Free Sherwood Nation by Benjamin Parzybok Page B

small on the floor, amid a cavernous space, and it was there in that container that he wondered how in the hell Nevel knew what he was up to. He felt that in this new space where his brain sat in its own slippery goo, troops marched toward him, and his brain with all its power and inventiveness fought futilely to invent some utterly obvious reason why he would be copying a revolutionary poster for his fugitive girlfriend that would only prove to demonstrate his superior commitment to this very job. After a great long while, punctuated by the shuffling beat of the copier spitting out copy after copy, Zach said darkly: “It’s for work.” He couldn’t think of one single damn time that he’d ever been called on in his history of working at Patel & Grummus to make a photocopy.
    “Listen, man, I don’t care. Seems like there might be a few tender spots there. You want me to turn around while you do your special thing here or what? Look, I’m printing stuff for the communist party.” Nevel turned the piece of paper he’d brought into the copy room around to show Zach, and indeed it was a Soviet-era communist propaganda piece about mining.
    “Oh,” Zach said. “Is that for the TeleCelSys contract?” 
    “What? No, it’s for my basement.”
    “Ah, should you be using the work copier for personal stuff?” he said, hating himself as he said it, wishing he were crushed under the boot of some great cockroach-crushing god.
    “I guess that seems like sort of a silly question, Zach.”
    “I didn’t really ask it. I didn’t really mean it. I mean I don’t even care. Will you make me a copy of your Russian thing too?” he said finally, to be companionable.

    Bea and Renee stood on the sprawling wood porch and thoughtabout knocking. The door was a giant oak defense, but the front window was broken and the house reeked of urine and and the cloying, putrid smell of death. They could see into the living room.
    “Just a dog, probably,” Renee said, the crook of her arm covering her nose. “Dead dog.”
    “It’s abandoned,” Bea said, “right?”
    “Grab something.” Renee picked up a long shard of glass and gripped it in her hand.
    If there was someone there, they’d run, Renee thought. But she dreaded the thought of running more. She stared up at the height of the house and imagined it theirs. Fixed up and bustling with her people.
    Bea found a damaged wood chair that had been thrown from the porch into the bushes and broke a leg off. “Glass is a bad idea, sweetheart,” she said.
    “You’re the tough guy. I’m going to watch.” Renee knocked at the door, and after a minute’s silence yelled hello into the living room through the broken window.
    “OK,” Bea said, “here goes.” She straddled the window and crawled in, and then padded quietly around a listing living room table toward a door at the far side. As she came to the end of the table a man leapt out of a closet and tackled her, gripping her in a full body hug that took her over the top of the table and to the ground.
    Renee hurdled the window frame but by the time she was there Bea had the man in a cursing, spitting, snarling ball of a half nelson and wouldn’t let go.
    “Stop it,” Renee yelled at him, “is this your house?”
    “Yes!” He was bone-thin, wiry and brown-skinned and pungent. He flailed like a cat under Bea’s grip.
    “Is there anybody else here?” Renee said.
    “It’s not your house!”
    “No, we were—the window was out.”
    “Get the fuck off me!”
    “Not until you tell us if there’s others,” Bea said.
    “Thom! Erik!” he shouted.
    They listened quietly. Renee raised her glass shard and backed toward the window, staring at the ceiling.
    “You’re lying,” Bea said.
    “Get off me!”
    Renee appraised the man ensnared in Bea’s grip, their skin tones in stark contrast to one another. “Sorry,” she said. “We’re leaving now.”
    Bea released him from her grip and scrabbled quickly away. The man