Free The Variables by Shelbi Wescott

hand, rubbing the tenderness of the burn.
    “Nothing,” Darla replied. She had thought she had heard something—the distinctive snap of a tree branch, a rustle of movement. The hair on her arm stood at attention and like a predator in the wild, her senses heightened, she scanned the perimeter, unmoving.
    “Come help me with this. I think I put some gloves in the truck...”
    “Dean—” Darla said. She didn’t turn to face him. “Leave it.”
    He began to protest. But Darla put up her hand to freeze his argument. Then she turned, unable to locate the source of the sound. “Leave. It.”
    A new plume of black smoke tumbled into the sky, and she watched it curl and loop into the cloud cover.  
    Dean looked down at the heavy metal contraption, with its exposed motor and external gas tank. A source of power and a source of comfort, the generator provided the Oregon survivors with small luxuries during their last days together.  
    Like a dejected preschooler, he shuffled away and muttered under his breath, and Darla watched him go, as he slipped through the wisps of smoke. Then she turned back to the empty woods and felt an urge to sob. For a brief second, she thought she had seen the shadow of her child slipping from tree to tree. When she realized it was just a figment of her imagination, her brain created an alternate reality where Teddy was still by her side and safe. She could feel the flesh of his hands seeking out her fingers. She clutched him tight until the moment passed and her brain reminded her that it was only air.
    With heavy footsteps, she trudged back toward Dean and the pickup, her arms motionless by her side.

    “We’ll find him,” Dean said as Darla climbed back into the truck. She took her gun off her side-holster and placed it on the expanse of seat cushion between her and the driver’s side—it sat lamely on the leather next to a crumpled up fast food bag and a discarded cassette tape.
    “Yes, we will,” Darla replied, and she turned to look at her unlikely traveling partner. She saw his expectant look, his puppy dog eagerness, and she added, “And we’ll find Grant, too.”
    He smiled and tapped the steering wheel with an energized rat-a-tat-tat, as if that was what he had been waiting for her to say. Putting the car into drive, Dean rolled down the road, weaving through the abandoned cars and overturned recycling cans that made up the landscape of their lives. The neighboring house behind them still refused to give in to the fire, and Darla hoped that rains would come and save the chain reaction from picking up speed.
    Dean’s face was scruffy and his fingernails were blackened from an accumulation of dirt and grime. She imagined that in a different life this lanky, brown-eyed man might have been attractive. He had a sweet naiveté that both enraged and endeared him to Darla. And from what she had gathered, the Trotter men seemed to share a penchant for starry-eyed optimism and blind allegiance.
    “We’ll have to take the back roads. When I was out exploring before you all came along,”—Dean said came along as if they had just happened upon each other one sunny afternoon and not as if he had been caught pilfering their supplies—“I saw that we are boxed in. No major roads or freeways are passable.”  
    “I know,” Darla replied.  
    “So, you know we should cut up north once we get on the other side of the river. Back roads through the mountain range, then down and along the Columbia? Washington to Idaho, maybe. Through Montana if we can’t find a better way.”
    Darla nodded.
    “Not a shortcut, per se. Makes me wish I had my balloon,” Dean said, and he chuckled to himself. When she didn’t reciprocate even a smile, Dean sighed. “If you trust me, I’ll just make a go of it. Do my best. We can trade off. Drive until we can’t.”
    “That’s all we can do,” Darla managed to say. Then she leaned her head against the back window and let her eyes slide shut.
    She