by Tom Abrahams
He wasn’t sure he’d actually seen anything, but he held his gaze there while trying not to give anything away. There it was again. Somebody was there. Two people. Three. All of them crossing a walkway that led past the second set of narrow steps to a sidewalk that ran along the edge of the hill. There was a road there that led around the hill to the back side of Rieber Plaza, where ride-sharing companies would park and wait for their fares. In the same instant his hopes for help were buoyed, they were dashed. Whoever it was wasn’t heading toward him. They were moving away.
“What are you waiting for?” harped the gunman. “We’re hungry.”
Dub faced the man then scanned the rest of his dinner party. They still wore pained expressions, their eyes wide with something worse than desperation. He ignored the question and moved forward, toward the second set of steps.
By the time he’d reached the third step and the family was behind him on the wide walkway separating the two long stairways, he heard a muffled cry and the sickening thud of something hard hitting the ground. He spun around to the sound of an unintelligible scream to see Barker and Michael on top of the gunman. The gun had skittered away from him.
The woman was screaming, beating on Barker’s back to free her husband. The children, even the tallest among them, were frozen in place. Fear had replaced the desperation.
Dub let go of the handrail, took a giant step downward, and slipped on the ash, tumbling onto his friends, who now had the man under control. He struggled to push himself free of the pile, and as he did, something hard caught him in the chest, propelling him backward onto the concrete. He caught himself but landed awkwardly on his wrist. A sharp pain exploded outward toward his fingertips and his elbow.
The woman was still screaming when Dub managed, one handed, to get to his feet and corral her away from his friends. She struggled against him, trying to free herself from his grasp. Despite his injured wrist, Dub was able to hold her long enough for Barker to grab the gun and level it at her.
“Stop,” he said.
The woman stopped.
Barker wore an expression devoid of the eyebrow-raised sarcasm that usually traveled with him in every circumstance. He was serious. He was angry. He backed away from the group and stepped up onto the first step. He swept his aim across them, his hands steady.
Michael was still on the ground with the man, who was apparently unconscious. The thud Dub had heard was his head slapping against the concrete when Barker and Michael had bum-rushed him and tackled him before he’d been able to react.
The children were whimpering, their bodies shuddering under their layers of tattered garments. The smallest plopped to the ground in tears and called for her mother.
The woman implored Barker with her eyes. She pulled her scarf down and asked if she could go to her child. Barker nodded and waved the gun in the child’s direction.
Dub let go of her and turned his attention to the man on the ground. He was groaning but wasn’t moving. Michael had removed the heavy scarf and his jacket hood, which revealed the man’s thick head of salt-and-pepper hair and a ruddy complexion.
“Is he okay?” Dub asked.
Michael nodded. “I think so. He’s got a big knot on the back of his head. But he’s breathing and making those noises. Maybe he has a concussion. But the swelling is a good sign.”
The mother was crouched beside the youngest child now. She had her arms around her. The three other children gathered around her. None of them moved toward their father.
The tallest of the children pointed at his dad. His voice was higher pitched than his father’s but carried the same awful, grating rasp. “My dad’s a good guy. He didn’t mean it.”
Barker huffed. “Yeah, he did.”
“C’mon, Barker,” said Dub. “That’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair,” said Barker, “is pointing a gun at your face and demanding food.”
Dub, for some reason he couldn’t understand, was more upset with Barker and his lack of empathy than he was with the pistol-packing desperates who’d threatened him and held him at gunpoint.
“We should give them some food,” said a familiar voice standing twenty yards above them on the steps.
Everyone but the semiconscious man on the ground turned to see Keri standing with her hands in her coat pockets. Her face and head were covered with protective gear.
“What?” asked Barker. “Why?”
Michael piped up before Keri could answer. “You’re the one who heard the gunshot and sent us to help Dub. Now you want to help them?”
“They’re people, like us,” said Keri. “It’s not their fault they don’t have food. It’s not like they’re a gang of—”
“They held your boyfriend at gunpoint,” said Barker. “If we feed them now, they’ll come back for more. Maybe they’ll bring more people. It’ll get worse. It’s like when they tell you not to feed wild animals at national parks. It makes the problem worse, not better.”
“We’re not wild animals,” growled the mother, a sharpness in her raspy voice.
Barker had the pistol leveled at the woman and he approached her. She stood and backed up a couple of nervous steps, as did her children. The tallest of them moved in front of her, apparently willing to take a bullet for his mother.
“You may not be wild animals,” said Barker, “but you’ll behave like them if we give you food. You’re telling me you won’t come back the next time you’re starving? You won’t go back to the place where the nice college kids helped you out and kept you alive?”
Dub’s flash of discontentment with Barker faded. He understood his friend’s point. As callous as it sounded, he was correct in that basic human conditioning would provoke their return. It was Skinner’s box.
He’d learned about it during his first semester. It was a groundbreaking psychological experiment conducted by behaviorist B. F. Skinner in the 1930s. Skinner’s box, as it became known, was technically called an operant conditioning chamber, and its use ultimately expanded well beyond the science of psychology.
