The Girl With All the Gifts(30)

“I’m going to put the scalpel down,” Dr Caldwell says. “I’m asking you to do the same with your… weapon.”

And Dr Caldwell does what she promised. She shows the scalpel, holds it high for a second, then sets it down on the edge of the table, close to Melanie’s left side. She does this slowly, with exaggerated care. So Miss Justineau is watching the hand with the scalpel. Of course she is.

With her other hand, Dr Caldwell takes something small and shiny from the pocket of her lab coat.

“Miss Justineau!” Melanie shrieks. Too late. Much too late.

Dr Caldwell thrusts the shiny something into Miss Justineau’s face. There’s a sound like the hiss of the shower spray, and a smell on the air that’s sour and scalding and takes your breath away. Miss Justineau gurgles, the sound cut off very suddenly. She drops the fire extinguisher, and she’s clawing at her face. She sinks slowly to her knees, then topples sideways on to the floor of the lab, where she twitches and writhes, making noises like she’s choking.

Dr Caldwell stares at her dispassionately. “Now go and get a security detail,” she says to Dr Selkirk. “I want this woman under military arrest. The charge will be attempted sabotage.”

Melanie slumps back on to the table with a moan of anguish–both for herself and for Miss Justineau. Despair fills her, makes her heavy as lead.

Dr Selkirk heads for the door, but that means she has to skirt around Miss Justineau, who is still on her knees, wheezing and moaning as she tries to draw a breath through the burning miasma of whatever it was that Dr Caldwell hit her with. It’s heavy in the air, and Dr Selkirk starts coughing too.

Entirely out of patience, Dr Caldwell reaches out her hand to pick up the scalpel again.

But right then, something happens that makes her stop. Two things, really. The first is an explosion, loud enough to make the windows rattle in their frames. The second is an ear-splitting scream, like a hundred people shrieking all at the same time.

Dr Selkirk’s face looks first blank, then terrified. “That’s general evacuation,” she says. “Isn’t it? Isn’t that the evacuation siren?”

Dr Caldwell doesn’t waste time answering her. She crosses to the window and hauls up the blinds.

Melanie sits up again, as far as she can, but she’s too low down. Mostly what she can see is the sky outside.

Both the doctors are staring out of the window. Miss Justineau is still on the floor, her hands clasped to her face, her back and shoulders shaking. She’s oblivious to everything except her pain.

“What’s happening?” Dr Selkirk bleats. “There are people moving out there. Are they—”

“I don’t know,” Dr Caldwell snaps. “I’m going to lower the emergency shutters. We can hold out here until the all-clear sounds.”

She reaches out to do it. She puts her hand on the switch.

That’s when the window shatters.

And the hungries swarm over the sill.





19


Long before Sergeant Parks has come up with any kind of a counter-attack, the fences are down.

It’s not that it happens fast; it’s just remorseless. The hungries that Gallagher clocked in the trees on the eastern perimeter suddenly come out of there at a flat run. They’re not hunting anything, they’re just running–and the strangeness of that maybe makes Parks hesitate for a second or two, while he tries to figure it out.

Then the wind changes and the smell hits him. A rank wave of decomposition, so intense it’s almost like a punch in the face. Soldiers on either side of him gasp. Someone swears.

And the smell tells him, even before he sees it. There are more of them. A lot more. That’s the smell of a whole herd of hungries, a frigging tidal wave of hungries. Too many to stop.

So the only option is to slow them down. Blunt that headlong charge before they reach the fence.

“Aim for the legs,” he shouts. “Full auto.” And then “Fire!”

The soldiers do as they’re told. The air fills with the angry punctuation of their guns. Hungries fall, and are trampled under by more hungries coming behind them. But there are too many, and they’re too close. It’s not going to stop them.

Then Parks sees something else, at the back of the moving wall of undead. Junkers. Junkers so thickly padded with body armour that each of them looks like the Michelin man. Some are carrying spears. Others are wielding what look like cattle prods, which they jam into the neck or back of any hungry who slows down. At least two are holding flame-throwers. Jets of flame fired to right and left hem in the hungries and keep them from straying too far off the target.

Which is the fence, and the base beyond.

Two bulldozers are also rolling along on the flanks of the herd, their blades set obliquely. When the hungries straggling at the edges get too close, they either turn back towards the central mass or else they’re ploughed under.

This isn’t a stampede. It’s a cattle drive.

“Oh God!” says Private Alsop in a strangled voice. “Oh Jesus!”

Parks wastes another moment in marvelling at the sheer genius of the assault. Using the hungries as battering rams, as weapons of war. He wonders how the junkers rounded up so many, and where they corralled them before this forced march, but that’s just logistics. The idea of doing something like this–it’s nothing short of majestic.