The Variables

“Do you?” Darla asked. She crossed her arms over the front of her body and her leg shook with impatience.

He examined the cigarette closely, peering at the open end, and tapped the filter against his open palm. “Once upon a time.”

“Smoke on the road,” she replied. She walked up to Dean and, in a stealthy maneuver, slipped the stick from one hand and the packet from the other before he had time to protest. Then Darla walked around to the passenger side, climbed into the truck, and waited.

Dean didn’t move.

“Are you kidding me?” Darla yelled at him and she leaned over and gave the horn a healthy honk.

Jolted into action, Dean leaned against the driver side door and peered in through the open window. “You think we should do something? For the others? Despite what’s happened in this world, I still believe in the next one, you know?”

“Good for you.”

“Come on, they deserve something. A prayer. A remembrance.”

Darla rolled her head sideways and her eyes landed on Dean. She felt for the gun against her hip, unhooked her holster, removed it, and in slow motion brought her right hand and arm across her body and angled the gun at Dean’s head. In that awkward position, Darla raised her eyebrows as a challenge. Dean yawned, undeterred by Darla’s act of aggression, and patted his pockets again for his nonexistent cigarettes and then settled his body weight against the truck. He motioned for her to speak.

With the gun still aimed, Darla cleared her throat.

“God, take care of your four new members to heaven, if that’s where those souls ended up. I’m sure you have your hands full dealing with admitting the other seven billion people lined up outside the pearly gates. Must be quite an intake list. But let’s be honest, skip yourself the work and let Spencer rot in hell. Amen.” Darla lowered the gun. “Get in the truck, Dean. Get in the truck or I’m leaving you.”

“You think I don’t have a sense of urgency?” Dean asked, unmoving from outside the cab.

“We should have left hours ago.”

“This trip will take three days with no hiccups. But what if we get stuck? Sick? Trapped? I’m not out here trying to waste time. I’m trying to safeguard success.” Dean sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He squinted into the sky black with smoke and ran his tongue across his teeth. “You’re right. We need to get past the back-ups and find some open road before dark. But we’ve got time...not much...but some. And I’ll use all the time we have, because,” he raised his eyebrows, “you’re not the only smart one.”

Darla looked incredulous.

“Generator. And then we’re gone. I promise,” Dean said pointing to the backyard and motioning for Darla to follow. “Come on, tough gal. I can’t carry that thing by myself.”

For a second, it appeared like Darla wouldn’t budge, but then she rolled herself out of the truck and trudged through grass and past the wreckage of the house. Heat still radiated from the collapsed wood, but the King house was nothing more than a heap of blackened lumber. Only the fireplace stood unscathed; standing erect, like a beacon to their tragedy.

Darla tried not to look in the corner of the front yard where she knew Spencer’s body was still slumped against the shrubbery. He was very dead. His gunshot wound to the stomach bled out and Darla took a morbid satisfaction in knowing that his final moments had been painful. She had not wanted to take his life—despite the pain he’d inflicted—but she had not wanted him to survive, either. He’d lived long enough to reflect on his actions. The man who valued personal survival above basic humanity had invited his own demise. Whether or not the men who came for Ethan would have found Teddy on their own was beside the point; Spencer had handed her son’s whereabouts to them on a silver platter—damning Ainsley and Doctor Krause, sacrificing Joey, and leaving her and Dean to escape. Just barely.

Reeling from the loss, Darla couldn’t quite wrap her head around the last few hours. Her heart had not stopped aching. There was a pain lodged under her ribcage, and it nearly crippled her every time she thought of Teddy’s face—wide-eyed, freckled, a tangled mess of wavy hair, uncut and growing longer by the day. How she longed to tousle that hair again, plant a kiss on his forehead, or discuss Star Wars or the meaning of life.

One time he had asked if she would color him a rainbow fish. She told him that she would later.

She never drew that fish, and it haunted her.

In her memories of Teddy’s kidnapping, the militant strangers at the heart of the siege were faceless shapes. Ghosts. As she tried to recollect a feature, a concrete detail, they slipped from her grasp like she was trying to hold on to steam.

Dean walked into the backyard. A smoky haze lingered, creating the illusion of fog. He walked toward the middle of the grass, where the generator sat unplugged. He bent down and reached out to the metal handle and then drew his hand back quickly.

“It’s hot,” he a

Darla hadn’t heard him.

She looked out into the wooded area behind the house. It was a small expanse of untouched wilderness, just along the edge of the tract housing. While cookie-cutter homes popped up on either side, this backyard was a comparative jungle. The trees spa

“What?” Dean called, and he took a step forward, cradling his hand, rubbing the tenderness of the burn.

“Nothing,” Darla replied. She had thought she had heard something—the distinctive snap of a tree branch, a rustle of movement. The hair on her arm stood at attention and like a predator in the wild, her senses heightened, she sca

“Come help me with this. I think I put some gloves in the truck...”

“Dean—” Darla said. She didn’t turn to face him. “Leave it.”

He began to protest. But Darla put up her hand to freeze his argument. Then she turned, unable to locate the source of the sound. “Leave. It.”

A new plume of black smoke tumbled into the sky, and she watched it curl and loop into the cloud cover.

Dean looked down at the heavy metal contraption, with its exposed motor and external gas tank. A source of power and a source of comfort, the generator provided the Oregon survivors with small luxuries during their last days together.

Like a dejected preschooler, he shuffled away and muttered under his breath, and Darla watched him go, as he slipped through the wisps of smoke. Then she turned back to the empty woods and felt an urge to sob. For a brief second, she thought she had seen the shadow of her child slipping from tree to tree. When she realized it was just a figment of her imagination, her brain created an alternate reality where Teddy was still by her side and safe. She could feel the flesh of his hands seeking out her fingers. She clutched him tight until the moment passed and her brain reminded her that it was only air.

With heavy footsteps, she trudged back toward Dean and the pickup, her arms motionless by her side.

“We’ll find him,” Dean said as Darla climbed back into the truck. She took her gun off her side-holster and placed it on the expanse of seat cushion between her and the driver’s side—it sat lamely on the leather next to a crumpled up fast food bag and a discarded cassette tape.

“Yes, we will,” Darla replied, and she turned to look at her unlikely traveling partner. She saw his expectant look, his puppy dog eagerness, and she added, “And we’ll find Grant, too.”

He smiled and tapped the steering wheel with an energized rat-a-tat-tat, as if that was what he had been waiting for her to say. Putting the car into drive, Dean rolled down the road, weaving through the abandoned cars and overturned recycling cans that made up the landscape of their lives. The neighboring house behind them still refused to give in to the fire, and Darla hoped that rains would come and save the chain reaction from picking up speed.