The Girl With All the Gifts(116)

Sergeant Parks gestures, left-handed, at the ragged rent in his shoulder. His face is pale, and his eyes are already a little red at the corners.

“I… have to get out of here,” he pants. “I’m—”

“The flame-throwers, Sergeant,” Melanie interrupts urgently. “You told Miss Justineau there were flame-throwers. Where are they?”

He doesn’t seem to understand what she wants at first. He meets her gaze, breathing hard. “The wall?” he hazards. “The… the fungus stuff?”

“Yes.”

Sergeant gets to his feet and stumbles through to the aft weapons station. “You need to power up,” he tells her.

“I did that before I came to get you.”

Sergeant wipes his face with the heel of his hand. His voice is a whisper. “Okay. Okay.” He points to two toggles. “Primer. Feed. You light the primer, then you uncap the feed, then you fire. Jet stays alight until you let go of the throttle here.”

Melanie stands on the firing platform. She can reach the controls, but she’s not tall enough to put her eye to the sights or even to peep over the lower edge of the viewing port. Sergeant can see that she’s not going to be able to do this by herself.

“Okay,” he says again, hollow with pain and exhaustion.

She stands down, and he climbs up in her place, stumbling and almost falling off the platform. With one hand useless, firing the flame-thrower seems to be a lot harder to do than it was to explain. Melanie helps him, working the toggles while he manhandles the gun itself.

The turret turns with servos, following the movement of the gun barrel, so at least that part is easy. Sergeant targets on the dull grey mass of the fungus forest, which is impossible to miss because it fills half of the horizon.

“Anywhere?” he asks her. His voice is slow and slippery, the way Mr Whitaker’s voice sometimes used to be.

“Anywhere,” Melanie confirms.

“Kid, there’s miles and miles of that stuff. It won’t… it won’t penetrate. Not all the way. It’s not going to punch a way through.”

“It doesn’t have to,” Melanie says. “The fire will spread.”

“I f*cking hope so.” Parks leans on the barrel to aim, and depresses the trigger. Fire streaks through the sky, horizontally at first, dipping at the end of its arc to slice through the grey mass like a sword twenty metres long.

Filaments that stand directly in the path of the flame just disappear. It’s only to the sides that the fire catches and spreads. And it spreads faster than they can turn their heads to see. The fungal mat is as dry as tinder. It seems to want to burn. In the light of the fierce flames, some of the nearer trunks can now be seen even from this far off, straight-edge shadows that shift wildly as the heart of the fire roams like a wild animal through the fungus forest. With more moisture inside them than the filaments, they smoulder and spit sparks for a long time before they catch too and pass from shadow into eye-hurting light.

After a full minute, Melanie touches Sergeant’s arm. “That should be enough,” she says.

Gratefully he releases the trigger. The fiery sword retracts itself in the space of a second back into the flame-thrower’s barrel.

Sergeant steps down off the platform, his knees buckling a little under him.

“You’ve got to let me out,” he mumbles. “I’m not safe any more. I… It feels like my f*cking head is splitting apart. For the love of God, kid, open the door.”

He doesn’t seem to be able to find it by himself. He turns one way, then another, blinking his bloodshot eyes and grimacing against the light. Melanie takes his good left hand and leads him to the door.

Miss Justineau is sitting up now, but she doesn’t seem to notice them as they walk by. There’s a puddle of vomit at her feet, and her head is hanging down between her knees.

Melanie stops to kiss her, very softly, on the top of her head. “I’m coming back,” she says. “I’ll take care of you.”

Miss Justineau doesn’t answer.

Sergeant’s hand is on the handle of the outer door, but Melanie’s hand closes over his, gently, trying not to hurt him, but stopping him from pulling back on the handle and opening the door. “We have to wait,” she explains.

She cycles the airlock, following the instructions written on the wall right next to the controls. Sergeant Parks watches, mystified. The light goes from red to green and she opens the outer door.

They walk out into a mist so fine it’s like someone laid a lace curtain across the world. The air tastes the same as it ever did, but it feels a little gritty on the tongue. Melanie keeps licking her lips to clear the rime from them, and she sees Sergeant Parks do it too.

“Is there somewhere I can sit?” he asks her. He’s blinking a lot, and a red tear has leaked down out of one of his eyes.

Melanie finds a black plastic wheelie bin and tips it over. She sits Sergeant down on it. She sits herself down beside him.

“What did we do?” Sergeant’s voice is hoarse, and he looks around urgently, as though he’s lost something but he can’t remember what it is. “What did we do, kid?”

“We burned the grey stuff. We burned it all up.”

“Right,” Parks says. “Is… is Helen…?”

“You saved her,” Melanie assures him. “You brought her back inside, and she’s safe now. She didn’t get bitten or anything. You saved her, Sergeant.”