The Variables by Shelbi Wescott Page B

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 running parallel to a train track. A mile down the road, a passenger train sat dormant. Several cars littered the street, but they were spaced out, making it easy to navigate, until half a mile down they encountered an empty city bus resting on its side, blocking the road entirely.
    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