Tabitha (28 page)

‘Well,’ Will
began, thinking. ‘…We didn’t know these people,’ he said, watching the flames
grow. ‘But we know what they believed in. They believed there was something
left to fight for, even now. They wanted to bring hope to people, because they
knew how important that is. Hope only needs a spark to catch on, and then it
spreads. Like fire.’ Liv and Tabitha stood close by, watching as the flames
burned away the death and the rot. ‘When we took the guns off these people, we
carried on their fight,’ Will concluded. Smoke drifted up into the sky,
reaching for the white clouds above. The fire danced hypnotic on the moor. Will
turned away from the blaze, looking to Liv and Tabitha. ‘We need to carry on
what these people started. We need to give people hope. Like what we were
saying on the wall this morning,’ he said, nodding at Tabitha.

‘Why, what were
you saying this m-morning?’ said Liv, looking between them. They didn’t seem to
see what she was getting at with the question. Well, she couldn’t help but feel
suspicious of them. How many conversations had they left her out of, exactly?
She used to be the one he told all his plans to. It made sense though really,
Liv told herself. Tabitha was just a better catch. Stronger, prettier. What was
worse, neither Will or Tabitha had the decency to tell her what was going on
between them. She wanted the truth.

‘Well, we were
kind of just talking about how any of us could be gone tomorrow, so we may as
well… you know, just jump in and find people,’ Will said brightly. Tabitha
smiled between them. ‘I mean like, reach out to people, instead of just waiting
around being afraid,’ he said. ‘And just live every day like it’s our last, you
know? And build a new life together?’ Liv nodded, and felt her heart break. She
knew what he was getting at. She should have told Will sooner about her
feelings for him. Or told Tabitha. Now she’d never get the chance again. Will
and Tabitha smiled at one another, just to rub it in for her. Will couldn’t
understand why Liv looked so sad about the idea of heading out to find
survivors.

‘I mean, don’t
you agree?’ he asked her with concern. She’d always been the one supporting
him; why did she seem so down? Was she finally sick of risking her life for his
crazy ideas? ‘Liv?’

‘Yeah,’ she said
quietly, looking down at the ground. ‘I understand.’ What more did he want from
her? Her blessing? So good of Tabitha to keep quiet and let him do all the
explaining, like she wasn’t even a part of this. Maybe he just preferred quiet
women like that, who’d just stand there looking pretty.

‘Look,’ said
Tabitha, pointing behind them. There was smoke drifting up from a distant fire
across the fields; a winding black trail springing up into the blue sky.

‘They m-must have
seen our smoke here,’ said Liv, trying to bury her feelings. She wondered if it
was her stutter that put Will off.

‘It can’t be
more than a couple of miles away,’ said Will, watching the distant smoke with a
kind of reverence. Liv and Tabitha headed back to the car; Liv took the
passenger seat while Tabitha sat down in the back and reached for her assault
rifle.

‘Do you
th
-think we’ll have some trouble?’ said Liv, looking back
at Tabitha as she clipped on her seatbelt.

‘Just being
prepared,’ Tabitha replied, checking the bolt on her rifle. ‘There’s always
spiders somewhere.’

‘I didn’t m-mean
the spiders,’ Liv mumbled quietly.

‘Sorry?’ said
Tabitha, leaning forward to hear properly.

‘Doesn’t matter,’
Liv replied, looking out of her window. Tabitha went back to checking her
rifle.

‘I can’t believe
it,’ said Will, nodding to the distant smoke as he sat down in the driver’s
seat. He slammed the door shut. Tabitha winced at the hard bang; a pet hate of
hers.

‘Let’s go!’ he
said, and promptly stalled the car in his rush to get off. ‘Sorry,’ he
chuckled, restarting the engine. ‘Right.’ They took off down the dirt path that
led back to the country road, and raced off towards the distant sliver of smoke.

‘Hello?’ said
Will, approaching the farmhouse cautiously. Liv and Tabitha followed behind
him, keeping their rifles aimed at the house. The smoke had been rising out of
the chimney; a thick black column that spoke of desperation. Whatever they’d
been burning in there, it didn’t smell as clean as wood. Will had parked the
car close by, in case they had to make a swift exit from the place. The fields
around shone green in the sunlight. Sparrows chirped and fluttered in the hedge
as they made their way closer to the house.

