Tabitha by Andrew Hall Page B

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