Tabitha (63 page)

47

The sun shone down bright on New York’s toppled
brick-dust corpse. Birds flocked over a jagged landscape of ruined skyscrapers
and jutting steel girders. Dead canary-yellow taxis punched colour into the
grey streets. Bags and wrappers had blown into
rubbled
corners and crevices on the sidewalks, piled high like rustling plastic
snowdrifts. Weeds and grass blew like tufts of hair in every concrete crack; an
endless web of green veins through roads and buildings that reclaimed the city
for the wild.

Alex wrestled a silver spider to the road
with a scraping clatter. He pinned it down with dark metallic hands and watched
it squirm. Skewered it with the spike on his long black tail.

‘Make me
stronger,’ he told the struggling spider. Its stab wound spurted blood as he
dug his fingers in. He ripped the wound open with a creak as the spider
shrieked and flailed; sank his black metal teeth down into the white flesh.
Alex wrenched his head and tore away a limp bloody chunk of meat while his prey
scrabbled and screamed.

‘Make me
stronger!’ he roared at it, spitting shreds of white flesh as he chewed. The
alien scrambled frantically, trying to get away. Pinning it down with his left
hand, Alex curled his right into a fist and laid into it. He thumped and beat
and battered the struggling spider over and over in the silent street, like a
hammer on sheet steel, until its silver blood covered his knuckles. ‘Last
chance,’ he said quietly, squeezing its head in his grey hand. The trembling
spider gave up the fight and twitched its legs limply. ‘You won’t survive me,’
he told it. ‘None of you will. Now, make me
stronger
.’ Again he sank his
teeth down into its back with sadistic feline pleasure, tearing away a mouthful
of flesh in a bloody spurt. He let the taste touch every side of his tongue; a
tingling electric sourness like lemons made of lightning. A sweeter aftertaste
than any dessert in the world. And then, the gulp of blood. A taste beyond
words; star juice. It floated his bones and massaged his mind, and blew every
drop of tension clean away. Alex pushed back his blonde hair and looked to the
heavens, closing his eyes. He sighed with satisfaction on a long shining high;
his mind twisted crystal-bright and silver-aquatic in the sunlight.

‘Delicious,’ he
told the spider, pointing to his mouthful. ‘Thank you.’ He gulped the cold
tingling blood and swallowed the flesh, and leaned in to rip away another raw
white shred. The maimed spider’s screams filled the empty street; filled the
dead city. There was a sudden sweeping noise overhead, and a distant hiss of
jet engines. Alex glanced up at the sound. Not fighter jets though; not this
time. He looked up between the ruined skyscrapers and saw a black ship flying
past. An alien ship. There was a woman riding it.

‘Well fuck me,’
said Alex, grinning as he watched them soar off over the city. ‘They’re heading
for the hive,’ he told the mangled spider, as it flailed uselessly in the
rubble to get away from him. ‘Looks like this is my lucky day!’ Alex said
brightly, his eyes stark and manic in the sunlight. His heart was soaring as he
dragged the spider back to him and beat it to death on the road.

Tabitha swept low over the toppled
skyscrapers and landed down on an office block to give Seven a rest. Sandy
flows of dust and rubble whispered and tumbled to the street where Seven set
down. Tabitha glanced down at the road beneath them. Nothing but dead traffic
and blowing rubbish, and dropped phones glinting in the sunlight. Landslide
mounds of demolished buildings faded into a haze for as far as the eye could
see. Hills of dead masonry swamped corporate HQs and gloomy boutiques with
broken signs and shattered windows. There didn’t seem to be anything left alive
here. She’d seen something there in the distance though, beyond a mountain
range of grey grassy rubble. A mass of black and white growths almost like a
forest, and a strange throbbing light beyond it. Seven looked down and growled.

‘Where can I get
one of those?’ a man called up from the street. Tabitha jumped at the voice and
peered over the edge of the roof at a blonde man below. Jacket and jeans caked
in dust; a beautiful brute. Tabitha didn’t trust him one bit. She didn’t trust
anyone any more.

‘Leave me alone,
or I’ll kill you,’ she called back. Her voice echoed in the dead city street.

