by Hall, Andrew
‘They’re climbing on t-top of each other!’ Liv yelled, shooting desperately at the sudden flux of spiders clambering up the wall below her.
‘Everyone, over here!’ Will yelled, running over to be with Liv. The spiders piled up into a single tumbling mass below them; a writhing silver hill that swelled and grew against the castle wall.
‘Someone give me a grenade!’ yelled Will, as the others opened fire on the growing mass. Jackie put one in his hand, glad to be without it. Will pulled the pin and prayed to god, and dropped it over the side. ‘Everyone down, cover your ears!’ he yelled. There was an echoing boom through the park. The top of the swarming hill burst apart like a living firework, scattering spiders high over the field below.
‘Another!’ yelled Will, watching the mass regrow rapidly towards the top of the wall.
‘Grenades, everyone!’ Will shouted desperately. ‘Any you’ve got left!’ one after another the Ghosts pulled the pins on their grenades and let them tumble down into the swarm. With every booming crack, the massing spiders tumbled and clattered down off one another with a sound like a truckload of scrap. The field became littered with their dead shapes, and a rain of silver blood splashed down on the rocks and grass below. But still the swarm kept swelling and climbing, edging its way relentlessly towards the top.
‘I’m out of bullets!’ said Jim, as the others fired uselessly on the mound.
‘They’re going to come over! Tabitha, get over here!’ yelled Will. ‘Shields up! Everyone without riot gear, get inside! Now!’ the first spider came clawing over the top of the wall as Chris, Sylvia, Jackie and Tony ran for the keep. Will yelled at the spider and speared it through, with barely enough time to pull the spear out again before more of them climbed over. Tabitha ran up onto the wall and remembered something then, as she felt the wind tossing her hair.
‘Chris, throw my helmet back! Chris!’ she yelled. But he was already running in through the door. Tabitha turned around and saw spiders come clattering over the wall, crashing down around her in a frenzy. She buried her spear in the first spider that scuttled towards her. The second took her spear with it as it fell shrieking from the wall, the wooden pole slipping clean out of her slick bloody hands. More spiders were smashing against the others’ riot shields, pushing them back down the wall towards Tabitha and the keep.
‘Tabitha!’ Liv screamed, hacking at the mass of spiders with her axe as they spread out over the wall.
‘We need to get back into the keep!’ Will shouted to Liv, putting the clear visor down on her helmet. He bashed his shield into a spider as it spat its stabbing tongue at them, and Liv buried her axe down in its head with a crunching squelch. Tabitha came running along the wall to help them as they backed away. A spider grabbed out at Jim’s legs and tripped him, and jabbed a needled claw into the sole of his boot. He screamed and pulled the claw away, kicking the spider back.
‘Jim!’ Liv yelled, hacking the spider to pieces to give Jim chance to get away.
‘It got my foot!’ Jim screamed. ‘Jesus Christ, it’s burning!’ Jim collapsed down in agony. It was a metal-tasting fire inside him, searing his leg like a red-hot poker through the heel. He was screaming, hysterical with the pain. Will dropped his spear and shield and grabbed Jim under the arms, dragging him away down the wall towards the keep. Liv held the spiders back for them, driving her axe down into another that edged too close.
‘Go and help Jim!’ said Tabitha, running past Liv to tackle the spiders head-on.
‘Keep them off us, and follow us into the keep!’ said Liv. She passed Tabitha the fire axe and ran to help Will. ‘Stay close behind us!’ Liv called back. Tabitha watched them dragging Jim along the wall towards the keep, flailing and screaming with the pain. It was just her and the tide of spiders, then. She felt the weight of the axe and shield in her hands, ready to swing as one crawled closer. A rifle cracked, and the scuttling spider dropped dead. More spiders burst and fell down behind it. Tabitha saw Chris and the others standing on top of the keep, opening fire on the horde.
‘Move!’ Chris yelled down to her. Suddenly there was a distant rumbling sound, high and thin over the scuttling racket of the horde. Tabitha turned to see a dot in the sky, growing larger and louder by the second. A fighter jet. As it passed overhead something dropped from its belly. As soon as Tabitha realised what the falling shape was, she ran. The towering mass of spiders exploded with a deafening boom behind her, blowing the mound of spiders apart and raining them down over the field in their hundreds. Tabitha lay face-down on top of the wall, surrounded by a giant dust cloud like a dry choking fog. She heard nothing but a high ringing in her ears as she sat up; a shrill droning racket. It masked the sound of the few surviving spiders scuttling along the wall towards her.
