The Last Policeman (Last Policeman, #1)

by Ben H. Winters

“Aren’t we all depressed, Detective? Under the weight of all this unbearable immanence? Aren’t you depressed?”

She’s like a picture of our mother that someone crumpled up and tried to smooth out again.

he could pound me to death if he wanted to, just like that, three or four blows, like a caveman destroying a deer.

Because people are doing all sorts of things, for motives that can be difficult or impossible to divine clearly. In recent months the world has seen episodes of cannibalism, of ecstatic orgies; outpourings of charity and good works; attempted socialist revolutions and attempted religious revolutions; mass psychoses including the second coming of Jesus; of the return of Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali, the

Commander of the Faithful; of the constellation Orion with sword and belt, climbing down from the sky.

People are building rocket ships, people are building tree houses, people are taking multiple wives, people are shooting indiscriminately in public places, people are setting fire to themselves, people are studying to be doctors while doctors...

“Ah, but we are. Fascist in the sky, baby.”

before someone took an axe handle and bashed in the face of the world.

I’m reminded of McConnell, the philosophical question of our era: How many more times do I get to yell, “Stop, motherfucker”?

“Oh, well, Agent Ness, how high-minded of you.” He gives me both middle fingers and sticks out his tongue for good measure.

“Okay then. So, your brother-in-law, Skeve? He’s a terrorist.” I laugh. “No. Skeve is not any kind of terrorist. He’s an idiot.” “The overlapping Venn-diagram section of those two categories, you will find, can be quite large.”

I squint into the gray sun, seeing Andreas plastered against the bus, slowly sliding down. IT IS SIMPLY TO PRAY. Secret government escape bases. People’s inability to face up to this thing is worse than the thing, it really is.

You tell a story like that, about your parents being killed, and people end up looking at you really closely, right in the eyes, advertising their empathy, when really what they’re doing is trying to peer into your soul, see what kind of marks and stains have been left on there.

“Well, it’s not a suicide by hanging,” says Denny Dotseth, appearing at my elbow, chuckling. Mustache, broad grin, coffee in a paper cup. “Kind of refreshing, isn’t it?”

(www.B612Foundation.org).