by Hall, Andrew
‘It did before. I can’t feel it now,’ Tabitha replied. ‘I can heal quickly, since the changes.’ Sam looked intrigued.
‘So these changes, how did they happen?’ said Sam. ‘What happened exactly?’ Tabitha explained everything about the alien and her fight with it. About its needled claw going in, and waking up with new hands. Sam and Jane listened intently.
‘That’s awesome,’ Sam muttered, wide-eyed. ‘Medically and… just in general.’ Tabitha couldn’t help but smile a little. She didn’t know what kind of evil government doctors she’d been imagining, but they weren’t Sam. Sam was more like a nerdy science teacher.
‘Would you mind if I took a little bit of blood?’ said Sam. Tabitha studied her expression. If there was any malice there, Sam was exceptionally good at hiding it. She looked like a kid in a toy shop.
‘…Ok,’ Tabitha replied. Probably better to find out as much as she could about her condition anyway.
‘Thank you,’ Sam said with a smile. She took a hypodermic needle from its plastic wrapper, and cleaned a patch of skin on Tabitha’s arm with a wet pad.
‘So, you’ll feel a slight scratch, all that business,’ Sam muttered, sliding the needle in. ‘Though I imagine you’ve felt much worse than slight scratches recently. Oh my god, it’s silver. Look Jane, silver blood! It’s incredible.’ Tabitha looked over at Jane, who’d taken a seat in a gloomy corner. It looked like the distrust was pouring out of her into the room, darkening the lantern glow from the corners. Tabitha looked back down at her arm.
‘There we go,’ said Sam, pulling the needle out. She pressed a small pad of gauze onto Tabitha’s arm. ‘Just hold that on there for me, please,’ she said. Sam was transfixed by the plastic needle full of silver blood. ‘Jane, you need to see this,’ she said, staring into the plastic vial. Tabitha sat still on the table, watching them examine her blood. She felt a sudden tingling in the air around her. The static press of a lightning storm.
‘Er…’ Tabitha muttered, feeling her hair begin to stand up on end. She sneezed and electricity exploded from her body. It half demolished the table she was sitting on, and flung Sam and Jane across the room. Voltage arced through the lab in a sudden lightning storm, buzzing and fizzing off the walls as it crackled away. And just like that, the chaos was over. Tabitha stood looking at Sam and Jane in the corner, huddled down like a bomb had gone off. Which it had, kind of.
‘…Sorry,’ Tabitha said quietly, looking around at the demolition.
‘Can you do that again?’ said Sam eagerly, picking herself up off the floor.
‘What the hell was that?’ Jane demanded, staggering to her feet in the corner. Terrified, she pulled her gun on Tabitha.
‘Jane!’ Sam warned her, stamping out a small fire on the floor.
‘Stop pointing that bloody thing at me!’ Tabitha snapped.
‘Christ Jane, put the gun away!’ said Sam. She put herself between them, standing in Jane’s line of fire. Jane hesitated, and put the gun away with a sigh.
‘Thank you,’ Sam said sarcastically. ‘Now can we just have a look at this blood, please?’ Jane glared at her, and nodded moodily. Sam pulled an old microscope from the smoking clutter on the floor. She set it down on a stack of boxes and gathered the fallen lanterns around it, for as much light as they could give her. Tabitha still smelled burning. Looking down at her shoulder, she realised there were smoking holes in her clothes. She patted the burning edges out, coughing as she tried to waft the smoke away.
‘Oh my god Jane,’ Sam muttered, studying the slide under the microscope. ‘You need to see this.’ Jane looked equally dumbfounded when she peered down the scope.
‘What the hell?’ Jane muttered, studying the drop of blood. She moved the makeshift mirror beneath the microscope to catch as much of the lantern light as she could. Sam motioned to Tabitha to come over and take a look.
‘Those are my cells?’ she said, watching the jumble of dots in the microscope.
‘There are two kinds of blood cells,’ Sam said excitedly. ‘The round ones are obviously your own cells, but the diamond-shaped ones… they’re alien cells. They could be some kind of organic metal or silicone, I’m not sure.’
‘Nanotechnology,’ Jane mumbled.
‘Exactly,’ Sam replied happily. Tabitha moved aside to let Sam look back down the microscope. Sam had given her a quick intense glance just then, as they traded places. What was that? Fascination? Attraction? …Or was she just the prize test subject?
