Tabitha

by Hall, Andrew

  ‘Someone’s sleepy,’ Tabitha said gently, stroking the soft fur on Laika’s head. A few moments later Laika’s mismatched eyes had closed, and her breath deepened as she slept. Tabitha sat for a while in the silence, looking absent-mindedly at the far wall. They could only afford to rest for a few minutes. Tired as she was, she couldn’t afford to fall asleep. She had to protect them; get them out of town. At least the silence wasn’t the same as it had been; it felt lighter now. With Laika there, that pressing lonely feeling had lifted.

  It was getting dark when Tabitha woke up.

  ‘Shit!’ she growled, startling Laika when she got up. Angry at herself. Why did she always have to fall asleep? ‘Come on, we need to go!’ she said quietly. Tabitha lifted the shutter up as silently as she could, and peered out of the shop door to check it was clear. They slipped out onto the forecourt. Suddenly Laika was growling.

  ‘Oi!’ came a man’s voice, echoing up the forecourt. Laika was barking at him as he approached. Tabitha tensed up. She’d left her rifle inside on the shop counter. At least she still had the hunting knife handy. She left it in her belt for now.

  ‘What’re you doing here?’ he shouted, coming closer. He had a shotgun in his left hand, and a crowbar in his right. Wild thinning hair; scruffy grey stubble on jowly cheeks. He was huge.

  ‘Looking for food,’ Tabitha called to him simply, aware that Laika was still barking loudly. She tried to shush her, checking over her shoulder for anyone or anything that might be creeping around behind them. The man stepped closer, mere feet away. His craggy old face had a fierce intensity to it; hard eyes staring. His jumper and jacket were covered in stains; crusted silver and sickly yellow. ‘What are you doing here?’ Tabitha asked him defensively, as he stared angrily.

  ‘Me?’ he said, affronted. ‘I live here! All round here, this is mine!’ he pointed his crowbar out in a circle, as if to encompass everything in sight. ‘All this is my territory, right?’ He burped through his words. Was he drunk? ‘All them spiders don’t come round here, right, ‘cause they know I’m here.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Tabitha replied stiffly, wary of the fierce look in his eyes. ‘Well, I found some food for my dog, and now we’re going. It was nice meeting you.’

  ‘Food? What food?’ he said angrily, stepping closer. ‘That’s my shop!’ he yelled, pointing the shotgun at the petrol station. ‘That’s my food!’ he bellowed. He was red-faced, staring. ‘Fine. I’m eating your dog then,’ he growled, pointing the crowbar at her face. Laika didn’t like that at all. She lunged at him, sank her teeth into his leg. The man screamed and raised the crowbar at Laika, but Tabitha leapt in and gripped it before he could hit her. He swung the shotgun around on her. Tabitha wrestled the barrel away, and the shotgun thundered. A window shattered on the petrol station. Before the man could swing at her Tabitha punched him on the jaw and staggered him. Another hit and he dropped his shotgun, and her third punch floored him with a solid knockout. Tabitha’s ears rang from the gunshot. Laika’s barks were a muffled noise to her. Her dog was trying to warn her. The spiders had found them.

  ‘Come here,’ said Tabitha, pulling Laika behind her by the collar. The three spiders crept in closer. Tabitha didn’t wait for them to attack. She leapt on the first and battered it into the tarmac, and stomped the second into the forecourt. Laika jumped in on the third one and bit onto a silver leg.

  ‘No, Laika!’ Tabitha yelled. The spider struck out. Laika yelped and jumped away. She’d been cut, bad. When Tabitha caught sight of Laika’s dark red blood on the forecourt, nothing was going to save that spider from what came next. Tabitha ploughed into the fight and wrestled the creature away from her dog, beating vicious dents into it as she yelled. She gripped its metal skin and pulled it, and tore the thing into pieces while it screeched and screamed in a bloody mess. Laika barked behind her, trying to join in.

  ‘Get back!’ Tabitha commanded, staring Laika down. When she’d finished with the spider’s mangled body, she turned around at a loud gulping noise. The second spider had crept away from the fight. It was drinking the man’s insides where he’d lain unconscious on the forecourt. Tabitha picked up his crowbar and drove the straight side down into the spider’s bloated body. It screeched and struggled. Oily silver-red blood poured out of its wound. Tabitha’s second stab must have found its brain, because it collapsed suddenly on the ground. Laika was limping over to her, leaving a trail of blood along the forecourt behind her.

