Tabitha (23 page)

‘The army?’ said
Tabitha. ‘Coming here to rescue you?’ she gave
Laika
a stroke as she came to sit by her feet.

‘We don’t know,’
Will replied with a shrug. ‘They might not even have known we were here. All we
know is what we heard from the fighting one night.’

‘They could have
been a g-gang, like a militia,’ said Liv.

‘Maybe,’ Will
replied, nodding. ‘But they sounded disciplined to me, to hear them shouting.
Personally, I think they were trained soldiers. But we’ve not seen anyone come
to find them since then.’

‘They were
screaming for a long time,’ Chris chipped in.

‘They were,’
Will replied grimly. He looked back at Tabitha. ‘Anyway, long story short, we
don’t think those soldiers need their guns any more, unfortunately. But if we
could get hold of them… just think what we could do here. We could take the
town back.’

‘You want to go
out there on the
m-moors
?’ Liv said doubtfully.

‘For some new
hardware that could really change our fortunes,’ Will replied, smiling.

‘It’s risky,’
Jim chipped in.

‘
Risky?’
said
Chris. ‘It’s going to get us killed!’ he stared around at them. The sky was
turning grey up above the castle courtyard.

‘Not if we’re
quick. And careful,’ Will replied. ‘Plus, we’ve got a
car
now.’ He
nodded to Tabitha.

‘There’s not
enough petrol in it though,’ Tabitha replied, feeling like she’d slurred her
words. Suddenly she was feeling drained with a creeping exhaustion. ‘It was
running on empty when I got here.’

‘Well, there’s
that minivan p-parked round the back on the drive,’ Liv suggested. ‘The engine
won’t start, but it should have some petrol we can
sy
-syphon
off.’

‘Syphoning
doesn’t work
any more
,’ said Chris. ‘They put valves
in now to stop people doing it. You have to –

‘Put a hole in the
fuel tank,’ Tabitha chipped in.

‘Yeah,’ said
Chris, looking over at her.

‘Sounds like a
plan,’ said Will. ‘
So.
Once we’ve filled up Tabitha’s
tank,’ Jim sniggered.

‘Oh Jesus, Jim,’
said Liv. ‘You’re nearly
s-seventy.
Grow up.’

‘Sorry,’ he
chuckled.

‘Once we’ve
filled up Tabitha’s
car
,’ said Will, ‘we’ll decide who goes out there to
find the army patrol. And bring the guns back here.’

‘Hold on, you
can’t just
decide
we’re all going out there now!’ Chris objected.

‘It’s not up to
Will,’ Jim replied gruffly. ‘We’re all going out because we want to.’

‘I don’t want
to!’ Chris shot back.

‘But it’s like
Will said,’ Liv told him. ‘If we don’t start looking s-soon, we’re going to run
out of food. Eventually.’

‘But those
spiders might still be out there,’ said Chris.

‘Yeah, they
might be,’ Will agreed. ‘But they might not. They might be a hundred miles away
by now. Think about what we could
gain
though. If we get guns, we can
defend ourselves here
.
And even if we do run into trouble out there,
we’ve got Tabitha and her talents on our side.’ Will smiled at her. Tabitha
felt embarrassed at the praise. Looking to Liv didn’t help, though. She saw an
uncertainty there in Liv’s face. Maybe even a dark trace of jealousy, before
she looked back to Will.

‘So,’ said Will.
‘How do we decide who’s going out?’

‘We’re all
going,’ said Liv. ‘We’re a t-team.’

‘Someone should
stay back and guard the castle,’ Chris chipped in. A silence of indecision hung
over the group suddenly. Everyone waited for someone else to decline or volunteer,
one way or the other.

‘Well, how many
seats are there in your car?’ said Jim, breaking the silence.

‘Only four,
actually,’ Tabitha replied. ‘We’ve got the gear to bring back too, so it’ll be
a tight fit anyway.’

‘Exactly,’ said Chris.
‘So one of us should stay back. To guard the castle.’

‘Yeah, you
already m-mentioned that,’ said Liv accusingly. ‘Would that someone be you,
b-by any chance?’ Chris gave her a dark look.

‘Wow, my hero,’
said Liv, walking past him towards the keep. ‘Try not to let those evil flames
b-burn the dinner while we’re gone, guardian of the c-castle.’

‘Piss off,’
Chris replied.

‘Right. Boots
on, people,’ said Will, following Liv to the keep. ‘No time like the present.
Oh, and nice one for volunteering to stay here mate,’ he told Chris, patting
him on the shoulder as he walked by. ‘Very brave of you.’

