The Girl With All the Gifts(49)
They’re all looking scared and shaken, Gallagher most of all, but there’s no time for hand-holding. The good news is that the junkers headed north, which means they’ve got a window for their run to the south and they’d better use it. “Ten minutes,” Parks says. “We eat and run.”
They go deeper into the long grass, one by one, to relieve themselves and wash and whatever else they need to do, and then they eat a quick, joyless breakfast of carb-and-protein mix 3. The hungry kid is a silent, passive observer to all of this. She doesn’t piss and this time she doesn’t eat, either. Parks ties her leash to a tree when he goes off to perform his own ablutions.
When he comes back, he finds that Justineau has untied the leash from the tree and is holding it herself. That’s fine by Parks. He’d rather keep his hands free. With a minimum of discussion–a minimum of interaction of any kind–they hit the road. Every face Parks looks at is drawn and scared. They fled from a nightmare, and f*ck if it isn’t right here again, bumping along behind them. What he knows and doesn’t say is that they’re heading into worse.
They go east at first, towards Stotfold, but there’s no need to stop there now so they detour south, hit the road that used to be the A507 and keep right on going.
This is wild country, for a lot of reasons. In the first days and weeks of the Breakdown, the UK government, like a whole lot of others, thought they could contain the infection by locking down the civilian population. Not surprisingly, this didn’t stop people running like rats when they saw what was happening. Thousands, maybe millions, tried to get out of London along the north–south arteries, the A1 and M1. The authorities responded ruthlessly, first with military roadblocks and then with targeted airstrikes.
There are clean stretches still, and some of them are extensive. For miles at a time, though, the two great roads are cratered like First World War battlefields and strewn with rusted hulks like a mechanical version of the elephants’ graveyard. You could still walk the road, in between the ruined cars, if you chose to–but only a madman would do it. With visibility down to almost nothing, a hungry could jump out at you from any direction and you wouldn’t have more than a heartbeat’s warning.
Parks’ plan is to join the A1 at junction 10, just north of Baldock. He knows from his grab-bagging days that there’s a nice, open corridor there, going south a good ten or fifteen miles. They can do it easily in a day if the weather holds: leave the junkers way behind them. They’ll make Stevenage before dark, and hopefully find a good place to sleep without venturing too deep into the urban hinterlands.
For the first few years after the Breakdown, and even after the retreat from London, Beacon used to maintain an armed presence on the main north–south roads. The idea was to allow the grab-baggers a safe passage, both on their outward journey and–more importantly–when they went home again laden down with good things from the land of how-it-used-to-be. But they found out the hard way that there was a down side to those sweet, clear lines of sight. Hungries could spot you from a long way off, and home in on your movements. After a few costly clusterf*cks, the permanent posts were dismantled and the grab-baggers took their chances. In recent years they’ve gone in and out by chopper, when they’ve gone at all. The roads have been given up for lost.
All of which means that Parks is very watchful as they approach the wide stretch of blacktop, marching in single file up the gentle curve of the old approach road. A sign where they join it points to Baldock services, making a number of unsubstantiated promises: food, petrol, a picnic area, even a bed for the night. From the top of the rise they can see the roofless ruin that used to be the service station, burned out long before. Parks remembers stopping there once, when he was a child, on the way back from a family holiday in the Peak District. Remembers a few highlights anyway: lukewarm hot chocolate with thick sludge at the bottom where it wasn’t stirred properly, and a weird man in the gents’ toilet, with bulging Marty Feldman eyes, who was singing Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” in a scary monotone.
From where Parks is standing, Baldock services was no great loss.
The A1, though, is the same as it ever was. A little weed-choked and pitted, maybe, but as straight as a ruler at this point and pointed due south towards home sweet home. There’s a whole lifeless metropolis between here and there, of course, but the sergeant can count his blessings and get as high as two. Right now they’ve got a good elevation. They can see for miles.
And the sun comes out, like a kiss on the cheek from God.
“Okay, listen to me,” he says, looking at each of them in turn. Even Gallagher needs to hear this, although most of it’s general issue for when you’re outside the fence. “Road protocols. Let’s get them straight before we go out there. First is, you don’t talk. Not out loud. Sound carries, and the hungries home in on it. It’s not as strong a trigger for them as smell, but you’d be amazed how good their hearing is.
“Second, you clock any movement, any at all, and you signal. Raise your hand, like this, with the fingers spread. Then point. Make sure everyone sees. Don’t just whip your gun out and start shooting, because nobody will know what you’re shooting at and they won’t be able to back you up. If it’s close enough so you can see it’s a hungry, and if it’s moving towards us, then you can break rule one. Shout hungry, or hungries, and if you feel like it, give me a range and an address. Three o’clock and a hundred yards, or whatever.