Tabitha (12 page)

9

Tabitha was wandering through new-build
suburbs on the edge of town; suburbs that she’d only seen in passing before
now. Thin detached houses in fresh new brick, lined up along a brand new road
that led into the woods. All their neat little gardens still primped and
manicured to within an inch of their lives. There was a child’s bike laid out on
the road, and dark broken windows in the empty homes. She tried not to look at
the skins; walked on past and blotted them from her mind. She picked up an
elastic band off the road, and slipped it around her wrist. Something useful to
add to her knife and her stale bread. It was hardly a survival pack. That was
why she couldn’t afford to overlook anything lying around. Not if it could help
her chances of living through this. She headed up a driveway, intending to
search the house for bottled water. It looked like a mineral water kind of
house. When she peered in the living room window she saw a spindly silver shape
reflecting the daylight in the gloom. She backed away, and headed back down the
drive onto the road. Promptly gave up on the idea. It was probably better just
to get out of town now. She checked over her shoulder and jogged on down the
empty road, into the cover of the woods. People didn’t live in woods; maybe the
spiders had no reason to come in here.

Tabitha wandered
on for a while through the green silent shade of the trees, summer-full and
hanging low. She could smell the thick thorny brambles and the waist-high
grass; a heady whiff on the breeze. A little way down, the road gave way to
walking paths, and she left the old stone walls behind. There was only the wild
world ahead, vast and silent but for the sound of birds and the quiet creak of
her boots. She tried to get into the habit of checking around her. Looking for
danger, like a prey animal. That’s what she was now, she reminded herself. Just
lucky prey.

Deep in the
woods, through tangled brambles and storm-fallen trees, Tabitha came to a rocky
dip with a sleeping bag in it. She pressed up against a tree, cautious.
Convinced that an axe murderer was watching her from the woods all around. Crouching
down against the tree, with only the sound of her own panicked breaths for
company, Tabitha closed her eyes and climbed back out of her head. There were
worse things than axe murderers now; of course there were. Axe murderers only
wanted to straight-up murder you. Not capture you alive and drink your insides
out. Looking around, she stood up and made her way closer to investigate. There
were empty tins of food scattered around the sleeping bag, and a plastic bag
full of unopened water bottles. And flapping in the wind against a tree trunk
nearby, a skin in a coat and tracksuit trousers. Its withered feet had slipped
out of its trainers, blowing in the breeze like a fleshy pair of tights.
Tabitha wished she’d felt worse than she did about taking the food and water.
But already that grim, nauseating edge was wearing off scenes like this. She’d
seen a dozen others like it on her way into the woods. So many people had tried
to escape in here and survive. So many skins; they’d lost their shock factor. A
broken tree stood over the dell where she stood; a splintered pillar of rotten
timber that stabbed the blue sky above. She felt her caffeine headache come
back again when she stooped down to pick up a stray water bottle, and added it
to her plastic bag.

Tabitha felt
sluggish as she walked on into the woods, feeling relaxed without her regular
caffeine in her bloodstream. For a little while the air felt syrupy all around
her while she walked. Thicker to breathe, thicker to move through. She couldn’t
believe how rough she felt, even after just a couple of days without a cup of
tea. What had she been doing to herself, drinking that stuff every day?

‘God, sobriety’s
miserable,’ she said, squinting at the bright sunlight. She stood and watched a
crow for a while, wandering a patch of grass and thinking about its existence.
It stopped and studied her for a while.

‘It’s alright
for you,’ Tabitha said bitterly, watching the crow wandering on. She didn’t
like the way it strutted around, like nothing was going on in the world. As if
whatever had happened didn’t matter all that much.

‘Oh, look at me,
I’m a crow, I’m not getting eaten by aliens,’ Tabitha muttered. ‘Knob.’ The
crow paused; eyed her cautiously. It flew away on glossy black wings in clumsy
lurching flaps. Tabitha would’ve given anything to fly away with it, high above
the empty world and the biting silence.

