The Girl With All the Gifts(60)

“Long day,” Justineau observes.

Melanie nods, but says nothing.

Now that the meal is out of the way, Justineau shows Melanie what else she’s found. In a few of the rooms there were clothes in the wardrobe or the drawers. One of them must have been occupied by a girl once–probably a bit younger than Melanie, but of a roughly similar size.

Melanie stares at the clothes that Justineau holds out, without comment. Sombre and withdrawn as she is, it’s obvious that they still fascinate her. Pink jeans with a unicorn embroidered on the back pocket. A pastel blue T-shirt emblazoned with the motto BORN TO DANCE. An aviator jacket, also pink, with button-up flaps at the shoulders and lots and lots of pockets. White knickers and rainbow-striped socks. Trainers with jewel-spangled laces.

“Do you like them?” Justineau asks. Melanie hasn’t spoken, but her gaze flicks backwards and forwards between the strange offerings, studying them or perhaps comparing them.

“Yes,” she says. “I think so. But…” She hesitates.

“What?”

“I don’t know how to put them on.”

Of course. Melanie has never worn clothes with buttons or zip fasteners. And then she’s got the chain and the handcuffs to contend with. “I’ll help you,” Justineau promises. “We can’t do anything until morning, but before we get moving again, I’ll ask Sergeant Parks to untie you for a few minutes. We’ll get you out of that mouldy old sweater and into your glad rags.”

“Thank you, Miss Justineau.” The little girl’s face is solemn. “We’ll need the other soldier to be there too.”

Justineau is a little thrown by this. “They don’t need to watch while you change,” she says. “I think we’ll make them wait in the next room, don’t you?”

Melanie shakes her head. “No.”

“No?”

“One to untie me, the other to point the gun at me. That’s how many it takes.”





37


They talk for a little while longer about the things that have happened, wrapping the violence up in careful, delicate words so it feels less horrible. Melanie finds this interesting in spite of herself–that you can use words to hide things, or not to touch them, or to pretend that they’re something different than they are. She wishes she could do that with her big secret.

It seems like Miss Justineau thinks that Melanie must be sad because all those hungries got killed, and is trying to make her feel better about it. Melanie is sad for them, a little. But she knows enough, now, to be sure that the hungries weren’t really people any more, even before they got killed. They were more like empty houses where people used to live.

Melanie tries to reassure Miss Justineau–tries to show her that she’s not so very sad about the hungries. Not even about the man who was singing the song, although it seemed to her that there was no reason at all for Sergeant Parks to shoot him. He was just sitting there on the bed, and it didn’t look like he could even get up. All he could do was sing and look at his pictures.

But the lady outside had looked harmless too, until Dr Caldwell screamed. It seemed like hungries could change very quickly, and you had to be careful all the time when you were close to them.

“I’ll keep you safe,” Miss Justineau says to Melanie now. “You know that, right? I won’t let any of them hurt you.”

Melanie nods. She knows that Miss Justineau loves her, and that Miss Justineau will try her best.

But how can anyone save her from herself?





38


“I found this,” Gallagher says, when Helen Justineau comes back to the table. Her own food has gone cold by this time, and the rest of them have almost finished eating, but he felt like this was something they all had to be there for. He thinks Helen Justineau has a sexy smile for an older woman, and he hopes one day she’ll use it on him.

He sets down on the table a bottle that he found in a storage cupboard while they were searching. It was on the floor, covered with a pile of mouldering J Cloths, and he wouldn’t have seen it at all except that he kicked it by accident and heard the clink and slosh as its contents were disturbed.

Glancing down, he saw a little of the label, a teasing hint of brown and gold where the sheltering mound of sky-blue cloths had slid away. Metaxa three-star brandy. Full and unopened. On his own account he recoiled from it and from the poisoned release it represented. He piled the cloths on top of it again to hide it from sight.

But he kept going back to it. He’d been fretting all day about this journey. About going back to Beacon and the narrow, walled-in world he’d been so happy to leave behind. He’d been feeling like he was walking between the rock and the hard place. Maybe, he thought, desperate situations require desperate remedies.

The others stare at the bottle now, their dangling conversation comprehensively hijacked.

“Shit!” Sergeant Parks mutters, with something of reverence in his tone.

“This is the good stuff, right?” Gallagher asks, feeling himself blush.

“No.” Sergeant Parks shakes his head slowly. “No, this isn’t so great, all things considered, but it’s real. Not tin-bucket rotgut.” He turns the bottle over in his hands, examines the seal both by eye and by sniffing at it. “Promises well,” he comments. “Normally I wouldn’t get out of bed for anything less than French cognac, but f*ck it. Get some glasses, Private.”