Tabitha

by Hall, Andrew

  38

  Tabitha was a few miles out of the city ruins by noon. She’d made her way out onto the main roads and from there onto the silent motorway. She zipped up her coat against the wind, glad of the warmth despite her smelly damp clothes beneath. She had a good view of the city and the fields from the top of the motorway bridge. The whipping wind blew the smell of human shit up from the sewage treatment works down below. Far off to one side was a sprawling consumers’ paradise; a roofed shopping centre the size of a town. Out in the middle of nowhere really, compared with the jagged urban ruins far behind her. She’d been a couple of times with her mum; it had a warm pull of the familiar about it. That would be her new home, she decided, until she’d had a chance to rest and feed properly.

  Tabitha set off down the far side of the motorway bridge, doubling back on herself at the turn-off. She headed for roundabouts and towering signs for big-name outlets; studying the trees and office buildings for spiders that just weren’t there.

  There was no sign that the aliens had come here to the shopping centre, but then there weren’t any cars here either. No sign of people. The spiders would stick close to places with people, Tabitha considered. No point them coming all the way out here when there was no one around to eat.

  Trudging through acres of car park under a cloudy blue sky, Tabitha kicked a bloated little packet of rain-soaked tissues across the tarmac to break the silence and entertain herself. She pushed her hair from her eyes and studied the giant entrance as she approached the shopping centre. Huge heavy shutters stood solid behind the glass doors. There was no sign of entry, no evidence of looters. The place just seemed to have been locked up one night and never opened again. Tabitha slammed her fist into the doors, buckling the lock and shattering the glass. She slipped in through the dented doorframe, cracking shards of glass beneath her hard feet. She flicked her claws out and dug them in under the huge metal shutter, and strained until the lock popped and the whole thing started to creak and rattle upwards. She dragged it down shut behind her once she was inside, just in case a spider should find the spot where she’d broken in.

  She was a dust-darkened wanderer in a pristine white palace, as bright and silent as heaven. The colossal shopping centre was spotless, untouched; a temple to everything the creatures didn’t need. Tabitha stood before a large map telling her that She Was Here, and studied it carefully. Over on one side of the roofed city lay a gigantic food hall. On the far side, past fake streets lined with shops and lamp posts, stood a courtyard with an artificial sky. Tabitha’s dry tongue felt coarse against the roof of her mouth. She’d run out of water on the trek out of the city. She headed off for the pharmacy chain, and broke in for a bottle of water from the stinking fridges. A few more bottles went straight into her rucksack, and then she was off to find a place to nest down.

  Escalators stood frozen as she passed by streets of shuttered shops. She wandered down a huge sky-lit corridor, damp and grimy against the shining white walls, watched by staring statues. It all looked so beautiful; so untouched. A museum of the mythical; white hallowed halls in some strange consumer afterlife. The bottled water was a cool liquid bliss in her dry mouth. The sunlight spilled down through the glass ceiling, flaring as she squinted up at it. Beautiful. The warm clean feel of the light, the fresh cold taste of the water as she gulped it down… she’d never felt this before. Transcendent.

  The corridor led eventually into the colossal main bulk of the shopping centre. Tabitha couldn’t get over how clean it all looked; the invasion hadn’t happened in here. Daylight flooded in through the glass ceiling and gleamed against shop windows, pristine. Up ahead a giant fountain stood motionless, with a pool of water still as a mirror. She came closer. Beneath the surface she saw a hundred tossed coins, and thought how they’d never mean anything again.

  ‘Hello?’ she said, into the empty white street around her. She didn’t know why; she knew no one was there. Maybe she just needed to hear a voice, after so much solid silence.

  ‘What did you wish for?’ she said, sitting on the edge of the fountain and looking at the shiniest coin in the water. She dipped her hand in and tried to pick it up. Her black fingers fumbled with the coin edges, trying to peel it off the floor of the fountain. It felt like she was wearing gloves though; she couldn’t grip it. Her fingers weren’t delicate enough any more. These were hands for killing, hard and brutal. She took her black hand from the clear water, and felt sorry that she’d even rippled the surface. The coins’ previous owners were gone now. She could at least leave their wishes to rest in peace.