  ‘Stay still,’ said Tabitha, feeling a sad lump in her throat at the sight. Gently she pushed the fur apart on Laika’s side for a better look. It wasn’t a deep wound, but it wasn’t a neat one either. The spider’s claw had torn the skin apart; the blood was streaming. Laika didn’t seem to notice it; she was too busy trying to lick Tabitha’s face.

  ‘It’s ok Laika. It’s ok,’ said Tabitha, panicking at all the blood. ‘Just keep still. I’m going to look after you.’ Tabitha pulled off her hoodie and tied it around Laika’s middle to stop the blood, but the thick sleeves made it too hard to knot properly. Laika yelped when Tabitha picked her up. She carried her back inside the petrol station, and lay her down in the back office. Her dog’s blood coated her grey hands.

  ‘I’m not letting you die. I’m not,’ said Tabitha, stroking Laika’s head where she lay by the office wall. Tabitha went and pulled down the shutters over the door and windows, and turned the shop upside down looking for a first aid kit. All she managed to find though came from the office drawers; a pair of scissors and some crumpled tissues. Dabbing the wound with tissues did nothing though. The bleeding was far too heavy for that. Panicking, Tabitha wracked her brain. There was nothing else here; what the hell was she supposed to do? She remembered then; the jabbing shape pressed against her leg. The superglue and safety pins in her jeans pockets. Superglue worked perfectly well at sticking skin together; she knew that from painful personal experience as a young art student. Blood streamed down onto the carpet when Tabitha unfastened her hoodie from around Laika’s middle.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she whispered to Laika, stroking her head. Picking up the scissors, she carefully cut away Laika’s slick fur around the wound. She’d trimmed away as much as she could to expose the skin; any more and she would have cut too close.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Tabitha said softly, heart racing as she tried to hold her down. Laika whined and struggled. Tabitha fought to hold her there on the carpet. Her struggling wasn’t helping the wound; it seemed to be gushing more blood than before. She had to close up the skin, or at least try to. There wasn’t time for all the doubts and worries in her head. If she didn’t do something now, Laika was going to bleed to death.

  ‘Come on!’ she growled at the old superglue, squeezing the tube hard. Her hands shook with the effort as she coaxed out a clear sliver onto the nozzle. She pressed a ball of tissues against Laika’s wound and threw them away, soaked in blood. Hands trembling, Tabitha pinched at the torn skin and dabbed glue along the edge. Laika yelped.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Tabitha, terrified. She squeezed a final spurt of glue from the tube and dabbed it on. Pushed the edges of the wound back together until they met and stuck. Laika was still struggling against her.

  ‘Keep still, you stupid dog,’ Tabitha growled, pressing her wrists and her body down to pin Laika against the wall. She regained her blood-slippery grip on the edges of the wound, and held them tightly together for a few more seconds until the bleeding had slowed down. She counted another minute while Laika lay there, and peeled her fingers away from the glued-up wound.

  ‘It worked,’ she told Laika softly, smiling. But Laika wasn’t whining any more; she’d gone quiet.

  ‘Shit,’ Tabitha snapped, stroking Laika’s head gently. Laika blinked sadly and just lay there staring at the door, eyes half closed. Was she dying?

  ‘Just rest now, ok?’ she told her. ‘It’s the best I can do.’ Sitting back against the wall, Tabitha stroked Laika’s head and kept a constant watch on the wound. Laik
a was breathing alright, but she was so still. Tabitha shifted around a little on the floor. The squelching noise from the red sodden carpet told her that Laika had lost a lot of blood. At least the wound had stopped bleeding though. She just hoped that it wasn’t because Laika had already bled out dry.

