How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea

Whoever authorized the evolution of the spiders of Australia should be summarily dragged out into the street and shot.

There was one thing no one considered, however: Australia was populated by Australians. While the rest of us were trying to adapt to a world that suddenly seemed bent on eradicating the human race, the Australians had been dealing with a hostile environment for centuries. They looked upon our zombie apocalypse, and they were not impressed.

If anything, global response to the Rising only confirmed something that many Australians had quietly believed for quite some time: If forced to live in Australia for a year, most of the world’s population would simply curl up in a fetal ball and die of terror.

Please do not lick anything past this point.

No one should be posing for duck-lipped selfies with the plaque of the dead. That wouldn't be right.

Stop trying to judge us based on what you know, and try judging on what's actually around you. You might be surprised by how many things we don't do the way you'd expect but that turn out to work just fine all the same. Think about it, won't you?

Science is a powerful force, but it will never be stronger than mankind’s capacity to be afraid of what we do not yet fully understand.

Does everyone from England go to sleep the minute you load them into a car, or is that something that’s uniquely you?

The fact that he was still smiling was either a testament to his training or an argument in favor of stimulants.

Sorry we're late. There was a bit of a traffic snarl on the way into the airport. You know how it is when you have to be somewhere in a hurry." "Yes, I leave early.

You bury your lede in a hail of bullets, and no one will care enough to dig it up.

It's bad to make general statements about groups of people--there are always exceptions, and those exceptions are likely to be offended if they hear you generalizing about them.

Aren’t we rather uncomfortably close to the fence for rioting? I feel like there should be a nice bus to take us somewhere safer to riot.

The nursery reminded me uncomfortably of a pre-Rising thriller that Maggie had forced me to watch while we were staying at the Agora in Seattle: a dinosaur adventure called Jurassic Park, in which scientists with more brains than sense cloned enormous prehistoric predators just because they could. Maybe that’s an oversimplification of the movie’s premise, but really, who looks at a three-ton thunder lizard and thinks, “I should get one of those for the back garden”?

I was unaware that Darwinism was a race. —Mahir Gowda

Small Planes, Large Fences, and a Rather Daunting Number of Zombie Kangaroos, Because That Is Exactly What This Day Needed

Large, pleasant signs provided directions, accompanied by helpfully animated arrows that drew lines down the wall, just in case the addled, time-shifted tourists had lost the ability to read. I staggered in the indicated direction, followed by most of the population of my flight. I am quite sure that, in that moment, there was very little to differentiate us from your average zombie mob. No one was moaning, but all the rest of the characteristic signs were there: the slack-jawed expressions, the shambling gaits, and the absolute lack of apparent intelligence.

While the rest of us were trying to adapt to a world that suddenly seemed bent on eradicating the human race, the Australians had been dealing with a hostile environment for centuries. They looked upon our zombie apocalypse, and they were not impressed.

It’s quite all right,” I assured him. “My mother always said that eggs were appropriate no matter the time of day.” That was a filthy lie: My mother was a traditional woman who would have died before she’d fed me breakfast this late in the day.

People used to travel for fun before the Rising. Can you believe that? —Alaric Kwong