by Hall, Andrew
Tabitha heard a tiny clatter in the back garden when she stepped back out of the front door. Eyes pink and raw from her tears, she walked around the side of the house to peer over the garden gate. There was a silver spider round the back, sunning itself on the lawn. Tabitha recognised a shred of her mum’s nightie, tangled up around one of its spindly legs. Her gripping fingers sank into the creaking wooden gate. Anger broke her barriers down. Burnt her fear to the ground. For the first time in her life she was mad enough to reach out into the world and destroy. Her brain switched off. Tabitha booted the gate open and ran at the spider. It turned and pounced. She caught it, wrestled it to the grass. Slammed her fist hard into its head with a jarring dent. Again. Stunned on the grass, it screamed when she wrenched a leg away from its body. Tabitha felt her teeth clenched so hard it hurt. She shoved the screaming struggling creature back down to the grass and punched it again, pulling its claws away to tear another leg from its body. When its needled tongue shot out from its mouth, Tabitha gripped the stabbing tip and turned it. She pushed it, slowly, back through the screaming creature’s body. Skewered it. She pulled the carving knife from her belt, and punched the spider to the ground again before it could crawl away. She sank her knife in deep while it screamed, and skinned it alive.
A cold wind stirred up as Tabitha left the front garden, and closed the gate behind her. She’d mounted her kill on the gate spikes like a grizzly totem; a warning to the rest. She’d ripped and peeled its silver skin away to reveal the fibrous white flesh, like a shelled lobster. Tabitha took one last look at her mum’s front door, and headed back down the road towards town. Grieving and heartbroken in the lonely silent world; dead inside. Jen and Emma had to be ok. They had to be. If they weren’t… she didn’t know what she’d do. Maybe if it came to it she could take all those sleeping pills, like her mum said in her note. Wait, how could she? She still had to survive, she convinced herself. No matter what.
Rubbish tumbled down the streets as Tabitha walked back into town. She was numb. She felt nothing but a phantom lump of nausea balled up in her throat. She wanted to run to John. But her ex lived miles away now. With her. Izzy. If they were still alive. The thought of John being dead hit her like a ton-weight, and broke her heart all over again. Tabitha headed down a street off the main road, looking around at total devastation. Rubbish rustled and blew in the street. More skins too, tucked away on doorsteps or caught climbing in through open windows. She headed on and knocked on the door of Emma’s flat. No reply. Her phone still didn’t switch on. The door was easier to force open than she’d thought.
‘Emma?’ she called up the staircase. She didn’t need to walk into the flat though. An empty arm hung loosely over the top stair, and the smell said the rest. Tabitha collapsed into tears on the stairs. Dragged herself to her feet and ran outside. It was a nightmare. It had to be. She was ready to wake up now. But everything looked too real and vivid to be a dream. The sickness felt too real. By the time she reached Jen’s house, she only had to peer into the broken living room window to know enough. Tabitha crossed the road, leant by a lamp post, and threw up on the street.
She’d cried until the tears stopped coming. Tabitha stared at the sky, stared at the sea. Numb and torn up, alone in the silence. The breeze ran through her hair. A carrier bag rustled and blew in the wind nearby, pinned to the street by a new boxed-up clothes iron inside it. Probably dropped when its owner was running for their life. Tabitha just stared out at the sea, looking without seeing. No one to run to, nowhere to go. A ghost town all around her, murdered while she slept. A dead world that didn’t make any sense. She leant on the railing and looked out at the waves, as if they held the answers. She didn’t notice the spiders creeping up around her until she turned back, and found herself surrounded. The old Tabitha might have screamed and curled into a ball then. But she’d been peeled raw, and there was a new Tabitha in there somewhere, waiting. And all it felt was anger. Every cell in her new body said fight. When the first spider pounced she punched a dent deep into its body. She spun around, gripped another by its spindly legs and tore it limb from limb. Every punch was like a sledgehammer through a breezeblock, sudden and stunning, a dull metal knock echoing down the road. Some spiders scuttled away. Others came in from the sides to grip and twist and stab. Tabitha’s muscles felt like springs inside her, stronger than she’d ever known. She spun and stomped another spider into the kerb with a crack. One behind her screeched and pounced. She gripped it hard and smashed it into the iron rail by the sea.
