“The thing is we live in an upside world where the only law is our eventual demise.” Stuebing was trying to look wise in a stupid way and it almost worked. “We pretend like we’re trying, but we just can’t handle that basic thing.”

“We think we matter. And we don’t. We never have.” He toed the corpse and watched the foreleg flop back. “It looks like it’s asleep, but it ain’t. It’s just dead.”