The Girl With All The Gifts 18 page

“But I’d like you to do me a favour in return,” Parks goes on.

Justineau shrugs. “Okay. If I can. What?”

“Find out what she really saw.”

“What?” Justineau is mystified for a moment. Not angry or exasperated, just at a loss to understand what Parks is saying. “Why would she lie? Why would you even think that she …? Shit! Because of what Caroline said? Because she fancies herself as an anthropologist? She doesn’t know shit. You can’t expect psychopaths like the junkers to make rational decisions.”

“Probably not,” Parks agrees.

“Then what are you talking about?”

“Helen, the kid’s talking hairy-arsed nonsense. I’m pretty sure she saw something last night. And it was probably something that scared her, because she’s really sincere about wanting us to leave. But it wasn’t junkers.”

Justineau is getting angry again. “Why?” she demands. “How do you know? And how many times does she have to prove herself to you?”

“None. No times. I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on her now. But her story doesn’t hold together at all.”

He picks up one of the manuals he’s been working from, which he’s left lying on the cowling of the generator, and sets it aside so he can sit there. He doesn’t look happy.

“I can see why you wouldn’t want to face up to this,” Justineau says. “If they followed us from the base, it means we screwed up. We left a trail.”

Parks gives a sound that could be a laugh or just a snort. “We left a trail you could follow facing backwards with your head in a bucket,” he says. “It’s not that. It’s just…”

He raises a hand and starts counting off on his fingers.

“She says she saw all men, no women, which means this is a temporary camp. So why don’t they put up a perimeter? How come she can walk right in there and walk right out again without being seen?”

“Maybe they have lousy security, Parks. Not everyone has your skill set.”

“Maybe. And then we have those guys conveniently coming in just at the right moment and saying they’re following someone. And the tattoo. Private Barlow, back at the base, he had that same word on his arm. Some coincidence.”

“Coincidences happen, Parks.”

“Sometimes they do,” Parks agrees. “But then there’s Rosie.”

“Rosie? What’s Rosie got to do with this?”

“She hasn’t been touched. We found her standing right here in the street, and there isn’t a mark on her. Nobody tried to jack the door open, or to lever out one of the windows. There was all that dirt and grime on her, and not so much as a handprint or a smudge. I’m having a hard time believing that fifty junkers could walk through here and not see her. Or that they could see her and not want to take a look inside. Come to think of it, I’m having a hard time believing that you and Gallagher managed to do your foraging yesterday without bumping into them. Or that they didn’t see your flare. If they really are following our trail, they’re missing a hell of a lot of tricks.”

Justineau is looking for counterarguments, and finding some, when she runs right into the one piece of evidence that Parks didn’t see. Those sidelong looks at Caldwell … it was as though Melanie was really aiming her story at an audience of one all along. Talking to the doctor over the heads of everyone else in the room.

So she doesn’t argue. There’s no point when she’s more than half sold. But she doesn’t let it rest there either. She’s not going to go off and interrogate Melanie without knowing what Parks’ play is.

“Why did you do that then?” she demands. “Back in there?”

“Why did I do what?”

“Order a lockdown. If Melanie is lying, there’s no danger.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you didn’t try to get to the truth. You acted like you believed every word. Why?”

Parks takes a moment to think about that. “I’m not going to bet our lives on a hunch,” he says. “I think she’s lying, but I could be wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Bullshit, Parks. You don’t second-guess yourself like that. Not from what I’ve seen. Why didn’t you at least call her on it?”

Parks rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. He looks really tired all of a sudden. Tired, and maybe a little older. “It meant something to her,” he says. “I don’t know what, but unless I’m dead wrong, it’s something she’s way too scared to talk about. I didn’t push her, because I don’t have a bastard clue what kind of something that might be. So I’m asking you to find out, because I think you can get her to tell you what scared her without making it any worse for her than it is already. And I don’t think I can. We don’t have that kind of relationship.”

It’s the first time since Justineau met Parks that he’s actually surprised her.

Without thinking about it, she leans forward and kisses him on the cheek. He freezes just a little, maybe because where she kissed is mostly scar tissue, or maybe just because he didn’t see the move coming.

“Sorry,” Justineau says.

