1) "Comes a time when you have to say the hell with it, if only for a moment. Arlene and I had recently faced the worst thing anyone can face, worse than the monsters or dying in space. We knew what it meant to lose your sanity... and come back to yourself again. Arlene started whistling 'Molly Malone.' She'd picked one of the few songs to which I knew the words. I sang along. All that was missing was a bottle of Tullamore Dew, the world's finest sipping whiskey. As it was, our duet seemed to transform the lengthening shadows of dusk in Utah into the cool glades of Ireland. I wondered if doom had come there. Were there demons in Dublin?"

2) "'In space,' she said finally, 'on Phobos, we found a giant swastika.' She let her observation hang in the air, waiting for the Mormon to respond. 'What do you think it means?' he asked. Arlene sighed. 'I don't know; except it's a reason for me to hate them more.' 'I would hate them just as much,' said Albert, 'if you had found the cross up there, or the flag of the United States, which I believe was also inspired by God. A symbol used by aliens means nothing to me. We know them by their fruits.' 'Oh, fug,' said Jill. 'This is like being back in class. Don't give me a test, Albert.'"

3) "The next town along the line was Buckeye. We ditched the truck cab, then waited for night. We found an alley and enjoyed the busy sounds of night life in this modern world: troop trucks every few minutes, the tramping of little zombie feet, screams of pain, howled orders from hell-princes, and the occasional earthshaking tread of steam-demons. Even more soothing to our shattered nerves were mechanical sounds that reminded me of the spidermind, evidently a smaller model. I wondered if this one got better mileage. 'Have you noticed an odd thing?' whispered Arlene. 'You mean besides everything?' I replied."

3) "Inside the main part of the store, the fluorescent lights were on and burning steady. But the refrigeration was off, and there was a rotten smell of all kinds of produce, milk, and meat that had been let go before its time. 'Ew,' said my Mormon buddy, and he hit the center of the bull's-eye. The meat smelled a lot worse than the bad vegetable matter. And oh, that fish! If I hadn't been wide awake on adrenaline—compared to which caffeine is harmless kid stuff—I would never have believed what I saw next. Nothing on Phobos or Deimos had the feeling of a fever dream compared to the spectacle of... 'Hell in the aisles,' breathed Albert. The grocery store was as busy as a Saturday afternoon in the good old world. Mom and Dad and the kids were there. Young lovers wandered the aisles. Middle-class guys with middle-sized guts in ugly T-shirts pushed shopping carts down the center aisle with no regard for who got in the way. Nothing had changed from the way it used to be... except that everyone was dead. [...] They didn't eat any of the groceries. They seemed caught up in the behavior of the past, as if the program had been so hard-wired into their skulls that not even losing their souls could erase the ritual of going to the grocery store."

4) "'Don't worry about me,' Jill said, following my example and kicking the corpse. 'They're just bags of blood, and we've got the pins. It's no big thing.' No one was joking now. Arlene looked at me with a worried expression. This was no time to psycho-analyze a fourteen-year-old who was doing her best to feel nothing. This sort of cold attitude was par for the course in an adult, a mood that would be turned off (hopefully) in peacetime; but hearing it from a kid was unnerving. The words just out of her lips were the cold truth we created. Do only the youngest soldiers develop the attitude necessary to win a war? Until this moment, I wouldn't have thought of Arlene and myself as old-fashioned sentimentalists; but if the future human race became cold and machine-like to fight the monsters, then maybe the monsters win, regardless of the outcome."

5) "'As I said, his name's Ken Estes. He's a computer software designer slumming as a CIA analyst. Low-level stuff, not a field agent or anything. He was born in—' 'No time for the family background,' I interrupted. 'Keep him focused on how and why he became a cybermummy.' Somewhere, water was dripping. I hadn't noticed it before, but it was very annoying while waiting for Jill to pass on the messages in silence. Finally, she spoke again: 'When the aliens landed and started the war, Ken was told by his superiors that the agency had developed a new computer which the operator accessed in V.R. mode.' 'What's V.R.?' Albert asked. 'Old term; this guy's in his thirties! Virtual Reality; we call it burfing now, from 'body surfing,' I think.' 'Oh, the net,' said Albert."

6) "We took Sig-Cows off'n the first two zombies we killed; better than the pistols, even though they were still just 10mm. The next one had a beautiful, wonderful shotgun. I'd take it, even if it was a fascist pump-action."