He’s got a hip cocked against the dam’s railing, face turned into the warmth of the sun. It’ll be too soon before seven years of naught but the damp chill of concrete halls and buzzing LEDs are all they have. Much too soon for a man who can only just tolerate the relative liberty of walls above the Earth. Jacob indulges a long exhale, shifting so his back presses against the sun-baked metal. Arms fold across his midriff, the shifting of muscle causing half-closed sores to crack and weep. He doesn’t even notice. One of the few things he doesn’t. Instead he’s occupied watching the man he can only just recognize as his baby brother stomp up the steps as if each committed some personal offense. It’s a far, far cry from the bright-eyed child whose weeping Jacob had never been able to bear.
The indignant tread is only half so amusing as when the youngest brother catches sight of a gaggle of tourists below. Over-packed, under-prepared and phones extended overhead in direct contradiction to the majesty of nature unfolded behind them. Jacob himself had frowned on noticing them. Soft. Weak. Everything wrong with humanity in this age of looming crisis. But John shares an expression with a man who’s just trod in a pile of dogshit. Tourists give me heartburn, indeed. One broad palm covers the curl to Jacob’s mouth, blunt-tipped fingers rasping against that red beard. It does nothing to conceal the amusement in eyes so much lighter than his brother’s.
“Easy fix,” Jacob drawls, gesturing to the sheep in human form. And oh, he hasn’t even said it yet and his mouth is twisting into a smirk. “Stop eating them.”
Ah, tourists. A plague that was found everywhere, no matter how remote or isolated the location. Hope wasn’t a massive hotspot but the Whitetail State Park especially got the runoff from Glacier and that usually brought them down to the Valley and Fall’s end. Now that Faith’s statue of Joseph was complete, they had started to trickle into the Henbane too, which meant the Angels had to be kept out of sight as much as possible and those under the youngest Herald forced to be on their best behaviour. A difficult task when there was blatant disrespect being shown towards the statue. John was rather indifferent to the little ‘sister’s struggles, at least random tourists couldn’t get up to his sign without facing a massive hike through wolverine country.
Even back in Atlanta, John had hated tourists but somehow the ones in Hope were even worse; under prepared millennials that thought hiking and camping in the wilderness was a fun group activity, only to discover that there was no cell reception unless you were high in the mountains, and the only wi-fi available was down in Fall’s End. The former was why they gravitated towards the dam, it had a decent enough reception that even John’s phone hadn’t stopped pinging through notifications the moment he got up past the turn off to St. Francis. He’d silenced that quickly, but he could still feel it vibrating in his back pocket. The group that was stood in the middle of the dam, however, had not silenced their phones, and he could hear their notifications coming through from halfway between Jacob’s bunker and where he could see the top of a red head leaning against the railing. John didn’t even need to see them to know exactly what sight was waiting as he crested the small hill.
A gaggle of girls, none of them older than 25, backpacks sat on the floor, each with a phone in hand. Pose, pout, snap, mess with their hair, pose again. Rinse, repeat. He’s sure one of them was recording and he can already feel the bile rising even before the first giggle reaches his ears. “God give me strength.” It’s a mutter under his breath as he pushes himself up the last part of the hill onto the level road of the dam.
“Tourists give me heartburn.” A throwaway sentence that John regrets the second it comes out of his mouth but he doesn’t flinch, he merely looks at the group with disdain from behind those blue shades of his, nose wrinkling as if there was a bad smell lingering -- one that wasn’t one that clung Jacob, at least. His brother’s response is expected and John flashes him a grin. “But they’re so good on toast.” Cannibal jokes. Joseph would not approve but Joseph wasn’t there. He was off in whatever place that he vanishes to when he doesn’t want to be found. Trying to tune out the shrieks and giggles from the group off to one side, he leans forward to rest bare forearms on the warm metal railing, hip cocking as he looks out down the deeply carved waterway of the moccassin river and out towards the very distant statue of Joseph off on the highest hill in the Henbane, bone white against the brilliant blue sky.
“Mechanic suggests replacing one of the water filtration pumps and fitting a couple new air scrubbers to the lower levels.” Inked fingers interlace in front of him as he repeats what he was told, mentally running the figures he was quoted through his head. “It’s doable but they can’t be done at the same time, it would kick up too much dust and overload the already strained air filters. They’d also need to drop the water level in the dam while they do the water pump.” In other words, it was going to be a long job. “It’s up to you which they prioritise, it’s your Gate, I’m just here to sign off on funding.”
