Sherwood Nation: a novel

by Benjamin Parzybok

  She was already being filmed, she saw. The cameraman fine-tuned the controls of his camera.

  “Please,” the cameraman said in a Mexican accent. “Stand in front of truck, that way they don’t find where you are. You are safe with us.”

  Bea grabbed the back of her shirt and leaned in to whisper. “Goddamnit no, Renee, no,” and then Renee found herself nodding yes. She stood in position and smiled into the lens and winked.

  The newswoman, who introduced herself but whose name Renee forgot instantly in the giant glassy stare of the camera, asked: what was she doing? Why was she doing it? How did the people respond to receiving water? Did she have a message for Portland?

  “Hi, Portland,” Renee said. She glanced at Bea off camera who fumed at her. “How are you?” She brushed a braid back from her shoulder and realized she had not seen her face in a mirror for days. The last time there’d been a bloody comet streak down one cheek. “I wish you were here with me, going door to door. If you could all make a few stops with me and our Sherwood Club. We’re weaving together neighborhoods.”

  “By weaving, you mean?”

  Renee held up her hands for the camera, her fingers woven together. “Connecting them, providing safety and sharing rations, caring for each other. We’re creating a fabric upon which we can all depend. It’s hard work, I’ve buried a few people in the last week. And we like to think we kept a few from needing burials. I believe—I believe we’re now one of the safest parts of the city. Mayor Bartlett, the city council, everyone is invited. I’d love to have you on our side. Step into one of these rooms in Northeast Portland and it alters you. Mayor Bartlett, I’m afraid you would feel inclined to resign on the spot, for it’s difficult to imagine the gall one would need to carry out thieving water from public rations in the face of the kind of misery that exists here. You are free to do so, upon my suggestion. Resign or tag along, either way.” She winked again. “I’m sorry, tell me the question again?”

  “Rumor has it that your Sherwood Club provides extra rations to families in need. Where do you obtain the extra rations?”

  It is moments like these, Renee thought, where an opinion is transformed. In her mind she saw Josh’s water scanner and she made her eyes hold steady. “An excellent question. What we have is a pittance, a few gallons here. Where does the mayor get his trucks? You are familiar with Robin Hood? Well, the difference between that king and our Mayor Bartlett is that one over-taxed and the other steals.” She smiled. “A system that criminalizes a whistleblower is wanting in introspection.”

  The woman asked her another question, but Renee spooked, realizing the danger she was putting them all in.

  She nodded to the camera to end the interview and said thank you. Then they mounted their bicycles and rode as hard as they could, weaving through the streets recklessly with no thought to the safety of each neighborhood they passed through, in order to lose any trace of the van. After an hour they found themselves at the empty water tower.

  She felt sick to her stomach with her own stupidity, and buried under that a rising excitement as she thought of herself and their mission on everyone’s screen that night. She wondered how they’d make her out, how the newscasters might idly chat about the Sherwood Club. She imagined their jovial laughter ringing out over hundreds of thousands of televisions as they bandied about the fruitlessness of her task. Petty thief, petty charity. She lay down on top of the wooden playground equipment and buried her face in her hands. She’d screwed up, she could see that now. With a few idiotic moments of bravado and self-importance she’d fucked up everything they’d built so far and put all of her people at risk of arrest.

  As the sun went down and the sky began to darken, she fumbled about in her pockets. She found the green laser, and she gripped it tightly, a lifeline.

  .... . .-.. .-..—- ..—.. Hello? She Morse-coded on the side of the water tower, her thumb tiring with the first word. She lay on her side and stared up at the structure’s great belly, iron and empty, and waited. Every few minutes she traced out a circle on it, in case he plugged in.

  The reply came at last: You were awesome.

  Renee sat up and her heart raced. She traced a question mark directly on the tower.

  On news. Be careful. But yes.

  Josh led up the truck operation, and Jamal formally joined Sherwood Club as Josh’s partner on the heist. Extra water was set aside for them to clean themselves and the uniforms they’d quietly purchased.

  On the day of, they clipped through the cyclone fencing that housed the city’s twenty-two official water distribution trucks, in the big parking lot under the freeway where city buses, snow plows—from more optimistic times—and other city vehicles were stored.

  There were usually three or four trucks left behind in the parking lot, alone and dormant, waiting to be called into duty. Fewer trucks were needed as the population continued to dwindle.

  On the night before the heist they piled cardboard boxes and other debris against the back fence of the parking lot. They slept underneath this and watched as the city drivers each came to claim their truck early in the morning.

  After the trucks had pulled out, Josh and Jamal squeezed through the hole in the fence, dusted themselves off, and walked toward one of the remaining trucks in the lot.

  Josh concealed a framing hammer up his sleeve, to puncture the window if need be, but, mercifully, the passenger door was unlocked. They climbed into the barren truck and grinned tensely at each other, keeping their heads ducked while Jamal hot-wired the vehicle. When he’d finished and the engine started, he pulled two guns from a plastic bag and handed one to Josh.

  “Just in case,” he said. “The intent is not to use them.”

