The Variables

“I’ll come back with di

“Save it,” Darla said.

Lindsey pouted as she untied Darla’s hands and gave her a subtle push back into her room. She shut the door, and the locks clicked into place.

Ainsley sat in the corner; she flipped the flashlight on and off. On and off. Her face was gaunt, and her body was growing leaner. The light illuminated her striking features, casting them in shadow, and then she’d hit the switch and the darkness would swallow everything again.

“What day is it today?” Ainsley asked when she was certain they were alone.

“I don’t know,” Darla answered.

“How long have we been here?” Ainsley asked. On and off. On and off.

“Stop with the light.” Darla walked over and took the flashlight from Ainsley. She flashed it on the wall next to the door. Four crude marks were etched into the wall. “Five days. Tomorrow will be six.”

“I’m hungry,” Ainsley complained.

“Then eat what they feed us.”

Ainsley stopped talking. She sulked in the darkened corner. Darla flashed the light on her, and like a vampire she recoiled from the glare, throwing her pencil-thin arms up over her face. Above them they could hear the creaking boards as people moved around the house from room to room—they resented their captors’ mobility.

From beyond the outer walls, Darla heard a faint rumble. The noise was distinct and it jarred her more than anything because she hadn’t heard the sound since they had arrived. A car was approaching. She was certain.

“Is that—?” Ainsley scampered to her feet and lifted her head.

Darla walked over to the corner of the room and dropped to her belly. They had discovered on the third day that a heating vent carried their voices to each other from room to room. It wasn’t a perfect method of communication between the rooms, but it had worked, and it had kept Dean from going too crazy alone with the rabbits.

She crawled past the boxes and a thirty-year-old spring rocking horse with rusted coils, the paint where its eyes were supposed to be faded away, until she felt the cold metal beneath her fingers. “Dean!” she whispered through the floor. “Dean!” She placed her ear against the grate and waited.

“I’m here,” Dean said. “You hear the car, too?”

“Other survivors,” Darla whispered back. “Or...” she couldn’t finish her thought. She hadn’t entertained the possibility that it could get worse.

A car door slammed. Then someone began to knock on the front door. The movement above them was steady and calm. Their captors did not respond to the knocking with the level of distress and worry that one could reasonably expect from sudden visitors. That led Darla to the only rational conclusion she could muster: the Hales knew the people who had arrived on their doorstep. And they weren’t a threat.

Inaudible voices. Cheery salutations. The front part of the house was alive, and Darla snapped her fingers at Ainsley, who had found her way to Darla’s corner and hovered within earshot of the open vent.

“Stand on the coffee table over there and listen,” Darla said.

Ainsley did as she was told, and Darla followed her with the flashlight, brightening the way. She strained her head and her neck, but shook her head and stepped down.

“You can’t hear anything,” Ainsley said and she plopped herself against the coarse carpet next to Darla.

“Dean?” Darla whispered.

“Yeah,” he replied.

“They’ve been holding out on us.”

“And we’ve been holding out on them.”

“Ca

“They haven’t been trying to fatten us up,” Darla replied, as if this were a valid argument.

“Ainsley soup—” Ainsley said into the carpet as she curled up into the fetal position.

Darla rolled her eyes at the young woman and pushed herself off the floor; she walked over to the coffee table herself and stood up tall, craning her neck to the ceiling. Then she reached down and grabbed the base of a discarded lamp and began to hit the ceiling with methodical thuds. Soon the voices upstairs shifted from cordial to intense; a man’s voice. A woman’s voice. The rising and falling tenor of an argument.

“What are you doing?” Ainsley seethed.

“Making things interesting,” she said and she thumped the lamp base again into the ceiling. After three or four well-placed hits, Darla let the lamp crash to the floor and she hopped off the table and waited. Sure enough, they heard the basement door open and someone take the steps two at a time. Crossing her arms in front of her, she waited until the door flew open.

Lyle stood in the frame, his body backlit by the hall light. He was holding his Taser.

“Quiet down,” he mustered. He snarled.

“You didn’t tell us about the others,” Darla said. She walked forward.

“Back up,” Lyle spat.

“Who are they?”

“I’ll fire,” he threatened.

“Tell me who they are, Lyle Lyle Crocodile,” Darla said and she kept walking forward. She shook her head. Sometimes she couldn’t tell if she was still drugged or if the dark and claustrophobia was affecting her brain.

“I warned you,” he said and without hesitating he fired the Taser at Darla’s leg. The probes locked into her skin through her leggings and she staggered downward, bracing herself before she hit the carpet. Her muscles seized involuntarily. She closed her eyes and waited for her muscles to return to normal. It was the fifth time she’d been attacked with either the barbed Taser or the handheld stun gun. Each time it hurt a little less; each time she anticipated the sting and the burn, and knew that it would be over soon. She was starting to get used to it. Soon, she thought, she could train herself to keep upright. Soon, she might be unstoppable.

The car left an hour after it arrived. And Lindsey came down with di

“Is it drugged?” Darla asked, looking at the bowls.

Lindsey nodded slowly. And Darla responded by lifting her foot to the rim and kicking the bowl over. Reddish soup seeped down into the carpet, the chunks of noodles and vegetables clung to the sides of the bowl. Lindsey sighed. She stood up and started to leave.

“Who were your visitors?” Darla asked. “Your brother didn’t seem very forthcoming earlier.”

“Here,” Lindsey said and she reached into her pocket and pulled out two granola bars. She dumped them on the floor next to the spilled soup. “You’re welcome.”

“Answer the question,” Darla demanded. She eyed the granola bars with suspicion.

“Another group.”

“How many?”

“A few.”

“How many?”

Lindsey sighed. She darted her head out into the hallway and then looked back in at Darla. “I shouldn’t tell you...”

“Do they know we’re down here?”

Slowly, Lindsey nodded.

“And?”

She shrugged. “My dad told them you know where the Sweepers are based. He believes this to be true. He thinks he can get it out of you—”

“Why? What will he do once he knows?”

“I don’t know,” Lindsey answered, and Darla believed her.

Darla reached down and grabbed the granola bar. She inspected the wrapper for tears and holes. Holding it to the light, she ran her fingers over every inch. Being in the basement was making her paranoid. She was examining a granola bar wrapper for puncture marks, and she had never felt more sane.

“I didn’t do anything to it,” Lindsey said, offended.

Ainsley snorted from the corner. “I’ll take one,” she said, and Darla threw the other one back to her.

“Look,” Lindsey said. “I can get you out of here. Okay? The others...look...there were people before...and...they tried to escape. And...”