Tabitha

by Hall, Andrew

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Alex laughed, admiring the violence. The spiders hesitated around the huge black body, its gushing blood turning the blue moss into a shining swamp. Tabitha stared at the hesitant swarm around her, catching her breath. They were coming back though; regrouping. She couldn’t keep this pace up forever, not against so many. It was going to be a long slow death once her energy started to run out. Suddenly the swarm was scuttling back in for round two. Seven’s roar filled the sky then, and his shadow swept down over the spiders like a deathly spectre. He crashed down amongst them with an earthquake impact and lit the field up with a white inferno, melting the spiders a dozen at a time. Alex laughed and cheered at the carnage, stepping back from the searing heat.

  ‘Alright, I definitely need one of those!’ he yelled happily, barely audible over the thundering rush of Seven’s flames. The spider swarm was dwindling down, edging back as Alex and Tabitha fought on. Seven cut deep molten trenches through the horde beyond, hurling ghostly white napalm deep into their ranks until the survivors were scuttling away.

  ‘There’s dragons coming!’ Tabitha yelled to Alex, watching the skies as she leapt up into Seven’s saddle. ‘Come with me!’

  ‘Take care of them!’ said Alex, slamming his fist into another spider scurrying his way. The mossy field burned white behind him. ‘I’ll handle the rest of these, just keep those big fuckers off me!’

  ‘Take this then,’ Tabitha called to him. She took the alien knife from her belt and tossed it down to the moss by his feet. Alex grinned and picked it up, and promptly buried the blade in a scuttling spider with a flying burst of silver blood. He pulled it out with a squeak and carved another in half. It cut them like they were cardboard.

  ‘It’s beautiful!’ he shouted back happily, slashing another spider apart and blinking away from the blood.

  ‘I want that back,’ Tabitha called over her shoulder, turning Seven around and taking off over the meadow. She looked back at Alex’s shrinking shape as she climbed off into the sky. A single frenzied figure standing against the swarm, fast and animal-violent; painting the blue moss in shining bursts of silver blood.

  Tabitha’s rage bubbled up black and burning as she sank down into the cockpit. Revenge filled her head. Seven climbed high over the hive and the city ruins. The grey dragons loomed closer, circling above.

  ‘I really hope you’re the ones that caught us in the desert, because I’m going to fucking destroy you,’ she growled at the pack. Tabitha stepped into Seven’s mind and felt the full rabid brunt of his rage in there; a shotgun blast of snarling bloody thoughts that filled her head. Seven raced for the dragons on a collision course, taking their orderly formation by surprise with his recklessness.

  ‘Get in there, Seven,’ she told him. ‘Kill.’

  Alex heard Seven roar high above the meadow. He looked up at a sudden bursting cloud of silver in the sky, shining in the sun like a fluid firework. Dragon blood rained down on him from the heavens as he cut another spider open, laughing as he wrenched the knife out with a slick spurt. He grabbed another that leapt for him and wrestled it brutally to the ground, savouring its metal screams as he hacked its legs away.

  Seven tackled another dragon and ripped its throat out. The grey body dropped away to the city below, crashing down on an office block with an echoing dustcloud explosion. The dragons’ white flames did nothing against Seven, huge and black and hurtling towards them. Their pale skinny frames dived away as he crashed in amongst them.

  ‘You’re a bunch of rookies,’ Tabitha said with a grin, swooping over the panicked pack as they tried to fight. She spun Seven around and chased down a dragon that was scrawny by comparison; clamped his claws down into the back of its neck and snatched it out of the sky. Tabitha pressed Seven’s head close enough to see the fear in the grey dragon’s eyes, and chewed its head into a mangled bloody mess. She caught something moving in the corner of her eye. A dark figure was clambering out of the grey dragon’s hatch; a watcher trying to escape his dead ship. Tabitha screamed in a blind rage and spat a jet of flame down on the figure, watching the dragon and its burning pilot drop and smash into the ground. She felt a dragon bite Seven’s wing and yelled in anger, wrapping his body around their attacker and crushing his jaws deep into the grey dragon’s chest. His weight dropped the two of them to a tower block roof with a crash. Seven’s victim was batting its wings and screaming for life in the dustcloud, scrambling to get away. Seven dragged it back. Tabitha didn’t stop tearing the scales and flesh until she saw the watcher pilot inside it, holding on for dear life to what remained of the cockpit. Seven slammed his jaws around the deep wound of his own accord and spewed flames into the dragon’s chest, bursting its body apart in a tide of steaming blood.