  Josh studied the gun and then put it under the seat. “I’ve never actually used one.”

  “Then let’s not make this the first time.”

  Jamal accelerated out of the lot and caught sight of the last of the vehicles turning onto Highway 30. As the trucks ahead passed a National Guard base, they slowed and spaced themselves out, so that a military jeep could pull in behind each.

  “Shit. Here we go,” he said. They waited tensely to see if a jeep would pull in behind their truck, the last in the long motorcade.

  Josh stared into the rearview mirror. “Nothing.”

  At the airport checkpoint they pulled to a stop at the entrance. A security guard with a thick mustache and plump cheeks waited in a telephone booth–sized compartment. He looked as if he needed to be pumped in at the start of each day and pried out at the end. He inspected his laptop and eyed them. “I don’t have this truck in the queue today.”

  “We’re taking it up to the workers at the wind fields,” Josh said and swallowed. “New workers. I guess they’re bumping up power supplies.” He nervously fiddled with the door handle.

  “Well, that’s good, I suppose,” the security guard said. He pointed up to the small solar panel on his roof. “These damn things are impossible to keep clean with the dust storms. Always fritzing out on me. Where’s your escort?”

  “One never pulled out.” Josh shrugged.

  “Hmm,” he said, and there was a long pause as he worked at his keyboard. “Must be a bug in the software. The wind farms are delivered by helicopter. When did the truck get initiated?”

  “Just this morning,” Josh said.

  The security guard studied them both for a long awkward moment and then leaned out the window to sight along the truck. “Well, I’ll call you in an escort. Don’t leave the grounds until they come in.”

  “Perhaps they’re meeting us on the freeway toward the dam?”

  “Nope, doubt it. Worst case scenario, you get two escorts. I wouldn’t want to do that route. You’ll be glad for the extra help.”

  “True, true.” Josh smiled and thanked him.

  T
he guard waved them forward and Jamal drove into line behind the other trucks and they waited. The trucks were filling from a nozzle that hung from the underbelly of a behemoth plane. When a plane emptied, another rolled forward.

  “Shit,” Josh said.

  “It’ll work,” Jamal said.

  “Shit.”

  “Stay calm.”

  They waited their turn and watched the exit gate, looking for the jeep that would be their escort.

  Josh began to have that hopeless feeling he imagined spies and double-agents had, the sense of doing the enemy’s job for them until that’s all you knew. The fear of discovery keeping you on task in their service until you were found out. He wished they’d told the security guard they were running a job in town, but they didn’t know where the other trucks were bound. Between the city and the wind farms, rumors of violence and robbery were prevalent.

  Their turn came and Jamal pulled the truck up under the nozzle, missing the mark so that the ground crewman swore and he had to back up. He felt the crewman stare at them, whether to register his scowl or to root out their fraud, he didn’t know.

  When the truck was properly under the nozzle they began to fill it. It was the most enchanting, bewitching sound Jamal felt he’d ever heard. Gallon after gallon splashing into the deep metal tank. The sound of such wealth. It made him intensely thirsty.

  When the truck was full, the crewman capped the top of their tank—the drivers were forbidden from exiting the trucks at the National Guard–run airport—and Jamal started for the gate.

  There was an identical phone booth–sized checkpoint on the way out, stocked with what appeared to be the identical twin, minus thirty pounds, of the incoming guard.

  “Destination?”

  “Wind farms.”

  The guard looked up from his computer. “Oh yes.” He folded his hands thoughtfully and set them on the window sill dividing them. “This shit never works. Data sync issue maybe? Wish I could say it was the first time.”

  “Huh,” Josh said across Jamal, “should we drive it back to the garage then?” Suddenly he felt more than willing to give up the whole thing, to put the truck, full though it was, in the lot and bicycle home. They could come back and lift it at night.

  “No,” the guard said, drawing the word out. “Can’t get off that easy. You know what I think? Piece of paper and a phone call. Boom. Job’s done.” The guard picked up an old style phone with a cord and held it out toward the truck. “Doesn’t work either.” He raised his eyebrows for effect and then looked at his screen again. “Instead we rely on some half-assed software. I can’t think of one thing I ever done where these things”—he tapped the side of his screen—“have made it better.”

  Josh and Jamal waited. The man seemed to be chewing on some kind of decision.

  “Route’s not used much anymore,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “So you know what I think that means?”

  Jamal inched down into his seat and felt their moment was up. The guard had worked through the situation and deduced their crime.

  “I think it means the copter’s broke.” He stared at them. “You know about this route? I don’t recognize you guys.”

  “We work distribution usually, sir,” Jamal said.

  The guard slapped the sill of the booth with his big, meaty hand. “What can you do?” He pointed out the window beyond his booth. “Your gunners are waiting out the gate, better stick close to them.”

  Josh nodded.

  “Well, pull on out then,” he said, “off you go! There’s thirsty folk out there!”

  Waiting for them on the other side was a military jeep with four National Guardsmen, looking sleepy and not at all alert.

