by Hall, Andrew
Tabitha watched the sky and the ruined city in the distance; the one she’d escaped and left far behind. She breathed deep, feeling the wind toss her hair. She tried to ignore the hunger, deep and gnawing inside her. All her bottles of blood were still in the shopping centre, and the place was probably burning and overrun by now. There’d be more places to hunt now, though. Anywhere she wanted. She could afford to think much bigger than just here. She could travel anywhere, so long as she had enough fuel. What kind of fuel did the ship run on, anyway? It didn’t really matter right now, she supposed. Just so long as there was enough to get her where she needed to go.
‘There’s something important I need to do,’ she told the ship, as she stood up on the roof and turned to face it. ‘And you’re going to help me do it.’ With a click of her fingers, the ship lowered its wing for her and raised her up onto its back. As the alien harness grew and stretched around her and secured her in the saddle, Tabitha tried to imagine how her revenge would play out. The thought had burned in the back of her mind ever since she’d coughed and spluttered back to life, cold and frightened below the walls of the castle. Chris. But first things first. There was something that Will would want her to do before she left. Tabitha took off from the hotel roof and climbed into the sky, steering the ship south. Back towards the ruined city of skins on the horizon.
Tabitha swept into the grim city on dark wings. The broken office buildings and tower blocks rose up like some vast jagged ribcage around her. There was still nothing living here; the place was silent as a grave. She landed the ship down on a crumbling old office block, scanning the streets from the saddle. There it was, off to her left through the toppled shops. A pale grey carpet in the square. The sea of skins, rotting in the heart of the city. Tabitha gripped the saddle and leapt the dragon off the roof, with a rollercoaster twist in her stomach as they dropped. On rushing wings she took her ship down between the tall buildings. Through the ruins the square sprawled out beneath her. Even up here she could smell the grey dank rot of decay. She hovered the ship lower. With nothing but a thought she made the dragon spit a white inferno down on the square. Another great burst of fire, and another. Setting the skins alight, Tabitha watched them curl and disappear in the pale flames. All those people. They were getting a proper funeral now, just like Will would have wanted. Just like they would have wanted. Tabitha hovered there for a while in the saddle, hypnotised by the growing flames that burned away all the death and rot to ash.
After a soaring lap of the city Tabitha took off again into the sky. She left all the bricks and tarmac behind and followed far fields below, retracing her steps through the countryside. The fields below gave way to familiar woods, and the lake and paths, and the beautiful village where she’d stayed to rest. That felt like a different person now. Someone weaker. Her old journey rolled by quickly beneath her now; a minute’s flight over a route that’d taken days to walk. There was the hill that she’d climbed barefoot in the night, frozen and exhausted in nothing but a hospital gown. And the lake on the far side of it, where she’d fallen from the dragon. Wait, was this the same one? Was she riding on it? There was no way to tell, it’d been so dark that night. But Tabitha liked to think so. It felt like more of a victory that way, returning on the same monster that had made her run for her life.
A minute later Tabitha was flying high over the pale lonely moors, back towards the smoking ruin of the military base she’d escaped from. A cold high wind whipped at her hair as she circled overhead, studying the charred carnage in the base. There were dead silver spiders dotted all over, no bigger than ordinary spiders from up here. Over on the hill beyond a dead dragon lay crumpled in a rain-puddled crater. There was no reaction from her own mount at the sight. Whether it was robotic or reptilian, she’d at least expected some interest from the creature when it saw one of its own. But it didn’t even acknowledge the giant corpse. Maybe it was just a ship after all.
The military complex was a burnt-out demolition site. It was littered with charcoal bodies and empty skins that had turned to crackling in the heat of long-gone flames. Tabitha could see the operating theatre below, its roof torn open and bared to the world. There were two burnt corpses there inside, half buried in the rubble. She couldn’t see any signs of life anywhere. Specifically, she couldn’t see any signs of Blake. He could be any one of those bodies in the yard, she told herself. She would have really liked to find him in there somewhere, hiding in the burned wreckage, so she could catch him like he’d caught her. Tabitha made a couple of laps of the base, and had her ship spit a jet of fire through the ruins just to make sure no one came running out. But there was nothing living here. So long as Blake had met some grizzly end, she didn’t care. Tabitha turned the ship in the air and took off into the sky, leaving the scorched ruins behind. Dry-lipped and half dead, Blake watched her from the rubble below. He’d been drinking from a bitter puddle, hidden away behind charred bricks and fallen girders when she appeared. He was wheezing, gasping for breath, blinking at the blowing ash in the breeze. Cowering down, he watched the dark deathly shape and the red-haired woman riding it disappear into the blue above.
