by Hall, Andrew
‘Just keep doing what you’re doing,’ Tabitha said with a smile.
‘Hm,’ Paul replied, unsure. ‘I worry about what they see when they look at me,’ he admitted, his voice thick with grief.
‘They’ll look at you and see what everyone else sees,’ Tabitha assured him, putting her hand on his back while he cried. ‘They’ll see the man who raised them single-handed, and protected them through all of this. And found them a new home where they could grow up safe. So don’t be so hard on yourself, ok?’ Paul sniffed and nodded, and wiped another tear away.
‘Sorry,’ he said with a smile. ‘I can’t talk about this stuff around the kids. I don’t want them to see me crying.’
‘Just come to me any time you need to talk, alright?’ she said. ‘Come to any of us. We’re a family now. Or a tribe. Whatever you want to call it.’ Paul smiled at her, and wiped the tears off his cheeks.
‘Hello?’ came a voice from the front door. Paul and Tabitha looked at one another in surprise. They didn’t recognise the voice. Tabitha rushed back down the hallway. When she got to the open front door, there was a couple standing outside.
‘God Tony, what’s wrong with her?’ the woman asked the man, looking Tabitha up and down.
‘Are you alright love?’ said Tony with concern, approaching Tabitha cautiously. He was tall and broad; a bodybuilder.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ said Tabitha suspiciously, backing up a step into the hallway. They were looking at her like she was about to attack them.
‘What happened to you?’ said the woman, staring at her with a look of distaste.
‘The aliens,’ said Tabitha defensively. ‘I’m fine, really. Paul?’ she called back down the hallway.
‘Your hands are all…’ the woman backed away a step too, with no attempt to hide her revulsion.
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Tabitha, fixing her with a stare. Tony watched her carefully.
‘Hi!’ Paul said warmly. The couple were visibly relieved to see someone who looked more like them. Tabitha stepped aside as Paul came to the door, only too happy to let him speak with the strangers. As bad as she felt about it, she didn’t want to talk to them. Not with the way they were looking at her.
‘I’ll get the bags,’ she said, disappearing down the hall into the kitchen.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ said the woman, in a hushed tone. Tabitha still heard her. She had a loud voice, and her hushed tone wasn’t all that hushed.
‘She’s fine, really,’ Paul assured them.
‘She looks weird,’ the man said quietly. Again, not all that quietly. Tabitha clenched her rough grey knuckles and dragged them along the textured wallpaper as she went, grating foamy white specks from the wall that fluttered down like snow on the carpet.
‘So where have you guys come from?’ Paul asked them, changing the subject as he invited them into the house.
‘We’ve been in the attic at Jackie’s house, down the road,’ said Tony, pointing a thumb at Jackie beside him. ‘We’ve been staying up there after everything kicked off. Anyway, we heard some shouting yesterday then a car today, so we came out to look.’
‘You must be hungry,’ said Paul, closing the front door behind them.
‘Starving mate, absolutely starving,’ said Tony, filling the hallway as he walked through into the kitchen.
‘Would you like some beans?’ said Tabitha, trying again with the couple.
‘Cold?’ said Jackie, puzzled. Tabitha looked at her. What did she expect?
‘So there’s no power anywhere?’ said Tony, trying the light switch. ‘We didn’t know if it was just Jackie’s house or what.’
‘It’s the same all over the country, I’m afraid,’ Paul replied.
‘Why, where have you come from?’ said Tony.
‘The other end of it,’ he said brightly.
‘Thanks,’ Jackie mumbled, looking distinctly unimpressed with the bowls of beans Tabitha put down on the table for them. Tabitha wasn’t about to go to any more effort than that for someone who kept staring at her like a freak.
‘We’ll get you some hot food when we get back to the castle,’ said Paul.
‘You’re up in the castle?’ said Tony. ‘Why didn’t we think of that?’ he asked Jackie, spooning cold beans into his mouth. ‘Is it just the two of you?’
‘No, there’s a few of us,’ said Paul, pouring them a glass of water each from a bottle. ‘We’re out in town getting some food together, since the spiders seem to have buggered off.’
‘So they have gone!’ Tony told Jackie, with a look of victory. ‘I had to drag her out screaming from that attic, she said they were all still here in town!’
