Tabitha

by Hall, Andrew

  ‘Crap crap crap,’ she muttered, wriggling out from under the car. She ran into the shop, cursing her lack of planning. Just as well that there weren’t any spiders in here; she’d run in without thinking. She grabbed a pair of plastic petrol cans and raced back outside to the car. She placed the container under the trickle of petrol, and pulled the crack wider with a finger until it was gushing like a tap. The plastic can drummed with the flow like a bath running.

  ‘I hope you had time to fill it right up before the apocalypse,’ she told the car, as if the driver was still sat inside. ‘Otherwise this could take a long time.’ Looking around at the handful of abandoned cars on the forecourt, she just hoped they had enough petrol between them to fill up her car’s tank. The flow of petrol tailed off then, ending with a sorry little trickle into the plastic can. So it was going to take a long time then. Tabitha sighed, and threw the ball for Laika.

  Laika seemed to have endless energy where a tennis ball was concerned. Tabitha was glad of the distraction while she squeezed at the petrol tank on the next car along, trying to tear it. She shifted her grip on the smooth tank, squeezed, but she couldn’t get a proper hold. She stopped when the thought hit her.

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ she mumbled to herself, remembering the hunting knife on her belt. If she could get the blade through a spider’s skin, she could get it through this. She pressed the knife point into the tank and stabbed it through, and pulled the plastic petrol can under it to catch the flow. It was fast; she’d rapidly filled up the first plastic can and switched it for the second, and ran back into the shop to grab the rest from the shelf.

  Tabitha looked proudly at the full plastic petrol cans, lined up beside her car. She’d never known that filling a car up could feel this satisfying, as she popped the petrol cap and glugged the first of her harvest into the tank. Laika had lain down to chew her tennis ball in the sun. Tabitha had hoped to have a few cans of petrol left over to go in the boot, but the last one went into the tank and still there wasn’t any sign of an overflow. When she turned the key in the ignition though, the needle on the fuel gauge jumped up into full territory. It was a good feeling, a deep satisfaction. She’d bled every car in the place, and still there’d only been just enough petrol between them to fill her tank for the next couple of hundred miles. But, for now at least, the road trip was back on.

  Tabitha took a few gulps from one of her water bottles. Rainwater probably wasn’t the best stuff to be drinking, she supposed, and there were silty bits in it from the drainpipe. But it was better than nothing; the shop here had long been emptied of bottled water. She couldn’t get over how little appetite she had, though. Maybe she should have tried inside the main services building, and look for any scraps in the fast food restaurants. But she had a bad feeling about what could be waiting inside. With so many miles of countryside all around here, it was the perfect place for spiders to nest. The sun was going down, and the thought of silvery swarms wouldn’t leave her head. She wanted to be a hundred miles from here, out in the back of beyond where the spiders couldn’t find them. She looked around to make sure she hadn’t left anything, and opened the car door for her dog.

  ‘Come on, dog face,’ she said, getting Laika comfy in the back. ‘Let’s go.’

  Getting the petrol together had taken longer than she’d thought. The sun was dipping down behind the trees lining the road, and really she’d only just left the services behind. The gathering clouds didn’t help either, and a little while later she was straining to see the road in the dusk. She passed an abandoned coach that stood dead in the slow lane. The road around it was littered with greying skins, ghostly pale in the failing light; the passengers who must have tried to run away.

  Tabitha hadn’t wanted to stop driving, but the headlights weren’t working and it was getting too dark to see. She parked up in a lonely old mechanic’s workshop, out on the edge of a ghost town. She closed the old wooden doors on the night, checked for any sign of spiders inside, and settled back down in the car and locked the doors. She tilted the seat back as far as it would go, and pulled a blanket from the back. Laika took a sudden interest in her face in this new position, and gave her a thorough licking. Laughing, Tabitha fought Laika back.

  ‘Get some sleep you,’ she said softly, stroking Laika where she lay. Tabitha pulled a blanket over herself, and curled up against the cold night. She heard Laika breathe in the blackness behind her; short deep sniffs. She stroked Laika’s fur without feeling it. ‘Sweet dreams.’

