Tabitha (5 page)

‘Down
here!’ Alex shouted, taking a side street where the dust cloud wasn’t so thick.
David stumbled and retched on the road, but Alex was there to pull him up and
drag him on. The city sounded like a warzone around them, all echoing cracks
and booms. A rock crashed down onto a dumpster on their left, cratering the
lid. Alex watched his feet running but didn’t feel like he was there. He felt
his heart racing, but he wasn’t sure if he was still attached to it. Everything
was dizzy and spinning in the shock. His brother’s voice was right next to him,
but far away. All he felt were the stinging pebbles that struck his skin,
raining down on them after another massive, static hiss. All he knew was that
they were running. Running from a volcanic cloud that was twice as big now,
filling the sky. When they reached the far end of the side street onto another
block, David grabbed Alex’s arm. Begging for a moment to stop and catch his
breath.

‘Jesus
Christ,’ David panted, gasping for air. He felt like passing out. They stared
down the road at the ruined city beyond the river; everything burning and
collapsing. Through the huge gloomy cloud of the fallout, there was a dark
shape moving in the sky. A black monstrous mass of tentacles that loomed over
the city, only hinted at through the dust cloud. A twisting tower of light
spewed out from its belly, toppling skyscrapers in a thundering rush. Churning
more of the city up into the sky. Alex opened his mouth to speak, but he
couldn’t find the words. The blond brothers could only look from the ship to
one another, silent in disbelief. Something exploded behind them, throwing them
into the air. David watched the world spin around him, as if in slow motion,
and the road came up to slam him in the face. All he heard was the ringing in
his ears, high and endless. Senseless, he lay there staring at the dust cloud
in the sky, vast and tumbling, like a volcano had blown. Nothing mattered for a
little while, and he closed his eyes... Then he remembered that he wasn’t
waking from a dream. He was lying on the road at the end of the world. He had
to get back to Helena and the kids. That was all that mattered. He looked
around desperately for his brother, ears still ringing. The street was a silent
grey fog, tilting and shaking as he looked around at it.

‘Alex?’
he called out. His voice echoed down the empty street, into the creeping wall
of dust.

‘I’m
here,’ came his brother’s muffled voice behind him. Alex helped him back to his
feet. David staggered. Blinking and dust-pale, he realised that he couldn’t see
from his right eye. Alex held him strongly by the shoulders, staring at him in
shock. His brother’s face was inches from his own, but he could hardly see him
in the ashen gloom.

‘Are
you ok?’ David slurred, with the taste of metal in his mouth. As he wiped his
chin he realised his arm was blackened and soaked in blood. He tried to put
some weight on his right leg and screamed.

‘Take
it easy. I’ve got you,’ Alex said gently. He helped David into the passenger
side of a car close by. Alex turned the key in the ignition, but there was no
sound. He cursed, slamming the steering wheel.

‘Nothing’s
working!’ he yelled, trying his phone. He got back out and helped David to his
feet. Alex tried not to look at the gaping hole in his brother’s stomach.

‘I’m
getting you to the hospital,’ said Alex.

‘If
it’s still there,’ David mumbled, smiling. He was still smiling when he
collapsed on the road, staring shell-shocked at the sky. Alex had to catch him
and lie him down, just to stop him hitting the road hard.

‘Here,
hold this on your stomach to stop the bleeding,’ said Alex, wriggling out of
his jacket. ‘Hold it as tight as you can.’ He pressed his bunched-up coat
against the hole in David’s stomach, but his brother couldn’t lift his arms to
hold on to it. David’s blood was
puddling
around them
on the road, stark red against the pale snowy dust.

‘Hold
it on there,’ Alex insisted, wiping a tear quickly off his face. He looked into
his brother’s eyes. ‘Hold it on.’

‘I
love you, man,’ David whispered, as the sky and the city and his brother faded
to black.

‘David?’
Alex said quietly, watching his brother’s lifeless face. ‘David!’ Alex could
only stare in shock, holding his brother’s cold limp hand. David’s dead eyes
stared up at the vanishing sun. Overhead a vast black shape crawled through the
sky.

4

Blinking, Tabitha came around on the
carpet. She’d been having the longest dreams, and so vivid too. Of spidery
silver legs in the dark, reaching out towards her. Of a pain so fierce, she’d
thought her heart was about to burst through her chest. It took a while to get
the feeling back in her limbs.

