“Sam had a DVD in his hand. He said, "Yesterday I sent Edilio to the power plant to get two things. First, a cache of automatic weapons from the guardhouse. "Machine guns?" "Yeah. Not just for us to have, but to make sure the other side doesn't get them." "Now we have an arms race," Astrid said. Her tone seemed to irritate Sam. "You want me to leave them for Caine?" "I wasn't criticizing, just... you know. Ninth graders with machine guns; it's hard to make that a happy story." Sam relented. He even grinned. "Yeah. The phrase 'ninth graders with machine guns' isn't exactly followed by 'have a nice day'.”

“Ninth graders with machine guns: its hard to make that a happy story.”

“Trent, do you have any weapons? Like a gun?” He looked at me in disgust. “You’re here to protect me,” he said as he closed the distance between us and stood beside me. “You didn’t bring a weapon?” “Yeah, I brought a weapon,” I snapped as I brought my splat gun out and aimed it at the ceiling where the sounds were coming from. “I just thought that since you’re a freaking murderer you might have a gun, too (...)”

“Yeah, but you don’t need a machine gun to kill a fly.”

“LSD, yeah, the big parade – everybody's doin' it now. Take LSD, then you are a poet, an intellectual. What a sick mob. I am building a machine gun in my closet now to take out as many of them as I can before they get me.”

“At the front window was something that looked like a machine gun with a cluster of barrels. “Rocket launcher?” he wondered aloud. “Nope, nope! Potatoes. Ella doesn't like potatoes.”“Ella! Where are the others?”“Roof. Ogre-watching. Ella doesn't like ogres. Potatoes.”Potatoes? Frank didn't understand until he swiveled the machine gun around. Its eight barrels were loaded with spuds. At the base of the gun, a basket was filled with more edible ammunition…“They have cannonballs,” Frank said, “and we have a potato gun.”“Starch,” Ella said thoughtfully. “Starch is bad for ogres.”