‘Yep, they’ve gone,’ Paul assured them.
‘Since when though?’ said Jackie, picking at her meal.
‘Since we kicked their arse in a fight,’ Tabitha said proudly. She tried to hide her delight as she watched Jackie eating cold beans.
Despite the way they looked at her sometimes, Tabitha couldn’t fault the new couple’s work ethic. The four of them scoured half the houses on the street looking for food and supplies, and came back to the car with eight full bags of food and a toolbox. The others greeted the new faces warmly where they stood around the car.
‘Welcome to the gang!’ said Will, shaking Tony’s hand enthusiastically. ‘I’ve seen you round town before mate, the bodybuilder guy!’
‘Likewise mate, you’re the dreadlocks guy,’ Tony said with a grin.
‘Where have you been staying?’ said Jim, stopping to introduce himself before he loaded another bag of tins into the car boot.
‘Well we’ve not been living in a bloody castle, put it that way!’ Tony said happily, shaking Jim’s rough hand. Natalie screamed suddenly around the street corner. Paul came running. There was a spider on the road, scuttling towards her. Panicking, Natalie fired her rifle. The shots hit one of the spider’s legs; not enough to stop it. Before she could shoot again the spider leapt on her, knocking her to the road. Paul raced in and grabbed the spider, throwing it off her with a clatter.
‘Get away from my little girl!’ he roared at it, keeping himself between them. Natalie reached for her gun on the road and tried to aim around her dad at the hissing spider. The others came sprinting around the corner then, finding Natalie screaming for help. Paul yelled and grabbed at the spider’s legs as it leapt at him, and dropped dead on the road with the creature’s tongue in his heart. Natalie screamed. Tabitha ripped the spider away from Paul and threw it down on the road. Hysterical, Natalie shot the spider over and over until it was nothing but frayed and tattered flesh. Already it had drunk out some of her dad’s insides, though. The spindly silver corpse leaked a bloody silver-pink soup from its belly.
‘Oh my god!’ Natalie screamed, dropping down next to her dad’s body. She touched his face with shaking hands, trying to get him back somehow. Lip trembling, she stared into his eyes that looked up at the sky. ‘He’s dead!’ she screamed, disbelieving. She stroked his head and grabbed at his clothes, frantic to pull him back into the world. The others gathered around, looking on, shell shocked. But something else caught Tabitha’s eye then, far in the distance. Things moving, out beyond the town walls. She looked down at Paul and Natalie on the road, and came closer.
‘Get away from him!’ Natalie yelled at her, blinded with tears as she held her dad’s lifeless hand. ‘Get away!’
‘Natalie,’ said Tabitha, reaching out towards her.
‘Get away!’ Natalie screamed, eyes wild, pointing the rifle at her.
‘Alright,’ Tabitha said gently, putting her hands up. She backed away towards the others and wiped her tears away. ‘Will,’ she said quietly, nodding at the movement she’d spotted on the distant hills.
‘Jesus. Look,’ Will told the others, pointing at the fields through the stone arch. He was holding on to Liv as Natalie aimed her gun at the group. They watched more and more silver dots appear on the distant hills, reflecting the sunlight. Too many to count.
A faraway droning carried in on the breeze; a deathly insect chitter. Natalie looked up at the sound and saw the spiders swarming on the hills. Wide eyes red with tears, she staggered up from the road and kept her rifle aimed at the others gathered on the street.
‘I’m taking the car,’ she said, sniffling back her snot. ‘I’m taking my family away from here.’
‘You need to stay here with us,’ Will said calmly, putting his hands out as she aimed the rifle at him. ‘Stay here in the castle, and we can keep your family safe.’
‘Safe?’ she screamed back, looking at her dad’s body on the road. ‘You call this safe?’
‘Stop p-pointing that gun at him!’ Liv yelled, trying to get in front of Will to protect him.
‘You said the spiders weren’t coming back!’ said Natalie, wiping her nose. ‘You said so! We trusted you!’
‘I was wrong!’ said Will. ‘I’m sorry!’
‘Sorry doesn’t bring my dad back!’ Natalie yelled hysterically, raising her rifle. ‘I’m taking my family! It’s not safe here, I’m taking them away!’ Will watched her, and chose his words carefully.
