Tabitha (15 page)

12

‘Come on,’ she
told Laika, creeping inside the petrol station shop. The place had already been
looted of everything useful, more than once from the looks of it. Searching the
shelves though, she was surprised to find a couple of tins lurking at the back.
Beef stew, cheap and nasty. She wasn’t surprised it’d been left
unscavenged
. It looked disgusting, and she had no appetite
anyway. Laika was interested though; she started barking at the prospect of
real tinned food.

‘
Shh
! Bad girl!’ Tabitha whispered. She looked up over the
shelves to check the forecourt for any sign of spiders. Laika fell quiet,
staring at the tin. Tabitha cursed when she saw that there wasn’t a ring pull
to open it.

‘Looks like
you’ll have to wait a bit longer, until I can find a tin opener,’ she told
Laika. ‘Sorry.’ Wait, why did she need a tin opener? Squeezing hard, she sank
her metal fingers into the tin lid. Ripped it open. She scraped the smelly stew
down into a sloppy pile on the tiled floor. Laika wolfed it down faster than
Tabitha thought possible.

‘Just keep quiet
and eat your food,’ Tabitha told her, looking around the empty shelves. ‘And
don’t make yourself sick.’ Laika finished it quickly, hacked, and threw it back
up again.

‘Told you,’ said
Tabitha, looking away from the sick. When Laika sniffed around it and started
eating it again more slowly, Tabitha gagged and had to walk away. Looking
around the rest of the shop, there was practically nothing left on the shelves.
Half the magazines still lay untouched on their racks, though Tabitha had to
wonder who in their right mind would loot the other half in the first place. A
style magazine was torn and sprawled across the floor in tatters, ripped up
into rodent nesting. Flawless models grinned and pouted from the torn pages,
half hidden under rat shit.

Peering over the
shop counter, Tabitha saw that the till had been prised open and emptied.

‘Seriously?
Stealing cash
at the end of the world?
’ she asked the till, as if it
held the answers. She took the weight of the rifle from her shoulder, and put
it down on the counter with a wooden clunk. Checking the shelves, she couldn’t
find any soap or shampoo. There wasn’t much of anything left on the shelves;
just a couple of car sponges and adaptors. In truth she hadn’t expected there
to be anything to wash with anyway. But it would have been nice not to smell
her own sweat for once.

‘How’s it going
over there, dog face?’ she called over the shelves. Turning the corner, she saw
Laika licking up the last traces of food and vomit. ‘Well, you’re disgusting,
but I’m glad you’re not hungry
any more
.’
Laika
padded over and nuzzled Tabitha’s hand.

‘You’ll have to
eat the other one now, if you want it,’ she said. ‘I’m not carrying your food
around for you.’ Laika didn’t need much convincing; her tail was sweeping the
floor where she sat when Tabitha produced the other tin from the shelf. She
cracked the tin open and peeled it apart to empty it on the floor. Again Laika
was straight in, letting the last chunks drop down on her head as she was
eating.

‘You’re so
thin,’ said Tabitha, brushing the gravy off Laika’s head while she ate. She
could trace the dog’s ribs against her fingers as she stroked her side. Tabitha
felt her tiredness weighing her down, putting a slow numb filter on everything.

‘We’ll have a
rest for ten minutes after you’ve finished, ok? But then we need to get going.
I don’t want to be around here when it gets dark.’

Tabitha yawned
and searched the shop one last time, closing the metal shutter over the shop
front against the world outside. She couldn’t find anything to drink in the
place. There was an office and a tiny bathroom in a section off behind the
till, but the sink tap shuddered loudly and puked brown sludge, just like
everywhere else. Once Laika had finished eating she followed Tabitha into the
small office. The collie didn’t need much convincing to huddle down next to her
on the floor, resting her head on Tabitha’s thigh.

‘Someone’s
sleepy,’ Tabitha said gently, stroking the soft fur on Laika’s head. A few
moments later Laika’s mismatched eyes had closed, and her breath deepened as
she slept. Tabitha sat for a while in the silence, looking absent-mindedly at
the far wall. They could only afford to rest for a few minutes. Tired as she
was, she couldn’t afford to fall asleep. She had to protect them; get them out
of town. At least the silence wasn’t the same as it had been; it felt lighter
now. With Laika there, that pressing lonely feeling had lifted.

It was getting dark when Tabitha woke
up.