  The next day’s drive took them down twisting country roads, punctuated here and there with abandoned trucks and cars. The lakeland towns up here were small and scenic, all grey stone houses and arty little cafes on winding streets. All beautiful places to live, Tabitha told herself… if not for the fact that the spiders had overrun them. Their big silver bodies were splayed murderous against the stone walls of shops, or sat clutched and bunched like fists in the tight gaps between the buildings. Tabitha’s safe-haven daydream had long since crumbled to dust as she drove on through. Rotten skins tumbled on the streets.

  There were fewer towns and villages further north. The road took her on past wild fields and rugged crags, and still the silver spiders lurked here and there on the landscape. The road wound on through lonely hills, sided with mossy dry-stone walls older than tales. The engine roared guttural and threw them on down the wild roads; a steel hymn.

  Tabitha yawned and hung on the steering wheel. Laika was asleep. A straight silent A-road gave way to winding country lanes, and the landscape changed personality again. On her right, pine forests sloped up above the road. Lakes and mountains stretched out bleak and beautiful on her left, filling her view like an epic movie scene. Even here, she glimpsed a flash of silver scuttling between the trees. She felt a cold jolt of shock and steered around a huge spider on the road, drinking out the corpse of a deer. Wasn’t there anywhere they hadn’t reached?

  By the afternoon she was well over the Scottish border, further north than she’d ever been in her life. Every town she detoured through, it was the same story. Shattered windows, blowing skins; urban graveyards. Since then the bricks and concrete had given way to lonely roads and villages; scattered pubs and farms. A while later these had given way to endless miles of stark, empty heath. She tore down miles of bleak road, looking for signs of life. She raced on past moors cloaked in mist that rolled down off the mountains, and welled in ancient pine forests around her. She sighed and yawned, and turned off at a junction in the country road to head towards the sea in the distance.

  Tabitha’s arse felt numb in her seat by the time she reached the coast. There weren’t any signs around here; she could only guess at where she’d brought them. Studying the road atlas when they’d parked by the beach, it looked as if she’d headed as far north as she could go on the motorway. After that there was only a sparse tangle of winding A-roads on the atlas, snaking their way through lochs and mountains deep into the north. The dark waves rushed and tumbled on the cold brown beach. Looking around, she glimpsed another dead empty deer on the moors behind her.

  ‘It’s the middle of nowhere, and the spiders have still been through here,’ Tabitha told Laika. Pissed off, she threw the atlas down on the car bonnet with a slap. She looked from Laika to the slobbery tennis ball she’d dropped at her feet. The sky hung lead-grey over the sea, promising rain.

  ‘We’ve not see a bloody soul, have we?’ she said grimly. For a moment, Laika seemed to stand there listening to her. But Tabitha’s problems weren’t her focus. All she wanted was another throw of the ball.

  ‘I wish I thought like you, dog face,’ she said, reaching down for the slobbery tennis ball. She caught a whiff of Laika’s breath in front of her, sweet and smelly, puffing from her panting mouth in tufts of tumbling mist. ‘You only worry about danger when it’s happening, don’t you? I envy you.’ She stopped tormenting Laika’s one-track mind and tossed the ball down the beach. Laika took off after it like a shot, pounding four-clawed paw
prints into the damp dull sand. Holding the pages of the road atlas down against the wind, Tabitha studied the road that had led her all the way up here. Her greasy hair whipped at her face before she brushed it behind her ear; a tangle of bright red curls in desperate need of a wash.

  ‘There wasn’t anywhere they hadn’t come to,’ she said to herself, while Laika came racing back down the sand with the ball. Every town, every village they’d passed had spiders lurking, and no sign of people. There hadn’t even been bodies or skins in most places. They were like ghost towns. Even the farms and pubs in the middle of nowhere had the spiders’ splayed silver shapes resting on the walls, drinking the sunlight. Tabitha’s search for some shining spiderless haven wasn’t going very well.

  ‘We’ll head down the east coast,’ she told Laika hopefully. ‘Maybe they haven’t got that far.’ Laika sat smiling patiently, panting the sea air, waiting for the ball to fly again.