‘Natalie, it’s best if we –
‘If you try to stop me I’ll kill you!’ Natalie screamed, storming over to aim the gun right in his terrified face. Tabitha watched Liv watching the gun. Liv was about to do something stupid to protect Will; she could tell. Jim was too old to be put through this, and Chris looked like he was about to make a run for it. If any one of them tried something…
‘Here, take the car,’ said Tabitha, pulling the keys out of the ignition. ‘Get your family away from here. We won’t try to stop you.’ She held out the keys for Natalie to see.
‘Throw them down,’ said Natalie, staring, aiming the rifle at her. Tabitha tossed the keys down the road to Natalie’s feet. ‘I’m protecting my family,’ said Natalie, convincing herself. Tabitha nodded. ‘Get away from the car.’
‘We won’t try to stop you,’ said Tabitha, motioning for everyone to step away. Natalie seemed torn between her dad’s body and the car. The chattering insect drone was getting clearer. The crest of a distant hill was turning silver.
‘We need to bury my dad,’ Natalie told them, panicked and heartbroken.
‘Natalie, we can’t do that,’ said Will.
‘We need to bury him!’ she repeated. ‘I buried my mum, so I’m going to bury my dad!’
‘The venom inside him would kill us,’ Will said, as gently as he could. Liv wiped away a tear, and held onto Will’s hand.
‘We’ll burn him then,’ said Natalie, pale and shaking with the shock. ‘I want him to have a
funeral.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Will. ‘We’ll do whatever you want but just please, put the gun down. Trust us.’
‘I don’t trust you,’ she replied, her voice nasal with her tears. ‘You said it was safe out here. I don’t trust any of you. We’re going to give my dad a real funeral. Do it.’
The group took as much wood, coal, paper and lighter fluid as they could find from the houses nearby, and piled it up over Paul’s body on the road. Natalie stood in the street all the while, aiming her rifle at whoever came close to her dad.
‘She’s insane,’ Chris muttered to Jim, coming out of a house further down the street. ‘This is what you get for giving guns to people you don’t know.’
‘Shut up Chris,’ said Jim, carting out a broken-up chair. ‘Just do whatever she says, then we can go home.’
‘We shouldn’t have come out of the bloody attic,’ Tony whispered to Jackie, carrying a stack of newspapers up the road.
‘Let’s just go,’ Jackie whispered. ‘Come on, Tony.’
‘No,’ he shot back. ‘She can see us. It’s not worth it. Just do what she says.’
‘Give me the lighter,’ said Natalie, eyes red-raw with tears. Tabitha tossed hers over. Natalie stood there with the lit flame blowing in the breeze, staring at the pile of wood and paper at her feet. She closed her eyes tight and put her hand on the woodpile, and whispered a few last words to her dad beneath the timber.
‘Bye dad,’ Natalie finished with a sob, setting light to the newspaper stacked around him. ‘I’m sorry that I couldn’t protect you. I’m sorry that I’m burning you in the middle of the street,’ she said, with a desperate laugh, wiping her tears away. ‘There’s no time to do anything properly these days,’ she told the flames, watching them catch across the broken-up furniture. ‘I’m going to look after Grace and Robert,’ she told her dad in the bonfire. ‘I’ll die for them if I have to. I promise.’
‘I’m sorry, lass,’ said Jim, stepping forward.
‘Don’t talk to me,’ Natalie snapped bitterly, watching the flames burn her dad away. ‘This is nothing to do with you.’ They stood for silent minutes around Paul as the blaze consumed him, watching Natalie sob and whisper to the flames all the while. Something caught Tabitha’s eye then, through the heat haze over the fire. A black figure on the distant moor, stalking through the silver swarm. When she moved aside to see past the heat haze, it was gone. Natalie walked past the Ghosts as Jim and Liv wiped their eyes, staring coldly at them as she pulled the car keys from her pocket.
‘You’re really letting her take the car?’ said Chris, disbelieving.
‘Yeah,’ Tabitha replied, watching Natalie climb in and slam the door.
‘Don’t you think we might need it?’ he growled.
