by Marcus Sakey
Nothing. He felt fine.
Hawk rolled out of the cot. The lodge was a two-room log cabin with lacquered walls and the smell of smoke from the woodstove. He staggered to the bathroom and took the longest leak in history. The toothbrush was someone else’s but better than nothing, even though 532 of the bristles bent out in tired waves.
He was halfway through his bottom teeth when he realized that he knew how many bristles were bent. Without any effort or thought, he’d known it as certainly as he knew that if he dropped the toothbrush it would fall: 532 bristles, which represented 21.28 percent of the total number. He smiled. Finished brushing. Spat.
The night of the battle, after the militia had passed, he’d forced himself off the kitchen floor and into the garage. It took twenty minutes of alternately stalling out and grinding gears to get the hang of the Jeep, but by the time the gunfire started, he was out of town, riding west. Around midnight he’d let himself into the hunting cabin with a rock, intending to hit the road first thing. But he’d woken with his brain on fire, and everything since had been a blurry fugue.
In the kitchen he ate canned corn while the coffee dripped. When the machine hissed, he reached for a mug, but wasn’t paying attention, and it slipped off the counter and tipped end over end.
It was beautiful.
Hawk didn’t have the mathematics to describe it, but he could see the formula clearly, the way gravity and air resistance and momentum were dancing, and he found it so fascinating that he took a few seconds to watch, just made it spin slower and slower until he could examine every detail: the inside stained in distinct rings, a faint fingerprint on the handle, the way dust swirled around it and sunlight gleamed off the rim as the mug drifted slowly to the floor.
When it hit, it burst into fragments that vectored predictably, and he could hear the sound of each piece as it clicked against the tile, and for some reason they made him think of John.
In the maintenance tunnel, lecturing on the importance of contingencies, John had been paying only a small fraction of attention to the boy behind him. But then he’d stopped and stared full focus. “I need to tell you something, Hawk. Something important. There’s a very good chance I won’t make it out of this. If that happens, just remember that you’re the future.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will,” John had said, and then they had climbed up the ladder and a few minutes later he was dead.
He was right, Hawk thought. There wouldn’t have been any point in explaining then. But you understand now.
He understood other things, too. That John had been using him, that when he’d referred to turning a pawn into a queen, this was what he’d meant. It was okay. He’d still cared about Hawk, had treated him like a man, given him a name and a purpose and his heart’s desire. The reasons might matter, but not as much as the facts.
Hawk took a new mug and poured a cup of coffee, drank it slowly, thinking. Then he went outside and climbed into the Jeep. As he reached for his seat belt, a fit of coughing racked him, and he leaned against the steering wheel until it passed. When he could breathe again, he took a tissue from his pocket.
Then stopped.
Wadded up the tissue.
Wiped his nose with his hands, and rubbed them together.
The gas tank was three-quarters full. Figure it held sixteen gallons, with a fuel efficiency of roughly twenty-two miles per, call it three hundred and fifty miles per full tank. With the money he’d found in the safe house, he could fill the Jeep eight, maybe ten times. He’d need food too, and cash for contingencies—thank you, John—so assume twenty-five hundred miles.
Hawk called up a mental map, the image as crisp as if he were looking at the real thing, right down to the scale in the corner.
First, Salt Lake City.
Then Reno.
Sacramento.
San Francisco.
Los Angeles.
Northeast to Las Vegas, southeast to Phoenix.
Spin back to end the trip in San Diego.
Total distance, 2440 miles.
Forty hours if he did it straight. But he’d want to eat in restaurants, go to church, ride buses. Given the latency he’d experienced, though, he couldn’t dawdle too much. So spend, say, four days shaking hands and sneezing his way through metropolitan areas encompassing a population of, let’s see . . .
Nine million people.
Hawk coughed, smiled, and started the Jeep.
There was a long way to go.
END OF THE BRILLIANCE TRILOGY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In 2010, on a climbing trip with my buddy Blake Crouch, I fell in love with an idea. We were camping at fourteen thousand feet, bullshitting and sipping bourbon when it happened. Like most love affairs, it started with a sense of intrigue, swiftly progressed to flirting, and before either of us knew it, we were both gaga over reckless notions. Blake’s became the wildly successful Wayward Pines trilogy. Mine culminates in the book you’re now holding.
It’s been a long, wonderful journey, spanning five years, three books, and three hundred thousand words—and those are just the ones I kept. In that time my wife and I sold a condo, bought a house, had a daughter, laughed and cooked and traveled. That journey is now at an end, and like most experiences that change you, its ending brings both joy and regret.
It’s been such a pleasure to live in this world, to hang out with Cooper and Shannon and Natalie and Ethan and Quinn—sorry, Bobby, really I am—and John Smith and Erik Epstein and Hawk, and the notion of that time being behind me is a melancholy one indeed. But while I may return to this world at some point, I think that those stories are done; everyone got their shining moments and their blackest midnights, and I am grateful to them for letting me hitch a ride.
There are a number of other people I’m grateful to as well, and while few of them have a body count, like my imaginary friends, they are all badasses.
My literary agent, Scott Miller, is a fine man and a good friend, a believer from the beginning. Jon Cassir whips Hollywood into line and looks suave doing it. Thank you both, gentlemen.
It remains an honor to work with Thomas & Mercer, publishers extraordinaire. No power in the ’verse can stop my editor and FF, Alison Dasho. Jacque Ben-Zekry bends the world to her will, and it thanks her and asks her for another. Gracie Doyle kicks ass and chews bubblegum. Additional huge thanks to Tiffany Pokorny, Alan Turkus, Mikyla Bruder, Daphne Durham, and Jeff Belle, brilliant and dedicated folks whose love for story burns like a star.
Shasti O’Leary Soudant did an amazing job re-envisioning the covers of the whole series. Jessica Fogleman caught approximately one million errors I’d made. Caitlin Alexander brought vision and style to her edit, and did it crazy-fast.
My old friend Dr. Yuval Raz was incredibly generous with his time and knowledge. Both the biological basis for brilliance and the methodology to burn down the world belong to him, a juxtaposition that tickles me.
When I was stuck, when I was insomniacal, when I was rocking back and forth sobbing and picking at my skin, my boys Blake Crouch and Sean Chercover were always there to get me through. The words are all mine, but plenty of the solutions are theirs.
As always, boundless thanks to my parents, Tony and Sally, and my brother, Matt. I love you all.
My girls are my life. Thank you to my grown-up love g.g. and our little love, the brilliant, fearless, and very silly Jocelyn Sally Sakey.
Finally, dear reader, thank you. This is what I have wanted to do since I was four years old, and I am grateful for every moment of it. And so I say again: thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © Jay Franco
Marcus Sakey’s thrillers have been nominated for more than fifteen awards. They’ve been named New York Times Editors’ Choice picks and have been selected among Esquire’s top five books of the year. His novel Good People was made into a movie starring James Franco and Kate Hudson, and Brilliance is currently in development. Sakey lives in C
hicago with his wife and daughter.
For more information, visit MarcusSakey.com.