The Variables

“Ainsley—” Dean interrupted, but Darla shook her head to stop him from divulging too much. They looked at each other over Ainsley’s head and Dean closed his eyes and let his words trail off. There was nothing Ainsley could have done; those men killed her mother the moment they walked into the study. It was an attempt at full elimination.

“We all wish we could have done things differently.” Darla brought her hand up to pat Ainsley on her shoulder, but she changed her mind and let it drop into her lap.

“I’m sorry,” Ainsley said.

“Me too, kid,” Darla replied. “But let’s get one thing straight. Teddy is a five year-old child. Five. He was defenseless, alone, and he’s gone. I am not going to undermine your loss, but this is my kid. A child...my child.” Darla felt a swell of emotion and her lip quivered. “Dean and I are going to rescue our kids. You’re not supposed to outlive your kids, Ainsley. That’s not the way it’s supposed to happen. And I’m not going to let that happen.”

She turned away from both of them and stared out the window and tried to regain control.

Ainsley sniffed. “I know. I’m sorry. You can be mad at me. You can stay mad at me for the rest of your life, I don’t care. I don’t care. Because here’s the difference...we’re going to get Teddy. We’re going to save him. And my mom? My mom stays dead. I don’t say it meanly, Darla. But it’s the truth. Those men killed her. They took the last person I had and tore her from the earth.”

They came to a main thoroughfare ru

To the left and to the right were grassy ditches, full of overgrown weeds and rainwater. Dean swung the car to the right and started to inch forward around the backside of the bus, the truck leaning, unsteady on the mud. The bus flanked them on one side, the ditch and the train on the other. Darla looked out the window and a breath caught in her chest.

“Dean—” she said, unsteadily. “We’re not going to make it. Reverse. Reverse!”

He realized too late she was right. Ainsley shrieked as the tires on the right side sunk into the wetness of the earth and the truck slipped sideways down the embankment, where it threatened to topple over completely. Dean pressed down on the gas, hoping to pull them up, but gravity sucked them down. Inch by inch, the truck slipped, and landed on a tilt, no further up the road than they started. They were embedded at a forty-five degree angle in the embankment; Ainsley’s unbuckled body pushed against Darla’s as they crowded at the window.

Dean pushed down on the pedal. The tires spun and mud flapped against the side.

“Come on, come on,” Dean muttered as he attempted to coax the car out, but it was useless. Their slow motion slip-and-slide had rooted them into the ditch. The truck was not getting out without a tow.

“Abandon ship,” Darla said without a hint of the ire she felt building within her.

“We can get it out,” Dean replied, determined. “You two get out and I’ll see if we can budge the truck downward.”

“We’ll just waste time. Get out. We pack up. We walk from here.” Darla attempted to open the passenger door, but it could only be nudged forward a few inches before it lodged against the side of the embankment. Resigned, Dean opened his own door and scrambled up the grassy hill to the pavement. Ainsley and Darla followed.

Assuming they would have the car to act as transport, they lacked the means to carry supplies. A sturdy hiking backpack could have saved them, but instead Dean had thrown what little food they could salvage from the fire, some flashlights, sleeping bags, and a pup tent loosely into the trunk bed. Darla slipped down next to the truck and hoisted herself over the side; she eyed a tarp, and she yanked it free. Then she climbed back up to the road and unfolded it, laying it on the ground.

“Come on. Food and weapons. Flashlights, candles. Leave the rest.”

Dean stared wordlessly at the drifts of supplies resting in the truck. He sighed and scratched his head. “There’s a way...”

“There’s no way. Not if we want to leave the city today.”

“Maybe some of those houses up there would have packs, right? We’d lose twenty-minutes instead of our things.”

“I don’t care about the things!” Darla yelled, her voice echoed. Things, things, things.

Ainsley crossed her arms over her chest and bounced up and down on her heels, looking between Dean and Darla out from under her lowered head.

“Can we just make some progress today, please?”

No one answered.

Darla went back a second time into the ditch and pulled herself up to the truck. She rifled through the items and tossed out a few cans of green beans, a dented can of chickpeas, some crackers, candles, and several plastic bottles of water. Ainsley collected the cast-offs from the grass and carried them to the tarp wordlessly while Dean wandered off a few feet, peering at the overturned bus and the abandoned train with interest.

“You have your lighter? And your knife?” Darla asked him and he didn’t answer. She called his name and he turned, withdrawn. “Do you have the lighter and your knife?” This time Dean nodded. He looked like he wanted to say something, but thought better of it, and he turned back to the wreckage, his hands fumbling around his front shirt pocket.

“There’s no point in trying to work our way around the city. On foot, our best bet is to just go straight through. Let’s go.” She hopped down and the truck wobbled under her shifting weight. Gathering the edges of the tarp into her hands, Darla formed a plastic sack, and she pulled it up over her shoulder, like a downtrodden Santa Claus. Her gun holstered against her side, she walked with speed and determination past Ainsley and Dean, and left the duo in her dust.

For the most part, the city was intact. It was dusk as they marched their way into downtown Portland. This was Dean and Ainsley’s home, and it was the first time they had ventured into the heart of the city since the Release. They lamented and expressed shock over its desolate, abandoned, and wrecked landscape.

Arriving from the west, they hit the heart of downtown after two hours of steady hiking. Their path took them past the Oregon Zoo, which Ainsley petitioned to go see. The dogs had died, it was true, and other animals suffered from the contaminated water. But they had all seen the feral cats sprouting up along the outskirts of the neighborhoods, and had heard the distant howls of wolves moving closer to the city. It was possible that some animals, even after four weeks, might still be alive.

But Darla vetoed the detour; if all the zoo animals had perished, it would have been too grisly a sight. Worse yet, if they had been left abandoned by humans, and were clinging to life, their suffering would have been far more painful. They were not going to set the captives free, so it was better to leave them alone.

“I grew up not far from this teaching hospital, you know. My mom worked at the hospital and she could walk to work, but our backyard butted up against this grassy field and beyond that...the labs. Mostly monkeys. And sometimes on summer nights we could hear them. Howling. Just screaming like they were right there in our yard. Not far away...right there,” Ainsley told them in a quiet voice.

“In Portland?” Dean asked.

“Right here. Outskirts of the city. Right in my backyard, but you wouldn’t know it...unless you could hear them.”