‘These cells might explain your rapid healing, but how?’ said Sam. She ignored the smoking ceiling light that crashed to the floor behind her. Jane and Tabitha jumped at the noise, and flashed a look at one another. ‘I’m not even sure these are cells as we would understand them,’ Sam muttered into the microscope. ‘There’s a nucleus, but not one that I can recognise.’ Her excitement made her voice tremble. ‘They’re living metal. They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I would’ve thought your immune system should be fighting them, like any foreign body. But it looks like they actually function in conjunction with your own cells. Oh, that rhymes!’ she chuckled. ‘Function in conjunction. Now, if you had a high enough concentration of these alien cells close enough to the surface…’
‘I’d have alien metal skin?’ Tabitha interrupted, raising her grey hands.
‘Exactly,’ said Sam happily. ‘Have you had any other changes?’
‘Just the hands,’ Tabitha replied. At least she hadn’t grown any spidery parts, she supposed.
‘Still, armoured alien hands are nothing to be sniffed at,’ Sam replied. She scraped the silver blood off the slide into a flask of solution. Tabitha considered Sam’s strange choice of words, and made a sly sniff of her hands while Sam shook the mixture. They smelled like copper coins, and felt cold and rough against her nose. Jane flashed her a suspicious look.
‘When did all this happen?’ said Sam, inspecting the flask of solution. Nothing was happening to the blood.
‘When that thing stung me,’ Tabitha replied. ‘It felt like I was having a heart attack.’ She thought back to that sense of dread, and the metallic pounding in her chest. How long had Dev said it was since then? Three days? She thought back to his lifeless body in the pub. And how little sadness she felt. Maybe she’d already run out of sadness.
‘It stung you?’ said Jane, leaning on the boxes beside Sam. The lanterns cast her face in a craggy yellow light, picking out creases and shadows.
‘A needle inside its claw, yeah. It injected me with something,’ said Tabitha.
‘Then you should be dead,’ Jane replied, disbelieving. ‘You should be an empty skin.’
‘Sorry to disappoint,’ said Tabitha, looking Jane square in the eye. Jane’s hand never strayed far from the gun in her belt.
‘An exchange and modification of cellular material,’ Sam replied, awestruck as she looked up from the microscope and a fresh drop of blood. ‘I had a listen to your heart too, while you were unconscious,’ she admitted. ‘There wasn’t a beat, just… a really faint hum. Your heart tissue must have mutated with the venom. Or, it might even have been completely replaced.’
‘So what’s in there instead?’ said Tabitha, pressing a palm to her breastbone.
‘I think it’s a core,’ Sam replied excitedly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It could be some kind of reactor or a generator, at a guess,’ said Sam. ‘A power source. It might explain the explosion,’ she said, glancing around at the messy cellar. ‘And all this came from a venom that was supposed to kill you. You’ve had a completely different reaction to the substance than any other victim I’ve seen.’ Tabitha watched Sam closely, and how flustered she looked. She was fidgety; tapping the flask of blood impatiently. There was definitely something going on there; Jane had noticed it too. Sam was looking more and more excited by the minute, frantic even. She hurried back to the microscope again, with an energy bordering on the obsessive.
‘It’s possible that an ex
isting genetic mutation allowed your body to incorporate the cells in the alien venom, rather than fall victim to them,’ said Sam. She was talking rapidly, focussing on the blood in the microscope. ‘I can only assume that these alien nanotech cells coursed through your blood vessels and deposited in the heart. Rather than destroying your tissues, they somehow acted as stem cells or templates… modifying your mammal heart into an alien counterpart. A bioelectrical reactor.’
‘Are you alright love?’ said Jane, putting a hand on Sam’s arm.
‘Yes, fine,’ Sam replied, affronted. ‘Why?’
‘You seem… frantic.’
‘It’s exciting!’ said Sam, tearing the plastic wrapping off a hypodermic needle. ‘Don’t you think so?’ Jane looked at her.
‘Well yes, I suppose,’ she said. ‘You just look wired, that’s all.’
‘Can you blame me?’ Sam replied happily. ‘Think of all the applications!’ she was drawing a clear liquid into the needle from a small glass bottle. They watched her tap the needle with a shaking hand.
‘Applications?’ said Tabitha, backing away. Sam turned around and grabbed her arm.
‘Now if you just hold still a moment –
‘What the hell are you doing!?’ Tabitha snapped, recoiling as Jane grabbed her shoulders. She felt the needle sink into her arm. Sam held on tight to her struggling wrist.