  ‘Where the fuck are you going?’ Tabitha screamed at the last two, leaping Seven off the roof to chase a dragon down as it turned to fly away. Seven shot into the sky, staring hungrily as he chased it down. The dragon was dodging and weaving, frantic to escape. Seven snatched it up in his talons and bit down into its wing, tearing it off at the shoulder in a gush of blood. The grey dragon screamed and fell away in a spin, spurting blood in a silvery spiral before it crashed down into the ruins.

  ‘You’re really going to wish you weren’t the last one left,’ Tabitha told the remaining dragon. It glanced back at them gaining fast as it zig-zagged in the sky. Their prey gave up ducking and dodging and opened up its jets into a straight-out sprint into the blue, trying desperately to escape Seven’s shadow. Tabitha chased it down and sank Seven’s cruel talons into its back, forcing the struggling grey dragon to a rooftop where they could pick it apart one screaming shred at a time. Tabitha thought about her mum and took her bloodbath revenge. She thought about Emma and Jen, the Ghosts… and her Laika and Fishbowl. She thought about herself, being force-fed to that monstrosity on the mothership. Thought about every healed-up gouge and screaming punishment she’d never deserved. When the watcher emerged broken from the grey dragon’s mangled corpse, Tabitha leapt out of Seven’s cockpit to finish it herself. The dazed figure looked up from the rooftop to see the human hybrid standing over it. Gold eyes staring, the same colour as its own. It watched her carefully and opened its hands out at its sides; asking for mercy. Tabitha flicked her claws out and ripped its throat away, forcing the screaming watcher down on the rooftop to strangle the life out of it.

  Alex felt his arms cramping as he wrestled another spider to the ground. He buried the knife in its heart and staggered to his feet, exhausted from the fighting. Suddenly there was a clawing clambering weight on his back as another pounced on him from behind. Grunting with the effort he threw the spider over his shoulder and pummelled it into the ground. Almost forgetting, he pulled the knife from the bleeding spider behind him with a shrill metal squeak. He sighed breathlessly and looked around at the never-ending swarm creeping closer. He felt his heart in his throat when he saw the spiders bursting apart in the distance. Something huge was ploughing through them to get to him. The biggest monster he’d ever seen.

  ‘Alright,’ he said, exasperated, hacking another spider away. He had a tail; he had the knife. Maybe he stood a chance. He faced the monster as it charged towards him. He was faster, smaller. He could give it a matador cut when it came past. Enough of those and he might even bleed its strength out. Alex leapt away too late though, and the monster raked its claws down his arm as he dived aside. The monster skidded in the moss and turned to run back at him. Alex wasn’t even on his feet. A sudden shadow descended and bit down into the monster’s side. Gigantic jaws mangled the screaming creature into a bloody mess, and tossed it away to flail and die. Seven stood growling at the spiders, a deep murderous rumble. Tabitha watched from the saddle as the silver tide hesitated and backed away. There were no more dragons above; no hulking brutes charging from the forest. Only the shrinking swarm of spiders sulking back, and a creeping hope of victory in Tabitha’s mind. The breeze was thick with the smell of fire and alien blood; the blue silver-ma
rsh meadow was strewn with bodies around them.

  ‘You’re still alive then,’ she observed, looking down at Alex sitting in the moss. ‘Oh god, your shoulder!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Alex nodded, staring at the gaping wound in his cradled arm. The torn scales and flesh streamed silver, mixing with the spiders’ blood on his hands. ‘I could say that it’s fine and I could carry on, but this really fucking hurts and I’m losing a lot of blood.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Tabitha, jumping down from Seven to help Alex to his feet. ‘We need to get you inside,’ she said, nodding at the living cathedral. ‘We’ll be safer in there.’

