Tabitha (50 page)

‘You’re
delicious,’ she told the alien corpse, leaning back against its body on the
bloody road. With her old hunger finally gone, Tabitha sighed with satisfaction
and watched the golden sun rise over the empty city. She felt one of those
intense moments of peace again, like the sunshine held some strange power over
her. She felt her mind resting, and the warm sun on her face. Maybe her
bloodmeal
had a lot to do with the way she felt.
Inspiration struck her then, and she wandered off to find some plastic bottles.
It was so simple; why hadn’t she thought of it before?

Later
on Tabitha retraced her steps down the city streets, following the trail of
destruction from her fight the day before. Every trace of havoc; every cracked
and crumbled wall. It felt like a dream now. The worst dream of her life. She
found her way back to the taxi she’d been hiding behind in the rain, and
retrieved her damp rucksack still lying beside it. She zipped it open and
popped a couple of packed painkillers with a swig of water, and promptly
retched them back up again.

‘Seriously,’
she mumbled angrily, unable to keep even a pair of pills down. She packed up
her rucksack and looked back up the road. That was the square, up there. The
sea of skins. The thought gave her a sick hollow feeling; a massive sadness.
Even worse that she couldn’t do anything about it. She was sure that if the
Ghosts were here, Will would’ve had them burning every skin they could find in
a huge bonfire. Except… the Ghosts weren’t here. They were gone. It was just
her. And after the kind of dreams she’d had last night, she just couldn’t face
seeing all those skins again. She just wanted to leave this city. She never
wanted to see this place again. She turned away from the street leading to the
square, and headed back down the road away from the centre. That was the road
to take now; the one out of town. Tabitha put her rucksack back on, picked up
her axe, and walked away.

38

Tabitha was a few miles
out of the city ruins by noon. She’d made her way out onto the main roads and
from there onto the silent motorway. She zipped up her coat against the wind,
glad of the warmth despite her smelly damp clothes beneath. She had a good view
of the city and the fields from the top of the motorway bridge. The whipping
wind blew the smell of human shit up from the sewage treatment works down
below. Far off to one side was a sprawling consumers’ paradise; a roofed
shopping centre the size of a town. Out in the middle of nowhere really, compared
with the jagged urban ruins far behind her. She’d been a couple of times with
her mum; it had a warm pull of the familiar about it. That would be her new
home, she decided, until she’d had a chance to rest and feed properly.

Tabitha
set off down the far side of the motorway bridge, doubling back on herself at
the turn-off. She headed for roundabouts and towering signs for big-name
outlets; studying the trees and office buildings for spiders that just weren’t
there.

There was no sign that the
aliens had come here to the shopping centre, but then there weren’t any cars
here either. No sign of people. The spiders would stick close to places with
people, Tabitha considered. No point them coming all the way out here when
there was no one around to eat.

Trudging
through acres of car park under a cloudy blue sky, Tabitha kicked a bloated
little packet of rain-soaked tissues across the tarmac to break the silence and
entertain herself. She pushed her hair from her eyes and studied the giant
entrance as she approached the shopping centre. Huge heavy shutters stood solid
behind the glass doors. There was no sign of entry, no evidence of looters. The
place just seemed to have been locked up one night and never opened again.
Tabitha slammed her fist into the doors, buckling the lock and shattering the
glass. She slipped in through the dented doorframe, cracking shards of glass
beneath her hard feet. She flicked her claws out and dug them in under the huge
metal shutter, and strained until the lock popped and the whole thing started
to creak and rattle upwards. She dragged it down shut behind her once she was
inside, just in case a spider should find the spot where she’d broken in.

She
was a dust-darkened wanderer in a pristine white palace, as bright and silent
as heaven. The colossal shopping centre was spotless, untouched; a temple to
everything the creatures didn’t need. Tabitha stood before a large map telling
her that She Was Here, and studied it carefully. Over on one side of the roofed
city lay a gigantic food hall. On the far side, past fake streets lined with
shops and lamp posts, stood a courtyard with an artificial sky. Tabitha’s dry
tongue felt coarse against the roof of her mouth. She’d run out of water on the
trek out of the city
.
She headed off for the pharmacy chain, and broke
in for a bottle of water from the stinking fridges. A few more bottles went
straight into her rucksack, and then she was off to find a place to nest down.

Escalators
stood frozen as she passed by streets of shuttered shops. She wandered down a
huge sky-lit corridor, damp and grimy against the shining white walls, watched
by staring statues. It all looked so beautiful; so untouched. A museum of the
mythical; white hallowed halls in some strange consumer afterlife. The bottled
water was a cool liquid bliss in her dry mouth. The sunlight spilled down
through the glass ceiling, flaring as she squinted up at it. Beautiful. The
warm clean feel of the light, the fresh cold taste of the water as she gulped
it down… she’d never felt this before. Transcendent.

