Tabitha by Andrew Hall Page A

haunted stare.
    ‘I just saw my
brother die, before you found me,’ he said, hoarse voice trembling. He clamped
a bloody hand over his eyes, sobbed for a moment, and wiped the tears away down
his dusty cheeks.
    ‘I mean, what is
this?’ he said, looking around at the shattered world. ‘Is it punishment from
god or something? They’ve killed everyone! What are we supposed to do?’
    ‘I don’t know,’
Tabitha mumbled quietly. Hesitating, she put a grey hand on Dev’s shoulder as
he sank down to his knees on the road. His sobs clashed against the silence and
the peaceful birdsong. The sky was a gleaming blue. Towering clouds shone white
in the sun. Their world had ended; Earth had carried on as if nothing had
happened. The thought struck her then, a hard grim revelation. This was a new
world now. And it wasn’t one that tolerated weakness. Every gap and shattered
window could have a spider inside it, waiting for its chance.
    ‘We should get
moving,’ she said softly. Tabitha stamped her own raw grief deep down. Buried
it under a good layer of grit, to dig up later when she could afford to. If
they both fell apart now, the world would soon finish them off.
    ‘Come on,’ she
insisted. She took Dev’s hand to pull him to his feet. ‘It’s dangerous here. We
should get going.’ Dev stood up, wiped his bloodshot eyes, and nodded sadly.
    ‘Where to?’ he
said, his voice thick with grief. Tabitha looked around at the world, and tried
to think where they could go. She glanced down again at the cuddly toy in the
puddle. She picked it up, wrung the grimy brown water from it, and sat it
upright on the kerb to dry in the sun.
    ‘We’re going to
look for survivors,’ she said. ‘Then we’re going to get out of here.’
     
    They walked on in silence for a while,
keeping an eye on the walls and windows. The only sound was their footsteps in
the eerie silence.
    ‘Tell me more
about what happened,’ said Tabitha, leading the way down the high street. ‘That
satellite fell down on the shop back there, so what else?’
    ‘There was a
plane,’ Dev replied quietly. ‘It just… dropped out of the sky into the sea. We
could hear the survivors, screaming in the water. Something was eating them.’
Tabitha glanced at him. He stared blankly down the road as they walked.
Haunted. ‘The street lights all went out, and then all the cars wouldn’t
start,’ he said, frustrated. ‘Nothing worked . Our phones didn’t work.
TVs and radios didn’t work. There weren’t even any police. Then the next thing
we know, the army turns up.’
    ‘What happened
then?’ said Tabitha.
    ‘We were all
standing outside after the power cuts,’ he said, shaking his head. Choking up.
‘It was pitch black, nobody could see anything,’ he was sobbing. ‘Those spiders
came out of the dark, from the beach and... all we could hear was screams, and…
things just falling out of the sky.’ He looked a million miles away, wiping
away his tears.
    ‘Jesus,’ Tabitha
mumbled, giving the sobbing man a hug. He smelled of dust and sweat. She looked
around at the ruins of her home town, and let Dev let go first. He nodded his
thanks for the hug, and wiped his tired eyes with dusty hands.
    ‘So what about
the army?’ she asked him.
    ‘They got
butchered like the rest of us,’ he replied, sniffling. ‘All their night vision
and stuff, that all stopped working too. There wasn’t much of a fight. It was
just screaming, all night. The morning after, there was no one left. Just me
and my brother walking through town, and five or six people we saw down the
street. They didn’t see us. But we couldn’t shout to them, in case the spiders
found us.’
    ‘How have you
survived?’ she asked him.
    ‘Just hiding,’
Dev replied. ‘That’s all we could do.’
    ‘So you’ve not
tried to get out of town?’ she said, watching him wipe the tears from his eyes.
    ‘Yeah, we did
try,’ he replied, his voice faltering. ‘Ever since it happened, we