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She’s even keen to do it, because she’s restless and unhappy about everything that’s happened today. Kieran dying–dying because her story, her lie, frightened him away. And then Dr Caldwell driving off and leaving Miss Justineau with nowhere safe to sleep. And then the finding of the little corpse, the body of a child much younger than her, with his head cut off.
She thinks maybe Dr Caldwell cut his head off, because that’s the sort of thing that Dr Caldwell does. Underneath the unhappiness, she finds a pure, white anger. Dr Caldwell has to be made to stop doing these things. Someone has to teach her a lesson.
The wild children are just the same as she is, except that they never got to have lessons with Miss Justineau. Nobody ever taught them how to think for themselves, or even how to be people, but they’re learning without that help. They’ve already learned how to be a family. And then Dr Caldwell comes and kills them as though they’re just animals. Maybe they tried to kill her first, but they don’t know any better and Dr Caldwell does.
It fills Melanie with a rage so strong it’s almost like the hungry feeling. And discovering that she can feel like that makes her afraid.
So she doesn’t mind at all going out to explore the grey stuff. She thinks moving will be a lot better for her than staying still.
Sergeant Parks and Miss Justineau find a loft in one of the houses of a three-storey Victorian terrace a few streets away from where Rosie stopped. There’s a ladder that leads up there, but once Sergeant Parks and Miss Justineau have climbed up, Melanie takes the bottom of it while the two grown-ups take the top and they manage between the three of them to rip it out of the metal brackets that hold it in place. Melanie catches it as it falls and lowers it carefully to the floor so that it doesn’t make too much noise.
“I’ll see you later,” she calls up to them softly. She takes the walkie-talkie from her belt and waves it to show that she hasn’t forgotten about it. She’ll be able to talk to them, even if she goes far away.
Miss Justineau whispers a reply. Goodbye, or good luck, or something like that. Melanie is already running lightly back down the stairs, her bare feet silent on the rotten, moss-covered carpet.
She picks a starting point at random and follows the edge of the grey mass. She starts off at a walk, but she’s still filled with a sense of restlessness and urgency, so after a while she breaks into a trot and then into a run. She goes a long way, detouring wherever she has to and then finding the wall again as soon as she can.
It seems to go on for ever. Its outer surface isn’t totally straight; it goes in and out a lot, throwing out salients along the narrower streets, falling back a little where there are open spaces that offer less to cling to. But there’s no sign of a break and nowhere where Melanie can glimpse anything on the further side of the barrier.
After she’s been running for more than an hour, she stops. Not to rest–she could go on for a while yet without discomfort–but to check in with Miss Justineau and Sergeant Parks.
She presses the stud on the walkie-talkie and says hello into it. For a long time it just crackles, but then Sergeant Parks’ voice answers. “How are you doing?”
“I went east,” Melanie tells him. “Quite a long way. The wall just goes on and on.”
“You’ve been walking all this time?”
“Running.”
“Where are you now? Can you see any street signs?”
Melanie can’t, but she walks on until she reaches another crossroads. “Northchurch Road,” she says. “London Borough of Hackney.”
She hears Parks breathing hard. “And it goes on further than that?”
“A lot further. As far as I can see. And I can see a long way, even in the dark.” Melanie isn’t boasting; it’s just something Sergeant Parks needs to know.
“Okay. Thanks, kid. Come on back. If you feel like taking a look to the west, too, I’d be grateful. But don’t wear yourself out. Come on back here if you’re feeling tired.”
“I’m fine,” Melanie says. “Over and out.”
She retraces her steps and goes the other way, but it’s exactly the same. If they go around the wall, they’ll have to go a very long way either to the east or to the west, and it’s not clear where they’ll be able to start going south again.
Finally Melanie finds herself standing directly in front of the wall, a few miles away from where they first met it. It’s as thick here as it is anywhere, but the angle of its fall is different. An outcrop of grey froth leans forward a long way, right over her, and she can see the moon shining down through it. The stark white glow is like a promise, an encouragement. If she pushes forward through the wall, she might be able to find the further side before she loses the light.
