The Girl with All the Gifts

23

Parks would prefer to drive straight across country – the Humvee doesn’t need roads all that much – but the scrape and grind from behind him tells him that all isn’t well with the rear axle. So he shifts down to get a bit more push out of the engine, floors the gas and drives with reckless speed down the empty B roads around the base, swerving left and right at random. He figures that the best way for them not to be found is – for the time being – to be lost themselves.

At least there’s no pursuit that he can see. That’s something to be profoundly grateful for.

He finally brings the Humvee to a halt about ten miles from the base, pulling off the road on to a rutted, overgrown field. He turns off the ignition and gets his breath back, leaning over the wheel as the engine cools. The sounds it’s making are not happy sounds. He grabbed the vehicle from the workshop, the only place he could get to without crossing a parade ground full of hungries, and he wonders – now that it’s too late – what it was in there for.

Gallagher climbs down from the pedestal, folds the gun down after him and locks the hatch. He’s shaking like he’s got a fever, so these simple actions take him quite a while. When he’s finally sitting in the shotgun seat he gives the sergeant a terrified stare, looking for orders or explanations or anything that will help him to keep it together.

“Good work,” Parks tells him. “Check on the civilians. I’m going to do a quick recce.”

He opens the door, but he doesn’t get any further than that. Glancing over into the back seat, Gallagher gives a short, pained yell. “Sarge! Sergeant Parks!”

“What is it, son?” Parks asks wearily. He turns to look into the back with a sinking feeling, expecting to see that one of the two women has sustained a gut wound or something similar – that they’re going to have to watch her die.

But it’s not that. Dr Caldwell’s coat is saturated with blood, but most of it seems to be from her hands. And Helen Justineau looks pretty much fine, apart from her red, puffed-up face.

No, what made the boy shout out is their third passenger. It’s one of the little hungry kids – the monsters from the containment block. Parks recognises her, with a palpable shock, as the one he just took over to the meat market, to Dr Caldwell’s lab. She’s changed since then. She’s crouching on the floor of the Humvee, buck naked, shaved bald, and painted like a savage, her vivid blue eyes flicking backwards and forwards between the women. The curve of her back speaks both tension and the imminence of movement.

Awkwardly, because of the angle, Parks grabs his sidearm and takes aim, thrusting it between the seat backs so that it points directly at the little girl’s head. A head shot is his best chance of putting her down, at this sort of range.

Their eyes meet. She doesn’t move. Like she’s asking him to do it.

It’s Helen Justineau who stops him, interposing her body between them. In the narrow confines of the Humvee, she makes a pretty unanswerable barricade.

“Move aside,” Parks tells her.

“Then put the gun down,” Justineau says. “You’re not killing her.”

“She’s already dead,” Dr Caldwell points out from the floor, her voice uneven. “Technically speaking.”

Justineau shoots a sidelong glance at the doctor, but doesn’t bother to answer her. Her gaze comes back immediately to Parks. “She’s not a danger,” she says. “Not right now. You can see that. Let her out of the car, let her get some distance from you – from all of us – and take it from there. Okay?”

What Parks can see is that the nightmare-that-walks-like-a-girl is wide-eyed and trembling, barely in control of itself. Everyone in the car is chemmed up, e-blocker from hairline to socks, but there’s enough blood kicking around – on Caldwell’s hands and arms and clothes, on the kid herself – to be pushing her triggers anyway. He’s never seen a hungry in a meat frenzy and not acting on it. It’s a novelty, but he’s not going to bet his life on it being a long-term trend.

He either shoots her now, or he does what Justineau says. And if he shoots her, he takes the risk of killing one or both of the civilians.

“Do it,” he says. “Quickly.”

Justineau throws the door open. “Melanie…” she says, but the kid doesn’t need to be told. She’s out of there like a bullet, running away from the Humvee and across the field, her spindly legs a blur.

She goes upwind, Parks can’t help but notice. She gets away from the smell of them. From the smell of the blood. Then she crouches down in the long grass, almost lost to view, and hugs her knees. She turns her face away.

“Good enough?” Justineau demands.

“No!” Caldwell says quickly. “She’s got to be restrained and brought with us. We have no idea what happened to the rest of the subjects. If the base is lost, and my records along with it, she’s all we’ve got to show for a four-year programme.”

“Which says a lot for your programme,” Justineau says. Caldwell glares. The air between them is thick with bad vibes.

Parks gestures to Gallagher – a jerk of the head – and gets out of the vehicle, leaving the womenfolk to it. He’s worried about the Humvee’s rear axle and he wants to look at it right away. No telling when they might have to move again.