In it, Skinner used positive and negative reinforcements to condition an animal’s response inside an electrified wire cage. In its simplest form, a light or noise would prompt the animal to push response levers. If the animal pushed the correct lever, it got food or water. If it pushed the wrong one, the cage would supply a shock.
Give these people food, and they’ll come back for more. Deny them, and they’ll go away. The psychologist in Dub knew it was as simple as that. But nothing in the real world was ever as clear-cut as a controlled scientific experiment conducted in a lab. What he’d mistaken for something feral and wild in their eyes was maybe hunger and fear after all.
Keri descended the steps until she’d reached everyone else. The wind intensified, and she pulled her scarf up higher on her face, pinching it at her nose under the bridge of her goggles. She stood as tall as the eldest child, her athletic build thinner than before the attack but hardly skinny. The wind blew toward her, pressing her coat against her body. Ash flew directly at her and she wiped her goggles clean with her thumb. She angled herself away from the wind as she approached Barker and shielded one side of her face with a gloved hand. She spoke slowly and in a way that neither suggested she was at odds with him nor that she agreed with his position.
“Look,” she said, “I don’t disagree with you. If we turn them away, they probably won’t come back. Or they might. We don’t know. I bet if you asked them right now, they don’t know.”
Dub moved closer to Keri, quietly siding with her without saying anything. His attention shifted between her and the gunman struggling to regain consciousness. He was moving now, albeit slowly.
“We can’t make our decisions based on what they may or may not do in the future,” Keri said. “We need to make our decisions based on right now. And right now, this family is hungry.”
The man on the ground groaned more loudly. He rolled onto his side and reached for the back of his head. He winced
. A thin trail of drool on his chin trapped flakes of ash.
“I say we feed them,” said Keri. “Give them a little extra to take with them and send them on their way. It’s the right thing to do.”
She looked over at Dub through her goggles and held his gaze. She was telling him she remembered the conversation they’d had in Ackerman a month earlier. Regardless of how smart an idea it might be to send the family away hungry, she was holding on to that bit of humanity Dub was afraid they were all losing.
“I’m with Keri,” said Dub. “I say we feed them.”
“Of course you do,” said Barker. “You’d give them the keys to our room if she told you to.”
Dub clenched his jaw. His fingers balled into fists. His body tensed, and his heart rate, which had slowed considerably, accelerated. Keri touched his arm, suggesting he let it go.
“C’mon, Barker,” said Michael. He was still crouched next to the father. “That’s not fair.”
Still holding the weapon at the mother and her children, Barker stole a glance at Michael. His scarf had slipped beneath his chin. “You’re with them too? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m not the jerk here. I’m not heartless. But I’m clearly the only one using my head. We’re only inviting more trouble by giving these people what they want. It’s like negotiating with terrorists or paying off a blackmailer. Do it once and more come knocking.”
“So now we’re blackmailers and terrorists?” asked the mother.
Barker held up the gun and waved it at her. “This is your gun, isn’t it?”
“Let’s compromise,” said Dub. “We give them something to take with them but make it clear if we see them again, it doesn’t end well. The well is dry after this. It’s a onetime deal.”
“I’m okay with that,” said Keri.
“That’s a good idea,” said Michael.
“It’s not a good idea,” Barker huffed. “But I’m outvoted here.”
He turned away from the mother, lowered the gun, and handed it to Dub. He pulled his scarf over his mouth and nose, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and marched up the steps back to the hill. Dub watched him until he’d finished his ascent and turned the corner toward their dorm.
“I’ll go and get something for each of them,” said Keri. She turned to the mother. “Then you’re gone. Understood? And there’s no more where it came from.”
“Thank you,” she said. “We are—”
“Save it,” said Keri. “You’ve done and said enough. This is for your kids. Not you.”
Keri spun on her heel and followed the same path Barker had taken. Ten minutes later she was back with a box of crackers and a third of a block of cheddar cheese. She handed them over to the eldest child and produced three bottles of water.
By then, the father was sitting on a step. He was woozy but conscious and could stand without help.
“We’re keeping the gun,” said Keri, shooing the family down the steps. They quietly shuffled away, the wife helping her husband navigate their exit.
Once they were gone, she faced Dub and Michael. She wiped the ash from her goggles. “We need to have a meeting.”
“Agreed,” said Dub. He started following her back up the steps when he stopped her. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” she said. “But you should thank Michael and Barker. They’re the ones who actually saved you.”
***
Barker sat on his bunk, his back against the wall and a pillow in his lap. He wore shorts, a T-shirt, and a disgusted look on his face. Despite the chill outside, it was warm in their room on the fifth floor. The air was thick and stale. The lack of air-conditioning was noticeable, as was the tension among the four friends.
Michael was next to Barker, sitting on the edge of the bunk with his feet on the floor. Keri was in Dub’s desk chair, rubbing her temples. Dub was above her on his lofted bunk.
They’d been there for half an hour more or less, and nobody had said much of anything. Dub had thanked Barker and Michael for coming to his aid. Barker had begrudgingly accepted it.
Finally, Keri broke the silence. “I want to give away the key to the room,” she announced.
“Too soon,” said Michael, though his smirk told Dub he found the attempt at humor moderately funny.
