat with a plastic fork and, despite the rope around her ankles and her pounding headache, she devoured every bit of the food provided to her. The Hales sat and watched; Cricket sat like a pleased housewife oohing and aahing over every enjoyed bite.

“You’re not afraid of the rabbit being contaminated?” Dean asked as he took another bite, a small fluffy white piece of mashed potato stayed in the corner of his mouth. “One bite of rabbit and then,” he made a noise and drew his finger over his neck.

“Oh,” Cricket smiled. “These aren’t wild rabbits. We’re breeding them for meat in the basement.”

Ainsley choked a bit and then set her fork down against the side of her plate. She pushed the plate away. “A family slaughterhouse? No, thank you.”

Darla shrugged and reached her fork over to Ainsley’s piece and jabbed the prongs into the meat. Then she transferred the rabbit over to her own plate and began to pick out the juiciest pieces. “Makes no difference to me.”

“It’s quick and I bleed them out and then cook them immediately,” Cricket said. “The rabbits were always one of our major protein plans.”

“You just...planned? For the end of the world?” Ainsley asked as she pushed around her remaining potatoes around her plate. “What kind of life is that?”

“Well, that’s the answer, isn’t it?” Lou replied with a smile. “We’re alive.”

“You’re alive because you’re immune. You’re well-fed because you planned,” Darla interrupted with her mouth full. “Tell me about the day the virus hit. I wanna hear your story. Did you get a little bit excited and exhilarated when you heard the news? ‘Hey mom, guess what? We can finally breed rabbits in the basement like we always wanted to.’” She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in her chair. When no one started talking, Darla motioned for someone to start. “I’m serious.”