Tabitha

by Hall, Andrew

  ‘Oi you,’ she said, ruffling Laika’s head. She looked back down the scope. Down in the village, something moved. Or someone.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked Laika, sitting patiently beside her. Laika turned and looked at her, holding her gaze with a soft dog smile. Crazy mismatched eyes, bright in the growing sunlight.

  ‘I say we go and have a look,’ said Tabitha, zipping up her blood-stained hoodie. ‘Watch my back when we get down there, ok?’ she helped Laika into the car and popped the seat back. Nervous and excited, she started the car up and drove off down the road.

  The rain had started to fall lightly by the time she reached the village. Without working windscreen wipers, the raindrops filled her view. The world outside disappeared in a glassy smudge. She wound the window down, wiped at the windscreen with her hard palm. She just hoped that she wouldn’t plough into something and wreck the car in her rush to park up. Probably best to slow down a bit. The grey sea tumbled in along the sand. Laika watched from the back window as they passed cottages and a little old shop, untouched by the end of the world. Here and there Tabitha glimpsed faces in the windows, drawn to the alien sound of a working car. Coughing, nervous, Tabitha parked up on a patch of gravel by the sea. The cool salty breeze hit her as she stepped out of the car and looked around.

  ‘Come on you,’ she told Laika, lifting the seat forward to let her out. Laika sniffed around the grass beside the car park. The rain pattered down with soft slaps in the grass. Tabitha grabbed the shotgun from the footwell and locked the car door, and waited for Laika to finish her business on the grass.

  ‘Ready?’ said Tabitha, patting her leg as she walked off. Laika padded on alongside her, and together they headed down the road towards the village. She’d overshot the place intentionally, parking on the main road, just in case they had to get out quickly. Maybe she should have parked closer, she wondered. It was a tiny place, wind-whipped and silent. The old houses were painted bright white, built from rough rugged stone. A rusty old black and white fingerpost pointed the way. Tabitha saw no sign of spiders in the fields around her. It was strange though; there were indents in the grass, and the ground had been torn up in places as if there’d been a struggle. But there were no empty skins here, animal or human. Strange that there wasn’t any birdsong either. There were always birds singing, everywhere she went. Everything about the whitewashed village ahead of her had a deathly silence draped over it. Maybe it was so quiet and uneventful here that the spiders hadn’t found the place. But she couldn’t help but wonder how long that would last. Surely their luck was bound to run out one day, and the spiders would find this place. The trees around here looked especially dull, green-barked and twisted under a lead-grey sky. The silence was all-consuming. Suddenly alert, Laika turned and barked.

  ‘Hello?’ came a voice behind her. Startled, Tabitha turned around to see a little old lady up the street. She wore a heap of skirts and cardigans, wrapped up against the wind. ‘Are you alright over there?’ said the old lady, in a high song of a voice. She was waving to her repeatedly, as if Tabitha couldn’t see her.

  ‘Hi,’ Tabitha replied, walking towards her. She kept Laika close by the collar.

  ‘Are you tired love?’ said the old lady, meeting her on the road. She looked at Tabitha’s shotgun warily with blue watery eyes. Her skin was so pale and wrinkled she looked like she belonged in a fantasy movie; a wisened old crone with a curly grey tangle of hair. ‘You’ll want a bed for a while love? Somewhere warm to get some sleep?’ she said.

  ‘If it’s safe here,’ Tabitha replied cautiously, looking around the white houses and bungalows on the main road.

  ‘Yes, yes. Safe as houses here,’ the old woman replied. ‘Come on now, out of the rain before you catch cold. And look at you, your clothes are all torn up as well. Let’s get you bedded down for a bit, before everyone starts prying into your business.’

  Tabitha walked with the old lady as she ambled up the road, and shivered in the sea breeze. The lady was dressed warmly though, with two cardigans buttoned up over her jumper and skirt. Her face had a sad old warmth to it, homely and fretting. There was a lone cottage further on, out on the edge of the village.

  ‘Are there lots of people here?’ Tabitha asked her, breaking the silence. She thought it was strange that the old lady had said so little so far.

  ‘Oh I don’t know, must be a dozen of us or so,’ the old woman replied shortly, as if Tabitha was being nosy by asking. She had a hacking chesty cough. When they passed through the garden gate and got to the front door she took a firm hold of Tabitha’s arm, with an iron grip that only little old ladies possessed.