Wandering deeper
into the woods than she’d ever been before, Tabitha took a seat for a while on
a fallen tree. Up above, two little birds chattered and sang endlessly at one
another over the same bush. Up ahead, Tabitha made out the waving black shape
of an alien tree; one of the towering black anemones that she’d seen back in
town. It looked tree-shaped, she supposed; but its thick arms waved around
gently, surreal, as if it was underwater. She noticed birds perching on its
drifting branches, flitting from one to another when the waving tentacles
overlapped. The tree’s alien shape had already taken root here. Already it had
become just another part of the world.

Tabitha came to
a pond and edged around it. She studied the frogspawn in the murky water,
crossing a sturdy wooden walkway to the far side. A big dragonfly darted past
her from the bushes and hunted around the reeds; a tyrant among lesser bugs.
Tabitha tried to blot out the summery silence as she reached the far side of
the pond; tried to keep her grief buried deep down. The shallow mud made sticky
pucker sounds as she lifted her feet.

She felt more
alive out of town now, even despite her grief; it was the strangest feeling.
There was something new about the sunshine through the trees, lighting up the
leaves into emerald shades over her head. Some strange revelation; a moment of
holy bliss. She glimpsed tiny veins of light in the leaves above; a running current.
Life’s voltage. It gave her butterflies, tingling just to see it. A natural
attraction, heady as lust. The rich dark black of the soil beneath the trees
looked as good as chocolate cake under her feet. She felt hungry, but not in
her stomach. It was a longing that ran through her whole body, like she was
missing some vital part of herself. A gaping want inside her; divine horniness.
She didn’t understand the feeling. It was something she’d never felt before.

Pigeons
scattered into the air as Tabitha walked into a clearing; wings flapping soft
in the silence. She smelled the earthy green tang of leaves here, half
surrounded by a misty violet carpet of bluebells. Her sight began to shift
again. Looking closely at the roots of the nearest tree, she saw energy there.
Beneath the rough brown bark was a living light factory. She could sense the
leaves above her on the branches, drinking in the sunlight. Everything around
her had taken on a brighter shade, and it wasn’t just from the light. There was
something in the way she saw it. The only sound was her footsteps; light
rasping strokes on the sandy dirt path.

She saw a
squirrel running along the top of a wooden fence, bounding over the square
posts in a rhythm of perfect arcs. Smiling, she followed at a distance. She
walked on and it ran from her, all along the downhill path, until it stopped a
few fence posts along and looked at her. It had its back turned, as if it was
hiding something. Tabitha stopped, smiled, and edged a little closer towards
it.

‘What’ve you got
there?’ she said quietly, stepping closer without trying to spook it.

‘Where are you
going?’ said a gravelly monotone voice, off to her left in the trees. Tabitha
froze. It took her a moment to see him. He wore muddy camouflage gear, like a
hunter. Shaved head and a fierce look; scowling and rough-
stubbled
.
The brilliant colours she saw in everything suddenly faded away. All the world
lost its shine.

‘I said, where
are you going?’ the man repeated. He was pointing a rifle. She didn’t like the
way he looked at her. There was an intense hunger about him.
Tell him what
he wants to hear,
she told herself.
Just get away.

‘None of your
business,’ Tabitha replied, surprising herself. The old her would never say
something like that.

‘You what?’ he
chuckled, stepping closer.

‘I said, it’s
none of your fucking business where I’m going!’ she said, standing her ground.
The man laughed, loud and hoarse.

‘You should talk
nicer than that, seeing as I’ve got this pointed at you.’ He raised the rifle and
aimed it between her eyes.
Get away,
Tabitha told herself.
Just run.

‘Well are you
going to shoot me or not?’ she said. It was the new Tabitha talking. Her gut
reaction. She looked him right in the eye, and held his stare. He saw her strange
grey hands bunch into fists, and hesitated.

‘Give me
everything you’ve got,’ he said, stepping closer. He smelled like stale
tobacco.

