The Girl with All the Gifts

26

“What do you want to do?” Miss Justineau asks her.

For a moment Melanie doesn’t even understand the question. She waits for Miss J to clarify, and eventually – a little haltingly – she does.

“We’re driving south, towards Beacon. But you could go anywhere. The soldiers trapped you, in Luton or Bedford or somewhere like that, where you were living. You could go back there if you wanted, and be with… well, with your own…”

She hesitates. “What?” Melanie prompts. “With who?”

Miss Justineau shakes her head. “Be on your own, I mean. Be free to do what you want. In Beacon, you wouldn’t be free. They’d only put you in another cell.”

“I liked my cell. I liked the classroom.”

“But there probably wouldn’t be any more lessons, Melanie. And Dr Caldwell would be in charge of you again.”

Melanie nods. She knows all this. And it’s not that she isn’t afraid. It’s just that the fear makes no difference.

“It doesn’t matter,” she explains to Miss J. “I want to be where you are. And I don’t know the way back to wherever I was before, anyway. I don’t even remember it. All I remember is the block, and you. You’re…” Now it’s Melanie’s turn to hesitate. She doesn’t know the words for this. “You’re my bread,” she says at last. “When I’m hungry. I don’t mean that I want to eat you, Miss Justineau! I really don’t! I’d rather die than do that. I just mean… you fill me up the way the bread does to the man in the song. You make me feel like I don’t need anything else.”

Miss J doesn’t seem to have an answer for that. She doesn’t have any answer at all for a few moments. She looks away, looks back, looks away again. Her eyes fill up with tears and she can’t speak at all for a while. When she can finally meet Melanie’s gaze, she seems to have accepted that the two of them are going to stay together – if not for ever, at least for now. “You’re going to have to ride up on the roof,” she tells Melanie. “Are you okay with that?”

“Yes,” Melanie says at once. “Sure. That’s fine, Miss Justineau.”

It’s better than fine. It’s a relief. The thought of getting back inside the Humvee has been terrifying Melanie ever since she realised it was a possibility, so it’s purely wonderful that they’ve thought of an alternative. Now she doesn’t have to ride with Dr Caldwell, who scares her so badly it’s like scissors cutting into her chest. But more importantly, there’s no danger that she’ll get hungry again with Miss Justineau sitting right next to her.

Now Miss Justineau is looking at the picture Melanie drew in the dust on the Humvee’s bonnet. Blobs and blocks, with a single wavy line threading through them. She gives Melanie a curious glance. “What’s this?”

Melanie shrugs. She doesn’t want to say. It’s the route she memorised, from Dr Caldwell’s lab all the way back to the stairs that lead down to the block. To her cell. It’s the way home, and she drew it even though she knows that she’s never going to retrace those steps, to sit in the classroom with the other children. Knows that home is just an idea now to be visited in memories but not ever again found in the way that you find your ground and stand on it and know that it’s yours.

All she has – to describe to herself how she feels now – is stories she’s been told, about Moses not getting to see that land where there was all the milk, and Aeneas running away after Troy fell down, and a poem about a nightingale and a sad heart standing in alien corn.

It all comes together inside her, and she can’t begin to explain. “It’s just a pattern,” she says, feeling bad because it’s a lie. She’s lying to Miss Justineau, who she loves more than anyone in the world. And of course the other part of the feeling, that’s even harder to say, is that they’re each other’s home now. They have to be.

If only she didn’t have the memory of that terrible hunger, coming up from inside her. The horrifying pleasure of blood and meat in her mouth. Why hasn’t Miss Justineau asked her about that? Why wasn’t she surprised that Melanie could do those things?

“Those men…” she says tentatively.

“The men at the base?”

“Yes. Them. What I did to them…”

“They were junkers, Melanie,” Miss Justineau says. “Killers. They would have done worse to you, if you’d let them. And to me. You shouldn’t feel bad about anything that happened. You couldn’t help it. You’re not to blame for any of it.”

In spite of her fears, Melanie has to ask. “Why? Why am I not to blame?”

Miss J hesitates. “Because of your nature,” she says. And when Melanie opens her mouth on another question, she shakes her head. “Not now. There’s no time now, and this is really deep stuff. I know you’re scared. I know you don’t understand. I promise I’ll explain, when we’ve got the time. When we’re safe. For now… just try not to worry, and try not to be sad. We won’t leave you. I promise. We’ll all stick together. Okay?”

Melanie considers. Is it okay? This is a scary subject, so it’s a relief in some ways to let it drop. But the question is hanging over her like a weight, and she can’t be content until it’s answered. Finally, uncertainly, she nods. Because she’s found a way of looking at it that makes it not so bad at all – a thought that’s lying at the bottom of the sadness and the worry like hope lying underneath all the terrible things in Pandora’s box.

From now on, every day will be a Miss Justineau day.