The Girl with All the Gifts

The Girl with All the Gifts is a novel by the British writer Mike Carey, published in 2014. It is set in a version of Britain where an infection has turned most of the population into mindless, hungry people, and the survivors are soldiers, scientists or children kept in a secure facility, each group with a different explanation for why.

Melanie is ten years old and lives in a cell, and she is collected each morning by armed soldiers and taken to a classroom. She is a bright and affectionate child who is also, by the rules of the base, dangerous, and the novel follows what happens when the facility is overrun and she, her teacher and a sergeant are forced onto the road together. The book's subject is who gets to be treated as a person.

Carey writes it as a road story with a small cast, and the infection is the setting rather than the plot, with the group's journey carrying the argument and the ending deliberately unresolved.