‘Come on!’ she yelled, breathless and rage-hot, punching and pummelling another into the kerb. At its edges the horde began to slink away, while the braver ones were beaten down into the road. Tabitha screamed and sent another flying with a kick. All the quiet anger she’d been collecting for years, it all came bursting out of her. It was burning through a new body that knew how to use it. Knew how to do damage. The rest of the horde backed away, watching her wrestle one to the ground and pull it apart screaming. Back into their alleys and doorways, back into basements and drains, the swarm of chittering monsters crawled away over their dead to leave the red-haired human alone.
‘Is that all you’ve got!?’ she yelled, throwing a dead spider after them. Breathless, she sat down on the kerb, watching her cuts and bruises heal up and fade away. She saw her silver blood left behind on her skin; licked it. It tasted tingly, metallic, like tonguing a nine-volt battery. Tabitha was exhausted, but thought better of collapsing on the pavement here. The surviving spiders watched her from their hiding holes. She staggered to her feet and stared at them. They didn’t come out towards her. She walked off into town through her alien kills; a jumbled mass of curled-up legs like upturned silver crabs.
Town was empty and deathly silent, like permanent dawn on a Sunday morning. Rubbish and rubble filled the kerbsides. A fox looked up from the torn carcass of a bin bag, staring at Tabitha as she came closer. She watched it quickly turn and pad away, inconvenienced by her presence.
Trees stood strangled in metallic tentacles. Shops had been looted; corpses littered the high street. Empty husks, drained out dry. Silver spiders hugged the walls of distant buildings, waiting for signs of life. Thick grey rainclouds rolled in from the sea. Tabitha saw a flash in the corner of her eye, and looked out over the water. She saw the grey bleak sky, and the solid salty slab of sea stretching on forever… but there was light there too. It wasn’t a light she could see too well through the clouds, but she felt it. Like the sky was electric, and the sunlight was up there somewhere with all the promise of life in it. It was a vague feeling, hardly there really, like hands hovering an inch over her skin. Something tingled inside her. Her thoughts jigsawed around in her head – moving and turning, finding new places to fit. She saw the sea crawl with current for a second; a billion blinking connections between electrolytes. It was a fleeting vision that flared like a holy revelation, then suddenly vanished from her sight.
‘What?…’ she mumbled, blinking at the beach below. What was this, that she was feeling? For a moment then, the sun was all that mattered. Like a god had come down to look after her. She felt a strength she’d never known before, surging through veins and connections beneath her skin. It was a revelation without an answer; the morphine bliss of a fleeting dream, making less and less sense the more she tried to recall. And suddenly, the world was grey again. The dull black road stretched off into town, and all sense of light and current had gone from her mind. Everything was human again. All the strength she’d just felt in her body suddenly left her. She felt like a flat battery. All she wanted to do was rest. And cry.
5
In the town centre a few streets away, a young man was running for his life. One minute he’d been having a whispered argument with his brother, while they looked for food in a looted corner shop. The next thing he knew, his brother had slumped lifelessly on the floor under a pack of silver spiders. He’d pulled his gun and shot the first one dead, and barely made it out of the shop alive. N
ow he was running through the empty streets with tears in his eyes, never looking back as the things scrambled after him. He felt a claw nick his leg, and he spun around and shot. Three bullets left. The spider staggered and dropped, but the rest of the silver horde was gaining fast. All he could smell was brick dust in the air. The metal clattering racket of the horde filled his head. He yelled out in fear as he ran; primal wails that echoed in the empty streets.
