The New Hunger

Nothing is permanent. Not even the end of the world.

There’s not really such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people, there’s just like…humanity. And it gets broken sometimes.

Nora knows better than most that nothing lasts forever. Life doesn't, love doesn't, hope doesn't, so why would death, hate, or despair? Nothing is permanent. Not even the end of the world.

Her life has seen little light. She is twelve years old but has a woman’s weathered poise. Her abyss-blue eyes have a piercing focus that some adults find unsettling. [...] She has fired a gun into a human head. She has watched a pile of bodies set alight. She has starved and thirsted, stolen food and given it away, and glimpsed the meaning of life by watching it end over and over.

It’s more eerie to be alone in a city that’s lit up and functioning than one that’s a tomb. If everything were silent, one could almost pretend to be in nature. A forest. A meadow. Crickets and birdsong. But the corpse of civilization is as restless as the creatures that now roam the graveyards.

He is spent. His mind is mercury again, its brief surge of humanity melting into an oily residue on its surface, and he no longer understands the feelings he felt in that strange moment on the overpass. But he did feel them. They did happen. They rest on the murky seabed of his mind, buried under sand and silt and miles of grey waves. Patient seeds waiting for light.

The harder a place is to reach, the more likely reaching it will be worthwhile.

It radiates out from him like a cloud of ghosts, countless hands clutching at the air, reaching out for…something.

She remembers sprinting over the thin after-waves that slid over each other like sheets of glass. When she ran with the waves it looked like she wasn’t moving. When she ran against them it looked like she was flying. She refuses to believe her brother will never know these things. Somewhere, they will find sand.

Nature is hungry. It is ready to take back what the man stole from it by living.

What happened? How did I get here? How could I have known that my choices mattered?

The windows are empty holes lined with glass teeth.

Suddenly exhausted, she closes her eyes and slips into nightmares again. Graveyards rising out of the ocean. Her friends’ corpses in the light of their burning school. Skeletons ripping open men's chests and crawling inside. She endures it patiently, waiting for the horror film to end and the theater to go dark, those precious few hours of blackout that are her only respite.

Life is only fair for the Dead, who get what they want because they want nothing.

Responsible murder is the new recycling.

Good people care more about people than food. They try to help people and don’t give up even when they get hungry. Only bad people give up. But good people fix things. Good people stay good even when it’s hard to. Even if they’re sick or sad or they have to lose their favorite stuff. Even if they have to die. Good people see past their own fucking lives. They aren’t just hunger and math. They aren’t just animals. Good people are part of the Higher, good people are fuel for the sun.

When a corpse tells you how to live, do the opposite.

If he were alive he would be sitting on a park bench with a mug of hot coffee reading his favorite book for the fifth or tenth time, glancing up now and then to watch the people stroll by, and the city would smmile and lean in and whisper: That bench was shaped for your body. That book was written for your mind. This city was built for your life, and all these people were born to share it with you. You are part of this, living man. Go live.

Maybe creatures that are not like each other are supposed to hurt each other to find out which one is stronger, so that the stronger one can take the things it wants. A competition. A game. War! Sex! Football!

Has your life gone on long after the thrill of living is gone? Are the dreams in which you're dying the best you've ever had?

He is a child, but why does that make him any less deserving? Nora herself is a child; so are her parents—everyone is equally young and foolish in the wide lens of history, and the arrogant denial of this is what unraveled the world.

is equally young and foolish in the wide lens of history, and the arrogant denial of this is what unraveled the world.

Crying. Expelling grief from the body in the form of salt water. What's its purpose? How did it evolve, and why are humans the only creatures on Earth that do it? Nora wonders how many years it takes to dry up that messy urge.

It’s not that different. Grown-ups just don’t like seeing kids in altered states. It reminds them you’re a person, not some little toy they sewed their faces onto.