London Wild (5 page)

‘Choose a native
? That’s a disgusting idea. Besides the fact that we’ll be eating the natives to survive, we simply wouldn’t be compatible with each other. Our genes would be totally alien.’ Mitsiocaler sat on one of the chairs and leaned forward a little to rest her arms on her knees. From her expression, it was clear that she was unhappy with the suggestion.

‘We’ll have plenty of time once we arrive, and there’s no saying we have to pick a mate immediately for you. There’ll be time to get used to the idea. After all
, we’ll have to learn to speak their language first. Hatshulosk has some of the fundamentals from a thousand years ago, but it has probably changed a lot since then, assuming we even land in the same area as he did and thus encounter the same people and anything akin to the same language.’

‘So while you and Hatshulosk are colonizing this new world
, I will slowly make my way through a selection of non-Herbaht partners, never having any children, no one to care for me, no one to guard me.’ Mitsiocaler was fast going off the idea. The alternative of staying and dying didn’t really appeal much either, but she was fast considering the idea of trying to form some sort of Herbaht resistance with the survivors from as many cities as possible. To go out in a blaze of glory rather than sitting around on some distant planet alone and unwanted.

‘It won’t be like that,’ her sister explained
. ‘Firstly, we’ll take some of the immortal elixir with us so that your chosen partner will be just that for as long as you desire. Secondly, I managed to get ahold of five phials of a slightly different type of drug.’

‘Tell me
.’ Mitsiocaler felt as if she wasn’t going to be all that impressed.

‘Well, you remember how Susioleh was fascinated by how D.N.A
. and R.N.A. strands of various creatures worked, including those of us and the throwbacks.’

‘I remember she had some weird hobbies,’ Mitsiocaler replied.

‘Well, something she played with was trying to actually reprogram the D.N.A. of some of her subjects and, well, turn them into something else.’

‘Where are you going with this?’ Mitsiocaler commented.

‘A few of the throwbacks she experimented on actually became compatible with Herbaht. They didn’t grow tails or anything like that, but the physiognomy of the subjects changed markedly.’

‘So?’ Mitsiocaler sat back and folded her arms. She felt she knew where he
r sister was going with this, but she wanted it to be spelled out for her.

‘It’s possible it might work on the human creatures we encounter.’ 

‘Not sure I like the idea,’ Mitsiocaler replied, ‘but I suppose it’s better than nothing, and it’ll be good to have something to fall back on. Tell me, did she tell you how the new D.N.A. affected the host? Assuming it works?’ She idly scratched one of her legs with an extended claw.

‘She didn’t say,’ Mitsioni explained
. ‘She never had any human subjects to experiment on. It’s quite likely that the drug will just kill the host. She did mention, though, that if it works on humans it’ll take about seven years for the D.N.A. to be fully altered to its new configuration.’

Slowly the conversation turned away from their future to their past and together they discussed things as they were a thousand, two thousand
, even seven thousand years ago. They talked about their reactions when they found out they had been chosen to become Goddesses
.
Mitsioni discussed the many things she had done with Hatshulosk since he had become a good friend, though she denied they had had any children together yet. The small talk continued late into the evening, and then it was bed time.

Mitsiocaler had to spend that night in one of the servant’s beds because the master bedroom was her sister’s, but she didn’t mind too much. She hated to think what the throwbacks might have done to her own bed by now, and the idea of returning through the gateway for the chance of the good
night’s sleep simply wasn’t a possibility. Besides, what if her sister decided to leave with Hatshulosk during her absence? The space craft was only a two-seater, after all; Mitsiocaler was effectively just in the way. It was thoughts like this that kept her awake half the night; she barely dared to close her eyes in case her sister should decide to sneak off.

It was early when Mitsiocaler reentered the stateroom the following day. Her sister was already up
, though, staring at the riots in the city. In particular, she had her eye on one of her death squads, who were busy attacking the various gangs. She didn’t turn around in the chair when Mitsiocaler entered the room; she simply said, ‘My children are fighting with them; I hope they survive.’

‘When do we leave?’ Mitsiocaler asked drowsily. There was nothing left for her on this planet
, and though the idea of finding a native mate repulsed her, she would simply have to cross that bridge when she came to it.

‘We should probably leave today,
’ Mitsioni replied. ‘I’ll contact Hatshulosk quickly and let him know you’re coming, and then we can leave for the launch site.’

‘Sounds good,’ Mitsiocaler commented
. ‘Are you packed?’ There were a lot of things she’d have liked to take from her own Temple, but there was no way she was going to risk going back now.

‘We don’t have room. The craft has enough food for two, which we’ll now need to share between the three of us. It’s a two
-month journey, and without access to boosters, we will need to find some prey as soon as we arrive before the effects of the elixir wear off totally.’ As she spoke, Mitsioni made her way to the gateway. As the last words left her lips, she tuned the gateway in to Hatshulosk’s Temple.

The sight was the last thing she had wanted to see
: she counted no less than seven of the throwbacks in his main stateroom. They were destroying the furniture and setting small fires. Hatshulosk himself was dead, lying on his back across a gold inlaid marble table that Mitsioni had admired so much. His clothes had been ripped from his body and his tail cut off, currently being worn as a headband by one of the throwbacks.

Then one of the
throwbacks caught a sight of her looking at them and approached quickly. Mitsioni, a tear in her eye, quickly turned off the gateway. ‘I guess it will be just two of us after all,’ she whispered.

