Mutant Leader Quotes

There is no morality in war', they said, 'but cannibals never killed more in one day that they could eat. In your wars, thousands are killed in a few minutes. Perhaps it might be worth suggesting to you leaders that both parties in your war agree to five minutes of combat. Then let all the parents come to the battlefield and collect the pieces and parts of their children, take them home and mourn and bury them. After that is over, another five minutes of battle might or might not be agreed upon. It is difficult to make sense out of senselessness.

You’re supposed to be the big boss.” Sam said nothing. The crowd hushed, ready to watch this one-on-one confrontation. “You’re the big boss of the freaks,” Zil yelled. “But you can’t do anything. You can shoot laser beams out of your hands, but you can’t get enough food, and you can’t keep the power on, and you won’t do anything about that murderer Hunter, who killed my best friend.” He paused to fill his lungs for a final, furious cry. “You shouldn’t be in charge.” “You want to be in charge, Zil? Last night you were running around trying to get a lynch mob together. And let’s not even pretend that wasn’t you responsible for graffiti I saw driving into town just now.” “So what?” Zil demanded. “So what? So I said what everyone who isn’t a freak is thinking.” He spit the word “freak,” making it an insult, making it an accusation. “You really think what we need right now is to divide up between freaks and normals?” Sam asked. “You figure that will get the lights turned back on? That will put food on people’s tables?

Only a fool says in his heart There is no Creator, no King of kings, Only mules would dare to bray These lethal mutterings. Over darkened minds as these The Darkness bears full sway, Fruitless, yet, bearing fruit, In their fell, destructive way. Sterile, though proliferate, A filthy progeny sees the day, When Evil, Thought and Action mate: Breeding sin, rebels and decay. The blackest deeds and foul ideals, Multiply throughout the earth, Through deadened, lifeless, braying souls, The Darkness labours and gives birth. Taking the Lord’s abundant gifts And rotting them to the core, They dress their dish and serve it out Foul seeds to infect thousands more. ‘The Tree of Life is dead!’ they cry, ‘And that of Knowledge not enough, Let us glut on the ashen apples Of Sodom and Gomorrah.’ Have pity on Thy children, Lord, Left sorrowing on this earth, While fools and all their kindred Cast shadows with their murk, And to the dwindling wise, They toss their heads and wryly smirk. The world daily grinds to dust Virtue’s fair unicorns, Rather, it would now beget Vice’s mutant manticores. Wisdom crushed, our joy is gone, Buried under anxious fears For lost rights and freedoms, We shed many bitter tears. Death is life, Life is no more, Humanity buried in a tomb, In a fatal prenatal world Where tiny flowers Are ripped from the womb, Discarded, thrown away, Inconvenient lives That barely bloomed. Our elders fare no better, Their wisdom unwanted by and by, Boarded out to end their days, And forsaken are left to die. Only the youthful and the useful, In this capital age prosper and fly. Yet, they too are quickly strangled, Before their future plans are met, Professions legally pre-enslaved Held bound by mounting student debt. Our leaders all harangue for peace Yet perpetrate the horror, Of economic greed shored up Through manufactured war. Our armies now welter In foreign civilian gore. How many of our kin are slain For hollow martial honour? As if we could forget, ignore, The scourge of nuclear power, Alas, victors are rarely tried For their woeful crimes of war. Hope and pray we never see A repeat of Hiroshima. No more! Crimes are legion, The deeds of devil-spawn! What has happened to the souls Your Divine Image was minted on? They are now recast: Crooked coins of Caesar and The Whore of Babylon. How often mankind shuts its ears To Your music celestial, Mankind would rather march To the anthems of Hell. If humanity cannot be reclaimed By Your Mercy and great Love Deservedly we should be struck By Vengeance from above. Many dread the Final Day, And the Crack of Doom For others the Apocalypse Will never come too soon. ‘Lift up your heads, be glad’, Fools shall bray no more For at last the Master comes To thresh His threshing floor.

So what happened? How did we go from leader of the pack to lost and left behind? It’s hard to determine a single cause for any event in this complex world, of course, but forced to choose, the answer is best summed up as follows: $ Sure, plenty of people will throw up excuses about Kenyans having some kind of mutant muscle fiber, but this isn’t about why other people got faster; it’s about why we got slower. And the fact is, American distance running went into a death spiral precisely when cash entered the equation. The Olympics were opened to professionals after the 1984 Games, which meant running-shoe companies could bring the distance-running savages out of the wilderness and onto the payroll reservation. Vigil could smell the apocalypse coming, and he’d tried hard to warn his runners. “There are two goddesses in your heart,” he told them. “The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you.” Ask nothing from your running, in other words, and you’ll get more than you ever imagined.

