Tabitha

by Hall, Andrew

  ‘Get out of my house, you weird bitch!’ said a man in a white suit, zipping up his flies and pushing forward in the crowd. ‘Who are you, anyway? I didn’t invite you. Fuck off.’ Tabitha gritted her teeth and walked slowly from the bar towards the doors. When the man tried to grab her and force her out Tabitha sank her claws into his arms by reflex. He yelled and backed away, staring in shock as he clutched his bleeding arm.

  ‘They’re coming for you too, you know,’ Tabitha told the room of silent faces, taking another swig of whiskey as she headed for the door. ‘All your money, all your talent, it won’t mean a thing when they get here. You can’t buy your way out of this.’

  ‘What’s your point exactly?’ an actress said mockingly, as Tabitha headed through the crowd towards the open glass doors. ‘You’re going to die with the rest of us, you weird bitch. At least we’ve got the means to enjoy ourselves before the end. No one even knows who you are. What are you even doing here?’

  Tabitha whistled into the night sky, and walked down into the garden by the bright-lit pool. She just hoped that Seven still responded to her whistle.

  ‘You think we’re bad people?’ the actress said angrily, pressing the point, following Tabitha down into the garden. A crowd gathered at the doors, drinking in the drama. ‘There aren’t any rules any more that you can judge us by,’ said the woman, diving into the argument. ‘It’s survival of the fittest now. We’re the fittest. So if the end’s coming, yeah, we’re going to enjoy our money. And we’ll carry on enjoying it right up to the end.’ Other people murmured their agreement in the crowd. ‘We’ll carry on enjoying ourselves right until the end,’ the woman repeated. ‘We’ll carry on living right until the end.’ The crowd of famous faces liked the sentiment. ‘The best survive,’ the actress told Tabitha, with a philosophical air. ‘The best look out for themselves and survive to enjoy the spoils. Like it or not, that’s what makes us human.’ Suddenly Seven dived down out of the night and landed heavily in the garden, and the house filled with screams and yells at the roaring black monster. Tabitha climbed up onto his back.

  ‘I’m glad I’m not human then,’ she replied, settling down into the saddle. Tabitha took a swig of whiskey while the harness fitted around her. With a thought she sent Seven leaping up over the garden with a jet blast. The crowd screamed as the creature bounded off the mansion roof, and they watched it tear off into the night.

  Survival of the fittest. The woman’s words echoed in Tabitha’s head as she soared into the starry sky. She looked down from Seven’s back at the dark world laid out far below, and took another tipsy swig of the whisky bottle and threw it into the night. Those people back there weren’t the fittest; not any more. They were just hiding away from extinction, gorging themselves on the last scraps of success while the new fittest took over the world. And trying to quote Darwin to justify themselves wasn’t going to make a blind bit of difference. Selfish and contentious people will not cohere, and without coherence, nothing can be effected. They were fucked.

  Tabitha sank down into the cockpit and watched the world roll away beneath them; a gleaming mould-white carpet in Seven’s spectral night vision. Spirit-white beaches and lead-grey rainforest rolled on forever as they reached Panama. At least, Tabitha thought it was Panama. She didn’t know. It was the narrowest stretch of land on the hologram map anyway. She saw farms and cities in ruins, looking all the more haunting in her ship’s nocturnal sight. She took Seven higher so that the dead towns and villages were just vague patchworks far below. She couldn’t stand to see any more death and destruction.

  The peaceful cockpit kept the temperature steady as Tabitha dozed, and the alien flight suit let her skin breathe freely. She still couldn’t feel Seven’s mind though, despite her attempts to reach out to him. Fishbowl was bobbing around placidly in the cockpit as they flew, until Tabitha felt a gentle tapping on her arm while she was trying to connect her thoughts to Seven’s.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked Fishbowl brightly, coming out of the ship’s mind and back into the cockpit. She was just glad to have some interaction at last. Fishbowl simply floated there next to her, and held out a tentacle.