‘Shit!’ she
growled, startling Laika when she got up. Angry at herself. Why did she always
have to fall asleep? ‘Come on, we need to go!’ she said quietly. Tabitha lifted
the shutter up as silently as she could, and peered out of the shop door to
check it was clear. They slipped out onto the forecourt. Suddenly Laika was
growling.

‘
Oi
!’ came a man’s voice, echoing up the forecourt. Laika
was barking at him as he approached. Tabitha tensed up. She’d left her rifle
inside on the shop counter. At least she still had the hunting knife handy. She
left it in her belt for now.

‘What’re you
doing here?’ he shouted, coming closer. He had a shotgun in his left hand, and
a crowbar in his right. Wild thinning hair; scruffy grey stubble on jowly
cheeks. He was huge.

‘Looking for
food,’ Tabitha called to him simply, aware that Laika was still barking loudly.
She tried to shush her, checking over her shoulder for anyone or anything that
might be creeping around behind them. The man stepped closer, mere feet away.
His craggy old face had a fierce intensity to it; hard eyes staring. His jumper
and jacket were covered in stains; crusted silver and sickly yellow. ‘What are
you doing here?’ Tabitha asked him defensively, as he stared angrily.

‘Me?’ he said,
affronted. ‘I live here! All round here, this is mine!’ he pointed his crowbar
out in a circle, as if to encompass everything in sight. ‘All this is my
territory, right?’ He burped through his words. Was he drunk? ‘All them spiders
don’t come round here, right, ‘cause they know I’m here.’

‘Fair enough,’
Tabitha replied stiffly, wary of the fierce look in his eyes. ‘Well, I found
some food for my dog, and now we’re going. It was nice meeting you.’

‘Food? What
food?’ he said angrily, stepping closer. ‘That’s
my
shop!’ he yelled,
pointing the shotgun at the petrol station. ‘That’s
my
food!’ he
bellowed. He was red-faced, staring. ‘Fine. I’m eating your dog then,’ he
growled, pointing the crowbar at her face. Laika didn’t like that at all. She lunged
at him, sank her teeth into his leg. The man screamed and raised the crowbar at
Laika, but Tabitha leapt in and gripped it before he could hit her. He swung
the shotgun around on her. Tabitha wrestled the barrel away, and the shotgun
thundered. A window shattered on the petrol station. Before the man could swing
at her Tabitha punched him on the jaw and staggered him. Another hit and he
dropped his shotgun, and her third punch floored him with a solid knockout.
Tabitha’s ears rang from the gunshot. Laika’s barks were a muffled noise to
her. Her dog was trying to warn her. The spiders had found them.

‘Come here,’
said Tabitha, pulling Laika behind her by the collar. The three spiders crept
in closer. Tabitha didn’t wait for them to attack. She leapt on the first and
battered it into the tarmac, and stomped the second into the forecourt. Laika
jumped in on the third one and bit onto a silver leg.

‘No, Laika!’
Tabitha yelled. The spider struck out. Laika yelped and jumped away. She’d been
cut, bad. When Tabitha caught sight of Laika’s dark red blood on the forecourt,
nothing was going to save that spider from what came next. Tabitha ploughed
into the fight and wrestled the creature away from her dog, beating vicious
dents into it as she yelled. She gripped its metal skin and pulled it, and tore
the thing into pieces while it screeched and screamed in a bloody mess. Laika
barked behind her, trying to join in.

‘Get back!’
Tabitha commanded, staring Laika down. When she’d finished with the spider’s
mangled body, she turned around at a loud gulping noise. The second spider had
crept away from the fight. It was drinking the man’s insides where he’d lain
unconscious on the forecourt. Tabitha picked up his crowbar and drove the
straight side down into the spider’s bloated body. It screeched and struggled.
Oily silver-red blood poured out of its wound. Tabitha’s second stab must have
found its brain, because it collapsed suddenly on the ground. Laika was limping
over to her, leaving a trail of blood along the forecourt behind her.

‘Stay still,’
said Tabitha, feeling a sad lump in her throat at the sight. Gently she pushed
the fur apart on Laika’s side for a better look. It wasn’t a deep wound, but it
wasn’t a neat one either. The spider’s claw had torn the skin apart; the blood
was streaming. Laika didn’t seem to notice it; she was too busy trying to lick
Tabitha’s face.

