The Girl with All the Gifts

70

Melanie did her best with the limited materials that were available to her.

She advances on the feral children on tiptoe, straining for height, making herself look as little like a girl and as much like a god or a Titan as she can. She’s naked from the neck down – sky-clad – but she wears on her head the oversized helmet from the environment suit, whose polarised view-plate completely hides her face.

Her body is bright blue and glistening, anointed from head to foot with the disinfectant gel that Dr Caldwell employs – used to employ – in her dissections.

In her left hand, she carries Miss Justineau’s personal alarm, which is doing exactly what Miss Justineau said it would do. A hundred and fifty decibels of sound hammer the ears and hector the brains of everyone in the vicinity, making clear thought impossible. It’s doing this to Melanie too, of course, but at least she knew it was coming.

In her right hand she carries the flare pistol, and she fires it now directly at the painted-face boy who stole Kieran Gallagher’s jacket. The flare shoots right past his head and the smoke from its passage falls over him, over all of them, like a shawl dropping out of the sky.

Melanie flings the personal alarm at the boy’s feet, and he takes a step back, flailing at the air as though he’s being attacked.

She throws herself at him. She doesn’t really want to. She wants him to run away from her, because then all the other kids will run too, but he’s not doing it and she’s reached him and she’s all out of ideas now.

She catches him under the chin with the butt of the flare pistol, a solid blow that snaps his head back and makes him stagger. But he doesn’t fall. Shifting his stance, he swings the baseball bat with all his strength.

And connects. But he’s been fooled by the helmet, which is way too big for Melanie and sitting very loosely on her slender shoulders. He thinks she’s six inches taller than she is. His devastating blow, which would have staved in the side of her skull if it had connected, ploughs into the top of the helmet instead and whips it right off her head.

The boy seems surprised to find that she’s got another head underneath, and he hesitates, the baseball bat poised for a backhand slash. The sound of the personal alarm is still shrilling in their ears. It’s as though the whole world is screaming.

Melanie clicks the flare gun a quarter-turn, loading another pellet. She shoots the boy in the face with it.

To the other kids, watching, it must look as though his face has caught fire. The flare pellet is lodged in his eye socket, shining like a piece of the sun that’s fallen to the ground. Smoke pours out of it, straight upwards at first, then breaking into a tight spiral as the boy bends backward from the knees. He drops the baseball bat to clutch at his face.

Melanie uses the baseball bat to finish him.

By the time she’s done, the other kids have finally run away.