‘Tabitha!’ came a muffled scream, like it was underwater. ‘Tabitha!’ dazed, she looked over at the screaming figures through the dust. Will and Liv had lain Jim down in the courtyard, unsure whether to get him inside or to come back for her.
‘Go!’ said Tabitha, waving them on, choking on dust. Even her own voice sounded a hundred miles away. She picked up the riot shield and the fire axe where she’d dropped them, and saw a spider come scuttling suddenly out of the foggy dust towards her.
She barely managed to block its stabbing tongue with the shield, staggering back as it swiped its claws at her feet.
‘Come on!’ she growled, waiting for it to come in again. When it pounced she bashed the shield into it to floor it, and buried the axe in its head with a bloody squelch.
‘I can’t see anything down there!’ came Chris’s voice through the dustcloud, up on top of the keep.
‘Don’t shoot!’ Sylvia called back. ‘There’s no use wasting bullets if we can’t see!’ down on the wall, Tabitha adjusted the shield against her arm. Two more spiders crept towards her out of the dust. More followed behind them; Tabitha reached for her hunting knife. As soon as she heard barking though, she froze up. Laika had gotten outside.
‘Laika, come here!’ Liv screamed, as she and Will dragged Jim in through the door of the keep. Liv tried to grab at Laika’s collar but she was too fast, and bounded across the courtyard and up the steps onto the wall. Ears raised, teeth bared, Laika was growling feral at the spiders creeping up on Tabitha.
‘Laika, stay!’ Tabitha yelled desperately, looking back at her as the horde of spiders edged closer. When she turned back to face them one of the spiders leapt on her shield and clung on. As its weight knocked her off balance another dragged her to the ground. Tabitha screamed. She struggled helplessly against their sudden strength gripping her limbs, holding her down. Working in unison. Her frantic writhing was useless against so many; her riot armour made it even harder to move. Panicking, Tabitha tried to force the lightning out of her body; pushing and willing it with every nerve. It was useless. Screaming, she felt claws grip her head still; felt a spider’s sudden weight as it crept onto her chest. There in front of her a spike slid out from a slimy black mouth, edging towards her eye. She smelled death on it, coming for her at last. Laika crashed into the spider and bit down on a leg, dragging it off Tabitha’s chest. Even before Tabitha could get to her feet she heard Laika yelp. She pulled her dog away from the spiders as fast as she could, with Laika’s blood slapping down on the stones at her feet. Tabitha screamed and split the spider in half with the fire axe. She cratered the head of the next one, punching it over and over until the spider stopped moving. The third she tore the legs off, and sank her hunting knife into a fourth. The fifth dropped dead before she could get to it, bleeding from a bullet hole. The shooters on the keep picked off the last few on the wall through the fading dust cloud. Tabitha wrenched the fire axe free from the first spider, and swung it deep into another that still lay twitching on the wall.
‘Clear!’ Chris shouted across the castle, delirious. ‘We’ve won! We’ve fucking won!’ Tabitha turned away from the spiders, and her heart broke at the sight. Laika limped and collapsed by the wall, lying there
in a growing pool of blood beneath her. The fighter jet tore overhead again, and an echoing boom massacred the spiders still left on the field below. Tabitha sat down by the wall, and lifted Laika up to cradle her in her lap. She felt Laika’s warm blood coursing out of her body, making her fur slick and wet. It streamed down Tabitha’s arms as she held her close. Laika whined quietly, and closed her mismatched eyes.
‘Oh, my beautiful girl,’ Tabitha said softly. She held her cheek against Laika’s warm head, and kissed her soft fur.
‘I’ve got you,’ she told her, past the lump in her throat. ‘It’s ok.’ She stroked her dog’s bloody fur. Laika’s body gently slumped then, lifeless in her lap.
‘I love you,’ she said quietly, kissing Laika’s nose.
‘Tabitha!’ said Liv, running over. ‘Are you hurt?’ Tabitha looked up at her and shook her head. Liv was staring at Laika.
‘How’s Jim?’ said Tabitha, sniffling back the tears.
‘He’s not g-good. At all,’ Liv replied. ‘Tabitha, I’m s-so s-sorry about your dog. I opened th-the door and didn’t think, a-and –
‘Liv,’ Tabitha replied softly, looking down at Laika. ‘If she hadn’t come running out I could be dead now. She saved my life.’ Liv watched her stroking Laika and burst into tears.