‘I’m sure you
could,’ he replied. ‘But us monsters should stick together.’ Tabitha couldn’t
help but peer down again. The man was holding grey hands up, and shaking some
kind of spear. Wait… not a spear. That was a tail. He was a hybrid like her;
the watchers’ wanted man.

‘What happened
to you?’ she said, suspicious of him.

‘Alien
superpowers,’ he said brightly, taking a seat in a cratered car roof. The roof
made a thin metal thud under his weight. ‘I’m Alex,’ he said warmly. ‘Nice to
meet you. So, what happened to you?’

‘Same,’ she
replied warily. How had he found her so easily? Did he know she was coming
here? Had they been drawn together, like Seven was to her? Or maybe she was
just hard to miss, riding around on a big black dragon.

‘Are you going
to stop pointing that gun at me?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Fine,’ he
chuckled. ‘Can we at least talk down here on the street, so I’m not shouting to
every spider in town?’ Tabitha watched him cautiously. He had a point. She
didn’t trust him, but she didn’t want him dead either. She’d seen enough
violence.

Alex watched the
dragon soar down from the rooftop, and felt the road shake under the car when
it landed down. The woman still had the alien pistol aimed at him as he came
closer. She’d left a good distance between them. Plenty of room for the dragon
to torch him if he tried anything.

Tabitha stayed
on Seven’s back, watching the man walk closer. He was lean and muscular, and
had that same animal quickness about him that she recognised in her new self.

‘You were
looking at the hive up there,’ the man observed, glancing at the office block
above and flicking away a fly with his tail.

‘Is that what it
is?’ Tabitha replied.

‘Or maybe you’d
call it a garden, I don’t know,’ said Alex. ‘It’s where they’re all coming
from, anyway. It’s where they grow. You can see the place glowing at night on
the skyline.’

‘I’m not
interested in the hive,’ Tabitha replied, still aiming the gun.

‘Really? So why
did you come here?’ he asked her. Tabitha hesitated. How could she say that she
was here for him? She didn’t even trust him. She’d come all this way to meet
her fellow fugitive, to find out what he was; it turned out that he was just
like her. Now what?

‘I get it,
you’re here for the others,’ said Alex. Tabitha watched him carefully as he
stepped a little closer. He moved strangely; fluid and feral.

‘What others?
You mean the aliens?’ she said. Birds chirped in the grey silence.

‘I mean people
like us,’ he replied. Tabitha stared at him warily, gripped with a happy shock
and a rotting doubt. Wanting to believe him.

‘There’s more of
us,’ he assured her, opening his hands out. ‘Those things have been rounding us
up, keeping us in the hive. God knows what they do to those poor bastards, but
I swear… on a really quiet night… I can hear them screaming sometimes.’ Tabitha’s
mind shot to a hellish vision of torture and death. Her tribe. ‘I saw a couple
of young kids like us just a few days ago, you know,’ said Alex. ‘They were
dead on the road. Killed by a gang, I think.’ Tabitha’s eyes widened at the
thought of them. ‘I don’t know which is worse,’ Alex said sadly. ‘How the
aliens treat us, or how the humans do.’

‘So… you don’t
think we’re human?’ said Tabitha. She was dwelling on the thought of the dead
children.

‘Do you?’ he
replied. ‘Look at us. We’re a race above. We’ve
adapted.
That’s why
they’re hunting us. Why
everything
is hunting us. Because we’re the real
survivors. They’re all afraid of us.’ Tabitha watched him. He was making too
much sense for her to be pointing a gun at him. Still, she had her doubts. He
looked strong, intimidating, even despite his smile. His grin revealed a mouth
full of sharp black teeth. She kept the pistol on him.

‘
The freak
shall inherit the Earth
,’ Alex added. ‘That’s why they’re so afraid of us.
I came up with that myself, by the way. I’ve had a lot of time on my own to
think. Do you like it?’

‘How many are
there in the hive? People like us?’ said Tabitha, dismissing his question.

‘I don’t know.
Nine, ten maybe? Those were the ones I saw them taking in there, anyway. Could
be a lot more inside,’ he replied. ‘Men, women, little kids. If they’re all
still alive, that is.’

‘You want to get
them out,’ said Tabitha, still uncertain of him.

