The Chaos Function

by Jack Skillingstead

  Olivia rested her back against the wall of the van. On the bench, Emilio produced his phone and started swiping on 2D mode. After the burger talk, she didn’t feel quite as threatened, though she knew that was a false perception. Christ, they’d just taped her mouth shut.

  From the passenger seat, Nike said, “Do you believe she’s got it? I don’t believe it.”

  Emilio concentrated on his phone and didn’t look up. But Nike turned around, a big crooked-toothed grin on his face. “There’s no way she’s got it.”

  Emilio looked up. “Shut it.”

  “You’re not the boss of me,” Nike said.

  Emilio shook his head and looked back at his phone. “Idiot.”

  Nike winked at Olivia. “He’s very jealous of you.”

  Emilio stood up, lighted phone in his clenched hand, like he was getting ready to throw it at Nike’s head. “Can you quit talking about stuff you’re not supposed to talk about?”

  Nike turned sullen. “I don’t know why we can’t. What difference does it make? She’s never going to repeat it.”

  And like that, Olivia’s fear roared back.

  “Robbie’s not going to like it,” Emilio said.

  “Hey, don’t tell him. Come on. I didn’t mean anything.”

  Everybody stopped talking, giving Olivia time to think. Was Robbie the older man who had drugged her? Or was it somebody they were going to meet later? The van must be parked near a burger joint, she thought. If she was going to scream, fight to get away, this might be her best chance. She started to reach for the tape. Emilio stared hard at her. She dropped her hands back in her lap. A few minutes later, the driver’s door opened and the older man climbed in, preceded by the smell of hamburgers and french fries. Nike turned sideways on his seat and took the drink tray from him. The older man looked at Emilio and back at Nike.

  “All right, what’s going on with you two?”

  Nike stared at the drink tray. “Nothing. Arguing about soccer.”

  “Soccer. Look at me, brother.”

  Nike raised his head slowly, flicking Emilio a worried glance before meeting Robbie’s eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but Emilio interrupted. “This dummy thinks the Sounders have a prayer.”

  Nike, visibly relieved, said, “They do, they absolutely do.”

  “You’re ignorant,” Emilio said with real heat.

  The older man (Robbie?) didn’t seem to be buying it. “Both of you keep your minds on what we’re doing. You know how important this is.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nike said.

  Emilio nodded and sat down.

  The older man tossed a Burger King bag to him. “We get rolling, you give her a hamburger if she wants it. The plain one’s for her.”

  They pulled back onto the road. Olivia stripped the duct tape off her face. It felt like half her lips came off with it. Emilio dug a plain burger out of the bag and held it up like a question. Olivia nodded, and he flipped it into her lap.

  She ate half the burger but felt too sick with anxiety to finish it. After about fifteen minutes, the driver pulled the van onto the side of the road and turned the engine off. He came back and hunched over, opening a big clasp knife. Olivia almost did scream. What difference does it make? She’s never going to repeat it.

  He lowered himself to his knees and cut the flex cuffs off her ankles but left the ones binding her wrists. Olivia didn’t move. He folded his knife closed and shoved it in his pocket. “Bathroom break, okay?”

  “Yes.”

  He threw open the loading door, hopped down, and extended his hand. Olivia let him help her. She blinked in the sunlight. The van was parked on the shoulder of a deserted stretch of two-lane road bordered by woodsy countryside.

  “You’re Robbie?” she asked.

  He blinked. “Yes. Go that way.” He pointed.

  Olivia stumbled down a shallow embankment and into the woods, Robbie right behind her.

  “Okay, this is good enough. You can go behind that cedar tree.” He looked embarrassed. “Don’t try anything foolish.”

  Behind the tree, which wasn’t nearly wide enough, Olivia dropped her pants and underwear and squatted in the brush. It took forever to go. She peeked around the trunk. Robbie was half turned away. She finished and fixed her pants. “I’m done,” she said.

  He seemed to want to say something. Olivia waited. “All this,” he said, “it’s undignified. I know, and I’m sorry.”

