Tabitha (62 page)

Tabitha caught
her breath and watched a muscular lift shaft rushing past her on every side.
The lift was dropping fast, dropping forever. The floor was an artwork, just
like everywhere else in the ship; smooth rubbery stone etched with glowing
geometric patterns. Hypnotically complex; super-clockwork circles shifting and
blooming and shrinking endlessly. The whole ship filled with an alarm sound
then, blurting a weird organic
boop
all around
her. A thought flashed in her head. For a brief second, she saw another place.
A hangar. It was Seven’s vision. Tabitha looked up in shock. Her heart leapt at
the thought of him being alive. It felt like he was reaching out to her from
the walls; from the lift itself. As if the whole fleshy fabric of the living
ship had carried his mind to hers.

‘Hold on,’ she
said desperately, trying to grasp at the thought of him. She was getting
closer; she could feel it. She was coming to save him.

The bony elevator slowed, stopped and sagged
open in a vast gloomy cargo hold. The alarm echoed in the endless space.
Tabitha checked around her for watchers and crept out of the lift, pressing her
back to the dull grey wall. She sprinted down a corridor between cliff-walls of
giant containers, skidding to a stop on whispering feet when she heard running
footsteps up ahead. She ducked back behind the containers as a watcher ran
past. She checked around the edge to see it disappearing into the distance, and
ran across the pathway towards the far warehouse wall. Her mind felt drawn to
Seven’s like a magnet, pulling her on as she sprinted breathless through the
far door.

Tabitha jumped
in fright. A sprawling hangar stretched out ahead of her, packed with grey
dragons lying comatose. She ran inside in search of Seven, ducking down beside
some kind of console to hide away from more searching figures in the distance.
Creeping along beside the wall as quickly as she could, Tabitha quietly ran the
length of the hangar. She searched, paused, and froze when she picked him out.
Seven lay still as she watched him from her cover, huge and black compared with
his grey brothers and sisters lined up alongside. But he was lifeless. Tabitha
felt shell shocked as she stared over at him. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t.
She’d felt his thoughts. She ran across the hangar towards him when she spotted
her chance. Hoping against hope she put a palm on his snout, and… nothing.
There was no warmth to feel there, not like before. No thoughts of his to mix
and mingle with her own. He was cold, unmoving. There was no tingle of a
current between their skin. Tabitha looked to the ceiling, blinking the tears
away. Maybe his mind had been swallowed back into the
mothership
.
Maybe that was what she’d felt in the lift.

Seven’s cockpit
was dark and empty; Fishbowl was nowhere to be seen when Tabitha peered inside.
The console wouldn’t respond to her, no matter what she tried. There was no
feeling
of him in here. Seven was dead. Tabitha sobbed quietly, pressing a hand to
her bruised face. But she had to stamp that cold black feeling back down. She
had to survive. Pulling the boxes out from under the seat, Tabitha saw that the
contents were still plundered like she’d left them. She hurriedly prised open
the hatch of a lifeless grey dragon beside Seven, and tore open the boxes under
the seat. She pulled a lid open and peeled off her white bodysuit, unfolding
the black material from the box. She watched the cockpit wall with a weary
stare as the scaly fabric fitted itself to her skin. Dead-hearted she pulled
the new grey belt around her waist, clipping on the water bottle beside the
knife and the pistol. Tabitha edged her head cautiously out of the hatch, and
climbed down the grey dragon’s back to the hangar floor.