‘Oh, shit,’ she
croaked drowsily, realising with utter shame that she’d soiled herself. She sat
up and squinted at the hallway around her. Dry mouth; morning breath. Why did
she have a hangover?

‘Ok… what just
happened?’ she asked the empty house, gasping for a drink. She’d never felt so
desperately thirsty; so utterly disgusting.

Half-blind she
staggered upstairs to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet. It wouldn’t
flush properly. The sink tap just choked when she turned it, and shuddered the
pipes. There was nothing but a dribble of brown sludge spluttering out; the
same from the shower too. Cursing, she pulled off her sodden clothes. She
unwrapped the bandage around her thigh, peeling dry like ancient paper; crusted
with silver. The square grey veins had disappeared; there was only a pock mark
left where the needle had punctured her skin. Shuffling out again, she fetched
a big bottle of water from the kitchen to wash herself off in the bathtub. The
clean frothy perfume of soap had never smelled so good; she still couldn’t
believe that she’d crapped herself. Her body felt numb as she towelled down and
brushed her teeth. The bathroom was still a blur in the white daylight; glowing
smudges and dancing shadows. As her vision slowly came back into focus, she
stared at her hands. She wiggled her fingers, turned her palms up. She raised
her hands up at the window, just to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. Her
hands were grey. They were grey metal. Dull, matte, rubbery metal. The grey
faded back to her own skin tone at the wrists, as if her hands had been
spray-painted. Like she was wearing painted-on gloves. She tried to grip the
grey coating and peel it off, but there wasn’t a join. She scratched at the
armoured skin but felt nothing. She could still feel her grey fingertips
scratching at her wrists, at least. But clapping her hands, and pinching them,
and punching them, even banging them down on the sink to hurt them… no
sensation at all. She had, however, sent a crack right through the heavy sink.
Another whack, and the sink shattered with a gurgling spurt of gunge from the
pipes. She’d barely shifted her feet back in time to avoid broken toes. Tabitha
looked at her hands; looked around at the bathroom to see if she was still
dreaming.

‘What?...’ she
mumbled to herself, sitting down on the edge of the bathtub. When she glanced
in the mirror, she saw someone new. Her sad eyes were piercing green, lighter
than they should have been. Her ginger curls had turned a vivid shade of red.
She stared in silent shock; raised a grey hand to her face. That wasn’t her.

Dazed, Tabitha
wandered back into her bedroom. She saw the threadbare carpet just inside the
doorway. It was all coming back to her then, like a dream forgotten. Silver
legs; lots of legs. And the stabbing alien needle. She studied the little pock
mark in her thigh where the needle had gone in. It’d healed incredibly well for
such a short time; there wasn’t even a scab. Looking around as she got dressed,
she saw a silver spidery leg on the carpet behind the door. The alien. The
socket… she’d killed it. It was out on the landing. Tabitha turned around, and
there it was. Propped up in the back corner, legs jutting up against the wall.
Just as sinister in death. She didn’t want to go close, but curiosity pushed
her towards it like a hand on the small of her back. She reached out and
touched a silver leg. Its skin rasped against her grey palm like sandpaper. The
same skin.

Tabitha sat down
on her bed, and pulled her phone from her pocket to call her mum. The phone
didn’t switch on though. The charger didn’t work either. Not the lights, or the
radio, or her little TV. No electricity, no running water… what was going on?
Nothing made sense. She had to get to her mum. Everything would be alright; she
just had to get to her mum. She had to tell her the whole terrifying tale.

When Tabitha
came back downstairs into the living room, Mog didn’t recognise her. She looked
much the same but moved, smiled and smelled differently. Her every step was a
snake-hipped seduction to the empty house around her.

‘Hi,’ she said
softly, waiting for Mog to edge closer for a stroke. Eventually he came and
nudged her grey hands and circled her feet, purring. Tabitha put some food out
for him in the kitchen, and stroked him as he tucked in. She couldn’t feel his
fur on her fingers. There was a sour rancid smell coming from the fridge; the
power must have cut out while she was passed out on the carpet. A cold puddle
covered half the kitchen floor. Just how long had she been unconscious? She
took a carving knife from the kitchen drawer to dissect the alien upstairs. She
had to be quick. She had to get to her mum. But if there were more of these
creatures out there, then she had to know how to stop them. She had to know
what made them tick. Suddenly this was survival.

