Book Snails Book Group discussion

"...Justineau shows Melanie what else she’s found. In a few of the rooms there were clothes in the wardrobe or the drawers. One of them must have been occupied by a girl once – probably a bit younger than Melanie, but of a roughly similar size.

Melanie stares at the clothes that Justineau holds out, without comment. Sombre and withdrawn as she is, it’s obvious that they still fascinate her. Pink jeans with a unicorn embroidered on the back pocket. A pastel blue T-shirt emblazoned with the motto BORN TO DANCE. An aviator jacket, also pink, with button-up flaps at the shoulders and lots and lots of pockets. White knickers and rainbow-striped socks. Trainers with jewel-spangled laces.

“Do you like them?” Justineau asks. Melanie hasn’t spoken, but her gaze flicks backwards and forwards between the strange offerings, studying them or perhaps comparing them.

“Yes,” she says. “I think so. But…” She hesitates.

“What?”

“I don’t know how to put them on.”

Of course. Melanie has never worn clothes with buttons or zip fasteners. And then she’s got the chain and the handcuffs to contend with. “I’ll help you,” Justineau promises. “We can’t do anything until morning, but before we get moving again, I’ll ask Sergeant Parks to untie you for a few minutes. We’ll get you out of that mouldy old sweater and into your glad rags.”

“Thank you, Miss Justineau.” The little girl’s face is solemn. “We’ll need the other soldier to be there too.”

Justineau is a little thrown by this. “They don’t need to watch while you change,” she says. “I think we’ll make them wait in the next room, don’t you?”

Melanie shakes her head. “No.”

“No?”

“One to untie me, the other to point the gun at me. That’s how many it takes."

Melanie’s face is unreadable, but some powerful emotion flits across it, doesn’t settle. “I’m different because I don’t want to eat anyone.”

“No? Then what was that red stuff all over you when you jumped on board the Humvee, day before yesterday? Looked like blood to me.”

“Sometimes I need to eat people. I never want to.”

“That’s all you’ve got, kid? Shit happens?”

Another pause. Longer, this time. “It hasn’t happened to you.”

“Very true,” Parks admits. “Still feels like we’re splitting hairs, though. You’re offering to help us against those things down there, when it seems to me that you’d want to be down there with them, looking up at us, waiting for the dinner bell to ring. So I guess that’s what I’m asking you. Why would you come back, and why would I believe you’d come back?”

For the first time, Melanie lets her impatience show. “I’d come back because I want to. Because I’m with you, not with them. And there isn’t any way to be with them, even if I wanted to. They’re…” Whatever concept she’s reaching for, it eludes her for a moment. “They’re not with each other. Not ever.”

Nobody answers her, but Parks looks happy with this. Like she got the secret password. She’s in the club. The hopelessly-outnumbered-and-surrounded-by-monsters club.

“I’m with you,” Melanie says again. And then, as if it needed saying, “Not you, really. I’m with Miss Justineau.”

Surprisingly, Parks seems satisfied with this too. He stands, with a decisive air. “I get that,” he says. “Okay, kid. We’re going to trust you to get this job done. Let’s go.”

Melanie stays where she is.

“What?” Parks demands. “Something else you need?

“Yes,” Melanie tells him. “I want to wear my new clothes, please.

Sergeant Parks unties the leash from around her neck, too, and she turns to Miss J, who’s ready with the little bundle of clothes.

It’s unpleasant to have the sweater – Miss Justineau’s sweater, which she’s worn all this time – lifted off over her head. To be momentarily naked again. It’s not the scrutiny of the adults she dislikes, it’s the feel of air directly on her body. The sensation of being so exposed.

But as Miss J dresses her in her new finery, that feeling goes away. She likes the jeans and the T-shirt very much – and the jacket, which is a little like Sergeant Parks’ jacket. It’s only the trainers that feel strange. She’s never worn shoes before, and the loss of the stream of information her feet receive from the ground is disturbing. It’s possible that she and the trainers might not be a long-term thing. But they’re so beautiful!

“Done?” Parks says.

“You look great, Melanie,” Miss Justineau tells her.

She nods thanks, and agreement. She knows she does.

....

As soon as her feet are on the ground, she loosens the rope with a tug. Sergeant Parks draws it up again, just as slowly and gradually as he let it down.

Melanie glances up. Sees Sergeant Parks and Miss Justineau peering down at her. Miss Justineau waves; a slow opening and closing of her hand. Melanie waves back.

She threads her way carefully through the hungries, unnoticed, unmolested.

But she was lying when she said she wasn’t afraid. To be right here in the middle of them – to look up at their bowed heads and half-open mouths, their off-white eyes – is very frightening indeed.

Was it green before?” Melanie asks, pointing.

“Yes. Just like the countryside we passed through right after we left the base.”

“Why did they burn it?”

“They were trying to keep the hungries contained, in the first few weeks after the infection appeared.”

“But it didn’t work?”

“No. They were scared, and they panicked. A lot of the people who should have been making the important decisions were infected themselves, or else they ran away and hid. The ones who were left didn’t really know what they were doing. But I’m not sure there was anything better they could have done. It was too late, by then. All the evil shit they were afraid of had already happened, pretty much.”

“The evil shit?” Melanie queries.

“The hungries.”

Melanie contemplates this equation. It may be true, but she doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like it at all. “I’m not evil, Miss Justineau.”

Miss J is penitent. She touches Melanie on the arm, gives her a brief but reassuring squeeze. It’s not as nice as a hug, but also not so dangerous. “I know you’re not, sweetheart. I wasn’t saying that.”

“But I am a hungry.”

A pause. “You’re infected,” Miss J says. “But you’re not a hungry, because you can still think, and they can’t.”

That distinction hasn’t struck Melanie until now, or at least hasn’t weighed much against the planetary mass of her realisation. But it is a real difference. Does it make other differences possible? Does it make her not be a monster after all?