The Girl With All the Gifts(95)

He pours in about a third of his remaining water, grips the neck of the sachet tight and shakes it for half a minute or so. Then he opens it and squeezes a dollop of the resulting paste straight into his mouth.

It’s delicious. A gourmet’s feast, just like it says on the label. And he doesn’t even need to chew. It slides down as easy as soup. The slight grittiness doesn’t bother him either, until some of the unmixed powder accidentally goes down his throat and he breaks into a fit of explosive coughing, anointing all the packets left on the shelf with brown flecks of curried spit.

He finishes off the packet, with a bit more caution. Then he rips open a few more of them, discarding the cardboard sleeves and stuffing his many pockets with the food sachets. When he reaches the river, he’ll celebrate with two or three of them chosen at random. A mix-and-match supper.

Speaking of which, he should really get going. But he can’t resist casting a quick eye over the rest of the store, wondering what other marvels it might contain.

When he finds the magazine rack, Gallagher’s heart leaps. The entire top shelf–ten feet or more of display space–is full of porno mags. He takes them down, one after another, and turns the pages as reverently as if they contained holy writ. Women of inconceivable beauty smile back at him with love, understanding and welcome. Their legs and hearts are wide open.

If he were still at the base, this treasure trove would make him rich beyond measure. Pilgrims would come from every barracks to pay him in tobacco and alcohol for a half-hour in the company of these ladies. The fact that he doesn’t smoke and fears alcohol almost as badly as he fears hungries and junkers does nothing to tarnish this dazzling vision. He’d be the man, nonetheless. One of those guys who gets a nod or a word from everybody when he walks into the mess hall, and takes it as his due. A man whose acknowledgement, when granted, confers status on those who get a nod or a word in return.

The creak of a floorboard startles Gallagher back from eternal glory into the here and now. He lowers the magazine that’s in his hands. Ten feet away, hidden until that moment by the magazine although she’s not making any effort to conceal herself, is a girl. She’s tiny, naked, skinny as a bag of sticks. For a startling moment, she looks like a black and white photograph, because her hair is jet and her skin is pure, unmitigated white. Her eyes are as black and bottomless as holes drilled through a board. Her mouth is a straight, bloodless line.

She could be five or six years old, or an emaciated seven.

She just stands there, staring at Gallagher. Then, when she’s sure she’s got his attention, she holds out her hand and shows him what she’s holding. It’s a dead rat without a head.

Gallagher looks from the rat to the girl’s face. Then back to the rat. They stand like that for what feels like a long time. Gallagher sucks in a long, tremulous breath.

“Hey,” he says at last. “How are you doing?”

It’s about the stupidest line you could come up with, but he’s having a really hard time believing this is happening. This little girl is a hungry, that’s obvious. But she’s one of the Melanie kind of hungries, that can think and doesn’t have to eat people if it doesn’t want to.

And she’s giving him a peace offering. A pretty major one, given how agonisingly thin she is.

But she doesn’t make a move towards him, and she doesn’t say anything. Can she even speak? The kids at the base were more like animals when they were first brought in. They learned to talk pretty quickly once they heard other people talking, but he remembers them squealing like little piglets or chittering like chimps to start with.

Doesn’t matter. There’s other stuff. Body language.

Gallagher gives the girl a big wide smile and a friendly wave. She’s still not moving, and her face is as rigid as a mask. She just jiggles the rat at him, the way you’d do for a dog.

“You’re a very pretty little girl,” Gallagher tells her inanely. “What’s your name? My name’s Kieran. Kieran Gallagher.”

The rat jiggles again. The girl’s mouth opens and closes as though she’s miming eating.

This is ridiculous. He’s going to have to take the rat, or the impasse will go on for ever.

Gallagher puts down the porno mag very slowly–face down, as if this living dead kid was capable of being embarrassed or corrupted by the bare breasts on the cover. He shows her his empty hands. Moving in the gradual, strolling gait Sergeant Parks taught him, he advances on her, one step at a time. He’s careful to keep his hands in full view and the smile on his face the whole time.

He reaches out one hand, very slowly, for the rat.

The little brat hauls it back, out of his reach. Gallagher stops dead, wondering if maybe he’s misunderstood.

Pain explodes in his left leg, then his right, sudden and astonishing. He screams and falls, both legs buckling under him so that he hits the floor as heavy and ungainly as a toppled wardrobe. Diminutive figures flee away on both sides of him from the intersecting aisle where they’d been crouching hidden. He doesn’t get a good look at them because he’s in pain and he’s angry and he’s too thoroughly confused even to realise at first what it is that’s just happened.

He levers himself up on one elbow and looks down at his feet, but he can’t process what he’s seeing. There’s red everywhere. Blood. It’s blood. And it’s his. He knows that because he can feel it now as well as see it. The backs of his calves pulse and throb agonisingly. From the knees down, his trousers are already saturated.