These days, we can be whatever we want to be. The apocalypse is sort of freeing, don’t you think?

Life is nothing more than a series of lyric snippets from Bruce Springsteen songs.

Keep that hate alive in your heart, lad. It’ll warm you when nothing else will.

We’re all scared. Might as well be scared together.

Maybe God is nothing more than another villain – the biggest villain of them all. Maybe.

I mean, what’s the sense in being a hero when there’s no one left to save? Oh.

Sometimes it whispers. If you stand too close to it, right there on the edge where the candlelight is swallowed by shadow, the darkness talks to you in a voice not its own – a voice you’ve probably heard before. A lover. A parent. A friend.

What a crazy way to be buried, he thought as he hunted. Get your body burned up and then poured into a box that looked like a library book, like your relatives could check you out and take you home for a couple of weeks. Would there be an overdue penalty if they were late bringing back the dead?

Know your genre. Know your history. Read a book.

In late 2001, I contributed a short story called 'Castaways' to an anthology called 'In Laymon's Terms,' which was a tribute to Richard Laymon, who had passed away earlier that year.