  Olivia didn’t know what to say.

  “The fact is,” Robbie continued, “you’re a very special person.”

  That caught her off guard. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s not your fault—being a girl—but I’m just saying: If you weren’t a girl, you’d be the most important person alive.”

  Eight

  A couple of hours later, the van rocked to a halt. Above the windshield, a metal entrance sign hung between twenty-foot poles: SANCTUARY. Robbie rolled down his window and talked to somebody Olivia couldn’t see.

  “How’d it go?” the person—a woman—said.

  “Stressful, but we have her.”

  “The back unlocked?”

  “Yes,” Robbie said.

  A few moments later the loading door opened. A woman with a round face, wearing a military-green Castro cap, leaned in. She held an AR-15, which she kept pointed down and away.

  “Hey, Emilio,” she said in greeting, then: “That’s her, huh?”

  “That’s her.”

  The guard studied Olivia. “She doesn’t look special.” Behind the woman, a narrow dirt road wound away into the woods.

  “Dee, are you going to pass us through or not?”

  “One sec.”

  She slammed shut the loading door. Then an electric motor began to grind, and there was the sound of chain-link rattling. Robbie rolled the van forward. They traveled a short distance and stopped again. This time Robbie killed the engine. He and Nike got out.

  The loading door opened. A fat man wearing a denim shirt and red baseball cap said, “Come on out of there, miss.”  When he spoke, his big walrus mustache bobbed up and down, as if he were chewing the words before spitting them out.

  Olivia crawled to the open doors, her wrists still flex-cuffed in front of her. The mustached man helped her down, breathing audibly through his mouth. Emilio slid out behind her and walked away without a word. The air felt cool and clean. They had gained some elevation. Nike and Emilio entered a big multigabled ranch house. The house sprawled, throwing wings off the main structure. It looked old and in need of paint. A wheelchair ramp slanted up to the porch. A couple of outbuildings stood between the ranch house and a barn. A six-foot woven-wire fence enclosed the property, topped with three strands of razor wire. Beyond the fence, a guy in a cowboy hat rode a brown horse along the tree line.

  Olivia looked around, taking it all in. From where she stood, it was about forty yards to the fence. “Where is this? Why’d you bring me here?”

  “This is Sanctuary,” the fat man said, injecting solemnity into the word. “And from what I hear, you might have called it home, as much as any other honored tenant, except for the obvious problem.”

  “Are you in charge?”

  He grinned and shook his head. “Oh, heck no. I just keep things organized around the ranch, is all. My name’s Cranston. Here, let me see those cuffs.”

  Olivia held out her hands. Cranston produced a pair of yellow-handled wire cutters and snipped the flex cuffs off. Olivia rubbed her wrists, each bearing a red circlet where the cuffs had chafed the skin.

  “If you’re not in charge, who is?”

  “You’ll meet him pretty soon. Maybe tonight, if he’s not too tired.”

  “Then what happens?”

  Robbie ambled over with his thumbs hooked in his belt. “You don’t have to concern yourself about that. You’ll get the answers you’re entitled to. For now, let’s get you situated.”

  Cranston and Robbie started walking her toward one of the outbuildings,
a slant-roofed structure not much larger than a garden shed. If they put her in there, she would be helpless again, just like she’d been in the back of the van. She couldn’t let that happen.

  Halfway to the shed, Olivia bolted.

  She ran full-out for the fence, anticipating the bang of the AR-15 with every pounding footfall. But it didn’t come.

  “Hey, stop!” Robbie yelled. “Don’t do that! Don’t touch the fen—”

  She made it to the fence and leaped at it, already picturing the scramble over the top, the razor wire slicing her, the sprint for the trees. If they shot her, they shot her. Anything was better than getting locked in that shed, where they could do whatever they wanted with her. But when Olivia’s hands touched the woven wires, a powerful electric jolt surged into her and flung her backward. She landed hard on her back, the breath knocked out of her. Robbie and Cranston ran to her, Cranston winded by the exercise, wheezing and coughing. The rider loped his horse up to the fence, his hand resting on the butt of the pistol holstered on his hip. The woman in the Castro hat watched from the gate, but her long gun was still shoulder-slung.

