CHAPTER 22
~T-minus 41:39~
"You up? Sam, you up?"
It was hardly in Will Scarborough's nature to wake up early. That his jobs were mostly at night was by design, picked by a man who never paid time enough heed to rouse himself at any fixed hour. Furthermore, given the previous day's events, there were few people who would fault Will for wanting to sleep until doomsday. Even so, he had made a promise, one that he had every intention of keeping. Thus, that Saturday, he was up well before the sun, dressing in the dark and creeping through sleeping halls to find his brother.
"Sam?" Will had one hand rested against Sam's door, knocking gently and whispering. "Sam?"
"Out here." Sam waved from the living room, backpack over one shoulder.
"You beat me up?" Will made a little whispery laugh. "Yeah, I guess you always did, huh?"
"I didn't sleep much, so I decided to work on some things. Type up a few old notes..." Sam pulled a notebook out of his bag. "...and get started on this."
"Awesome," said Will. "What's it about?"
Sam tucked the notebook under one arm. "Something special. I don't want to tell you until it's done. You should be the first person to read it."
"Yeah? That's great. Hey, if it's that important, we ought to get you something more durable to keep it in. Maybe after breakfast, huh?" Will peeked back down the hall. "We can talk more in the car. Mom was on call, I'm sure she wants to sleep."
"Okay," said Sam, opening the front door for Will. "So what's the plan?"
"I've got a few things planned, but I figure we can just play it by ear for the most part." Will gently closed and locked the door. "There's never much going on in ol' Patmos, but I think we can find some entertainment."
Will's junker was quiet that morning, almost as though it were respecting the morning calm. There was nothing peaceful about Patmos, though, but rather an eerie sensation. Not that there was ever much activity at that time, but with the lockdown in effect there was even less going on. The devoted joggers, the early birds, the chronic insomniacs - they all kept indoors behind drawn curtains and blinds, lest they arouse suspicion. Even the police were staying out of sight, watching the town from side streets and quiet little nooks, ready to pounce at the next sign of trouble. Apart from whatever business owners chose to open their shops in the wake of recent events, the sidewalks and roads were clear. There was an apocalyptic character to the town, such that the two of them may as well have been the only people alive.
"Why didn't we eat before we left?" said Sam. "I always get hungry when I stay up late."
"Oh, you're in for a treat," said Will. "After the sun rises, we're going to Harper's for an old fashioned greasy spoon breakfast, with donuts on the side. It's cheap, it's awful for you, and it's just the thing you need in the morning. Gives you that all-day energy."
"You sure Harper's will be open?" said Sam. "It looks like a lot of people are sleeping in today."
"You kidding? Those guys never close. They could burn the whole town to the ground, and a short order cook would start frying eggs in the smoldering ash."
"Even with all the police around?"
"Yeah. Reminds me - I'd better avoid Icaria. We'll take the scenic route."
Sam inspected Will, scanning his face with puzzled eyes. "What's wrong with your face?"
"What? Oh..." Will self-consciously touched the bruises at his temple - the relics from his confrontation the night before. "You can see those?"
"Just barely."
"Yeah, I...got into a thing last night. It was dumb, don't ask about it. Don't get into fights, that's my advice for the day."
"You don't need to tell me that. I don't get into fights, I'd never win."
"Hey, no one wins a fight. One guy loses, the other guy loses a little worse." Will rubbed the bruise again, wincing slightly. "I'm not sure which one I was last night."
Sam gazed out the window at the sleeping town in silence, turning back to Will only after several protracted moments of silence. "Can I get an apple fritter?"
"You can't order something that fancy at a diner," said Will. "Chocolate-frosted cake donuts. Old school. That's what you want."
The car rumbled down Leros, stopping in a patch of stickers at the base of Kiyama Hill. The morning sun was just peeking over the horizon, giving the world a faint cerulean cast. From where they stood, the burial site of Will's time capsule was just visible, a naked square of earth amid the blue-purple buffalo grass. Everything else was cloaked in the hill's long shadow, the ghostly plants swaying in a phantasmal breeze.
Will breathed in deeply, drinking in the morning air and savoring the flavor. "Here we are. Kiyama Hill. You know, I can't remember the last time I came up here to watch the sun rise. You never do these things for yourself, that's the problem. I don't know what it is about people, we need an excuse to enjoy beauty, or even just to be happy." He clapped his hands. "Well, let's get to it. Don't want to miss a second."