‘I’m going to
come back, and I’m going to slaughter them,’ she promised Seven, kissing his
dead snout. ‘For you.’ Tabitha laid a hand on his snout and breathed deep
against the lump in her throat, feeling the tense grip of grief winding tight
around her chest. A shot of light tore past her ear suddenly, and another
exploded against Seven’s shoulder. Tabitha fired back on the running watchers,
forcing them behind a pillar as she sprinted away. More of them filled the wide
doorway and came flooding into the hangar, with a sudden storm of laser fire.
Tabitha shot at them and ran for the nearest grey dragon, banging her palms on
its head to wake it up. Nothing. She tried to prise her claws into the saddle,
tried to open it up. Nothing. It was locked down. She cursed and ran as the
gunshots pummelled into the dragon’s side. She ran instead for the end of the
hangar, where the daylight shone from a gigantic opening. Tabitha sprinted for
cover as the shots shrieked and burst all around her. She aimed her pistol,
fired, sprinted again. Ducking and weaving as the floor around her feet erupted
in bursts of light. Another shot blew a crater in a pillar, and the rubble
burst against Tabitha’s head and knocked her sideways. She steadied herself and
shook off the sting, still sprinting for the opening as the watchers hunted her
down. Her first pistol was empty; another sat unused on her belt. She threw the
first one down as she ran, dodging another hail of shots that punched into the
floor around her. Adrenaline forced her on. Her muscles burned. She had to keep
running; that was all she could do now. She had to escape and survive. The
hangar opening was a shimmering wall of energy; a barrier of light. Tabitha ran
for it and braced herself to collide against the wall, but felt nothing. She
stumbled on, fell through the wall of light… and the next thing she knew, she
was dropping into open sky. The wind rushed in her ears as she flailed,
terrified. The vast sapphire sea sprawled infinite, shimmering far below her as
she fell. She felt a sudden shadow above, and spun away from the grey dragon’s
snapping jaws. Before it could lunge at her again the dragon burst into flames,
dropping dead out of the sky. Human artillery crackled and boomed from the
shoreline below, raining hell on the
mothership
as it
passed by the Florida coast. Gasping desperately as she fell, Tabitha dived
after the wreckage of the dead grey dragon as the sea loomed closer below.
Sinking her claws into its grey armour, she hung on tight and braced for the
impact. The sea hit like a wall of rock, smashing the dead dragon to pieces.
The force threw Tabitha back up in the air, flailing as she dropped and crashed
down into the clear water in a bubbling plunge. The sky was a deafening chaos
of shells and gunfire above her when she surfaced, treading water and blinking
back the salty sea. The huge black
mothership
reeled
away from the roar of a hundred tanks and howitzers biting into it, retaliating
with shrieking white artillery of its own. Tabitha had landed in a warzone.

46

A thundering hell had erupted around
Tabitha as she climbed ashore. Deep booming cracks of artillery pounded the
alien ship relentlessly as it crept towards the army on the coast. Tabitha had
to put her hands to her ears as she collapsed on the golden beach. The deafening
violence seemed to fill the world. She couldn’t stay here. The beach and the
palms were exploding in shrill bursts and ear-splitting bangs. Tabitha leapt
away from a sudden shrieking laser bolt from the
mothership
,
hitting the sand like a bomb blast behind her. She gasped and ran for her life,
struggling to sprint in the sand as the churning cratered beach erupted around
her. Tabitha ran blindly into a momentary sandstorm, escaping deep into a bank
of palms and bushes up ahead. She jumped down into cover and backed up against
a palm tree, hands clamped to her ears against the noise. She closed her eyes
tight against the bursting blitz around her and curled into a ball between the
bushes, kicking and terrified. A palm beside her boomed and cracked, collapsing
with a creaking groan. Tabitha yelped and ground her teeth at the deafening
chaos, writhing her legs as she tried desperately to hide herself away from it
all. The beach was an endless pounding murder scene, palm leaves tearing and
falling around her as the sand exploded. On the far side of the palms and
bushes the army was spewing hell into the sky. The
mothership
crept ever closer over the sea. The fighting was all around her; where the hell
was she supposed to go? With short sharp panic breaths, Tabitha opened her eyes
and caught herself. If she stayed here she was dead. She stared for a while,
stared at the bushes in front of her. Lost in a terrified trance.

‘Get up,’ she
told herself. ‘Get up!’ Tabitha felt her energy returning as she caught he
breath; hands and feet drinking the sunlight above. She refused to grieve for
Seven and Fishbowl. Not now, anyway. Right now she had to survive. She locked
the feeling away, deep down inside. They were gone, and she wasn’t. That’s how
it was. She had to keep fighting. Tabitha hauled herself up from the sand and
looked around frantically at the warzone. She couldn’t run for the sea; even
now she could see monstrous black squids dragging their way out of the bright
water onto the shore. Tabitha staggered off to the road beyond the trees. Grey
dragons were spewing from the creeping
mothership
in
the distance, dropping dead in a firestorm of missiles and rattling gunfire
before they could even take flight.