  “I wish you wouldn’t hurt yourself, Miss Nikitas,” Robbie said, helping her to her feet. He looked genuinely pained. “Take it slow now, let your breath catch up. That’s six thousand volts you just tangled with.”

  Olivia pulled away from Robbie and hugged herself.

  “Don’t be so afraid,” Robbie fretted.

  When she recovered herself, Olivia said, “Stop saying that. I’m afraid, okay? Jesus, who are you people? What are you going to do to me?”

  “That’s up to the Elders,” Cranston said. “And the sooner they decide, the better. We’re running out of time to get this done.”

  Robbie said, “You have to calm down. You can see there’s no way out of here, can’t you?”

  Olivia could see it. What’s he mean, running out of time? Running out of time for what?

  “Come on now,” Robbie said. “You’ve had long, difficult day.”

  “Please.” Olivia hated the note of pleading in her voice.

  “Please what, miss?”

  “Don’t lock me in that shed.”

  Robbie looked hurt. “You make it sound nasty, but it’s very comfortable. Besides, it’s for your own privacy as much as anything else.”

  “My privacy. Are you people crazy?”

  “We like to think not,” Cranston said.

  They walked her back to the shed, and Cranston used a key to open the door. Inside was a built-in sofa bed. On a hinged desk sat a clock and battery-powered lamp. There was also a folding chair, a braided rug, a pellet stove, and a chemical toilet. The shed smelled of pine sap and the toilet.

  “Someone will bring you food in a little while. Just make yourself at home.”

  Home.

  They withdrew, Robbie pulling the door shut behind him. Olivia stood on the rug, listening to the key turn. After a minute she gripped the handle and pulled. She was locked in.

  A skylight admitted sun. Olivia dragged the folding chair away from the desk and stood on it to look out the small fanlight window above the door. The chair wobbled. Except for the female guard, Dee, the property appeared empty. Everyone had gone inside the ranch house. Dee, who had a little shack of her own about the size of a small garden shed, looked in Olivia’s direction and raised her open hand. Olivia climbed down.

  Later, a key turned in the lock and Emilio entered with a tray of food. Breaded chicken breast, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Also a plastic bottle of Lipton iced tea. Olivia made no move to take the tray.

  “Don’t worry,” Emilio said. “It’s not poisoned or anything. It’s good, even. Our women know how to cook.” He set the tray on the desk and started to leave.

  “Wait,” Olivia said. He turned back to her, somehow belligerent without saying a word. “Tell me what’s going on. What is it these Elders are deciding about me?”

  “You’ll know soon enough.” He smiled, and it was cold as a codfish.

  * * *

  In the night, Olivia came awake on the hard sofa bed. She’d heard a vehicle.

  The clock said 10:15. The fanlight lit up. Shadows wheeled across the ceiling. Olivia rubbed the bad sleep out of her eyes, dragged the chair over to the wall again, and stepped up. A black SUV idled in front of the ranch house, throwing headlight glare on a dozen or so people. She recognized Nike, Emilio, Robbie, and Cranston. Two old men were front and center. The hawk-faced one leaned on a walker. The other sat in a wheelchair with a watch cap pulled over his ears. The Elders? A few other men, all of whom looked at least as young as Emilio, completed the all-male welcoming committee.

  Behind them stood three women, all dressed similarly in jeans and pullovers. Somehow, they weren’t part of the official group. Olivia thought of servants assembled for the arrival of the lord of the manor. The guard—apparently the only woman on the ranch with a position of authority—wasn’t present.

  Someone turned off the SUV’s engine. The headlamps went dark, the brake lights flashed once, and three doors opened. A couple of men got out of the front, and a much younger man emerged from the back seat. The front passenger wore a black duster and a slouch hat. Despite the clothes, his overall appearance was unmistakable. Olivia almost fell off the chair.

  It was the old man who had seemingly come back to life under the madrassa in the Old City.

  What the hell was going on here?

