The Variables

“Who are you?” Darla asked. “What did we do to you?”

The two faces turned to each other in slow motion, their gas masks almost touching.

“We have no interest in your supplies,” Dean said. “We didn’t come to rob you. We are in a hurry...we are on a journey...this has nothing to do with you.”

The masks turned back to them. Like robots: turn, watch, turn again. The still quality of their voiceless command created an eerie discomfort. Like Scrooge’s ghost of Christmas future, they condemned them wordlessly.

“Let us go.” She had not held out hope that they would suddenly shrug and point to the door, but Darla couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Let us go get our stuff,” Ainsley muttered, still curled up into a ball. She stretched her legs and grimaced. “Please?” Her voice cracked and she put her hands together to plead. “My book.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Darla moaned.

“No,” came the swift reply. “No—”

“I doubt these guys care much about Whitman,” Darla said. “Or decency. Kindness.”

“No!” Ainsley continue to scream, her voice rattling in the back of her throat.

“Damn,” Dean whispered. He turned to Darla, “Who are we supposed to be afraid of?”

When Ainsley looked up, her face was streaked with tears, and her chest heaved as she began to get more worked up, fury flashing across her features. She stood in a quick blur of limbs, her hands in fists at her side, and she launched herself at the suits, landing soft blows into their chests and arms.

“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, sca

“You were armed.”

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

“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 ca

“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 di

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 ca