‘Keep your guns
up,’ said Liv, looking in at the dark windows down her rifle sights. She’d
already come too close to a spider yesterday. At least it had sharpened her
wits, though. Now she wanted to be ready for anything.

‘And watch out for
any dogs around,’ said Tabitha. She thought back to the wild pack, and their
jagged clamping teeth on her flesh. She wished that Laika was here with her.

‘Hello?’ Will
repeated, trying the handle on the front door. It opened soundlessly, and gave
way to a gloomy wall of thick stale air inside. Tabitha followed Will as he
went in through the porch; she looked over his shoulder at a dark old living
room inside. The floorboards creaked beneath a worn carpet.

‘God,’ said Liv,
cringing at the smell when she stepped into the house. She took one last look
outside and closed the front door behind her. Better to be stuck in the house
with a couple of lurking spiders, than have a whole horde of them following
them inside.

‘Is anyone
here?’ said Tabitha, splitting off from Will to try upstairs. The old steps
warped and creaked under her boots.

‘Be c-careful,’
said Liv. When she stepped into the kitchen, a dirty saucer cracked beneath
Liv’s boot. As she turned around to look down she accidentally knocked a jar of
mould off the counter with the barrel of her gun. It shattered on the tile
floor in a puffing cloud of spores. Liv sighed and stepped away, clearly
terrible at following her own advice. ‘Actually, forget being careful,’ she
told them, aware of the sour powdery smell of spores. ‘Let’s just g-get a move
on, before we catch something.’

‘Definitely,’
said Will, scouring the living room with a look of distaste. He used his rifle
to poke a crumpled newspaper to one side on the carpet, revealing a dry pile of
shit beneath. A door creaked open at the far end of the living room. Will
turned around in shock and pointed his rifle at the figure that emerged.

‘You’ll have to
forgive us our current circumstances,’ said an old lady, stepping into the
living room. ‘We’ve only been here for a day and a night. I assure you that the
mess in here is nothing to do with us.’ She was upright; well-spoken. Her wavy
grey hair reached down to her cardigan collar. There was a keen, sharp look
about her that hadn’t dulled with age.

‘Are you
alright?’ said Will, lowering his gun as she came into the room.

‘Fine, thank
you,’ she said politely. ‘Just old.’ She came to stand by the crackling fire,
warming her wrinkled hands. ‘Welcome to our little piece of paradise,’ she told
them.

‘Have you c-come
far to get here?’ said Liv, noting the woman’s accent.

‘We’ve come a
long way,’ she replied wearily, with a tired nod. ‘We haven’t eaten in days.
So, as soon as we saw your smoke over the hill, we got the fire going. And then
we just hoped you’d be the kind of people we actually wanted to come and find
us.’

‘I’m sorry,
who’s
we
?’ said Liv.

‘The gang,’ the
woman replied with a smile. ‘I’d better introduce you. I’m Sylvia, by the way,’
she said, shaking Will’s hand. A girl screamed upstairs. There were sounds of a
struggle.

‘Tabitha?’ Liv
called upstairs.

‘That’ll be the
gang,’ said Sylvia, rushing past them up the creaking staircase.

‘She’s breaking
my hand!’ said a middle-aged man, who’d grabbed at Tabitha’s gun and was paying
the price for it. A young woman had her hands wrapped around Tabitha’s other
arm. A little boy and girl stood terrified in the corner.

‘Stop this!’
said Sylvia, running into the bedroom. ‘She’s here to help us! They all are!’
but as Paul and Natalie let go of the woman, Sylvia felt a doubt crawl down her
spine. The strange woman looked wild. Tense and angry, like a cornered animal.
A tangle of red hair hung over half her face, brighter than the paint on a post
box. Her eyes were unnatural; not brown or green but a stark, vivid gold.

‘Who are you
people?’ Sylvia demanded, edging away towards Paul and the children.

‘What do you
mean?’ said Will, coming to stand by Tabitha.

‘There’s
something… weird about her,’ said Sylvia, glancing at Tabitha. The old woman stood
between the strangers and her family, barring the way.