  The man who got out of the back seat also looked familiar. Lanky, wild hair. The one who had stalked her in Aleppo. She was almost positive.

  Oh, fuck.

  The driver opened the hatch and lifted out several suitcases. A couple of the young men came off the porch to help.

  The old man turned toward Olivia. She could feel his gaze.

  He started walking toward the shed, moving stiffly. Olivia got off the chair. She retreated to the desk, switched on the cheap battery-powered lamp, and stood squarely facing the door.

  A key scraped in the lock.

  The door opened. The old man stood framed in a doorway too small for him to pass through without stooping. He looked tired, the skin under his eyes bruised and puffy. He held up his right hand, palm out, as if he were taking an oath. The hand looked big enough to unscrew her head like a lightbulb. “My name is Jacob.”

  He pulled his hat off and, ducking, stepped into the shed. One of the young men Olivia hadn’t seen before slipped in behind him and stood to one side. Jacob made the shed feel even smaller than it was. He moved closer. Olivia wanted to back up but stood her ground. Looming over her, Jacob said, “I’m very glad to see you again. We last met in a dangerous place. You remember.”

  “We didn’t exactly meet.”

  “Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You were there. You don’t need me to tell you what happened.”

  He leaned in. Odors of travel sweat and tobacco and stale deodorant came off him.

  “Tell me both memories.”

  Olivia stepped back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “For all our sakes, I hope you’re lying.” He crowded her. “Tell me the truth.”

  Olivia backed up some more, far enough that her legs encountered the sofa bed, and so she sat to give herself a little distance from the man. Jacob stood over her, crushing the crown of his slouch hat in his huge blue-veined hand. Others pushed into the shed. Robbie. Cranston, breathing asthmatically through his mouth. These men, so much larger than Olivia, seemed to displace all the oxygen in the room.

  “All right,” she said. Olivia closed her eyes, deliberately turning her attention to a faded corner of her mind, where the old man who stood over her now instead lay dead on a table in a torture cell beneath a madrassa in the Old City. It wasn’t a false memory, the result of shock or trauma. She wasn’t somehow making it up for unconscious reasons she couldn’t understand.

  It was real.

  “I remember
seeing you dead,” Olivia said.

  Jacob stood up straighter. He appeared relieved. “What else?”

  “They had tortured you, stabbed and electrocuted you. Burned you.”

  “Yes. What else?”

  “My—my friend also . . . died.” It hurt even to say it. Instinctively, Olivia knew Brian’s death had also been real, as real as his recovery in the second memory stream, the memory stream that now predominated even as the other, darker events retreated into the shadow of the new reality. She found the first reality, where Brian died, difficult to contemplate. He died in that torture cell because of her. She couldn’t get around that. Nor could she reconcile the existence of the two memories.

  “And yet we are both alive,” Jacob said.

  “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “It will be resolved tomorrow.” He started to turn away but stopped. “You men leave us,” he said.

  Cranston and Robbie looked at each other. The third, younger man appeared uncertain.

  “Go on,” Jacob said.

  They withdrew, pulling the door shut behind them. Jacob sat on the chair with his hat in his lap. Even sitting, he seemed to fill the room. “Tomorrow when you come before the Elders, questions and answers will be more formal. Before then I want you to understand the significance of what the Society does.” He glanced at the door, lowered his voice. “In short, the choices we make assure the future.”

  Olivia said, “Choices like kidnapping me?”

  He shook his head. “That was regrettably necessary. Miss Nikitas, I’m on your side in this situation.”

  “What is this situation?”

  “I’m sorry.” Jacob stood and put his hat on. He looked tired, his broad shoulders slumping.

  Olivia stood up, too. “Whatever you’re doing, it doesn’t justify kidnapping me.”

  “I’m afraid it does, Miss Nikitas. The decisions the Society makes are sometimes very painful, but they serve the greater good. If I didn’t believe that, my whole life would be meaningless.”

  Olivia stepped closer. “Please. After tomorrow will you let me go?”

  He held her gaze for several seconds. “Rest now,” he said.