Chapters (79)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Fifty-Seven
- Fifty-Eight
- Fifty-Nine
- Sixty
- Sixty-One
- Sixty-Two
- Sixty-Three
- Sixty-Four
- Sixty-Five
- Sixty-Six
- Sixty-Seven
- Sixty-Eight
- Sixty-Nine
- Seventy
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Praise for Destroy All Monsters
- Books by Sam J. Miller
- Back Ad
- About the Publisher
“A machine,” Ash said. “Like a really big trolley that flies. It can go very vast distances very quickly. Over sea, over land.”
“How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “Ever since I woke up, I know lots of weird things that don’t make a lot of sense. Stuff from . . . the other side?”
“So why can I see it now?”
She shrugged again. The airplane’s howl echoed across the sky. “Maybe we broke the universe.”
Forty-Seven
Ash
There is no other word for it: I howled.
I knew there was nothing to say. No words that would fix this. But I couldn’t be silent. Couldn’t shut my mouth. I wept, and I wailed, and I screamed, and I howled. I dropped to my knees, because it was getting hard to breathe. Probably I was hyperventilating. Hopefully I was dying. It would be so much easier to never have to stand up again.
The universe was broken.
I howled until my eye twitched uncontrollably, until a headache wrapped all the way around my cranium.
“Ash,” Solomon said, high above me in the rain.
“Oh god, Solomon,” I said. “Oh god, I am so, so sorry.”
“Ash, no,” he said, and got down on his knees beside me. “It’s not your fault.”
I remembered everything. Lying on my back, on the ground. Moving in and out of consciousness. Seeing him in the doorway up above me, holding on to the tattered red blanket. Seeing Mr. Barrett behind him. His pants hastily, sloppily pulled up.
The hospital, after. My arm, broken. My skull cracked, around my eye.
More importantly, I remembered the not remembering. The days of darkness. The way nothing was clear. The dream I’d had, that city of rain and fire and monsters, giant squids and manta rays that swam through the skies, spiders as big as people who infested vacant buildings.
I lay back, into the mud. Solomon lay back too. I grabbed his hand. Our fingers interlaced.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I should have done something. Said something. But I didn’t remember. Not enough . . .” Since that day all that had remained was a suspicion. A fear. A knowledge that Solomon had been hurt in some irrevocable way. And that I couldn’t do anything about it. And sometimes there wasn’t even that.
“You blocked it out by accident,” he said. “I did it on purpose. I was so scared, all the time. I used to have nightmares. They started bleeding into when I was awake. I tried my hardest not to think about it. To lock it up tight. And eventually, I guess it worked. I knew I hated him—I knew I was afraid of him—but I never knew why. The other night, after the bonfire, things started to come back to me. But now . . .”
Thunder boomed twice in the time I spent waiting for Solomon to finish his sentence.