Tabitha (19 page)

‘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 nothing 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.

18

Tabitha raced down the motorway south.
The car was running on fumes, but at least the rain had stopped and she could
see where she was driving. She looked back at Laika every so often, making sure
she was alright.

‘You’re ok
aren’t you, dog face?’ she said doubtfully. Laika was licking her side where
the man had knifed her. It was more of a cut than a stab wound, when she’d
pushed Laika’s fur back to see it. There wasn’t much blood; Laika seemed calm
enough. Taking it with typical canine resilience.

‘I’m sorry,’
Tabitha told her, watching her in the rear-view mirror. Laika’s ear moved at
the sound of her voice, but she lay still. ‘I just seem to get us into trouble,
every time. I’m bad luck.’ She looked back at the road, still rolling on
forever beneath the car.

‘Unless it’s you
that’s bad luck,’ she added, smiling. She caught a glimpse of herself in the
mirror.

‘And what the
hell’s going on with my eyes?’ she said, staring at her reflection. They’d
grown such a light shade of green lately that they looked almost yellow in the
daylight. ‘Maybe we should just get on a boat, what do you think?’ she asked
Laika. ‘We could fill it up with food and water and just sail off. Nothing
could get us out there.’ It was a nice idea, the more she thought about it. And
the more she thought about it, the faster she talked herself out of it. There’d
be a storm. They’d run out of food and not catch any fish. They’d run out of
water and have to drink from the sea, and then they’d be sunburned and crazy
and end up eating each other. And to cap it all off, those giant black squids
would find them and eat them. She’d forgotten about them. It was a terrible
idea, when she really thought about it.

The motorway
followed a wide river south, the water burning orange in the fading sunlight.
Tabitha watched the grassy sandbanks and the endless sea give way to green
fields. The sun was setting on yet another worst day of her life. She ran her
tongue over the grainy film on her teeth, thinking. She clenched her jaw,
tense. Gripped the steering wheel hard until it creaked.

‘I don’t know
where to go,
Laika
,’ she said, defeated. The dog’s
ears pricked up at hearing her name, but she hardly looked up. ‘I don’t know
what to do,’ Tabitha admitted. Hiding away in the back of beyond had been a bad
idea, then. It was either die in a town, or die in the country. That was all
the choice they had. The needle on the fuel gauge was hanging just over empty.

‘I thought
people could survive out in the sticks,’ she said, easing her foot off the
accelerator. The engine roar died down. ‘I mean, that’s why we set out in the
first place. To find somewhere safe, out of the towns. Then when we get
there...’ she was shaking her head in disbelief. How long had it been since the
invasion? Ten days, like the man said? Ten days and the country had turned into
a wild pit. Then there was that group of men, back at the petrol station. The
ones she’d tried to blot from her mind. They might have raped her, if they’d
caught her. She would’ve murdered them if they’d tried, looking back now.
Facing the village mob had broken her fear. Maybe that was just humanity now;
possible rapists and potential cannibals, scratching around for food at the end
of the world. This stuff only happened in the movies, she told herself. It
didn’t have any place in reality. No one was ever supposed to go through this.

‘I mean, all
that stuff takes months to happen, surely,’ she told Laika, shaking her head.
‘Nobody thinks about turning cannibal in a fortnight.’ Apparently people would,
though. And all it would take was for one starving psycho to make it ok. So…
this was humanity minus law and order. Minus farms, supermarkets and the
national grid. Screwed. The countryside whipped by a little slower as Tabitha
left her foot off the pedal. A motorway junction drew closer. Maybe it was just
better to find a place where there weren’t any people at all. At least there
they could live out their last few days in peace together, before the spiders
found them.

Tabitha pulled
up at a big roundabout in the middle of nowhere. Yanked the handbrake up.
Switched off the engine. Pine trees covered the hills on her left, a gloomy
mass in the twilight. There was a road sign on her right for a village with a
strange name, eleven miles away. Another huge patch of the back of beyond.
Silent as the grave, just like everywhere else. Tabitha stared ahead for a
little while behind the steering wheel, blank and despondent. Pushed the locks
down on the doors with a grey finger. She climbed into the back with Laika, and
buried herself under the blankets on a nest of pillows. Once Laika had stopped
sniffing and fussing over her, Tabitha brought the rifle closer in the
footwell
beside her. The blankets smelled like dog, safe
and musty. Tabitha’s breaths sharpened, shortened, and the sobs came jumping
out of her. She thought about gangs coming to rape her. She thought about a
village of hungry people trying to kill her. Wild dogs, and
weirdos
with guns. And spiders. And her mum and friends too, like a black hole twisting
in her chest. Laika lay down on top of her then, warm and graceless, and
stretched up to lick the tears on her cheeks. Startled, Tabitha smiled through
her sobs. Her dog looked up at her, resting on her chest. She ran her thumbs
along Laika’s cheeks; scratched her behind the ears. Checking the fur on
Laika’s shoulder, the knife wound had already clotted and dried. The glued skin
on her other side had knitted and scabbed. She couldn’t smell any infection, at
least.

