The Girl With All The Gifts (21 page)

Parks has already told them what he’s looking for. Not a house on a street like this, with neighbours on all sides. That would be too difficult to secure. He wants a detached structure standing in its own grounds, with reasonable lines of sight at least out of the upstairs windows, and ideally with the doors intact. He has realistic expectations, though, and he’ll take anything that’s broadly okay if it means not going too deeply into the town.

But there’s nothing he likes here, so they move on.

Five minutes later, keeping up their intent and silent stroll, they come into a wider road into which several streets feed. There’s an arcade of shops here. The road surface is crunchy with shattered glass, all the shopfronts broken into and ransacked by looters of a bygone era. Empty tin cans on the ground, rusted to the thinness and delicacy of shells, roll and rattle when the wind comes up a little.

And there are hungries.

Perhaps a dozen of them, widely scattered.

The party of living humans comes to a halt when they see them, only Parks remembering to slow his steps gradually rather than going straight from motion into stillness.

Caldwell is fascinated. She turns her head slowly to examine each of the hungries in turn.

They’re a mix of old and new. The older ones can be identified very easily both by their mouldering clothing and by their extreme gauntness. When a hungry feeds, it also feeds the pathogen within it. But if prey can’t be found,
Ophiocordyceps
will draw its nutrients directly from the flesh of the host.

Closer to, she can also see the mottled colouring on the older ones. Grey threads have broken the leathery surface of their skin in a network of fine lines, crossing and re-crossing like veins. The whites of the eyes are grey too, and if the hungry’s mouth is open you can see a fuzz of grey on the tongue.

The newer hungries are dressed more nattily – or at least their clothes have had less time to rot – and they still have a broadly human appearance. Paradoxically, that makes them a lot more unpleasant to look at, because the wounds and torn flesh through which they contracted the infection in the first place are clearly visible. On an older hungry, the general bleaching and weathering of the skin surface and clothing, along with the overlay of grey mycelia, softens and disguises the wounds; makes something more architectural out of them.

The hungries are in their stationary mode, which is why Caldwell can get away with this unhurried inspection. They stand or sit or kneel at random points along the length of the road, completely motionless, their eyes on nothing and their arms mostly dangling at their sides or – if they’re sitting – folded in their laps.

They look like they’re posing for paintings, or sunk into such deep introspection that they’ve forgotten what it was they were meant to be doing. Not like they’re waiting; not like a single sound or movement out of place would wake them and launch them into instant motion.

Parks raises his hand, waves the party on with a slow sweep of his arm. The movement serves both as a command and as a reminder of the unhurried pace they need to keep up. The sergeant leads the way, his rifle ready in his hands but pointed at the ground. His gaze is on the ground too for a lot of the time. He scans the visual field with quick, darting glances, his eyes the only part of him at odds with his slow, shambling stride. Caldwell recalls belatedly the hypothesis that hungries retain the rudimentary pattern recognition that all babies are born with – that they’re capable of identifying a human face, and respond to it by slipping into a slightly heightened mode of arousal and awareness. Her own researches have failed either to confirm or to refute this, but she is prepared to accept that it might be true for all but the most severely decayed.

So they avoid the eyes of the hungries as they shuffle on down the high street. They look at each other, at the gaping shop windows, at the road ahead or at the sky, letting the macabre still-life figures hover in their peripheral vision.

Except for the test subject. Melanie doesn’t seem to be able to look away from her larger counterparts even for a moment; she stares at them as though they exert a hypnotic fascination, almost tripping at one point because she’s not looking where she’s going.

That stumble causes Sergeant Parks to turn his head – slowly, measuredly – and give her a baleful glare. She understands the reprimand, and the warning. Her own nod, in return, is so gradual that it takes ten seconds to be completed. She wants him to know that she won’t make that mistake again.

They pass the first group of hungries and keep on going. More houses, terraced this time, and then another row of shops. A side street that they pass is much more densely populated. Hungries stand silently in a tight cluster, as though awaiting the start of a parade. Caldwell guesses that they converged on a kill, and then when they were done simply remained there, in the absence of a trigger that would induce them to move.