Tabitha swept on into the sky, banking left until the thin black strip of a motorway came into view. At least if she could take the right general direction she had a hope of finding the castle again. But she had no idea which was the right general direction. She’d been flown here when the army caught her; unconscious. Not a clue which way to go. A blue dot of light appeared in front of her then on the saddle, and expanded into a hologram globe the size of a football. Tabitha reached out to it and zoomed in over Europe; over Britain.
‘Er,’ she said, hesitating, and pointed out on the glowing map where she wanted to go. A white dot appeared on the map under her finger, and the globe disappeared. Startled, Tabitha sat back in the saddle as the ship began to tilt. It steered itself in a half-circle towards the north, and took off of its own accord. The sudden rush of air was blinding; their speed made the wind deafening in her ears. Tabitha pushed the white circle on the saddle and sank back down into the cockpit, and let the ship’s view of the sky outside take over her sight. She saw a faint white line there in its vision, stretching out to the horizon. It was her route, laid out for her like a GPS from the future. Laid out like she’d always been meant to take it. Her revenge.
40
Chris woke up to a humming sound outside the castle keep, a strange droning rush. It could only be a helicopter. Dirty cups and plates were rattling on the table with the vibration. He grabbed the shotgun and climbed the ladder up to the roof of the keep, pulling himself through the trapdoor to look over the town beyond. The wind blew cold today; he pulled his coat collar closer around his neck. Suddenly the strange noise grew much louder. It was coming from everywhere; a rushing wind and a low rumbling growl. He looked over the other side of the keep, and saw a ghost rising up outside the curtain wall.
‘Tabitha?’ he mumbled, pale with shock. His world came crashing down at the sight of her. But… the soldiers had taken her away. They were going to cut her open, take her apart. The hellish droning grew louder. Chris stepped back in fright as a vast dark monster rose up beneath her. Wings beating. White eyes staring. A cold spirit riding death, come to claim his soul.
‘That’s Jackie and Sylvia down there, isn’t it?’ Tabitha called down. Two drained skins were flapping in the wind, down by the walls of the keep. She glimpsed silver shapes lurking here and there in the fallen ruins of the curtain wall. ‘You killed them,’ she observed, studying the skins and their loose clothes. ‘That’s a new low for you,’ she told him, as she rose up higher than the keep. Chris didn’t say anything though. Hands trembling, eyes wide with fear, he raised up his shotgun and aimed it at her where she hovered.
‘Try it,’ she said. ‘See what happens.’ Chris panicked and the shotgun thundered, emptying both barrels into the sky. The dragon did nothing when the shot bounced off its thick scales. It barely seemed to notice, and Tabitha wasn’t
hit. Birds scattered up from the trees in the park.
