The Chaos Function

by Jack Skillingstead

  Twenty-Seven

  Pushing west into the afternoon, Olivia could almost believe it was a normal day.  Traffic moved on the interstate. Random livestock grazed in the fields. A man changed his Hyundai’s flat tire while a woman and young boy stood watching, the woman’s skirt billowing in the wind. Approaching Spokane, the low overcast lifted and blue sky appeared like a promise.

  But other things drove home the absolute not-normalness of the new world. Military aircraft crisscrossed the blue sky, leaving an apocalyptic tic-tac-toe of contrails. Troop carriers and heavily armored vehicles periodically took over the road, forcing Astina to clutch down and pull over to let them pass. And even once they got near Spokane, the internet remained dark and cellular service dead. Far to the west, streaks of coal-black cloud reached toward them like the fingers of an immense Reaper. Western Washington was burning.

  The truck’s cab was practically a self-contained studio apartment, complete with a sleeping area behind the seats, a mini-fridge, OLED screen, and other amenities. The truck itself was fitted to self-drive, so Astina could cross the country with no stopovers if necessary. But with global positioning inoperative, she had to do all the driving manually. Olivia, riding shotgun, wondered if Astina was up to it. Her face had grown flush. Sweat beaded on her forehead. She drank a lot of water, and she kept rolling her shoulders and taking one hand then the other off the wheel to flex her fingers and rotate her wrists. Aches, fever.

  Early symptoms of smallpox.

  “Do you feel all right?” Olivia asked.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Astina?”

  She turned to Olivia and their eyes met. Astina had the look Helen had worn the last time Olivia had spoken with her friend and editor.

  Astina faced forward again, holding the big steering wheel with both hands, resting forearms on the rim.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t have it.”

  “You could have it and not know.”

  “I’d know. If you’re worried, I can let you out wherever.”

  Brian’s voice came from the back: “No.”

  Olivia said, “We need to get to Portland.”

  Astina reached under her seat and came up with an N-95 filter mask and pulled it over her mouth and nose.

  “Just in case,” she said.

  A pointless gesture, but Olivia said, “Thanks.” If Astina was contagious, they were already exposed and beyond the ability of prophylactic measures to make a difference.

  They drove on, departing the 90 at Ritzville and heading southwest on US 395. Astina picked up her mic and switched on the CB.

  “Breaker one-niner. Big Tuna south on 395, Portland bound.”

  The radio hissed and crackled. After a few moments a male voice spoke: “Copy, Big Tuna. What can I do you for?”

  “You been to Portland?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Be advised, we got a checkpoint about three miles south of Kennewick on the Oregon border.”

  “Smokey? Come back.”

  “US military. National Guard, anyway.”

  “What are they checkpointing for?” Brian asked.

  Astina keyed the mic. “What’s the guard want with me?”

  “Border stop. They’re looking for bad guys and infected. Keep Oregon”—he pronounced it exaggerated, like Or-a-gone—“pure. Not possible, but things are nuts out here.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Big Tuna, you get to Portland, you’d best stay there.”

  “Why’s that? Come back.”

  “Seattle is a radioactive cow pie. Ditto Los Angeles. Least that’s what I hear. Nobody’s coming out of them places to tell the story, and roadblocks are in full force. You hunker down now.”

  “Ten-four.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Back at you.”

  The radio went quiet.

  A few miles north of the Columbia River, Astina pulled over, set the brake, and turned to Olivia.

  “Look,” Astina said. “I’m tired. I’ve been driving for days with no auto-assist. I’ve got bad allergies—germs aren’t the only thing in the air, you know. I’m not sick, but I look sick.”

  “We believe you,” Olivia said, not believing her at all but knowing Astina needed to believe she hadn’t contracted smallpox.

  “Great. But the boys and girls at that Oregon checkpoint might not. Have either one of you driven anything bigger than that little Ford hybrid?”

  “I have,” Olivia said.

  “How much bigger?”

