The Darkest Winter (Savage North Chronicles, #1)

by Lindsey Pogue

You are not in control. You never were. It was all a smokescreen, and they played you like my uncle Earl’s fiddle.”

“In sleep paralysis, the inability to speak and move generates fear, naturally, which feeds panic. It’s common to hallucinate apparitions, sometimes even hear them.”

The early stages of a relationship were easy—they were mostly physical, and you could be whoever you wanted in the beginning.

“I think the more you try to understand the monsters you’ve created in your mind, the more you can expel their power over you and move on.”

He above any of us knew how precious life was; he’d watched it slip through his fingers more than once, something he only talked about when he’d had too many beers and his heart felt too full.

I never considered the ramifications of silence would be worse.

“Some of us are surviving. This is how we will fight our enemy—by not giving up, by being resilient and resourceful, by surviving. We are not a species that will go out quietly, so I task those of you who are still alive with one essential purpose: live.”

The sound of silence will set you free. In the silence there I’ll be.

I knew that facade—stay busy and focused. It was the only way to keep your shit together.

A safe haven was a nice thought, even if I knew it would fail. Too many strangers, especially scared ones, would be difficult to manage, and I didn’t trust anyone, not anymore.

Alex put on a brave face—something I could tell he was used to doing, but the end of the world meant even the toughest would break eventually.

The world was stocked with surplus goods and supplies now, but staying alive long enough to use them would be the hard part.

The edge was a precarious place. If you paid too much attention to everything in front of you, you risked the view, but ignore the dangers and you could fall. If your intention was to fall, like me, the catch was whether or not you could.

And yet, that’s the thing about haunting memories, they were like shadows; they moved around, impeding your view. Other times, light warmed the dark places and basking in it felt like a betrayal.

Nothing was certain, everything felt wrong, and I was tired of feeling lost.

“Hoping and wishing are pointless. Suck it up and do something instead.”

Birthdays come with too many expectations—expectations that someone needs to care about your birthday to begin with; there’s the inescapable disappointment when they don’t.

It was one thing to be given opportunities and make the wrong choices, but to have none to begin with, as I’m sure Alex often dealt with, your only choice was to take the lesser of the evils.

Reassortment: responsible for major genetic shifts in the history of the influenza virus. Pandemic flu strains are caused by reassortment between different viral strands, avian and human, for example. H1N1 virus responsible for the swine flu outbreak was the result of an unusual mix of swine, avian, and human influenza genetic sequences. Ever-changing viral sequences lead to new or revived diseases, as well as natural selection.

That was one thing I was learning about the crazy survivors; they tended to think they were so smart, but were overzealous and that left room for error. The people in the bus depot had been the same way, and all it took was a little unexpected disorder for them to lose their footing.

“In nature, there’s a balance to everything—an evolution. Like a moth with large eyes painted on its wings to scare off predators, and frogs with alluring toxic skin. Jackson said we’re not the top of the food chain anymore.” She popped a few more seeds into her mouth, trying to put the pieces together, but I had little insight to offer. “If natural selection reset the scales, those of us left have to find a new balance.”

“Mother Nature can be extreme—just look at where we live. What matters is that we’re not defenseless. If the bad guys can use their powers for evil, we can use ours for good.”

The hurt hadn’t gone away even if it had become easier to push away.

“Sometimes families have a way of forming, even if we don’t think we need or want them.”

“A restless mind is a restless soul.”

I wasn’t sure how natural the outbreak was; but he was right. Nothing was certain and change was inevitable, no matter how big and small. No matter how heartbreaking.

“You find people in your life when you need them,” she said. “That’s something I’ve always believed.”

They say an old soul is a person who has the knowledge and wisdom of someone much older than they are.

person was supposed to accumulate knowledge over the years and gain wisdom in their old age through experience.