‘It’s ok Laika.
It’s ok,’ said Tabitha, panicking at all the blood. ‘Just keep still. I’m going
to look after you.’ Tabitha pulled off her hoodie and tied it around Laika’s
middle to stop the blood, but the thick sleeves made it too hard to knot
properly. Laika yelped when Tabitha picked her up. She carried her back inside
the petrol station, and lay her down in the back office. Her dog’s blood coated
her grey hands.

‘I’m not letting
you die. I’m not,’ said Tabitha, stroking Laika’s head where she lay by the
office wall. Tabitha went and pulled down the shutters over the door and
windows, and turned the shop upside down looking for a first aid kit. All she
managed to find though came from the office drawers; a pair of scissors and
some crumpled tissues. Dabbing the wound with tissues did nothing though. The
bleeding was far too heavy for that. Panicking, Tabitha wracked her brain.
There was nothing else here; what the hell was she supposed to do? She
remembered then; the jabbing shape pressed against her leg. The superglue and
safety pins in her jeans pockets. Superglue worked perfectly well at sticking
skin together; she knew that from painful personal experience as a young art
student. Blood streamed down onto the carpet when Tabitha unfastened her hoodie
from around Laika’s middle.

‘I’m sorry, I’m
so sorry,’ she whispered to Laika, stroking her head. Picking up the scissors,
she carefully cut away Laika’s slick fur around the wound. She’d trimmed away
as much as she could to expose the skin;
any more
and
she would have cut too close.

‘Don’t move,’
Tabitha said softly, heart racing as she tried to hold her down. Laika whined
and struggled. Tabitha fought to hold her there on the carpet. Her struggling
wasn’t helping the wound; it seemed to be gushing more blood than before. She
had to close up the skin, or at least try to. There wasn’t time for all the
doubts and worries in her head. If she didn’t do something now, Laika was going
to bleed to death.

‘Come on!’ she
growled at the old superglue, squeezing the tube hard. Her hands shook with the
effort as she coaxed out a clear sliver onto the nozzle. She pressed a ball of
tissues against Laika’s wound and threw them away, soaked in blood. Hands
trembling, Tabitha pinched at the torn skin and dabbed glue along the edge.
Laika yelped.

‘Sorry,’ said
Tabitha, terrified. She squeezed a final spurt of glue from the tube and dabbed
it on. Pushed the edges of the wound back together until they met and stuck.
Laika was still struggling against her.

‘Keep still, you
stupid dog,’ Tabitha growled, pressing her wrists and her body down to pin
Laika against the wall. She regained her blood-slippery grip on the edges of
the wound, and held them tightly together for a few more seconds until the
bleeding had slowed down. She counted another minute while Laika lay there, and
peeled her fingers away from the glued-up wound.

‘It worked,’ she
told Laika softly, smiling. But
Laika
wasn’t whining
any more
; she’d gone quiet.

‘Shit,’ Tabitha
snapped, stroking Laika’s head gently. Laika blinked sadly and just lay there
staring at the door, eyes half closed. Was she dying?

‘Just rest now,
ok?’ she told her. ‘It’s the best I can do.’ Sitting back against the wall,
Tabitha stroked Laika’s head and kept a constant watch on the wound. Laika was
breathing alright, but she was so still. Tabitha shifted around a little on the
floor. The squelching noise from the red sodden carpet told her that Laika had
lost a lot of blood. At least the wound had stopped bleeding though. She just
hoped that it wasn’t because Laika had already bled out dry.

Tabitha watched over
Laika
for the rest of the night. She drifted in and out of consciousness herself, sat
there on the hard sodden carpet tiles. There was a sucking noise outside,
jolting her from half-sleep. Tabitha grabbed the man’s shotgun where she’d left
it on the counter, and went to investigate. It felt hefty and solid in her
hands; reassuringly lethal as she lifted the shutter and looked out from the
doors. Sure enough there was a silvery shape outside, hunched over the man’s
corpse and drinking out what was left of him. She wasn’t going to waste the
remaining shotgun shell on it. Too loud anyway. Tabitha headed back inside and
swapped the shotgun for the crowbar, and came charging out of the dark shop to
attack the spider. She dodged its spiked tongue. It jumped. She swung the
crowbar, dropped the spider to the ground. Before it could right itself she buried
the crowbar in its underside with a metal squelch. Wrenching the crowbar from
its twitching body, she took one last look out into the night around her, and
headed back inside. She pulled the shutter down behind her with a clatter.