The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

It does no good to tell a beautiful woman how beautiful she is. If she already knows, it gives her power over the fool who tells her. If she does not, there is nothing that can be said to make her believe it. Dusty did not know everything, but she knew that.

There is no argument to be had with faith.

Scent is the key to the door of memory.

Find some people, wish you were alone. Live alone, wish for people.

What disease cannot do, people accomplish with astonishing ease.

I would be happy to defend you ladies,” Duke said with a shine in his eyes. Every man on earth thinks his dick is magic. Alex could hear Roxanne saying it in her head the day they had met.

Nobody chooses to be a victim, but after a lifetime of practice, it just happens.

One by one, they were lost and found.

His last thought was that to die in such peace in a world like this was the most privileged and selfish act he had ever committed.

It was too intimate, too odd, and she found herself deeply uncomfortable

I’d be annoyed except that I benefit from it.

Time stopped a long time ago. Time was never time at all.

Some people had been waiting their whole lives to live lawlessly, and they were the first to take to the streets. Some people knew that would happen; they knew better than to open their doors when they heard cries of help. Others didn’t. What disease cannot do, people accomplish with astonishing ease.

When the sirens quit, the rules gave out. Some people had been waiting their whole lives to live lawlessly, and they were the first to take to the streets. Some people knew what would happen; they knew better than to open their doors when they heard cries of help. Other's didn't. What disease cannot do, people accomplish with astonishing ease.

Out in the lost world were hundreds of soldiers who had been sent abroad before the end of it all and could not be brought home. In the wilds of Afghanistan and the ancient cities of Iraq, they were making their way. At bases in Europe, they were holding their ground against the locals only by firepower. When that ran out, they would be taken. Peace corps kids in Africa realized they could not swim home, would never see home again. Tourists all over Asia, the Caribbean, stranded in airports, forgotten in consulates, lived long enough to face the terror of permanence in strange lands. Cruise ships drifted full of plague dead, a few unlucky souls left alive on some.

Scent is the key to the door of memory. For a minute, she let herself live in it.

They lit candles against the dark and waited. Without birth, life is only that wait.

Still a midwife. Thing being born is the world. New, ugly baby world. Mission,

He doesn’t want anyone to know. Bad for leadership, bad for morale. Unsustainable.

The earth grew quiet, and everything seemed to teem with life and hold its breath, waiting.

She wasn’t sure she could talk if she wanted to. Her voice was something that fell away, unneeded.

Might as well give the kid a taste of the lost world before it’s gone forever.

she missed conversation. That moment of connection, of being understood that passed easily between equals.

His voice was low, sweet, cozening. It was the voice she had heard a thousand times before.

Hope was with her; it would not go away.

Dusty did not want to hope. She tried to keep hope out of her, shutting all the doors and locking them with the keys of reason and evidence and precedent. Still, she could feel it seeping in, incorporeal and deathless, refusing to be refused.

She was a silent, thoughtless thing. Nothing interested her.

When she was lonely, she tortured herself with the idea that it could be worse.

What does it matter? Die here, die there. Die now, die later. Might as well go.