To hell with monsters and to hell with men. There is no difference to me.

It's almost dawn. You can feel it coming. The world holds its breath, because there's really no guarantee that the sun will rise. That there was a yesterday doesn't mean there will be a tomorrow.

The beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father's study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece contributed its individual power to the whole. It was simple. It was complex. It was savage; it was elegant. It was a dance; it was a war. It was finite and eternal. It was life.

And red is not the color of apples or roses or the dresses that pretty girls wear in the summertime. That is not the color of red at all.

Then the door flew open and Mr. Faulks told us to head over to the gym. I thought that was really smart. Get all of us in one place so the aliens didn't have to waste a lot of ammunition.

Our enemy is fear. Blinding, reason-killing fear. Fear consumes the truth and poisons all the evidence, leading us to false assumptions and irrational conclusions.

I'm one, too," he said. "What?" He spit a wad of blood and mucus into the dirt. "A virgin." What a shock. "What makes you think I'm a virgin?" I asked. "You wouldn't have hit me if you weren't.