Wanderers

by Chuck Wendig

Shana couldn’t help but notice how the cop had this walk, a cocky rooster strut that looked like he had shit his pants at some point but was too proud to admit it or change his drawers.

(Politicians were always keen to try to “bring back coal,” but you might as well try to bring back the buggy whip. Talking about coal was never about coal, though: It was always code for making promises to blue-collar America about their blue-collar ways of life.)

you’d have to forget you ever heard the Beatles, or Guided by Voices, or Rammstein, or the Scorpions, or gods, what about Babymetal? Japanese bubblegum heavy metal? Brilliant! Or the metal scene out of Botswana (Overthrust!), or those glorious little punk prick bastards out of Myanmar (Rebel Riot!), or that glam-band dream-balladry of that Argentine band that Evil Elvis used to listen to (Babasónicos!).

“Bottoms up.” Then he shoved the swab up his nose. It had to go up pretty far, same as a flu swab would. It conjured a pressure behind his eye as he turned it around up there. The act summoned a tear in that eye—a lone drop that rolled down his cheek.

Ha, like COVID tests. Swab gotta touch your brain.

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“But we don’t have big boners about it, either. We treat guns like tools, like hammers or screwdrivers. Don’t see much value in forming some kind of ideological cult around ’em. Definitely don’t see why people get such a kick out of those black rifles. Your nipples get hard using one of those, I start to worry about you shooting up a school or a movie theater.” “Or forming a white supremacist militia.” “That, too, Benji, that too.”

We have chickens. They didn’t die in the plague, and in fact, chickens seem to be having…quite a moment, ecologically.”

Reminds me of the waves of animals having their resurgence in Earth Abides.