The
corridor led eventually into the colossal main bulk of the shopping centre.
Tabitha couldn’t get over how clean it all looked; the invasion hadn’t happened
in here. Daylight flooded in through the glass ceiling and gleamed against shop
windows, pristine. Up ahead a giant fountain stood motionless, with a pool of
water still as a mirror. She came closer. Beneath the surface she saw a hundred
tossed coins, and thought how they’d never mean anything again.

‘Hello?’
she said, into the empty white street around her. She didn’t know why; she knew
no one was there. Maybe she just needed to hear a voice, after so much solid
silence.

‘What
did you wish for?’ she said, sitting on the edge of the fountain and looking at
the shiniest coin in the water. She dipped her hand in and tried to pick it up.
Her black fingers fumbled with the coin edges, trying to peel it off the floor
of the fountain. It felt like she was wearing gloves though; she couldn’t grip
it. Her fingers weren’t delicate enough
any more
.
These were hands for killing, hard and brutal. She took her black hand from the
clear water, and felt sorry that she’d even rippled the surface. The coins’
previous owners were gone now. She could at least leave their wishes to rest in
peace.

A
little later Tabitha could hear rain pattering on the glass roof over the
streets of shops. It was good, heavy rain. The kind that made her feel safe. It
reminded her of the days when her and mum would play board games, or read one
another stories that they’d made up. She’d always had such an infectious
giggle, her mum. Their laughs made one another laugh. Tabitha cried for a while
in the chocolate shop, picking out a few boxes that her mum would have liked.
She couldn’t get over just how neat and untouched everything was, as if all the
shops had been stocked up and left just for her. When she tried a chocolate
though, she coughed it straight back out. Of course she did. It was a moment of
fantasy.

Tabitha
put the best box of chocolates down by the fountain, a present to her mum.
Belgian ones; very posh. Mum would have loved them.

It
took Tabitha ages to fish the single penny out of the shop till. All the
checkouts must have been emptied before the place closed up. There was only a
dull old penny left, right at the back of the change drawer. Her new fingers
were hard and clumsy, and she was still learning to use them properly. After
several attempts, she’d managed to pincer the penny between her claws and
transport it carefully to her other palm. Victorious, she closed her hand
around it and headed back out from the checkout. She didn’t feel the penny slip
through her fingers; just heard its high ringing sound on the shop floor.
Tabitha sighed impatiently, watching it roll around her in a circle. She
stamped a black foot on it, and tried for a while to peel it off the floor.

‘For
god’s sake,’ she mumbled, kneeling down so she was eye-level with the coin.
Tried to edge her claws underneath it. It didn’t help. She slid the penny along
the floor towards the shop door, and tried to push it up against the metal
doorframe. That way she could up-end it, and maybe pick it up more easily. But
when she got there the penny just stubbed against the metal edge of the
doorframe, and half-disappeared in the gap underneath it. She growled in defeat
and punched a dent in the doorframe, looking around the shop. There were some
cards on the checkout. She pushed the edge of a card against the penny, edged
it out from the gap, and it popped up and stayed put against the card. Smiling
at her victory, Tabitha gripped the penny hard against the card and took it to
the fountain.

‘Well,
we got there eventually,’ she told her mum brightly, as she dropped the penny
into the water. She wished for her mum and dad to find one another up there,
whatever happened to people when they died. Even if there wasn’t a heaven, and
they only found each other again in her imagination, it was good enough for
her. She thought about her friends too, and Laika. Just like the cottage, this
looked like a good place to rest their memories. Down in the water in a shining
white palace, where the monsters couldn’t find them.

Tabitha gravitated
towards the big home store at the heart of the shopping centre. She pulled up
the shutter to cast a dim light on the tables, rugs and lamps inside. The smell
of air fresheners relaxed her as she wandered in. For a moment then she could
have been back in the real world; just another shopper looking for more crap to
fill her house with. Tabitha laid her axe down and pushed two big sofas
together at the back into a kind of walled nest. She’d tried the beds; her nest
was better though. It felt more natural. She was glad to leave her rucksack
down somewhere at last, and rubbed her raw shoulders where the weight on the
straps had been digging in. The backpack had weighed a ton ever since she’d
shouldered it again and left the city, but she knew it’d be worth the effort
when she got here. She pulled out a few two-litre bottles from the backpack and
lined them up on a table; each one filled with silver blood that she’d milked
from the monster’s corpse. Half a cupful would keep her going for three or four
days, she imagined, if she was strict on her appetite. If she could just have a
little when she was absolutely starving in need of it, she might even make it
last through the winter. She wouldn’t have to go hunting outside in the
freezing cold. She wasn’t hungry right now, but she could just take a tiny sip.
Just for the taste.

