Tabitha (8 page)

‘Where to?’ he
said, his voice thick with grief. Tabitha looked around at the world, and tried
to think where they could go. She glanced down again at the cuddly toy in the
puddle. She picked it up, wrung the grimy brown water from it, and sat it
upright on the kerb to dry in the sun.

‘We’re going to
look for survivors,’ she said. ‘Then we’re going to get out of here.’

They walked on in silence for a while,
keeping an eye on the walls and windows. The only sound was their footsteps in
the eerie silence.

‘Tell me more
about what happened,’ said Tabitha, leading the way down the high street. ‘That
satellite fell down on the shop back there, so what else?’

‘There was a
plane,’ Dev replied quietly. ‘It just… dropped out of the sky into the sea. We
could hear the survivors, screaming in the water. Something was eating them.’
Tabitha glanced at him. He stared blankly down the road as they walked.
Haunted. ‘The street lights all went out, and then all the cars wouldn’t
start,’ he said, frustrated. ‘Nothing
worked
. Our phones didn’t work.
TVs and radios didn’t work. There weren’t even any police. Then the next thing
we know, the army turns up.’

‘What happened
then?’ said Tabitha.

‘We were all
standing outside after the power cuts,’ he said, shaking his head. Choking up.
‘It was pitch black, nobody could see anything,’ he was sobbing. ‘Those spiders
came out of the dark, from the beach and... all we could hear was screams, and…
things just falling out of the sky.’ He looked a million miles away, wiping
away his tears.

‘Jesus,’ Tabitha
mumbled, giving the sobbing man a hug. He smelled of dust and sweat. She looked
around at the ruins of her home town, and let Dev let go first. He nodded his
thanks for the hug, and wiped his tired eyes with dusty hands.

‘So what about
the army?’ she asked him.

‘They got
butchered like the rest of us,’ he replied, sniffling. ‘All their night vision
and stuff, that all stopped working too. There wasn’t much of a fight. It was
just screaming, all night. The morning after, there was no one left. Just me
and my brother walking through town, and five or six people we saw down the
street. They didn’t see us. But we couldn’t shout to them, in case the spiders
found us.’

‘How have you
survived?’ she asked him.

‘Just hiding,’
Dev replied. ‘That’s all we could do.’

‘So you’ve not
tried to get out of town?’ she said, watching him wipe the tears from his eyes.

‘Yeah, we did
try,’ he replied, his voice faltering. ‘Ever since it happened, we were trying.
There’s no way out though. Those things are everywhere.’

‘What about the
sea? Getting on a boat?’ said Tabitha.

‘Have you
seen
those things in the water?’ he replied. ‘They’re
eating
all the
boats anyway. There’s no way out. There’s spiders in the sewers too. You can
hear them at night when you’re trying to hide. You can’t sleep. You just have
to keep moving and hiding, looking for food.’

‘Jesus Christ,’
said Tabitha.

‘Yeah.’ Dev
agreed, wiping the cold tears off his dusty cheeks.

‘So, where are
these other survivors you saw?’

‘Don’t know,’
Dev shrugged. ‘We only saw them once. They could be dead by now.’

‘We should try
to find them,’ Tabitha suggested.

‘There’s no
point,’ he replied. ‘It’ll get us killed.’ His eyes widened with a sudden
realisation. ‘Hey, we can get out of town now!’ he said. ‘You can handle the
spiders, we’ll be alright! We can get out!’

‘Not until we’ve
found those other people,’ Tabitha insisted. Dev scoffed at the idea, stared at
her in disbelief.

‘But everyone’s
already dead,’ he said.

‘You don’t know
that,’ Tabitha replied. ‘They might have survived, like you.’ Dev was shaking
his head.

‘We’re missing
our chance to get out,’ he argued.

‘They might
still be alive,’ said Tabitha. ‘We owe it to them to find them.’

‘They’re not our
problem,’ said Dev, shaking his head. ‘It’s not like they came to find me and
my brother. I say leave them to it.’ Tabitha looked at him in shock. Was he
really
that
cold? ‘We don’t have to make this complicated,’ said Dev.
‘Let’s just get out. It’s every man for himself now, anyway.’