‘Piss off,’
Chris repeated, looking away.

‘Yes, very good
of you Christopher,’ Jim joined in, walking by. ‘A true gent.’ Tabitha walked
on by after Jim, saying nothing. Chris still gave her an angry look though,
despite her silence.

‘And you can
piss off too,’ he told her.

‘I’ve not said
anything,’ she replied, trying her best to skirt around a confrontation.

‘No, you just
thought it instead,’ said Chris accusingly. ‘Just come out and say it. You
don’t like me.’ Tabitha sighed and stopped walking. A skinny moth fluttered up
from the grass at her feet. The old Tabitha in her head begged her to say
nothing and walk on. The new Tabitha didn’t care.

‘Look,’ she
said, squaring up to Chris. ‘You’re letting a
pensioner
take your place
in my car, while you stay here nice and safe.’ Chris tried to say something;
Tabitha interrupted. ‘I understand self-preservation. I do,’ she said. ‘But
there’s self-preservation, and then there’s being a coward that won’t pull
their weight.’ Chris stared at her in shock, lost for words. ‘Yeah, I’m quiet
around people,’ she said, looking him in the eye. ‘But don’t think I’m a
pushover. For your own sake. I’ve had to do a lot of things to stay alive the
past couple of weeks and I’m
so
much worse than you realise.’ Chris
didn’t say a word. Tabitha held his stare, and walked away. Laika followed her
as she headed off into the keep. Chris stood there alone in the garden,
watching her go.

21

Tabitha took
Liv’s shotgun and ran back through town, sticking to the old stone walls of the
shops and houses. Fear spurred her on; the chance that a sudden silver swarm
might come spilling out of a back street behind her. She reached the stone
archway and climbed back into her car, and cursed for not parking up at the
castle in the first place. She turned the key in the ignition and headed up the
winding roads around town, heading through the park gates towards the castle.
Taking the steep road as it wound left, she parked up on a drive beside the
castle hill. The others were waiting for her.

‘Excellent
work,’ said Will. ‘Right, let’s get a move on,’ he told the group, wary of any
silver shapes that might be lurking while they stood outside the castle walls.
They’d already jacked the minivan up to expose the fuel tank. The whole task
went so much faster with a few extra hands; in a few short minutes they had the
car’s petrol tank full.

‘You know, I
never stopped to think if the minivan might be a diesel,’ said Will, carting
one of Tabitha’s plastic petrol cans over to her car.

‘Just a lucky
guess?’ said Tabitha, filling another container beneath the van.

‘All the time,’
Liv said despairingly. ‘He lives by lucky guesses.’ Will shrugged.

‘Well, he’s been
a lucky sod for as long as I’ve known him,’ said Jim. He zipped up his jacket
against the breeze, colder than it should have been for August. He looked out
over the trees at the hilly moors in the distance. ‘I just hope your luck lasts
us while we’re out there.’

Tabitha started the engine up and turned
the car around on the whispering gravel drive. She rolled steadily through the
narrow park gates and joined the winding road into town, still tempted to check
left and right before she took the turn.

‘I can’t b-believe
we’re in a working car,’ Liv said excitedly in the back, watching the shops
roll by. Jim sat quietly beside her, secretly dreading the mission to come.

‘Shame the
radio’s not working,’ said Will in the passenger seat, fiddling with the dials.

‘We could have
rewired it to broadcast an SOS signal or something.’

‘You can’t do
that, can you?’ said Liv.

‘Of course not,’
he said over his shoulder. ‘But I bet it made me seem really impressive for
about two seconds there.’

‘Really
impressive,’ Liv replied sarcastically.

‘Oh, next left
please,’ said Will, directing Tabitha down a winding road past a small
supermarket. The four of them fell silent for a while as they watched the dead
world rolling by. Tabitha felt butterflies in her stomach at the thought of heading
out into the wild. The others must have been as nervous as she was. Jim
coughed. Tabitha hoped he was going to say something; anything to break the
silence. Any little conversation, just to interrupt the dark thoughts running
through her head.

‘Wait, I think I
heard something on the radio!’ said Liv, breaking the uneasy quiet.

‘Really?’ said
Will, turning around.

‘Yeah, listen!’
she said. They listened intently for a sound in the silence, watching the radio
in the dashboard as if it was about to spring to life. Liv started singing
quietly.

‘L-listen, it’s
a music station,’ she said, interrupting herself before she went back to her
song. The others were smiling.

‘Turn it up,’
said Jim. Will turned the dial, and Liv sang a little louder.