‘No,’
she told herself, taking her hands off the nearest bottle. The swirled silver
liquid was so tempting; pulling at her gaze like a glass of wine and a slab of
chocolate cake. She hid the bottles away in a cupboard, out of sight and
hopefully out of mind. She had to keep her thoughts off the stuff if she wanted
to make it last. Luckily there’d be plenty of distractions around here anyway.
After all, she was back in civilisation.

Heading out on a shopping trip through
the vast centre, Tabitha caught sight of a cookie counter and felt a deep
longing for something sugary. Never again. She sighed, and looked around at the
other shops. She definitely had some kind of craving though, and it wasn’t
pulling her back to the sweet counters. She was gravitating towards an
electricals
store.

Tabitha
pulled the shutter up and wandered into the gloom, browsing her way past
expensive speakers and games on sale. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was in
here, but she knew real cravings when she felt them. After all the changes that
had happened to her already she just went along with it. Her body had gotten
her this far; if her cravings pulled her over towards a rack of batteries down
the centre aisle, so be it. She took a nine-volt battery from the shelf and opened
the crinkling packet, and lifted the tip to her mouth. It felt nice, the sour
jarring jolt of electricity that pinched her tongue.

‘Ooh,’
she said quietly, savouring the taste. It definitely had something of a
silver-blood tingle about it. She touched the battery back to her tongue again,
and felt the volts empty into her body.

Tabitha
set down a shopping basket full of batteries on a couch in the bookshop and
went in search of a new read. Faced with the choice of thousands on the
shelves, suddenly the old rain-warped book she’d brought from the cottage
really wasn’t that compelling. For two blissful minutes Tabitha forgot the
world outside and browsed a hundred printed minds on the shelves. Her eyes ate
the blurb on the back of a recommended read, and she was into the first page
even before she’d sat down on the couch. Interrupting herself, she grabbed some
throws and cushions from the shop across the way. She pulled off her filthy
jumper and trousers and nestled back down under blankets on the couch, surrounded
by bookshelves. Burrowing her brain back into the book, Tabitha sank back into
a wall of cushions and curled her metal feet up under her bum. She sipped wine
in a metal cup from an outdoors shop, since the glasses she liked kept cracking
in her grip. Turning the page she reached over into the shopping basket for
another battery, tonguing the moreish tips while she read on. She drained the
charge from one battery after another, like they were chocolates. The wine did
what wine did best. The throws felt so soft on her arms and legs that she
wished the world outside would disappear, and just leave her in here for the
rest of her life. The handwritten review on the bookshelf was right; this
really was a good read. Tabitha slurped her wine as she devoured her book, and
plucked another battery from the basket as if she shouldn’t really. A tear
patted down on the page as the words tugged at her raw feelings. It felt nice
to cry over something fictional for a change.

Shaving was a joy;
after weeks of growth she’d never been so hairy in her life. Tabitha browsed
the shelves and used the best razor and shaving cream she could steal. The
stuff that smelled like it belonged in a five-star hotel. It felt good to have
smooth skin again. It wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but in some
small way she felt closer to a normal life. She fantasised about washing her
hair next; she couldn’t wait. Books, wine, body hair management… she was
feeling more civilised already.

After
the glorious tingly chill of a wet-wipe shower, Tabitha stood in front of the
shelves of deodorant for a while. She was faced with too much choice. Rank upon
rank of flowery tins of smell, dreamt up and discussed at length before they
were boxed up and marketed out. Driven all across the country and set out in
neat little rows for the discerning shopper. A bizarre state of affairs really,
now that she looked back on it. Tabitha stood and stared for a while, weighing
them up. Which tin of smell defined her best as a person? With a phantom feeling
of consumer glee she pulled the most expensive roll-on from the shelf. It felt
cold and slick in her armpits. It smelled like weird
cucumbery
flowers with a light dusting of sugar; an alien sweetness that she wasn’t used
to any more. She was used to the smell of sweat and sour damp, and there was
plenty of both in the grubby pile of clothes she’d left in the bookshop.
Sniffing her smooth perfumed armpits, Tabitha went to sit among the dim pearly
white of the makeup counters. She browsed the shelves for the best eyeliner and
the reddest lipstick she could find. She switched her borrowed underwear from
the cottage for a new black set, and decided to devote the rest of her shopping
trip to a new dress and shoes. Until she remembered, and looked down at her feet.
She wasn’t going to find any shoes to fit around those things. In a way though,
she supposed, her new feet looked better than any shoes ever could. They were
unique, for one thing. Lithe but solid; alien chic. Midnight-black and animal.
Her hands and feet were a statement. Not that there were many people left in
the world to make a statement to. But… if the only people left in the world
were the likes of Chris and Sylvia, or Major Blake and his doctor, she wanted
nothing to do with
people
any more. People could crawl away and die
screaming for all she cared. They had it coming.