“Your family must choose to willingly sacrifice one of your three in order to prevent the apocalypse. After you make what I know is an impossible choice, you must then kill whoever it is you choose. If you fail to make the choice or fail to follow through with the sacrifice, the world will end. The three of you will live but the rest of humanity, seven billion plus, will perish.”
This quote situates the central premise of the narrative. Everything that happens across the length and breadth of the story all traces back to this primal paragraph. Leonard is a complete stranger to the family occupying the titular cabin. A young girl and her two dads have been randomly approached by Leonard and three others who, they insist, have no relationship to each other. Leonard's reference to "the apocalypse" is the element of this quote that takes it beyond delusion and lifts the book into sphere of psychological horror. He and his companions have been brought together by visions of obstructing this approach apocalypse through the ancient time-honored methodology of offering a human sacrifice to an unknown god responsible for bringing an end to humanity.
“I know, I’m sorry, but I’m not as sure as you are that it’s the same guy. He—he looks different to me, but even if it is him, is that enough of a why? I mean, why go through everything else? If it was only about us, they wouldn’t have been killing each other, would they?”
Eric is one of the two dads occupying the cabin when the strangers arrive. The above quote immediately inspires suspicion. In this quote, Eric is responding to Andrew's suggestion that the four strangers are not necessarily also strangers to each other. The reference to the "same guy" is part of a conversation about the possibility that one of the strangers is actually a homophobe who physically assaulted Andrew more than a decade earlier, went to prison, is now seeking revenge. The final line of this quote references the complex interpersonal dynamics between the four strangers demanding a human sacrifice. The question is related to motivation. These four people could be simple cultists acting out a bizarre delusional ritual just as easily as they could be four liars united in an act of hateful revenge.
"Eric spies two thick, black flies (wondering if they are the same ones he saw earlier) and when they smack into a bulb, Eric is convinced the wagon wheel sways with the impact. Their buzzing is a low hum, like a chant."
Ultimately, the question becomes one of whether this apocalypse the strangers are certain demands a human sacrifice has any veracity at all. This quote focuses on one of the most important symbols in the book. There are recurring references to these black flies that seem at times to indicate that the story being told by the strangers is true. The flies are representatives of both sides of the equation. If there is a coming apocalypse, this sensation on the part of Eric that the buzzing is a portent of dystopic malevolence is entirely symbolic. On the other hand, if they are simply being targeted in a complex revenge plot, then the sensation on Eric's part of the strength of the flies to move the wagon wheel is simply a manifestation of intensifying paranoia. As the story progresses, this image of flies as symbolizing both the arrival of literal carrion and the potential for symbolic carrion will become more and more significant as well as increasing the level of horror within the narrative.
