The Girl With All the Gifts(22)

Parks has doubts about half his muster, at this point.

Doubts about himself too, insofar as he’s a non-commissioned officer effectively acting as a field commander for a unit maintaining a fixed post with civilian liaison. The minimum rank for that billet, if you go by regs, is lieutenant.

Parks has his own scripture, which doesn’t meet regs at many points. But he knows when his centre of gravity is compromised. And just recently that’s how he feels more days than not.

That’s how he feels today, when he takes Gallagher’s report.

Gallagher, K., Private, 1097, 24 July, 17.36

In the course of a routine clearance sweep of the woodland north-west of base, I was involved in an incident which transpired as follows immediately below.

I was bait, Devani was pacing me with the heavy auto, and Barlow and Tap were clean-up.

We verified a large group of hungries stationary in the Hitchin Road, close to the Airman roundabout. They were skin and bone, mostly, but none of them looked too far gone to be a threat.

We set up in the wood, as per operational parameters, and Devani dropped me off at the roundabout. On Lance Bombardier Tap’s orders, I was not wearing e-blocker.

I proceeded to go upwind of the hungries and waited until they clocked me.

Whereupon, having clocked me, they pursued me for several hundred yards, off the road and into the woodland, where I proceeded to—



“Jesus wept,” Parks says, putting the report down on his desk. “You proceeded to proceed? Just tell me what happened, Gallagher. Save this bollocks for your autobiography.”

Gallagher blushes to the roots of his red hair. His freckles disappear in the general incandescence. On anyone else, that blazing face would mean a consciousness of having screwed up, but there’s a long list of things that would make Gallagher blush like a schoolgirl, including for example a dirty joke, any exertion more taxing than a parade march, or a single sip of bootleg gin. Not that you tend to see this soldier drinking all that often–he’s as skittish around alcohol as if the army he signed up with was the one that offers you salvation. Parks extends the benefit of the doubt a little bit further and a little bit thinner.

“Sir,” Gallagher says, “the hungries were right up my arse. I mean, they were close enough so I could smell them. You know that sour stink they get, when the grey threads start showing through their skin? It was strong enough so my eyes were watering.”

“Thready ones don’t normally get this far out from the cities,” Parks muses, not liking the news.

“No, sir. But I’m telling you, this bunch was ripe. Couple of them had their faces all fallen in. Clothes had mostly rotted off them. One of them had lost an arm. Don’t know whether it had been eaten off of him, back when he first got infected, or if it had fallen off since, but yeah, these weren’t newbies.

“Anyway, I was running back towards where Tap and Barlow were set up, behind that big stand of beech trees. There’s a hedgerow there, and it’s pretty solid. You’ve got to pick your spot–go through it where it’s thin enough not to slow you down too much. And you can’t see what you’re running into, obviously.”

Gallagher hesitates, seeming to wince slightly. His memories have hit a barrier a lot more solid than that hedge.

“What did you run into?” Parks prompts.

“Three blokes. Junkers. They were just walking along on the far side of the hedge, where they couldn’t be seen from the road. There are blackberry bushes all along that stretch, so maybe they were picking fruit or something. Except that one of the three–boss man, I reckoned, on account of his kit–he had a pair of binoculars. And all three of them were armed. Boss man’s got a handgun; the other two have got machetes.

“I broke out of the hedge about fifty yards away, heading right at them.” Gallagher shakes his head in unhappy wonder. “I shouted at them to run, but they didn’t take any notice. The bloke with the gun drew down on me, and he was this close to blowing my brains out.

“Then the hungries burst through the hedge right behind me, and he sort of lost his concentration. But the three of them were still blocking my way, and this nutcase still had his gun pointed right at me. So I barged him. It’s not like there was anywhere else to go. He got one shot off, but he managed to miss me. Don’t know how, at that range. Then I hit him full on with my shoulder and kept right on going.”

The soldier stops again. Parks waits, letting him get it out in his own words. It’s clear that this whole thing has freaked him out badly, and it’s part of Parks’ job, sometimes, to take confession. Gallagher is one of the greenest of the buck privates. If he was born at all when the Breakdown came, he was still sucking on his mother’s tit. You’ve got to make allowances for that.

“Ten seconds later, I’m back in the trees again,” Gallagher says. “I looked over my shoulder and didn’t see anything. But I heard a scream. One of the junkers, obviously. And he went on screaming for a hell of a long time. I stopped. I was thinking about going back, but then the hungries popped up right behind me and I had to get going again.”

Gallagher shrugs.

“We completed the mission. Tap and Barlow had set the traps up right on the finish line. Hungries ran into them, got themselves stuck in the barbed wire, and after that it was just clean-up.”

“Petrol or lime?” Parks asks. He can’t keep from asking, because he’s told Nielson no more petrol for routine bake-offs, but he knows for a fact the quartermaster is still signing off on ten-gallon drums.