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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

She shrugged. “We don’t know yet. A reporter was holed up down at the docks, in a bar known to be popular among nativists, just listening, trying to see what we could find out. This one guy was drunk, saying a lot of nasty stuff, but like he knew something. A reckoning is coming; he’s got something up his sleeve; he’s going to change everything. Like he was in on whatever was going on. My reporter waited till he was half–passed out, then stole the guy’s satchel.”

“You teach your journalists to be thieves?” I said, laughing. “Seems dangerous.”

“I teach my journalists to get the story. Anyway, there wasn’t much in the satchel to tell us what’s going on with ‘destroy all monsters,’ but there was a lot of information about the Refugee Princess.”

“Really,” I said, and it was hard to keep my voice neutral. “Do you think she’s a—a target of whatever’s going on?”

“Could be,” she said. “Nobody knows anything about her.”

“Wow.” I wanted desperately to open the folder and see what was there, but I couldn’t risk Cass wondering why I was so curious about it.

Because that was my big secret. My friendship with Ash. A refugee; a princess; an othersider. She was the biggest news story of the year, maybe the decade, and I’d been holding out on Cass. Hiding what I knew. I told myself Cass would understand, even appreciate my loyalty to my friend—but I also knew that she was a newswoman before anything else. Her first allegiance was always to The Story. So she wouldn’t be able to keep from acting on anything I shared.

To distract her, I told her about the graffiti I’d seen on one of the bridge pillars. The big blue man; the barely legible scribble underneath it: “He Is the Answer.”

“Might be the same person,” I said. “The one that guy was talking about. ‘He’s got something up his sleeve.’”

Cass didn’t know who he was, or what he might be the answer to.

But Niv might. He had access to the Palace intelligence officers.

I just needed to swallow my pride and ask for his help.

Seven

Ash

A big blue man, spray-painted onto the side of the abandoned elementary school. An illegible scribble underneath it. The smell of swamp water and soggy marijuana joints. Broken glass. Discarded condoms. Rain-bleached jelly beans all over the ground.

I should have loved this place. Desolation is photogenic. Graffiti makes for great pictures. I raised my camera, aimed it at the tags. Bright blue smears. But I couldn’t stop thinking about those swastikas spray-painted on the side of Judy Saperstein’s house. The thought of them made everything uglier. Scarier.