‘Can you fly the thing?’ Mitsiocaler asked
. She gulped in sorrow for her sister and couldn’t look her squarely in the face.

‘I’m not really sure we have the luxury of finding out
,’ Mitsioni responded. ‘Oh, he showed me the basics and then told me the target planet is already programmed into its trajectory so we’ll find the place all right.’

‘Then I guess we’d better get what we need and go
,’ Mitsiocaler suggested.

‘There are a couple of power pistols over there; get them and their energy packs. They won’t last us long, but they’ll give us a start. I’ll get the phials and the elixir, and then we should go
,’ Mitsioni replied, tears flowing properly now.

Mitsiocaler fetched the weapons and rejoined her sister in front of the gateway. 

Before she tuned the gateway to the launch pad for the space craft, Mitsioni turned to face her sister once more. ‘Hatshulosk and I had made an agreement. Because there would only be the two of us eating human meat, we were sure that our children might think us strange, might even shun us. Now we both need native mates, and once they are injected with the elixir, they too will need regular doses of that same chemical. But that would still only be four. Things could get awkward for us there.’

‘So what do you suggest?’ her sister asked.

‘The plan was that we would teach our offspring that they all needed the human meat in order to survive. That way we wouldn’t be alone, we wouldn’t be shunned, and what’s more, we might even be able to teach our children to hunt and gather the food for us,’ Mitsioni replied.

‘I can see the reasoning behind it,’ Mitsiocaler responded, ‘
and though I dislike the idea of lying to my children, I don’t see any real alternative. But that’s all in the future, and maybe we’ll come up with a solution in time. In the meantime, we probably should get going before the mobs either find us or locate the spacecraft.’

Mitsioni nodded her agreement
, and in less than an hour the two were entering a low orbit and preparing to switch the onboard controls over to the autopilot so that it could take them to Earth.

Day One

Release

        
For the first few years after the arrival of the Herbaht on Earth, the increase in missing persons was so slight that it took another hundred and fifty-four years before mankind realized that he was no longer the only sentient life-form on the planet.

1

The Huntress

London in the year 2948 was very much a city of lights. Every street in the city where people might have business during the dead
of night, including the golden mile and the large shopping districts, was kept illuminated to the extent that it was often difficult to tell the difference between day and night. If that wasn’t enough, there were cameras everywhere, dozens of cameras per street, more cameras than they could possibly afford to hire people to monitor. All to protect the people of the city from the cat-like hunters who prowled the streets of the city and the South-East of the country and who had done so for nearly an entire millennium now.

The outskirts of the city were less bright. This was where the residential areas were, and the people
who lived here had long ago complained of the bright light invading their bedrooms when they were trying to sleep. These streets were still lit, but not to the same extent as the main thoroughfares of the city. There were plenty of other security devices to protect individual homes from the Herbaht, and a self-inflicted curfew meant that most people were home from work long before it began to get seriously dark. If anything, the residential areas of the city had an even higher number of cameras scattered about the streets, some with infra-red lenses to better penetrate the dark. But it was generally accepted that these cameras weren’t monitored properly. They just didn’t have the manpower to watch every one, so they were checked only after something had happened, by which time the hunter would be long gone.

Also patrolling the residential streets, both during the day and a
t night, were a small number of UAVs. There were only about fifty for the entire city, so it was quite rare to see one; however, their cameras always had someone guiding them. If they saw something, they were armed with a tranquilizer gun capable of knocking a subject out for twenty-four hours, plenty of time for the authorities to move in and collect the target.

February Sivka was seventeen. She
had been born in the town of Sou’nd, virtually the east coast of the country, and had moved to Upminster as soon as she had been able, where she now lived alone. During the day she worked as a computer programmer and web designer. She’d usually telecommute from home because of the perceived risk from the Herbaht. During the night she tended to relax with the newspaper or even an occasional book. She didn’t really know any of her neighbors all that well, but she had never given them any cause to be concerned about her occasional trips to the city. Thanks to years of experience and the right combination of make-up, February was able to effectively hide her true race even from those who thought they did know her.

Every month, sometimes twice a month, February climbed into the driver’s seat of her car while it was still daylight outside
(and therefore not too suspicious) and drove to London. A long time ago she had changed the tires of her car to something with a different style of tread, in order to make it harder for anyone to trace back to her. Nevertheless, there was still a little bit of danger, so as soon as she reached the city and found somewhere to park, she would wander a few streets until she felt she had gone far enough and then steal another vehicle, using that to venture further into the residential areas of the city.

One of the reasons she had chosen to hunt this night was because there was to be no moon
. However, she had miscalculated a little, because as she stopped the stolen vehicle opposite a tempting-looking backstreet, the sun was still in the sky, even if it was making its way slowly down behind the houses to the west.

February preferred to hunt in her natural stripes. She wore no more than a tee shirt and jeans that had been adjusted to make room for her tail and with a pocket suitable for a small laser pistol. She enjoyed the look of fear on the faces of her prey just before she struck,
and on more than one occasion the mere sight of her had paralyzed her prey and she had been able to take her time. Then there was also the problem of the cameras. Should she attack someone while wearing a disguise and it was caught on camera, then those hunting her would have a better idea of what she looked like when she was trying to hide. True, she knew how to turn off the cameras, with the right gadget. But any time a camera went down, an alarm was triggered, and such outages were taken very seriously. She would effectively be signaling her position to the watchers. It was better to ignore the cameras and hope no one was currently monitoring them.