Tabitha (31 page)

‘Yeah, we know,’
Will replied. ‘
We’ll
go out and get some more. We’ll take our guns.
You’ll stay here, as usual. Don’t worry about it.’

‘No, I am
worried about it. I’m worried about starving to death.’

‘Chris, what’s
this about?’ said Will, turning to face him. He’d never known someone to look
so tense. ‘You’ve been acting weird ever since Tabitha got here.’ Chris looked
at him and sighed.

‘Well, we had a
good thing here, before she came,’ said Chris, smiling. It was a desperate
smile. ‘There was just enough food to last us. And just enough space. Now look
at us. We’re a pissing hotel. Kids running round screaming, dog shit all over
the place, no proper bed to sleep in… and soon we’ll have no bloody food left
either
.
’

‘Look Chris,
this isn’t just your home,’ Will told him. ‘It’s open to as many people who can
fit inside it. It’s a bloody
castle,
mate. Alright, it’s not a very big
one, but it’s big enough. And as long as everyone pulls their weight, we’re not
going to run out of food.’

‘But there’s
only so much space,’ Chris countered.

‘You just don’t
see this place for what it can be,’ said Will, shaking his head. ‘This is a
place where we can
thrive.
When there’s enough of us and we’re strong
enough, we might even fight back and take the town. And then you can have all
the bloody space you want.’ Chris went to say something, and changed his mind.
The breeze ruffled his hair.

‘It was better
before,’ Chris muttered, reaching for the trapdoor.

‘Before what?’
Will asked him, not seeing his point.

‘Before her.’

26

It was a quiet day; a day for jobs. Paul
and Jim talked motorbikes all afternoon, weeding the rest of the garden at an
easy pace. The twins were playing fetch with Laika. Liv watched Tabitha’s back
from the curtain wall as she worked outside the iron gate, making a round of
the hill to check for spiders or spot anywhere they could get in.

‘So, do you know
anything about this secret project?’ Liv asked Tabitha quietly, as Tabitha
headed back inside the curtain wall.

‘Project?’
Tabitha replied, smiling as she closed the gate.

‘The one Will
and Jim k-keep talking about,’ said Liv, locking the gate bar with a clang.

‘Oh, I don’t
know,’ Tabitha said brightly, still smiling. ‘Would you like a brew?’

‘So you’re in on
it!’ Liv accused her, following Tabitha back up the courtyard. ‘What is it?’
she demanded, jogging up alongside her.

‘I don’t know
what you mean,’ Tabitha said innocently. Liv stamped her foot and growled up at
the sky, and stormed off to find Natalie to press the investigation.

Meanwhile Sylvia
went snooping around upstairs, and emerged with a book from Liv’s bedroom to
read with the twins in the garden. Chris tried his best to make awkward
conversation with Natalie on the wall, until they spotted Liv coming over.
Natalie saw her chance to get away, and told Chris that she had to help Liv
with something.

Will watched
over his growing family from the top of the keep, and smiled to himself. He
couldn’t help but take a bit of selfish pride at the sight; this place had been
so dark and dead when he’d first got here. He took one last look over the
garden, and headed back down through the trapdoor to get to work in the
kitchen.

As the sun sank in the sky, Will stepped
outside and invited everyone into the keep.

‘A family that eats
together stays together,’ he said brightly, holding the door open for everyone
to come inside. Tabitha stroked Laika and led her into the keep after the
others, walking in on excited chatter inside. The small dining table had been
extended with a few more tables from the walls, and candles flickered on a bed
sheet for a makeshift tablecloth. There was even tinsel taped up around the
walls and ceiling, and the light and breeze of the summer evening still filled
the room through the open door.

‘Will, it’s
beautiful,’ said Liv, giving him a hug. Everyone was making the right noises as
they sat down to their fresh stew, and Will was grinning. Even Laika had a good
portion in her bowl.

‘Tuck in,
everyone,’ he said happily.

‘Wait,’ said
Sylvia, placing her hands together.

‘…Are we saying
grace
?’
Jim whispered to Liv. Liv shrugged.

‘What?’ said
Grace, eating her stew open-mouthed. The table filled with smiles. Natalie
shushed her while Sylvia waited to speak. ‘Jim said my name though,’ Grace
protested, with a voice as high and clear as a bell in the sudden silence.

‘Dear Lord,’
Sylvia began. ‘Thank you for bringing us here to this safe place. Thank you for
this meal, and for these good people.’

‘Amen,’ Paul
joined in, smiling at the others around the table. ‘Personally I think God’s a
load of rubbish, but anyway. Amen to the rest of it.’ The rest of the table
grinned with him, watching Sylvia’s look of distaste.

