Chapter 1

THE LAST KIDS ON EARTH. JUNE'S WILD FLIGHT

chapter one That's me. Not the giant Ogre. Beneath the giant Ogre. The girl in the driver's seat of the oversized bumper car. The legendarily heroic girl about to get eaten. My name is June Del Toro, and I had a good life, while it lasted.

For a while, my claim to fame was that I was the first sixth grader to be editor-in-chief of my middle school newspaper: The Parker Gazette. Of course, that was before the Monster Apocalypse.... These days, there's no more school, no more newspaper, no more lots of stuff. Now my claim to fame is that I'm the bravest girl on the block. (To be clear, it's no great achievement: I'm the only girl on the block.) Proof of bravery, you ask? I regularly exchange blows with evil beasts, lock horns with zombie hordes, and make mincemeat out of evil monsters. And here's the topper—I live in a tree house with three middle school boys. Yes. It gets gross. But it's generally pretty rad, because they're also my best friends in the whole world: Jack Sullivan, Quint Baker, and Dirk Savage.

And we have a crew of good-guy monster buddies who live at the local pizza joint next door. We spend most of our time competing in high-stakes lip sync battles, cruising around in our post-apocalyptic pickup truck, and having Nutella-sandwich-eating contests. Also, battling evil forces from another dimension that are trying to take over our world. And yep—in case you were wondering —that happens a lot. Like I said, it's been a pretty good life. I've seen, done, and eaten more weird things than, like, ninety-two kids my age. But it's not perfect. I miss my parents—although that's mostly okay, because I know they're alive and out there, somewhere. And I miss getting to break big news stories at school, like ORCHESTRA RECITAL CANCELLED—PARENTS, STUDENTS, TEACHERS ALL EQUALLY ECSTATIC. The other not-so-perfect bit? An extreme-evil, power-mad monster named Thrull is assembling an army of

skeleton soldiers to build something called the Tower. It's part of his plan to summon the ultimate, endgame evil: .e...c. the Ancient, Destructor of Worlds. Sooo... yeah. That part is lousy. But not as lousy as being EATEN BY A GIANT BEAST. WHICH IS WHAT'S ABOUT TO HAPPEN! So y'know what—with the milliseconds remaining before I'm swallowed whole, let me— EXPLAIN HOW I GOT HERE!

I stood alone at the center of the old Sunshine Roller Rink, tense and alert, ready for action. Suddenly— VA-ROOOM! The roar of revving engines filled the air—a dozen DoomKarts: souped-up bumper cars, built to fit monsters. (Like our BoomKarts— but bigger.)