The Variables

“That’s awful,” Darla added, shifting the tarp from one shoulder to the other.

“Terrifying,” Ainsley whispered.

“You want me to take a turn with that?” Dean reached out his hands toward the tarp, but Darla shied away. She shook her head.

“I got it.”

“I can take a turn,” he said.

“You can take a turn tomorrow.”

“Come on—” Dean complained, readying up an argument.

Darla spun to him. “I’m not playing some martyr role and I’m not going to give you the tarp so you can feel like you’re being productive. I’m fifteen years younger than you are and I worked out my upper arms and shoulders every day for the past five years. I’m the most equipped person to haul the damn tarp. I’m not doing it to make you feel sorry for me...I’m doing it because I should.”

Dean put up his hands in surrender and then went to his pockets for a cigarette.

Still hauling the tarp, Darla marched over and freed one of her hands and grabbed the pack. She tossed it to the ground and put the heel of her boot over the cardboard and smashed it into the cement.

Ainsley watched the incident wide-eyed.

“It’s a stressful time...if he wants to smoke, let him smoke,” she whispered.

Darla turned her head toward Ainsley, and looked at her, blinking. She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly, then blew the air out her mouth, mumbling some version of a serenity prayer under her breath. Ignoring their disdain, she took several steps out into the street. The sun was lower in the sky, and a hazy orange hue filled the hills behind them. “We’re going to have to camp inside somewhere tonight. You two know the area the best, so where should we go?”

Everyone looked up and down the street. There were pockets of flooding, bodies, and abandoned vehicles. Something was on fire on the other side of the river and smoke trickled upward.

Ainsley shuffled her feet and then looked at Darla. “I have a place I want to go,” she a

Without hesitation, Darla said, “Lead the way.”

“A bookstore?” Darla looked at the black, red and white marquee and then at the darkened lobby. Without light, it was impossible to see much beyond the front windows; the cascading bookshelves disappeared into darkness. Powell’s City of Books was a Portland landmark and a tourist attraction. It took up an entire city block and inside its industrial, no frills interior were more than a million books. Or so it boasted.

“Hotels might be too full of bodies. I wouldn’t be able to handle the smell,” Ainsley said, cupping her eyes and leaning against the glass, her breath forming a circle of fog on the window.

“The smell doesn’t go away,” Dean added. “There’s got to be people in there, too. Employees who couldn’t make it home from work...”

Ainsley shrugged. “It was just a thought.”

“It’s dark.” Darla rattled the front door handle and then walked around the corner, staring at the empty side street.

“We can go somewhere else,” Ainsley breathed, defeated. “I just thought...I don’t know...I’ve always wanted to be in there alone. “

“Wait,” Darla replied. She motioned for them to follow her. Along the edge of the street was an employee entrance, guarded by a keypad, rendered useless without power. Darla took off her sweatshirt and wrapped her hand up tight, then without explanation or warning, she punched the glass above the door. The sound of breaking glass echoed up the street. Shaking the shards free, Darla reached over and inside and pushed the metal bar on the door. It opened easily, welcoming them into the children’s section of the store.

Dean cleared his throat and mumbled a sincere thank you.

“From watching movies,” she explained with a half-smile.

Racks of Maurice Sendak and Curious George hardbacks beckoned them. Darla ran her hand over a copy of Goodnight Moon, which had been Teddy’s favorite when he was a toddler. She went to grab it, flip through the pages, but under the watchful eyes of Dean and Ainsley, she stopped herself. Nostalgia would have to wait.

Once inside, Ainsley had a plan.

Their flashlights lit the way around the darkened store. Occasionally, they would encounter a toppled shelf, scattered books, signs of panic, but for the most part Powell’s was quiet and void of life. Ainsley led them through a hallway lined with journals, pens, and bookmarks and up into a general fiction section. They traveled up another staircase and into science fiction. Collapsed next to a fantasy display, they confronted their first body; it was a liquefied mess, a puddle of yellow spread out from under its plaid shirt and seeped on to the concrete below. A leathery hand still clutched a hardcover book about dragons.

The trio stepped around it and shined the flashlight away.

In the next room, they found a café. The display case was empty.

“It was worth a shot,” Ainsley said as they slid the light over the shelves looking for anything of value.

“We aren’t the first ones to get inside here. Before day six the Raiders would have picked it clean.”

“Most of the food would have been perishable anyway,” Dean lamented. He took a step behind the counter and ran his finger along the Formica laminate. Dust had started to collect on the tables and chairs. Outside, it was raining. There was a gentle pit-pat of droplets on the sidewalk.

“Come on.” Ainsley motioned. “This way.”

The Rare Book Room was cozy: antique furniture and faux Persian rugs, wood paneling, and non-working lamps. Behind display cases were first or rare editions of classic literature. Darla shined her flashlight over the spines and read the titles. The area was cordoned off from the rest of the bookstore, like its own little private store-within-a-store, and whether by design or by accident, the air was cool, but not cold. To guarantee comfort, Dean had nabbed three oversized Powell’s sweatshirts on their way from behind a help desk on the second level. As they settled down on to the rug, they each shimmied into the fleece, and pulled the hoods down over their faces.

“Okay, this is going to sound stupid, but my dream was to buy a book from the Rare Book Room when I got my first job. A treat for myself, you know?” Ainsley told them, while perusing the titles from the comfort of the floor.

“That’s not stupid,” Darla told her.

Ainsley smiled and her face lit up. “Thanks.”

“You can have anything you want, you know. They’re doomed here...left to rot. You should take one,” Dean added, rummaging through the tarp and examining the green beans and the chickpeas with mild interest before leaving the cans unopened. He ripped open the bag of tea lights and set them out one by one around the room, lighting them with his lighter.

“It’s not the same,” Ainsley grieved. “I wouldn’t have earned it.”

The room glowed from the candles, and their shadows flickered across the walls. Sca

“Here,” Dean said, handing the book to Ainsley. “We’ve most definitely earned it.”

Ainsley put her hand on top of the cover and gasped. Then she tenderly turned the pages, and ran a finger along the words. It was the first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. A yellow bookmark fell out between the pages, and written in a flowery script was the price: $170,000. She let out a small shriek as she held the stated value in her hand.