by M. R. Carey
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.
27
They skirt the edge of Shefford and drive across open fields to Sergeant Parks’ stream, which is actually a shallow stretch of the river Flit. They fill a dozen ten-gallon plastic drums with water and load them into the lockers on the Humvee that are designed to hold them.
While they’re there, Justineau takes off her sweater and washes it in the quick-flowing water, squeezes it out against a rock, washes it some more. The blood gradually detaches itself from the fibres, rust-brown clouds swirling and dissipating in the turbulence. She ties it to the Humvee’s radio antenna to dry. It’s heavy enough to bend the antenna almost horizontal.
Melanie uses water from the river to wash the blue gel off her body. Its smell reminds her of the lab, she tells Justineau, and it makes her look really silly besides.
From the river, they go to a set of coordinates that Parks reads off from a file on his mobile phone. They’re looking for one of the supply caches that were set up when they first took over the base, intended to provision a retreat to Beacon in the event of an emergency like the one that just happened. The cache would have contained food, guns and ammunition, medical supplies, tubes of e-blocker gel, water purification tablets, maps, comms gear, ultra-light blankets – everything they could possibly need. But it’s academic now, because there’s just a hole in the ground where the cache should be. Junkers have found it, or someone else has. Best-case scenario: they weren’t the only ones who escaped from the base, and some other group has beaten them to it. But Sergeant Parks doesn’t think so, because there wouldn’t have been time to dig all the way down to the cache and then get clear before they arrived. This was probably done long before.
So they’re limited to what they’ve got in the vehicle. They go and take inventory now, throwing open all the lockers inside and out to see which are full and which are empty. According to regs, Parks explains, they should all be full. He leaves the other half of that thought unspoken; after this many years in the field, regs don’t count for much.
There’s good news and there’s bad. The Humvee boasts a well-stocked first aid kit and an intact weapons locker. The rations locker, though, is three-quarters empty. Between the five of them, they’ve got enough food sachets for a couple of days at best. There are also two backpacks, five water canteens and a flare gun that carries seven pre-loaded slugs.
Maybe the most worrying thing is that they’ve got only three tubes of e-blocker gel between them, one of which is already started.
Justineau wrestles against a humanitarian impulse, and loses. She takes out the first aid kit and indicates Caldwell’s hands with a nod of her head. “We might as well get some bandages on those,” she says. “Unless you’ve got something else you should be doing.”
The injuries to Caldwell’s hands are very severe. The cuts go all the way to the bone. The flesh of her palms hangs in ragged flaps, partially sliced away, as though she was a Sunday roast that someone took a clumsy pass at. The skin around these areas is swollen and red. The blood that’s dried on them is black.
Justineau washes the wounds as best she can with water from a canteen. Caldwell doesn’t cry out, but she’s trembling and pale as Justineau carefully wipes away the dried blood with cotton wool swabs. This makes the wounds bleed again, but Justineau suspects that’s a good thing. Infection is a real possibility out here, and blood plays its part in flushing germs out from the surface of a wound.
Then she disinfects. Caldwell moans for the first time as the astringent liquid bites into her newly opened flesh. Sweat stands out on her forehead, and she bites her lower lip to keep from crying out.
Justineau puts field dressings on both of the doctor’s hands, leaving the fingers free to move as far as she can, but making sure that all the injured areas are well covered. She took a first aid course once, a couple of years back, so she knows what she’s doing. It’s a good, workmanlike job.
“Thank you,” Caldwell says when she’s finished.
Justineau shrugs. The last thing she wants is civilities from this woman. And Caldwell seems to recognise this, because she doesn’t take the civilities any further.
“All aboard,” Parks says, as Gallagher slams the boot shut. “We should get moving.”
“Give me a minute,” Justineau says. She takes the sweater down from the radio antenna and inspects it. There are still a few stains on it, but it’s mostly dry. She helps Melanie to wriggle into it.
“Is it too scratchy?” she asks.
Melanie shakes her head, and gives a smile – weak, but sincere. “It’s really soft,” she says. “And warm. Thank you, Miss Justineau.”
“You’re welcome, Melanie. Does it … smell okay?”
“It doesn’t smell of blood. Or of you. It doesn’t smell of anything very much.”
“Then I guess it will do for now,” Justineau says. “Until we can find something better.”
Parks has been waiting all this time, not even trying to look patient. Justineau climbs into the Humvee, giving Melanie a final wave. As soon as the door is closed, Melanie swarms up the outside of the vehicle and finds herself a comfortable place, wedged in behind the cover of the pedestal gun. She holds on tight as the Humvee starts to roll.
Now they’re doubling back on their own tracks, eastwards, to the ancient north–south slash of the A1. They take it slow, to avoid giving the rear axle any further shocks. And they’re careful to skirt around the towns. That’s where you always get the heaviest concentrations of hungries, Parks says, and the noise of the Humvee would bring them running. But all the same, they’re making good time.
For about five miles.
Then the Humvee rocks and yaws like a dinghy on a wild sea, pitching them out of their seats on to the floor. Caldwell gives an anguished howl as she steadies herself, unthinking, with her injured hands. She goes into a tight crouch around them, hugging them against her chest.
