Home > Work > Deadline (Newsflesh, #2)
61 " I took his hand and shook it. Even with all the training I’ve had to desensitize me to the necessity of occasional contact with strangers, the gesture felt wrong. You aren’t supposed to touch people you don’t know. Not unless they’ve just demonstrated their infection status with a successful blood test, and maybe not even then. "
― Mira Grant , Deadline (Newsflesh, #2)
62 " Hot, short, thorough," I said. I hesitated before adding, "Please." It never pays to insult computers that are smart enough to form sentences. Not when they're in control of the locks, and especially when they have the capacity to boil you in bleach."Absolutely," said the shower. "
63 " She really talks to you, doesn't she?" She asked. "it's not just you talking to her. She talks BACK.""hel, half the time she starts it." I said, half-defensively. "I know it's weird.""Well, yes, it's weird. Technically, I think it's insane. But who am I to judge?" Maggie shrugged. "I live in a house most people view as the setting of a horror movie waiting to happen, with an army of security ninjas and a couple dozen epileptic dogs for company. I don't think I'm qualified to pass judgement on 'weird'. "
64 " Yeah, well, right now? Right now, I think being crazy may be the only thing that’s keeping me sane. "
65 " Only Shaun would be totally miserable if I did that, because he’d follow me. He’ll always follow me, just like I’ll always follow him. That’s what being together means, right? Neither of us ever has to be alone. "
66 " To tell the truth is to provide armament against a world too full of cruelties to be defeated with simple falsehoods. If these truths mean the world is less comforting than it might have been, it seems like a pretty small price to pay. "
67 " George always said the first summer of the Rising was possibly the best example of human nobility that history had to offer, because for just a few months, before the accusations started flying and the fingers started pointing, we really were one people, united against one enemy. And we fought. We fought for the right to live, and in the end, we won. Sort of, anyway. "
68 " The only reward you get for making it to the end is making it to the end—you get to know the truth, and that’s it. "
69 " The echoes of my knock were still ringing when the door swung open, revealing a short, cheerfully curvy woman with spiky brown hair streaked with bleach-white lines that looked more accidental than anything else. She was wearing an electric orange T-shirt that read DO NOT TAUNT THE OCTOPUS, jeans, and a lab coat, and was pointing a hunting rifle at the middle of my chest. "
70 " That meant we needed to play to our strengths, and our strengths came from lifelong training in shoving microphones at danger and demanding that it explain itself. It wasn't much. It was going to have to be enough. "
71 " Do I give money to charity and help old-lady zombies across streets so that they can bite babies? "
72 " I’m sorry, but you’re kinda losing me here. I’m happy to keep apologizing, but I do need to know what I’m apologizing for. "
73 " A fresh Coke would keep me from thinking too hard about the tools he was using to do the job. "
74 " There is a time when even reasonable men must begin to take unreasonable actions. To do anything else is to be less than human. And to those who would choose the safety of inaction over the danger of taking a stand, I have this to say: You bloody cowards. May you have the world that you deserve. —From "
75 " If they really wanted some fancy new term for “zombie” to catch on, they should have made it easy to shout at the top of your lungs, "
76 " I stopped in my tracks. Looking bemused, Alaric did the same. “What year did we go to block-by-block private cell towers? Anybody know?” “Uh… two thousand twenty,” said Alaric, after a long pause to do the math inside his head. “I remember when they put ours in. "
77 " George and I both held our breaths, and then cheered when she didn’t reanimate and try to eat her son. "
78 " There’s always somebody willing and waiting to make a buck off somebody else’s pain. "
79 " and they were fighting a different war by the time the Rising rolled around. Oakland had become the site of an ongoing conflict between the natives who’d lived there for generations and the forces of gentrification that really wanted a Starbucks on every corner and an iPod in every pocket. "
80 " I’m going to walk through my life being Shaun Mason, the Dude Who Copes. Copes with a world filled with stupid people. Copes with a life that doesn’t include the one person who ever really mattered. Copes with everyone asking him whether he’s “coping,” when the answer should be totally obvious to anyone with a brain. How am I coping? I miss George, and the goddamn world is still full of zombies, that’s how. Everything else… Everything else is just details. And those don’t really matter to me anymore. "