Zombies are everywhere right now. Hit zombie TV shows, zombie movies, zombie books. All we need is a remake of "I Walked With A Zombie." 
 But unlike most fantasy creatures -- vampires, werewolves, et cetera -- zombies eventually need some kind of new twist, because it's hard to give human complexity to animated corpses that just want to eat brains. Therein lies the charm of M.R. Carey's "The Girl With All The Gifts," a clever little novel set in a future where "hungries" have reduced human civilization to ruins, and the only chance for its rebuilding may be a little zombie girl. 
 That little girl is Melanie, who is perfectly normal in some ways -- she's very intelligent, loves books, and goes to school every day. But she's not so normal in others: she lives in a subterranean cell in an army base, and is immobilized in a wheelchair whenever she is allowed out of her cell. Sergeant Parks and his soldiers seem (to Melanie) inexplicably hostile to her and the other children, and to her idolized teacher Miss Justineau for her kindness to the kids. 
 Gradually, it is revealed why: Melanie and the other children are not human. They are hungries. In this postapocalyptic future, a variation of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis has infected the human race, turning them into hungries. The surviving humans either live in roving Mad Max-style gangs known as junkers, or fortify themselves in army bases. 
 But in the ruins of civilization, the army has found zombie children who seem to retain their intelligence for some reason. They can think, learn, speak and are in all ways normal as long as they don't get a whiff of human flesh. If that happens, they temporarily lose their minds and go all chompy chompy BRAAAAINNNNNNSS. So while Miss Justineau teaches the children, Dr. Caldwell occasionally dissects them in hopes of finding a cure for the fungus. 
 And when she tries to dissect Melanie, Miss Justineau finally can't take it anymore and barges in to stop her. Coincidentally, that is also when the base is swarmed by the hungries, forcing Justineau, Caldwell, Parks, Melanie and one other guy who isn't important to flee. They stumble across a mobile lab that the dying Caldwell uses to finally finish her research -- and Melanie makes a shocking discovery about herself and the other children. 
 The interesting thing about "The Girl With All The Gifts" is the idea of zombie children who are somehow able to retain their mental faculties. They're still clearly "hungries" -- one scene has Melanie horrified by her almost biting chunks off Miss Justineau -- but their intelligence makes this a more complicated, morally ambiguous story than just "people shoot zombies in head, zombies eat human brains, the end." 
 Carey's writing is mostly in the present tense, which takes a little while to get used to, especially since he flips wildly from one perspective to another -- while a lot of the story is from Melanie's third-person perspective, we also see the perspectives of of Justineau and the soldiers. His prose tends to be pretty straightforward and simple, but detailed enough to keep the gritty, decayed atmosphere alive ("Grey threads have broken the leathery surface of their skin in a network of fine lines, crossing and re-crossing like veins"). 
 Admittedly, Carey's plot is rather slender, since for most of the book, the characters either just wander through the deserted countryside or bicker in their bunkers. But it moves along pretty quickly, and he weaves in some real-life science (Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the e-blocker) that won't leave the audience tearing out their hair. 
 Melanie is a striking protagonist merely because she is actually a zombie, but has the feelings and morals to be appalled by her involuntary urges -- she's a genuinely kind little girl with a ravenous hunger for knowledge as well as human flesh. And her childish crush on Miss Justineau is rather charming, and helps tie in to Justineau's oddly maternal feelings and awakening moral sense. She knows that the children have real feelings and thoughts, and she can't bring herself to hurt them. 
 This is the opposite of Caldwell, who is calm, coldly calculating, and insists that the children are all just hosts for a fungus... although I doubt any fungus could fake complicated emotions and reactions to Greek myth. And while the soldiers -- including Park -- are antagonistic, Carey does remind us that they have seen the whole world fall apart, and they need to vent their hostility towards the hungries. 
 "The Girl With All The Gifts" is thin on plot and a little uneven in writing, but the genuinely well-crafted characters and clever twist on the zombiepocalypse makes this an entertaining read for fans of the undead. Just remember your e-blocker.