Tabitha wandered further into town, following the echoing crack of gunshots. The place was a ruin; broken windows and half-toppled shops. Strange dandelion seeds floated down as she passed by. The seeds that landed in the sunlight sprang into tiny grey shoots, growing visibly into spidery little plants. Tabitha stopped, watched them grow. So that was where the spiders came from. She walked closer and ground the shoots into the road with her boot. Some of the windows she looked up at were covered by splayed silver spiders. Their bodies were stark and still and murderous as she passed by. She couldn’t tell if they were watching her. She didn’t know if she could go another round with more of them, she felt so tired. Tabitha coughed quietly and hurried on away from them. She wandered by a lone pram on the street, abandoned. At least there was nothing inside it. No tiny skin. An empty drinks can clanked and clattered down the road in the wind; the only noise in the eerie silence. The homes and shops were dark and empty around her. Her town was dead.
Dev felt like he’d been running forever. The horde was right on his heels. His lungs heaved; his legs pumped battery acid. He spun and shot another spider that came too close. Two bullets left. He looked around desperately for somewhere high to climb. He couldn’t run much further, and there was no point locking himself in a car that wasn’t going anywhere. None of the cars worked any more, and they wouldn’t protect him. The spiders caught up to him before he could shoot and dragged him screaming onto the road.
Tabitha was sure she’d heard running footsteps just then. A man yelled for help, down a street off to her right. She saw sunlight bouncing off a silver cluster of spiders, pulling a figure to the road. Tabitha came running. The spiders on the high windows stirred to life behind her, dropping down to the street.
Up ahead the horde bared their spiked tongues as she came closer. Their throaty hisses warned her away from their screaming prey.
‘Get away from him!’ she shouted, pulling the carving knife from her belt. Her fists felt solid, heavy. Like weapons. Adrenaline cancelled out her exhaustion. Tabitha yelled at the spiders, and one sprang towards her. She leapt and gripped its legs that cut her, and it fell limp when she stabbed it hard through the head. Something took over her; a new instinct. She sent the spider flying into the horde like a hammer-throw, scattering them away from the man on the road. He staggered away in terror, pointing his gun at spiders that suddenly weren’t interested in him. They were all creeping away towards her.
‘Up there! Climb up there!’ Tabitha shouted, pointing at the roof of a bus stop. He ran and climbed up onto a big plastic bin, and hauled himself up onto the bus stop away from them.
‘Behind you!’ he called back. He was pointing at a handful of spiders stalking up the road.
‘Shit,’ she mumbled, suddenly surrounded. The old Tabitha hesitated. The new Tabitha reacted. She yelled and buried her knife in a spider’s back with a slick tinny crunch. She spun and punched another with a shrill crack. Adrenaline pumped; time slowed down. The spider hit the road in slow motion; imploded on the tarmac and lost a leg. Tabitha’s swing turned her body through the air in an arcing dance. She landed on her feet, raised her knife. A third spider rushed her, flicking its legs out like a net. She dodged its jabbing spike. Looked for a gap. Stuck the knife in deep with a burst of silver blood. She wrenched a grey leg off her kill with a crustacean crack. Swinging the dead limb she fended off the rattling horde around her, whipping them back.
‘Get away!’ she yelled nervously, as the horde closed in around her. Tabitha felt a very human terror returning to her, creeping down her spine like a cold hand. When a claw stabbed her calf she gasped and jumped away. The old Tabitha would have tried to run then. The new her clenched her fists, gritted her teeth. She laid into the spiders and filled the street with ringing thuds, the song of striking metal. The man kicked one to the road as it scaled up the side of the bus stop.