  “Like a thirty-foot moving van. Drove it from Trenton to Charlotte. I mean—I shared the driving with a friend who was moving.”

  Astina nodded. “It’ll have to do. I’m gonna show you the basics. Then me and your boyfriend are gonna get in the back with all the Walmart stuff, in case there’s somebody at that checkpoint who’s smart enough to know you should be driving alone.”

  “What if they want to see my license? Obviously I’m not certified to drive this thing.”

  Astina got out her wallet and removed the license from its sleeve. She handed it to Olivia. “We’re about the same size, more or less. You’re a little shorter and I’m a little darker, but we’ll just have to chance it.”

  “They could make me open the trailer.”

  “They could.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I don’t know. Maybe they won’t care.”

  The lesson was brief. Astina and Olivia traded seats. Astina had her drive a mile running the clutch up and down the tree, especially had her clutch up smoothly from a dead stop (“So you don’t look like an amateur pulling out of the checkpoint”), and pronounced her adequate. Olivia did not feel this was an accurate appraisal.

  “This thing’s scary big.”

  “You’ll be all right. Here, put this on.” She removed her baseball cap and handed it to Olivia. “Kind of stuff your hair up under it.”

  Olivia did it. “Is there another filter mask?”

  “Good idea, and yes, I’ll get it for you.”

  Netted crates and cardboard boxes filled the semi’s trailer. Olivia stood by the bumper watching Brian and Astina climb over the cargo and squeeze down out of sight near the front. Astina’s head bobbed up.

  “This stuff is secured, but that doesn’t mean it can’t shift. Don’t overdo it with the brakes. Pay attention. Give yourself plenty of stopping distance.”

  “I will.”

  Olivia swung the heavy door shut and secured it. She climbed back into the cab, buckled up, and took a minute to organize herself. Thank God her migraine had backed off, but she still didn’t feel a hundred percent. Her drawn face regarded her from the side mirror. I look as sick as Astina. It was the aftermath of making the wrong decisions in the halo. It was the strain of what was happening now and what was coming.

  She pulled an N-95 mask over her face and adjusted it so the stretchy bands weren’t tugging on her hair every time she moved her head. In the mirror, Olivia was gone, replaced by a slightly closer approximation of Big Tuna.

  * * *

  The Walmart tractor-trailer was the biggest vehicle in line at the Oregon checkpoint. From her high position in the cab Olivia commanded a view over the tops of the carbon-guzzlers, hybrids, and full-electrics inching forward. A pair of desert-colored lightly armored military trucks bracketed the highway. Four guardsmen, armed with assault rifles and wearing elaborate double-canister gas masks, examined the civilian vehicles and passed them through. Whisper drones hovered over the scene. The Columbia River sparkled just beyond, marking the border between Washington and Oregon.

  Except for the Pacific Northwest landscape, Olivia could have been approaching a checkpoint in Aleppo. The Disaster had landed. Of course, it had always been here, cleverly disguised as virtuous civilization. But the human disaster was everywhere, the chaos boiling just under the surface. Maybe it was the awareness of that chaos that drove people to build civilization in the first place, pushed them to make meaningful connection
s, form relationships.

  Olivia had spent her grown-up life guarding her own borders, keeping as much of the personal chaos out as possible. But borders not only kept the chaos out but everything else, too. Since her father’s death, only Brian had passed through her personal checkpoint. Rohana was still waiting for clearance. Sorry, your papers are not in order. Only it wasn’t Rohana’s papers that needed ordering.

  The line moved and she muscled the clutch, jerking the big rig forward. Two guardsmen approached. In their masks they looked like giant bipedal insects. Olivia lowered her window.

  “What’s your destination?” The guardsman sounded young, trying to cover his fear with an unconvincing tone of authority.

  “Portland.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go ahead.” He waved her through.

  Olivia almost couldn’t believe it. For all this kid knew, the trailer was loaded with pox-riddled corpses. She knew she should just go, but she had to know something that this guardsman might be able to tell her.

  “Is it as bad as I’ve heard?”

  “It’s bad.”

