The Girl With All the Gifts(89)

“I think so,” Melanie says, her eyes on Dr Caldwell again. “And then, while I was watching, three more men came in. They talked about a trail that they were following, and they said they’d lost it. The leader got really angry with them and sent them straight back out again. He said if they didn’t bring back prisoners, he was going to let the other men use them to practise on with their knives and sticks.”

That seems to be the end of the story, but Melanie waits, tense and expectant, in case there are questions.

“Christ almighty!” Gallagher moans. He buries his head in his folded arms, and keeps it there.

Justineau turns to Parks. “What do we do?” she asks him.

Because like it or not, he’s the one who’s going to formulate their strategy. He’s the only one who really has a chance of bringing them out of here, now that they’ve run out of e-blocker and there’s an army of murderous lunatics camped on their doorstep. She’s heard stories about what the junkers do to people they take alive. Probably bullshit, but enough that you’d want to make sure they took you dead.

“What do we do?” Gallagher echoes, unfolding from his crouch. He stares at her like she’s crazy. “We get out of here. We run. Now.”

“Not yet we don’t,” Parks says deliberately. And then when they turn to him, “Better to roll than to run. I’m maybe an hour away from getting the generator working–and from where I stand, this bucket still gives us our best chance. So we don’t make a break for it. We lock down until we’re good and ready.”

“It’s anomalous behaviour,” Caldwell muses.

Parks gives her a shrewd glance. “From the junkers? Yeah, it is.”

“They were in convoy when we saw them. Using the base’s vehicles to cover the ground fast. Switching to a fixed base–a command post of some kind–makes no sense. A group that size is going to find it hard to live off the land. Scavenging has proved difficult enough even for the four of us.”

Justineau can just about find room to be surprised. “Wow,” she says, shaking her head. “Why don’t you go and tell them that, Caroline? They nearly made a really stupid mistake there. They need someone with your wisdom and foresight to smack their heads together and get them thinking straight.”

Caldwell ignores this sally. “I think we may be missing something that would make sense of this,” she says, forensically precise. “It doesn’t make sense as it stands.”

Parks comes away from the door-frame, rubbing his shoulder. “We lock down,” he says again. “Nobody goes out there until further notice. Private, did you find any duct tape in those lockers?”

Gallagher nods. “Yes, sir. Three full rolls, one started.”

“Tape up the windows. No telling how good those flare-baffles are.”

When he mentions flares, Justineau feels a rush of shame and retrospective dread. When she fired that flare last night, she could have brought the junkers right down on their heads. Parks should have shot her when he had the chance.

“And check how we’re doing for water,” he’s saying now. “Doc, you were going to see if there was any in the filtration tank.”

“The tank is full,” Caldwell says. “But I wouldn’t advise drinking from it until the generator is running. There’s algae in there, and probably a lot more contaminants besides. We can rely on the filters to do their job, but only once they get some power.”

“Then I guess I’d better get back to work,” Parks says. But he doesn’t leave. He’s looking at Melanie. “What about you?” he demands. “Are you holding up? Been most of a day now since any of us put any blocker on.”

“I’m fine now,” Melanie tells him in the same pragmatic tone–as though they were discussing some problem external to both of them. “But I can smell all four of you. Miss Justineau and Kieran a little, you and Dr Caldwell a lot. If I can’t go out to hunt again, you’d better find some way to lock me up.”

Gallagher looks up quickly when Melanie says she can smell him, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s looking a little pale around the gills.

“Handcuffs and a muzzle aren’t enough?” Parks asks.

“I think I could pull my hands out of the handcuffs, if I had to,” Melanie tells him. “It would hurt, because I’d have to scrape the skin all off, but I could do it. And then it would be very easy to get the muzzle off.”

“There’s a specimen cage in the lab,” Dr Caldwell says. “I believe it’s big enough, and strong enough.”

“No.” Justineau spits out the word. The anger that went to sleep while Melanie was talking yawns and stretches, awake again in an instant.

“It sounds like a good idea,” Parks says. “Get it ready, Doc. Kid, stay close to it. Like a hop and a jump away. And if you feel anything…”

“That’s absurd,” says Caldwell. “You can’t expect her to self-monitor.”

“Any more than we can expect you to,” Justineau says. “You’ve been itching to get your hands on her ever since we left the base.”

“Since before that,” Caldwell says. “But I’ve resigned myself to waiting until we reach Beacon. Once we’re there, the Survivors’ Council can hear us both out and make a determination.”