Tabitha (67 page)

‘Maybe we should
find somewhere else to hide,’ Alex whispered nervously. The statue’s dead eyes
glowed into staring white life.

‘Definitely,’
Tabitha whispered back, already halfway to the entrance. Nothing seemed to have
changed outside though. They moved cautiously out from the flower chimney and
looked around. There was still a way to go before they reached the alien
cathedral and their tribe imprisoned inside.

‘Maybe we can
just run for the doors,’ Alex suggested. Tabitha looked over at the cathedral
and around at the empty meadow. Maybe they could, if they were quick enough. A
pair of white eyes appeared in the forest then, bobbing between the trees.

‘There, in the woods.
It’s seen us,’ said Tabitha, staring at the eyes. The black monster burst out
from the forest and stalked across the turquoise field towards them. Tabitha
pulled the gun from her belt and stepped out from the shade of the chimney.

‘Wait! You’ll
blow our cover!’ Alex whispered desperately, reaching for her.

‘It’s already
blown,’ Tabitha replied, not bothering to whisper any more. They watched
spiders creeping out from the woods and tower blocks in the distance. Tabitha
held the pistol in both hands, taking aim. ‘May as well blow it wide open.’ The
monster was galloping across the blue field, drooling hot metal as it closed
the gap. Tabitha fixed the gun sights on its bobbing head.

‘Shoot it,’ said
Alex, staring in terror. ‘Shoot it!’ Tabitha waited until the monster was
practically on them; until she couldn’t miss. She squeezed the trigger and blew
a sparking hole straight through its skull. The crackling gunshot echoed across
the field and left a clear warped trail in the air behind it. The monster’s limp
colossal body crashed and crumpled into the moss, tumbling to a stop beside
her.

‘You’re insane,’
Alex chuckled, walking out onto the field to admire her kill. Spiders were
streaming out from every distant crack and crevice in the toppled-tower hills.

‘Well, you’re an
idiot,’ Tabitha replied, nodding at the dead silver spider he’d dropped down
noisily on the ground. ‘So that round thing up there, is that what shoots the
jets down?’ she said, pointing at a glowing sphere on a cathedral tower.

‘I think so,’
Alex replied. ‘Not exactly easy to get to if you want to take it out.’

‘We don’t need
to get to it,’ Tabitha replied, taking aim. She shot three bolts of light into
the high sphere, and it exploded in a blue flash and echoed across the field.
Strange, she thought. Artillery shouldn’t be so easy to kill.

‘Wow,
that’s a lot of spiders,’ said Alex, looking around them. Tabitha looked from
the cathedral back to the blue field. The spiders were a crawling army of
hundreds, creeping out from every hole and tree around them. They swarmed out
from the cathedral entrance too; a chittering barricade blocking the way.

‘Have
you ever seen that many?’ said Alex in horror, stepping closer to her as the
spiders crept onto the field around them.

‘Once.
You?’ she said.

‘Nope.’
Alex looked around for a way out; somewhere to run. Saw nothing but spiders.
‘We’re going to stay here and fight them, aren’t we?’ he said grimly.

‘Yeah,’
Tabitha replied. ‘With a bit of help.’ She whistled at the sky as loudly as she
could. Alex took his coat off for the fight and dropped it in the blue moss in
a flurry of dusty spores.

‘Do
you heal quickly?’ Tabitha asked him, watching the spiders creep closer.

‘Nope.
Never needed to,’ Alex replied, taking off his t-shirt. His arms and torso were
covered in rubbery black scales, just like the dead monster sprawled out in
front of them.

‘The
spiders can’t get through this. I grew this when I ate the monster like that
guy,’ he said, nodding at Tabitha’s kill. ‘If they get me in the head though, I’m
fucked,’ he said, grinning. ‘So I try not to let that happen. Anyway, let’s
fight.’ Alex turned to walk away, heading for the massing spiders.

‘Alex!
Wait for Seven to get here,’ said Tabitha. ‘We can fight from the sky.’

‘I’ll
take my chances down here,’ he replied. ‘They’ll shoot your ship down, like I
told you. There’s more of those cannons around here, you know.’

‘We’ll
be fine,’ Tabitha insisted. ‘Seven’s one of their ships, after all. Why would
they shoot their own kind?’

