Sherwood Nation: a novel

by Benjamin Parzybok

  At Prescott and 33rd a line of jeeps rolled by and they hid between two houses. Citizens came out on their porches to watch, the rumble of so many vehicles a foreign sound.

  Zach heard a woman ask what was happening from the porch next to them. “They’re not Rangers,” a man answered, speaking of the jeeps.

  “Maybe from the new Irvington neighborhood?” she said.

  “No.” After the trucks had passed, the man said, “We need to see if we can find a Ranger. Right now.”

  Zach struggled with the moral obligation to warn them and a desire to disappear with his charge without a soul knowing. He pulled Renee to a crouch and they snuck in front of the house and continued on, keeping away from the street and ignoring any who called out to them.

  At the corner there were gunshots and Zach raced Renee into an alley. This is civil war, he realized. Once the fighting started it would be difficult to end.

  A loud thwok of a bullet impact sounded next to him. He realized with alarm they’d been spotted. He could not see any sign of attackers in the dark. They were using night vision goggles, he realized, of course they were. The night took on the menace of being stalked.

  Zach yanked Renee forward and they ran half the length of the alley and then he doubled back and crept forward until they were stationed behind an old, tireless car.

  He could hear the soft crunch of careful boots, heel to toe, as the Guardsman walked over a patch of gravel.

  He brought Renee’s ear to his mouth. “We can’t outrun him,” Zach whispered. “We have to jump him.”

  “No,” Renee said.

  “No choice,” Zach said. “He’s got goggles on. If we pull them off that will blind him.”

  They waited and tried to stifle the sound of their breathing.

  Zach could feel the man’s presence before he could see him, the sonic vibration of him just around the bumper. He crouched in a sprinter’s stance and then leapt into him, getting his arms around the man’s middle. There was a startled, quick pok-pok of automatic fire into the air as they fell. The man was stronger than Zach and though he held on, he could feel himself losing as they rolled back and forth on the ground, Zach’s legs planted to keep from getting rolled over. The soldier was laden with gear and rattled as they fought, as if Zach wrestled a garbage can. Punches landed on his head and face and in the ribs, until finally he got the better of Zach and rolled him over. He drew back to hit Zach in the face and then there was a solid whack and the man collapsed to the side.

  “With the lead pipe in the alley,” Renee said, and he could hear a savagery in her voice.

  “My god,” Zach whispered. He struggled himself away from the Guardsman and tried to catch his breath. He felt the tenderness along his face and ribs for any lasting damage but found none. “You’re supposed to ask if I’m OK.”

  “You’ll get better,” Renee said.

  “Let’s get his gear and get out of here.”

  They dragged the man behind the car.

  “Should we kill him?” Renee said

  “I don’t know.” Zach looked up and down the alley to see what attention their brawl had caused but heard only distant fighting. There was no way in hell he could imagine killing an unconscious man.

  “He was hunting us,” Zach said. “I doubt he knew it was you—he was hunting anybody, like sport. Unless—are you in Ranger’s uniform?”

  “Of course I’m in uniform. Let’s kill him,” Renee said.

  “Please,” the man groaned from the ground.

  “Crap,” Zach said. “Wait.” Zach smashed in the driver’s side window of the car with the acquired rifle and felt around until he found the trunk lever.

  Zach prodded the soldier with the rifle. “Get in the trunk,” Zach said.

  “But—”

  “Dude,” Zach said. “I’m going to freak out. I am not good at this. I’m going to fucking kill you.” Zach wasn’t a hundred percent sure he knew how to operate the rifle so he just gave him a couple more hard jabs with it. The man grabbed the barrel of the gun and Renee kicked him in the head—now helmetless—and the man let go and curled up.

  “Get in,” Renee said.

  The man got on all fours and said, “I recognize that voice.”

  “Yep,” she said. She kicked him in the ribs and the man groaned and said he was going.

  They closed the trunk and the Guardsman began banging from the inside.

  “I always wanted to meet you,” he said, his voice muffled.

  “Holy christ, we’re going to wake the neighborhood.” Zach fumbled with the night vision goggles.

  “Well, you met me,” Renee said, feeling suddenly sick with herself. She leaned into a squat.

  “How do you turn these fucking goggles on?” Zach’s fingers shook as he tried to arrange them on his face.

  “Like I’d tell you,” the man said.

  “I can turn off the emergency brake.”

  There was a silence from the trunk, then: “But we’re not on a hill.”

  “Goddamnit, now I have the head strap tangled,” Zach said.

  “Let’s go,” Renee said.

  “It’s more of a monocle, really,” Zach said, “unless, hey, were there two lenses?”

  “It’s a knob, on top,” the man said.

  “Oh, thanks. Sorry about the trunk.”

  Renee pulled Zach down the alley and the Guardsman began thumping against the trunk again.

  “Maybe you should have asked him for the manual,” Renee said.

  “I can see now,” Zach said, but he wasn’t sure he preferred this at all. The world was green and white and he saw shapes moving at the range of his vision, a ghost world. It was difficult to imagine they couldn’t see him. It made him want to hunker down in someone’s backyard until morning light came, but he suspected they would continue to search for her well into the night.

