Serpent of the Abyss by S.J. Sanders
Chapter 7
Lori settled back on Vi’s bunk as her friend poured them each a shot of vodka.
“I can’t believe we’re breaking that open when we have to work tomorrow. I know we’re going to regret it. In fact, I’m hurting so much that I’m already regretting it,” Lori complained.
Vi laughed and handed her a shot glass. “We are celebrating. A couple of shots to toast your success isn’t going to hurt anything.”
Returning the smile, Lori accepted the glass and shrugged. “I guess I’m still trying to understand what the big deal is.” The bonus had been deposited by the end of the shift and the number of digits in the credits added to her bank had shocked her silent for a good twenty minutes.
“I don’t know the details either,” Vi agreed, downing her shot with a little salute. “But I do know what I heard from the rest of the crew. Corp is ecstatic. I mean, shit, it looks like the vein may run deep. They’re even talking of redirecting the excavator through our tunnel to see if they can cut a direct shaft down to it. Everyone is saying that this may be the largest deposit that they’ve found yet. That’s worth celebrating.”
Lori shook her head in amusement. “Where do you even hear all this?”
Her friend smirked and poured them each another shot.
“You know me. I am a friendly sort of person. It makes people chatty.”
“And do your dates realize that you are trying to weasel information out of them?” Lori teased.
Vi snickered. “If they are smart, they do. I’m not exactly subtle about it. Sadly, grunts don’t have access to the really good stuff,” she said before she tossed back her shot.
Lori murmured in agreement as she swallowed her own and grimaced. She waved her hand when Vi tried to pour another.
“I think that’s it for me. I prefer to be able to feel my head firmly attached to my neck when I wake up and not want it severed due to a headache.”
“Lightweight,” Vi observed, her smile widening as she screwed the lid back on with a regretful look at the bottle. “You’re right, though. We’ll save the serious celebrating for when we’re off rotation. Fuck, I can’t wait!” Vi flopped back to sprawl across the width of the bunk.
Lips curving, she stacked her hands behind her head and looked over at Lori. “Since we are on the topic of the upcoming rotation…”
“No, don’t say it,” Lori objected with a laugh. “I have no plans but to lie around in my pajamas, thank you.”
Vi groaned. “What’s the fun in that? You can’t just abandon me like this!” Her eyes widened, her bottom lip poking out ridiculously, making Lori giggle despite herself. “Come on, Lor, you have to go.”
Lori rolled her eyes and gave her friend a hard shake, making the other woman erupt with laughter. With a soft exclamation about having lunatic friends, she dug out her package of licorice ropes from her stash with the idea of ferreting out a sweet when the package was yanked out of her hands.
Staring at the blocky wording on the package that had barely changed in the hundreds of years the candy had been on the market, Vi wrinkled her nose.
“How the hell can you eat this? I didn’t know that they even still made this putrid shit.”
Lori snatched it back and immediately shoved a delicious black rope into her mouth. With the lingering sting of vodka, the anise flavor danced on her tongue. “It’s not putrid. It’s a classic, I’ll have you know.”
Vi let her tongue loll out in an expression of abject disgust. “Not everything ‘classic’ is good. Sometimes they just didn’t know any better—take it from a grunt who was raised on mostly old Earth castoffs. Trust me, that stuff should have gone out with the radio.”
Lori snickered and stuffed another in her mouth, enjoying the green cast rising in her friend’s cheeks.
“You’re going to psychologically damage me by making our dorm smell like we’re rooming with my grandfather,” Vi groaned as she picked up the nearest pillow and slapped it over her face.
Grin widening around the candy vine, Lori leaned forward to poke her friend when a sound in the distance made her freeze. Drawing up from a deep rumble to a piercing shriek, it came again, the layered sound loud and pulsating.
Flying off the bed, they backed away from their room’s outer wall. Their dorm being the closest to the dome’s outer barrier, the unrestricted view of M285 from their room that had excited Lori now left her feeling vulnerable and exposed.
Logically, she knew that nothing could get through the dome, but that message didn’t seem to get from her brain to the rest of her. Perhaps it was because the dome, for security reasons, wasn’t soundproof. The sound of late night windstorms was common, as well as those of animals calling to each other. But this was something else entirely. The piercing shriek of what could only belong to a predator—and a large one at that—sent a wash of cold down her spine.
It cut off, and Lori’s ears strained to catch even a hint of it as she stared at the fading violets in the sky, the sands meeting it darkening from red to deep hues of plum wherever the perimeter lights failed to hit. The automated lights had only cut on a little more than twenty minutes ago, and while they usually annoyed Lori when she tried to sleep to the point of sometimes being forced to lower her blast shields, she was very grateful for them now. Even with the lights, however, it was too dark to see if anything was lurking just beyond them.
Her skin prickled, and she exchanged a wary look with Vi.
“Maybe whatever it is has moved on,” her friend whispered.
Somewhere, someone or something screamed. It was such a wail of distress and pain that they both jumped and immediately dropped down onto the floor, flattening themselves.
“Oh, fuck,” Lori hissed, her heart fluttering in her ribcage anxiously. Despite the terror flooding through her veins, she couldn’t look away from the emptiness in front of her. Not when the first was joined with a second scream. Nor when a third and fourth rang out.
Vi’s hand curled around hers, her body scooting closer until they were huddled together as the terrible shrieks and screams blended into a symphony of horror. Thankfully distance blotted out any wetter sounds of flesh being torn apart. With those screams, her imagination was able to provide some pretty graphic possibilities of just what was happening. She imagined muscle and fat being shredded and ripped away, the heavy crack of bones.
When the screams faded and no further sounds came from outside, they eventually climbed onto the bunk, cramping together on one bed so that they could continue to huddle together as they stared out into the desert beyond the dome. Neither of them was able to sleep after that. Instead, they sat there, wide awake throughout the night, long after the last scream had faded away, until the morning light cut over the horizon.