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.
71
Melanie leads the way and Sergeant Parks comes after, carrying Miss Justineau on his left shoulder. His right arm hangs straight down at his side, swinging very slightly with the rhythm of his walking. He doesn’t seem to be able to move it.
Miss Justineau is unconscious, but she’s definitely still breathing. And there’s no sign that she’s been bitten.
The kids are getting their courage back, a little at a time. They don’t dare to press an attack just yet, but stones whistle out of the dark to clatter at Melanie’s feet. She keeps to the same level pace, and Sergeant Parks does too. If they run, Melanie thinks, the children will chase them. And then they’ll have to fight again.
They turn a corner at last, and Rosie is before them. Melanie walks just a little faster so she can get there first and open the door. Sergeant Parks staggers over the threshold and sinks to his knees. With Melanie’s help, he puts Miss Justineau down. He’s exhausted, but she can’t let him rest yet.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” she tells him, kicking the door closed. “There’s something we still need to do.”
Sergeant Parks gestures, left-handed, at the ragged rent in his shoulder. His face is pale, and his eyes are already a little red at the corners.
“I… have to get out of here,” he pants. “I’m—”
“The flame-throwers, Sergeant,” Melanie interrupts urgently. “You told Miss Justineau there were flame-throwers. Where are they?”
He doesn’t seem to understand what she wants at first. He meets her gaze, breathing hard. “The wall?” he hazards. “The… the fungus stuff?”
“Yes.”
Sergeant gets to his feet and stumbles through to the aft weapons station. “You need to power up,” he tells her.
“I did that before I came to get you.”
Sergeant wipes his face with the heel of his hand. His voice is a whisper. “Okay. Okay.” He points to two toggles. “Primer. Feed. You light the primer, then you uncap the feed, then you fire. Jet stays alight until you let go of the throttle here.”
Melanie stands on the firing platform. She can reach the controls, but she’s not tall enough to put her eye to the sights or even to peep over the lower edge of the viewing port. Sergeant can see that she’s not going to be able to do this by herself.
“Okay,” he says again, hollow with pain and exhaustion.
She stands down, and he climbs up in her place, stumbling and almost falling off the platform. With one hand useless, firing the flame-thrower seems to be a lot harder to do than it was to explain. Melanie helps him, working the toggles while he manhandles the gun itself.
The turret turns with servos, following the movement of the gun barrel, so at least that part is easy. Sergeant targets on the dull grey mass of the fungus forest, which is impossible to miss because it fills half of the horizon.
“Anywhere?” he asks her. His voice is slow and slippery, the way Mr Whitaker’s voice sometimes used to be.
“Anywhere,” Melanie confirms.
“Kid, there’s miles and miles of that stuff. It won’t… it won’t penetrate. Not all the way. It’s not going to punch a way through.”
“It doesn’t have to,” Melanie says. “The fire will spread.”
“I fucking hope so.” Parks leans on the barrel to aim, and depresses the trigger. Fire streaks through the sky, horizontally at first, dipping at the end of its arc to slice through the grey mass like a sword twenty metres long.
Filaments that stand directly in the path of the flame just disappear. It’s only to the sides that the fire catches and spreads. And it spreads faster than they can turn their heads to see. The fungal mat is as dry as tinder. It seems to want to burn. In the light of the fierce flames, some of the nearer trunks can now be seen even from this far off, straight-edge shadows that shift wildly as the heart of the fire roams like a wild animal through the fungus forest. With more moisture inside them than the filaments, they smoulder and spit sparks for a long time before they catch too and pass from shadow into eye-hurting light.
After a full minute, Melanie touches Sergeant’s arm. “That should be enough,” she says.
Gratefully he releases the trigger. The fiery sword retracts itself in the space of a second back into the flame-thrower’s barrel.
Sergeant steps down off the platform, his knees buckling a little under him.
“You’ve got to let me out,” he mumbles. “I’m not safe any more. I… It feels like my fucking head is splitting apart. For the love of God, kid, open the door.”
He doesn’t seem to be able to find it by himself. He turns one way, then another, blinking his bloodshot eyes and grimacing against the light. Melanie takes his good left hand and leads him to the door.
Miss Justineau is sitting up now, but she doesn’t seem to notice them as they walk by. There’s a puddle of vomit at her feet, and her head is hanging down between her knees.
Melanie stops to kiss her, very softly, on the top of her head. “I’m coming back,” she says. “I’ll take care of you.”
Miss Justineau doesn’t answer.
Sergeant’s hand is on the handle of the outer door, but Melanie’s hand closes over his, gently, trying not to hurt him, but stopping him from pulling back on the handle and opening the door. “We have to wait,” she explains.
She cycles the airlock, following the instructions written on the wall right next to the controls. Sergeant Parks watches, mystified. The light goes from red to green and she opens the outer door.
They walk out into a mist so fine it’s like someone laid a lace curtain across the world. The air tastes the same as it ever did, but it feels a little gritty on the tongue. Melanie keeps licking her lips to clear the rime from them, and she sees Sergeant Parks do it too.
