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178 results · Page 4 of 8Play this collection ▷
04Undated
Female say Pack Leader stop,” Pack Leader said angrily.“What?” Caine could make no sense of it till he saw Diana striding up, dark hair flying, eyes furious.“I told this filthy beast to stop,” Diana said, barely controlled.“Stop what?” Caine demanded.“They’re still attacking the kids,” Diana said. “We’ve won. Sam is dead. Call them off, Caine.”Caine turned his attention back to the battle between Drake and the monster. “They’re coyotes,” Caine said coldly.Diana flew at him. “You’ve lost your mind, Caine. This has to stop. You’ve won. This has to stop.”“Or what, Diana? Or what?” Caine demanded. “Go get Lana. I’m hurt. Pack Leader, do what you want.”“Maybe this is why your mother abandoned you,” Diana said savagely. “Maybe she could see that you weren’t just bad, you were twisted and sick and evil.
Michael Grant / quote
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09Undated
ot everyone liked Albert. Not everyone was happy that he had become the most important person around. Lots of people were jealous that Albert had a girl to clean his house and the porcelain basin where he did his business at night when he didn’t want to go outside to the only actual outhouse in Per-dido Beach. And that he could afford to send his clothes to be washed in the fresh water of the ironically named Lake Evian.And there were definitely people who didn’t like working for Albert, having to do what he said or go hungry.Albert traveled with a bodyguard now. The bodyguard’s name was Jamal. Jamal carried an automatic rifle over his shoulder. He had a massive hunting knife in his belt. And a club that was an oak chair leg with spikes driven through it to make a sort of mace.Unlike everyone else Albert carried no weapon himself. Jamal was weapon enough.
Michael Grant / quote
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10Undated
Find Sam Temple. Tell him you escaped.”Jack gulped and bobbed his head.“Better yet, find that girl, Astrid.” Diana recovered some of her mocking attitude. “Astrid the Genius. She’ll be desperate to save Sam.”“Okay. Okay.” He steeled himself. “I better go.”Diana touched his arm. “Tell them about Andrew.”Jack froze with his hand on the key. “That’s what you want me to do?”“Jack, if Sam blinks out, Drake will turn on me, and Caine won’t be able to stop him. Drake is stronger than before. I need Sam alive. I need someone for Drake to hate. I need balance. Tell Sam about the temptation. Warn him that he’ll be tempted to surrender to the big jump, but maybe, maybe, if he says no…” She sighed. It was not a hopeful sound. “Now: go.
Michael Grant / quote
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11Undated
Then, Zil and a half dozen of his crew swaggered into the plaza from the far side. Astrid clenched her jaw. Would the crowd turn on them? She almost hoped so. People thought because she wouldn’t let Sam go after Zil she must not really despise the Human Crew’s Leader. That was wrong. She hated Zil. Hated everything he had done and everything he had tried to do.Edilio moved quickly between Zil and a few of the boys who had started toward him, sticks and knives at the ready.Zil’s kids were armed with knives and bats, and so were those who wanted to take them on. Edilio was armed with an assault rifle.Astrid hated that this was what life so often came down to: my weapon is bigger than your weapon.If Sam were here it would be about his hands. Everyone had either seen what Sam could do, or heard the stories retold in vivid detail. No one challenged Sam.
Michael Grant / quote
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15Undated
Hey, Sam,” Drake shouted. “I thought you’d like to know this isn’t my whole army.”Sam didn’t doubt it.“Your girl Brianna tried to stop us.” Drake waved a bowie knife in the air. “I took this from her. I whipped her, Sam.” He snapped his whip hand. The crack was like a pistol shot. “I broke her legs so she couldn’t run. Then . . .”Dekka was halfway over the side, ready to swim ashore. Jack grabbed her and held her.“Let me go!” Dekka yelled.“Hold her,” Sam ordered Jack. “Don’t be stupid, Dekka. He wants us to come rushing at him.”“I can beat him,” Jack said. “Dekka and me together, we can kill him.”Sam registered the fact that Jack was actually making a physical threat. He didn’t remember ever hearing that kind of thing from Jack. But Dekka was Sam’s greater concern.“I’m going to kill him,” Dekka said in a voice so deep in her throat she sounded like an animal. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him.” Then she shouted, “I’m going to kill you, Drake. I’m going to kill you!”Drake grinned. “I think she liked it. She was screaming, but she liked it.”“He’s lying,” Toto said.“Who?” Sam snapped.“Him.” He pointed at Drake. “He hasn’t killed that girl or hurt her.”Dekka relaxed and Sam and Jack let go of her.“Truth-teller Toto,” Sam whispered. “He can tell when people are lying.”“I just decided I like you,” Dekka said to Toto. “You might be useful.”Toto frowned. “It’s true: you just decided you like me.
