The Girl with All the Gifts

Parks, Gallagher, and Justineau take Melanie to the top of the shattered staircase. Parks removes the shackles, and Melanie dons her new clothes. Justineau gives Melanie a small handheld alarm in case she needs to make noise to draw the hungries away. The men slowly lower Melanie directly into the horde of hungries, who barely take notice. She gently pushes her way through the crowd and outside through a shattered window. Out on the street, Melanie searches the abandoned homes. She traps a startled fox, wrangles it into docility, and carries it back toward the mass of waiting hungries. Then she screams. Awakened by the sound, the hungries turn toward Melanie. She releases the terrified fox, and the hungries, now with prey in their sights, pursue. Melanie watches as the great mass of hungries clear the house and the front yard. She returns to the house where Parks and Justineau are waiting. “Good job, kid” (237), Parks says.

Back out on the street, the group moves through town looking for the nearest access point to the A1. They maintain a respectable pace, although Caldwell lags behind, slowed by fatigue. They pass a “burn shadow”—a remnant of a disastrous government policy meant to eradicate hungries with incendiary explosives, but which mostly destroyed infrastructure and killed uninfected civilians.