...but it was death that changed. People are still people. Some good, some bad. Death changed, and we don't know what death really means anymore. Maybe that was the point. Maybe this is an object lesson about the arrogance of our assumptions. Hard to say. But the world? She didn't change. She healed. We stopped hurting her and she began to heal. You can see it all around. The whole world is a forest now. The air is fresher. More trees, more oxygen.

They held each other and wept as the night closed its fist around their tiny shelter, and the world below them seethed with killers both living and dead.

Everyone carries around his own monsters.---Richard Pryor

He knew that these creatures were dead, that they were reanimated echoes who wore the disguise of the people they had once been, but Tom's words rang in his mind. They used to be people. How could he strike them? How could he hurt them? Children, women, old people. Lost souls.

Point is, people lie a lot. Sometimes out of habit. Not many people are good at telling the truth.

It's important to know the past, but your survival depends on knowing the present.

Walls, towns, rules, and day-to-day life doesn't make us civilized ... That's organization and ritual. Civilization lives in our hearts and heads or it doesn't exist at all.