‘That’s all I needed,’ Tabitha told him, hungry for revenge. She poured all her burning fury into the thought, and felt the creature respond beneath her. Everything Chris had ever said and done fuelled her hate; everything that had happened to her after he’d shot her dead. She felt the dragon’s sides swell with breath. Chris scrambled for the trapdoor. The dragon belched a pillar of flame down on the keep that hit like a bomb blast, blowing the top of the tower to pieces. The explosion echoed through the dead town in warping ripples. Tabitha’s winged shadow passed over the scorched stones below. She circled the hill and came in close over the castle again, hovering over the burning keep. Chris was still in there somewhere; she knew it. Another burst of white light from the dragon’s throat and the sleeping quarters exploded in a crackling fireball. The tower top rained down on the flaming beds below. Tabitha heard his screams somewhere inside. Good. Despite her grief to see her old home in ruins, Tabitha wouldn’t miss this chance at revenge for anything. Besides, this wasn’t her home any more. All the happy memories here had died with the people she loved. There was only Chris now; defiling their memories just by being alive. Let it all burn. Tabitha willed her ship to belch fire down into the bedroom, torching the beds and collapsing the flaming floorboards down on top of the kitchen. She felt the full brunt of her anger rise up in her. More than she knew. Enough to drive her to kill someone. This wasn’t the same as the army doctor she’d spared back at the base; Chris had murdered her, without a second thought. He was asking for this. Tabitha watched for any sign of him, and felt the heat rising up from the pale inferno. The keep was a ruined shell. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted to level the place, to wipe it all out now that Chris had poisoned everything. She wanted him to pay for what he’d done to her. For what the army had done to her, once Chris had killed her and left her to rot in a ditch. She rained fire down on the ashes of the garden, boring a blazing crater into the earth. Taking control of her ship’s claws she tore the curtain wall down into ruined shreds of stone, and watched red-hot blocks tumbling down the hill into the park. Hovering overhead she took a gasp of air and yelled down on the castle, channelling the creature’s breath with her mind. Another pillar of white fire lit up the town, crackling down into the keep and bursting the walls apart. Another blast tore the castle down to its foundations. Another cratered the burning ground right down to bare glowing rock. She wanted to raze it all, to wipe out every trace. To scorch everything about Chris off the face of the planet. She waited, hovering around the white inferno. If he still came crawling out of the flames then she wanted to be there to mangle him and burn him away into the dirt. But there was nothing left. Only ruins; glowing red rocks in the firestorm. The towering flames lit her eyes with a hard white light. She aimed a blast at the rocky outcrop of the hill beneath the walls, and watched it explode into dust and boulders over the field. The stumpy remains of the curtain wall tumbled with it, and half of the glowing red ruins toppled down onto the hill. One final blast bit deep into the keep’s foundations, like a raw blazing nerve under a shattered tooth. The towering fire had eaten everything; left no trace. Thick black smoke twisted into the sky. An eerie fog had crept over the flaming ruins; hot air against the cool breeze over the field. It grew into a haunted flickering mist, lit with an eerie white glow from the flames. A resting place for ghosts. Tabitha took one last look at her revenge in the wiped-out ruins and took off over the town. She saw silver shapes moving down below, their bodies reflecting the flames. The spiders hid away from the shadow of dark wings up above. Tabitha turned the ship south, watching the world roll away beneath her. There was only one more thing left to do.
Tabitha couldn’t find her home town. She’d soared over endless fields and headed down the coast, following the hologram map until she recognised the beaches and the bay creeping closer. The sky was a blank mess of cloud, white and grey and dull. Seagulls called and battled the chilly wind out over the dark waves. There was the old pier down below, rusting in the grey sea. But all the buildings were gone. Her house too. The entire town had been reduced to rubble, and yet there wasn’t an alien in sight. As she flew over the road along the seafront, Tabitha reached the crumpled street sign where her house should have stood. Nothing but a heap of shattered bricks, just like everything else around her. A land-sea of fallen masonry. She couldn’t believe that her home was gone. This town was her place. It was where she always went back to, back in the old world. It was the one place that grounded her, centred her. But there weren’t even birds singing here any more. Just a cold stranglehold of dead silence. She looked around from the dragon’s back, desperate for a sign of something still standing. She pinned all her hopes on one last part of the old world having survived; something left to save her sanity.