‘What?’ she
replied. It threw him. Tabitha stared down the dark barrel of the gun; the
promise of instant death.

‘Are you deaf,
you stupid bitch?’ he growled. ‘Give me everything! Your food and water, give
it to me!’

‘You’d have it
by now, if you had the balls to come and take it,’ Tabitha said with a smile.

‘I’ll fucking
shoot you.’

‘Do it.’

‘I’ll kill you.’

‘So fucking do
it!’ she yelled. The man stepped closer, hesitated. He wasn’t going to shoot
her; she could tell. She was drunk on adrenaline. Time to lay it on thick.

‘If you fire
that, every spider for a mile around is going to come here looking for us,’ she
told him. ‘Now I know I’ll be alright. They tried to kill me once and it didn’t
work. All they did was give me these.’ She raised her hands for him to see. He
had no idea how scared he looked. ‘But you… they’ll find you, and they’ll hold
you down and drink your insides out. I don’t think you want that to happen.’
He’d been edging closer all the while, rifle still raised and aimed at her
face. Wide-eyed he looked her over, sized her up. He dropped the rifle, pulled
a hunting knife from his belt and came at her. He was slower than her. When he
went to stab her Tabitha grabbed the blade tight, and put him on the ground
with a broken nose. Before he could move she was knelt over him, pressing the
knife point in against the dry red skin on his throat. He struggled. She pushed
the point in to break the skin. He yelped. Dark red blood trickled down his
neck. He struggled again.

‘Don’t,’ she
told him quietly, fixing him with a stare. ‘Those spiders are nothing compared
to me. Now give me everything, and I’ll let you live.’ She pressed the knife in
a little more.

‘T-take it,’ he
said. She could see the fear in his eyes.

Tabitha walked on right into the
evening, deep into the dusky forest. She had the hunting knife on her belt in
its leather sheath, and the scoped rifle slung across her back by the strap.
She hadn’t needed to keep checking over her shoulder for the man; he hadn’t
tried to come after her. She didn’t suppose he would last very long out here
anyway. Good. She’d had enough of bullies growing up to last her a lifetime.
Let them feel weak and terrified for a change.

She made her way
down unfamiliar paths, further than she’d ever been before through here. She
knew the town on the far side of the woods, but she didn’t know how to get
there from here. She had to be heading the right way though, she told herself.
She’d been following the downward slope of the land for a couple of miles at
least.

Further on
Tabitha sat down on a log by the stream, and pulled the hard stale chunk of
bread from her pocket in a shower of crumbs. She chewed it until her jaw hurt
with the effort; washed it down with a bottle of water from the bag. She
watched froth collect behind a fallen tree in the stream. She picked the mud
from her boots idly with the big cruel hunting knife, and watched the sun set
over the fields that stretched out beyond the edge of the woods. She soon felt
queasy though, and her appetite dropped right off. Maybe that was a good thing,
really. The bread would last longer if she didn’t feel like eating much of it.
She put a rough cold hand under her t-shirt and rubbed her stomach, wincing at
the cramps. Maybe she should have eaten sooner, when she’d come around in her
house. It’d been days now, and all the bread had done was make her feel ill.
The quiet bliss of the woods helped, though. No jarring racket of voices; no
people to watch her and laugh. There was only the flowing sound of the stream;
the vicious harmony of the birds. It was a strange silence though, normally
filled with the distant hiss of traffic. The world was a new and lonely place.

After a few warm
sips of water Tabitha sighed, and got back up on her tired feet. She wasn’t
used to walking this much
any more
; there’d be a lot
more of it to come too. Just one of those things, she told herself. No use
getting in a state about it, as Mum would say. Just one footstep at a time.
Picking up her new hunting rifle, Tabitha let the movies guide her hands. She
lifted the rifle’s bolt handle up and pulled it back with a
clack
. Sure
enough there was a bullet in there, big and brass. Fishing it out, there was
another beneath it. And another. Beyond that though, it was just a dark empty
recess.