  Tabitha watched over Laika for the rest of the night. She drifted in and out of consciousness herself, sat there on the hard sodden carpet tiles. There was a sucking noise outside, jolting her from half-sleep. Tabitha grabbed the man’s shotgun where she’d left it on the counter, and went to investigate. It felt hefty and solid in her hands; reassuringly lethal as she lifted the shutter and looked out from the doors. Sure enough there was a silvery shape outside, hunched over the man’s corpse and drinking out what was left of him. She wasn’t going to waste the remaining shotgun shell on it. Too loud anyway. Tabitha headed back inside and swapped the shotgun for the crowbar, and came charging out of the dark shop to attack the spider. She dodged its spiked tongue. It jumped. She swung the crowbar, dropped the spider to the ground. Before it could right itself she buried the crowbar in its underside with a metal squelch. Wrenching the crowbar from its twitching body, she took one last look out into the night around her, and headed back inside. She pulled the shutter down behind her with a clatter.

  ‘We’ll stay here tonight, but we need to get moving tomorrow,’ she told Laika, stroking her head as she rested. ‘I said the same thing before though, didn’t I? Oh god, this is my fault Laika. I’m so sorry.’ If she hadn’t fallen asleep today they could have been long gone from here. They could have missed all this fighting. Laika would have been alright. She smoothed down Laika’s fur, over and over, but more to take her mind off the guilt. She heard Laika’s shallow breathing; felt her faint heartbeat. She felt happier fussing over Laika than just sitting there still, going back over everything in her head.

  Later on, during one of her frequent checks out of the shutter, Tabitha felt the rain spitting gently against her face. In a little while it’d become a downpour. Rushing back into the office she emptied a pencil pot of its contents, grabbed a dusty cup, and took them outside to catch the rain trickling from the broken drainpipe. She went back in for some plastic tubs and the office bin too, followed by the drawers from the cabinet. Anything that would hold the rain. Within minutes it was lashing down in a summer lightning storm. Tabitha heard the rainwater tumble and splatter from the roof over the petrol pumps, falling like liquid glass onto the forecourt. She felt the plastic tub fill up under the drainpipe, and switched it for another. Collecting the water made her feel better. It felt better to busy herself with something, rather than just lying with Laika unable to help her. Even if all she could do was watch rain fill containers in the dark, she still felt more useful out here. She carried a full tub back in to Laika, about the same size as a big dog bowl, and set it down in front of her.

  ‘I brought you some water,’ Tabitha said softly, stroking Laika’s paw. Laika stirred weakly in the dark. Her nose sniffed for the water, but she didn’t move.

  ‘Here,’ Tabitha whispered. She took a mouthful of water, tilted Laika’s head gently to one side, and trickled it slowly from her lips onto Laika’s mouth. Laika licked at the trickle, and began to lap at it thirstily. Tabitha took another gulp of rainwater for herself; it felt cold and beautiful. Her next gulp she trickled into Laika’s waiting mouth, and again. She fed her water until the tub was almost empty.

  ‘Good girl,’ Tabitha said softly, stroking Laika’s head while she rested. She heard something clatter and gush outside. She rushed back out from the office. A spider had knocked over the office bin full of water on its way through the shop door. Tabitha took a running swing with the crowbar, but the spider was too quick in the darkness. It stuck a needled claw in her leg. Tabitha yelled and brought the tip of the crowbar down into its head to silence it.

  ‘Shit,’ she said, gasping as she pulled the claw out from her calf. She gave the twitching dead spider a furious kicking for good measure. She felt the poison pulsing through her. That same strange, bitter, cold sensation running through her veins, but nothing more. She barely even felt lightheaded this time.

  ‘Thank you very much, for that,’ she grumbled. She grabbed a spindly leg and dragged the dead spider out onto the forecourt. She walked around to the drainpipe to swap a full cabinet drawer for the empty office bin, and re-filled Laika’s water bowl before she came back in and closed the shutter. Tabitha fought off sleep for the rest of the night, staying by Laika to feed her water and check on the wound. Every so often she’d get up to check the doorway, whenever she felt the drowsiness laying its hands down on her head.

  By the time the sun was lightening the sky over the rooftops, Tabitha was tired but more than ready for the day. She’d been sitting in rain-soaked clothes all night, and now they stunk of damp and clung cold to her skin. As she stood up and stretched her stiff back, she heard the gentle thumping of Laika’s tail against the drywall.