‘It’s strange,
you don’t hear lots of songs about giraffes,’ said Tabitha, nodding along to
the tune.

‘It’s shocking
what they’ll put on the radio these days,’ said Will, watching the town give
way to fields. Liv laughed through her singing, and hit a dramatic chorus with her
fist in the air.

‘Jeez,’ said
Jim, cringing at Liv’s shrieking guitar solo. Outside the windows, the fields
rolled away as the moors loomed closer. Secretly exhausted, Tabitha willed
herself to stay focussed on the road. And the danger that could be out there on
the bleak moors, waiting for them.

Will directed
Tabitha to a turn-off in the fields, and they took a dirt road up into the
moors. A couple of minutes later the town was a distant cluster behind them,
looking no bigger than a model.

‘Well, this looks
like a good place to start,’ said Will.

‘Just anywhere
around here?’ Tabitha checked.

‘Yep, please,’
Will replied. Tabitha brought the car to a stop and stepped out onto the windy
moors, and pulled the seat forwards to help Jim climb out.

‘So what’s the
p-plan?’ said Liv, looking around nervously at the windy wild.

‘We’re looking
for any kind of remains,’ Will replied. I’m pretty sure that this is where the
army patrol were, when they got attacked.’

‘This is where
we saw the flashes, wasn’t it?’ Jim agreed.

‘I think so,’
Will replied. ‘
So.
Liv and Jim, you’ve got a shotgun
each, if you can pair up,’ he said. ‘Tabitha, you’ve got the rifle, and I’ll
stick with you because I’ve got
diddly
squat. If we
all spread out a bit, it shouldn’t take us long to find the bodies. Let’s get
this done.’

They fanned out in pairs and scoured the
moor in silence, listening intently for any scuttling legs. The wind rushed
against Tabitha’s face in sudden gusts, throwing her hair around like a greasy
scarlet blaze. Will coughed quietly beside her as they walked, studying the
grass and heather for any clues. Tabitha felt dizzy with hunger; so weak that
she wanted to sit down right there on the moor.

‘There was
something I wanted to ask you about,’ said Will, breaking the silence. ‘Liv
told us about your travels… and she said you mentioned a
dragon
.’

‘Yeah,’ Tabitha
replied awkwardly, unsure what to say about it. It sounded insane. ‘That’s the
only word I could think of to describe it.’

‘Well, that
makes things more interesting,’ Will replied with a smile. ‘What was it like?’

‘Well… Big.
Grey. Dragon-shaped. It was breathing fire, or some kind of energy maybe. I
watched it catch a fighter jet and tear it to pieces.’

‘Jesus,’ Will
muttered.

‘Are you worried
that one might come here?’ she asked him.

‘Well, I would
be if it showed up, definitely,’ he said, with a grim smile. ‘But that’s a big
if
.
I mean, it might never come here. I don’t think we’re going to attract that
much attention, really. It’s not like we’ve got fighter jets.’ He smiled,
shrugged. Tabitha hoped he was right. ‘And there’s not really much we could do
to stop it anyway,’ he added. ‘So worrying about it isn’t really going to do us
any good.’

‘No, I don’t
suppose it is,’ Tabitha replied.

‘Wow,’ said Liv.
She took one look over the far side of the hill and covered her mouth at the
sight. Jim looked around at it in shock.

‘Over here,’ he
called out, waving Will and Tabitha over. They stopped their search of the moor
and came to join them up on the steeper ground.

‘Bloody hell,’
said Will, looking down over the hill. Tabitha nodded in agreement, grimacing
at the remains. Empty skins wearing empty uniforms; a dozen popped soldiers
sprawled in the grass.

‘Right, let’s
take everything we can. Helmets, uniforms, everything,’ said Will. ‘Let’s get a
move on. Those spiders might still be out here.’

It was grim
work. The stinking skins had already begun to rot into their uniforms, clinging
to the fabric like slimy grey leather. Will had barely taken the jacket off the
first body when he retched.

‘Right, sod
this,’ he said, shaking floppy tatters of rotten skin off his fingers. ‘This is
taking too long.’

‘
And
it’s the m-most messed-up thing
we’ve ever had to do,’ Liv chipped in.

‘Yeah, that
too,’ said Will. ‘Just get the guns, the helmets, and the vests. And any
equipment they’ve got on them. We’ll put it all in the car and burn the bodies,
then we’re done.’

‘Burn the
bodies?’ said Jim. ‘We haven’t got time for that.’

