Tabitha (49 page)

‘I’m
going to get out of this,’ she told herself, cringing at the pain. ‘I’m going
to get out of this.’ She thought back to the silver spider in the bathtub in
her house; her first kill. At first it seemed invulnerable, a metal monster.
She’d cut it open though, managed to dismantle it. She went through it in her
head – the silvery crustacean skin, the tendons, the white flesh beneath.
Everything could be reduced to its parts, whether it was an engine or an alien
body. She knew alien bodies better than anyone. Even better, her rough metal
fingers were practically pliers.

‘Start
at the weakest point,’ she whispered to herself, trying to ignore the maddening
pain. ‘Break it down. Start with the smallest piece.’ Tabitha reached down and grasped
the giant fingers gripping her legs. She felt down the first fingertip where it
was buried in her bleeding calf. Gasping at the pain, she wiggled the alien
claw tip as hard as she could. It wasn’t about to come loose. She breathed
deep, tried to stop panicking, and tried again. She strained at the finger with
everything she had, and the joint creaked and loosened. Staring in shock at her
victory, Tabitha pulled the finger away as hard as she could. She set to work
on the rest. It was agony, but it was worth it. Nothing motivated like the
promise of freedom. Wrenching the last curled finger from her calf, Tabitha
rested a while to let her legs heal up. She could barely even look at her feet
though, trapped and punctured in its giant piranha teeth.

‘Start
with the smallest piece,’ she repeated, like a prayer. She reached into the
monster’s mouth and gripped the smallest tooth. With a great deal of prising
and wiggling, in a few minutes she’d wrenched out the tooth from its jaw. She
gasped and leant back with the pain in her feet, staring at the starry night
sky. The tooth looked like black enamel, and it had a root. So the monster was
more organic than machine; it had to be. Tabitha felt more hopeful at the
thought. The second tooth came out easier; she prised it from the jaw with the
help of the first one. Same with the third, and the fourth. She worked her way
back through the rows of giant teeth, first loosening them from the mangled
metal gums and then, wishing she had a strong drink to go with it, pulling the
teeth from her feet.

Tabitha
blacked out with the pain as she worked. Coming around, she reminded herself of
her progress and pulled more teeth. Willed herself on. The last one was the
deepest; a knife of black bone buried deep through her right foot. She pulled
it out and screamed, punching the road. She screamed again as she tugged her
soles off the bottom rows of teeth, one foot and then the other. Free. Tabitha
took her numb legs slowly out from the monster’s mouth, crying with the pain.
She dragged herself away from the cold silver pool of blood, shivering in
rain-soaked clothes. She had to get warm. All she wanted was a corner to crawl
away into. She slunk off to sit down in a shop doorway, with darkening eyes and
the axe by her side, and rocked herself to sleep. She woke up shivering soon
after, and knew that she had to get warm. Her feet hadn’t healed up. They
weren’t bleeding, but the wounds were black and festering in the moonlight
through her torn-up boots. She staggered up and leant against the wall of the
shop doorway, and hacked away the shutter over the door with the axe. Once
inside, she slotted the axe through both handles to bar the doors, and crawled
off into the dark heart of the clothes shop. She ripped coats and cardigans down
off their hangers; piling them into a nest down behind the tills.

As
lonely as she’d felt when she came clothes shopping here, back in the real
world, Tabitha knew she could rely on the sad knowing smiles of the checkout
girls. The ones she could spot a mile off; the ones like herself. Just like
her, they had to put up with the indifference and the judging glances of the
girls who were better off, better dressed, better equipped to handle life… just
better.
But now, here, behind these tills where the sad girls used to
stand and work, Tabitha felt at home. It was a human point of reference; a
familiar place. She felt herself getting warmer inside her pile of coats and
cardigans. For the few moments before she fell asleep, Tabitha felt almost
human again. Until the dreams came, and the hands and teeth and white eyes
descended on her in the dark. She sat up, reaching her hand out to nothing in
the empty shop. Her mind raced as she lay back down and closed her eyes. Venom
dreams; hallucinations. The coats were human skins piled high over her,
dripping silver blood and molten steel that burned her skin. Her feet gushed
blood and liquid metal. Her hands curled and froze and cracked. Her feet burned
and grew stabbing teeth. Tabitha screamed and cried into hot human skins that
were coats, and passed out into a deep poisoned sleep.