“Don’t be,” Parks replies quickly. “But … if you don’t mind me asking…”

“It’s just that you talked about her like a human being. With feelings that might sometimes have to be respected. It felt like that was an occasion that ought to be marked somehow.”

“Okay,” Parks says, trying that on for size. “You want to sit around and talk about her feelings some more? We could—”

“Later maybe.” Justineau heads for the door. “I wouldn’t want to distract you from your work.”

Or get your hopes up, she adds to herself. Because Parks is still someone she mostly associates with blood and death and cruelty. Almost as strongly as she associates herself with those things. It really wouldn’t be a good idea for the two of them to get together.

They might breed, or something.

She goes through into the lab where she sees that Caldwell has already set up the specimen cage. It’s a fold-out structure, like the airlock, but sturdy. A cube of thick wire mesh about four feet on each side, supported by solid steel uprights that lock into place in brackets set into the walls of the lab. It stands in the forward corner, where it doesn’t impede access to work surfaces or equipment.

Melanie is sitting in the cage, knees hugged to her chest. Caldwell is doing very much what Parks is doing with the generator – overhauling a complicated piece of equipment, one of the largest in the lab, so deeply and completely absorbed that she doesn’t hear Justineau come in.

“Good morning, Miss Justineau,” Melanie says.

“Good morning, Melanie,” Justineau echoes. But she’s looking at Caldwell. “Whatever you’re doing,” she says to the doctor, “it’s going to have to wait. Go take a cigarette break or something.”

Caldwell turns. Almost for the first time, she lets her dislike of Justineau show on her face. Justineau greets it like a friend; it’s really something to have got through that emotional barricade.

“What I’m doing is important,” Caldwell says.

“Is it? Too bad. Get out, Caroline. I’ll tell you when you can come back.”

For a long moment they’re face to face, almost squaring off against each other. It looks like Caldwell might go for it, damaged hands or not, but she doesn’t. It’s probably just as well. She looks bad enough right now that a stiff wind would knock her down, never mind a stiff punch in the head.

“You should examine the pleasure you take in intimidating me,” Caldwell says.

“No, that might spoil it.”

“You should ask yourself,” Caldwell persists, “why you’re so keen on thinking of me as the enemy. If I make a vaccine, it might cure people like Melanie, who already have a partial immunity to Ophiocordyceps. It would certainly prevent thousands upon thousands of other children from ending up the way she has. Which weighs the most, Helen? Which will do the most good in the end? Your compassion, or my commitment to my work? Or could it be that you shout at me and disrespect me to stop yourself from having to ask questions like that?”

“It could be,” Justineau admits. “Now do as you’re told and get out.”

She doesn’t wait for an answer. She just bundles Caldwell to the forward end of the room, pushes her through into the crew quarters and closes the door on her. The doctor is so weak that it isn’t even hard. The door doesn’t lock, though. Justineau waits there for a moment or two in case Caldwell tries to come back in, but the door stays closed.

Finally, satisfied that they’ve got as much privacy as they’re going to get, she goes back to the cage and kneels beside it. She stares through the bars at the small, pale face inside.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi, Miss Justineau.”

“Is it okay if we…” she starts to say. But then she thinks better of it. “I’m coming in,” she says.

“No!” Melanie yelps. “Don’t. Stay there!” As Justineau puts her hand on the door and slides back the bolt, the girl scrambles to the other end of the cage. She presses herself hard into the corner.

Justineau stops, with the door half open. “You said you could only smell me a little bit,” she says. “Is it enough to be uncomfortable for you?”

“Not yet.” Melanie’s voice is tight.

“Then we’re okay. If that changes, you tell me and I’ll get out. But I don’t like you being in a cage like an animal with me out there looking in. This would feel better for me. If it’s okay with you.”

But it’s clear from Melanie’s face that it’s not okay. Justineau gives up. She closes the door and locks it again. Then she sits down and leans her shoulder against the mesh, legs crossed.

“Okay,” she says. “You win. But come on over here and sit with me at least. If you’re inside and I’m outside, that should be fine, right?”

Melanie advances cautiously, but she stops halfway, evidently fearful of a situation that could spiral quickly out of her control. “If I tell you to get further back, you have to do it right away, Miss Justineau.”

“Melanie, there’s a wire-mesh screen in between us and you’ve got your muzzle on. You can’t hurt me.”

“I don’t mean that,” Melanie says quietly.