‘This is f-fucked up,’ Liv sobbed, putting a hand over her eyes. ‘Everything.’
‘I know,’ Tabitha said softly, laying Laika’s body gently to one side as she got to her feet. ‘Look, why don’t you go back inside and help Jim?’ Tabitha suggested, hugging Liv tight. ‘I’m just going to put Laika in the garden. I’ll only be a second.’
‘Ok,’ said Liv. Carefully Tabitha carried Laika down the steps and into the garden, laying her down by the bushes at the bottom of the lawn.
‘Tabitha? Are you alright?’ Will called over, stepping out of the keep onto the courtyard.
‘She’ll just be a minute,’ Liv said quietly, walking over to him. ‘It’s Laika,’ she told him quietly. Tabitha stood up from the grass, and sighed at Laika’s body laying there. A vast shadow swept overhead. Looking up at the blue sky, she heard a weird rumbling that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
‘What’s that noise?’ said Will, looking around as Liv held close to his side. They watched the sky from the courtyard. There was a sound like flapping wings then, a colossal whoom. A dark grey head rose up beyond the wall, huge and reptilian. White eyes stared; grey wings drowned out the daylight. The creature opened its jaws to reveal a pale glow in its throat, crackling like static. Liv and Will stared for a moment in silent shock, and held hands as they ran for their lives. Tabitha screamed and ran for them along the wall as the hellish creature drew breath. It spat a sudden gout of white light, obliterating Liv and Will in a burst of ashes. Tabitha stared in horror, refusing to believe what she’d just seen. She watched the creature crash down on the wall and look over at her, and she leapt down off the battlements and ran for the keep as the garden erupted into white flames behind her. The creature spat down a pale firestorm as she ran, incinerating the grass and Jim’s allotment. The monster leapt down into the raging flames to hunt her. Something shot out of the sky then and exploded against its body, and the creature roared and took off into the air. The same fighter jet thundered overhead, and circled around for another strike. The huge creature headed high and dodged and weaved away from the jet that chased it, but took another missile hit in a burst of flames. The thing roared and dropped out of the sky, crashing down into town in a boiling dust cloud. The jet tore off into the blue then, vanishing from sight. Tabitha just stared at the sky in disbelief. At the smoking black scorch mark where Liv and Will had stood. At the garden in flames all around her.
‘Chris,’ Tabitha mumbled, heading around the far side of the keep. The thought of Liv and Will wrenched inside her. She felt sick, numb. The heat from the garden was unbearable; the flames cut her off from the courtyard. She’d need to go right around the keep to get in. ‘Chris!’ she called, coughing at the smoke. ‘Sylvia!’ even her bedsheet banner on the wall of the keep had burned away to nothing. As Tabitha rounded the keep and came in through the door, she stopped dead in her tracks. She looked at Jim in shock. Will and Liv had laid him out on the table. They’d taken off his riot gear, and cut open his trouser leg. He was lying there just breathing, fast. The venom had made his leg wither away to nothing. ‘Chris! Anyone!’ she called out. She looked up the stairs and saw Chris just standing there, wide-eyed and motionless.
‘They’ve got dragons now!’ he laughed desperately. ‘What’s next, fucking ogres and wizards coming through the gate? What the fuck’s going on?’
‘Jim’s dying down here, for god’s sake!’ she yelled back. ‘Help me!’ Chris and the others plodded downstairs, and took one look at Jim and stayed away. They were just standing there, shell shocked.
‘Jesus Christ, we need to help him!’ Tabitha yelled at them. Chris took his eyes away from Jim and looked at her. He was white as a sheet.
‘How?’
30
Chris was right. There was nothing they could do to stop Jim’s leg collapsing further. They could only keep him drunk to dull the pain, and try to stop the endless bleeding from the cratered needle hole in his foot. After a big dose of vodka, Jim’s screams had reduced to an endless groaning.
‘The blood won’t stop!’ said Tabitha in a panic, unwrapping another blood-soaked bandage with a wet slap on the floor. She tied another tight around his foot. The others had refused to touch Jim’s blood, in case the venom got to work on them too. They could only stand around uselessly, watching Tabitha. Their silent presence was grating on her while she worked.
‘I don’t need a bloody audience!’ she snapped, brushing the hair away from her forehead with the back of her wrist. Jim’s blood coated her hands with a slick red shine, marbled against her grey skin beneath. The others stepped back, but carried on watching with a morbid fascination.