  Jamal gave them a quick wave and waited to see if they wished to talk to him. The driver signaled emphatically for him to carry on and he pulled forward into the street, pointed toward their rendezvous with Maid Marian’s people, where the plan was to drive the truck into a warehouse and fake a riot while they hid it away.

  After Jamal’s first turn toward their destination, though, the jeep began flashing its headlights and honking furiously and then tore out around, veering to a skid in front of them. The driver strode furiously toward them.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Marine Drive?” Jamal said.

  “You’ll get hijacked on Marine Drive! We take the freeway, that’s the secure route. How long you been on this job?”

  “But I thought . . . We—we can take that way if you want, yes sir.”

  “If I want?” The driver scowled at him and told them to turn around, and then strode back to his jeep.

  “Well?” Jamal exhaled, and put his hands over his face. Their plan had spun off into the unknown. “How many of them can you take?”

  Josh closed his eyes and sank down in the seat.

  “I guess we’re driving to the wind farms,” Jamal said.

  Along I-84 the hills to the right of the freeway were ominous with a great yellow-brown forest, the needles gone brittle and brown for thirst, the trees long-dead. It was to the hills that they watched for ambush, in front of them for road block.

  They passed two burnt-out cars discarded on the side of the road and Josh remembered how the news had covered the first ambushes outside of the city a couple of years ago.

  “What are we going to do?” Jamal said.

  Josh shook his head, grim.

  “I could get up top, shoot their driver and see if the jeep rolled,” Jamal said.

  Josh smirked. “You can do that?”

  Jamal shrugged. He wouldn’t know if he could until the moment came.

  “We may need their protection,” Josh said.

  There were no other cars on the road.

  They drove the truck in silence for half an hour. They were going at a careful pace, slowing down to dodge debris in the road—fallen trees, a tire, the remains of a campfire. They watched in front and to the side for movement, and behind them to keep an eye on the jeep that followed.

  “We might as well be wearing a suit of money,” Jamal said.

  “We’re driving a suit of money.”

  At Multnomah Falls, the now-defunct tourist stop, the jeep pulled ahead of them and began to slow down, bringing them to a stop. They came to a rest fifty yards from the stone gift shop. Its windows were blown out, the interior was dark, and there was a burn mark along the eaves. It appeared as though someone had been having campfires in the place.

  They waited in the truck, letting it idle. Jamal watched the guardsmen get out of the truck and feared suddenly that they might be robbed by their own soldiers. That perhaps they’d been eager to go along with the ruse in order to hoard the water for themselves.

  In the rearview mirror he watched one walk toward them while the others stayed with the jeep.

  “Get your gun ready,” Jamal said. “Keep it low.”

  The guardsman was older than the others, in his late forties, with a scar along his chin. He came to the passenger side window. After looking around the truck compartment he exhaled with impatience. “I talked to command a few minutes back. There’s no delivery out this way today.” He raised his eyebrows at them.

  “Oh?” Josh said, “You’re sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. This makes this a lost truck. Who’d you get your orders from?”

  “The usual place,” Josh said weakly.

  “The usual place?” The guardsman pulled out a military-issue phone and dialed a number, and then swore when he realized they were in a dead zone, off even the guard’s own network. “What’s your name?”

  “I—I wonder if it’s safe here,” Josh said.

  “Get out of the truck. Right now.” The guardsman looked toward his jeep and his men to signal f
or help. The driver of the jeep took one step toward them and then a red gash appeared across his neck. He made a gurgling sound and fell.

  “Jesus!” said the guardsman at the window. Jamal jammed the truck into reverse and stepped on the gas, backing down the freeway as fast as he could go, leaving the fourth guardsman exposed and hollering at him.

  “Switch places!” Josh yelled. “You’re better with a gun.”

  “No!”

  “Switch me, damn it, I can’t shoot.”

  Jamal skidded to a stop. As they fumbled across each other to switch places he caught sight of people in the old lodge.

  “That building!” Jamal yelled, and Josh looked to see a face and rifle appear briefly in the window of the gift shop to their right, and then another guardsman was on the ground.

  “Oh my god,” Josh said. He accelerated backward again and yanked the steering wheel to the left. The truck skidded partway around, stuck in the middle of the freeway at a perpendicular angle, facing the forest. Their windshield exploded, splintering glass over them.

  Jamal waved his gun about looking for a sign of the attackers. Ahead of them was a dark brown, dead forest. “Drive! Fuck, drive!” Jamal shouted.

  Josh stepped on the gas and yanked the wheel to the right. The turning radius was wide and he accelerated into the turn, driving them into the ditch at the side of the road. The truck’s grille hit the bank and the truck would turn no more. “Shit!” Josh yelled. In the side mirror he saw the two remaining guardsmen under cover behind the jeep. He felt the truck shudder as it took bullets. He ground into reverse and freed them from the ditch. Up the hillside to his left a small band advanced toward them. Two had rifles pointed. He ducked below the steering wheel as his side window blew out, the bullet cutting a path across them and embedding in the passenger side door, above Jamal’s thigh.