The Girl with All the Gifts

Overwhelmed by the fear and pressure, Gallagher flees. He heads for the river, hoping to find a boat and sail to a secluded island. As he wanders the empty streets, he realizes how little he’s brought with him—no food, almost no water, and not the last vestiges of e-blocker. Reluctantly, he decides to double back a few miles to the garage where he and Justineau found the stash of food. He soon gets lost.

Certain he’s being followed, he darts across a street and into a burned-out shop. There, he finds packets of freeze-dried food. He eats a bit, fills his pockets with more, and then stops to leaf through a porn magazine. He hears movement and turns to see a small girl, “one of the Melanie kind of hungries, that can think and doesn’t have to eat people if it doesn’t want to” (327). She holds out a headless rat—a “peace offering,” he thinks. He approaches, reaches for the rat, and several other children emerge from hiding and attack. He collapses to the floor as more children converge, some with knives or other weapons. He draws his gun and aims for one of the older boys, but the clip is empty. Desperate, he takes the grenade from his pocket, but he can’t pull the pin. He doesn’t have the will to kill children, imagining their childhood “has probably been as big a load of shit as his was” (332). Sensing Gallagher’s surrender, the children swarm and devour him. 

Melanie leads Justineau and Parks on a search for Gallagher. They approach the store where Gallagher died; Melanie tells Parks to draw his weapon and remove her cuffs and muzzle. It’s too late, however. They find Gallagher’s remains in a corner, most of his flesh eaten away. Melanie suggests they bury him so dogs and other hungries don’t eat the rest; she also argues that Parks has a duty to honor a fellow soldier. Burying him is impractical, so she then suggests cremation with some of the fuel from Rosie. Parks realizes that Melanie is clinging to antiquated lessons she learned from class: the importance of death rituals, for example. Parks agrees to burn the body. When Justineau protests, he grows angry and fires a shot into the ceiling. Honoring Gallagher is suddenly more important than giving away their position. After burning the body with the fluid from the store’s disposable lighters, they head back to Rosie, but they hear its engines and see Caldwell driving it madly down the street. She drives past them, leaving them standing in Rosie’s wake. 

Inside Rosie, Caldwell locks the door, powers up the generator, and examines brain tissue samples under the electron microscope. She sees how the fungal pathogen entwines itself around the neurons; she also sees the structure of uninfected neurons and begins to develop a hypothesis. In order to test it, however, she needs tissue samples from an infected child. She surmises that Justineau will resist any attempt to take brain samples from Melanie, so she constructs a plan: assemble the airlock and seal it tight, fill the airlock with phosgene gas and hope that Melanie enters first, and then lock the door before anyone else enters. The gas will kill Melanie without damaging her brain tissue.

While waiting for the others to return, Caldwell notices several hungry children lingering nearby, watching her through Rosie’s window. She decides to capture and kill one of the feral children instead. She opens the outer door to let her scent lure the children inside and into the waiting airlock. One boy, at a signal from the leader, rushes the door and flings his body inside. Caldwell quickly shuts the second, inner door, but it closes on the boy’s torso, crushing him. As Caldwell reaches for the boy, one of the children slingshots a rock through the small opening of the inner door the trapped boy’s body has created. It tears through Caldwell’s face mask and shatters her jaw. The rest of the children approach the lab and force open the outer door. In a panic, Caldwell activates Rosie’s engine and drives wildly through the street, hoping to escape the ravenous children. After driving south through several outlying towns, she finally stops; a huge gray wall stands directly in her path. 

Parks, Justineau, and Melanie follow Rosie’s scent trail. They understand that without the mobile lab’s protection, they have no chance of survival. Justineau despairs of catching up to Caldwell, but Melanie pleads with her to try. She can’t protect her teacher from the gang of feral children if they remain stationary. They decide to walk until dark and then find a place to hide. Since Melanie can run fastest, Parks gives her a walkie-talkie so she can lead them to her if she gets too far ahead. She hugs Justineau, promising to keep her safe, and runs ahead, following Rosie’s trail.