Obviously. She’s talking about changing, in front of her teacher and her friend. Ceasing to be herself. That prospect scares her a lot.

Justineau feels ashamed, not just about the thoughtless comment but about what she’s come here to do. Melanie must have lied for a reason. Breaking down the lie feels wrong. But so does the thought of some new random factor out there that Melanie wants them all to run away from. Parks is right. They have to know.

“When you went into the theatre last night…” she begins tentatively.

“Yes?”

“And saw the junkers…”

“There weren’t any junkers, Miss Justineau.”

Just like that. Justineau’s got her next few lines already prepared. She stares stupidly, mouth open. “No?” she says.

“No.”

And Melanie tells her what she really saw.

Running between the mildewed seats and across the booming stage. Naked as the day they were born. And filthy, although their skin underneath the dirt was the same bone white as her own. Their hair hanging lank and heavy, or in a few cases standing up in spikes. Some of them had sticks in their hands, and some of them had bags – old plastic bags, with words on them like Foodfresh and Grocer’s Market.

“But I wasn’t lying about the knives. They had those too. Not stabbing knives like Sergeant Parks’ and Kieran’s. Knives like you might cut bread or meat with in a kitchen.”

Fifteen of them. She counted. And when she made up the story of the junkers, she just added forty more.

But they weren’t junkers. They were children of every age from maybe four or five to about fifteen. And what they were doing was chasing rats. Some of them beating the floor and the seats with their sticks to get the rats running. Others catching them when they ran, biting off their heads and dropping the limp bodies into the bags. They were much faster than the rats, so it wasn’t hard for them. They made it into a game, laughing and taunting each other with shrieks and funny faces as they ran.

Children like her. Children who were hungries too, and alive, and animated, and enjoying the thrill of the hunt. Until they sat down, at last, and feasted on the small, blood-drenched corpses, the big ones choosing first, the little ones pushing in between them to snatch and steal. Even that was a game, and they were still laughing. There was no threat in it.

“There was a boy who seemed to be the leader. He had a big stick like a king’s sceptre, all shiny, and his face was painted in lots of different colours. It made him look sort of scary, but he wasn’t scary to the little ones: he was protecting them. When one of the other big kids showed her teeth to one of the little ones and looked like she was going to bite him, the painted-face boy put his stick on the big kid’s shoulder and she stopped. But mostly they didn’t try to hurt each other. It seemed like they were a family almost. They all knew each other, and they liked being together.”

It was a midnight picnic. Watching it, Melanie felt like she was looking at her own life through the wrong end of a telescope. This was what she would have been if she hadn’t been taken away to the base. This was what she was supposed to be. And the way she felt about that kept changing as she thought about it. She was sad that she couldn’t join the picnic. But if she hadn’t gone to the base, she would never have learned so many things and she would never have met Miss Justineau.

“I started to cry,” Melanie says. “Not because I was sad, but because I didn’t know if I was sad or not. It was like I was missing all those kids down there, even though I’d never even met them. Even though I didn’t know their names. They probably didn’t have names. It didn’t seem like they could talk, because they just made these squeaking and growling sounds at each other.”

The emotions that cross the little girl’s face are painfully intense. Justineau puts her hand up against the side of the cage, slides her fingers through the mesh.

Melanie leans forward, letting her forehead touch the tips of Justineau’s fingers.

“So … why didn’t you tell us all this?” It’s the first thing Justineau can think of to ask. She skirts around Melanie’s existential crisis with instinctive caution, afraid to confront it head on. She knows Melanie won’t let her go into the cage and hug her, not with that fear of losing herself, so all she has is words, and words feel inadequate for the job.

“I don’t mind telling you,” Melanie says simply. “But it has to be our secret. I don’t want Dr Caldwell to know. Or Sergeant Parks. Or even Kieran.”

“Why not, Melanie?” Justineau coaxes. And gets it as soon as she’s asked. She holds up her hand to stop Melanie from saying it. But Melanie says it anyway.

“They’d catch them and put them in cells under the ground,” she says. “And Dr Caldwell would cut them up. So I made up something that I thought would make Sergeant Parks want to go away really fast, before anyone finds out they’re here. Please say you won’t tell, Miss Justineau. Please promise me.”