  ‘Alright. One more, then we’re going,’ said Tabitha, picking up the sandy tennis ball. ‘I want to find another petrol station before dark. And do some drink driving too, if I can help it.’ Tabitha launched the ball into the sky, into the sea. Laika bounded into the gloomy surf, snatching up the ball where it bobbed and drifted in the waves. She padded back again, triumphant, and dropped the ball by Tabitha’s feet. She shook her wet fur, sneezed out the salty water, and waited expectantly.

  ‘No more, Laika,’ said Tabitha, patting the back seat until her dog jumped up inside the car. ‘Let’s find you somewhere better to play,’ she said, looking around at the brown sand and the wind-whipped tufts of grass. ‘This is grimmest bloody beach I’ve ever seen in my life.’

  Tabitha rejoined the motorway south, and drove in silence for a while until she could turn off for a large roundabout. She studied the atlas on the passenger seat to make sure she was heading east.

  ‘This is it, then,’ she told Laika, who barely opened her eyes in response. ‘Road Trip, Mark Two.’

  After long enough on the road to make her legs stiff, Tabitha spotted a motorway services and pulled in. A little wiser now, she worked fast to bleed petrol from the abandoned cars. She glanced around the place with tired eyes, paler green than they used to be. She looked in through the dark windows of the modern cafe. She didn’t want to go inside here either; it looked like the perfect spider nest. She just wanted to fill up her tank and go. There had to be somewhere safe. She had to keep that thought in her head. In her rush she dropped a couple of the plastic petrol cans as she took them from the boot. They fell with an empty plastic clatter. Something twitched across the forecourt then. A spider, scuttling towards the noise.

  ‘Oh come on then!’ Tabitha yelled, losing it. She shut the car door before Laika could jump out, and stepped out onto the empty forecourt where the spider could see her. ‘I’ve had enough of this survival shit,’ she told it, pulling her knife as it scuttled closer. She felt something rise up in her body, a tense fury. The spider pounced. Tabitha leapt and smashed her fist in its face. It dropped to the forecourt with a junkyard crash, and she was on it with her knife. By the time she’d done with it and she was thinking clearly again, it looked like bloody roadkill on the concrete. Breathless, Tabitha stepped back and wiped the silver blood off the knife against her torn jeans. She admired her work on the spider; she was getting more confident. Its splayed grey legs jutted up from a jagged massacre. Silver blood ran across the forecourt in a river, stark and pale under the vast shadow of the petrol station roof. Tabitha stepped back and sheathed her knife, and thought about everyone they’d taken from her. She looked around at the huge empty world, alone in the silent fields beside a dead motorway. Too numb for tears any more. There was only the gaping sadness. And a hardness inside. She remembered her mum’s ribbon blowing at her belt; her note folded up in her bra. She had to carry on; that was all she needed to know.

  ‘They never stop trying,’ she told Laika, cracking a tin of dog food open and shaking it empty on the forecourt. ‘So maybe that’s one thing we can learn from them.’ Laika took one last sniff of the dead spider and came padding back over for her food. She nipped and lapped at the mound of brown mush. Tabitha stared exhausted at the petrol pumps and zoned out, looking without seeing. Her tired eyes drooped shut for a moment. ‘Right,’ she said, patting her cheeks to wake up. ‘I’m going in there to find some caffeine. Raw coffee beans, anything. I don’t care. You, finish that stuff and have a dump. Then I’ll get us some petrol, and we’re out of here. I mean you’re lovely and everything, but you’re rubbish conversation. And to be honest, I’m so sleep deprived I’m going insane.’

  Bleeding the petrol tanks seemed to go easier with some cold coffee inside her. It tasted horrible, and it was making her queasy, but it definitely blew away her sleepiness. As Tabitha poured the last plastic can of scrounged petrol into the tank, Laika started growling. Tabitha looked up to see a gang of men in the distance, wandering closer through the field. Had they seen her?

  ‘Quiet now,’ said Tabitha, pulling Laika back by the collar. ‘Back in the car,’ she said, helping her into the back seat. Tabitha hurriedly drained the last bit of petrol into the tank. She screwed the cap shut and wriggled the keys free.

  ‘Alright darlin?’ came a shout from the distant gang. Tabitha shut the car boot, suddenly numb with dread. She looked over to see the men jogging across the field towards the forecourt.

  ‘Have you got any food love?’ the first man called over, climbing the short fence.