‘Anaesthetic,’ Sam assured her. She emptied the needle into her arm before Tabitha could pull away. ‘Only a biopsy. We’ll have you back around in no time.’ Tabitha stumbled away from them and crashed into the desk behind her. She felt her legs turn to jelly, watched Jane stepping closer. The room spun as the anaesthetic coursed through her.
‘You want to cut me open!’ Tabitha heard herself mumble, looking up at Sam’s blurry shape. Alarm bells were ringing in her head; her paranoia. She felt Jane’s hands grip her arms behind her back.
‘I only want to see your core working,’ said Sam, by way of a compromise.
‘You want to open my heart up!’ Tabitha slurred, struggling to get free. She felt the anaesthetic bleeding all the urgency out of her. Her limbs were impossible weights.
‘Don’t worry, you’ll heal right up again,’ Sam reminded her brightly.
‘Anyway, you’re more hardware than human now,’ Jane said in her ear. ‘Shouldn’t be too hard to piece you back together when we’re done.’ Tabitha shook her head and tried to fight for consciousness, and felt the dizziness begin to fade like the shroud of sleep. She felt her heart kick in, or her core, or whatever the hell it was. Current ran through her veins like espresso. She felt her body defend itself, burning off the drug. She felt her senses coming back to her; felt Jane’s strong hands gripping her arms behind her back.
‘Just relax Tabitha, please,’ Sam said pleasantly, approaching her with a fresh needle of anaesthetic. ‘It won’t hurt a bit. I promise.’ Tabitha wrenched her arms free from Jane’s grip and hit Sam on the jaw, laying her out on the floor. Jane staggered away and pulled the gun from her belt. Tabitha leapt aside as the pistol cracked, deafening in the cellar. Missed her. She tackled Jane and brought her crashing to the floor, kneeling over her to grip her by the throat. Jane spluttered and struggled, and gave up the pistol as Tabitha crushed her hand around the grip. Teeth gritted, Tabitha raised a metal fist into the air ready to swing, and saw the terror in Jane’s eyes.
‘Stop it! Please!’ Sam pleaded. ‘You’ll kill her!’ Tabitha looked around at Sam in a daze, and back down at Jane gasping on the floor. Tabitha saw her metal hand bunched into a cruel fist, and opened her fingers out in shock. She would have smashed the woman’s skull, right there and then – what the hell was happening to her?
‘Please, don’t,’ Sam begged, terrified, watching Tabitha drag Jane from the floor.
‘Let me out of here,’ Tabitha growled, her hand still clutched around Jane’s throat. ‘Now!’ panicked, Sam rushed past them to open the door into the first cellar. Tabitha marched Jane into the other room and shoved her off into the corner.
‘They’re still outside!’ Jane yelled hoarsely. ‘If you open that shutter they’ll kill us all!’ but Tabitha didn’t so much as look at the shutter where she’d come in. Instead she climbed the steps at the back of the cellar, the wooden ladder that led up to the shadowed trap door. She pushed at the hatch, but it only rattled in its hinges.
‘There’s bolts on it,’ Sam said timidly, holding onto Jane. ‘You have to –
Tabitha smashed her fist up into the door and burst it open with a bang, bolts or not. Daylight flooded the staircase, and a flurry of dust drifted down in the glow. Tabitha looked up at the room above, and the doctors below in their basement. They were just staring at her from the foot of the stairs, terrified in the gloom.
‘If you follow me, I’ll kill you.’
7
There was no sign of Mog when Tabitha got back home. She’d crept and sprinted her way back through town, keeping to the walls. Taking cautious detours wherever the spiders lurked. Bees and wasps still prowled her front garden, oblivious to the dead town. Tabitha smelled the sickly-stale stench of rotten food as she went inside and headed for the kitchen. She emptied a crinkling pouch of food into Mog’s bowl, and went upstairs to her room.
It was all too tempting to climb in between the bedsheets. Hide away, and pretend none of this was happening. She kicked her boots and socks off and slid in. Pulled the warm covers close, and just sat for a while against the pillows. She ran the soles of her feet over the bobbly bedsheet; breathed in the fresh smell of good washing powder. The world stretched only as far as her bedroom walls, safe and familiar and full of her stuff. For a blissful moment she was hidden away inside comfort; a sunny fluffy world glimpsed only in ads for fabric softener. But it didn’t change a thing. She took her pale green eyes from the far wall and glanced out of the window at a bright blue sky. That new world was still out there, sunny and lethal. Then came that one sickening thought again; the barbed wire round her heart. There was no one left who loved her. It was just her now.
