Free Sherwood Nation by Benjamin Parzybok Page A

feverishly as people died, as if a wage, or the pursuit of, were some kind of shield against their own mortalities. They were all dying of thirst; money was one elixir.
    We’s in yo head! , he wrote, and then sketched a satellite with a lightning bolt coming out of it and straight into a stick-figure’s head. He kept his ears out for Nevel.
    Sputnik is thirsty for more.  
    The all-seeing eye.
    He penciled out a quick sketch of Renee, giving her braids and a tin-foil hat. He remembered the first time he’d seen her in the cafe, joking with somebody at the counter, a warm wit to her. She gestured her arms wide as she made a customer laugh. When his turn in line came, he’d been struck with her spell. He’d lingered there, deciding long over the scones, as she spoke about the qualities of each, how this scone, with the chocolate, was for sadness, for mornings when you wake up and there’s an unspeakable shadow right here—she tapped above her own heart—and this with the cranberries would be fire in the belly, like locomotive fuel, and this one with the apricot bits was for love, the finding and keeping of it.
    He bought the one for love, red-faced and smiling and she put it in its paper sheath and drew on a heart with a Sharpie. Let me know how it goes, she’d said conspiratorially, sly with smile.
    It had gone well, at least until now.
    He admired his drawing and then became conscious of the fact that he’d just sketched the fugitive and written her name below it. He gave her a Frida mustache and unibrow and drew satellites and buildings and other bits around her, embedding and obscuring her in the image.
    He didn’t know what this satellite company was even selling nor to whom, though with the power issues most other sources of communication had gone dark, so he could probably figure it out. At any rate, they gave him the brand to steer, not a product to pitch. He decided to take the chance, Russian roulette style, and hit the print button. He would either get caught or he wouldn’t. It was the designer’s printer, he could always intimate that the poster belonged to her. And if the poster showed up in the news and on the police blotter the next day, well then fuck. Maybe he’d follow her up north. He made himself count to thirty, during which time he drew a giant eye on his scratch pad, spying down on civilian hordes, then he walked briskly down the hall toward the printer. Halfway there Nevel exited the kitchen and Zach started.
    “Drought up,” Nevel said on his way by. Nevel’s office joke was that all anybody ever talked about anymore was the drought, so why not replace every word with that one?
    “Drought up,” Zach answered.
    He could feel his face and neck grow hot as he watched as the printer head painstakingly snail-danced across the paper, the poster’s tongue rooted in the cogs, so he could not make a run for it. From the back, his neck must surely look burned. But it printed, and it was lovely. He was, he thought as he admired it, a genius.
    A few minutes later in the copy room he punched in 300 color copies. No one would ask what he was doing, he repeated to himself, everyone else had something to hide. He was working, there was no need for his skin to blaze fire-engine red.
    “Hey, you’re everywhere today,” Nevel said. 
    Zach felt the copy room couldn’t adequately hold two people. He knew his personal space requirements were on the high side, but still.
    “How many are you going to print here, tree-killer? Should I go on vacation? You printing your novel or something?” Nevel leaned against the wall, blocking the door, in a manner that suggested he might be there until nightfall.
    “No,” Zach said. “I’m not even writing a novel.” 
    “Oh? I thought everyone was,” Nevel said. “What is it then, poster for your girlfriend?”
    The container known as the skull which held Zach’s brain expanded spontaneously a thousand feet in every direction, leaving his brain wet and