A Hero's End by Sutherland Staatz (books for 7th graders TXT) 📕

of the social stress. From the looks on the faces of the people that he worked with, and of the people that they gradually brought out of the city, there was definitely a good amount of relief.

Yes, things were going well. There was news that something like what they were trying was being attempted elsewhere, with train tracks being run from the new farms into the cities. This decaying corpse of a nation may even start breathing again.

And then Harry got some bad news, while everyone else seemed to get good news.

#

“So, get this,” Robert started out, as he usually did when he had big news to impart, “Some old revolutionary found a way to kill all those pompous gas bags that ran the cities. Can you believe it?”

“Sure, I don’t know if it will change anything though.”

“Sure it does, their dead and we aren’t!” The rest of the crowd around the news carrier cheered and Tillings, now a leading councilman in the community, took the opportunity. He stepped up onto the nearest stump.

“Hear this! Today is Vanessa Vilaramos day!”

More ecstatic cheering, more ecstatic expressions, all of it was for Vanessa Vilaramos. Harry slipped to the back of the crowd and begun the long walk back to his farm on the outskirts of the settlement.

Harry thought things over, all the way to his farm. The gas companies had taken over the cities after the riots, after the migrations, after the government proved useless in the crisis. They had also been responsible for the massive wage cuts and, by extension, Robert’s starving family before he came to the suburbs and converted it into farmland. He thought it was still a little ghoulish to celebrate a collection of deaths which he thought would have little practical effect. But Harry figured it was just a passing thing.

#

She had changed nothing, Harry thought, several months after the assassinations, as he plowed his patch of ground. Everything has come from the slow, steady work of farming! Other people will take the place of those assholes at the top.

Harry’s inner monologue was interrupted by something that he had not heard in this part of rural-suburbia since they had switched to draft animals to get grain to the train station. It was a sound of a combustion engine.

“Hay man, check it out! The pencil necks are loosing their grip on things. Some of the station managers have dropped their prices!” Robert said as he got out of the car.

“You’re not planning to rely on that thing, are you Tillings?”

Robert regarded Harry for a moment. “No, not entirely. Man, you have to relax; the gas bags are dead! And call me Robert; we’ve known each other for a while now.”

Harry regarded his visitor for a moment. “You’re not being nearly cautious enough, what happens when the gas companies get their stuff together and come asking for that gas back?”

Robert shook his head “You really need to get off your farm once in a while. Things are okay now. There is a parade tomorrow; Vanessa Vilaramos is coming into town…” Robert stopped as he noticed his expression. “Geez, what’s with the sour look?”

Harry just shook his head.

“What, don’t tell me you are jealous? All you did was find a way to make us poor working stiffs work a bit harder and get a bit more out of it. Vanessa freed us with a pull of the trigger, and she could have died, she could still die.”

“They aren’t going to kill her Robert, even if they weren’t too busy with succession they wouldn’t want to make a martyr out of one sad little revolutionary.”

“You don’t get it. Come down to the parade and see what she means to us.”

Harry couldn’t pass up the potential cornucopia of smiling faces, even if they might hurt.

#

The next day Harry walked down to the community’s plaza. What he saw there struck him as absolutely obscene; going down the center of the road were farmers with floats, many of them pulled by draft animals but some were… Harry shuddered, driven. Everyone present, save for Harry, had absolutely joyous expressions and all of them turned to face a convertible. It was slowly going down the middle of the street with Vilaramos sitting in the back seat waving and smiling at her fans, at their smiling faces. Pleasant looks, all harvested by her work of wonderful violence.

Harry glared at Vilaramos, steaming. All these people want is a violent hero. I’ll give them one. Harry grabbed a hunting rifle from an unsuspecting peasant, aimed it at Vilaramos and harvested his last batch of rotten looks. Imprint

Publication Date: 05-05-2010

All Rights Reserved