Tabitha emerged
from the palms onto the road, and saw the full force of the tanks and artillery
massed along the coast. A sea of beige metal, screaming and booming endless
shots into the sky. There was a barricade up the road towards her, and soldiers
lined up in a ditch right across the tarmac. Waiting for the enemy to come
rushing up the beach and crash through the trees onto the road. All they got
was her.

‘Contact!’ a
soldier yelled at her. Tabitha dived down behind a palm tree as the assault
rifles cracked and rattled death around her. She wrenched the alien pistol from
her belt and returned fire behind the tree; biting static shrieks that warped
the air and exploded into the soldiers’ ditch. The gun’s recoil jerked her
wrist, spitting bolts of light into screaming men and women across the road.
Tabitha rained hell on them; a racket of laser fire that dropped a soldier dead
and forced the others into cover. She wasn’t being captured again. No way. Her
next shot blew a soldier into the air, and the next vaporised another as the
troops fired back. The crackle of gunshots rattled the palm tree with dull
splintering thuds, and it collapsed down on the road with a crash. Tabitha
leapt out from the bushes and took another shot, missed. Machine gun shots
rattled into the road ahead of her and tore into her shoulder, forcing her back
to hide amongst the trees.

‘Moving in, hold
your fire!’ a soldier yelled. There was a sudden silence. Tabitha gasped for
breath and pressed her hand into her shoulder, streaming bright silver blood
between her fingers. The soldiers edged from their cover and stalked across the
road towards her. Behind on the beach Tabitha saw monstrous black squids
dragging their bodies up the sand towards her. Silver spiders and hulking black
monsters were spewing from the
mothership
into the
sea below, churning in the water and rushing out onto the beach in their
hundreds. Tabitha was trapped. It was too hot here. A hard place to die, under
the searing sun. Breathing was hard, and her shoulder streamed blood. Her
heartcore
pounded; her head screamed fear. The soldiers
were getting close. Time to decide. She could shout out that she was human, and
surrender to the army for tests… or go out in a hail of gunfire and end all the
running, all the fear, once and for all.

‘…I don’t
surrender,’ she told herself. Tabitha walked out from her cover and opened fire
on hesitating soldiers; a black-clawed hellion staring them down. She spun her
body and shot in a slow-motion dance to the death, turning on her toes as she
fired and sprinted and leapt from bursting bullet holes in the asphalt. A
bullet punched a hole in her lung; another burst her thigh and dropped her
screaming to the road. She looked up and watched the man in front of her take
the killing shot. Suddenly the soldiers erupted in white fire. The screaming
men and women were ash in seconds. Tabitha stared. A black shape swept over the
soldiers that came running towards her. Seven landed like an earthquake on the
road behind her; a snarling death-black monstrosity growling low and savage.
The terrified soldiers yelled and ran for cover at the sight of him.

‘Seven,’ Tabitha
mumbled, wide-eyed in shock. He was alive. Her dragon roared deep and brutal at
the soldiers ahead of them, stomping close to protect her. A ghostly hellfire
glow burned bright in his black throat. Tabitha staggered away from the
crackling gunfire and took cover behind Seven’s wing. The gunshots rattled and
ricocheted off his scarred scales, and Tabitha clambered up his leg and ran
along his back to the saddle. She still couldn’t believe he was alive until she
felt her mind moving towards his; magnetic. She felt the saddle harness grasp
her and her thoughts plug into his, like stepping into comfy old trainers. That
neon
superbright
connection when their two minds
clicked. Tabitha fired off laser shots from the saddle as Seven swept her up
into the air. She had him circle round on the soldiers from behind, getting in
a couple more shots to force their retreat as her dragon dived down rabid.

