The Girl With All the Gifts(68)

“Done?” Parks says.

“You look great, Melanie,” Miss Justineau tells her.

She nods thanks, and agreement. She knows she does.

But they’re not done. Not yet. Miss Justineau takes something out of her pocket and holds it out for Melanie to take. It’s a tiny thing, made out of grey plastic. Rectangular, with a single round button on it. Around the edge of the button, in red letters are the words SAFE and GUARD. And then underneath, DANGER 150 DECIBELS.

“When you get to the part where you have to make a big noise,” Miss Justineau tells her, “this might help.”

“What is it?” Melanie asks. She’s trying to look casual and calm, like getting a present from Miss Justineau is no big deal.

“It’s a personal alarm. From a long time ago. People used to carry them in case they got attacked.”

“By hungries?”

“No, by other people. It makes a noise like the end-of-the-day klaxon back at the base, but much, much louder–loud enough to make people panic, so they want to run away. But hungries wouldn’t run away, they’d run towards the sound. It might not work at all, after all this time, but you never know.”

Melanie hesitates. “You should keep it,” she says. “In case you get attacked.”

Miss Justineau closes Melanie’s fingers over the object, which is still warm from being in her pocket. It’s like a little piece of Miss Justineau that she can take out into the world with her. The weight of her new knowledge is still pressing her down, but her heart swells with joy as she puts the alarm into the pocket of her brand-new unicorn jeans.

“Done,” she confirms to Sergeant Parks. Sergeant’s face says about time. He ties the leash up again around Melanie’s waist with a different knot.

“Once you’re down on the ground,” he tells her, “you pull on this end here, and the rope will come away.”

“Okay,” she says.

“I’m not taking your muzzle off,” Sergeant says. “But with your hands free, you could easily release the strap yourself and get it off. You’re a smart kid, and I bet you thought of that already.”

Melanie shrugs. Of course she has, and there doesn’t seem to be any point in trying to explain to him all over again why she won’t do that.

“Just so you know,” Sergeant Parks says, “if you want to stay with us, you’re going to need to keep the muzzle on. Or put it back on when you’re done. I don’t have any more of them, and as far as I’m concerned, your teeth are a loaded gun. So keep that thing safe, because that’s what gets you back in the door. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay then. Gallagher, give me a hand here.”

The two men move into position at the top of the stairs and get ready to pay out the rope, but at the last moment Miss Justineau kneels beside Melanie again and holds out her arms.

Melanie steps into the embrace, shivers deliciously as Miss Justineau’s arms close around her.

But she pulls away after no more than a moment. There’s just a tiny trace of the human smell, the Miss Justineau smell, underneath the bitterness of the chemicals. Enough to turn the pure pleasure of their proximity into something else entirely; something that threatens to escalate out of her control. “Not safe,” she mutters urgently. “Not safe.”

“Your e-blockers,” Sergeant Parks translates unnecessarily. “You need another layer.”

“I’m sorry,” Miss Justineau murmurs–not to Sergeant Parks, but to Melanie.

Melanie nods. She was scared for a moment there, but it’s okay. It was a very faint scent, and now that it’s gone, the hungry feeling is back under her control.

Sergeant Parks tells her to sit down on the top step, and then to push herself away. He and Kieran lower her down into the waiting crowd of hungries.

Who don’t react at all. Some of them follow the movement as she comes down, but Sergeant Parks makes sure that her descent is really slow and gradual, so it doesn’t get the hungries too excited. Their gaze sweeps over her without lingering. Or else they stare right through her, not registering her presence at all.

As soon as her feet are on the ground, she loosens the rope with a tug. Sergeant Parks draws it up again, just as slowly and gradually as he let it down.

Melanie glances up. Sees Sergeant Parks and Miss Justineau peering down at her. Miss Justineau waves; a slow opening and closing of her hand. Melanie waves back.

She threads her way carefully through the hungries, unnoticed, unmolested.

But she was lying when she said she wasn’t afraid. To be right here in the middle of them–to look up at their bowed heads and half-open mouths, their off-white eyes–is very frightening indeed. Yesterday she thought that the hungries were like houses that people used to live in. Now she thinks that every one of those houses is haunted. She’s not just surrounded by the hungries. She’s surrounded by the ghosts of the men and women they used to be. She has to fight a sudden urge to break into a run, to get out of here into the open air as quickly as she can.

She makes it to the door, pushing between the packed-together bodies. But the doorway itself is completely impassable. Too many hungries have squeezed themselves into the narrow space between the doorposts, and she’s not strong enough to break up that logjam. But the floor-to-ceiling windows to either side of the door have been shattered, every last sliver of glass forced out of their frames by the hungries charging through. Some of those closest to Melanie bear the slash marks from that difficult passage on their arms and bodies. From the new wounds a sluggish brown liquid has oozed. It doesn’t look much like blood.