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The War Beneath QUOTES

The War Beneath QUOTES

1 " It was teeth and talons and fire and mustard gas, it was ghosts scorched into Hiroshima streets, showerheads pouring poison into tiled rooms, and a grasp that twined itself around his own bones, a tongue that licked for marrow in his own spine, and a hunger he could feel in his own stomach. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

2 " You believe that. People believe all kinds of crazy shit. People think the sky is up. The sky is out though, isn’t it? We just feel more comfortable thinking it’s up ‘cause otherwise you gotta admit the whole world is a little speck of rock floating in the fucking dark. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

3 " Virgil stepped back from the front door and drew a non-standard-issued sidearm—a large-mouthed weapon of history. A hand-me-down from an officer in one of those wars that were supposed to end all those other wars. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

4 " In the receding wake of the engine, night faded into day. Birds twittered in the growing forest. All around her, a sprawl of rotting ex-suburbs roused its wheezing way into sunlight. Vines clung to abandoned houses like lover’s limbs as if saying come back to the earth with us. come back
to the earth and sleep. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

5 " The deal involved saving your life. There aren’t any subsection clauses to that. I saved your life. And if you hurt that kid, I’ll take it back.”
Frank’s lips flapped, making sounds but not words.
Deirdre didn’t wait for him to figure out how to speak again. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

6 " You’ve got something on Randall or else you wouldn’t work with him, so what’ve you got?”

“Addresses, names. His whole crew.”

“You scared of him?”

“He’s insane. We got his kid, he’s got a son in Portland, we keep an eye on him. If we didn’t have that…”

“Are you scared of him?” she repeated.

“Y-yes.”

A drop of sweat fell from her forehead and splashed onto the back of his scalp. An oppressive quiet grew around them.

“Think carefully about this next one,” Deirdre whispered, craning forward to get her lips close to his ear, pressing the barrel harder against his skin. “Are you scared of me? "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

7 " Paul scrambled across the war torn lot to the rear of the car and snatched the dead boy’s rifle from the moonlight. Wet blood kissed his palm along its grip. He wiped the gore on his pantleg and pressed his back to the tire well at the rear of the vehicle. Another bullet yawped against the reinforced frame.

From the tree line, the chorus of dead rasped, you too, soon. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

8 " Consider yourselves innocent.
Easier said than done. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

9 " It was funny how little justice seemed to come in the wake of justice being done. It was funny how often the word “funny” described horrors that couldn’t be screamed away. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

10 " Time passed. Warehouses shed exoskeletons and became artist lofts. Collapsing Victorians and colonials slouched into their roles as homeless shelters. The suburbs hunched into Squatter City. Malleus Industries International relocated its North American East offices to Oceanrest. Highrises sprouted overnight, a newborn downtown squealing in glass and neon. Oceanrest shivered out from its old skin. Everything became something else, eventually. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

11 " New names cost. They’d sacrificed things in their transfigurations. Tyrell Meeks. Imani Greene. Razz. Deirdre. They’d carved open their histories and offered up their guts. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

12 " Deirdre’s consciousness flooded with unbidden images. Her foot on a man’s throat; her gun against a man’s head; her hand wrapped around power; her seat atop a throne of yellowed bone, a kingdom spread out below her in bloodstained wasteland. In return: offerings, worship.

Worship: apes eating their own young, faces smeared in meatjelly.
Worship: jackbooted soldiers marching over corpse-strewn battlefields.
Worship: a father staring at the severed hands and feet of his own child.

Inside her gut, an instinctive gospel heaved itself into her diaphragm. The scripture said there were two kinds of people in the world: predators and prey. All other truths were secondary. Deirdre could be a predator in exchange for worship. If not… "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

13 " if you’ll let me hijack your feed for one second, I think we could help each other.

The voice was chemical-sweet, carcinogenic, a pool of oily promise cooking in a silver spoon. Its silky bravado reminded Deirdre of stories about devils and demons, about dark fae spirits feasting on firstborn children after a handshake and a trick. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

14 " The thing appeared jointed, osteological, a creature of bone and sinew, but it moved like drooping glue. It stretched out and fell from the ragged hole in the ceiling, a horrific whiteness of teeth and bladed limbs. Too many legs, three arms—one from the top of its spine, if it had a spine, the others from curdled-milk textured shoulders—and a vast jaw lined with rows and rows of jagged fangs. In the center of the serpentine tube of its torso, a red-black hole guttered to its innards. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

15 " Reality unzipped before her eyes, floors and walls melting into some new Dali steelscape. Gravity twisted, shifted, plucked at her from different directions like groping hands. The beaded blood from their opponents rose from the floor and floated mid-air.

Somehow, her feet stayed stuck to the ground. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

16 " She pushed herself through the opening, around an ornament that was simultaneously a hanging light bulb and a uvula, and stepped inside. She entered the Mouth, the Throne Room, the Jaws of the Devouring God, or maybe just another in a series of countless double-wides gutted and lashed together with scavenged steel and magic, the bare skeleton of an illusory power. Tongue. The Devourer. God, the Devil, or nobody at all. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

17 " The restless dead crowded the back of his mind. They strained to be heard, clawing through graves at the back of his skull. hear us, they pled. please, hear us.

And some of them merely chorused giddily you, too, soon. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

18 " Victor made an amused sound from the threshold.

Nora’s eyes flicked to him. “What? What is it?”

“I told them you were bad with people.”

“I’m not bad with people.”

“You aren’t great with them,” Deirdre said. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

19 " Under lightless skies, dark things flourished. "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath

20 " I’m looking for information.”

She lifted her arms, indicating the breadth of the library, and declared with self-parodied drama, “I’m surrounded by it! "

― S.R. Hughes , The War Beneath