It was dark when
Tabitha woke up, and she remembered crawling into the shop as if she’d been
drunk or drugged. But peering over the checkout counter, she spotted dots of
light through the metal shutters over the windows. It was morning, and she’d
never felt happier to see it. She remembered dreams, fleeting and terrible,
slipping her mind. She limped over to the doors, and then the monster came back
to her in a jagged thought. Its staring white eyes. Its grip. Its teeth. The
sea of skins and a tide of silver blood, and the gnawing cold of the night.
Tabitha dropped to the floor and gripped her knees to her chest, rocking and
staring at the sign for a half-price sale.

‘Up,’
she commanded herself, sighing out the tension. ‘Get up.
Get up.
’

Tabitha’s
feet were agony as she hobbled around the shop. She peeled off her cold damp
jumper and t-shirt and looked in the changing room mirrors. Everywhere but her
hands, her skin was still pale and freckled. Human skin. She hugged herself
with grey metal hands that seemed a little darker this morning, a little harder
and stronger. Despite her agonising feet and everything that had happened, she
somehow felt more energetic today. She was especially impressed with the
muscular crease that ran down her stomach. She’d never had one of those before.
She felt springy, powerful. She had intended to change into some new clothes
here, but there wasn’t anything practical for autumn. Only sandals and shorts;
flimsy summer dresses. Clothes from the old world, where fashion was a real
thing. The jackets were light cotton; nowhere close to her own musty
weatherproof that she’d tossed down smoking outside somewhere. She pulled her
wet dirty jumper back on and gave up on changing. It’d be warmer than anything
here anyway, once it dried off. Its damp stink and silver bloodstains gave it a
hard-wearing honesty that she didn’t want to part with. Her feet still throbbed
and ached in her torn boots.

Tabitha
limped over to the doors, unbarring the handles and throwing one open for a bit
of daylight to see by. Popping her head outside, the coast was clear. There was
only the hulking black corpse of the monster out there, sprawled massive on the
road. She couldn’t believe she’d killed it. As she walked out a little further,
Tabitha wondered why she was still limping. Surely her feet should have healed
up by now. Worried, she sat down on the shop’s doorstep and unlaced her mangled
boots. She peeled off her stinking blood-crusted socks, and with great
difficulty she pulled the shredded strands of fabric from the dark open wounds
on her feet. She noticed then in the daylight that her fingers weren’t grey
any more
; they were black. As black as the monster on the
road. They’d changed since the fight; since she’d been asleep. At her wrists
the black skin faded to grey, and from grey to her own pale skin tone. Her
hands felt so much harder; heavier. Stronger. With a punch, she shattered a
tile on the shop doorstep and cracked the concrete beneath. She was definitely
stronger than yesterday. She finished pulling shreds of sock from the gouges in
her feet, and stared in horror. It wasn’t just the shadows in the doorstep and
the strange milky glow of the morning light; her feet really were turning grey.
They were starting to match the new black skin on her hands, growing darker and
harder by the minute. She jumped a little then at a giant moth resting in the
doorway, halfway to a small bat. She shuddered at its zombie stillness and
pushed herself up from the doorway, staggering out into the light.

Tabitha
certainly felt stronger once she stood in the growing sunlight, admiring the
monster’s corpse. She wished she had a camera, really. She could have buried
the axe down in its brains and posed for a photo with a foot on her kill. She
couldn’t get enough of the warm sun, like it held a new tingling fascination
for her – just like that bloody moss in the forest. An inexplicable attraction;
some new alien part of her mind maybe.