As she skinned
her kill quickly in the bathtub, Tabitha realised that her body felt leaner.
Stronger. She peeled back the alien’s skin in a rush and caught her wrist
against the edge, and it sliced her skin like a tin lid. Blood like quicksilver
streamed down her arm for a second, before the stinging cut healed up. A few
seconds, and it’d closed up completely. She stared at her blood, shining silver
like mercury, still dribbling down her arm. It tasted good. Beneath the
spider’s skin were fibrous muscles, solid bunched-up cords of white meat. It
hardly smelled of anything; just metal and faint salty flesh, with the clammy
whiff of oil mixed in. Its splayed legs looked part spider and part crab. Its
silver blood dripped thick into the bathtub, pooling and trickling down the
drain.

After the quick
dissection Tabitha slipped the carving knife into her belt. She’d wasted enough
time. How could she not have rushed out to see her mum first? She hurried
downstairs and swapped her trainers for hiking boots.

‘I’ll be back
soon,’ she told Mog in the kitchen, rushing back through the living room for
the front door. She stopped for a second, and felt a tingling in her chest. A
sudden burst of lightning arced around her; a noisy crackling hiss. She stared
in shock at white veins of electricity, coming from
her
. Something in
her chest came to life where her heart should have been; something made of
living metal and current. Voltage coursed through her body. Frantic branches of
lightning jumped out of her, scorching the walls. Tabitha was paralysed;
feeling too good to do anything about it. High on a neon cloud in her head. She
tensed up inside when the electric feel embraced her. Weak at the knees. She
felt the current reaching in everywhere, warm and tingling. Some new part of
her mind fantasised about cables and circuits; saw their amorous voltage
reaching out towards her. There was a lightning storm around her in the living
room. Her clutter and magazines were sailing through the air, blown against the
walls in a hissing gale of static. Mog escaped out of the cat flap in the
kitchen door. Tabitha threw her head back. The volts reached into her, right
in. They made her gasp. She moaned and smiled, climaxing. Every electronic
shook and rumbled then, and exploded suddenly in a cloud of sparks and smoke.
The stuffing from the couch tumbled down like foam snow. Tabitha writhed on the
carpet as the waves of pleasure died down.

‘
Hm
?’ she said in a daze, sitting up to look around. A
lightning storm had scarred her living room. Possessions in ruins. TV on fire.
As her senses came back to her, Tabitha remembered her mum. She had to get to
her. Drunk on voltage, she picked up the TV and sent it bursting through the
window. She leapt out after it; cast her old self aside. Tabitha was about to
become much, much more.

Tabitha leapt
down to the garden. The shattered plastic corpse of her TV lay in pieces around
her. She stood and stretched, took in the seaside. Walked out onto the street.
She wondered what everyone would make of her now, lithe and confident; bright
red hair and steel-grey hands. But the street was empty. The air was a heavy
silence. The sky was cloud-muddled, stark and white. Beneath it the grey world
sprawled in shock, silent and bleak. The drains reeked; the cloying sulphur
smell of decay. There were no city sounds, no hiss of traffic in the distance.
Only the tide and the seagulls. Where was everyone? She got into her car and it
wouldn’t start. No lights, no radio, nothing. This was getting too weird. She
cursed and slammed the car door, and walked off down the road at a panicked
pace. The world seemed empty of people. Far too quiet.

‘…Hello?’ she
called down the street. No answer. ‘Hello!’ she called louder. Nothing. Not a
single car on the roads; no sign of anyone as she wandered. The world was
empty, silent as a grave.

Down the main
road away from town, something caught her eye. Looking over the iron railing by
the sea, Tabitha saw a huge black shape beneath the waves. It looked like a
kraken or a sunken ship, strewn in fairy lights. What was it, a submarine? The
water was too shallow here, surely. The wind blew cold. She looked around to
see twisting smoke, rising up all over town along the bay. It looked like a
warzone. Her next footstep sent a cracked smartphone skittering expensively
across the pavement. Tabitha went to pick it up, then changed her mind. Strange
to find a smartphone just lying around on the pavement, broken or not. She
stood up and looked around, and left it alone like evidence at a crime scene.