  ‘Have you got any tits?’ another man added. They were laughing. ‘Come here, we want to talk to you.’ Terrified, Tabitha shut the car door and roared the engine into life. Laika was barking in the back seat.

  ‘Oi!’ one of the men yelled, shocked to hear the engine start up. They were sprinting across the forecourt for the car. Hands shaking, Tabitha yanked it into first gear, floored the accelerator… and went nowhere. The running gang had reached the far petrol pumps. The car wheels were spinning and screeching. Handbrake. Tabitha pulled the handbrake off and roared out of the forecourt. A thrown hammer thundered against the car boot. Laika barked and growled at the gang through the back window. A shrinking, slowing mass of dirty denim and feral faces.

  ‘It’s alright,’ Tabitha said shakily, racing down the slip road and back onto the motorway. Laika was still barking. Tabitha checked for traffic over her right shoulder by force of habit. ‘Shh, it’s ok,’ she said softly. With shaking hands she reached back to stroke Laika until she whimpered and fell quiet. ‘It’s alright,’ she told her quietly. Just under the surface though, Tabitha felt anything but.

  She drove on in silence for the rest of the day, reaching back to stroke Laika once in a while for comfort. Whether it was for Laika’s comfort or hers, she couldn’t be sure. Her thoughts ran away with her in the meantime, as the motorway stretched on endlessly before her. Caffeine, fear and imagination were a horrible mix.

  Tabitha had run the petrol gauge half down before she parked up for the night. She refused to stop driving until she really couldn’t see a thing. All she cared about was getting as far away as possible, far from anyone. She parked up on a hilltop that night, far from any towns and villages. Better to get caught by a pack of spiders than a pack of people, she told herself. At least the spiders only wanted to kill her, nice and quick.

  17

  The drive back down the east coast the next morning was mercifully uneventful. They passed back over the English border, tearing down an A-road beside the sea. Silver spiders twitched and moved in the villages as she passed through; draining the bodies of sheep in the fields, or stalking endlessly over the rain-soaked moors. The coast stretched on forever beside them, empty and grey. Every town they passed looked like a dull graveyard. Houses and shops and council flats, all toppled ruins. Their walls dotted with spidery silver constellations.

  Tabitha patted her cheeks to stay awake. She drove past crippled villages beside the sea, pretty and torn open. Fields of cows with swollen udders, left to their ow
n devices. A pack of feral dogs on the roadside, eating the body of something or someone. She didn’t slow down to look. Tabitha took a worried glance at the fuel gauge, and put her foot down to get away from here. It felt like they’d been on the road for a lifetime.

  The motorway was coming up ahead, after she’d passed through a sunny crypt of a city on the coast. Tabitha’s legs were getting numb. The fuel gauge was well into the red as they tore down the motorway south.

  ‘We’ll have to find a petrol station,’ she fretted, looking around at the silent countryside. She hadn’t seen any signs for motorway services; she couldn’t count on finding one close by. A couple of miles on, wracked with fear about running out of petrol, Tabitha took the next turn-off and joined the country lanes along the coast. She really didn’t want to stop around here, ruined and desolate as it was. When she reached the next large roadsign, she slowed right down to stare at it. There was something scrawled over the town names, painted in a scruffy hand. She studied the messy writing as they drew closer.

  FOOD + SHELTER 3 MILE STRAIGHT ON

  Tabitha could have cried. It was the most beautiful sign she’d ever seen.

  ‘Laika, look,’ she said softly, waking her up. ‘I think we’ve found somewhere.’ Tabitha felt her shoulders relax, like a weight was lifting. She breathed deep, and pulled her tired eyes from the sign. She threw the car into first gear and tore off down the road. Suddenly the glum sky and the grey country lane had a new brightness about them.

  A couple of miles on Tabitha ground the car to a halt and stared over the steering wheel, eyes wide, watching. Down a hill in the back of beyond, she saw a village in the distance with no signs of destruction. It was a tiny place on the coast, untouched, walled in by a range of rocky crags behind. Tabitha climbed out of the car and watched the place for a while down her rifle scope, kneeling down beside the car bonnet. She fended off Laika happily when her dog had the sudden urge to lick her ear.