  “Does—”

  “Move your vehicle.”

  Olivia raised her window and hauled the trailer into Oregon. On the other side of the river she pulled into a crowded truck stop. Either Oregon had a functioning grid or the Crossroads truck stop came prepared with heavy-duty generators. Still no cellular service, though, Olivia saw. She wondered if the destruction of communications had been the result of cascading failures or because the cellular networks had been deliberately targeted. Not that it mattered at this point.

  She parked the truck without even trying to make it look good. Muscling the tractor-trailer around was stressful. Olivia set the brake and turned the engine off. She could smell her own nervous sweat. Dark stains had bloomed under her arms, despite the AC.

  She unbuckled, shouldered the door open, and jumped down. There was no one in the parking lot behind the building, nobody to see her let Astina and Brian out of the trailer. She unlocked the bar, swung it up, and opened the door. Brian, sitting on top of the cargo, waved. Her chest tightened with the kind of emotion she’d held at bay for years, guarding her checkpoints with lethal force.

  * * *

  Brian’s parents lived in southeast Portland, in a neighborhood called Belmont. Astina let them off a few blocks away. “I’m not taking this thing down those narrow-ass streets,” she said.

  Olivia offered her hand. “Thanks for giving us a lift.”

  Astina looked at the hand, her eyes burning with fever, took it, and gave it a firm shake.

  “Right,” Brian said. “We wouldn’t have gotten here without you.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true. You two seem pretty determined. But you’re welcome.”

  Olivia opened the passenger door and climbed down. Brian folded the seat forward and clambered out of the sleeping space and down to the street.

  Looking up into the cab, Olivia said, “Where are you going from here?”

  “First off, I need fuel.” Astina was sweating hard. It seemed unlikely she could bank many more miles. “I got a house of my own in Portland, but I think I better go see the folks. They’re up in Centralia. If I can get across the border into Washington, that’s where I’ll go. I don’t think the National Guard is stopping anybody from leaving Oregon.”

  “Stupid to waste them on the border at all,” Brian said.

  Astina grunted. “Good luck, you two.”

  Olivia stepped back and Brian threw the door shut. The big truck growled and huffed and slowly ground forward, blinkers on to reenter the sporadic traffic.

  Unexpectedly, a deep tide of loneliness swept through Olivia. In her mind she saw the semis parked behind that rest stop in Idaho, and she remembered her fear that those high cabs held terrified truckers—or variola victims, like the one in the Subaru parked in front.

  How much time was left to make the world right again?

  Twenty-Eight

  Quiet lay over tree-lined streets as Olivia and Brian walked into the residential neighborhood. Craftsman homes, some dating back to the early 1900s, stood silent and lightless, like funereal boxes. An old man in a sleeveless T-shirt and what looked like a World War One gas mask sat on the porch of a rundown house, one of the few in need of fresh paint and a new roof. He watched them as they passed on the sidewalk, his hand covering the pistol on his thigh.

  A block farther, a large dog stood in the middle of the street. Its drooping head swung listlessly left and right, as if looking for something. It held clenched in its jaws a piece of yellow rope about eighteen inches long, one end of it tied in a knot as big as a baby’s fist. The dog, a retriever mix, sniffed hopefully at them.

  “Poor guy,” Brian said. “Nobody to play with.”

  The dog followed them. Stopped when they stopped, walked when they walked.

  “Go on home,” Brian said.

  But home seemed to be the pavement a yard or so behind their heels.

  A flowering shade tree with purple buds reached protectively over the front porch of Brian’s parents’ house. Another Craftsman home, this one gabled and ornamented with architectural details and beveled windows. They mounted the porch. A man’s bucket cap with a red-and-blue band sat on the glider. Olivia picked it up.

  “Your dad like to golf?”

  “He likes to sit out here and drink beer and talk about golf.”

  Brian knocked on the door. The dog that had followed them started barking. Olivia dropped the hat on the glider and turned. The dog sat at the bottom of the porch steps, the rope on the ground by its forepaws, jaws parted in that way dogs had that made them look like they were smiling.