“Is there somewhere I can sit?” he asks her. He’s blinking a lot, and a red tear has leaked down out of one of his eyes.
Melanie finds a black plastic wheelie bin and tips it over. She sits Sergeant down on it. She sits herself down beside him.
“What did we do?” Sergeant’s voice is hoarse, and he looks around urgently, as though he’s lost something but he can’t remember what it is. “What did we do, kid?”
“We burned the grey stuff. We burned it all up.”
“Right,” Parks says. “Is… is Helen…?”
“You saved her,” Melanie assures him. “You brought her back inside, and she’s safe now. She didn’t get bitten or anything. You saved her, Sergeant.”
“Good,” Sergeant says. And then he’s quiet for a long time. “Listen,” he says at last. “Could you… Kid, listen. Could you do me a favour?”
“What is it?” Melanie asks.
Sergeant takes his sidearm out of its holster. He has to reach across his body to do this with his left hand. He ejects the empty magazine, and gropes around in his belt until he finds a fresh one, which he snaps home. He shows Melanie where to put her fingers, and he shows her how to take off the safety. He chambers a round.
“I’d like…” he says. And then he goes quiet again.
“What would you like?” Melanie asks him. She’s holding the big gun in her tiny hands and she knows, really, what the answer is. But he has to say it so she’s sure she’s right.
“I’ve seen enough of them to know… I don’t want that,” Sergeant says. “I mean…” He swallows noisily. “Don’t want to go out like that. No offence.”
“I’m not offended, Sergeant.”
“I can’t shoot left-handed. Sorry. It’s a lot to ask.”
“It’s all right.”
“If I could shoot left-handed…”
“Don’t worry, Sergeant. I’ll do it. I won’t leave you until it’s done.”
They sit side by side while the dawn comes up, the sky lightening by such tiny increments that you can’t tell when the night stops and the day begins.
“We burned it?” Sergeant asks.
“Yes.”
He sighs. The sound has a liquid undertow.
“Bullshit,” he groans. “This stuff in the air… it’s the fungus, right? What did we do, kid? Tell me. Or I’ll take that gun away from you and send you to bed early.”
Melanie resigns herself. She didn’t want to trouble him with this stuff when he’s dying, but she won’t lie to him after he’s asked her for the truth. “There are pods,” she says, pointing towards where the fungus wall is still burning. “In there. Pods full of seeds. Dr Caldwell said this was the fungus’s mature form, and the pods were meant to break open and spread the seeds on the wind. But the pods are very tough, and they can’t open by themselves. Dr Caldwell said they needed something to give them a push and make them open. She called it an environmental trigger. And I remembered the trees in the rainforest that need a big fire to make their seeds grow. I used to have a picture of them, on the wall of my cell back at the base.”
Parks is struck dumb with the horror of what he’s just done. Melanie strokes his hand, contrite. “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you,” she says. “I knew it would make you sad.”
“But…” Parks shakes his head. As hard as it is for her to explain, it’s a lot harder for him to understand. She can see that it’s hard for him even to frame the words. Ophiocordyceps is demolishing the parts of his mind it doesn’t need, leaving him less and less to think with. In the end he settles for, “Why?”
Because of the war, Melanie tells him. And because of the children. The children like her–the second generation. There’s no cure for the hungry plague, but in the end the plague becomes its own cure. It’s terribly, terribly sad for the people who get it first, but their children will be okay and they’ll be the ones who live and grow up and have children of their own and make a new world.
“But only if you let them grow up,” she finishes. “If you keep shooting them and cutting them into pieces and throwing them into pits, nobody will be left to make a new world. Your people and the junker people will keep killing each other, and you’ll both kill the hungries wherever you find them, and in the end the world will be empty. This way is better. Everybody turns into a hungry all at once, and that means they’ll all die, which is really sad. But then the children will grow up, and they won’t be the old kind of people but they won’t be hungries either. They’ll be different. Like me, and the rest of the kids in the class.
“They’ll be the next people. The ones who make everything okay again.”
She doesn’t know how much of this Sergeant has even heard. His movements are changing. His face slackens and then twists by turns, his hands jerking suddenly like the hands of badly animated puppets. He mutters “Okay” a few times, and Melanie thinks that might mean he gets what she said. That he accepts it. Or it might just mean that he’s remembered she was talking to him and wants to reassure her that he’s still listening.
“She was blonde,” he says suddenly.
“What?”
“Marie. She was… blonde. Like you. So if we’d had a kid…”
His hands circle each other, searching for a meaning that evades them. After a while he goes very still, until the sound of a bird singing on a wire between the houses makes him sit bolt upright and swivel his head, left and then right, to locate the source of the sound. His jaw starts to open and close, the hunger reflex kicking in sudden and strong.
Melanie pulls the trigger. The soft bullet goes into Sergeant’s head and doesn’t come out again.