17
For Helen Justineau, the first hint that something is wrong is when she’s walking down the corridor from the shower to the classroom. She looks for Melanie’s face in the mesh window of her door, but Melanie doesn’t appear.
She unlocks the classroom and stands at her desk while the children are wheeled in one by one. She says hello to each in turn. The twentieth child (the twenty-first, until Marcia was taken) ought to be Melanie, but it’s Anne. One of the deadpan soldier boys deposits her and immediately heads for the door.
“Hold on,” Justineau says.
The private stops, turns back to face her with minimal civility. “Yes, miss?”
“Where’s Melanie?”
He shrugs. “One of the cells was empty,” he offers. “I went on to the next one. Is there a problem?”
Justineau doesn’t answer. She leaves the classroom, walks out into the corridor. She goes to Melanie’s cell. Nothing to be seen there. The door of the cell stands open. The bed and the chair are both empty.
Nothing about this feels right. The soldier is at her back, asking her again if there’s a problem. She ignores him and heads for the stairs.
Sergeant Parks is standing at the top, talking in a low voice to a group of three soldiers who all look very scared–very far from business as usual. At another time that might give Justineau pause. At another time she’d at least wait for him to finish, but she barges right in.
“Sergeant,” she says. “Has Melanie been moved?”
Parks has seen her walk up, but he stares at her now as though he’s only just registered who she is. “I’m sorry, Miss Justineau,” he says. “We’ve got something of an emergency. Potentially. We’re clocking large number of hungries close to the perimeter.”
“Has Melanie been moved?” Justineau repeats.
Sergeant Parks tries again. “If you go back to the classroom, we can talk about this as soon as—”
“Just answer me. Where is she?”
Parks glances away, just for a second, then looks her square in the eyes. “Dr Caldwell asked for her to be sent over to the lab.”
Justineau’s stomach free-falls. “And you… you took her?” she asks stupidly.
He nods. “About half an hour ago. I would have told you, obviously, but class hadn’t started and I didn’t know where you were.”
But she should have known as soon as she saw the empty cell. Once it’s said, it becomes so blindingly obvious that she curses herself for wasting these few precious minutes. She’s off at a run toward the lab complex. Parks is shouting at her–something about needing to get inside–but there’ll be time for him later.
If she’s too late, all the time in the worthless fucking world.