The Girl With All the Gifts(114)

Justineau is already sliding back down the tiles towards the rain gutter, arms spread to slow herself, feet scrabbling. Parks follows her on hands and knees, facing backwards up the ridge, ready to shoot at anything that moves. But nothing moves.

“Parks,” Justineau says below him. “Here.”

She’s found a window that’s not just open but gone, frame and all. All they have to do is let themselves down from the roof, taking their weight on their elbows, and step off on to the sill. Then it’s the work of a second to duck and snake inside.

Seconds count now. They’ve got to make it to the ground before the kids do. Get as good a head start as they can manage. They stumble through the dark, looking for a staircase.

That’s when the walkie-talkie goes off. Parks doesn’t stop–doesn’t dare to–but he snatches it up from its holster on his belt and answers.

“Parks. Go.”

“I heard shots,” Melanie says. “Are you okay?”

“Not so much.”

Justineau grabs his shoulder, drags him sideways. She’s found some stairs. They launch themselves into the lightless well, stumbling and almost falling. He should stop and get the torch from his backpack, but using it would probably just bring the kids down on them more quickly.

“Some hungry kids found us,” he says, through panting breaths. “Armed to the teeth. Kind of like you, only harder to get along with. They’re still on us.”

“Where are you?” Melanie asks. “Where I left you?”

“Further. End of the street.”

“I’m coming to find you.”

Good news. “Come fast,” he suggests.

They can tell when they’re on the ground floor, because the house’s street door is gaping open. They’re heading right for it, but the moonlight frames a silhouette as it pops up right in front of them. Four feet tall, a knife in each hand, ready to carve.

Parks fires, and the slight shape ducks away. Last bullet in the mag, or maybe second to last. He slides to a ragged, flailing halt. Justineau slams into his back. In full reverse, they head for the rear of the house.

Through one mouldering cave after another. The functions of the rooms are impossible to guess and of no damn interest to Parks at all. He’s just looking for a back door. When he finds it, he kicks it open and they burst out into–what he was praying for–the walled-in wilderness of an urban garden twenty years gone to seed.

They dive into head-high brambles, leaving flesh and cloth as tribute. An ululation from behind tells them that the kids are close at hand and still coming. Parks wishes them joy of it. Most of them are bollock naked, so they’re more exposed to the inch-long thorns, which are thickest close to the ground.

He looks behind. The doorway they just ran through is already lost in the inky dark, but he can see some vague movement back there. He fires into it and something shrieks. Fires again and the slide springs back with a barren click. Does he have another mag in his belt? Is he going to stop and reload, in the dark, with those cute little moppets climbing right up his arse?

A garden wall. “Go! Go!” he shouts. He boosts Justineau over it, then jumps, misses, jumps again. He finds the top on his third try and she’s hauling him up by the neck of his shirt.

Something punches him in the shoulder. Another something explodes against the brickwork next to his hand. Justineau grunts in pain and she’s gone from the top of the wall, toppled as clean as a target on a gunnery range.

Parks slides over the top and jumps down after her, on to the cracked, weed-choked asphalt of a car park. The remains of a four-by-four lies beside them, its front wheels gone, looking like a steer down on its knees and waiting for the bolt gun to be pressed to its head. The coup de grace.

Justineau is down, and not moving. He feels her forehead gingerly, and his fingers come away wet.

She’s no lightweight, but Parks manages to get her up on to his shoulder. He can’t keep her there one-handed, though, so it’s either run or fight.

He runs. Then figures out immediately that it was the wrong thing to do. Half a dozen low, lithe forms come sprinting around the side of the house into view, and they don’t even slow as they head for him. More are squirming up on to the garden wall and dropping down on to the asphalt behind him.

He runs in the only direction he can see that’s clear, out into the open, where he’s a sitting duck for the slingshots. Right on cue, they start up again. He takes another hit, low down on his back, and it feels like someone punched him in the kidney. He staggers, just about stays upright.

And he’s tackled, run right off his feet, by the fastest of the kids. It launches itself at him in a flying dive, lands on the small of his back and clings there, letting its momentum topple him. Parks goes sprawling, trying to twist his body around under Justineau’s to cushion the landing, but they part company somewhere along the way.

As Parks goes down, the hungry is already clawing for his throat. He punches it in the face, as hard as he can, and it falls away, giving him space to get his foot up and kick it away into midfield. He’s doing fine now. Got space enough to grab his rifle and bring it round.

Something smashes down on to his shoulder–the same shoulder that took the slingshot stone–with shocking force. The rifle falls from his fingers, but he only knows that because he hears it hit the ground. For a second or two he doesn’t feel anything, not even pain. Then the pain rushes in and fills him to the brim.