The Girl With All the Gifts(69)

Melanie pushes her way out through the left-hand window. More hungries are standing out on the driveway, but they’re not so tightly clustered and it’s easier for her to make her way through.

To the gates, and then out on to the street.

She walks past more hungries. They don’t turn as she goes by or seem to notice her at all. She crosses to the overgrown green and walks in among the trees and tall grass.

Melanie likes it here. If she were free, if she had lots of time and nothing that she needed to do, she’d like to stay here for a long time and pretend that she’s in the Amazon rainforest, which she knows about from a lesson with Miss Mailer, a long time ago, and from the picture on the wall of her cell.

But she’s not free, and time is pressing. If she takes too long, Miss Justineau might think she’s run away and left her, and she’d rather die than let Miss Justineau think that even for a second.

She’s hoping for a rat like the one that scared Dr Caldwell, but there are no rats. No birds, even, but in any case a bird probably wouldn’t do for what she needs.

So she looks further afield, walking up and down the streets, through the open doors of houses, through the jumbled, desecrated remains of vanished lives, trying not to be distracted by the ornaments, the photos, the hundreds and thousands of inscrutable objects.

In a room silted up a foot deep with old brown leaves, she startles a fox. It leaps for a broken window, but Melanie is on it so quickly that she catches it in mid-air. She’s thrilled at her own speed.

And at her strength. Though the fox is as big as she is, when it squirms and thrashes in her arms she just tightens her grip, closing down its range of movement, until it stills, quivering, whining, and lets her take it where she wants.

Back up the street to the green. Across the green to the fence where the hungries are clustered, every face turned away from her, every body still.

Melanie screams. It’s the loudest sound she can make. Not as loud as Miss Justineau’s personal alarm would be, but both her hands are full of fox and she doesn’t want to let it go until all the hungries are looking at her.

When the heads turn, she opens her arms. The fox is away like an arrow flying out of Ulysses’ bow.

Primed by the sound, awake and alert for prey, the hungries obey their programming. They start into violent motion, run after the fox as though they’re joined to it by taut strings. Melanie backs out of the way quickly, into a doorway, as the first wave goes by her.

There are so many of them, crowded in so tightly together, that some of them get knocked down and trampled on. Melanie sees them trying again and again to get up, only to be trodden underfoot each time. It’s almost funny, but the grey-brown froth that’s forced out of their mouths, like wine from grapes, makes it sort of sad and horrible too. When the rest of the horde have run on down the road, almost out of sight, some of these fallen struggle to their feet and limp and crawl after them. Others stay where they fell, twitching and scrabbling but too badly broken to get up off the ground.

Melanie skirts around them carefully. She feels bad for them. She wishes that there was something she could do to help them, but there isn’t anything. She goes back in through the gates and walks up to the house. She enters the hall, which is completely deserted now, and calls up to Sergeant Parks, who is exactly where he was when she left. “It worked. They’ve gone now.”

“Stay there,” Sergeant Parks calls down. “We’ll join you.”

And then, after looking at her hard for a few moments longer:

“Good job, kid.”





44


Getting everyone down to street level is easy enough, with the ropes. Sergeant Parks decides the order: Gallagher first, so there’s someone on the ground who knows how to use a gun, then Helen Justineau, then Dr Caldwell, with himself bringing up the rear. Dr Caldwell is the only one who presents any kind of a problem, since her bandaged hands won’t allow her to grip the rope. Parks makes a running knot, which he ties around her waist, and lowers her down.

They could retrace their steps, but it’s easier to keep going through the town. There are any number of places where they can pick up the A1 again, and they’ll actually get out from among the buildings more quickly if they steer east of south, past a region of desolate industrial estates. Not many people ever lived out here, and after the Breakdown the pickings were thin for uninfected survivors, whose needs ran more to food than to heavy plant, so they don’t see many hungries at all. Of course, they’re also following roughly the same line that the fox took, at least to start with. That irresistible moving target cleared the way for them very effectively.

So that’s twice now that the hungry kid has saved their bacon. If she makes the hat-trick, maybe Parks will even start to relax a little around her. Hasn’t happened yet though.

They discuss logistics as they walk, in low, measured voices that won’t carry too far. Parks feels they should stick to Plan A, despite the clusterf*ck they just experienced.

His reasons are the same as they were. The direct route through London will save them at least two days’ travel, and they still need shelter when they stop and sleep.

“Even given that the shelter can turn into a trap?” Dr Caldwell asks tartly.

“Well, that’s an issue,” Parks allows. “But on the other hand, if we’d been out in the open when those hungries came for us last night, we wouldn’t have lasted ten f*cking heartbeats. Just a thought.”