Michael Grant / quote
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20Undated
Lunch had been at a McDonald’s in Santa Barbara. It had been so clean. It had smelled like food. It had sounded happy and alive. In the bathroom, the toilet flushed. Water ran in the sink.He had passed a trash can on the way back to his table and stopped just to look at it. It was full of food. Leftover burgers, the last few fries, smears of ketchup on cardboard. He’d had to hold back tears when he saw it.“Candy bar?” Vicky asked, and held a Snickers out to him.At that moment they slowed to turn off the highway and head cautiously, carefully, through recently bulldozed streets, toward the town plaza. That’s where the McDonald’s was. His McDonald’s.A candy bar. People had killed for less.
Michael Grant / quote
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21Undated
She found Diana’s room. Diana was sitting in her bed using a remote control to idly flip through the channels on the wall-mounted TV.“You,” Diana said by way of greeting.“Me,” Astrid said.“Can’t believe it,” Diana said. “All this time. And there’s still nothing on.”Astrid laughed and lowered herself slowly into a chair. “You know how they say hospital food is so awful? Somehow I’m not having that reaction.”“Tapioca beats rat,” Diana said.“I never minded rat as much as that dog jerky we were getting for a while. The stuff Albert had them flavor with celery salt? That was the culinary low point for me.”“Yeah, well, I had a lower low point,” Diana said, sounding angry. Or maybe not angry, maybe hurt.Astrid put a hand on Diana’s arm, and Diana did not shake it off.
Michael Grant / quote
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22Undated
We’ve searched all of the homes and carried the food to Ralph’s,” Sam continued. “The problem is that all the fruit and veggies spoiled while we were all filling up on chips and cookies. The meat all rotted. People were stupid and careless, and there’s nothing we can do about that now.” Sam swallowed the bitterness he felt, the anger he felt at his own foolishness. “But we have food sitting out in the fields. Maybe not the food we’d like, but enough to carry us for months—many months—if we bring it in before it rots and the birds eat it.”“Maybe we’ll get rescued, and we won’t have to worry,” another voice said.“Maybe we’ll learn to live on air,” Astrid muttered under her breath but loudly enough to be heard by at least a few.“Why don’t you go get our food back from Drake and the chuds up there?”It was Zil. He accepted a congratulatory slap on the back from a creepy kid named Antoine, part of Zil’s little posse.“Because it would mean getting some kids killed,” Sam said bluntly. “We’d be lucky to rescue any of the food, and we’d end up digging more graves in the plaza. And it wouldn’t solve our problem, anyway.
Michael Grant / quote
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23Undated
First off,” he said, “I want to say I’m sorry about E.Z. He was a good kid. He didn’t deserve…” For a moment he almost lost it as a surge of emotion welled up from nowhere. “I’m sorry he died.”Someone sobbed loudly.“Look, I’m going to get right to it: we have three hundred and thirty-two…I’m sorry, three hundred and thirty-one mouths to feed,” Sam said. He placed his hands on his hips and planted his feet wide apart. “We were already pretty bad off for food supplies. But after the attack by the Coates kids…well, it’s not pretty bad off, anymore, it’s desperate.”He let that sink in. But how much were six-and eight-year-olds really grasping? Even the older kids looked more glazed than alarmed.“Three hundred and thirty-one kids,” Sam reiterated, “And food for maybe a week. That’s not a long time. It’s not a lot of food. And as you all know, the food we have is awful.”That got a response from the audience. The younger kids produced a chorus of gagging and retching sounds.“All right,” Sam snapped. “Knock it off. The point is, things are really desperate.
Michael Grant / quote
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