There’s a single, jolting crash, after which the Humvee starts up a different kind of shuddering, intense and agonising. A shriek like an air-raid siren splits the air. The axle’s gone, and they’re dragging their backside across the tarmac.
Parks slams on the brakes and brings them to a dead stop. They slew over, settle onto the road with a hydraulic sigh, more like an animal lying down than anything mechanical.
Parks sighs too. Braces himself.
Justineau has never felt anything for the sergeant up to now apart from resentment and suspicion – spiking into real hatred when he delivered Melanie into Caldwell’s hands – but in this moment she admires him. The loss of the Humvee is a crushing blow, and he doesn’t even take the time to curse about it.
He gets them moving. Gets them out of their dead transport. First thing Justineau does is to check on Melanie, who’s managed to hold on through all the bucking and shaking. She takes the girl’s hand briefly and squeezes it. “Change of plan,” she says. Melanie nods. She gets it. Without being asked, she climbs down again and grabs some distance, just as she did at the cache site.
Sergeant Parks throws open the boot, takes a backpack for himself and gives the o
ther one to Gallagher. They’ll need as much water as they can take with them, but there’s no way they can carry those big drums. Everyone gets a canteen, fills it from one of the drums. Parks takes the fifth canteen himself (the possibility of him giving it to Melanie is never raised). Everyone except Melanie has a good, long swig from the half-empty drum, until their stomachs are uncomfortably full. When it’s mostly empty, Parks offers it to Melanie to finish, but she’s never drunk water in her life. The little moisture her body needs, she’s used to taking from live meat. The thought of pouring water into her mouth makes her wrinkle up her face and back away.
Everyone gets a knife and a handgun, the sheath and holster clipping right on to their belts. The soldiers take rifles too, and Parks scoops up a double handful of grenades like strange black fruit. The grenades are smooth-sided, not sculpted into lozenges like the ones Justineau has seen in old war movies. Parks also helps himself – after a moment’s thought – to the flare gun, which he slips into the backpack, and to a pair of walkie-talkies from under the Humvee’s dash. He gives one of these to Gallagher and hooks the other into his belt.
Into the backpacks too go the meagre food supplies, divided evenly between them. Justineau adds the first aid kit, despite its awkward bulk. Chances are pretty good that they’ll need it.
They work with feverish haste, even though the country road they’re on is silent except for birdsong. They take their cue from Parks, who is grim-faced and urgent, speaking in monosyllables, chivvying them along.
“Okay,” he says at last. “We’re good to go. Everybody ready to move out?”
One by one they nod. It’s starting to sink in that a journey you could do in half a day on good roads has just become a four-or five-day trek through terra completely incognita, and Justineau presumes that that’s as hard for the rest of them to come to terms with as it is for her. She was brought to the base by helicopter, directly from Beacon – and she lived in Beacon for long enough that it became her status quo. Thoughts from before that time, from the Breakdown, when the world filled with monsters who looked like people you knew and loved, and every living soul went scrambling and skittering for cover like mice when the cat wakes up, have been so deeply suppressed, for so long, that they’re not memories at all – they’re memories of memories.
And that’s the world they’re going to walk through now. Home is seventy-odd miles away. Seventy miles of England’s green and pleasant land, all gone to the hungries and as safe to wander in as it would be to dance a mazurka in a minefield. A bewildering prospect, even if that were all.
And Sergeant Parks’ face tells her, even before he speaks, that that’s not all.
“You still dead set against cutting the kid loose?” he asks her.
“Yes.”
“Then I’m laying down some conditions.”
He goes around to the side of the Humvee. There’s another locker there, that nobody has opened yet. It turns out to be full of the highly specialised kit that Parks and his people used to use, way back in the day, when they raided the towns of Herts, Beds and Bucks for the high-functioning hungries that Caroline Caldwell was so eager to meet. Restraint harnesses, handcuffs, stun batons, telescoping poles with lasso collars at their business end; a whole chandler’s shop full of ways to bring dangerous animals in alive, with minimal risk to their handlers.
“No,” Justineau says, her throat dry.
But Melanie, when she sees this filthy arsenal, says yes just as quickly, just as firmly. She looks Parks in the eye, appraising, maybe approving. “It’s a good idea,” she says. “To make sure I can’t hurt anyone.”
“No,” Parks says. “The good idea would be something else entirely. This is just making the best of a bad job.” Justineau is in no doubt about his meaning. He’d like to put a bullet in Melanie’s head and leave her by the roadside. But given that the civilians have joined forces against him, given that both Caldwell and Justineau, for their different reasons, want Melanie to stay on as a member of their party, this is his grudging compromise.
The two soldiers cuff Melanie’s hands behind her back. They attach an adjustable leash to the chain of the cuffs, and play it out to about two metres. Then they put a mask over the lower half of the girl’s face, which looks something like a dog’s muzzle or a medieval scold’s bridle. It’s made for an adult but fully adjustable, and they lock it really tight.