‘Well,
if you say so,’ Alex replied doubtfully. ‘Like I said, I’ll take my chances
down here. I’ve killed enough of those things to know what I’m doing. And
anyway… it’s a good day to die. May as well go out in style.’ Alex left her and
walked out into the field of moss. The spiders were creeping closer, shrinking
the circle on all sides. ‘Whenever you’re ready!’ Alex yelled to the spiders,
stretching his arms out as if to welcome them. His sharp tail was writhing.
Tabitha breathed deep and watched the sky for a second. A bird flew past,
oblivious, almost in slow motion. The sky was a watercolour sea; a pale blue
deep, stretching up forever. She looked back down at a strange violent world,
and a sea of creeping silver that covered the turquoise field around them. No
sign of Seven. Tabitha cursed and ran over to stand with Alex, whistling at the
sky again for her dragon. Seven should have been here by now; she couldn’t wait
any longer. Tabitha took a breath, aimed her pistol at the creeping spiders,
and fired.

‘So
much for the plan,’ said Alex, watching spiders explode at Tabitha’s shot.
Another scuttled towards him and he leapt at it, and punched a hole through its
head to drop it dead on the moss.

‘The
plan’s still on,’ Tabitha replied, opening fire on the spiders as they swarmed
towards them. ‘We’re cutting a hole through to the doors,’ she said, nodding at
the cathedral. She whistled for Seven again as loudly as she could, and
vaporised the spiders scuttling towards her with a laser blast. The spider
swarm rattled and clanked towards them like a stabbing wall of legs, pouncing
and falling back against Alex and Tabitha’s kicks and punches. The fight had
begun.

‘Looks
like your friend’s not coming,’ Alex called over his shoulder, throwing a
spider to the ground and stabbing his tail through another. Tabitha snapped her
near-empty pistol back on her belt, gritting her teeth and wearing a pissed-off
stare. She flicked her claws out and ripped the nearest spider to shreds. Leapt
on a second and kicked a crater in its head, and pulled the tongue clean out of
another when it jumped to stab her.

‘I’m
not going down without a fight,’ she told Alex, wiping silver blood off her
face. ‘They’ll have to pull me apart at the fucking seams to stop me.’ Alex and
Tabitha looked at one another; at the spiders surrounding them. They started a
war together, throwing themselves into the fight with everything they had.
Crunching metal punches slammed spiders down dead with dents in their heads.
Stabs and clawed gouges spurted silver blood into the air; thin metal shrieks
painted the clattering battle in murdered bursts. Wriggling bodies were lifted
high and broken down on the ground. Spiders thrown down cracked and clawed
open, vicious and visceral, streaming blood as their corpses flew back into the
crowd. Tabitha yelled and tore the legs off one and buried her knife in
another, high on the blood and the fury. Alex smiled as he watched her fight,
whipping his tail in a violent grinning dance to scatter the creeping horde. He
dug his hands down into a silver body and felt for its pounding heart, and
squeezed until it burst to gulp the blood. Fighting back to back, Alex and
Tabitha brought their own bleeding hell down on the spiders. Echoing yells and
ringing metal punches filled the meadow, holding back the tide one murderous
victory at a time.

‘Getting
tired yet?’ Alex called back, putting the spiders down one by one as they
scrambled against his metal skin.

‘I’m
just getting started!’ Tabitha yelled fiercely, tearing another spider apart in
a slapping gush of shining blood.

‘Behind
you!’ Alex shouted, as a hellish monster pounded feral across the field and
crashed in through the mass of spiders. Tabitha turned to face it. ‘Shoot it!’
he yelled. Tabitha stared at the creature charging towards her. She’d be wasting
her shots on the spiders flying up in front of it; a tumbling silver shield as
the monster approached. It was up close in seconds. Tabitha leapt aside from
the creature and let it plough through the spiders behind her. The monster lost
its momentum as it turned back for her, caught up and staggering in the
clattering horde at its feet. It stumbled to a knee and Tabitha ran, leapt, and
suddenly she was on top of it. Anchoring her feet in its back she tore the
armoured plate from its neck with everything she had. Punched a crunching wet
hole in its skull and plunged her grasping fingers inside, and felt her claws
slice brain. The monster screamed and jumped up, staggering and reaching for
her on its back. Tabitha strained to drive her claws in deeper and tore the
thick gristly cord from its spine, and the monster spewed a waterfall gush of
gurgling blood and dropped dead with a crash.

‘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.