There is always something better than now...One
“I’m not defending him, or what he does. The General is not a good man! He’s not just or fair. I’m not saying I agree with what he says or does or that I want to go back to New Albuquerque because it’s a perfect place, but come on, what else is there?”
"Sam took the bottle from him and took another swig, “Anything else.”
"Paul shrugged, “That’s easy for you to say.”
I interjected and the timing seemed perfect. “And that’s easy for you to say. I get it, I was where you’re at now, but I was there for years. We’re out here, sitting around a few burning logs, a horde a thousand strong could come over those hills or down the slope of that old black top at any moment and that’s it for us. Sure, we might go out swinging but we’d still go out, chewed up, screaming, begging for an end long before one comes and then boom…we come back to life as one of them, roaming the country side hungry for warm flesh. That sounds like the worst-case scenario, but trust me, there are things a hell of a lot worse than that.”
“Like?” Paul wasn’t looking at me as he spoke but Sam and Emma were."
"I didn’t need to work hard for the words, I remembered the look in Cochran’s eyes as I slowly choked the life out of him. “Like surrendering your humanity, like trading it in for safety or the illusion of security. I’ve done some foul shit in my time, before and after all of this, mostly after, and for all of it, my worst inclination, my ugliest moment, when the cruelty and the objectification fed me and warmed me just as sure as I am now, I never cowered behind the coat tails of some sweet-talking shit heel or a cadre of simpering jackboots.”
“Better to die alone and believing that there is still something worthy and good in all of human kind than to live a few years eating shit and drinking piss with a boot pressed down on your neck while praising the assholes who home brewed your misery.”