When they start to attach a hobble to Melanie’s ankles, which will allow her to walk but not to run, Justineau steps in. “Forget it,” she snaps. “Do I have to keep reminding you that we’re running from junkers as well as hungries? Making sure Melanie can’t bite is one thing. Making sure she can’t run either – that’s just killing her without wasting a bullet.”
Which the sergeant clearly wouldn’t mind at all. But he thinks about it for a while and finally gives a curt nod.
“You keep talking about killing in relation to the test subjects, Helen,” Caldwell says, didactic by default. “I’ve told you this before. In most cases, brain function stops a few hours after infection, which meets the clinical definition of death as far as—”
Justineau turns around and punches Caldwell in the face.
It’s a hard punch, and it hurts her hand a lot more than she expects, the shock travelling up her arm all the way to the elbow.
Caldwell staggers and almost falls, her arms flailing for balance as she takes one and then two steps back. She stares at Justineau in utter astonishment. Justineau stares right back, nursing the hand she hit with. But she’s got one hand left if it turns out to be needed, and of course that’s one more than Caldwell has just then.
“Keep talking,” she suggests. “I’ll knock the teeth out of your mouth one by one.”
The two soldiers stand by, interested but impartial. Clearly, they don’t have a dog in this catfight.
Melanie also watches, big-eyed, mouth wide open. The anger drains out of Justineau, replaced by a surge of shame at her loss of self-control. She feels the blood rush into her face.
Caldwell’s blood is showing too. She licks a trickle of it from her lip. “You’re both my witnesses,” she says to Parks and Gallagher, her voice thick. “That was an unprovoked assault.”
“We saw it,” Parks confirms. His tone is dry. “I look forward to being someplace where our witnessing will make a difference. Okay, are we done? Anyone got any speeches they want to make? No? Then let’s move out.”
They walk on down the lane, due east, leaving the Humvee spavined and silent behind them. Caldwell stands alone for a few moments before joining the exodus. Clearly she’s amazed that the attack on her person has elicited so little interest. But she’s a realist. She rolls with the bad news.
Justineau wonders if they should have pushed the Humvee into one of the neighbouring fields to hide their trail a little, but she presumes that with the axle broken and the back end of the vehicle hard against the ground, it would be way too heavy to move. And burning it would be a whole lot worse, of course – like sending up a signal flare to tell the enemy exactly where they are.
Plenty of other enemies waiting out there for them without that.
28
Melanie builds the world around her as she goes.
This is mostly countryside, with fields on all sides. Rectangular fields, mostly, or at least with roughly squared-off edges. But they’re overgrown with weeds to the grown-ups’ shoulder height, whatever crops they were once planted with swallowed up long ago. Where the fields meet the road, there are ragged hedges or crumbling walls, and the surface they’re walking on is a faded black carpet pitted with holes, some of them big enough for her to fall into.
A landscape of decay – but still gloriously and heart-stoppingly beautiful. The sky overhead is a bright blue bowl of almost infinite size, given depth by a massive bank of pure white cloud at the limit of vision that goes up and up and up like a tower. Birds and insects are everywhere, some of them familiar to her now from the field where they stopped that m
orning. The sun warms her skin, pouring energy down on to the world out of that upturned bowl – it makes flowers grow on the land, Melanie knows, and algae in the sea; starts food chains all over the place.
A million smells freight the complicated air.
The few houses they see are far off, but even at this distance Melanie observes the signs of ruin. Windows broken, or boarded up. Doors hanging off their hinges. One big farmhouse has its roof all fallen in, the spine of the roof making a perfect downward-pointing parabola.
She remembers Mr Whitaker’s lesson, which feels like a very long time ago now. The population of Birmingham is zero … This world she’s seeing was built by people, to meet their needs, but it’s not meeting their needs any more. It’s all changed. And it’s changed because they’ve retreated from it. They’ve left it to the hungries.
Melanie realises now that she’s been told all this already. She just ignored it, ignored the self-evident logic of her world, and believed – out of the many conflicting stories she was given – only the parts she wanted to believe.
Sergeant Parks is wrestling with a logistical problem, and he still hasn’t seen a way out of it.
His initial instinct was to stay clear of the towns on their route – of any built-up area at all – and make this whole stroll strictly cross-country. The argument for doing that is obvious. The hungries mostly stay close to where they were first turned, or infected, or whatever you want to call it. It’s not a homing instinct, it’s just a side effect of the fact that when they’re not hunting, they’re mostly standing stock still, like little kids playing Grandmother’s Footsteps. So the cities and towns are full of them, the countryside more sparsely populated, exactly the way it used to be before the Breakdown.
But Parks has got three good points to set against that one. The first is the temperature thing – something he noticed when he was out in the field, and teaches to all the soldiers under his command, even though Caldwell says the evidence is still “far from conclusive”. The hungries’ known triggers are endocrine sweat from an unmasked human body, rapid movement and loud noises. But there’s a fourth, which mostly comes into play when the temperature drops at night. They can zero in on you by your body heat, somehow. They can pick you out in the dark like you were a neon sign saying FINE DINING HERE.