Listen, Sam, and everyone, you need to know something so it won’t freak you out: Pack Leader can speak. I mean, human words. Like Smart-Girl Barbie there was saying, he’s some kind of mutant or whatever. I know you think I’m probably crazy.” She had Hermit Jim’s tin cup now and used it to scoop up another helping of wonderful, wonderful pudding. Blondie—Astrid—was opening a can of fruit cocktail. “What do you know about the FAYZ?” Astrid asked. Lana stopped eating and stared at her. “The what?” Astrid shrugged and looked embarrassed. “That’s what people are calling it. The Fallout Alley Youth Zone. FAYZ.” “What does that mean?” “Have you seen the barrier?” She nodded. “Oh, yeah. I’ve seen the barrier. I touched the barrier, which, by the way, is not a good idea.” Sam said, “As far as we can tell, it goes clear around in a big circle. Or maybe a sphere. We think the center is the power plant. It seems like a ten-mile radius from there, you know, twenty miles across.” “Circumference of 62.83 miles, with an area of 314.159 square miles,” Astrid said. “Point 159,” Quinn echoed from his corner. “That’s important.” “It’s basically pi,” Astrid said. “You know, 3.14159265…. Okay, I’ll stop.” Lana hadn’t stopped being hungry. She took a scoop of the fruit cocktail. “Sam, you think the power plant caused it?” Sam shrugged, and then he hesitated, surprised. Lana guessed that he felt no pain in his shoulder. “No one knows. All of a sudden every single person over the age of fourteen disappears and there’s this barrier and people…animals…” Lana slowly absorbed this new information. “You mean all the adults? They’re gone?” “Poof,” Quinn said. “They ditched. They blinked out. They vacated. They took the off-ramp. They cut a hole. They emigrated. Adults and teenagers. Nothing left but kids.” “I’ve done all I can to strengthen the door,” Edilio announced. “But all I have is nails. Someone can break it in eventually.” “Maybe they didn’t all ditch,” Lana said. “Maybe we did.” Astrid said, “That’s definitely one of the possibilities, not that it makes any real difference. It’s effectively the same thing.

The intruders spoke no words as they rushed in. Five boys carrying baseball bats and tire irons. They wore an assortment of Halloween masks and stocking masks. But Derek knew who they were. “No! No!” he cried. All five boys wore bulky shooter’s earmuffs. They couldn’t hear him. But more importantly, they couldn’t hear Jill. One of the boys stayed in the doorway. He was in charge. A runty kid named Hank. The stocking pulled down over his face smashed his features into Play-Doh, but it could only be Hank. One of the boys, fat but fast-moving and wearing an Easter Bunny mask, stepped to Derek and hit him in the stomach with his aluminum baseball bat. Derek dropped to his knees. Another boy grabbed Jill. He put his hand over her mouth. Someone produced a roll of duct tape. Jill screamed. Derek tried to stand, but the blow to his stomach had winded him. He tried to stand up, but the fat boy pushed him back down. “Don’t be stupid, Derek. We’re not after you.” The duct tape went around and around Jill’s mouth. They worked by flashlight. Derek could see Jill’s eyes, wild with terror. Pleading silently with her big brother to save her. When her mouth was sealed, the thugs pulled off their shooter’s earmuffs. Hank stepped forward. “Derek, Derek, Derek,” Hank said, shaking his head slowly, regretfully. “You know better than this.” “Leave her alone,” Derek managed to gasp, clutching his stomach, fighting the urge to vomit. “She’s a freak,” Hank said. “She’s my little sister. This is our home.” “She’s a freak,” Hank said. “And this house is east of First Avenue. This is a no-freak zone.” “Man, come on,” Derek pleaded. “She’s not hurting anyone.” “It’s not about that,” a boy named Turk said. He had a weak leg, a limp that made it impossible not to recognize him. “Freaks with freaks, normals with normals. That’s the way it has to be.” “All she does is—” Hank’s slap stung. “Shut up. Traitor. A normal who stands up for a freak gets treated like a freak. Is that what you want?” “Besides,” the fat boy said with a giggle, “we’re taking it easy on her. We were going to fix her so she could never sing again. Or talk. If you know what I mean.” He pulled a knife from a sheath in the small of his back. “Do you, Derek? Do you understand?” Derek’s resistance died. “The Leader showed mercy,” Turk said. “But the Leader isn’t weak. So this freak either goes west, over the border right now. Or…” He let the threat hang there. Jill’s tears flowed freely. She could barely breathe because her nose was running. Derek could see that by the way she sucked tape into her mouth, trying for air. She would suffocate if they didn’t let her go soon. “Let me at least get her doll.