Sherwood Nation (52 page)

She developed a honed sense of their expectations. With every Maid Marian response, with her eyes and speech, each action was a promise to those expectations.

But back at HQ she felt lost inside the cavernous personality of Maid Marian. She and Bea had fought: Maid Marian had given Bea an inviting hug in a moment of quiet, intuiting the need that was ever-present there and answering it, as she had done all day and to everyone, with Maid Marian’s desire to provide, to be all, to be adored.

She made a victory tour of the map room where acquired bottles of champagne and other alcohol were opened and drunk. She shook hands and cheered and realized that she felt like a great, brilliantly colored beetle whose insides had been eaten out by ants.

She chatted with everyone, her words spilling from her, empty as styrofoam, and then she excused herself and went to her room and stood looking out the back window.

“I’m just tired,” she whispered into the window glass. This part of the job, the part that was showboat, wore on her. There was too much work to do to waste so much time on it. But ironically, she thought, you could not get the work done—you could not empower the people to see the vision of the work—if you did not do the other.

Zach opened the door and came and put his arm around her. He had things to say, she could feel it.

“I’m going to go to sleep, Zach.” She wanted to be alone. She wanted to get a foothold on who she was. She feared she was failing at the promises she’d given him.

“As you should. And so—it’s just that—”

“Zach. I need to be alone right now.”

“Yes, but—” Zach looked around the room and out the window into the dark backyard and stepped in close to her. He could see she was frayed and exhausted but he had more important things than her sanity to worry about. He gripped her arm hard to focus her. “I need to discuss something with you,” he whispered, “and we have to do it right now.”

The National Guard arrived at 2 a.m. There were four trucks of soldiers, a tank, and a small fleet of jeeps. The soldiers quickly spread out and secured the block. Rangers were easily taken out if they chose to fight, but most quickly surrendered to the superior armed force.

The tank’s first shot, from fifty yards up the street, obliterated the map room. As if a comet had taken it out on its way through, it was nothing but a gaping hole, leaking fragmented paper and dust and smoke and the sounds of human terror.

The second shot took the back bedroom completely off the house so that the roof slumped. The teeth had been taken out of the house—the roof sloping nearly to the first floor—its bite full of gums. After the structure finished settling on itself, the National Guard moved swiftly into the house and collected the remaining few who held out. Stretchers entered the building then and pulled out the wounded and dead, and finally the great house on Going Street was empty again and Sherwood HQ was no more.

The mayor sat in the back of a Lincoln Town Car on a runway at the airport. He’d had his driver move there from the warehouse so they could get better reception. Two of his advisers sat with him and they chatted over the top of the constant stream of National Guard chatter on the military’s open channel. They passed a bag of roasted peanuts between them. Bodies had been removed from the building and people taken prisoner, but he’d not heard any names yet. It was nearly 4 a.m. and he leaned himself into a corner, exhausted from several days of planning and the lateness. He felt shame for allowing it to come to this, and exhilaration. When the hell would they get the names?

His driver, an assistant to the National Guard’s general, refused to take him there, citing area restrictions and the danger involved, but he desperately wanted to get a look at her, for them to lock eyes and for her to see how things had changed. He wanted to see her defeated with his own eyes. When he heard they’d used the tank on the building, he was aghast.

“You fucking brutes,” he yelled into the leather-upholstered car. He got on the line with one of the commander’s men.

“The commander, please,” the mayor said, knowing there was no way he’d be able to scale the wall of phone transfers required to talk to Commander Aachen in the middle of a battle.

“Sorry, he’s indisposed at the moment.”

“Come on. This is the mayor. Have you found her yet?”

“I’m told they’re still sorting through bodies, sir.”

The mayor had a physical revulsion at the remark and had to pause while his throat worked it out. “No—how many? And they’d see fucking Maid Marian, right? Everybody knows what she looks like.”

“Yes, sir, apparently there are a few that are somewhat difficult to identify. But I’m told we haven’t see her.”

This had gone wrong, he could see that now. He should have never trusted the National Guard.

“We’re ceasing operations until morning upon your earlier recommendation, which the commander agreed with.”

