Swan Song

by Robert McCammon

Drones, he thought. They lived to breed and eat and shit, and they thought they knew all about freedom and loyalty and courage—but they didn’t know the first thing about those attributes.

He braced himself and started giving the orientation speech with as much enthusiasm as if he were digging a latrine ditch.

“Do you really think that God has His eye on you, lady? Do you think He really cares whether you live one more day or not? What singles you out from all those corpses we passed today? Didn’t God care about them?”

“So what are you going to do, then? Where are you going to go? Down to the supermarket for a few steaks and a six-pack?

We take such privileges for granted.

As the roaches swarmed over his body Josh had a sudden ridiculous thought: You can’t kill those things! Not even a nuclear disaster can kill ’em!

And beware of dwelling on the past if you want to keep your sanity.”

into these holes clean water was poured, and if you listened hard and the wind was still, you could hear the earth gasping as it drank.