‘Hello?’ she
called out again, jogging down the road towards her mum’s house. ‘Hello!’
nothing but silence. An empty world. No one answered their doors when she
knocked. This was beyond strange now; it was frightening.

The daylight was
cold and hard, and made the grey world greyer. Tabitha hurried on and turned a
street corner. She stopped suddenly, staring at shapes on the road. Pale
leathery forms tumbled in the wind like popped
lilos
.
Skins. Tabitha put her rough hands to her mouth, felt the sickness rising up.
They were
people
. Corpses. Boned and gutted, just haircuts and skin,
dried up and drained out and flapping down the pavement in the breeze. One skin
was draped over the kerb beside her; another tangled up in a fallen mountain bike
on the road. Tabitha ran back around the corner and vomited over the rusted
railing by the sea. Out there in the harbour by the bobbing boats something
caught her eye, caught her breath. Another black lurking mass, a creature in
the ocean. It looked like a bone-clad squid, a writhing submarine. Tabitha
stared in horror. The black shape reached up a tree-thick tentacle from the
water and pulled a fishing boat down into the deep. It smashed and twisted the
boat idly into its mouth, hidden in a mess of arms. Tabitha could only watch in
disbelief. A sudden metal shriek shot through the silence, echoing down the
road. She turned to see a pair of silver spiders, scuttling down the street
towards her.

‘Oh my god,’ she
mumbled, wide-eyed, backing away. A third spider emerged from a house on her
right, edging down the wall from a broken window. Staring, terrified, Tabitha
reached for the carving knife tucked into her belt. The spiders were closing in
on her. She refused to believe it. Her brain switched off when the first spider
jumped. Instinct and adrenaline drove her knife deep into the spider’s chest,
with a squelching spurt of silver blood. The spider screamed and clattered to
the road, kicking at the air. Tabitha backed away from the other two that crept
forwards. She yelled and jumped away from long jabbing tongues. The carving
knife was still buried in the first twitching spider; she couldn’t get it now.
The other two were stalking closer. Scared, unarmed, Tabitha looked from one to
the other. Their lanky legs clattered on the tarmac, stilted and silver. Black
mouths drooling.

‘Get away!’ she
yelled, waving her arms. The nearest spider jumped and clutched her wrist,
clawing her flesh. Tabitha screamed, reacted. The spider fell to the road with
a knuckle imprint in its head, scratching around in a daze. Tabitha looked at
her balled-up fist, solid and grey. She hadn’t felt a thing. The other spider
pounced, and she leapt away. Before it could turn around she jumped in and hit
it, then hit it harder. It staggered on the road. She ran back over and
wrenched the carving knife from the dead one, and stuck it deep into the
second. A metal scream, and the thing dropped dead. She wrestled the knife back
out with a squelch.

‘I’ll kill you!’
she yelled at the last spider, the one with her knuckle print in its head.
Tabitha felt her pulse pounding. She’d never been in a fight. The spider was
still drooling for the scent of her. Crawling towards her. Edging its tongue
out hungrily.

‘I’m warning
you!’ she said, pointing the knife at it. She’d never said that before in her
life. She’d never really stood up to anything before. The spider scuttled
towards her regardless, and leapt. Tabitha jumped away, but too slow. The thing
sank a claw into her side and dragged her screaming to the road, and leapt on
top of her. Slid its tongue out towards her face. Tabitha yelled, gripping the
spike and wrestling it away. Panicking, she stuck the knife deep into the
spider’s head. The blade squeaked in through the metal skin and suddenly the spider
was a dead bleeding weight on top of her. Gasping, she struggled out of its
cage of dead legs. She staggered up and backed away, and held the knife out at
nothing around her. Breathed heavy. Staring, wide-eyed, looking for danger on
the empty road. She glanced down at her ripped t-shirt and the silver blood
that streamed from her side. She sat down on the kerb and lifted her t-shirt
up, only to see the wound healing up before her eyes. The spider’s venom was in
her veins though. She could feel it, like a deep scalding chill. It hadn’t
killed her the first time though; why should it kill her now? She waited a
minute on the kerb, and the cold rush faded from her veins. She stood up and
felt alright. No numb tingling; no thumping pain in her chest. She tucked the
silver-bloodied knife into her belt and ran down the street for her mum’s
house.