The Girl With All the Gifts(59)

Melanie stiffens. She’s seen what guns can do at very close quarters. She stares at the barrel, sickly hypnotised by its nearness, its deadly potentiality.

Caldwell beckons again, this time with a toss of her head.

“And she… grew pale… at… the raven’s tale…”

Melanie takes a long time to decide, but at last she crosses to Caldwell. Caldwell takes one hand off the gun, steers Melanie out through the door with a hand on her shoulder.

She turns back to the male hungry.

“All kinds of sin I have rioted in,” she sings. “And now the judgment must be.”

The hungry shudders, a quick convulsion running through it. Caldwell steps hurriedly back, swivelling the gun to point it at the centre of the thing’s chest. At this range, she can’t miss.

But the hungry doesn’t charge. It just moves its head from side to side as though it’s trying to locate the source of the sound.

“So…” it rasps in that almost-not-there voice. “So. So. So.”

“Leave him alone,” Melanie whispers fiercely. “He’s not hurting you.”

“But I secured my children’s souls,” Caldwell croons. “So pray, my children, for me.”

“So,” the hungry croaks. “So…”

“Get out of the way,” Sergeant Parks says. His hand is on Caldwell’s shoulder, brusquely pushing her aside.

“… phie…” the hungry says.

Parks fires once. A neat black circle, like a caste mark, appears in the centre of the hungry’s forehead. It slips down sideways, rolling off the bed. Ancient stains, black and red and grey, mark the place where it has sat for so long.

“Why?” Caldwell wails, in spite of herself. She turns to the sergeant, her arms thrown wide. “Why do you always, always shoot them in the f*cking head?”

Parks stares back at her, stony-faced. After a moment, he takes her right hand in his left and pushes it down until it’s pointing at the ground.

“You want to get demonstrative with a gun in your hand,” he says, “you make sure the safety is on.”





36


Considering how badly it started, their second night on the road is a lot better than their first, at least in Helen Justineau’s opinion.

For starters, they’ve got food to eat. Even more miraculously, they’ve got something to cook it with, because the range in the tiny kitchen is powered by gas cylinders. The one that’s already hooked up is empty, but there are two full ones standing in the corner of the room and they’re both still sound.

The three of them–Justineau, Parks and Gallagher–go through the treasure trove of canned goods in the kitchen cupboards, by the light of electric torches and of a nearly full moon shining in from outside, exclaiming in wonder or disgust at what’s on offer. Justineau makes the mistake of checking the best-before dates, which of course are all at least a decade in the past, but Parks insists that they’re okay. Or at least some of them will be, by the law of averages. And a can whose contents have oxidised will smell really bad when it’s opened, so they can just keep on rolling the dice until their luck is in.

Justineau weighs up the risk against the absolute certainty of protein and carbohydrate mix number 3. She picks up a can opener that she found in a drawer and starts to open the cans.

There are some horrific encounters, but Parks’ theory holds. Maybe thirty or forty cans later, they end up with a menu of beef in gravy with baby new potatoes, baked beans and mushy peas. Parks lights the range with a spark struck from a tinderbox–an honest-to-God tinderbox; that has to be centuries old–produced from his pocket with something suspiciously like a flourish, and Gallagher cooks while Justineau wipes dust off plates and cutlery and washes them clean with a dribble of water from one of the canteens.

Melanie and Dr Caldwell play no part in any of this. Caldwell sits on one of the chairs in the day room, laboriously removing and adjusting and rewinding the dressings on her hands. She wears an expression of furious intensity, and doesn’t answer when spoken to. You could almost believe she’s sulking, but in Justineau’s opinion, what they’re seeing is raw thought. The doctor is in.

Melanie is in the next room along, which evidently used to be some kind of a play space for kids to hang out in while their parents were here as visitors or inmates. She’s been quiet and subdued ever since they arrived. It’s hard to get a word out of her. Parks refused absolutely to free her hands, but at least there are posters on the walls for her to look at, and the remains of a bright red beanbag for her to sit on. Her ankle is tethered to a radiator by a short restraint chain, giving her freedom of movement within a circle about seven feet in diameter.

When the food is ready, Justineau takes some through to her. She’s sitting on the beanbag, her legs crossed, her bright blue eyes staring with fixed intensity at a poster on the wall depicting voles, shrews, badgers and other British wildlife. There’s a light yellow fuzz on the top of her head, Justineau notices. The first hint of hair starting to grow back. It puts her in mind of a newly hatched chick.

She sits with Melanie while she eats. According to Caldwell, hungries can only metabolise protein, so Justineau has washed some cubes of beef clean of the gravy they came in and put them in a bowl.

Melanie is a little freaked out that the meat is hot. Justineau has to blow on each cube before she feeds it to the girl–through the steel grille of her muzzle–on the end of a fork. Melanie doesn’t seem impressed, but she thanks Justineau very politely.