‘We’re all
entitled to our beliefs, or sad lack thereof,’ Sylvia replied, with a barbed
tone. ‘Regardless. I’d like to thank William, and everyone, for taking us into
their home.’ She lifted her glass of water to him. ‘It’s a big adjustment to
make, to accommodate all of us. But we’re going to take the rough with the
smooth, and personally I hope there’s plenty of both. Keeps things
interesting.’ She winked at Will, and raised her glass. ‘To the Ghosts,’ she
said. Everyone joined in the toast, and promptly dug into their stew.

Sylvia watched
the table as they ate. She watched Chris in particular, and how he behaved.
After speaking with him for five minutes this morning, Sylvia knew that he was
a little shit stirrer. Unfortunately in her experience, shit stirrers did seem
to have a good nose for the stuff – and they knew where it was coming from too.
He certainly had a lot to say against Tabitha, and there was bound to be some
truth in that somewhere. She could hardly forget her first meeting with the
girl; a scene that looked for all the world like a feral human threatening her
family. Nor could she see past Tabitha’s strange unnatural side. It was hidden
away from view most of the time, with only the slightest hint that it was
there. But she saw it nonetheless; a fleeting glimpse when Tabitha let her
guard down. She saw it in the way the girl watched them eat, with a jealousy
verging on hatred. She saw it in Tabitha’s reflexes, when she played catch with
the twins. She moved too quickly, too fluidly. She was unsettling. Tabitha
caught her staring, and looked at her. Sylvia held her gaze. Tabitha broke
first and looked back down awkwardly, and took a sip of water. Victorious,
matriarchal, Sylvia turned her attention back to her meal.

‘Tabitha doesn’t
have any stew,’ said Robert, pointing at her bowl with his spoon. ‘Will,
Tabitha doesn’t have any,’ he said.

‘It’s alright,’
Tabitha said with a smile. ‘I’m not really hungry.’

‘But you have to
keep your strength up,’ Grace said with concern. ‘That’s what New Grandma
says.’ She looked over at Sylvia. ‘Everyone needs to eat and keep their
strength up, don’t they
New
Grandma?’ the table fell
silent, lost in an awkwardness that no one knew how to break.

‘I’ll just be a
minute,’ said Tabitha, getting up from the table and heading outside. Liv got
up and followed her out.

‘What’s wrong?’
said Robert, looking around at them.

‘It’s alright,’
Paul told him. ‘Tabitha’s just not feeling well, that’s all.’

Outside Tabitha was opening the
iron-barred gate in the wall.

‘What are you
doing?’ Liv called over, running across the courtyard to stop her.

‘I need to go,’
Tabitha sobbed. ‘I don’t belong here.’

‘What? Why?
W-What’s happened?’

‘You’re all so…
fucking
human
,’ she said, wiping her tears away with her fingers. ‘
Ow
,’ she added angrily, looking down at her coarse metal
hands that had scraped her eyelids.

‘Tell me what
you’re
th
-thinking,’ said Liv, trying to hold the
gate shut. ‘Tell me.’

‘I’m thinking I
don’t want to die like this,’ Tabitha replied. She looked at Liv with stark
teary eyes; yellow gold on bloodshot pink. ‘I’m
so
hungry
Liv.
It’s driving me mad. I’d sooner die fighting than starve to death.’

‘Then you’re
giving up,’ said Liv. ‘Everything you’ve gone
th
-through
to get here, and you’re throwing it all away because you’ve got it into your
head that you’re s-starving to death.’ Liv took Tabitha’s hand and turned her
away from the gate. ‘You’re s-safe here, Tabitha. You’re
loved
here.
Don’t walk away from that. We’ll find a way round the hunger, somehow.’

‘It’s not just
the hunger though,’ Tabitha replied, sliding down the gate with her back
against the bars. She sniffled, snotty. ‘It’s the way people look at me
sometimes. Like they’re sorry for me. Or like they hate me for what I am.’

‘Look, no one’s
going to change what they think of you just because you d-don’t like it,’ Liv
snapped, banging the bolt shut on the gate. The sound rang through the bars.
She crouched down, and looked Tabitha in the eyes. ‘If you don’t like what
s-someone thinks about you, tell them to go and fuck themselves and then walk
away. Or I’ll d-do it for you, until you get the hang of it. Or, I’ll throw
them over the castle wall myself.’ Tabitha laughed, and dabbed at her snot with
her sleeve. Bats clicked overhead in the purple sunset sky.

‘Here,’ said
Liv,
uncrumpling
a tissue from her pocket. ‘Clean yourself
up. You’re a snotty disgusting m-mess.’ Tabitha laughed again, and filled the
tissue with a crackling flow of wet snot.

‘Jesus,’ said
Liv, cringing and looking away.