“Fuck the commander—find her! I don’t care how many homes you have to search.”

There was silence on the other end. “Hello?” the mayor said, “Hello?” In violent frustration he shoved a handful of peanuts into his mouth.

“Hello, sir, we will continue to search homes for another two hours, but efforts need to be taken to secure the country—neighborhood, area sir.”

“Thank you—” he mumbled around his mouthful “—two more hours. If you hear or see any sign of her . . .” The line went dead.

The mayor gripped his hair. From the backseat an adviser leaned forward and rubbed his shoulders.

“We’ve gained a lot here tonight,” the woman reassured him. “Sherwood is gone. We can run the whole city again.”

The mayor wondered why there was no pleasure in it. He ran his tongue across his teeth—one of the peanuts had been bad, and he could not rid his mouth of the taste of rot.

It was the only place he could think of that felt really safe, and so they stumbled madly toward it, passing people erupting from their houses as they heard the crackle of gunfire or the boom of the tank gun.

Z
ach had gone over every detail he could piece together, holding the two notes in his hand for what felt like forever on the night of their victory, as the party raged about him, their meaning dawning on him slowly. Even as they celebrated, here was the end. The city had decided to risk everything to destroy them.

She had wanted proof of what he’d said and then they had argued.

“Look,” she said and swept her arm across the room and toward the back, meaning the enormity of what she’d built. “I cannot leave.”

He could see in her then a willingness to die with her nation, and it angered him.

“You have to go! I won’t let you stay. You die here, then everything dies with you. There is no fight.”

“Then we evacuate.”

“Yes, OK, but have you seen them in there?” He could hear the fight in his voice, just under a yell. “They’re all drunk. The music is blaring.”

He agreed to announce what they could, to shout out into the room, but he worried about every second that passed. And so the moment they’d finished attempting to broadcast the message, this time shouting at the stunned, blurry-eyed crowd, he pulled her from the room.

They struggled against each other, arguing still as they left. She turned to each person they passed:
The Guard is coming!
And then they sprinted into the night. Across the back field they barely eluded a National Guardsman in the chaos of the first tank blast. The top half of Zach’s head felt like it had been jarred loose and filled with gravel. The map room was gone.

In the dark around him he heard the sound of panicked running as others escaped too, boots in the field.

She didn’t know who else got out and as she followed Zach she wept. She knew somewhere behind them the Guard was spreading out across her country, taking it back. It was over, she feared. The guard had betrayed them.

He clutched her hand and would not let go. They ran for blocks before they stopped. Jeeps passed and they cowered in the shadows. The National Guard was spreading outward into the neighborhood behind them. He could hear their engines and the cries of people pulled from their houses as they probed for her.

They crouched down on the porch of an empty house—coughing up dust and bile, their run having winded them. He put his hand on her shoulder to steady her as they listened to gunfire, farther away now. He wished they’d grabbed bikes, though he was unsure he could trust her on one.

They ran from one empty house porch to the next. Many Sherwooders would have taken them in, but there would be searches and he did not want to leave a trail of any kind. Past the perimeter of National Guard activity they avoided perplexed Rangers standing in the middle of the street, their eyes trained in the direction of Sherwood HQ, unsure if the sounds they heard were joyous celebration or something else. Warning signals flashed out into the Ranger message network, warning the Rangers away, or the conflicting message, to come fight. The many new gaps in the network caused messages to dead-end.

On 37th and Prescott Renee wandered off the porch and toward the lights of an approaching jeep.

“Renee!” Zach yelled. He ran into the dusty yard and tackled her around the middle, pulling her to the ground. They lay flattened there until the jeep passed. Zach held her down, gripped her to him, trying to squeeze some awareness back, some urgency.

“I’ll turn myself in,” she said. “They’ll stop if I turn myself in.”

“No!” Zach said. “No, you can’t.”

He pulled her up and forced her to run again. He could see the glow of fire reflected against the smoke in the sky. The sound was building from the direction of Sherwood HQ, the chaos radiating outward toward them. He gripped Renee’s arm tightly around her bicep. Her head dipped, whether in grief or sleep or resignation he didn’t know, and so he pulled her firmly along like a rag doll.

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.