She wonders, walking on, whether the sergeant’s strategy is a sound one. They’re embedding themselves very deeply. There are now enemies behind them as well as in front and – potentially – on all sides. Parks wears a troubled expression. Probably he’s thinking the same thing.

Caldwell is about to suggest that they retrace their steps and – as the least bad of a number of unpleasant options – spend the night in one of the semi-detached houses on the outskirts of the town. They might have hungries for neighbours, but at least they’ll have a clear escape route.

But ahead of them, there’s an old-fashioned village green – or the remains of one at least. The green itself has run to jungle, but at least it’s jungle that seems to have a very sparse hungry population. There are a few of them on the strip of road that surrounds the open space, but not nearly so many as on the street they’re on.

Something else too. Private Gallagher sees it first, points – slowly, but emphatically. On the other side of the green is exactly what the sergeant told them to look for: a big detached house, two storeys, standing in its own grounds. It’s a mini-mansion of modern design, masquerading as a country house of an earlier age – but given away by its anachronistic excess. It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of a house, with a half-timbered front, Gothic arches on the ground-floor windows, pilasters framing the front door, gables adhering like barnacles to the roof ridge. The sign on the gate says
wainwright house.

“Good enough,” Parks says. “Let’s go.”

Justineau is about to take the direct route, across the overgrown green, but Parks blocks her with a hand on her shoulder. “No telling what’s in there,” he mutters. “Might startle a cat, or a bird, and get all the deadheads for miles around looking in our direction. Let’s stick to the open road.”

So they skirt the edge of the weeds and couch grass, instead of going through, and that’s why Caldwell sees it.

She slows down, and then she stops. She can’t help herself; she stares. It’s such a crazy, impossible thing.

One of the hungries is walking down the centre of the road. A female – biological age when she encountered the
Ophiocordyceps
pathogen probably late twenties or early thirties. She seems quite well preserved, unblemished apart from bite damage to the left side of her face. Only the grey threads around her eyes and mouth indicate how long it must have been since she left the human race. She’s wearing tan trousers, a white blouse with quarter-length sleeves; stylish summer wear, but the effect is somewhat tarnished by the fact that she’s got one shoe missing. In her long, straight, blonde hair there’s a single cornrow braid.

She’s pushing a baby carriage.

Out of the two things that make this impossible, Caldwell is arrested first by the less remarkable. Why is she walking? Hungries either run, when they pursue prey, or stand still when they don’t. There’s no intermediate state of leisurely perambulation.

And then: why is she clinging to an object? Among the myriad things a human being loses when
Ophiocordyceps
infiltrates the brain and redecorates is the ability to use tools. The baby carriage ought to be as meaningless to this creature as the equations of general relativity would be.

Caldwell can’t help herself. She advances, crab-wise, to intersect the female hungry’s trajectory, careful at these close quarters to watch her only out of the corner of her eye. Out of the corner of her other eye, she’s aware of Parks raising his hand in a halt gesture. She ignores him. This is too important, and she can’t in conscience let it pass.

She stands full in the path of the oncoming carriage, the shambling ex-woman. It bumps against her, with minimal force, and the woman stops dead. Her shoulders slump, her head bows. Now she looks the part: the lights going out, system powering down until something happens to kick-start it again.

Parks and the others have frozen. They’re all looking Caldwell’s way, watching this play out because there’s nothing they can do now to influence it. By the same token, it’s too late for Caldwell to worry about whether her e-blockers will work at point-blank range, so she doesn’t.

Moving with glacial slowness, she comes around to the side of the carriage. From this angle, she can see that the hungry has more injuries than was immediately apparent. Her shoulder has been torn, flesh hanging there in desiccated strips. The white blouse isn’t white at all at the back – it’s black from neckline to hem with ancient, crusted blood.

Inside the pushchair there’s a row of ducks on an elasticated string, which bob and rock in a desultory dance, and a big yellow blanket, dusty and rucked up, which hides whatever else might be there.