  They padded down the alley. Though it was cleared up some since Sherwood, alleys were natural receptacles for trash and debris and the outgrowth of strange projects hidden from view. It was slow going and Zach frequently flipped the goggles on and off to navigate. Off to quell the graveyard fog of danger that lurked beyond his vision and to enhance his hearing, On to maneuver around some obstacle in front of them—burned debris or dead cars.

  At 24th they crossed Prescott and headed toward Fremont. Renee led now, feeling the exhausted Maid Marian shell disintegrating in the adrenalin rush.

  “What to do now?” she said.

  “Hide, first—after, I have no idea. We need to see the city in the morning. If the Guard have it locked down then—I don’t know—then we see what the press and the citizens do. We find out if we have any friends, and how many were killed. We get on the news. We control the story.”

  “I guess—” Renee said, pausing in the street.

  Zach put on the goggles and turned, paranoid, but nothing moved in the scope. In the eerie ghost-glow he watched Renee put her hands over her face.

  “Goddamnit,” she said from behind her hands. “I don’t want to be on the run.”

  “Come on.” He pulled her up and turned her toward the tunnel. They passed a few more houses and then turned into the backyard where the tunnel had once entered Sherwood—when there was still a border there.

  They stood over the camouflaged hole and wondered when they’d next be able to exit it.

  “Well,” Zach said.

  She crouched down. “Oh shit,” she said, the extent of what happened resurfacing, the message in their fate’s eight ball floating up through the murkiness to declare doom before drifting back into obscurity again. She touched the inside of her forearm, a habit, where was writ: There Is No End.

  Zach patted her shoulder and asked her to get in, looking about to see if they’d
been noticed. On the corner lay Nevel’s house, and he wondered how long it’d be before they searched it too. He could tell she was headed toward uselessness, burnt and empty and collapsed inside, like the nation. He snapped his fingers several times, more for himself than for her; he had to stay focused. If he could just keep her alive through the night, he thought. They would assess in the morning.

  Once she’d gone down, he looked for a way to disguise the entrance. At the end of the driveway was a garage. Inside he found an old Mercedes. He imagined how lonely and wonderful it would feel to get in and drive away, just the two of them, were it not out of gas. He removed his shirt and padded the riflebutt with it and smashed the window in, finding pleasure in his second window smash of the night. Just to be sure, he checked the fuel gauge. Siphoned out by gas thieves long ago. With the car in neutral, he let down the emergency brake and slowly rolled it out of the garage toward the hole. Once the car was in motion he feared the hole would collapse with the weight, but it held.

  With the car in place over the hole, he scooted himself under it until he could bend his legs into the hole. He lowered himself down until he touched the top of the stool, then he reached up and shot out the back tire. The sound was shocking and his ears rang, but the car sank until the tunnel was obscured.

  When he came to the tunnel floor he called out to her. He flipped on his goggles and the dim shape of the tunnel materialized, the walls becoming clear to his left and right and the tunnel itself remaining a deep black hole in the center of his vision. There was no sign of her.

  He edged forward and the dim black and green glow of the night vision gave him the creeps, like he was a character in the dungeon corridors of some stylized video game. At any second some beastly undead creature would appear.

  Instead what he found was Renee, halfway up the tunnel, sitting on the ground with the wall to her back, slumped over. Her arms were wrapped around her chest and her neck bent at a pitiful angle.

  The sight of her made his chest ache and he tried to imagine a future in which they were safe and happy and could just live. Maybe they’d make a journey for the east, he thought, and the thought brought a shudder of fear over him.

  Zach stepped around her and went deeper into the tunnel. He explored each of the branches, many of them simple alcoves, some long, wandering offshoots that ended suddenly, as if the digger had grown bored or frustrated with the direction. At the end of one such branch he found what he was looking for—Nevel’s water hoard. He fell to his knees in front of it, loving the man then. There were easily several hundred bottles, enough for them to stay for a long while, pending Nevel and Cora’s generosity. The repressed thirst overtook him. He opened a bottle and drank until he felt sick, awash with it, a sea in his belly.

  He took the remains of the bottle and set it beside Renee. “Drink some,” he said but she didn’t move.

  Zach wandered to the edge of the basement. There in the middle of the room like some discarded mannequin, holding perfectly still and unaware of him in the night vision glow, Zach saw Nevel staring toward the tunnel entrance. He was dressed in a bathrobe, his hair askew. Zach stood for a moment waiting for the man to say something but then realized he couldn’t see him. He was simply standing there in the dark. He must have some kind of sixth sense about his lair, Zach thought.

  “Nevel,” Zach said quietly, and Nevel jumped and flailed his arms in the air.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, who’s there?”

  “Sorry, it’s Zach.”

  Nevel bent over and breathed deeply, a landslide of curses issuing from him.

  “Sorry for scaring you. We have a bit of trouble.”

  “I’ll say!”