“I promise,” Justineau whispers. And she means it. Whatever comes of it, she won’t let Caroline Caldwell know that she’s sitting right next door to a new batch of test subjects. There’ll be no culling of these feral children.

Which means she’ll have to go back to Parks and maintain the lie. Or bring him in on it. Or come up with a better one.

The two of them are silent for a moment, both presumably thinking about how this changes things between them. Back when they first left the base, she’d offered Melanie the choice between staying with them and going into one of the nearby towns. “To be with your own kind,” she’d almost said, and stopped herself because she realised even as she was saying it that Melanie didn’t have a kind.

But now she does.

While she’s still thinking through the implications of what Melanie has just told her, Justineau starts to shake. For a surreal and terrifying moment she thinks it’s just her – that it’s some sort of seizure. But the vibration settles into a throbbing rhythm that she recognises, and there’s a low rumble in her ears that crests and then dies. The throbbing dies with it as quickly as it came.

“My God!” Justineau gasps.

She scrambles up off the floor and runs, heading aft.

Parks stands over the generator, his oily hands hovering as though he’s just performed a blessing. Or an exorcism. “Got it,” he says, giving Justineau a fierce grin as she comes into the room.

“But it died again,” she says.

Caldwell follows her into the room. The generator’s magical resurrection has brought her running too.

“No, it didn’t. I cut it off. Don’t want the noise to carry until we’re ready to drive out. You never know who’s listening, after all.”

“So we can leave!” Justineau says. “Keep going south. Let’s roll, Parks. To hell with anything else.”

He gives her a wry look. “Yeah,” he says. “Don’t want to have to tangle with those junkers. We might have to…” He stops and looks past the two women, his face serious all of a sudden.

“Where’s Gallagher?” he demands.

Gallagher is in the wind. He’s bolted. The pressure that had been building in him exploded outwards, all at once, and carried him out of there before he even registered what he was doing.

It’s not that he’s a coward. It’s more like a law of motion. Because the pressure, for him, was coming from in front as well as from behind – from the thought of what he was going back to. He just got squeezed sideways.

Yeah, but it’s also the thought of locking the door, turning out the lights and waiting for the junkers to find them. Like anyone could possibly miss them, just standing out there in the street.

When the base fell, Gallagher saw Si Brooks – the man who rented out his precious vintage porno mag to the whole barracks, and was privately in love with the girl on page twenty-three – get his face split open with the butt of a rifle. And Lauren Green, one of the few female privates he could talk to without getting tongue-tied, was stabbed in the stomach with a bayonet. And he would have got a helping of that too, if Sergeant Parks hadn’t grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him away from the corner of the mess hall, where he was hiding, with a terse “I need a gunner.”

Gallagher has no illusions about how long he would have lasted otherwise. He was nailed to the spot with pure terror. But nailed was the wrong word, because what he was actually feeling right then was more like vertigo – as though if he moved, he was going to fall in some random direction, slantwise across the tilting world.

So he’s ashamed, now, to be running out on the Sarge, his saviour. But this is how you square the circle. Can’t go back. Can’t go forward. Can’t stay put. So you pick another direction and you get out from under.

The river is going to save him. There’ll be boats there, left over from the old days before the Breakdown. He can row or sail away and find an island somewhere, with a house on it but no hungries, and live on what he can grow or hunt or trap. He knows that Britain is an island, and that there are others close to it. He’s seen maps, although he doesn’t remember the fine detail. How hard can it be? Explorers and pirates used to do it all the time.

He’s heading south, with the aid of the compass from his belt. Or rather he’s trying to, but the streets don’t always help. He’s left the main drag, where he felt way too exposed, and is zigzagging his way through back streets. The compass tells him which way to go, and he follows its advice whenever the maze of avenues, crescents and cul-de-sacs allows him to. They’re mercifully empty. He hasn’t seen a live hungry since he flung open Rosie’s door and fled. Just a couple more of the dead ones with the trees growing out of them.

He’ll get to the river, which can only be another five miles or so, and then he’ll take stock. As he walks, the rain clouds roll on past and the sun comes out again. Gallagher is surprised, in a dislocated kind of way, to see it again. The warmth and the light seem to have nothing in common with the world he’s journeying through. It even makes him a little uneasy – dangerously exposed, as though the sun is a spotlight focused on him, keeping pace with him as he walks.