  ‘Tell me love,’ said the old woman closely, dipping her voice and checking over her shoulder. ‘Do you have any food on you, in the car?’

  ‘A few things, yeah,’ Tabitha replied, setting the shotgun down by the doorframe. ‘Isn’t there much food here?’

  ‘None,’ the old woman replied, shaking her head. She did have a kind of intense look about her. Hunger.

  ‘I’ll split my food with you,’ Tabitha told her. The woman’s face changed completely.

  ‘Oh lovely,’ she whispered desperately. ‘Yes. You sleep here, and I’ll have a bit of your food for rent, alright?’

  ‘Alright,’ Tabitha replied happily. ‘When was the last time you had something to eat?’

  ‘Something proper? More than a week now, yes.’

  ‘A week?’ Tabitha replied, horrified. She hadn’t eaten in ages either, but it was worse to know a little old lady was going so hungry. ‘But there’s hardly any people here, there has to be plenty of food left to go round,’ she said. ‘What about shops? Supermarkets?’

  ‘What supermarkets?’ the woman replied, smiling sadly. ‘Only two corner shops here, love. A lot of people took all the food they could find and left the village. Hardly left us a scrap. There were more of us before.’

  ‘But you’re by the sea, what about your fishing boats?’ said Tabitha. She looked over at the small harbour, barely a hundred yards down the road.

  ‘No, no,’ the old woman said with a hoarse hush, as if Tabitha was talking about the devil himself. ‘There’s things in the water now. Dark horrible things. Huge. They’re eating everything. No, we daren’t go near the water. Young Jonathan set out in his fishing boat the other day and the thing had him, poor man. We’ve got allotments coming on now, but they’ll be weeks and months growing.’

  ‘So you’ve had nothing to eat in all this time?’ said Tabitha, disbelieving.

  ‘Nothing but what we can catch or shoot,’ the old woman admitted, exhausted. ‘We’ll catch the odd fish or a sparrow now and again, but there’s not much meat on them to go around all of us. And we daren’t go out too far in case those things come looking for us.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Tabitha muttered, looking around at the village. It wasn’t exactly the safe haven she’d been hoping for.

  ‘You must have been keeping fed, if you’ve come from down south,’ the old lady observed.

  ‘Well… I’ve not been eating at all,’ Tabitha mumbled, with a strange hint of guilt.

  ‘You’ve not eaten?’ the old woman replied, shocked. ‘A car full of food, and you’ve not been eating!’ she looked appalled. ‘And you’ve not eaten the dog either, what’s the matter with you?’

  ‘My dog? I’m not going to eat my dog!’ Tabitha replied, disbelieving.

  ‘More for us then,’ a young woman called over the garden gate. Tabitha jumped. The woman had a glazed look in her eyes. Short bleach-blonde hair; skin tanned with hard work in the sun. Dirty vest top. Dry cracked lips. She was eyeing up Laika and Tabitha both, like they were meat hanging on butcher’s hooks.

  ‘Give us your dog,’ the young woman told her. A man walked up beside her to see, with more people wandering out from the village streets behind them.

  ‘Yeah, give us your dog,’ the man repeated, eyeing Laika hungrily.

  ‘We’ve got kids starving,’ a woman chipped in.
Tabitha watched them carefully. She’d never known that faces could look so haunted.

  ‘I’m not giving you my dog,’ she said firmly.

  ‘We’re not giving you a choice,’ the young woman replied at the gate. ‘We’re starving. It’s food. Give it here.’

  ‘Try it,’ Tabitha replied, making her grey hands perfectly clear for them to see. The young woman staring back wiped the snot dripping from her nose, and stood back off the garden gate.

  ‘We’re not asking,’ she said, fixing Tabitha’s look with a dead stare. The young woman pulled a knife from her pocket.

  ‘Rose, leave her be,’ the old woman pleaded. ‘The dogs and cats were ours to eat… this one’s hers. We can’t do that to the girl. Let her go. This is wrong.’