‘Of course I
want to get them out,’ Alex replied wilfully, his face growing stern. ‘They’re
the only reason I’ve stayed alive, so I could help them somehow. But I can’t do
it on my own. I’ve tried. Now you’re here too, we can help them together. Break
them out of there and take them somewhere safe.’

‘People like us?
You’re sure?’ said Tabitha, clinging to the hope.

‘People like
us,’ Alex assured her. ‘We need to get to them. We need to get together, all of
us.’ he had Tabitha’s attention. ‘You know to the aliens,
we’re
the
threats. Not the humans,’ he said. His face had grown fierce at the thought.
‘The humans? They were easy. The whole invasion was easy. But when the freaks
start getting together and fighting back, that’s a whole different story. You
and me, we could be the start of that, you know? If we work together, we can
get those people out of there. Our people.’ Tabitha stared at him and imagined
more people like them. A tribe. An uprising. A sudden fleeting thought of a
fight they could win. But… she’d already had a tribe. She’d had the Ghosts.
They’d tried to fight back; look what happened to them. Maybe this would be
different, though. She was stronger now. She could protect them.

‘So, what do you
think?’ Alex asked her, interrupting her thoughts. Tabitha looked back to him
and opened her mouth to speak; hesitated. She felt torn. She didn’t want any more
deaths on her conscience. She wasn’t even sure if she believed him yet. What
about the plan? Her and Seven were going to leave the planet. That’s what they
wanted, to leave it all behind and find a safe new home. The thought had been
so strong in Seven’s mind; in both their minds. Now though… maybe she could
take her tribe with her, wherever Seven was taking her. They could all start
again, on a new world. A new race flourishing, far away from the world that
hated them...
if
the man in front of her was telling the truth.

‘You don’t trust
me,’ Alex observed. Tabitha pulled her eyes from the road where she’d been
staring, lost in thought.

‘I…’ she
hesitated.

‘You don’t have
any reason to trust me,’ he said with a smile. ‘It’s understandable. I mean you
only just got here, you don’t know me, and you’ve had the shittiest time
because of what you are. And you’re a long way from England.’

‘Wales,’ she
corrected him.

‘Sorry. Wales,’
he said with a smile. ‘So yeah, fine, you don’t have any reason to trust me. But
look at that monster you’re sitting on,’ he chuckled. ‘If anyone’s got a reason
to be nervous, it’s me. If you don’t trust me, you can just... vaporise me. I
mean look at that thing.’ Tabitha stroked Seven’s neck proudly, and dipped into
his thoughts. Seven didn’t know what to make of him either. The man looked like
her; he smelled a little like her. That was the only feedback she could get.
Beyond that, Seven was preoccupied with getting away into space. He didn’t
think much about a tribe; she was his tribe. Tabitha smiled at Seven’s thought
and fell in love with him just a little bit more.

‘Look, I know I
can’t make you trust me,’ said Alex. ‘All I can say is I’ve had a
really
hard
time surviving out here. And I’m not about to risk my life by crossing a girl
on a, a, big-ass
dragon
.’ Tabitha stifled a smile. She sent her thoughts
into Seven’s head.
Let’s see about these prisoners,
she told her dragon.
If he tries anything, you know what to do.
Seven understood.

‘What do you
know about the hive?’ she said, looking back to the man.

‘I know there’s
some kind of air defences,’ he replied. ‘They’ll shoot you down if you fly too
close. You’re not exactly inconspicuous, riding around on that thing.’

‘Why do you care
if I get shot down?’ she said.

‘Why do I care? Because
I want to get my people out of there,’ he said. ‘
Our people
. And you’re
the best chance we’ve got.’ Tabitha went to say something, hesitated. ‘Ever
since those things came here, I’ve wanted revenge,’ Alex cut in. ‘It’s the only
reason I’ve survived this long. Now we can take it straight to them. And we can
help people just like us. We can
save
them. And blow the hive too.’

‘Blow it up?
How?’ she said.

‘There’s a
reactor in there,’ he replied. ‘Right in the middle of that place. I’ve seen
it, from the tall buildings over there behind you. That reactor’s making the
weird light you can see. If we blow that reactor, the whole colony goes up.’