She stared forever at the pattern on her duvet cover, and felt too numb to cry. Working people with working emotions, they could cry. Like water from a tap, on and off again. But Tabitha felt broken now. She was a dropped vase, shattered; no more. All the grief had flooded out of her in one big tide. Now she was just the pieces of a person. All the tears had dried away. She felt exhausted. A headache thumped against her skull; probably caffeine withdrawal. She wanted nothing more than to stay up here in her beautiful house, comfy in her bed, and wait for everything to go back to normal. But she knew that was just the little girl coming out in her. She’d done the same thing when her dad died, when her world had fallen down around her. And hiding under the bed sheets didn’t change a thing. After weeks and weeks of it, it had taken her mum coming upstairs and berating her to finally snap her out of it. I know it’s hard love. That was what she’d said. It’s hard for me too. But life doesn’t stop. We both need to be strong, and carry on. Now her mum was gone too. And Emma and Jen. John as well, probably. Tabitha let the thought sink in, hard and glass-jagged as it was; she was on her own. All the strength had to come from her. She could hide away from that new world, or she could survive it. She could be the victim, or use her new body to fight back. The bed sheets were paradise though. She didn’t even need to fight, not really. The spiders would just find her and kill her in her sleep… or she could end her life right now. There were plenty of sleeping tablets downstairs. She could fall asleep and never wake up. Easy.
‘I’m not waiting here to die,’ she told her bedroom, dragging her eyes from the window. She threw the covers off and pulled her socks and boots back on. ‘I’m not. I’m not.’
Tabitha clomped back downstairs in her boots. She called out to her cat and searched the house, but there was still no sign of him. Sighing, she rummaged around the ruins of her living room for a pen and paper, and scribbled a note on a lightning-burnt cabinet.
Dear Mog,
> I know you can’t read, but writing you a note makes me feel better. I have to leave, Mog. It’s not safe here any more. I wish I could just lock the door and close the curtains, and we can watch films and snuggle on the couch like we always do. But the world’s changed now, and it’s dangerous. Thinking about it, you might not even be alive any more.
I need to find other survivors if I’m going to live through this, so I’m going to look for them. I don’t know if I’ll be coming back. I’ll try to, if I can. Maybe the army’s winning, somewhere out there. I don’t know. Please forgive me, Mog. I know you’ll be alright. I love you, you stupid cat.
Tabitha X
Tabitha kissed the note and put it down on the kitchen floor, beside every bit of cat food in the house. He was a cat; he’d be alright. It was her she had to worry about. She had to think survival. She felt for the carving knife in her belt, and cursed when she remembered it was in Jane and Sam’s cellar. She pulled the other knives from the wooden block and studied them, and tucked a thinner longer one into her belt. The breadknife and the smaller ones wouldn’t be any use anyway. Rifling in the kitchen drawers, she pocketed an old crumpled tube of superglue and some safety pins. Bound to be useful for something. The table mats and birthday candles, probably less so. And the cigarette lighter for the oven didn’t work anyway.
She threw a hoodie on and shoved a hard stale heel of French bread into a pocket. Set about rummaging through the other drawers for whatever it was people needed for survival. Even the word felt daunting; a vague concept. Suddenly a spider burst through the kitchen window, and Tabitha ran as two more clambered inside. They were already climbing in through the shattered living room window. They struck out at her as she dodged past and fumbled frantically with the front door. Another spider was lurking on the doorstep when she opened it. Tabitha leapt over it and fell clumsily down the steps, and ran out of the garden as the chattering horde raced after her on the street. Had they stalked her all the way back from the lab? She tried to summon up the same electrical energy that had thrown Sam and Jane across the room. Strained inwardly at a non-existent feeling. There was nothing there to summon; she may as well have been trying to sneeze at will. At least the stab wound in her thigh had long since healed. She sprinted down the road with a fresh energy, a new intensity that the spiders struggled to keep up with. Her muscles felt like coiled springs. Her heart was a power plant, launching her on. Boots pounding the tarmac, Tabitha ran with every volt of power her new body could summon. The silver chattering mass wasn’t at her heels for long. Every sprinting step pushed the road away behind her; opened up the gap between them. Instinct gripped her brain and numbed her burning muscles. One by one, the spiders slowed and gave up the chase. Tabitha felt her lungs wrenching air, gasping for relief. But she ran on, past dead skins and crashed cars and shattered belongings on the road out of town. She wasn’t going to die here in the ruins. She refused.