‘We’ll make
time,’ Will replied stubbornly. ‘We can’t just leave them out here to rot.
These are
people.
We owe it to them to give them a proper funeral.’

‘I’ve got a
lighter,’ said Tabitha, fishing it out of her hoodie pocket. The cheap bright
lighter from the library drawer. That library felt a million miles away from
here, in lonelier days.

‘I’m telling
you, we won’t have time,’ Jim argued.

‘Well, let’s get
this
st
-stuff in the car first,’ Liv suggested. ‘Then
we’ll think about it.’ The others nodded and grunted, trying not to look down any
more at the remains. Switching off to it. It was bad enough having to peel the
soldiers’ empty fingers off their assault rifles before they could put the guns
in the car boot. They took all the radios and headsets they could find;
unclipped the heavy armoured vests from around the uniforms. They filled the
back seat of the car with the soldiers’ helmets. The bayonets, grenades and
spare ammunition got crammed into the car boot with the guns.

‘Well, I think
that’s all of it,’ Jim said eventually, wearing a pained expression as he
fought to get his breath back on the slope.

‘Tabitha, are
you alright?’ said Liv. Tabitha looked exhausted, white as a sheet.

‘Yeah, I’m
fine,’ she lied, feeling far away from Liv’s muffled voice. A shiver ran
through her clammy skin. She felt a strange hunger, sudden and fierce. Not in
her stomach though. It was coming from the core that used to be her heart.

‘Let’s get back
to the castle,’ said Jim, looking at her with concern.

‘Listen,’
Tabitha whispered, shaking and pale. The others stopped; heard nothing. ‘You
can’t hear it?’ she said quietly. They shook their heads. ‘Spiders. Just over
that hill behind us.’ Jim looked terrified.

‘Everyone back
in the car,’ said Will, wide-eyed with panic.

‘We may as well
s-see if the guns work,’ said Liv, raising her rifle.

‘There!’ said
Jim. A spider had appeared on the hill in the distance. Liv aimed her rifle at
it.

‘No!’ said Will,
grabbing the gun off her. ‘Everyone back in the car. Now!’ Tabitha nodded.
Sweat trickled down her temple; she felt faint. She didn’t feel herself falling
until the ground punched her in the head. The next thing she knew she was being
dragged to the car and helped into the passenger seat. Their shouting voices
sounded distant. She sat and stared at the white sky through the windscreen,
battling to keep her head up. The others piled into the car. She could hardly
turn to face Will beside her in the driver’s seat when he said her name. As he
turned the key in the ignition a silver horde burst over the hill behind them.

‘Go, go!’ said
Jim in the back, drowning under a pile of army helmets. Spiders crashed into
the car boot, punching their claws through the bodywork with crunching stabs.
Will floored it and skidded the car back onto the dirt road. Tearing down the
bumpy lane with the spiders right behind them, Will brought them racing back
onto the main road. The spiders spilled out from the lane, close behind, metal
claws scuttling on the tarmac. Liv looked back and saw a claw embedded in the
boot, dragging a silver body up towards the window.

‘Will, there’s
one still on the car!’ she said. Panicked, Will jerked the steering wheel from
side to side. The car weaved and jolted violently down the road, shaking the
spider loose. Clawing for a foothold, the spider slipped and clattered on the
road and crashed into the chasing swarm. The car was speeding up; there was a
wider gap between them and the spiders.

‘We’re l-losing
them,’ said Liv, looking out of the back window. One by one the spiders gave up
the chase, shrieking metallic and slinking away.

‘I could have
shot that first one on the hill, you know,’ Liv protested.

‘Yeah, and then
I’d have to die defending you from the rest of them,’ Will replied. ‘So I’m glad
you didn’t try, to be honest.’ Liv smiled at his answer and looked away out of
the window beside her, thinking over his words.

‘How is she?’
said Jim, nodding at Tabitha’s slumped body in the front.

‘Never been
better,’ Tabitha slurred, trying to smile. She was watching the road back into
town with heavy eyes; feeling clammy and sick. Like some toxic alien flu was
clutching at her skull.

Will raced back
through town like a joyrider, high on the victory of their first mission. He
passed the park gates and turned left onto the long gravel drive, parking up
beside the van around the back of the castle. Together they helped Tabitha out
and sat her down on a stone step. Liv left for the castle and came back with
Chris, and a wheelbarrow between them to cart the stuff back inside. She put a
bottle of water in Tabitha’s hands, and crouched down with her to look her
over.

‘I was
t-terrified when you just fell down like that,’ Liv said quietly. ‘Never do
that to me again, ok?’