‘You’re not as
skinny as when I found you,’ she said, stroking the black fur on Laika’s head.
‘So at least I’m doing something right.’ She felt her dog’s warm weight against
her stomach where she lay. Her soft furry head resting across her chest. Her
smelly breath. She watched Laika peacefully in the last light, eyes closing a
little more with every stroke on her head.

‘Me and you
against the world,’ Tabitha said softly, looking out at the fading light.

Tabitha gasped and woke up, terrified.
Laika lifted her head suddenly, staring at her in shock. Tabitha looked around.
It was light outside. She was in the back seat of the car. The rifle lay beside
her, just down there in the
footwell
. It’d been a bad
dream, nothing more.

‘Morning,’ she
said sleepily, rubbing her eyes. It hurt. Her fingers felt like sandpaper.
Laika hauled herself up off her as Tabitha moved to sit up.

‘Stop looking at
me,’ Tabitha told Laika, squatting down beside the car. They were high on the
moors, miles from anywhere. ‘I can’t go when you’re looking at me.’ Laika
didn’t have the same reservations, though. Her dog stared at her while they
both peed. Laika’s crazy mismatched eyes didn’t help either.

‘Are you done?’
she asked her dog, still squatting by the car. Laika wandered off. Tabitha
sighed, and commenced a satisfying post-sleep piss. It was strange how much
better the world looked sometimes, after a few hours’ sleep. A cold wind hissed
through the blonde dead grass that covered the moors, lumped and dry as tinder.
A bird warbled somewhere out there, past the broken-down ruins of an old stone
house. Strange, but the bird didn’t sound like it belonged here. It was the
kind of sound she’d only expected to hear in some far-flung rainforest. The sound
died down again, and Tabitha was alone in the wild pressing silence. She pulled
her torn jeans up and stretched in the sunlight, and cursed when she remembered
how low the petrol was.

It didn’t take long
to leave the high moors behind, and the strong winds eased off as they drove on
south towards green fields. Tabitha parked them up for a little while, just to
stretch her legs again. She was taking breaks more often now. The novelty of
driving had long since worn off, and she was glad just to be standing around
and walking for a little while. That, and she was desperately trying to come up
with a plan before she ran out of petrol.

Tabitha rubbed
Laika’s tennis ball down her forearm, unable to feel it in her palm. She felt
the cold wet dew on it from the grass where Laika had fetched it. Felt the
chill of the breeze where it blew against her wet arm. Passing the ball between
her hands though, she felt nothing. Only the weight of it, the shape, but not the
touch. Like she had gloves on. This was alien skin, spider skin. It made sense
that they were unfeeling creatures. Did that make her an unfeeling creature
then, at least in part? Laika barked, and snapped her out of her thoughts.

‘Sorry,’ Tabitha
replied, throwing the ball. ‘Human problems.’ Laika raced after the ball across
the dewy grass. She chased it down, snatched it up, and ran back to drop it at
Tabitha’s feet. Staring into Laika’s eyes, Tabitha saw total dependence. Canine
devotion. Laika seemed to smile as she panted, waiting to play. Tabitha lifted
the ball, drew her arm back to throw. Laika jumped into her stance, ready to
run. Watching the ball. Hooked on the thrill of the chase. Tabitha launched the
tennis ball high into the air, and watched Laika pelt after it. Tabitha thought
about how much the dog had fought to protect her, like nothing else mattered.
Laika only made room for one thought at a time, she supposed. Threw herself
into each new thing, and only that. Eating, dumping, chasing, protecting. There
was no room for uncertainty in her head, no room for doubt. There was only the
urgency of whatever came next. Hunting and fighting. And the thrill of the
chase. Maybe that was the secret of happiness. If Laika managed to stay happy
at the end of the world, maybe she could too.

They raced on down the motorway under a
clear summer sky. The next services they passed was a burned ruin; the petrol
station nothing but ash and scorched metal. Two burnt-out cars lay dead on the
forecourt. Tabitha’s petrol gauge read empty, and there wasn’t another services
for miles. They’d be stranded out here soon, and then it’d be back to wandering
the roads. Unless they passed a stray car or braved a town centre, and Tabitha
didn’t fancy her chances with either. Time to pick a nice quiet place in the
hills around here, and pray that the spiders never found them. Tabitha looked
back at the hills again, eyes drawn to something. So she hadn’t just imagined
it. There was a tiny black wisp there ahead of them, reaching up into the blue.
As Tabitha drove closer, it was clearly smoke from a fire. A couple of minutes
later, as the motorway cleared the nearest hills from view, Tabitha’s eyes
fixed on a tiny dark square on a distant peak. A castle. The lazy smoke trail
she’d followed was curling up from the roof, reaching into the hazy summer sky.