Something else too. He sees movement in the street ahead of him that makes him jump like a hare and all but piss himself. But then he realises it’s not in the street at all. There’s nothing there. It was the shadow of something moving behind and above him, up on one of the rooftops. A junker? Didn’t look big enough for that, and he’s pretty sure he would have been shot in the back already if they were on him. More likely a cat or something, but shit, that was a bad moment.

He’s still shaking, and his stomach feels like it’s going to do something that might be slightly projectile. Gallagher finds a place where the rusting remains of a car screen him from the street, and sits down for a moment. He takes a drink from his canteen.

Which is almost empty.

He’s aware suddenly that there are a whole lot of things he could really do with right now, and flat-out doesn’t have.

Like food. He didn’t feel like he could steal one of the backpacks when he left, so he’s got nothing. Not even the packet of peanuts he’d slipped under the pillow of his bunk for later.

Or his rifle.

Or the empty tube of e-blocker he was going to peel open so he could rub the last nubs of gel over his underarms and crotch.

He’s got his sidearm and six clips of ammunition. He’s got a little water left. He’s got the compass. And he’s got the grenade, which is still in the pocket of his fatigues where it’s sat ever since they abandoned the Humvee. That’s it. That’s the whole inventory.

What kind of idiot goes for a hike through enemy territory with just the clothes he’s standing up in? He’s got to resupply, and he’s got to do it fast.

The lock-up garage where he and Justineau found the snack foods is a couple of miles behind him now. He hates to double back and lose time. But he’d hate starving to death a whole lot more, and there’s no guarantee that he’ll find another mother lode like that between here and the Thames.

Gallagher stands up and gets himself moving again. It’s not easy, but he immediately feels better, just to be doing something. He’s got a defined goal, and he’s got a plan. He’s going backwards, but only so he can go forwards again and get further this time.

After five or six turns, compass or not, he’s totally lost.

And he’s pretty much certain now that he’s not alone. He doesn’t see any more moving shadows, but he can hear shuffling and skittering sounds coming from somewhere really close by. Whenever he pauses to listen, there’s nothing, but it’s right there behind the sound of his own footsteps when he starts walking again. Someone is moving when he moves, stopping when he stops.

It sounds like they’re almost on top of him. He ought to be able to see them, but he can’t. He can’t even be sure what direction they’re coming from. But the shadow he saw … that was definitely cast by something up on the roof. If he’s being stalked, Gallagher thinks, that would be a great way for the stalker to stay close to him without being seen.

Okay. So let’s see them jump clear across the street.

He breaks into a run, without warning. Sprints across the street and then sidelong into an alley.

Across a sort of parking area behind some burnt-out shops. Through one of the gaping back doors, into a narrow hallway. A vulcanised rubber swing door, rotten and sticky to the touch, takes him on to the sales floor, which Gallagher crosses quickly and…

Slows. Then stops.

Because this is some sort of mini-market, with about six cramped aisles and shelves from floor to ceiling.

On the shelves: toilet brushes, eggcups in the shape of smiling chicks, tin bread bins decorated with Union Jacks, wooden mousetraps with their name (“The Little Nipper”) stamped on their sides, cheese graters with easy-grip handles, chopping boards, tea towels, novelty condiment sets, bin liners, car seat protectors, magnetic screwdrivers.

And food.

Not much of it – just one section of shelving at the end of an aisle – but the tins and packets don’t seem to have been touched. They’re still neatly arrayed by type, all the soups on one shelf, foreign cuisine on another, rice and pasta on a third. Just as some anonymous and probably long-dead retail grunt set them out on what must have seemed like an ordinary morning, in a world that nobody thought could end.

The tins are blown, every one of them. They’re full in the sun right now, as they must have been on every sunny day going back to before Gallagher was even born.

But there are packets too. He examines them first with hope, and then with excitement.

Gourmet’s Feast Chicken Curry with Rice – just add water!

Gourmet’s Feast Beef Stroganoff – just add water!

Gourmet’s Feast Mixed Meat Paella – just add water!

In other words, desiccated foods in airtight sachets.

Gallagher tears one open and takes a tentative sniff. It smells pretty bloody good, all things considered. And he really doesn’t care whether or not this stuff ever met a chicken or a cow, as long as he can keep it down.

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.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 489