‘Hey, I’m right
here,’ said Tabitha, rubbing the redness on her arm where the girl had gripped
her. ‘I know, I look a bit strange. But I promise, I didn’t mean you any harm.’

‘You had your
gun pointed at my kids!’ the man growled, pushing past Sylvia to square up to
her.

‘You just
shocked me when I saw you! I’m sorry!’ said Tabitha, throwing her hands up. ‘We
thought this place was full of spiders when we got here, didn’t we?’ she said,
looking to Liv and Will.

‘That’s right,’
Will added. Liv was nodding.

‘You just
spooked me,’ Tabitha told the family. ‘I didn’t know what to expect when I came
in here. I’m sorry.’

‘Daddy, she’s
got funny eyes,’ said the little boy. Tabitha looked at him and saw how
frightened he was, clinging on to his big sister’s coat. Watching him stare
only made it worse, though. When he hid away from her completely, it broke
Tabitha’s heart. The man and the old woman still stared at her like she was
dangerous.

‘We should get
you guys b-back to the castle,’ said Liv, stepping in. ‘It’ll probably take two
trips. We won’t fit you all in the car at once.’

‘You’ve got a
car?’ said the man, turning from Tabitha to Liv. ‘How? How is it working?’

‘Well, we’ve got
Tabitha to thank for that actually,’ said Will, smiling and putting a hand
around her shoulder. Liv glanced at them together. ‘You know what, I want to
straighten this out right now,’ said Will. ‘This here is the nicest woman
you’ll ever meet. She’s had it hard. And yeah, she’s gone through a few
changes, so she looks different. But trust me when I say that she’d never want
to harm anyone. Never.’ Tabitha looked up at him and smiled. Liv’s heart sank.
If there was some small part of her still holding out for Will, that smile between
them was all the proof she needed.

‘I think we all
need to get to know each other a bit better,’ Will told the family. Sylvia and
the man still looked defensive though. The kids still looked afraid. Tabitha
couldn’t stand their staring. Like she was a monster. She had to do something.

‘Here,’ she
said, offering the man her assault rifle. Will wanted to stop her, but thought
better of it. Tabitha looked into the man’s weary eyes. He wouldn’t take it.
She watched the surprise on his thin weathered face as she pushed the gun into
his hands.

‘I know you
attacked me to protect your kids,’ she told him. ‘And I defended myself because
I was being attacked. Now if you don’t like me, or you still don’t trust me,
all you have to do is pull the trigger. Any time.’ She stood there and looked
into his tired eyes, wide with uncertainty. But the rifle stayed where it was,
cradled in his hands where she’d put it.

‘…I don’t want
to,’ he said awkwardly, handing the rifle back. ‘I don’t like holding this.’

‘Neither do I,’
said Tabitha, taking it from his hands.

‘Let’s g-get out
of here,’ said Liv, looking around at the gloomy bedroom with its old damp
wallpaper. ‘No offense, but this p-place is really depressing.’

‘I couldn’t
agree more,’ said Sylvia, leading them out of the bedroom. She threw Tabitha a
cautious glance on her way out.

Will and Liv tore off down the road back
towards town, with the man and his three children in the back of the car.
Despite Liv’s offers, Sylvia had insisted on staying back to wait for the second
trip. She and Tabitha hung around in the farm house in the pale milky light,
waiting for Liv and Will to come back and pick them up.

‘You’re new
around here too,’ Sylvia observed, watching Tabitha from the kitchen. There
wasn’t any warmth in her tone towards her. She eyed Tabitha with a cold hard
look, arms folded defensively.

‘What makes you
say that?’ Tabitha replied, picking up a handful of red embers from the
fireplace.

‘You look like
you’ve seen more than they have,’ said Sylvia.

‘You mean I look
old?’

‘No.
This
is
what old looks like, dear,’ she said, pointing at her own face. ‘You look
wary.’

‘Weary, you
mean?’ said Tabitha.

‘I meant what I
said,’ Sylvia replied shortly. ‘
Wary.
Like an animal. Doesn’t that
hurt?’ she nodded at the embers, glowing red hot in Tabitha’s hands.