  A little later Tabitha could hear rain pattering on the glass roof over the streets of shops. It was good, heavy rain. The kind that made her feel safe. It reminded her of the days when her and mum would play board games, or read one another stories that they’d made up. She’d always had such an infectious giggle, her mum. Their laughs made one another laugh. Tabitha cried for a while in the chocolate shop, picking out a few boxes that her mum would have liked. She couldn’t get over just how neat and untouched everything was, as if all the shops had been stocked up and left just for her. When she tried a chocolate though, she coughed it straight back out. Of course she did. It was a moment of fantasy.

  Tabitha put the best box of chocolates down by the fountain, a present to her mum. Belgian ones; very posh. Mum would have loved them.

  It took Tabitha ages to fish the single penny out of the shop till. All the checkouts must have been emptied before the place closed up. There was only a dull old penny left, right at the back of the change drawer. Her new fingers were hard and clumsy, and she was still learning to use them properly. After several attempts, she’d managed to pincer the penny between her claws and transport it carefully to her other palm. Victorious, she closed her hand around it and headed back out from the checkout. She didn’t feel the penny slip through her fingers; just heard its high ringing sound on the shop floor. Tabitha sighed impatiently, watching it roll around her in a circle. She stamped a black foot on it, and tried for a while to peel it off the floor.

  ‘For god’s sake,’ she mumbled, kneeling down so she was eye-level with the coin. Tried to edge her claws underneath it. It didn’t help. She slid the penny along the floor towards the shop door, and tried to push it up against the metal doorframe. That way she could up-end it, and maybe pick it up more easily. But when she got there the penny just stubbed against the metal edge of the doorframe, and half-disappeared in the gap underneath it. She growled in defeat and punched a dent in the doorframe, looking around the shop. There were some cards on the checkout. She pushed the edge of a card against the penny, edged it out from the gap, and it popped up and stayed put against the card. Smiling at her victory, Tabitha gripped the penny hard against the card and took it to the fountain.

  ‘Well, we got there eventually,’ she told her mum brightly, as she dropped the penny into the water. She wished for her mum and dad to find one another up there, whatever happened to people when they died. Even if there wasn’t a heaven, and they only found each other again in her imagination, it was good enough for her. She thought about her friends too, and Laika. Just like the cottage, this looked like a good place to rest their memories. Down in the water in a shining white palace, where the monsters couldn’t find them.

  Tabitha gravitated towards the big home store at the heart of the shopping centre. She pulled up the shutter to cast a dim light on the tables, rugs and lamps inside. The smell of air fresheners relaxed her as she wandered in. For a moment then she could have been back in the real world; just another shopper looking for more crap to fill her house with. Tabitha laid her axe down and pushed two big sofas together at the back into a kind of walled nest. She’d tried the beds; her nest was better though. It felt more natural. She was glad to leave her rucksack down somewhere at last, and rubbed her raw shoulders where the weight on the straps had been digging in. The backpack had weighed a ton ever since she’d shouldered it again and left the city, but she knew it’d be worth
the effort when she got here. She pulled out a few two-litre bottles from the backpack and lined them up on a table; each one filled with silver blood that she’d milked from the monster’s corpse. Half a cupful would keep her going for three or four days, she imagined, if she was strict on her appetite. If she could just have a little when she was absolutely starving in need of it, she might even make it last through the winter. She wouldn’t have to go hunting outside in the freezing cold. She wasn’t hungry right now, but she could just take a tiny sip. Just for the taste.

  ‘No,’ she told herself, taking her hands off the nearest bottle. The swirled silver liquid was so tempting; pulling at her gaze like a glass of wine and a slab of chocolate cake. She hid the bottles away in a cupboard, out of sight and hopefully out of mind. She had to keep her thoughts off the stuff if she wanted to make it last. Luckily there’d be plenty of distractions around here anyway. After all, she was back in civilisation.