It didn’t make Barker laugh either, but it did get him talking. He leaned forward, peeking his head out from the shadow of the bunk above him. “Giving those people food was stupid, Keri,” he said. “I know you’re trying to lighten the mood or whatever, but it was stupid. And we’re going to pay for it. I’m telling you. They will be back.”
“Don’t call her stupid,” said Dub. “Not cool.”
“I didn’t call her stupid,” sneered Barker. “I called the decision stupid, which it was. Deep down, Dub, you know it.”
Dub pushed himself from his bunk to the floor and landed on his feet. He took a step toward Barker and pointed at him. He spoke through a clenched jaw, doing everything he could to mitigate the frustration boiling inside him. “No, Barker, I don’t know that. We were in a no-win situation. We send them away with nothing? That doesn’t guarantee they don’t come back. And the next time, when they’re that much closer to death, they don’t hesitate to use violence. So what if they’re a family? Ultimately, they’ll do whatever they have to do to survive.”
Barker stood, his face inches from Dub. His muscles tensed. “Which is why giving them food was bad. Now they’ll bring their friends. Whoever they meet. They’ll tell everyone they got food from us. I already made this point. It’s not worth discussing again. What’s done is done.”
“It is worth discussing,” said Keri, wincing, “because it’s going to happen again. These weren’t the first people to come around looking for help.”
“You okay?” asked Dub, noticing her run her fingers along her forehead.
“I have a migraine,” she said. “It’s not bad yet. I’ll be fine.”
Dub reached over to his desk, picked up a thermos of water, and handed it to her. “You need to drink. You’re probably dehydrated.”
She took the water and opened its nipple with her teeth. She squeezed the sides and sucked down a swig. She waved at the others to keep talking.
“Keri’s right,” said Michael. “You guys heard about that missing couple, the rumors about them getting robbed and killed for their coats and boots, right?”
“Yeah,” said Barker. “And the kids who got the crap beat out of them for their shoes. It’s getting worse. Which is my point.”
“I think you’re also making Keri’s point,” said Dub. “It’s going to get worse regardless. Giving those people food wasn’t going to change that.”
Barker rolled his eyes. “We give up, then? We acquiesce to the pitiful demands of every desperate that shows up?”
“I’m not saying that,” said Dub.
“You’re not?” asked Keri.
“Yeah,” added Michael. “If you’re not saying we help whoever shows up, what are you saying?”
Dub put up his hands defensively and backed away from the group. He shook his head, sucked in a deep breath of the room’s increasingly fetid air, and exhaled loudly. It was stronger than a sigh, more forceful. His eyes danced amongst his friends. All of them glared back with varying degrees of confusion and accusation.
“Okay,” he started, gathering himself. “I guess what I’m saying is that we can’t have hard and fast rules about who we help and who we don’t. But we have to be prepared for those who will come here looking for more than a meal.”
“Elaborate,” said Barker.
“Psychologically,” said Dub, “people are going to start breaking. The human mind can only handle so much pain, so much…”
He was searching for the right word. The more he tried to find it, the more evasive it became. He snapped his fingers.
“Headache,” offered Keri. “I mean, heartache?”
“Death?” Michael suggested.
Barker offered a litany of four-letter words
that probably came closest to Dub’s intent. Dub pointed at them one by one. He nodded.
“Yes. Yes. Yes,” he said. “All of those. As that happens, as they deteriorate, they’ll either dive into some alternate fantasy land of denial, or they’ll get inhumanely violent, or a combination of the two. Their minds will find a way to cope.”
“What do we do?” asked Keri. “How do we prepare?”
“Well, that’s the first thing, right?” Dub said rhetorically. “We need to prepare. We’ve been subsisting and living as though there is some nebulous future in which our lives change, like the semester will end and we’ll go home, get jobs or internships, the whole drill.”
Michael ran his hand through his hair, rubbing it along the thinning crown. He sighed, puffing out his cheeks for attention. “I think we know that’s not happening. We don’t have a future. Not like what we used to think of as a future. This is our future. Here.”
His eyes danced from one person to the next. They settled on Dub. “You’re right. We need a plan. We need to defend ourselves in the short term and figure out an escape in the long term.”
“An escape?” asked Barker. “To where?”
Michael shrugged and plucked at his T-shirt to pull it away from his shrinking gut. He pushed himself from the bed and stood with Barker and Dub. “I don’t know, but we’ll find it. Eventually, we’ll figure out the right place to go. We need to be ready for that too.”
Barker hummed a tune. It was the Clash. “Should we stay, or should we go?” he asked, approximating their lyrics.
“If we stay, there will be trouble,” said Keri. “If we go…”
The tension in the room eased. The three roommates backed away from one another. Michael sat back on his bunk.
“We need a plan for both,” said Michael. “And we need it yesterday.”
“How’s the radio working?” asked Dub. “Any luck?”
“No,” said Michael. “There’s traffic out there, but I haven’t been able to connect cleanly with it. I’m not an expert.”
“Still, I think that’s our escape plan,” said Dub. “You keep trying the radio every chance you get. Search every frequency you’ve tried, then the ones you haven’t. We need to find safe places out there.”
