Tabitha

by Hall, Andrew

  Tabitha was standing in an electricals shop. She stared drunkenly at a gigantic TV. The gigantic TV stared back at her. And the cricket bat she was resting on her shoulder. She gripped the bat tight with both hands and launched it into the huge glass screen with a textbook swing. A hard wooden thump and a crisp glassy crack. She’d never heard such a satisfying sound. She brought the bat back again, ready for another swing. The opulent screen wasn’t long for this world. In a drunken rage Tabitha full-on murdered it, kicking it over with an expensive thump on the floor. She smashed the bat down into the shattered screen until glass shards bounced with every hit. She punched a hole through the TV standing next to it, and threw the next one down to the floor with a plastic crash. Swinging her bat, she obliterated a glass blender and smashed expensive cameras and tablets in a blissful rage. She toppled a towering fridge with a boom, and punched a crater in its big solid door. She slammed her foot against another fridge, pushed it, and tipped it back with a thump that shook the floor. She took her bat to everything on the shelves, smacking electronics across the store with violent wooden knocks and clattering plastic bursts.

  ‘Fuck you!’ she told the shattered chaos around her, destroying everything she could never afford. Nothing said white picket fence like a shop like this. It was a museum now, and all the expensive exhibits meant nothing any more. All part and parcel of the big consumer dream, and all of it useless and dead. The thought brought her down; deflated her. Action was needed. Tabitha turned around and smashed her cricket bat into pristine computer screens. Everything shiny must die, she told herself. Pretentious, expensive, shit. The prissy laptop cracked and bounced under her cricket bat, spraying plastic keys like alphabet teeth. And then… she saw it. The pinnacle of modern tech. The widget to end all widgets, set apart like a holy object on a pearly white display. Redundant in a disconnected world; less use than a stone. Tabitha looked at the price tag on it and grinned like a Cheshire cat. She shouldered her cricket bat like a baseballer, tightened her grip, and smashed the god-widget out of existence with a scattering crunch.

  The next shop along didn’t fare much better. Tabitha frisbeed ultra-pricey plates at the rest of the shelves, bursting cups and punching bowls to shards. She threw expensive carving knives that spun and thumped into the far wall, destroying a stack of crystal glassware in a high ringing song and a tinkling smash. She grinned and slammed her fist down on a dining table, demolishing a delicate table set and flinging glasses across the store. She tore open the steel shutter on the jewellers next door and kicked the door in, and smashed the glass cabinets apart to take her pick from the shiny shit.

  ‘Excuse me, none of your rings fit my fingers,’ she slurred at the empty space behind the counter. She plucked a four-figure diamond ring from the shards of a glass case, examined it, and tossed it over her shoulder.

  ‘What are they for?’ she asked the empty counter, swaying where she stood. ‘Why do they cost so much? Hm? Do they really make people happy?’ Tabitha tore her diamond necklace off and flung it at the wall. Took her earrings out and tossed them on the floor. She picked up a cruel shard of glass from the cases and closed her fist around it. It split, cracked, shattered in her grip. Tiny specks of glass glimmered on her fingers, catching the light of the sunset from the ceiling as she left the shop. She took a swig from her whisky bottle outside and stared down the street of shops for a while, resting and swaying on a handrail. What a lonely place. All the first-world consumer crap she could ever need, and no reason whatsoever to want it. Blood, air and water. And booze. That was all she needed. No… that was all she could handle. No more chocolate, no more crisps. No cola, popcorn, bacon or pizza. No more fresh apples, sweet and crunchy-red. No one to share some dips with. No more family meals. Tabitha felt the tears welling up in her eyes, and ground her teeth as she blinked them back.

  ‘Oh, fuck you,’ she told the whisky bottle, and sent it flying through the air to shatter on the fake street below. ‘I’m sick of this shit!’ she screamed at the echoing silence. ‘I’m the only person left in the world, boo fucking hoo!’ she kicked the glass balcony wall with a crunch, turning it veiny-opaque in an icy shatter. Tabitha stormed off back to the home store, and took a good gulp of silver blood from one of her plastic bottles. She felt her heart-core racing at the taste, and sobered up surprisingly quickly with the stuff inside her. She crawled down into her nest of sofas and pulled a cover close around her. She felt safe; hidden away from the world. It was no use just milling around all winter, she decided. As big and well-stocked as the shopping centre was, the place would be enough to drive anyone mad if they weren’t careful. If she was going to stay here, she’d need to keep busy. She had to set her mind to something, and take her thoughts off her grief. Movie montages ran through her head as she dozed off. Thoughts of becoming something stronger; something more.