  ‘Water?’ Tabitha guessed. She plucked the strange bottle from her belt and looked around the cockpit for a container to pour it in, but came up short. She glugged a bit into her cupped palm, and Fishbowl was straight in with a slurping tentacle. Tabitha gave it a few more glugs and drank a bit herself to take the edge off her whiskey headache. She was going to have to drink much more water than this to stay hydrated, she told herself. She refilled the bottle from the water dispenser behind the seat; it had a cold smooth taste. It was a novelty just to have water on tap again, there whenever she wanted it, easy as that. Where did Seven get it from though? Was it filtered seawater? She laid a palm on the dispenser and got a feeling from it; there was gallons of it held in a sac beyond the ribbed back wall. At least she wasn’t going to go thirsty, then. Tabitha yawned, stood up, stretched her legs. She’d have to decide where to go next, she supposed. Right now they were just flying without any particular place in mind. They should go somewhere uninhabited; that was all she could think of. Maybe another castle somewhere. It wasn’t like they needed food or supplies; they could live anywhere.

  ‘Where should we go?’ she asked Fishbowl, pulling up the hologram globe on the console. Its blue light lit her face with a calm glow.

  ‘Amazon? You’d like the Amazon,’ she told her companion. ‘You could grow flowers bigger than a house there. Hey, I could build a treehouse. Or what about Peru? It looks beautiful there, from the pictures. What do you think?’ she turned to look at Fishbowl, just glad to have something different to talk about. The creature just floated peacefully beside her and did nothing. ‘Never mind,’ said Tabitha, watching Fishbowl’s tentacles tap along her hand when she held it out. ‘I’m not very good with decisions either. Let’s do that then. Let’s go to Peru.’ Tabitha zoomed in on the hologram globe, held up her finger to the western coast, and hesitated. There weren’t any countries marked out on the globe, of course. Just land and sea.

  ‘Er,’ she mumbled, waving her finger around the general area. Ok, so she really was rubbish at geography. No point pretending. ‘Ah, we’ll know it when we see it.’ She took a guess and tapped her finger into the deepest part of the curving west coast, in the middle of the continent. Seven banked gently to the right, and Tabitha left him to it while she lay back in the seat to get some sleep. She just couldn’t face any more of that hard metal coldness that she felt in his mind.

  ‘Come back to me,’ she told Seven quietly, reaching out to press her palm to the wall. ‘I’m sorry.’

  By sunrise they were landing down quietly on a cloud-cloaked mountaintop, crowded with stone walls as old as myth. Machu Picchu; she couldn’t believe she was really here. Tabitha sat in the saddle for a while just to take it all in, and watched Fishbowl float off to explore the grass. She’d always wanted to come here. She was slap-bang in the heart of living history, surrounded by a solid earthy slab of legend. With her short attention span nagging at the reverent pause, Tabitha yawned away her sleep and jumped down from the saddle onto Seven’s wing. His scales were so dark now; nothing like when she’d first met him. Coal black. She made a point of stroking his neck, but he didn’t respond. Tabitha sighed sadly and turned away, walking down his wing like a ramp. She turned her attentions back to her destination and drank in the feel of the place, old and sacred. She smiled at the mountain view.

  ‘Well, this is Machu Picchu,’ she told Fishbowl, who was already bobbing around brightly above the grass in the city square. As soon as the creature had caught the scent of plants and earth on the fresh air it had pushed past her to get out of Seven’s hatch and explore.

  ‘At least someone’s happy,’ she said with a smile, watching Fishbowl tapping its tentacles on the grass around them. ‘You could have a word with him if you like,’ she said quietly, nodding at Seven. ‘He’s not the same any more.’ Tabitha wander
ed off towards the steep edge of the mountain, and looked around at the misty peaks that surrounded them. ‘Unless I’m just going insane, of course,’ she mumbled to herself. She was worrying over the emotional health of a dragon and an octopus. Still, who else did she have left to think about? Seven and Fishbowl were her friends, in some weird way. Her monsters.

  The clouds were lit gold in the rising sun. The only smell was grass in the fresh breeze. Tabitha saw light pouring over a different world around her, high and remote, hidden away in miles of forest as far as the eye could see. It wasn’t quite a tropical beach… but at least they were far from any battleships here. Her and Seven could take care of any stray spiders if they came creeping up to find them, and it was a long way up. It felt safe here; hidden. It was a good place to set up their home. She just hoped it would last.