‘Not as much as she does,’ said Tabitha, as Natalie started up the roaring engine and drove away. Tabitha felt an extra little sadness then, besides her grief for Paul, watching Natalie drive off in her car. She thought about how far it had brought her, and watching Laika sleep on the back seat. At least she still had Laika though, waiting for her back at the castle. And thinking about it, things could have turned out even worse here on the street. Tabitha breathed a sigh of relief as Natalie drove off down the road, sure for a moment back then that Natalie was going to shoot them. She looked around at the others on the pavement. All of them staring; all of them shell shocked at everything that had just happened.
‘Well, you’ve just let her take our escape plan, if we ever needed one,’ Chris snapped. ‘And it’s looking pretty fucking likely that we do,’ he said, watching the silver horde massing on the hills.
‘Oh yeah, and there goes all the f-food we just spent all d-day packing!’ Liv chipped in angrily. ‘What the hell were you th-thinking, doing that?’ she demanded. Tabitha looked at her sadly, and said nothing. It broke her heart to have Liv yelling at her.
‘We can find more food,’ Jim said calmly. ‘And in case you hadn’t noticed, Tabitha just stopped us all getting shot.’ Will nodded. Liv looked from Jim to Tabitha, and her scowl softened.
‘Oh god, I’m sorry,’ said Liv, walking over to grab Tabitha in a tight hug. ‘I didn’t see it like that. I’m sorry.’
‘Well, it’s not all bad then I suppose, if you put it like that,’ said Chris. ‘Now can we start walking back to the castle before all those big alien spiders get here?’
By the time they’d walked back to the hill leading up to the castle, they’d heard all the details of a shouting match between Natalie and Sylvia inside the walls. Sylvia was nothing to do with Natalie’s family, from the sounds of the argument, and Natalie was taking the twins and leaving. After the slam of a car door the Ghosts saw Natalie racing down the driveway, with the twins watching them in panic from the back seat. The car roared off down through town, disappeared out of the stone arch, and sped off down the country road towards the distant motorway. And just like that, half of their new family was gone. Once the Ghosts got back into the courtyard they found Sylvia hurriedly tucking a tissue away in her cardigan pocket.
‘She’s taken them,’ said Sylvia, standing up straight and stern; hiding her grief.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Will, coming forward.
‘It’s done now. There’s no undoing it,’ Sylvia replied, matter-of-factly. Her eyes were bloodshot with tears. ‘Natalie was right.
They aren’t my family.’
‘She’s doing what she thinks is best, to protect them,’ said Tabitha.
‘I know,’ Sylvia replied coldly, opening the door into the keep. The hills beyond the castle walls were lined with swarming silver dots. ‘We need to protect ourselves too, from the looks of it. We have a war coming to us.’
‘I saw something else, up on the hills,’ Tabitha told Liv in the keep, as they watched Tony and Jackie looking around the castle grounds outside. ‘It was a figure. Just… watching.’
‘Like a p-person?’ Liv said nervously.
‘It looked like one,’ Tabitha replied.
‘You two need to get suited up,’ said Will, coming over.
‘Tabitha says she saw a f-figure on the hills,’ said Liv.
‘A figure? What do you mean?’ Will replied absentmindedly, tightening the strap on his rifle.
‘Like a human figure, but taller,’ said Tabitha. Will looked up from his rifle. ‘It looked like it was leading the spiders,’ she told him. Will could only stare at her, dumbfounded.
‘What, you mean like another alien?’ he said quietly. ‘Another kind?’
‘It looked that way,’ Tabitha replied. ‘Maybe we got their attention after the last fight, so they brought a manager down. It looks like it’s going to be a bigger attack.’
‘Shit!’ said Will, pacing the kitchen. ‘So what, was it just one figure? Did it have any weapons?’
‘I only saw one,’ said Tabitha. ‘I couldn’t tell if it had any weapons or not.’
‘Well did you see what it was doing then? What it was telling the spiders to do?’ Will replied, panicked. ‘We need to know!’
‘Will, c-calm down,’ said Liv, worried that he looked so frantic.
‘Calm down?’ he said. ‘We’ve got an alien army coming for us! And there’s these new things leading them now, and you’re telling me to calm down? Nah, we’re dead,’ he said, holding his hands up against the back of his head. ‘We’re fucking dead.’ Chris and Jim looked around at him from the far side of the room, and saw the man who’d always led them start to pace around in terror.