‘It’s in his hands,’ said Tony, watching Jim’s skin slowly pock and pit. Worst of all, a few minutes later, the small dose of venom had stopped working and left Jim half mangled on the table. Once he’d regained his senses enough to ask where Liv and Will were, Tabitha was the one who had to break his heart with the news. She’d never heard anyone wail like that before; a tortured scream like his mind was coming apart along with his insides.
‘Kill me. Please,’ Jim whispered eventually, over and over, like a prayer. He prayed to Tabitha as she held his hand. When she changed his bandage again and disappeared from view, he prayed to the distant faces in the dusky gloom of the keep. The ones that wouldn’t come too close. Tabitha couldn’t tell him that she would end his suffering, though. She couldn’t tell him that she wouldn’t, either. She didn’t know what was going to happen to him, and she was scared.
‘Will you help me? Please?’ she said, turning to her silent audience.
‘I’m not touching him,’ Tony said bluntly.
‘Get me some pillows and sheets then!’ Tabitha snapped. The others just stared. ‘Now!’
Tabitha set them to work building a bed of cushions in the corner, closer to the fire. She couldn’t just leave Jim to bleed on the kitchen table.
‘Chris, it’s getting too dark in here,’ she said, putting her wrist on Jim’s forehead. He was red hot. Chris hadn’t taken the initiative; he just stared at her. ‘Do you think I’m just making conversation or something?’ she snapped at him. ‘What the hell’s wrong with you? Light some candles! Christ!’ was it all on her now to tell them what to do?
‘I think Sylvia’s in shock,’ said Jackie. She was sat down in the corner, looking outside at the glow of the white flames from the garden.
‘Get her some water then, I don’t know!’ said Tabitha. ‘I’m trying to stop Jim dying here!’ she sighed, frustrated, as Jim’s bandage began to soak through again.
‘I think we need to lie her down,’ said Chris, lighting candles with a cigarette lighter. He looked up at Tabitha. Waited for
acknowledgement.
‘Then bloody do it!’ Tabitha snapped. ‘Stop waiting for me to say yes or no!’
Affronted, Chris put the candle down and went to get Sylvia a drink. Once they’d convinced her to lie down upstairs, Tabitha had managed to unfurl a bed sheet out under Jim’s body on the table. His limbs felt way too light.
‘Help me get him down over there,’ she said, taking a corner of the sheet. Gingerly the others took a corner each, and together they hoisted him up. Jim was screaming with the pain.
‘Quick!’ said Tabitha. They rushed Jim over to the corner of the room, and laid him down on the bed of pillows.
‘I need to lie down, I can’t handle this,’ said Jackie, putting her hand on her forehead. She was looking to Chris for an answer. Tabitha supposed that Jackie knew she’d get a more agreeable reply from him.
‘Er, yeah, go and lie down,’ said Chris.
‘Are you fucking serious?’ Tabitha muttered. ‘Keep an eye on Sylvia then, while you’re up there,’ she told Jackie over her shoulder. Tony was going upstairs with her too, without the effort of giving an excuse. Personally Tabitha couldn’t have cared less for Sylvia, for all the help she’d been. Wasn’t she supposed to be the hardy matriarch sort, the last one to crumble? Maybe Tabitha had seen too many movies. Or maybe she’d just stopped feeling, she considered. In place of grief for Liv, Will and Laika, there was only a numbness setting in. Either she was in shock, or she’d just stopped feeling. Maybe it was emotional self-defence, she considered. Just putting the walls up once and for all, and switching off to it all for good.
‘Kill me,’ Jim whispered to her, carrying on his prayer. Tabitha looked at him lying there on the floor, and her walls crumbled again. She took his hand in her own and burst into tears.
Dusk gave way to dark, and Chris closed the door of the keep. White flames burned down outside. For the longest time, Chris and Tabitha sat with Jim and said nothing. Tabitha lay a cold damp cloth on Jim’s burning forehead, and moved a few candles closer on the fireplace beside him to see him better. The flickering candlelight picked out deep shadows in his pale old face; the creases and furrows of age. Jim’s cheeks had grown more hollow, even over a few hours. His eyelids were heavy, and he didn’t try to move. Maybe he couldn’t. At least he’d stopped screaming and groaning. Tabitha had felt her heart crack open every time she’d heard him scream.