The hungry doesn’t seem aware of Caldwell at all. That’s good. The doctor makes her movements even more gradual, even more unhurried. Reaches out her hand to the topmost edge of the blanket.

She takes a fold of the thick, stiff fabric between finger and thumb. Slow as a glacier now, she peels it back.

The baby has been dead for a long time. Two large rats, nesting in what’s left of its ribcage, start up at once and leap with shrill squeals of protest over Caldwell’s left and right shoulders.

Caldwell staggers back with a wordless shriek.

The hungry’s head snaps up and round. It stares at Caldwell, eyes widening. Its mouth gapes open on grey rot and black stumps of teeth.

Sergeant Parks fires a single shot into the back of its skull. Its mouth opens wider still, its head tilting sideways. It falls forward on to the carriage, which rolls and pitches it off on to the road’s gravelled surface.

On all sides, hungries stir to life, swivelling their heads like range-finders.

“Move,” Parks growls. “On me.”

Then he bellows:

“
Run!
”

They almost die in the first few seconds. Because in spite of Parks’ yell, the others freeze.

It just seems like there’s nowhere to run to. Hungries are swarming on them from every direction, the gaps between them closing as they converge.

But there’s only one direction that matters. And Parks sets to work to open it up again.

Three shots drop three of the sprinting dead in their tracks. Two shots miss. Parks gives Justineau a violent shove, gets her running. Gallagher does the same for Dr Caldwell, and the little hungry kid, Melanie, is already going flat out.

They jump over the fallen hungries, which are scrabbling like cockroaches, trying to right themselves. If Parks had the time, if the seconds that are ticking by weren’t shaping up to be the last seconds of their lives, he’d have tried for head shots. As it is, he goes for central body mass and the best odds for sending them down.

Works fine, up until Justineau goes sprawling. One of the holed hungries has grabbed her leg and is swarming up it, hand over hand.

Parks stops long enough to unload a second bullet into the hollow under the ear of the ex-human predator. It lets go. Justineau is up again in an instant, not looking back. Good. Lot’s wife should have had that kind of focus.

He’s shooting to left and right. Only taking out the closest, the ones that are about to jump or grab. Gallagher is doing the same thing, and – though his hit rate is shit – at least he’s not slowing to shoot. That’s better than having him aim like Deadeye Dick and stand still long enough to get tackled.

They’re at the gates now, and there’s no lock on them that Parks can see, but they don’t open. Used to be electric, obviously, but bygones are bygones and in the brave new post-mortem world that just means they don’t bloody work.

“Over!” he yells. “Up and over!”

Which is easily said. A head-high rampart of ornamental ironwork with functional spear points on top says different. They try, all the same. Parks leaves them to it, turns his back to them and goes on firing.

The up side is that now he can be indiscriminate. Set to full auto and aim low. Cut the hungries’ legs out from under them, turning the front-runners into trip hazards to slow the ones behind.

The down side is that more and more of them keep coming. The noise is like a dinner bell. Hungries are crowding into the green space from the streets on every side, at what you’d have to call a dead run. There’s no limit to their numbers, and there is a limit to his ammo.

Which he hits, suddenly. The gun stops vibrating in his hands and the noise of his shots dies away through layers of echoes. He ejects the empty magazine, gropes for another in his pocket. He’s done this so often he could go through the moves in his sleep. Slap the new mag in and give it a quick, sharp tug, pivoting it on the forward lip so it locks into place. Pull the bolt all the way back.

The bolt sticks halfway. The weapon’s just dead weight until he can clear whatever’s jamming it – the first round, most likely, elbowed in the chamber. And two hungries are on top of him now, triangulating from left and right. One of them used to be a man, the other a woman. They’re about a second away from the world’s nastiest three-way.

It’s just instinct. Faulty learning. He takes a step back, groping for his sidearm instead of swinging the rifle like a club. Wastes a second that he doesn’t have, and it’s all over.