  Tabitha placed her metal hands on rough ancient stone, carved into steps leading up to a rock platform. The stone walls of houses lined the mountaintop, from hovels to palaces. She had a whole town to herself, and Fishbowl could fill up the empty squares and foundations with new alien gardens. Tabitha smiled at the thought. All she wanted was a chance to live in peace.

  Seven had taken to the high peak that jutted over the town, and perched there on the highest rock with his wings spread to the sunlight. Fishbowl was floating around the stone terraces on the edge of the mountaintop, taking a great deal of interest in the grass and weeds and waving a tentacle through them. Tabitha looked around, nodded contentedly, and didn’t know what she could do. She always seemed to get teary in her quiet moments these days.

  ‘What am I supposed to do now, Mum?’ Tabitha asked the sky and the steep outlook in front of her. Her hand went straight for the ribbon on her wrist. ‘I wouldn’t mind so much if I had something to concentrate on, but there’s nothing left.’ She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her catsuit. She sniffled snot, laughed a little, and looked up at the sky. ‘Look, I’m still a big crybaby,’ she told her mum, smiling through her tears. ‘I don’t know where I’m supposed to go, or what I’m supposed to do. I mean, is it safe here? Or should I be on the other side of the world, looking for survivors?’ she sat down and hugged her knees close, staring over the steep drop at the hills and forest below. ‘I can’t even be around other people any more though,’ she told her mum. ‘I’m not the same person.’ Tabitha searched the heavens; watched the horizon under the golden sun, thinking all the while. And none of it helped her. Maybe she didn’t have to do anything. Maybe surviving for herself was enough. Perhaps this was her life now; blissful stretches of silver peace, shot through with sharp red chaos whenever they found her again. Just like being in the food chain, she supposed. Everything else had been living like that for millions of years.

  ‘I’ll survive all of this,’ she told the grass at her black feet. ‘That’s what I’ll do with my life. I’ll just be a survivor. A damn good one.’

  Tabitha strode back across the grassy square with a new sense of purpose. Survival, she said to herself. Like a mantra. It was a loose, misty kind of idea she had in her head, but at least it was something to set her mind to. She felt better having a plan, however basic it might be.

  ‘Water,’ she said to herself. ‘Water’s the most important thing.’ She walked off towards Seven on the peak, and was about to whistle him down into the city when she heard running water off to her left. It was coming from the sprawl of roofless stone houses, deep in the heart of the town. Tabitha followed the faint sound down dirt-path streets until it became a clear sloshing gush, and she rounded the corner of a stone alleyway to find the source. It was a square hole cut into the rock face, slapping water down into a stone basin in the ground. Tabitha sipped at a little to taste it, and filled her water bottle with a high-pitched rumble. She noticed a sunken button in the base of the bottle once she’d filled it, and pressed it in. The bottom split open like a flower, and a little filter inside dripped a dab of brown gunge on the ground. The base closed back up again, and that was that.

  ‘Well that was weird,’ she muttered, crouching down to dab her finger in the brown drip. It just seemed to be dirt. The bottle must have purified her water.

  ‘Mm,’ she concurred with herself, taking a sip. The water had a pure smoothness to it, fresh and mountain-cold. She turned around and jumped as she bumped into Fishbowl.

  ‘Oh hi you,’ she said brightly, sipping from her bottle. ‘Have some. It’s really good.’ She left Fishbowl to drink from the stone basin, and navigated back through ancient streets until she was back out on the green courtyard.

  ‘Ok, so water,’ she said, counting the essential with her thumb. ‘Then food,’ she added, popping up a finger and nodding at the sun. ‘Shelter… I’ve got a dragon for that… warmth, see above… and, what else?’ she looked around at a loss, staring at the mountain city. Searching for answers. There had to be more to survival than that. ‘Protection from predators, I suppose,’ she said. She touched the handle of the knife on her belt, and counted it off on her mental list by raising her little finger. She had her claws too, strong enough to tear holes in monsters; a small pack of spiders was nothing to her any more. ‘So now what?’ she said, a tiny figure standing alone on the mountaintop. The only thing she really had left to do was turn the ruins into a home. She smiled at the prospect, and looked around for the best house in town.

  ‘So this is an orchid, I think,’ Tabitha told Fishbowl, who was bobbing next to her on the terraces. It reached out a tentacle and tapped at the flower then wrapped it around the stem, about to pull it from the ground.