‘I don’t know what
I’d do without you,’ said Tabitha, leaning back against the gate.

‘Well I know
what I’d do without you,’ Liv replied. ‘I’d still have my last tissue and my
last bloody piece of
ch
-chocolate.’ Tabitha smiled.
‘Come on, let’s go b-back inside,’ Liv told her. ‘And don’t you dare freak out
on m-me like that again.’ Tabitha was just staring at her though, wide-eyed.
Her mouth was opening and closing.

‘Don’t, you look
weird doing that,’ said Liv. Suddenly her smile faded to a look of horror.
Tabitha was gasping. There was a silver needle in her neck.

‘Oh god!’ Liv
screamed, trying to drag Tabitha away from the gate. ‘Help!’ a spider on the
other side was gripping her, with a claw buried in her spine. Tabitha only
stared ahead, wide-eyed and gasping. Her body was jolting with the metal claw
writhing in her spinal cord. Everyone came rushing out of the keep, yelling and
screaming when they caught sight of the scene. Laika was frantic. Sylvia took
one look at what was happening and pulled the screaming twins back inside.

‘Get her away
from the gate!’ yelled Will, pulling at her other arm.

‘It’s inside her
spine!’ Liv screamed, ducking away from a silver claw through the bars. ‘We
can’t just pull her away, it’ll paralyse her!’

‘Do it!’ Will
roared. Together they gripped her arms. Paul grabbed her legs, and they pulled
her away from the spider with a snapping sound.

‘That was her
spine!’ Liv screamed.

‘She’ll heal!’
said Will, getting them all back from the gate. ‘Tabitha, can you hear me?’ he
said, shaking her shoulder. She was unconscious. ‘Just keep her on her side,
make sure she’s breathing!’ he said. Sobbing, Liv held her hand to Tabitha’s
gasping mouth.

‘Is she
breathing?’ Will demanded.

‘I think so,’
said Liv, panicking.

‘Is she
breathing
,
yes or no?’ he yelled. ‘Get your ear down and listen! Feel for her breath on
your cheek!’

‘She’s
breathing!’ said Liv, checking again.

‘Right, Chris,
get your hand on this wound!’ Will commanded, pressing his own hand against the
hole in Tabitha’s back. Her silver blood was already pouring between his
fingers,
puddling
on the courtyard around his knees.
‘Chris! You need to stop the blood while I get a bandage!’

‘But it’s spinal
fluid, it might be infected,’ Chris said nervously.

‘Fine!’ said
Will, biting back his contempt. ‘You get the bandages! Second box down on the
right, by the kitchen counter! Go!’

‘Back from the
gate everyone, right back!’ said Jim, pulling Laika snarling and barking from
the gate. ‘Natalie, go and sit down love.’ He took her hand and led her back
inside. She was trembling; white as a sheet.

The spider
lashed its tongue in through the bars, trying to reach for them. Jim came back
out from the keep with a rifle, and took aim through the bars and shot the
scrambling spider. It collapsed against the gate with a dead metal clatter.

‘Liv, how’s her
breathing?’ Will demanded, keeping his hand pressed tight against the hole in
Tabitha’s back.

‘It’s ok,’ she
replied, staring at him nervously.

‘Take her hand,
Liv. Talk to her,’ he said. ‘Chris, where’s those bandages?’

‘Here!’ he said,
rushing back outside and fumbling one out of the packet. Will took it off him
and unravelled it, and pressed it hard against Tabitha’s wound.

‘Liv, I’m going
to lift her body up a second and pass the bandage through underneath,’ said Will.
He heaved Tabitha’s side off the cobbles, and poked the bandage through
beneath. ‘Have you got it?’

‘Yeah,’ said
Liv, blinking her tears back. She took hold of the bandage and brought it up to
meet the other end around Tabitha’s chest.

‘Tie it off for me
Liv. Tie it as tight as you can,’ said Will calmly. Liv fumbled with the ends
of the bandage, looped them round one another, and pulled them tight into a
knot.

‘And another
bandage,’ said Will, motioning to Chris. He pressed the second bandage pad
against the first one, and he and Liv tied it off tight on top.

‘I think the
bleeding’s stopping,’ said Will, taking his hand off the bandages.

‘Because it’s
all come out already,’ Liv sobbed, looking at the silver pool around them.

‘She’ll be alright,’
said Will, pushing his palm back against the bandages. ‘As long as she’s still
breathing, she’ll be alright. Liv, try to keep her on her side.’

‘She’s p-pushing
against me,’ Liv replied in shock. Tabitha gasped a few silent words, and
pointed at the spider’s corpse on the other side of the gate.

‘Don’t,’ said
Liv, as Will tried to hold her back. Tabitha flopped down onto her front, and
crawled on her elbows back towards the gate.