  Zach told him about Sherwood and the Guard and Renee behind him in the dark.

  “Oh god.” Nevel fought back an urge to go check his children and his wife, as if the disaster were infectious. “Oh god. I thought—I thought she was winning.”

  Zach shrugged and knew his gesture was lost in the dark. “So, we’re in your tunnel, Renee and I.”

  Nevel shifted his feet. Zach noted that he had what appeared to be rabbits—bunnies—on each of his slippers, made ominous and ghoulish by the light of the night vision. Zach studied him, the light making it like watching an old black-and-white television, the man’s posture tilting a few degrees upon hearing the news that they were city property again and that his tunnel to paradise only housed fugitives now.

  “What can we do?” Nevel said.

  Zach asked if they could stay a while.

  “Maid Marian is back there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what about that Amazon woman.”

  Zach shook his head no and then tried to keep his voice steady. “We don’t know about any of them. There was an explosion.”

  “I’ll tell Cora. Of course you can stay.”

  Nevel turned and padded up the stairs and Zach returned to the tunnel. He found Renee and switched off his goggles and sat in the dark listening to the sound of her breath and smelling the earth close about them. He fought a wave of claustrophobia and tried to set his mind to what was next, but every time he started to make plans, he realized that the foundation of all plans would be built on what the morning looked like. She would want to go back.

  Just as he began to nod off, a light bounced down the tunnel from the direction of the basement.

  “Hello?” said the disembodied voice in the black fabric behind the light. Zach’s eyes stung. “Hello, are you safe? Come upstairs, we have a guest bed. He thinks of nothing.”

  “Hi, Cora,” Renee said weakly.

  “Maid Marian.” Cora bent and embraced Renee’s head. Zach could hear that she wept and they were silent for a while. “At least rest in a proper bed.”

  “If it’s OK,” Renee said, “I’d prefer to sleep down here; can we sleep down here?”

  “If that’s really what you prefer,” Cora said, “but let me make it more comfortable. I know; I’ve slept in this tunnel.”

  Cora made a bed of sleeping bags and an air mattress in the cave where the water cache was. And there they lay down, the bottles glittering in the light of the candle she lit for them. Zach couldn’t help but resent that water around him, even as he craved it, this wealth that had been the root of it all, the vital force they were intertwined with, their bodies built by and with it, and the cause of their suffering. It was water that had invented Maid Marian.

  The air in this part of the cave felt different, as if in here the world did not consist of the inanimate, dried husks of things, but water-filled and enlivened, the very air lifelike.

  Renee was catatonic and he stripped her of her Ranger uniform and lay next to her. “Have a drink at least, can’t I get you a drink?”

  She said nothing, her eyes open and unblinking.

  “It’ll be OK,” he whispered. “It’ll be OK,” he said again, feeling fairly certain it would not be OK.

  He felt her slipping into some icy state, a place where she might sleep down here forever, deactivated, her job over or failed. She was going to a still and shielded place in which she need not wonder if friends were dead or a country wrecked, or more likely, a place of her own making, to punish herself for those things. He felt like shaking her suddenly. Maybe she needed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, maybe she needed those memories dislodged from her esophagus.

  He felt he needed to evoke something, anything, so she didn’t slip away into some coma. He kissed her and bit her shoulder but she did not move. “Renee,” he said again, feeling desperate now, as if, unmoored, her soul would slip away if he didn’t fight against the doom that pressed in on them. He leaned up and slapped her lightly across the face and her head turned where he’d slapped it and she said nothing.

  “Please,” he said.

  He shook her shoulders but she was limp.
“Please don’t do this!” There was a thread of panic building up in him. He worried who she’d wake up as if he allowed emotional rigor mortis to set in overnight.

  “Come on,” he said. He put his ear up close to her face to listen for the sound of breathing. It was shallow and jagged, her mind no longer attentive to her faculties. He imagined her stuck reliving a single scene somewhere or just the barren echo of all the day’s scenes. Her silence was foreboding, as if she’d already succumbed and he would wake to her dead beside him, the flesh beginning to rot, in sympathy with the country.

  It seemed so small, such a tiny act, a mending thread of a life line thrown out, but next to her on the bed he whispered into her ear, weaving for her stories of what could be and what might be. Telling her how he loved her. Impossible outcomes, some so ridiculous he retracted, course corrected over his course corrections, until finally she moved, emitting a low groan or growl, and pulled him on top of her. He sighed into her neck and held on tight.

  Jamal was speaking to his father about other potential neighborhoods that could add clout and resources to the territory. It had all been too easy. One day they were one size, and the next they’d ballooned, taking one of Portland’s wealthier neighborhoods under their wing.

  The neighborhood welcomed them. They were heroes.

  “No more,” Gregor said.

  “But—” He imagined the entire city under their control—the stretches of farmland and resources they could plumb. Maybe the stabilization could spread past city limits. “Listen Pop, it’s not about craving power, it’s thinking about what we could do for the rest of the city. It’s about how it’s working here. The city should give up. We fit the new world. We are the government for what the world has become.”