  ‘No,’ said Tabitha, pulling the tentacle gently away. ‘It’s not a weed. It’s a flower. Flowers are good. Bees need them.’ She watched Fishbowl floating there, puffing air from its gills and hesitating. It reached back to the orchid and stroked it gently, and patted down the ground around it.

  ‘Very good,’ Tabitha said happily, watching Fishbowl move closer to water the flower from a tentacle tip. ‘Good job.’ She led Fishbowl’s tentacle gently over towards a second flower, and patted around the ground there as well. Fishbowl got the message, and watered that flower too. Tabitha smiled, and felt a contented feeling rising inside her. She’d never thought that gardening could do that to her. ‘Well, there’s a million more flowers around here,’ she told Fishbowl, looking around the terraces. ‘Should keep you busy enough, if you fancy the job.’ Tabitha watched her monster move on to a third flower further along, patting down the grass around it and giving it some water. Suddenly it was hard at work with a gardening project, back to its usual Fishbowl self. If only her ship was so easy to handle, Tabitha said to herself. She looked up at her dragon perched high on the peak. The sky all around them had grown thick with low cloud, and her dragon stood out black as death against the drifting white fog and the mountains beyond. The real Seven was still in there somewhere; she was sure of it. Hidden away behind those big white eyes that stared at her from the peak. She left Fishbowl to it on the terraces, and wandered off back to Seven across the grassy square. The sunlight spilled down through the mist in heavenly rays, pouring drama into a living landscape painting all around her. Tabitha could only sigh and look around at the view, drinking in the sight of vivid green grass and dark jutting mountains that surrounded them. She’d take some alien seeds out from the cockpit, she decided, and let Fishbowl try to grow another alien garden here. It was the perfect place for it, and she’d never seen the creature look so content as when it had its garden. She peered up to the mountain peak above to call Seven down, and looked around at the clouds at the sound of sudden rumbling thunder. Except it wasn’t thunder. It was Seven, she realised. He was staring down at her, growling.

  ‘Hey, what’s your problem?’ she called up to him, coming closer. ‘Don’t you dare growl at me!’ she aimed a finger at him as he shifted his body round towards her on his rocky perch. His growls were getting louder, until she felt them rumbling right in her chest.

  ‘What the hell’s going on with you?’ she said. �
�Look, I didn’t mean to take over your mind, or whatever I did to you. I was trying to get us out of there. I was trying to stop us getting killed.’ Seven carried on growling, and stretched out his gigantic wings. ‘In fact, why am I even trying to explain anything to you?’ she said. ‘You don’t understand any of this anyway. I don’t know what to do to make you –

  Seven leapt off the rocky peak and swept overhead, cutting her off mid-sentence. Tabitha turned to watch him disappear into the vast wall of cloud, and heard him roar as he vanished out of sight. ‘Or, you could just leave us here if you wanted to,’ she sighed. ‘Just like that.’ There was a thundering boom then from deep in the clouds, and a flash of white light illuminated the mist. Seven came tearing back out of the murk and soared over Tabitha’s head, circling the mountain. The creature was too grey though, she realised. Too pale. It wasn’t Seven. Another roar from the shrouded hills, and her big black dragon burst out of the clouds and shot after it. Tabitha was shocked to see how much bigger Seven was than the other. The scrawny grey dragon was like a battery hen; Seven was free-range. Was that really what he’d looked like, just a few days ago? Suddenly it was diving for her. Tabitha ran for her life. The smaller grey dragon didn’t get so much as a flame from its mouth before Seven ripped it out of the sky and tore its throat. The ground shook beneath Tabitha’s feet as the two dragons crashed down into the city square, and she watched Seven murdering his own kind with a feral intensity. The grey dragon roared and submitted beneath him, and Seven crunched its neck and silenced it. He looked up at Tabitha with wild white eyes, silver blood raining and slopping from his jaws. A tyrant. Seven bore down on the mangled dragon like a hawk over its kill, his wings spread to conceal it. He sank his claws deeper into the twitching grey dragon with a savage crunch. It screamed in pain when he finished it off, and he bit down and tore its head away from its gushing neck to tumble down the mountainside.