‘Don’t kill
them!’ Tabitha yelled to him, as they swept down over the road. Seven spewed
white napalm down on the empty asphalt, scattering the soldiers unharmed from
the searing blast.
Thank you,
Tabitha told him with a thought, stroking
his neck as they soared over the road. Seven snarled at booming cannon shells
that exploded against his wing.

‘Let’s go!’
Tabitha yelled, pulling his angry mind away from revenge and steering them into
the sky. They left the fighting far below, far behind. Tabitha looked back in
the saddle at a screaming carnage on the shore. Spiders swarming through ranks
of yelling troops. Hulking black monsters galloping up the beach to bite molten
holes in tanks and tear soldiers in two. Men and women flailed for lost limbs
on the blood-red sand; a hellish chorus of death and suffering as the aliens
butchered them. And over it all the black
tentacled
mothership
, creeping over the warzone and blocking out the
sun. Tabitha couldn’t look any more. She turned back to the blue sky ahead.
Freedom. She felt Seven’s fury in his thoughts, tried to calm him down. She
glimpsed his memories as they flew. He hadn’t been dead when she’d found him;
more like comatose. He’d felt her hand on his snout when she’d found him in the
hangar. He’d felt the current from her skin. The spark brought him back,
slowly, but she’d already gone when he woke up. He’d attacked the watchers that
came to wipe his mind. He’d fought his way out and followed her scent through
the hangar, leaping out of the massive doorway when the war was already in full
force. He didn’t want to be apart from her. Tabitha welled up as she stroked
Seven’s huge hot scales. She didn’t have to say a thing; she knew he could feel
her thoughts. A sudden thunderstorm of energy erupted behind them. Tabitha
swept Seven around at the noise that filled the sky, and they hovered to watch
from a distance. She could only stare in shock at what she saw. The alien
mothership
had opened a vast white mouth in its belly,
churning a
stormcloud
over the warzone. The world
fell silent for a second, waiting for hell. With a thundering god-rage static
the ship spat down a vast beam of light into the beach. The bright doming blast
annihilated the place and everything in it; humans and monsters alike. Tabitha
clamped her hands to her ears and felt a terrible shaking in her chest. The
growling rush of light bored a nuclear crater into the earth, leaving nothing,
and the sea rushed in to fill the new landscape. A volcanic dust cloud boiled
up around the monstrous ship over the coast. Tabitha watched in horror,
transfixed at the towering fallout. Seven pulled at her mind.

‘Yeah,’ she
muttered in a daze, as her dragon steered them away from the scene. Tabitha
flared Seven’s jet scales and tore off into the sky, leaving the black
mothership
and its scorched-earth devastation behind.

Tabitha stuck the pistol back to her
alien belt so she could take hold of the saddle grip tenderly with both hands.
She watched the coast stretching by, far below. She’d already searched the
cockpit for Fishbowl with a fresh hope, but it wasn’t there. The watchers must
have taken it; probably destroyed it. Tabitha watched the world from the
saddle, and felt herself grieving for Fishbowl like she’d lost a pet. Lost a
friend. Her tears came quickly. How could anything want to harm something so
gentle? She felt Seven’s mind too, grieving with her. He’d been asleep for a
long time; he didn’t know what had happened to the gardener creature. At least
Tabitha still had him, though. Two monsters, she told herself, both free and
denatured and running from their own kind. If all the world was against them
then all of it could burn before they left it behind. They weren’t going to get
caught again. Seven pushed an image into her mind; a fleeting glimpse of space
beyond the blue sky.

‘You’re sure you
can go up there?’ Tabitha asked him. His thoughts replied in the positive. ‘Is
there somewhere else you can take us, like another world?’ she said. Seven
replied that he could. ‘Then that’s what we’ll do,’ said Tabitha, gripping the
saddle tight. ‘But there’s just one last thing we need to do before we leave.’
She thought back to the hologram in the alien
mothership
,
in the control room she’d stumbled into when she escaped. There was someone
else the watchers were hunting; a mystery man in New York. Probably fighting
for every second of his life just like her, wondering if he was alone in the
world. Dreaming of a tribe to belong to. Tabitha knew that she had to find him.
She had to know that she wasn’t alone.