  ‘So you’re not hungry now, is that it?’ Rose replied. ‘I didn’t see you saying no to a piece of dog when it was going round,’ she said. ‘We were starving. We’re still starving. So give us the fucking dog.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Tabitha, looking between them. ‘You ate your pets? What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘We’re survivors,’ Rose replied proudly. She turned and whistled sharply up the road, and a dozen or so people emerged from the warren of streets. They were wandering to the garden gate to look over their visitors, studying Tabitha with cold zombie stares. Dirt picked out every crease in their faces. None of them could have been as old as they looked. It was dirt and hunger and desperation that was aging them. They looked tired; starving. A desperate blankness in their eyes. They were all looking at Laika.

  ‘A week,’ Tabitha chuckled nervously, disbelieving, as she held Laika’s collar close by her knee. ‘Eating your pets after a week. Look at you.’ People in the small crowd were glancing at one another; keeping quiet. Someone coughed in the silence.

  ‘Ten days,’ said the man beside Rose. ‘Do you know how hungry you get in ten days?’

  ‘What else are we supposed to eat around here?’ said a gangly teenager.

  ‘But what about rats? Rabbits?’ said Tabitha, trying to reason with them.

  ‘We’ve had everything around here,’ a woman replied. ‘Couple of lads went outside the village hunting and never came back.’

  ‘But doesn’t it break your heart to eat your pets?’ said Tabitha.

  ‘Breaks my heart more to see my kids starving to death,’ a big man replied. ‘I’d do anything to make sure they get fed.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Rose. ‘Whatever it takes to stay alive,’ she said, looking around at the group. Tabitha glimpsed nodding heads in the crowd, and held Laika close beside her. The villagers were gathered close around the garden wall.

  ‘Give us your dog,’ the man beside Rose repeated; exhaustion slurred his words. Tabitha watched their faces in the silence. They weren’t going to let her go without relieving her of Laika, apparently.

  ‘My kids are starving,’ said a bolshy woman, as if she was entitled to Laika by default.

  ‘It’s not like we want to eat you,’ Rose chuckled menacingly. Tabitha wouldn’t have put it past her though, given a few more weeks. ‘Just give us your fucking dog.’

  ‘Over my dead body,’ she told them. Rose shrugged with a smile as if to accept the challenge, and opened the garden gate.

  ‘There’s food in the car, take that,’ Tabitha told them, compromising.

  ‘Yeah, we will do,’ Rose replied, stepping in through the gate. She motioned to the mob of villagers on the road to follow her in. ‘Thing is though, that food’s not going to last very long between us. Your dog’ll last longer. Now give me the car keys, and give me the dog.’

  ‘Come and get her,’ Tabitha replied, backing away. Laika was snarling savagely as Rose stepped up the garden path.

  ‘I’ve put down plenty of dogs before now,’ Rose replied, showing the scars on her arms. ‘They’re worth the mauling, for the meat on them.’ Men and women were crowding the street behind her, looking over the garden hedge. The old woman had already slunk away inside her cottage, and was locking the door noisily. Tabitha looked over her shoulder, and realised the old woman had taken the shotgun too. She couldn’t do much about it now. It wasn’t worth turning her back on the mob to retrieve the gun for the sake of one shotgun shell.

  ‘So let me get this right,’ said Tabitha, looking around at them. ‘You’re going to eat my food and take my car, and then you’re going to kill my dog and eat her?’

  ‘Yeah,’ a woman called from the crowd, gaunt and greasy-haired.

  ‘Just making sure,’ Tabitha replied, clenching her fists. ‘Come on then.’ Rose ran at her. Teeth gritted, Tabitha went for her. She blocked Rose’s punch and made a bloody mess of her nose, dropping her to the ground screaming. Laika raced past her, growling at a middle-aged man running in through the gate. The man yelled as Laika bit into his calf. Tabitha landed two good hits on his jaw, and he stumbled back onto the lawn and didn’t get back up. She looked around at pissed off faces, baying for her blood.

  ‘Get her!’ Rose snarled, clutching her streaming nose as she staggered up from the grass. She leapt at Tabitha and wrestled her to the ground, trying her hardest to press the knife into her throat. Tabitha strained to hold the blade back.

  ‘I’m going to eat you too, you fucking bitch,’ Rose growled in her face. Looking up into those wild staring eyes as she struggled, Tabitha believed every word. Laika charged in and bit at Rose’s face. Taking her chance, Tabitha shoved Rose aside and smashed her fist into her face to lay her out cold on the grass. The spectators were suddenly rabid, crowding for the garden gate to rip her to shreds.