  The door opened, and Olivia turned back. If you put Brian Anker into a machine that bleached his hair, dragged his shoulders down like a wrestler’s, and stamped his face with a wrinkle press, you’d have the man standing in the doorway.

  “Brian! Thank God!”

  The men embraced. Brian had a couple of inches on his father. “I’m sorry I didn’t call, Dad. The phones don’t work.”

  “Of course they don’t. It’s all part of it.” He looked over Brian’s shoulder at Olivia, his eyebrows elevating. “You’re Liv?”

  Olivia said, “I am.” She hadn’t thought that Brian had mentioned her to his father. But naturally he would have. Bri didn’t live in a guarded fortress the way she did.

  Brian and his dad stopped hugging and the older man held out his hand. “John Anker. Glad to meet you.”

  “Olivia Nikitas. Likewise.”

  “I’ve heard, well, not a lot about you. But that I’ve heard anything about you at all speaks volumes. Brian can be less than forthcoming, at least when it comes to who he’s dating.”

  Olivia smiled, not recognizing Bri by that description. Brian was the most forthcoming person she’d ever met. “I guess he plays it close to the vest.”

  “Not really,” John said. “He just likes to be sure, when it matters. This time I think he is.”

  Olivia’s smile felt like a grimace.

  Brian said, “Where’s Mom?”

  “Resting. Got a summer cold.”

  Olivia exchanged a look with Brian.

  John turned away. “Come in and I’ll make us something to eat. Nothing fresh, I’m afraid. The power’s been out since it all started. Since the big attack. Frozen stuff made a hell of a mess.”

  They followed him into the house. It was as beautifully maintained as the exterior. The inlaid hardwood floor gleamed; the plants looked healthy. Family pictures occupied the top of the upright piano, and a portrait of Pope Benedict XVII peeked out from behind a schefflera plant, as if the pontiff was curious but shy about meeting strangers.

  “You two look tired,” John said over his shoulder.

  “We’ve been on the road,” Brian said.

  “Pretty bad out there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, thank God you’r
e home. There’s beer. Not cold.”

  “I’d like to look in on Mom.”

  “I told you, she’s resting.”

  “Dad—”

  “Leave her be,” he said, a little short, but then his face immediately shifted to make clear he didn’t mean anything by it. “She’ll come down when she feels better.”

  They ate lunch in the dining nook off the kitchen—peanut butter sandwiches, Ritz crackers, and warm Kona Big Wave Golden Ale.

  “I’m not much of a cook,” John said. “Karen would have made you something decent.”

  “How long has she been down with the . . . cold?” Olivia asked.

  John looked sharply at her, but it passed in a moment, and his gaze became soft and ruminative. “A few days, I think. Yes. Three days.”

  “I hope she feels better soon.”

  “Where are your folks?” John asked. “Are they here in Oregon?”

  “No. My mother and father died a long time ago, and my stepmother lives in India, in Jaipur. Is there any news about that part of the world?”

  “Before the blackout, it didn’t look good. Those two countries threatening each other like kids in the schoolyard. It’s been days, though. Things might have calmed down.”

  “Or gotten worse.” Olivia felt sick.

  John said, “You two are acting scared.”

  “Things are pretty bad,” Brian said.

  “You have to keep your head up, son.”

  “I know.”

  John turned to Olivia. “He’s always been the optimist.”

  “I’m just tired,” Brian said.

  “That I understand. When this mess gets straightened out, we can all go on vacation.”

  “Sure, Dad.”

  John stood. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to lie down for a few minutes. I was up all night looking after Karen.”

  Olivia put her bottle down. “Of course.”

  “Make yourselves at home.”

  He walked out of the room and up the stairs. The quiet stretched out. Olivia broke it: “Bri, your mother—”

  His eyes said, Don’t go there. “She’s always gotten sick a lot. When I was a kid, Dad used to say she was lucky because she got a little sick all the time so she would never get really sick.”