  Heading out on a shopping trip through the vast centre, Tabitha caught sight of a cookie counter and felt a deep longing for something sugary. Never again. She sighed, and looked around at the other shops. She definitely had some kind of craving though, and it wasn’t pulling her back to the sweet counters. She was gravitating towards an electricals store.

  Tabitha pulled the shutter up and wandered into the gloom, browsing her way past expensive speakers and games on sale. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was in here, but she knew real cravings when she felt them. After all the changes that had happened to her already she just went along with it. Her body had gotten her this far; if her cravings pulled her over towards a rack of batteries down the centre aisle, so be it. She took a nine-volt battery from the shelf and opened the crinkling packet, and lifted the tip to her mouth. It felt nice, the sour jarring jolt of electricity that pinched her tongue.

  ‘Ooh,’ she said quietly, savouring the taste. It definitely had something of a silver-blood tingle about it. She touched the battery back to her tongue again, and felt the volts empty into her body.

  Tabitha set down a shopping basket full of batteries on a couch in the bookshop and went in search of a new read. Faced with the choice of thousands on the shelves, suddenly the old rain-warped book she’d brought from the cottage really wasn’t that compelling. For two blissful minutes Tabitha forgot the world outside and browsed a hundred printed minds on the shelves. Her eyes ate the blurb on the back of a recommended read, and she was into the first page even before she’d sat down on the couch. Interrupting herself, she grabbed some throws and cushions from the shop across the way. She pulled off her filthy jumper and trousers and nestled back down under blankets on the couch, surrounded by bookshelves. Burrowing her brain back into the book, Tabitha sank back into a wall of cushions and curled her metal feet up under her bum. She sipped wine in a metal cup from an outdoors shop, since the glasses she liked kept cracking in her grip. Turning the page she reached over into the shopping basket for another battery, tonguing the moreish tips while she read on. She drained the charge from one battery after another, like they were chocolates. The wine did what wine did best. The throws felt so soft on her arms and legs that she wished the world outside would disappear, and just leave her in here for the rest of her life. The handwritten review on the bookshelf was right; this really was a good read. Tabitha slurped her wine as she devoured her book, and plucked another battery from the basket as if she shouldn’t really. A tear patted down on the page as the words tugged at her raw feelings. It felt nice to cry over something fictional for a change.

  Shaving was a joy; after weeks of growth she’d never been so hairy in her life. Tabitha browsed the shelves and used the best razor and shaving cream she could steal. The stuff that smelled like it belonged in a five-star hotel. It felt good to have smooth skin again. It wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but in some small way she felt closer to a normal life. She fantasised about washing her hair next; she couldn’t wait. Books, wine, body hair management… she was feeling more civilised already.

  After the glorious tingly chill of a wet-wipe shower, Tabitha stood in front of the shelves of deodorant for a while. She was faced with too much choice. Rank upon rank of flowery tins of smell, dreamt up and discussed at length before they were boxed up and marketed out. Driven all across the country and set out in neat little rows for the discerning shopper. A bizarre state of affairs really, now that she looked back on it. Tabitha stood and stared for a while, weighing them up. Which tin of smell defined her best as a person? With a phantom feeling of consumer glee she pulled the most expensive roll-on from the shelf. It felt cold and slick in her armpits. It smelled like weird cucumbery flowers with a light dusting of sugar; an alien sweetness that she wasn’t used to any more. She was used to the smell of sweat and sour damp, and there was plenty of both in the grubby pile of clothes she’d left in the bookshop. Sniffing her smooth perfumed armpits, Tabitha went to sit among the dim pearly white of the makeup counters. She browsed the shelves for the best eyeliner and the reddest lipstick she could find. She switched her borrowed underwear from the cottage for a new black set, and decided to devote the rest of her shopping trip to a new dress and shoes. Until she remembered, and looked down at her feet. She wasn’t going to find any shoes to fit around those things. In a way though, she supposed, her new feet looked better than any shoes ever could. They were unique, for one thing. Lithe but solid; alien chic. Midnight-black and animal. Her hands and feet were a statement. Not that there were many people left in the world to make a statement to. But… if the only people left in the world were the likes of Chris and Sylvia, or Major Blake and his doctor, she wanted nothing to do with people any more. People could crawl away and die screaming for all she cared. They had it coming.

