<P> Melanie tricks Caldwell into letting her inside . Before dying, Caldwell shares her findings with Melanie: There is no cure or vaccine for the fungus . Intelligent hungries are second - generation ones, conceived by hungries who retained some human behavior . Those born in this way retain their mental abilities . </P> <P> Outside the lab, Parks and Justineau are cornered by hungries . Melanie frightens them away, but Justineau is knocked unconscious and Parks is bitten and infected . Parks asks Melanie to shoot him before the infection cycle finishes so he does not turn into a hungry; she agrees to do so . She asks him to shoot the mass of spores with a flamethrower, deducing correctly that the environmental trigger to open the spores is fire . Before Melanie complies with Parks' request to kill him, she explains that as long as there are healthy humans, the war between them and the hungries will continue . For second - generation hungries to be born and rebuild the world, every human must first be infected . </P> <P> Justineau awakens in the Rosalind Franklin . Melanie leads her to a group of intelligent hungries, to whom Justineau, wearing an environmental protection suit, starts teaching the alphabet . </P> <P> The Girl with All the Gifts has received acclaim from critics, who praised its variation from typical zombie fiction as well as the depth of its characters . Torie Bosch of Slate called it a "crossover horror at its best" and wrote: "It's a welcome shift from the focus of many zombie stories...The Girl With All the Gifts turns eating brains from the usual empty - calorie snack into a full, complex, palate - challenging meal ." Writing for The Guardian, James Smythe praised the book as being "original, thrilling and powerful" and wrote: "Were the characters not so strong, the book might fall apart . The plot is rather slight, and the ending feels a little rushed; but the characters are so well drawn and so human that it's impossible not to feel for them ." Miles of Entertainment Weekly concurred, writing: "The character at the story's heart may have no pulse, but Melanie is empathetic and sympathetic, and her deeply tragic existence is proof that zombie tales can elicit an emotion other than fear ." While NPR's Genevieve Valentine was critical of the protagonist's narrative, which "veer (ed) occasionally and abruptly in one direction or the other", she still found the book to be "grotesque and grimly hopeful by turns, underscored by lovingly detailed infection in both metaphorical and very literal terms: Spores and hopelessness are equally contagious ." </P>

What happens at the end of the girl with all the gifts
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