verbava все записи автора Margaret Atwood, Naomi Alderman – Happy Zombie Sunrise Home

He replied, "Typical." Always an insult – one never knows how many unspoken sins one is being accused of, with "typical".

***

And then my mom eats my dad.
I'd come downstairs when the screaming had died down a bit. I sometimes wonder still why dad hadn't made any noise. That was so like him. He always just stood there and took it: whatever she did, whatever she said. I bet when she started to gnaw on his right arm he just said, “Oh now Sumatra, don't be like that.” I bet when she bit out his throat, his final words were, “Darling, have I upset you somehow?”

***

A minute wasted is a minute gone forever, as my own grandmother used to say; which is an idiotic maxim when you come to think of it, since even if you fill the minute to the bursting point with meaningful activity, it will be gone forever anyway.

***

It does not create a good impression on children to ask the why they have been so silly, as I know from sad experience. My poor son Norman, now shredded and partially masticated, would simply respond with a sullen look when told he had been silly, even when he was technically grown up.
In retrospect, it was not the most tactful thing for me to have said to him at his wedding reception, although without doubt appropriate enough. Anyone with a head on her shoulders could tell that marriage was going to be a train wreck.

***

There is absolutely no point however in arguing with a man in love about his silliness when large breasts are part of the bargain. It only makes them scowl.

***

It is my theory that children are always reassured by the promise of delicious treats. To them, a pie symbolizes normality. Safety and comfort.

***

I hadn’t drunk any “Glowing Skull” myself, though more by good luck than good judgment, never having had any marathon or trampoline or even tennis ambitions, I’m happy to say. For if I had drunk any, I’d likely not be happy to say anything; I’d simply be making that irritating moan. But Dexter did try the brew out on himself, like any self-respecting mad scientist.

***

I walked out of the kitchen so kind of quiet and calm, so just totally cool and peaceful, even though my head was really sort of a mess. I was proud of myself, right then, for not freaking out or throwing stuff or shouting, but just going off alone to think about it all.

***

And it never seemed like the right time to break up. You know, even though we didn't like each other, we had each other.

***

“Day before yesterday, I was gonna graduate High School and maybe go to college in one of those converted prisons they've kept clean of zombies or like travel on the road and take photographs or something and be a kind of, you know, war photographer of the Zombie War, and it was going to be so cool and I was going to win a Pulitzer Prize and now my dad's dead and my mom's a zombie and I'm stuck in a garden in Toronto and I've got nothing.”
Hughes let me talk myself out until I started to cry a little bit.
He put one arm around my shoulder.
“Kid,” he said, kinda wearily, “you know what? At least you've still got some family. So your mom's a dribbling fool and your Grandma's kinda manipulative and cold, so what? They love you, in their weird way. That's more than a lot of people have right now. Hell, that's more than a lot of people had before the apocalypse.”

***

Love’s First Kiss. Always so touching, don’t you think? Love’s Millionth Kiss is also cause for celebration: when a couple hits the diamond wedding anniversary cheers go up, much as when an overturned life boat with two survivors clinging to it finally washes ashore. It is not the shape they are in that impresses: merely the fact that they are there at all, when so many others have expired or jumped overboard.

***

You never know what the future holds. No civilization goes on forever without an apocalypse of some description.

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