  Tabitha headed down to the bars and restaurants that evening in a fitted blue dress. She wore her bright hair up, and an extremely expensive diamond necklace and earrings plundered from one of the jewellers. She smiled at imaginary passers-by, admired her stark yellow eyes in a mirrored shop window, and made her way to the trendiest bar. It was pitch-black inside; not much going on. So, she smiled to the invisible patrons and came back outside again. She opted instead for an open-plan bar overlooking the food court, and put her new purse down on the bar top by her seat. It was nice here. A little busy, but nice. Tabitha sat down at her barstool and glanced around for company, trying her best to fill every seat with people. A dashing pirate captain was speaking with a dinosaur at one table; at another a group of ladies were laughing over cocktails and dressed like the suits in a deck of cards. Hearts touched Diamonds delicately on the shoulder and laughed elegantly, like a silent movie star. Clubs was raving. Spades was drinking a Manhattan.

  ‘Hi, can I have a Manhattan please?’ Tabitha asked the speakeasy bartender. She got up from her seat, walked around the bar and stood by the till.

  ‘Of course, mademoiselle,’ she replied, in her manliest French accent. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know how to make one, so I will just find out pour vous.’ Tabitha pulled a cocktail menu from the stand and studied the description. She poured two sloshes of bourbon into a cocktail shaker. Probably a bit too much vermouth, and a sharp sour dash of bitters. She closed it up and shook it, though it didn’t have nearly enough satisfaction without the rattle of ice. All the ice, however, was a near-evaporated puddle on the floor. Tabitha poured her warm concoction into a martini glass, and slid it gently towards her seat on the opposite side of the bar.

  ‘On the house for you mademoiselle, of course,’ she told herself, and walked back around the bar.

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied with a smile, glancing around as if she owned the place. Which, in the absence of any surviving managers, was sort of true. She’d inherited the world. Tabitha raised her glass at the thought and took a sip of her warm cocktail. It was strong, really strong. Good. She looked down the bar, and imagined Emma and Jen were here too. Jen would be politely turning down some guy who’d come over, as usual. She and Emma had long since given up resent
ing Jen for having her pick of the bars. It was more of an accepted fact of life, like the tides or something. Unsuccessful with Jen, the men would usually just walk away. Emma would normally try to jump in and talk to them instead, if they hung around. Tabitha had always been thankful that Emma was there to deflect the attention, so she’d rarely had to mumble and hesitate her way through many encounters herself. She thought about John then as she sipped her drink, surprised at how little she’d missed him. She hadn’t met him in a club. He got talking to her in the park, while they were queuing for ice cream. He was good looking, in a way. Awkward like her. Sometimes bossy, sometimes spontaneously romantic. Easy to fall in love with. He’d always found it a bit funny, how shy she was. Tabitha wondered what he’d make of her now. She couldn’t help but remember some of their better moments, when they weren’t arguing or just living around one another in stony silence. Tabitha raised her martini glass and drained it with rapid sips; the best cure she’d ever found for a lump of sadness in her throat.

  ‘Mm. Another please,’ she asked the back of the empty bar.

  Tabitha spent a good while just sitting and drinking, staring at the huge ceiling over the food hall like she was heir to an ancient sadness. Strong spirits turned her grief into a massive melancholy, a gaping void without light or exit. After a while she headed for the ladies’ toilets and looked shakily into a mirror, staring at the thing looking back. Those weren’t her eyes, bright gold where they used to be green. She ran her trembling black hands through her red curls, her tears streaming through her makeup. Whatever that thing was in the reflection, it wasn’t her. It didn’t act or move or stare like her. It was a different person.