  ‘Let’s just get those people out so we can get out of here,’ Alex grumbled, gripping his bleeding arm. ‘And if they don’t sound grateful enough when we find them, I’m going to be really pissed off.’

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ Tabitha chuckled. ‘Seven, can you stay out here and keep the spiders away please?’ Seven growled and snapped at the swarm to force them back. ‘I don’t think you’d fit through the door anyway,’ she told her dragon with a smile, stroking his bloody snout. Seven watched Alex and Tabitha stagger off towards the cathedral and disappear inside. He stomped after them and sat by the entrance, guarding the door. The surviving spiders lurked in the distant trees and ruins, creeping away into their holes to wait. Seven lay down dominant, owning the empty field and looking around at his kills.

  49

  ‘Come on, we can’t stop here,’ said Tabitha, helping Alex across a giant entrance hall. The structure was a church of living metal inside, walls swelling and falling with peaceful breath in the sacred silence. Pulsing current. A ghoulish towering hybrid, lit by a million lights glowing cold and aquatic. It smelled like a forest in here.

  ‘Are you sure they’re in here? The prisoners?’ said Tabitha.

  ‘They’re here, somewhere,’ Alex replied, grunting at the pain. There was a rising heavenly drone in this place, like it was seeping from the walls. A rumbling choir of static in their heads. Their whispering footsteps echoed down the hall. The choir of current was rising. And behind the sound, the breath of the building. Constant, calm. Monumental.

  ‘We need to get you bandaged up,’ said Tabitha, looking back at Alex’s trail of silver blood on the scaly floor.

  ‘You know, I’m not going to argue with that,’ Alex replied, grunting again at the pain as they moved through melting doors into a vast hall. They crossed the room in a kind of reverent silence; staring around at organic walls and glowing plants, ornate and skeletal.

  ‘This place is incredible,’ said Alex, breaking the silence. Tabitha noticed how pale he was; shaky and sluggish. He was looking up at the high vaulted ceiling. There were webs of branches or bones up there; alien scaffolds that seemed more grown than built. Starlight twisted and fluxed in the fibrous rafters, lighting the place with a ghostly pulsing glow. Alex pressed his palm into a bony temple column beside them, and watched a glowing white imprint of his hand in the material fading back to grey. For a second the skin of the column ran through with illuminated veins, pulsing the touch of his skin to the rest of the cathedral like a message. Alex stared up in wonder at the haunting light show and pressed his hand against the column again.

  ‘Come on you idiot, you’re bleeding to death,’ said Tabitha, helping him on deeper into the hall. The walls grew brighter as they made their way up a wide ribbed slope, until at the top they found a glowing garden in the heart of the building. Fishbowls were floating around between alien shrubs and flowers, tending to their plants under a pale aquatic light. There was a trickle of water somewhere, beyond the trees ahead. Strange white proto-birds jetted their way between the flowers, sipping arcs of current from the blooms. Insects Tabitha had never seen before drifted placidly between the plants, floating and translucent like tiny jellyfish bobbing through the air.

  ‘Well, seems like a nice place to die anyway,’ Alex said shakily. He grunted with the pain as Tabitha helped him through the flowers to sit him down on the blue moss.

  ‘You’re not going to die,’ Tabitha told him, rinsing his wound with her water bottle. She looked around the garden and plucked a huge spiral-patterned leaf from a smoky-red shrub. She picked at the edge, and tore it into long spongy strips. Gently she wrapped the strips around his metal-skinned arm and tied them off tight like bandages, one by one. Tabitha worked in silence as the alien birds and insects floated and fluttered around them in the garden. High above, miniature moons hovered motionless below the ceiling. Glowing deathly pale, shining a watery light down on the growing garden. A glowing cloud of stardust swelled and shifted like a mist against the ceiling; a bonsai nebula writhing snail-slow above their heads. Tabitha tied off one last strip of leaf around Alex’s arm, and sat back on the moss.

  ‘Looks like you’ve stemmed the flow,’ Alex joked, grinning at her.

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ she replied, with the tiniest hint of a smile on her lips.

  ‘It really hurts,’ he said, flapping his arm like a chicken wing.

