Read Online Tabitha by Andrew Hall - Free Book Online Page B

down. Burnt her fear to the ground. For
the first time in her life she was mad enough to reach out into the world and
destroy. Her brain switched off. Tabitha booted the gate open and ran at the
spider. It turned and pounced. She caught it, wrestled it to the grass. Slammed
her fist hard into its head with a jarring dent. Again. Stunned on the grass,
it screamed when she wrenched a leg away from its body. Tabitha felt her teeth
clenched so hard it hurt. She shoved the screaming struggling creature back
down to the grass and punched it again, pulling its claws away to tear another
leg from its body. When its needled tongue shot out from its mouth, Tabitha
gripped the stabbing tip and turned it. She pushed it, slowly, back through the
screaming creature’s body. Skewered it. She pulled the carving knife from her
belt, and punched the spider to the ground again before it could crawl away.
She sank her knife in deep while it screamed, and skinned it alive.
    A cold wind
stirred up as Tabitha left the front garden, and closed the gate behind her.
She’d mounted her kill on the gate spikes like a grizzly totem; a warning to
the rest. She’d ripped and peeled its silver skin away to reveal the fibrous
white flesh, like a shelled lobster. Tabitha took one last look at her mum’s
front door, and headed back down the road towards town. Grieving and
heartbroken in the lonely silent world; dead inside. Jen and Emma had to
be ok. They had to be. If they weren’t… she didn’t know what she’d do. Maybe if
it came to it she could take all those sleeping pills, like her mum said in her
note. Wait, how could she? She still had to survive, she convinced herself. No
matter what.
     
    Rubbish tumbled down the streets as
Tabitha walked back into town. She was numb. She felt nothing but a phantom
lump of nausea balled up in her throat. She wanted to run to John. But her ex
lived miles away now. With her. Izzy .
If they were still alive. The thought of John being dead hit her like a
ton-weight, and broke her heart all over again. Tabitha headed down a street
off the main road, looking around at total devastation. Rubbish rustled and blew
in the street. More skins too, tucked away on doorsteps or caught climbing in
through open windows. She headed on and knocked on the door of Emma’s flat. No
reply. Her phone still didn’t switch on. The door was easier to force open than
she’d thought.
    ‘Emma?’ she
called up the staircase. She didn’t need to walk into the flat though. An empty
arm hung loosely over the top stair, and the smell said the rest. Tabitha
collapsed into tears on the stairs. Dragged herself to her feet and ran
outside. It was a nightmare. It had to be. She was ready to wake up now. But
everything looked too real and vivid to be a dream. The sickness felt too real.
By the time she reached Jen’s house, she only had to peer into the broken
living room window to know enough. Tabitha crossed the road, leant by a lamp
post, and threw up on the street.
    She’d cried
until the tears stopped coming. Tabitha stared at the sky, stared at the sea.
Numb and torn up, alone in the silence. The breeze ran through her hair. A
carrier bag rustled and blew in the wind nearby, pinned to the street by a new
boxed-up clothes iron inside it. Probably dropped when its owner was running
for their life. Tabitha just stared out at the sea, looking without seeing. No
one to run to, nowhere to go. A ghost town all around her, murdered while she
slept. A dead world that didn’t make any sense. She leant on the railing and
looked out at the waves, as if they held the answers. She didn’t notice the
spiders creeping up around her until she turned back, and found herself
surrounded. The old Tabitha might have screamed and curled into a ball then.
But she’d been peeled raw, and there was a new Tabitha in there somewhere,
waiting. And all it felt was anger. Every cell in her new body said fight. When
the first spider pounced she punched a dent deep