The Girl With All the Gifts(33)

Justineau has to swerve away from three soldiers who are running right towards her, rifles in their hands, and then she’s sideways on to another stampeding wedge of hungries. She tacks and weaves, and only realises she’s lost her way when she rounds another corner and what’s in front of her is about a dozen spike-haired men, their limbs black and shiny with tar that must still be liquid, firing from behind a makeshift barricade of overturned dumpsters.

The junkers turn and see her. Most of them turn right back again and keep on firing, but two immediately stand and walk towards her. One pulls a knife from a sheath at his belt and hefts it in his hand. The other just levels the gun he’s already carrying.

Justineau freezes. No point in running, turning her back to the gun, and when she tries to come up with another response, her brain floods with a cold flush of nothing at all.

The knife man kicks her legs out from under her, sends her sprawling. He grips the sleeve of her shirt, hauls her half upright, and holds her out to the other as though he’s offering her up as a gift.

“Do it,” he says.

Justineau raises her head. Usually a bad idea to make eye contact with a wild animal, but if she’s going to die anyway, she wants to die telling him to go screw himself and–if she has time–exactly how and where.

It’s the gunner whose gaze she meets. And she realises with an almost surreal jolt of surprise how young he is. Still in his teens, probably. He moves the gun from her head to point it at her chest, maybe because he doesn’t want to go home from this with the image of her exploded face hanging in the gallery of his dreams.

There’s something ritualistic about all this, the way the older man holds her still and waits for the other to dispatch her. It’s a rite of passage–a bonding moment, maybe, between a father and a son.

The youngster steels himself, visibly.

Then he’s gone. Knocked off his feet. Something dark and subliminally fast has whipped by and taken him with it. He writhes on the asphalt, struggling with an enemy that despite its tiny size spits and mewls and claws at him like an entire sackful of pissed off cats.

It’s Melanie. And she’s not taking any prisoners.

The man–boy, rather–gives a scream that tails off into a liquid gurgle as her jaws close on his throat.





21


The shock of that first taste of blood and warm flesh is so intense that it almost makes Melanie faint. Nothing in her life has ever been this good. Not even having her hair stroked by Miss Justineau! The rush of pleasure is bigger than she is. The part of her that can think bends in that cataract, broadsided, and clings to whatever it can to keep from being swept away.

She tries to remind herself what’s at stake. She attacked the man because he was going to hurt Miss Justineau, not because of the irresistible fresh meat smell; she didn’t catch a whiff of that until she was astride him, and she bit down before she’d even thought about doing it. Her body didn’t need her permission for this, and it wasn’t prepared to wait. Now she bites and tears and chews and swallows, the sensations filling her and battering her like the torrent of a waterfall pouring into a cup held right under it.

Something hits her hard, dislodging her from her prey, from her meal. Another man stands over her, leans down towards her, a knife raised in his hand. Miss Justineau tackles him from behind, her hands beating at his head. He has to turn to defend himself, and Melanie is able to get a solid grip on his leg. She wraps herself around him, lifts herself effortlessly off the ground with her strong arms, locks to him like a limpet.

The man bellows incoherent curses and hammers at her frantically. The blows hurt, but they don’t matter. Melanie finds the point where leg joins body, driven by some instinct so deep she can’t even tell where it comes from. She fastens her teeth on to the man and bites through the leg of his pants until the blood wells thick and spurting into her mouth. She knew it would. She sensed the artery singing to her through folds of flesh and fabric.

The man’s scream is a scary sound, shrill and wobbly. Melanie doesn’t like it at all. But oh, she likes the taste! Likes the way his opened thigh becomes a fountain, as though raw meat was a magic garden, a hidden landscape that she never glimpsed until now.

It’s too much, finally. Her stomach and her mind aren’t big enough. The whole world isn’t big enough. Numbed with delight, with repletion that melts her muscles and her thoughts, she doesn’t resist this time when hands pluck her loose and lift her up.

From under the reek of chemicals comes the Miss Justineau smell, familiar and welcome and wonderful. Pressed to Miss Justineau’s chest, she emits a satiated purr. She wants to curl to sleep there, like an animal in its burrow.

But she can’t sleep, because Miss Justineau is moving, running fast. Each footfall jars Melanie. And the full feeling doesn’t last. Her torpid hunger rallies quickly, prods at the edges of her mind with eager intimations. Already the smell means something different, is urging her to feed again. She turns and wriggles in a grip too weak to contain her, butts with her head against the underside of Miss J’s arm, mouth open to bite again.

But she can’t she mustn’t she can’t! This is Miss Justineau, who loves her. Who saved her from the table and the thin, scary knife. Melanie can’t stop her jaws from closing but she jerks her head back, at the last moment, so they close on air instead of flesh.

A growl wells up from inside her, from the same place that mewled like a kitten only a few moments ago.