BooksBarbecue
Back Destroy All Monsters Save as PDF
Chapters (79)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-One
  25. Twenty-Two
  26. Twenty-Three
  27. Twenty-Four
  28. Twenty-Five
  29. Twenty-Six
  30. Twenty-Seven
  31. Twenty-Eight
  32. Twenty-Nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-One
  35. Thirty-Two
  36. Thirty-Three
  37. Thirty-Four
  38. Thirty-Five
  39. Thirty-Six
  40. Thirty-Seven
  41. Thirty-Eight
  42. Thirty-Nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty-One
  45. Forty-Two
  46. Forty-Three
  47. Forty-Four
  48. Forty-Five
  49. Forty-Six
  50. Forty-Seven
  51. Forty-Eight
  52. Forty-Nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty-One
  55. Fifty-Two
  56. Fifty-Three
  57. Fifty-Four
  58. Fifty-Five
  59. Fifty-Six
  60. Fifty-Seven
  61. Fifty-Eight
  62. Fifty-Nine
  63. Sixty
  64. Sixty-One
  65. Sixty-Two
  66. Sixty-Three
  67. Sixty-Four
  68. Sixty-Five
  69. Sixty-Six
  70. Sixty-Seven
  71. Sixty-Eight
  72. Sixty-Nine
  73. Seventy
  74. Acknowledgments
  75. About the Author
  76. Praise for Destroy All Monsters
  77. Books by Sam J. Miller
  78. Back Ad
  79. About the Publisher

Only a little girl saw me. Just for a split second, but I saw her eyes widen. I wondered what she thought of the filthy wet woman in the mud, in the night, in the pouring-down rain. At first I hoped she wasn’t too scared, and then I decided it was okay if she was. The sooner you learned there were monsters in the world, the better.

I watched the train until it was long gone, leaving us alone with the river and the rails and the sky.

The sky, where something moved. Too solid to be a cloud. Moving too fast. Black as the night. Swimming through the air with broad slow strokes of a massive tail.

“Do you see that?” I asked, pointing.

“The sky whale? Of course.”

“Of course,” I said, and watched a massive sea creature as it descended from the sky and dove into the river.

Of course the world would never be the same again. We had passed through something, Solomon and I. Fighting it wouldn’t do me any good. Whatever weird shit came along, I would roll with it.

“I know what to do with you,” I said.

“Do with me,” he said, and laughed. “Is this the part where you take me out in the back, tell me about the rabbits, and shoot me in the head?”

“Shut up,” I said. “I never liked Of Mice and Men, anyway. I’ll sneak you into my basement; you can sleep there tonight.”

He sat up. “I’ll be fine out here. There’s an old duck hunter’s shed, in the swamp not far from here.”

I sighed. “It’s late October and you’ve been out in the rain and it’s going to get cold as hell tonight. You’re not sleeping alone in a dark shed in a goddamn swamp.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” he said. “It does sound kind of terrible.”

We went back to my car, and got inside. I turned the key, cranked up the heater, but didn’t put the car in drive right away. Instead, we sat there, listening to rain hitting the roof.

Forty-Eight

Solomon

Rain tapped away at the tin roof over our head. The brakeman’s hut smelled of oil and stale tobacco, but it was dry. Ash lay with her head in my lap. We held hands. Our teeth chattered.

I thought, I could really go for a cup of Radha’s hot milk tea right now.

And then I thought, My gods. Radha.

Connor.

“What?” Ash asked, when I sat up with a start.

I leaned forward, pressed my hands to my temples.

Thirty whole minutes had gone by, and I hadn’t thought about him once.

They took him. This beautiful kid, this boy with an incredible gift. They were going to take it away from him. If they didn’t do something way, way worse.