Miss Justineau said it was dangerous, but Melanie doesn’t see how, and she’s not afraid of it. She takes a step forward, and then another. The grey threads are up to her ankles, then up to her knees, but they offer no resistance at all. They just tickle a little as she pushes through them, parting with the smallest sigh of not-quite-sound.
The moon follows her, a moving spotlight in which everything opens itself up to her gaze. The grey threads quickly get thicker and thicker. Objects that she passes–rubbish bins, parked cars, post boxes, garden hedges and gates–are swathed in endless layers, turned into granite statues of themselves.
Twenty feet in, Melanie finds the first fallen bodies. She slows to a halt, amazed at what she’s seeing. The hungries have fallen down in the middle of the street, or slumped at the bases of walls–just like the bodies they saw when they were walking into London. But there are so many more of them here! From their split skulls and exploded heads, grey stems about six inches in diameter have sprouted like the trunks of trees. The stems grow straight upwards to incredible heights, and the threads pour out from them at all angles in endless proliferation. Some of them connect to whatever other stems are nearest, making a dense net like a million spiderwebs all woven together. Others wrap around whatever is in their path, or if there’s nothing, they shelve gently down to the ground. Wherever the threads touch the ground, another trunk appears, but these trunks are a lot thinner and shorter than the trunks that grow straight out of the bodies of the hungries.
Melanie goes closer. She can’t help herself. The sad husks at the bottom of each fungus tree don’t scare her. There’s nothing of humanity left in them, nothing to remind anyone that they were once alive. They’re more like clothes that someone has taken off and left lying on the ground.
Close up, she can see the grey fruit that hangs on these ghost trees. She reaches up to touch one of the spherical growths, which is just a little higher up on the trunk than the top of her head. Its surface is cool and leathery, and gives very slightly under the touch of her fingers. She presses hard, and makes an indentation. When she takes her hand away, the mark slowly disappears. The surface of the ball is elastic enough to spring back into shape. After a slow count of ten, it looks exactly the same as it did before she touched it.
Melanie wanders on through the grey wilderness. It doesn’t seem to have a further side; it just keeps going. And it keeps getting thicker. After a while, there’s only just enough space between the trunks for her to slide her skinny body through, and the moonlight is dripping down like dirty water through a raft of threads so tightly intertwined they’re almost like a solid mass.
Melanie’s shoulder bumps into one of the grey balls and it falls to the ground with a muffled plop. She stoops to pick it up. There’s a puckered ring where it was attached to the trunk, but the rest of the surface is smooth and unbroken. She squeezes it in her hand, and once again it returns quickly to the shape it had before she touched it.
If she goes any further, she’ll be bumping into the trunks. She touches one and finds that it feels unpleasantly clammy. She recoils a little. She was expecting the trunks to be smooth and dry like the fruit they bear, which in Melanie’s opinion would have been a lot less disgusting.
Something moves off to her left and she starts violently. She thought she had this twilit world to herself. A strange figure stumbles towards her, silhouetted in the dull moonlight. From the neck downwards it looks like a man–but it has no shoulders or neck or head. Its upper body is just an undifferentiated lump.
She backs away from the thing, scared more than anything by its utter strangeness. But it’s not attacking her. It doesn’t even seem to know she’s there.
As it passes her, she recognises it for what it is. It’s a hungry whose torso has started to split open. The first foot or so of one of the upright trunks is thrusting upwards from its chest, splintered spars of rib protruding outwards from its point of origin. Threads have blossomed profusely from the trunk, disguising what’s left of the hungry’s head, which has been forced sideways at a steep angle by the relentless upward growth.
Melanie stares at the apparition, both relieved–because the horror of the unknown is more frightening than any horror you can understand–and revolted at this strange violation of human flesh.
The hungry shambles on past her, its zigzag course dictated by the trunks it bumps into and bounces off. It’s almost more ridiculous than it is horrible. It will fall down soon, Melanie imagines–and then the trunk will be pointing sideways. It will have to find some way to right itself.
This whole forest grew from the ruined dead. This is where the hungries end up after all their faithful service to the infection that made them what they are.
Melanie sees her future, and accepts it. But she’s not ready to die with so many important things still to be done.
She turns and walks back the way she came, following the tunnel of her own cleared path through the crowding grey filaments.