Rick Yancey

That's a stupid question,' said Malachi. 'Because he didn't warn him. He didn't warn anyone.''No, it's a philosophical question,' Kearns corrected him. 'Which makes it useless, not stupid.

The nights did not come gently but seemed to slam down angrily upon the Earth.

Ah. And then you kill him.""No," Arkwright replied patiently. "We are British. We avoid murder if we can help it.{...}

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.

Despair is a wholly selfish response to fortune__ slings and arrows.

He didn__ like to see animals in captivity. When he looked into their eyes, something in their eyes looked back at him.

Poets never die, I thought. They just fail in the end.

Beside me the monstrumologist murmured, "I believe I am in hell, therefore I am there.

And, for one_ ten thousandth of a second, all of it fell away, the despair and grief and anger and pain and hunger, and the old Ben Parish rose from the dead. The eyes that impaled. The smile that slayed. In another moment, he would fade, slide back into the new Ben, the one called Zombie, and I understood something I hadn__ before: He was dead, the object of my schoolgirl desires, just as the schoolgirl who desired him was dead.

We'd stared into the face of Death, and Death blinked first. You'd think that would make us feel brave and invincible. It didn't.

Promises are priceless, and a kiss is a kind of promise, too.

Aren__ you coming with us?__ feel his hand on my cheek. I know what this means and I slap his hand away.__ou__e coming with us, Evan,_ I say.__here__ something I have to do.___hat__ right._ My hand flails for his in the dark. I find it and pull hard. __ou have to come with us._____l find you, Cassie. Don__ I always find you? I____on__, Evan. You don__ know you__l be able to find me.___assie._ I don__ like the way he says my name. His voice is too soft, too sad, too much like a good-bye voice. __ was wrong when I said I was both and neither. I can__ be; I know that now. I have to choose.___ait a minute,_ Ben says. __assie, this guy is one of them?___t__ complicated,_ I answer. __e__l go over it later._ I grab Evan__ hand in both of mine and press it against my chest. __on__ leave me aga

He lays me on the bed. I say, right before he kisses me again, __f you kiss me again, I__ going to knee you in the balls.__is hands are incredibly soft, like a cloud touching me.__ won__ let you just_ He searches for the right word. __fly away from me, Cassie Sullivan.__e blows out the candle beside the bed.I feel his kiss more intensely now, in the darkness of the room where his sister died. In the quiet of the house where his family died. In the stillness of the world where the life we knew before the Arrival died. He tastes my tears before I can feel them. Where there would be tears, his kiss.__ didn__ save you,_ he whispers, lips tickling my eyelashes. __ou saved me.__e repeats it over and over, until we fall asleep pressed against each other, his voice in my ear, my tears in his mouth.__ou saved me.

We have survived the death of our childhood. We are soldiers now, maybe the last soldiers who will ever fight, the Earth__ final and only hope, united as one in the spirit of vengeance.

It's always been this way, I wanted to tell him. We bear the unbearable. We endure the unendurable. We do what must be done until we ourselves are undone.

The cold stars spun to the ancient rhythm, the august march of an everlasting symphony. They are old, the stars, and their memory is long.

It wasn't a good fake smile. You could always tell when she was faking, because she didn't look friendly; she looked like she was going to throw up.

Let__ establish a code for when you want to go all creeper on me. One knock means you__ like to come in. Two means you__e just stopping by to spy on me while I sleep._ His eyes travel from my face to my shirt (which happens to be his shirt) to my bare legs, lingering a breath too long before returning to my face. His gaze is warm. My legs are cold.Then he knocks once on the jamb. But it__ the smile that gets him in.