Exit - Pursued by a Bee by Geoff Nelder
Tabitha Wish heard
the dinner bubbling and hissing in the kitchen, forcing her to abandon her
viewing of the CNN channel. Her family, exasperated by her fixation on the
spheres, have conspired to be out of the house so she had to get out of her
chair.
“I know what you’re
doing,” she shouted at no one, but possibly everyone outside the door of the
newly bought home in Jackson, Mississippi.
In the steam-filled
kitchen she met three saucepans whose lids danced with uninhibited rage at
being abandoned for so long. Peering into the condensation she discovered sweet
potatoes gurgling in one pan, turnips boiling down to pot liquor in another,
and a mysterious mishmash including Yellow Crookneck Squash and tomatoes
plotting to escape.
“I’m turning it all
off,” she yelled to her conspirators. The first in the family to gain a degree,
and still she was expected to be momma in everything. The twins were only a
week from being teens so they shouldn’t need their noses being wiped. Nor
should her pop, who had taken on man-of-the-house duties since her rat-husband
deserted after his Iraq duty. Not deserted from the army—that’d be
understandable, but from his family. Last seen in a New Orleans topless bar -
she’d top him if he came near Jackson. No child support in money or any other
kind.
Tabitha pulled a
face at the lace-curtained window, in case any of the three playing hooky were
peeping in. She sat back in her computer chair and logged onto
SpheresWatch.com.
She clicked through
the webcams at the five spheres, especially at Glastonbury, and Ayers Rock. The
metallic spheres floated thirty metres above their exit holes. Military
presence surrounded them, too. From missile launchers to tanks, fire brigades
with hoses at the ready in case the spheres or the landscape turned incendiary.
Scaffolding was climbing towards the Glastonbury sphere. She rapid read the
scrolled text, which informed her of the human need to probe the mysterious spheres,
test their structures.
With bloodshot eyes
from zooming too close to the screen, Tabitha hardly dared blink. Her fascination
would have bordered on insanity, but like those probes, she was gathering data
too. Although plenty of front pages had blurted the unusual phenomenon to the
populace, she, as a newly qualified journalist, searched for an angle. To make
her breakthrough at The Clarion Ledger, and beyond, she needed to be the
first to make a connection and get it out there.
“Hey, Mom,” shouted
Roma, “You’ve let the dinner go cold.”
“Sorry, daughter,
you know how important it is for me to show those men at the office how
brilliant us women are?” She swivelled the chair and grabbed her daughter for a
hug.
“It’s KFC again
tonight then?”
Roma laughed as Tabitha
tickled her. “No, it’s just about done. I’ll butter the bread. Ah, I see
Charlie’s beaten me to it.”
“Sure I have,” said
Roma’s twin, with his mouth full of peanut-buttered bread.
A walking stick
came in horizontally through the front doorway, signalling the entry of
Tabitha’s father.
“Hey, Pop, sorry to
have left you with them, but—”
“I know, I know.
Matters nothing to me. You get on with your studies, maybe you’ll pass them
exams this time.”
“I’ve already
passed them, Pop, it’s…oh, never mind.” She stood to belatedly sort the dinner
when a Reuter’s news item, scrolling across the computer screen caught her eye,
and then her breath.
“...Vatican
spokesperson says the spheres are a warning to non-believers...”
Amazing,
considering the Vatican works in centuries not in days. She hit her
journalist’s link to Vatican statements, but that report wasn’t there yet.
Good, that meant others wouldn’t find it either, increasing her chances of a
scoop. She used her Press ID password to get into the innards of Reuters and
found the source of the item. She was curious how the Vatican would’ve thought
the spheres favoured Christians.
“Whaddya think,
Pop? Could aliens have the same God as us?”
“Damn Mexicans say
they do.”
“No, outer space
aliens.” Tabitha stifled a laugh.
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