  Tabitha woke up and stretched in her double-sofa nest. She’d still had the same old nightmares, but at least they were fuzzy and fleeting. She’d only woken up once in the night, so it was a good start. Maybe it was her brain, she thought; too busy with ideas to dwell on dreams. Today would be a busy one, she decided. Even if it was just folding clothes in a couple of shops, she had to do something to keep herself occupied and feel useful. For all of her indulgences yesterday, they’d only given her a hollow kind of happiness. She had to apply herself, as her dad would say. Tabitha mulled over her options as she made her bed.

  ‘Ok. Stop drinking,’ she told herself, counting the resolution on her finger. ‘Get fitter. New clothes. Stock up supplies here.’ Smiling at the tasks on her fingers, Tabitha smoothed out her dress and headed out of the shop door. It felt better to have a plan. Another idea occurred to her then, and she counted it ponderously on her thumb. A black boiling thought that bubbled up again suddenly and gave new purpose to her life. Revenge.

  Tabitha plundered a clothes store for shorts and a light vest, pulling off her dress to change. What she needed was a training routine for the winter, to prepare herself for the act in spring. She fixed Chris’s face in her mind. He was staring down at her with the rifle aimed. Her murderer. Tabitha jogged out of the shop door and off down the white sunlit street. Chris was going to die. It was the one thing left for her to live for.

  ‘Oh god. Oh god,’ she panted, jogging down another shining white street. She was heading for the distant food hall to make a lap of the tables, then it was straight back to the far side of the shopping centre as fast as she could run. Her footsteps hardly made a sound; no more than bare feet would even despite their rubbery metal skin. They felt strangely comfortable to run with; agile and free. Exhausted as she was, she could never remember running as well as this.

  Tabitha gulped a bottle of water when she got back home to her nest, padding around the place on aching legs. Sweating and shaking, she raised her arms up and pressed her palms against the back of her head. For all her exhaustion, there was a high there too. It felt good. Not as good as a gulp of that silver blood, admittedly, but still good. Her mind strayed to the taste of the blood. She ran her tongue across her teeth, imagining the sour tingly sweetness in her mouth.

  ‘God, stop thinking about the blood!’ she growled at herself, and strolled out to a clothes shop across the way. After a wet-wipe shower Tabitha changed into a jumper and skinny jeans, and ruffled out her red curls in a mirror. Her legs ached. If she stopped and sat down though, she knew she wouldn’t get back up again. Without giving herself time to rest, she headed back outside and went into foraging mode. It was better to keep busy.

  ‘Survival stuff,’ Tabitha mumbled to herself, browsing the stores down at the far side of the shopping complex. ‘Survival stuff.’ Maybe if she said it enough times, something might spring to mind. She wanted to have a bag handy with everything she needed; but what? Tabitha started with the basics. Fire was a basic thing. She flicked her claws out and sank them down into some shop shutters, raking the metal apart to get in. Inside the newsagents she plucked a handful of lighters fro
m the counter; the sturdiest she could see. And a couple of the cheap ones too, just in case. They weren’t quite on a par with the gaudy old yellow lighter she used to have, but they’d do. Tabitha glanced at all the cigarettes behind the counter, and felt a sudden urge to spark up. How long had it been now since she’d smoked her last cigarette? Not even losing her mum or seeing the end of the world had made her want to smoke again; maybe her new body just didn’t want her to. Besides, she couldn’t have a smoke without a drink, and she didn’t want to drink any more. Resisting them, Tabitha turned her back on the cigarettes and headed to the pound shop next door. She filled a carrier bag with some comforts, impressed at the value for money. Tissues, toothbrush, and some much-needed toothpaste. She tongued the film on her teeth, grainy and disgusting. Hesitating, Tabitha opened up the toothbrushes right there and scrubbed the filth away with a good dollop of bright toothpaste. So it was minty freshness that was the great secret to happiness, she decided as she brushed. She dwelled on all those great thinkers through the ages, searching their thoughts and questioning existence in search of meaning and joy. And all they’d had to do in all that time was consider the mint. Tabitha bagged the toothpaste and took a few more boxes, just in case. Swilling a gulp of bottled water, she looked for somewhere to spit. She could have just gobbed the toothpaste on the floor really, for all it mattered. But her mum had raised her better than that. Tabitha wandered off to the homeware aisle, and spat into a plastic cup at the back of a shelf. Heading back through the shop she grabbed some chocolate bars on her way out, just in case she met any more survivors some day. She bagged up all the bottles of water from the shelves too, and started her long journey back to her nest in the home store.

  A second shopping trip turned up some warm thermal socks and a couple of first aid kits, but Tabitha couldn’t help but wonder if she was getting this stuff together for someone else’s sake. She didn’t need socks or first aid kits; she hardly needed anything really. Was there really any point dragging all that extra weight around, just in case she met someone who needed help? It was a moral dilemma. Surely it was better to travel light though, and any little extras would soon add up. She couldn’t just cart extra weight around on the basis of just in case. She had to conserve her energy in a survival situation, like that guy on TV had always said. Tabitha dropped the socks and first aid kits, and broke into the stationery shop for a pad and pen. She’d need to write a shopping list to get down to the bare essentials.

