The Girl With All the Gifts(74)

“Room at the inn,” Parks says.

Justineau thinks he’s joking, but then she sees that he’s not and she’s appalled. “Why would we lock ourselves in here?” she demands. “It’s a trap. There’s only one exit, and once we lock this door we’re blind. We wouldn’t have any way of keeping track of what’s going on above us.”

“All true,” Parks admits. “But we know those junkers followed us from the base. And now we’re getting into an area that had the densest population out of anywhere in the country. Wherever we stop, we’re going to want to maintain some kind of a perimeter. Locked steel door is the most discreet perimeter I can think of. Our lights won’t show, and any sound we make probably won’t reach the surface. We stay safe, but we don’t draw any attention to ourselves. Hard to imagine anything better, on that score.”

There’s no vote, but people start putting their packs down. Caldwell slumps against the wall, then slides down it into a squatting position. It might not even be that she agrees with Parks’ argument. She’s just too tired to walk any further. Private Gallagher is unpacking the last few cans of food from Wainwright House, and then he’s opening them.

It’s carried on the nod, and there’s no point in arguing.

They close the door so they can put their torches on, but they don’t lock it at first; claustrophobia is already setting in, for most of them, and turning the key seems like too irrevocable a step. As they eat, the desultory conversation winds down into silence. Parks is probably right about their voices not carrying, but they still sound way too loud in this echoing vault.

When they’re done, they slip away one by one into the guardroom to do whatever they need to do. No torches in there, so they’ve got something like privacy. Justineau realises that Melanie never needs to take a bathroom break. She vaguely remembers, somewhere in the briefing pack she was given when she arrived at the base, some notes by Caldwell on the digestive systems of the hungries. The fungus absorbs and uses everything they swallow. There’s no need for excretion, because there’s nothing to excrete.

Parks locks the door at last. The key sticks in the lock, and he has to apply a lot of force to turn it. Justineau imagines–probably they all do–what would happen to them if the shank broke off in the lock. That’s a bloody solid door.

They split up to sleep. Caldwell and Gallagher take a cell each, Melanie goes with Justineau and Parks sleeps at the foot of the stairs with his rifle ready to hand.

When the last torch clicks off, the darkness settles on them like a weight. Justineau lies awake, staring at it.

It’s like God never bothered.





49


Melanie thinks: when your dreams come true, your true has moved. You’ve already stopped being the person who had the dreams, so it feels more like a weird echo of something that already happened to you a long time ago.

She’s lying in a cell that’s a bit like her cell back at the base. But she’s sharing it with Miss Justineau. Miss Justineau’s shoulder is touching her back, and she can feel it moving rhythmically with Miss Justineau’s breath. On one level, that fills her with a happiness so complete that it’s stupefying.

But this isn’t anywhere they can stay, and live. It’s just a stop on the journey, which is full of uncertainties. And some of the uncertainties are inside her, not out in the world. She’s a hungry, with a driving need that will always come back no matter what she does. She has to be kept in chains, with a muzzle over her face, so she won’t eat anybody.

And they lived together, for ever after, in great peace and prosperity.

That was how the story she wrote ended, but it’s not how this real-life story will end. Beacon won’t take her. Or else it will take her and break her down in pieces. Miss Justineau’s happy ending isn’t hers.

She’ll have to leave Miss J soon, and go off into the world to seek her fortune. She’ll be like Aeneas, running away from Troy after it fell and sailing the seas until he comes to Latium and founds the new Troy, which ends up being called Rome.

But she seriously doubts now that the princes she once imagined fighting for her exist anywhere in this world, which is so beautiful but so full of old and broken things. And she already misses Miss J, even though they’re still together.

She doesn’t think she’ll ever love anyone else quite this much.





50


The fourth day is the day of the miracle, which falls on Caroline Caldwell out of a clear sky.

Except that it’s not clear, really. Not any more. The weather has turned. A thin rain is soaking through their clothes, there’s no food left, and everyone is in a dismal, surly mood. Parks is worried about the e-blocker, and taking it out on everybody. They’re running low on the stuff, and had to go sparingly when they anointed themselves before unlocking the door. And they’ve still got at least three days’ journey ahead of them. If they don’t manage to restock at some point, they’ll be in dead trouble.

They’re still walking south, with the whole of north London and central London and south London to get through. Even for the young private, Caldwell sees, some of the shock and awe has drained away. The only one who’s still looking at every new thing they pass with indefatigable wonder is test subject number one.

As for Caldwell, she’s thinking about lots of things. Fungal mycelia growing in a substrate of mammalian body cells. The GABA-A receptor in the human brain, whose widespread and vital operation concerns the selective conduction of chloride ions across the plasma membranes of specific neurons. And the more immediate issue of why they’re seeing so few hungries now, when yesterday morning they were seeing clusters of several hundred at a time.