Will led Sam up the side of the grassy incline, the rays of the sun growing more brilliant with each step. At the crest of the hill, the sky erupted for them. The sun was sitting on the edge of the prairie, as though resting from its arduous journey across the planet. The endless brush field was painted a deep vermilion, a vibrant sea of smoldering flames supporting a great golden sphere. Above it all, the sky was a palette of every shade in nature, the yellow brilliance of the sun giving way to royal hyacinth and blending into the deepest of azure blues before fading into the coal smudged edge of night.
Sam beheld the sight in mute awe for several seconds before willing himself to speak. "It's beautiful. I didn't know you could see something like this in town."
"Yeah." Will drank deeply of the morning air. "Bet you'd never think to come up here, huh? No one does."
"I can see why you like this place so much," said Sam.
Will patted Sam on the shoulder. "Oh, it's not just this. It seems like everything good happens on Kiyama." He pointed to the north, to a field at the edge of the lab's perimeter. "Over there? They used to have this music festival, uh...Main Event Patmos, that's what they called it. We had all these little bands that were going on to bigger and better things in Chicago or New York, or Nashville or wherever. But they always came here for one more show, to give us thanks for our support. I must have been nine or ten when I heard about it first, and I came every year until they stopped doing it. It could have been a hundred and five degrees out, didn't matter. I was here. I took you to one once, but you didn't seem to like it too much."
"I don't really remember that," said Sam.
"Really?" said Will. "I helped you write your first story. You don't remember that?"
"I don't know...maybe a little."
"Well, that's okay. It was a bigger deal to me than it was to you." Will pointed Sam to Patmos, still slumbering in the half-darkness. "Look at that. It's just an ordinary town, but when the light hits it like that? Poetry. When I was in school, there was this kid...What was his name? Derek? Derek Brawney, right. He was an artist. Fifteen years old, but I tell you, he had a gift that most people couldn't get in decades of practice. He came up here in the mornings to sketch the town. But he said that the light was only right for about twenty minutes a day, so it took him over two months. Two months! That's two months of getting up early, walking here, getting all his stuff set up, making a couple pencil strokes, packing everything away and then going to school. Everything had to be perfect, too, that's what I remember about the kid. Man, imagine dedicating so much of your life to beauty."
"I think I've seen that drawing," said Sam. "Never heard that story, though. I wish I had that kind of talent."
"But you do! You do have talent, and don't you forget it." Will paced around the crest of the hill. "This is the best place for stargazing, best in the state as far as I'm concerned. It's all clear for miles. You come here at midnight when the town turns off and space, like you could gather up all the stars within your grasp. When I was real little, dad got me this star map and took me out here one night. He always said that a real man should be able to appreciate natural beauty, the beauty of it all. Said that if you don't think the world is a beautiful place, you'll turn cruel." He took a deep breath and studied the town beneath them. "...So cruel."
Sam looked up at Will. "Are you okay?"
Will pointed at one of the intersections below them. "See that? That's the most dangerous intersection in town. Maybe not now, because it's clear. But all it takes is one cold and rainy night, one early freeze, one town too cheap to maintain the roads. He was only supposed to be out for fifteen minutes, you know that? Fifteen minutes, that's all it takes to change someone's life. That..." He paused for a moment, then began screaming. "A man's life isn't worth a couple dollar's worth of rock salt? Bastards! You dirty sons of bitches!"
Sam ran to Will's side. "Will?"
"And then what do you do? You sell your soul to these devils? You let them turn our town into a prison? Tell us this is the future...Who the hell wants this future? You all deserve to burn! Every last one of you!"
"Will, you're scaring me."
"I'm okay. Geez, I just lost it for a second." Will fell back into the grass, staring into the sky. "Whenever I get upset, I look up. Just look up at the sky. It's this ancient thing, you know? Ten thousand years ago, people looked up there and couldn't wrap their heads around it, this endless blue thing that was bigger than anything they'd ever known. It must have scared them just to think about it. And now we fly around in it, and we shoot big rockets right through it, and we've got sensors that can tell us just how blue it is, you know. But I'll tell you, for all of that, we've never been the master. The sky will always be the boss. It'll outlast all of us and everything we build. A million years from now, it'll still be there, laughing at us."
Sam reclined in the grass and closed his eyes, letting the cool morning air wash over him.