  As she headed off down another street in search of the next item on her list, Tabitha stopped and stared at a certain shop. It sold lingerie in the windows, along with more intimate products on the shelves inside. Tabitha forced the door open and stepped into the gloom, fishing around in the dark for phallic objects of interest. She was gone for a while.

  When she emerged blinking into the bright sunlit street, Tabitha sighed and smiled and felt much more relaxed. One more purchase had been added to her haul, having passed the quality test. She dusted her jeans off, picked up her shopping bags, and studied her list for the next shop to break into. She fancied a change of clothes. Something full-body; something dark and tight. She plundered the next shop along for some going-out makeup; coloured her lips sex-red.

  A couple of minutes’ walk down the street, Tabitha found her next stop. Forcing up the shutters and punching the locks to pieces on the dead sliding doors, she pushed them apart and went inside the darkened shop. This was where all the cool people used to come; shopping for the kind of clothes she couldn’t afford and was convinced she wouldn’t look right in. A sore resentment rose up inside her then; she thought back to the unkind glances when she’d been in places like this before. Tabitha didn’t get much further than the first rack of dresses before she walked back out on principle, punching the glass doors into crashing shards as she stepped back outside.

  Tabitha felt more at home in the sports shop. She’d always liked places like this, surrounded by tracksuits and walls of trainers. Swimwear, sportswear, bike gear, weights. They were beautiful. Hypnotised, she rifled through crowded racks of weatherproofs and helped herself to a brand new coat. A blue-grey parka with plenty of pockets, and a white fur trim on the hood. The coating on the fabric looked so warm, so waterproof… she felt a tingle come over her. She’d never appreciated a good coat quite so much as she did now. Tabitha looked at the price tag, as if it mattered. She couldn’t have afforded this, no way. She tried it on, and swapped it for a smaller size. It was warm and comfy for winter; reassuringly heavy. It was just so deliciously weatherproof. Looking around at the dim sunlit clothes racks on the walls, Tabitha even had her pick of the best base layers mankind had ever produced. This place was heaven.

  Admiring her new coat in dark shop windows, Tabitha headed on down another artificial street. A gadget shop stood out to her; they always did. So much plastic crap; so enticing. Wrenching the door open, she wandered into a gloomy grown-up toyshop crammed with office talking points. Everything had batteries in; nothing worked. Nothing except a little plastic flower by the open door, only four or so inches tall, swaying solar in its pot in the pouring sunlight. Tabitha couldn’t resist it. She boxed it back up and crammed it into her coat pocket, wrestling the zip shut over the plastic case.

  Next on her list was the outdoors shop. Taking down a rucksack from the racks, Tabitha rubbed it against the skin on her wrists to feel the fabric. It felt dry, coarse. The material whispered against her skin, and creaked quietly against the back padding where she squeezed it. She did like a good rucksack. The rubbery plastic coating inside still smelled faintly of the factory. There was even a zippy pouch inside. She stood there for a little while, running the zip slowly back and forth with an empty mind and a vacant stare, listening to the sound. Losing herself to grief and trauma for a second, before she pulled her mind back to the task at hand. It was a good rucksack.

  Next Tabitha busied herself with a tour of the shop, bagging anything else in her new backpack that she’d need to survive outdoors in the spring. She’d missed a lot off her list, actually. Map, hat, binoculars. A working torch, in case her old one from the village gave up. A spare compass with a glow-in-the-dark needle. A couple of micro-fleece tops, two sturdy water bottles, and some runners’ energy bars for survivors. She could always throw them away later if her bag got too heavy.

  Browsing the army knives on display in a solid glass cabinet, Tabitha punched the top into shattered pieces and plucked the most impressive models from their stands. She bagged a chunky army knife first, with more fold-out tools on it than she knew what to do with. She wondered if she could even get the thing open with her new fingers, and whether in fact she needed it at all now that she had claws. Maybe it’d still be useful. The second one she picked from the glass was a folding knife, solid and sharp and silvery in the daylight from the door. Definitely worth bagging, even just as a back-up to her claws. She took a belt from the racks and buckled it around her waist, wishing she had a big old hunting knife to put on it. If there was one thing she’d need out there come the spring, it’d be a big sharp hunting knife. She had Blake and the army to thank for taking away her old one, notched and rough, and crusted with dry silver blood around the handle. They’d taken her hoodie too, the bastards. She loved that hoodie. They’d been through so much together. Though she had to admit, the expensive new athlete’s base layer from the sports shop would look a hell of a lot tidier.