  ‘Come on!’ Tabitha yelled. She burst out of the gate and kicked a big man back off the kerb. He steadied himself and came in to hit her. She gave him a jab on the jaw that chattered his teeth, dropping him to the tarmac. The mob surrounded her. Laika scattered them, barking fierce and feral. A woman cracked Tabitha hard in the cheek. Tabitha felt adrenaline rush when she spun around, and with a fistful of alien knuckleduster she knocked the woman’s teeth in. She pulled another woman to the road by her hair, booting her in the head in return for her kicks and scratches.

  ‘I’m just getting started!’ Tabitha snarled into her face, and kicked her again. She shoved a man away and hit out at another, staggering him to the road. Laika yelped; a scrawny man had stabbed her. Tabitha screamed as she ran at him. She twisted the knife from his grip and buried it in his stomach. As he yelled and staggered away, Tabitha pulled the hunting knife from her belt. She lashed out at the mob; sliced a hand that reached out for her. Suddenly they were backing away; angry looks had turned to fear. Panting breaths and shuffling feet in the sudden silent peace. The man she’d stabbed was yelling on the road behind her, clutching his stomach and fighting Laika away. Breathless, Tabitha stared at the group. She just stood there, between them and Laika, as her dog mauled the screaming man. Tabitha watched the faces in the crowd, and let Laika savage him. None of them made a move for her. The next man she went for backed away. Suddenly she had more space around her. The mob was backing off. Laika growled and bit down again. The man’s screams filled the silence.

  ‘Stop it!’ a woman yelled. Tabitha stared her down. The man was screaming for his life.

  ‘Come on, Laika,’ she said, pulling her snarling dog away. The crowd looked angry, and scared. She went for the biggest among them, but he backed away with his hands out in surrender. Looking down the road to her car, Tabitha saw a little boy watching from a cottage doorway.

  ‘I would have given you the bloody food, if you’d asked for it,’ she told the group, pissed off. She spat silver blood on the ground and walked off towards the car.

  ‘Take me with you,’ said a middle-aged woman, coming forward from the mob. She reminded Tabitha of her mum. ‘I didn’t fight you. I didn’t want to eat your dog. Take me with you, please.’ Tabitha stared at her.

  ‘Did you eat those dogs and cats?’ said Tabitha.

  ‘We were starving,’ the woman pleaded. ‘There’s noth
ing else to eat here. We didn’t have any choice.’

  ‘You didn’t have any choice,’ Tabitha repeated, furious, staring into the woman’s eyes. ‘I bet you’ll be eating each other in a few more weeks,’ Tabitha told them.

  ‘If it comes to that, yeah,’ Rose called back, nursing her bloody nose. People looked around at her. ‘Whatever it takes to survive.’ A few others were nodding; hesitating. They probably would turn cannibal if Rose made it ok. Just following the leader. Tabitha felt a rising sickness in her stomach at the thought; a black nauseating bile.

  ‘You’re animals,’ she told the mob, disgusted. ‘Stay here and rot.’

  Tabitha kept turning to look back at the villagers as she walked back to the car. Thank god she’d locked it up; someone had already tried the door and the boot with a crowbar. Tabitha reached into the back for her hunting rifle, aiming it at the mob as they wandered up the road towards her. They didn’t come any closer. Living zombies, gaunt and pale.

  ‘Come on,’ she told Laika, helping her up into the back seat. Taking one last look at the desperate mob, Tabitha hesitated. Thin children watched from cottage windows. Tabitha opened the boot quickly and left some of her food on the road. The mob watched in silence as she slammed the boot shut and climbed into the car.

  ‘You saved me,’ she told Laika quietly, leaning back to kiss her on the head. Laika just sat there with a canine peace, watching the mob warily, and went in to lick Tabitha’s face gladly. Tabitha saw her dog’s bloody mouth.

  ‘Let’s get you cleaned up first, ok?’ she said, pushing her back gently with trembling hands. She turned the key in the ignition and took off down the road, and caught sight of the mob in the rear view mirror. A lifeless ragged tribe, pale and staring as they vanished from view. She turned her attention to the road ahead, and the journey south. There had to be somewhere left that wasn’t like this. Somewhere that people hadn’t stooped to eating their pets, and weren’t seriously considering eating each other too. She wanted to believe that somewhere out there, people hadn’t earned the silver spiders that were coming for them.