‘Really?’
Tabitha replied, disbelieving. ‘So, I should have left those spiders to kill
you then? Is that what you mean?’

‘Hey, behind
you!’ he said, pointing over her shoulder. A spider was stalking down from the
wall of a dry cleaners behind her, baring its mouth.

‘What!?’ she
yelled at it, pulling her carving knife from her belt. The spider hesitated,
and didn’t come any closer. ‘So I should have left you to die?’ she asked Dev.
‘I should have let those things kill you?’ Dev looked from the spider back to
her.

‘…Look, you’re
right,’ he sighed, dropping his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry. You saved my life. But…
this is our chance. Look, we could get out of town right now,’ he said,
pointing down the road. ‘Just a couple of streets to the town hall, then we can
take the main road and get out. You could fight us a way out, I could watch
your back. It’s simple.’

‘No,’ Tabitha
said stubbornly, walking off towards the market square. She couldn’t protect
the ones she loved any more, and it burned a hole in her heart. But maybe there
were more people out there she could help. She had to try.

‘Well, I’m going
to make a run for it,’ said Dev, looking at the shattered tower on the town
hall. ‘Straight to the town hall, then out down the main road,’ he said.
Tabitha stopped and looked back at him.

‘They’ll come
after you,’ she replied, looking up at the buildings. There were spiders dotted
around on half-hidden walls, splayed out flat against the bricks. Watching. Dev
looked up at them and hesitated.

‘And that one,’
Tabitha added, nodding at the spider outside the dry cleaners behind him. Dev
backed away from it. ‘But, it’s up to you.’ She turned and walked away. Dev
stared at the spider on the street, edging its way towards him.

‘Fine, hold up!’
he said, defeated, running from the spider to catch up with her. Tabitha
scratched an itch on her cheek with her strange rough hands. Her fingers felt
like sandpaper. She waited for Dev to catch up, and together they wandered on
into the urban ruins.

‘So what’s going
on with you, anyway?’ said Dev. ‘You got stung by one of them, so now you’ve
got some weird superpowers or something?’ Tabitha walked on in silence. She
watched stray newspapers shifting around on the road, rustling and tumbling in
the breeze.

‘What about the
air force?’ she asked him, changing the subject.

‘What?’

‘Alien invasion…
where was the air force? Fighter jets and things?’

‘No idea,’ Dev
replied. ‘Busy fighting them everywhere else first, probably. I don’t think
this town’s high on their list of priorities.’

‘True,’ she
conceded. ‘So, where was the last place you saw these survivors?’

‘Like I said, I
don’t know. Last ones we saw were on the street around the Queen’s Head.’

‘Right,’ said
Tabitha, turning down a side street towards the old pub across town.

‘This is insane,’
said Dev, watching the high walls of the shops for spiders.

‘Saving people’s
lives is insane?’

‘They’re already
dead,’ he insisted.

‘We don’t know
that.’

‘Well, they’re
probably
dead.’

‘Get over
there.’

‘What?’

‘Over there!’
Tabitha snapped. She pushed Dev away as a spider jumped at them from a doorway.
She reached out for its silver legs and regretted it, and pulled away with a
deep cut on her forearm. Before she could pull her knife there was a sudden
echoing gunshot, and the spider dropped dead on the road.

‘What are you
doing?’ Tabitha snapped, furious.

‘What?’ said
Dev, confused. ‘I killed it,’ he objected. ‘I saved your life.’

‘Yeah, with a
really loud gun!’ Tabitha argued. ‘What happened to you last time when you used
your
really loud gun?’ Dev stared at her, puzzled.

‘All those
spiders came chasing after you?’ she reminded him.

‘Shit,’ he said,
as the mistake dawned on him. Already they heard a distant chittering noise,
and legs clattering down brick walls. Tabitha looked back down the road.
Silvery shapes swarmed in the distance.

‘Run.’

Dev and Tabitha
sprinted down a side street onto the small town square.