‘Hey!’ he shouted. Tabitha didn’t hear him. ‘Behind you!’ but she didn’t catch his distant voice over the clattering metal. She glanced up and saw him pointing. Before she could turn around a jagged spike stabbed her in the back. Tabitha screamed and saw it jut through her stomach, black against her pale t-shirt. She felt the venom coursing through her. She could almost taste it in her blood, cold as ice. But harmless to her. All she felt was the stabbing spike, an overpowering agony, squelching and wrenching itself out from her back. She spun and stamped her attacker in the head, staggering it back. She screamed as blood slapped down on the road from her wound. Clutching her stomach she leapt forward and smashed her fist into the spider’s head. Shoved it to the ground and pummelled the life out of it. Her pain was secondary. Survival came first. She spun and booted another away, and ran after it to stick the knife in deep. She tore the limbs off another, and tossed it aside to scream and bleed. The surviving horde was hesitating. A sudden silent peace. The only sounds were Tabitha’s gasping breaths and the distant roll of the tide, and the slow tapping of spider legs on the road. The creatures stepped back when she came closer. Exhausted, Tabitha grabbed at another and pushed the knife in. Watched it flinch and scuttle away across the street in a trail of silver blood. The last few gave up and backed away, and tucked themselves back into gaps in the toppled buildings. Silver legs bunched up into shadowed arachnid fists, watching her from cramped dark corners in the ruins.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ she asked the man, as he climbed down from the bus stop. His jacket and jeans were torn and filthy. Tabitha clutched the stab wound in her stomach as the silver blood streamed out, slumping down against a crashed car. The man came over to stare in dumb panic at her. His stubbled face was a scruffy patchwork of pale dust and bright red blood.
‘They got you,’ he said hoarsely.
‘Yeah’, she mumbled, doubled over in agony. She lifted the side of her t-shirt, and gritted her teeth as she pressed her grey hands against the wound. At least it was closing up now.
‘Tell me what happened. To everything,’ she said, glancing around at the dead world.
‘What, you don’t know?’ he replied, baffled. He stared at the silver blood covering her grey fingers. ‘Let me help,’ he said. Tabitha shook her head.
‘It’s fine. It’s healed,’ she replied. The man watched in shock as her pale skin knitted together. Tabitha took a few deep breaths. At least the ripping pain had faded from her insides. She felt weak though, like she was ready to pass out. She could tell she’d lost a lot of blood; she was sitting in a puddle of it. The man crouched down beside her. He was younger than she’d first thought, under the blood and grime. He couldn’t have been much older than her.
‘Is that your blood?’ he mumbled. He dabbed a finger in the silver fluid on her hands.
‘Don’t touch me!’ she snapped, jumping up and staggering away.
‘Alright, I’m sorry,’ he said defensively, backing off. ‘As long as you’re alright.’ Tabitha looked him in the eyes, and saw a man as scared as she was. His black hair was a tangle of dust and grit. He sat down on the road, and pulled up a trouser leg to check his own wound. It wasn’t deep. More importantly though, it wasn’t poisoned. ‘So what happened to you?’ he said. He grimaced as he pressed blood out of his wound.
‘I was unconscious,’ Tabitha replied, leaning against the car. She felt dizzy, but she had to stay on her feet. ‘I woke up today, and suddenly it’s the end of the world.’
‘So you didn’t see any of this?’ he replied. Tabitha shook her head. ‘But that was three days ago,’ he said. Tabitha stared at him, disbelieving. Three days? How could she have been unconscious for th
ree days?
‘Tell me what happened,’ she said. ‘From the start.’ He pointed her in the direction of the town hall, and the clock tower that was shattered to rubble.
‘Let’s keep moving,’ he suggested, with a sniffing nervous tick. They started off down the road, looking back over their shoulders to make sure the hidden spiders weren’t following.
‘They came out of the sea, and just massacred us,’ he said, looking round at the abandoned buildings. Some of the shops and offices simply stood empty and dark; others had been torn down to ruins. ‘After the spiders, there were these huge black things like squids. They were tearing buildings down. Like, eating them. But like I said, that was three days ago. What happened to you?’ he said. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Unconscious, in my house,’ she replied. ‘One of them stabbed me. Injected me with something. I thought I was dying of a heart attack, and I passed out.’ The man stopped walking.
‘You should be dead,’ he mumbled, looking at her in disbelief. Tabitha shrugged. Maybe she wished that it had killed her. She looked around at greying sheets of office paper, tumbling and whispering down the street in the breeze. She saw a kid’s cuddly toy face-down in a puddle, and had to look away.