  ‘Well, I think that’s everything,’ she sighed to herself, taking one last look around the shop. She may as well try on her new outfit she supposed, while she was close to the sports shop. It seemed to take days to get around this place, and her legs felt too stiff and sore to come all the way back here tomorrow if her clothes didn’t fit. Tabitha pulled off her top and jeans and swapped them for the fitted base layer; a breathable grey one-piece that looked almost like a wetsuit. Definitely the kind of darker, tighter clothes she’d had in mind. It seemed more hard-wearing than she’d first thought too, now that she’d zipped
it up. There was some kind of rubbery mesh in parts, tough and fitted. She liked the fit in the mirror, and tried on her new blue-grey parka over the top. She noticed the fresh shop smell of them; a world away from the musty clothes she was used to. Surreally clean. With one last look in the mirror, and a final glance around the shop for anything she might have missed, Tabitha decided to call it a day on her shopping trip. Maybe she shouldn’t have gone for that run though, she told herself. It was making her hungry for blood. She pushed the thought from her mind and shouldered her new rucksack, heading outside into the bright white street. She froze to the spot then, and stared down the street on her left. She’d heard a noise in the distance. An echoing faraway crash, like a big steel shutter falling down.

  39

  By the time she reached the home store Tabitha could hear clattering spiders and stomping footsteps through the shopping centre in the distance. Heartcore hammering, she jumped at a shrill metallic screech off down a street to her right. When she peered around the doorway into her new home she saw a trail of destruction. They’d already been here. A huge black shape moved around at the back there, sniffing loudly. It roared and flung her sofas across the store, destroying tables and chairs. Terrified, Tabitha turned and ran. There were silver spiders clustering down the street behind her too. And then came their screeches. They’d seen her.

  ‘Shit!’ she growled, looking back. They were gaining fast. Tabitha threw off her backpack and broke into a sprint up the street. Feet pounding, vision shaking, she sprinted past blurred clothes shops and the wishing fountain. The spiders burst down the street after her, a tumbling silver tide at her heels. She turned to look as she rounded a corner. Something came ploughing through the chittering mass, tossing them into the air. A hulking black monster; a carbon copy of the one she’d killed in the city. Its white eyes were fixed on her. Tabitha just ran when she heard it roar. She didn’t look back any more; she just had to get to the far doors. She heard it come smashing down the street behind her like a tank, destroying the shops with primate swings. Its roar filled the place and froze her blood. Tabitha heard benches flying as she ran, booming through shop windows at her back. It was getting close, and the spiders behind it. She sprinted round the next corner on her left, through double doors and past the restaurants. She remembered seeing an exit on the far side of the food hall, right down the next street there. The horde crashed and clattered behind her, climbing over themselves to get into the side street after her. Legs burning, Tabitha ran down the street into the dome of the food hall. She hurtled past the open-plan bar where she’d been just last night. The horde smashed through it behind her in a deafening rush, tables and chairs flying. Ahead was the huge glass ceiling of the food hall, spilling light down on the chase. Tabitha’s legs ached for rest but adrenaline kept her dosed, kept her running for her life. She felt her heartcore pounding, humming like a generator as she ran down the marble steps into the food hall below. She spotted the exit, there in the distance. Suddenly the glass ceiling exploded high above; a deep thundering boom that rained shining shards down all over the tables and chairs. Tabitha jumped with fright as a huge grey shape crashed down into the food hall, dark and reptilian. Just like the monster that attacked the castle. A dragon. It turned and raised its huge head, white eyes staring at her. Took a breath in. The horde tumbled and burst down the steps behind her, led by the hulking black monster. Tabitha leapt away. The horde took the full force of the dragon’s firestorm breath, screaming in the melting white flames. The dragon was indifferent, turning to watch Tabitha escape. She looked back over her shoulder and ran for the doors, smashing the glass and desperately tearing a hole through the big steel shutters. Outside in the car park she gasped at the cool fresh air, drowning her lungs in it. There was a massive crunching crash up above her, as the dragon climbed back out of the roof. The chittering noise grew louder behind her, back inside the food hall. She saw silver legs emerge from the hole she’d made in the shutter. Then there was a crash inside, and the whole shutter collapsed as the hulking black monster dragged its half-melted body outside. Tabitha saw her chance. She ran back and leapt onto its shoulders; flicked her claws out and buried them in its big head. It screamed and flailed when she pulled an armoured plate away. She plunged her clawed hand in through its skull and deep into its brain with a burst of blood, and the monster dropped dead on the ground. She felt a spider needle stab her leg. She spun around and sank her claws into the spider’s body, and pulled it apart in a slopping gush of silver blood. Her punch to another went right through its head. A kick to a third stunned it on the ground, and she stomped its brains out. The dead monster bled a silver pool around her, reflecting the white sky. Tabitha glimpsed a shape move across the reflection, high above. A cold shadow passed overhead. The dragon was hunting her.