‘Mog?’ she called down, hoping to find some sign of her cat. She wanted more than anything to see his bright pale eyes look up from the ash and the rubble, somewhere along her street. She spent ages hovering low over acres of foundations, searching the flattened town and calling to her cat. She wanted him to be alright. She wanted to take him with her and look after him, to make up for abandoning him. But there was every chance that one way or another, Mog wasn’t around any more. Tabitha called a few more times here and there, and gave up with a sigh. If she couldn’t find him with a bird’s eye view of the town, and no buildings in her way, then she was never going to find him. She landed down in the fine rubble that used to be her house, and saw shreds of her belongings flapping beneath the sea of bricks. Turning around, she could see all the way over to the ruined stones up on the far hill, on the street where her mum’s house used to be. There was nothing left of her old life, then. No place to call home. Tabitha sighed shakily, and brushed the tears from her cheeks with her coat sleeve. There was a sudden wrenching noise then. Tabitha looked over at the iron railings by the sea, and watched them bend and warp under giant black tentacles. The dark tree-trunk arms dragged a whale of a creature up over the sea wall; a grotesque black squid with a ring of searching white eyes. Tabitha backed away from its sweeping tentacles as it hauled itself over the sea wall after her. Her ship did nothing; it just watched the squid pulling itself closer. A tentacle lifted high in the air and smashed down into the rubble where she’d stood. Tabitha ran and leapt up into her ship’s saddle and steered it round to face the squid. She reached out her mind to the ship and felt the connection. She had control. Her ship reared up and belched a bolt of light into the monster’s gaping mouth, and suddenly its long squid body burst apart in a bloody thunderclap. Tabitha watched the slopping carnage collapse on the road with savage satisfaction. She took off over the grey sea, sinking back down into the cockpit as her ship climbed higher into the gloomy sky.
The rest of the day she spent tracing the coastline south, searching for signs of life. Miles and miles of empty demolition; towns and villages wiped off the map. The sun set and the dusk light faded, and still she’d seen nothing. She couldn’t fight off sleep any longer, and felt her eyes closing at the controls. Setting the dragon-ship down to perch on a giant wind turbine in the hills, Tabitha tilted her seat back, zipped up her parka, and fell into a deep warm sleep.
When she woke the next morning Tabitha knew she’d have to think up a different plan. There was no way to tell how much fuel the ship had left, but she knew it would only last for so long. She had to make the best use of it, and get to somewhere safe. She launched her ship off the wind turbine with a heavy rattle, and climbed higher and higher into the cloudy autumn sky. She shot up through the gloomy mist until the clouds formed a pearly white field far below, stretching on forever like meadows in heaven. Up above there was only sunlight, and the big pale blue of the empty sky. It felt so peaceful up here, so far removed from the ruined world below. Far from all that dirt and blood and death. She remembered a flight abroad then, as she stared at the same view that she’d seen from the aeroplane years ago. Suddenly her imagination kicked into high gear. She was
in an aircraft. She could afford to think bigger than her home country, and there wasn’t anything to keep her here. Her friends and family were dead. Her beautiful Laika, and her handsome Mog. Her grief had already exhausted her a hundred times over; she was ready to move on. She had nothing left now but the ship she was sat in, and she wanted to find out what happened next. Diving down suddenly to whip beneath the clouds, Tabitha levelled out and followed the coast north. Gliding over white cliffs and muddy sands, she turned her back on the place she’d come from. She was taking herself far away from here. Nowhere was easy to survive any more, but some places would be better than others. She thought about that dream holiday that never happened; the one she fantasised about at her office desk. She thought about warm white sands and a vivid turquoise sea, and waves clear as glass. A place where palms swayed in the warm breeze, and winter never came. The hologram globe popped up on the console then. Tabitha reached out her black hands and gently turned the globe around, and poked her finger into the Pacific. She zoomed in there, and found an island in the middle of nowhere. She pressed a white dot into the map, and the line of light appeared in her vision to guide her; fading to the horizon. Willing her ship’s jets to full power, Tabitha felt a rollercoaster rush as she tore off into the sky. She left her own country far below, far behind. She was heading for a bright new home, hidden away on the far side of the world.
41
The hologram globe tracked her ship’s progress north into the Arctic. The cold sea was almost black, rippling away beneath her under a clear pale sky. After hours of watching and dozing as the ship followed its path, an icy coast loomed large beneath her. Tabitha sat up, stared. She dipped further into the ship’s vision for a better look. She’d never seen anything so beautiful. They passed over shining white cliffs, through warped bridges of ice. Towering natural shapes, jagged and bizarre. She saw hulking icebergs so vast and white that the sea glowed blue around their sunken masses. They flew past mountains of snow that didn’t have names; too shifting and impermanent for humans to claim ownership. Thinking about it, she couldn’t really blame the aliens for wanting to take this planet. She’d want to take it too.