  ‘So stop moving it,’ she said despairingly. ‘Here, lie back.’ She plucked a giant tubular fungus and set it down like a pillow, helping him lie down on the moss. A flurry of spores puffed from the moss where he lay down, dancing up like glowing dust into the air.

  ‘Are you trying to seduce me?’ he said, grinning. ‘I’m not that kind of guy.’ Tabitha fought back a smile, holding onto her stony expression.

  ‘You did well out there,’ she said, trying to change the subject. ‘You’re a good fighter.’ She checked the bleeding beneath his makeshift bandages, and brought another leaf over to tear up and replace the sodden strips. Tabitha worked in silence, scoring out the strips with a claw before she ripped the leaf into pieces.

  ‘You’re the saddest person I’ve ever seen,’ said Alex, watching her face as she tied the new bandages around his arm. Tabitha looked up from his wound into his eyes, and didn’t know what to say for a second. Caught off guard.

  ‘I’ve lost everyone,’ she replied quietly, tying off the last strip of leaf. ‘Of course I look sad.’

  ‘No, there’s more to it than that,’ said Alex, studying her expression where he lay. ‘And I know, losing everyone is hell, and I’m right there with you on that one. I’ve lost everyone too. But you look… lost. Absolutely lost. Like you’ve given up on the world.’ Tabitha sat back on the moss, staring at the garden. He had no right to start making guesses about her like that. But he was right. And the thoughts bubbled up into words before she could stop them.

  ‘…I’ve killed people,’ she told him. It felt so weird to say. It wasn’t something she’d ever expected to admit to. It wasn’t something she was capable of. At least, she never thought so. The building looked so much like some weird church though, that it felt like the right place to confess her sins. And most of all she felt the weight on her mind lift, just a little, when she’d said it.

  ‘I’ve killed people too,’ Alex replied, staring at the moonlit ceiling high above. ‘I didn’t have any choice,’ he told the stardust. He pushed himself up and grunted with the pain, and shuffled his way over beside her. ‘Look, we had to stay alive,’ he told her. Tabitha looked up into his eyes. ‘We did what we had to,’ he assured her.

  ‘I’m a murderer,’ she objected, quietly. She felt a tear roll down her cheek. ‘I’m the worst kind of person. A monster. This thing I’ve turned into… it isn’t me.’

  ‘We’re not the people we used to be,’ Alex replied. ‘But what else were we supposed to do, just lay down and die? Let those people kill us instead? This isn’t the same world any more. It’s just instinct, to do what it takes to survive.’ He met Tabitha’s gaze. ‘Civilisation’s disappeared,’ he told her. ‘So have the rules. Morals go out the window when you’re trying to survive. Especially when you think about what we’re up against.’

  ‘True,’ Tabitha said quietly, looking back down at the bright blue ground. They were interrupted for a moment by a strange passer-by. Both of them glanced up and
watched an alien creature swim by silently through the air, like an airborne squid or a nautilus. A bony shoe-shaped creature with tentacles and staring eyes. It drifted by, indifferent. Tabitha watched it go, thinking, and looked back down at the ground. The grief and sadness she’d fought off for so long came back with a vengeance, and swallowed her up completely.

  ‘Look, we’ve both done things we aren’t proud of, along the way,’ said Alex. Tabitha looked up through her tears and saw a fierce conviction in his eyes. An intensity. ‘But we did those things for a reason; the only reason that matters. To stay alive,’ he said. ‘And here we are, still hanging on, even after everything that’s happened to us. That’s all it comes down to. Here.’ Suddenly he took her black metal hand in his own, and Tabitha felt a current there between their skin.

  ‘Do you feel that?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied quietly, looking up into his eyes. It was the strangest sensation; a tingling magnetism like she’d never felt before. Electrostatic lust.

  ‘We’re different. We’re a new species,’ he told her. ‘We’re going to do whatever it takes to survive, and we’re going to do it together.’ Tabitha looked into his stark eyes, and dropped her guard. She’d only just met him. Whether it was the voltage or something else that made her heartcore race, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that when he leaned in closer, she didn’t pull away. Suddenly she didn’t feel so alone any more.