  ‘Morning, dog face,’ Tabitha said gently, smiling at Laika’s puppy-dog eyes looking up at her. ‘How do you feel?’ the thumping grew a little stronger at the question. ‘Don’t get up before you can. We’ll stay here for as long as you need.’ She dribbled a little more water into Laika’s mouth, and checked her wound in the dawn light. Her fur was crusted with dried blood around the glued skin, and the carpet tiles were sodden red and still squelched under her feet. But at least the wound had stopped bleeding. All she could do now, she supposed, was hope Laika got her strength back – and that the wound didn’t get infected.

  ‘I’d be an awesome vet,’ Tabitha told herself. She was dipping the plastic tub into one of the office drawers outside, full of rainwater. The forecourt was collecting dead silver spiders. ‘Hey Laika, would I be a good vet?’ she said, coming back inside to her patient. Laika didn’t understand but she wagged her tail a little, and looked up at Tabitha with her mismatched eyes.

  ‘You’ll be alright,’ Tabitha said gently. She set down the tub of water to stroke Laika’s soft head. ‘We’re partners now. I’ll protect you.’

  13

  It took another day and a night for Laika to start hobbling around the shop. Tabitha tried her best to clean up after her, but the lingering smell of blood and dog shit wasn’t going anywhere in that small office. Tabitha was glad to move Laika out of the back room, and down behind the till where she could rest in the sunlight. Laika seemed content to sleep most of the time. Tabitha was content to watch her, and fed her water every so often. The rest of the time, though, it was getting pretty boring waiting for her to mend. She wasn’t even sure if Laika was still recovering, or just being lazy. Better to be on the safe side, though. She’d just have to keep herself entertained in the meantime.

  ‘Pump number five, fifty pounds please sir,’ she told an imaginary customer across the counter. Tabitha took his invisible money and placed it professionally into the open till, and handed him his imaginary change. She closed the till with a broken crunch, and the drawer drifted back open again.

  ‘Lovely day,’ she said brightly, trying to close the broken till. She listened intently to his conversation. ‘Well, that’s what I think!’ she replied. ‘Why let the people with driving licences have all the fun, that’s what I say!’ she listened again to the thin air beyond the counter, and smoothed her hair down with a shy smile. ‘Do you really think so?’ she said coyly, looking down at the floor. ‘Well to be honest, I’m actually starting to like them too.’ She admired her grey hands, wiggling her fingers delicately. ‘Sorry? How did I get them? Well, I got injected with venom by a giant silver spider from outer space. I know, right? Pret-ty crazy.’ Tabitha nodded at his response, looking thoughtfully at the space in front of her. ‘Oh, sorry! And here I am, chatting on! Take care, bye!’ Tabitha waved to the invisible man as he left, and looked round at Laika lying on the floor behind her. Laika looked up at her, and her tail beat gently against the empty cigarette shelves.

  ‘Don’t you be judging me, dog f
ace,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have to make up customers if you had a bit more conversation going on.’ Tabitha glanced around the shop and sighed, and looked out of the window at the forecourt. The empty road beyond, and the bleak grey sky overhead that looked distinctly un-summery. It was only a matter of time before more spiders found them hiding here, and she wasn’t going to wait out the rest of the apocalypse in a blown-out petrol station. They had to get moving, and find somewhere safe. Laika was looking a little better, but Tabitha didn’t want to make her limp along behind her all the way out of town. They couldn’t just plod on for miles to the next town either, only to find the same scenario all over again. She needed a change of plan, a way to cover more ground. The thought hit her.

  ‘I wonder if there’s any cars left that work,’ she said to Laika. Maybe a good solid garage would protect a car from the alien EMP that had killed everything electrical. Or maybe an old car wouldn’t have anything electrical inside it to kill.

  Laika wagged her tail. She didn’t know why her human was making sounds. It didn’t smell like there was any food or trouble around. It seemed like humans just made noise because they didn’t like the silence.

  Tabitha stared out of the window, thinking.

  ‘I’m going out to look,’ she said at last, breaking the long silence. She took the rifle and the crowbar with her, and patted the hunting knife on her belt. Laika stood up. ‘It’s ok, I’ll pull the shutters down behind me,’ Tabitha told her. ‘I won’t be long.’ She zipped her hoodie up and took a gulp of water from the office pencil pot. Laika watched and whined when Tabitha left her and brought the shutters down.