Cell

by Stephen King

The closed-off, well-bred, out-in-public look on her face—what Clay thought of as your basic on-the-street-no-face look—had been replaced by a convulsive snarl that shrank her eyes to slits and exposed both sets of teeth. Her upper lip had turned completely inside out, revealing a pink velvet lining as intimate as a vulva.

Eyes like white lamps peered from blood-dappled sockets.

Clay Riddell believed he might be witnessing the first reluctant scurry he had ever seen in his life.

Clay was starting to think this guy could write a book—How to Be Disliked on Short Notice.

He had a wife who was still sort of his responsibility, and when it came to his son there was no sort-of at all. Even thinking of Johnny was dangerous. Every time his mind turned to the boy, Clay felt a panic-rat inside his mind, ready to burst free of the flimsy cage that held it and start gnawing anything it could get at with its sharp little teeth. If he could make sure Johnny and Sharon were okay, he could keep the rat in its cage and plan what to do next.

This is how a man looks when he’s deciding that the risk of death is better than the risk of change.

Stop it. Don’t you let that rat out. That rat can do nothing but run, bite, and chase its own tail.

The lions are out of their cages, and you may well find that they’ll eat the mouthy Christians first. Somebody canceled your right of free speech around three o’clock this afternoon.

“They saw we had built the Tower of Babel all over again . . . and on nothing but electronic cobwebs. And in a space of seconds, they brushed those cobwebs aside and our Tower fell.

“At bottom, you see, we are not Homo sapiens at all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle. And that is what the Pulse exposed five days ago.”

man has come to dominate the planet thanks to two essential traits. One is intelligence. The other has been the absolute willingness to kill anyone and anything that gets in his way.”

William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, John Shirley

They came onto the midway between the Krazy Kups and a half-constructed kiddie ride called Charlie the Choo-Choo.