‘Not that way!’
Dev said breathlessly, pulling Tabitha away. ‘Stick to the walls!’ Tabitha
looked back at the swarm as they ran. Half the spiders had followed them down
the side street; the rest had carried on down the main road.

‘More corners,’
she said, gasping for breath. ‘We need to turn more corners and lose them!’

‘This way!’ said
Dev, running on down another side street towards the shopping precinct. Tabitha
had never run so fast in her life. Mortal fear pushed her on; a desperate dread
pounding in her chest. Their running footsteps echoed in the silent shopping
precinct beyond. Pillars and walls of miserable sixties concrete. Dev led them
on down a piss-stink alleyway, past the dead market square. Every turn lost a
few more spiders behind them.

‘Queen’s Head!’
said Tabitha, when Dev looked to her for direction. They sprinted on down the
street for the pub as the last few spiders scuttled on behind them.

They were gasping for breath by the time
they reached the pub. Tabitha peered around the wall, back down the road.

‘They’ve gone,’
she said breathlessly.

‘Sorry,’ said
Dev. ‘For the gun.’ He was staggering around on sore legs outside the pub’s
front door.

‘You’re an
idiot,’ Tabitha replied. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been brave
enough to call someone an idiot. She couldn’t remember any time, actually.

‘I’m sorry,’ he
repeated, gasping for breath. The pub sign creaked a little in the wind over
their heads.

‘Just get me a
drink,’ she said, staggering to her feet. Neither of them saw the spider
scuttle across the road behind them. Tabitha screamed in agony and saw a bony
black needle wriggling out of her thigh. She tore the spider off her legs and
kicked it away onto the road. Dev’s hand hovered over his gun; he hesitated and
looked around for another weapon instead.

‘Back!’ Tabitha
warned him, backing away from the spider herself. ‘Just get inside the pub!’
the spider coiled up its legs and pounced at her. Tabitha gasped and met it
head-on, grabbing its scrambling legs. Trying to get a solid punch in. She
screamed when its claws sank in; one in her arm and one in her stomach. She
landed a punch on its head and wrestled it to the kerb, and pummelled it into
the road until it stopped moving. She staggered back and sat down on the road
beside it, weak and breathless.

‘Shit, are you
alright?’ said Dev, coming closer.

‘No,’ Tabitha mumbled,
pale, clutching her bleeding thigh with both hands. The wounds in her arm and
stomach were pouring too. Her silver blood pooled on the kerb and trickled down
into the gutter. She felt it setting in; a throbbing pain so fierce and
maddening that she just wanted to collapse on the pavement.

‘Here, let me
tie this around your leg,’ said Dev, hurriedly pulling off his jacket. Tabitha
gasped at the pain when he tied the sleeves tight around her thigh.

‘Lie back,’ he
said, kneeling down on the road. ‘We’ve got to raise your leg up, to slow down
the bleeding.’ Tabitha lay back on the pavement, and felt Dev’s hands grip her
ankle and gently lift it off the road. She gritted her teeth at the pain and
stared at the blue sky above, and lay still for a while to catch her breath.
She felt faint; lightheaded. How much blood had she lost today? All of it? She
looked over at her kill. Slowly the dead spider’s silver legs curled up tight
against its body, like some weird flower closing away from the sky.

‘It looks like
the blood’s stopped,’ said Dev, having held up her leg for a while. ‘You just
can’t get a break, can you?’ he said gently, lowering her leg back to the road.

‘Doesn’t look
like it,’ Tabitha replied, taking his hand as he helped her to sit up. ‘At
least I’m still here though, I suppose.’

‘Little Miss
Brightside,’ he said hoarsely, smiling. ‘Come on, I’ll get you that drink.’
Tabitha took his hand and gasped with the pain as she hobbled up.

‘Are you
alright?’ he said. ‘Sit down back down if you need to.’

‘No, I’m fine,’
she lied, staggering to her feet. ‘It’s safer inside the pub.’ She felt like
collapsing. The world felt far away. She freaked and backed away when she saw
floating seeds drifting by.

‘What? They’re
just dandelions,’ said Dev, giving her a funny look. Tabitha watched them. They
were
dandelion seeds.