She
rested down on a bench with a bottle of whiskey from the torn-up pub, with the
axe propped beside her and her rescued coat drying in the sun. Closing her
eyes, Tabitha let the sun shine red through her eyelids. Whiskey had never
tasted so sweet, so hot. But then she’d never needed a drink as much as she did
now. It went down easy; a burning liquid smoothness to scorch her thoughts
away. She sighed, breathing deep in the sunshine. Smelled the whiskey fumes on
her breath. The rotten sulphur stench of the drains hampered the scene a little
bit, but the city was so peaceful, so empty. She wiggled her bare toes while
she rested, and gradually felt the pain in her feet subside. She noticed all
sense of touch fade away from her feet too, just like her hands. Nothing much
she could do about it; no point in missing it.

‘Well,
I did wish for them,’ she mumbled to herself, thinking back to her journey over
the hills on soft bare feet. She thought about her escape from the base.
Flashbacks of operations haunted her for a second; she killed the thoughts and
dragged her mind back to the present. Tried to experience the world around her,
right here and right now. Deep breaths. Her clothes stunk of damp. They’d dry
while she wore them, she supposed. When she stood up the limp and the dull ache
had gone from her feet, and the wounds had disappeared. Just like her hands,
her feet had grown dark and armoured like the dead monster’s hide. The new skin
was thick and iron-hard, black as coal.

Tabitha
walked across the road to test out her new feet, feeling nothing of the
pavement under her hard bare soles. Walking felt smooth and natural, better
than wearing shoes. She kicked a sturdy metal bin; left a dent. Kicked it
again. And again. A sudden anger rising, she punched it and kicked it until the
bin was a crumpled ruin. She kicked hard against a wall and shattered a brick
into fragments, as if her heel was a sledgehammer. She ran down the street and
kicked a lamp post into a bent tilt. Punched a phone box half to pieces and
shattered bricks with her fists in the wall behind her. Leaning on the wall to
get her breath back, she lifted up her feet one by one to take a closer look.
The soles were covered in tiny scales, super-
grippy
on the pavement. She launched herself into a sprint, and felt a new strength in
her feet like coiled springs.
Heartcore
racing, she
felt high when she circled back up the street and jogged to a stop by the dead
monster.

Tabitha
found out just how strong she’d become when she gave the alien corpse a cursory
punch to the head. Clenched her black hand into a fist and smashed it down into
the creature’s skull. She’d left a dent – she couldn’t believe it. Another
punch deepened it to a crater. And then the pain started. There was a tingling
in her hands then, sharp like an electric shock. Suddenly her palms were
burning. Every finger felt on fire. She screamed and shook her fingers and
hugged them tight under her armpits, stamping the road and desperate for the
vice-grip feeling to stop. The pain made her want to throw up, to faint, to cut
off her hands just to stop it. It felt like someone was taking a chainsaw to
her fingers. Tabitha staggered and stumbled into a wall. She dropped to her
knees and shook as the burning came on again, even worse than before. She
screamed, clenched her teeth; clenched her fists as she fell to all fours. Her
trembling hands were shifting, bleeding, changing before her eyes. Claws sprang
from new gaps in her fingertips, thick and stubby and sharp. The pain faded
just as quickly as it’d come, and Tabitha stared wide-eyed and nauseous at the
claws.
Her
claws. By reflex they sank back down painlessly into the new
gaps in her fingertips. By reflex, she could spring them out again like a cat.
Sinking her new claws into the dead monster’s back, she could even peel away
its thick skin a little. She licked the creature’s silver blood off her black
fingers as she stood up. It was sweet, but not in any way she could put a taste
to. A stronger hit than the spider blood. Her heart core raced as she swallowed
a gulp; excited. She felt an electrical buzz, elated at the taste, and her old
appetite came back with a vengeance. She lapped at the silvery blood that still
covered the road, ice-cold and refreshing. She caught sight of herself in a
window, licking blood off the tarmac on her hands and knees. She ignored
herself and carried on, as if she were licking up melted chocolate. It was a
thin covering though, and it tasted too much like the road. Like dirt in good
wine. Pouncing hungrily on the creature’s head, Tabitha peeled its skull apart
and sucked at the blood that had welled around its brain. It felt like milk and
vodka going down, cold and strong and silky. Her face was covered in it when
she was done. She felt tipsy; tingly all over. All the itchy anxiety was gone.
Breast-fed
newborns
didn’t feel this contented.