Roger could barely hear the sound of banging on his door over the sound of the Afrika Bambaataa he was blasting through his 100w speaker set up. Blasting some classic hip-hop vinyl was his favourite way of relaxing. He was far too young to have been around for Afrika the first time, of course, but his father had raised him on Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash and Kurtis Flow. He found it comforting to throw up a wall of noise like this. It isolated him from the stress and strains of the day job, but it also made him feel as though he was closer to his home and family, rather than marooned in a rattly rig off the coast of Antarctica. Eventually, during a break beat, he heard the banging on the door, and dropped the volume down before answering it. He was expecting Betty – the two of them often hung out after hours, smoking weed and watching movies – or the Captain, who liked his music.
Claire stood at his door. She’d changed into a pair of tight jeans and a white hoodie, and in her hand was a six pack of Red Stripe lager, the metal prickling with condensation. “I’m bored, I found this in the stores, and I heard Planet Rock. Cool if I hang out?”
Roger raised his eyebrow, but quickly smiled. “Yeah, of course you can. Everyone is welcome here; especially if they dig Afrika and bring beers.”
Claire danced past him as he stepped back to allow her in. The Captain allowed all of the crew to spread out across several rooms so that they lived in mini-apartments, rather than the single bed allotted to a standard oil rig crew, but this didn’t change the fact that some of the original build structure was rather cramped. Claire popped open a can of lager and passed another to Roger. He accepted it gratefully and laughed.
“You didn’t strike me as a hip-hop fan when I first saw you.”
“Oh? And what do you see me being into?”
“I dunno, man. Not this stuff, though.”
Claire threw herself down onto his couch and took a long drink of the Red Stripe. “I got in via Public Enemy and Run DMC and worked backwards.”
Roger sat next to her. “Ah, those guys are great. My Dad got me into Afrika. It was just always on, you know. I’ll have to tell him I met a fellow fan in the Antarctic.”
Claire laughed, and they chatted about music as the tarantula crawled out of her hoodie pocket, and across the floor toward Roger’s ankle.
***
Jazmin had been flicking through the options on the oil rig’s movie package when she heard the knock on her door. She was a little confused at first, then realised any of the crew could be stopping by to ask her to jump back on the clock. It could be something in the laboratory, or perhaps the spiders had resurfaced. She swung her legs down from her top bunk, dropping to the floor with a thud, and opened the door.
Betty, the short haired engineer stood there, leaning against the door frame. “Hey.”
“Uh…hey,” said Jazmin. “What’s up?”
Betty shrugged, and Jazmin saw she was holding a six pack of Red Stripe lager in one hand. “I was just bored, figured you might be stuck for something to do, as you’re finding your feet here…wondered if you wanted to hang out and do a movie? You like horror movies?”
“I…uh…sometimes. Sure. I’d love to hang out, but maybe another night. I’m really tired, this spider thing got me on edge, and I’m just looking to crash out, to be honest.”
Betty leaned in a little, and Jazmin wondered if this was more of a come-on than a social call. “Ah, come on. Just one movie, a couple of beers…I got a couple of bifters in my pocket, too.”
“I dunno, Betty. Like I say, I’m really tired. Give me a couple of days, maybe.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I appreciate the offer, I really do, but I’m just beyond tired.”
Betty shrugged. “No worries. I’ll see if anyone else is up and fancies it.”
Jazmin felt bad for rejecting the woman, and tried to kick some life back into the conversation. “So, what movies do you recommend?”
“You like horror movies?”
“Sure. Sometimes. I get scared if I watch them alone, though.”
“Best you save those for when you’ve got someone to cuddle up to then,” joked Betty with a wink, making Jazmin blush. “Ah, I’m just messing with you.”
“No, it’s cool. I’d like a movie night with you sometime.”
Betty nodded. “Sounds cool. Here.”
She reached back and handed Betty a joint from behind her ear. “This’ll help you sleep if nothing else. Don’t watch any scary movies without me, though. It sucks if paranoia kicks in. When I was sixteen I got way too fucking high and watched Poltergeist all on my own. That was a bad idea. When I had to go the toilet before bed, I kept my eyes to the floor so I didn’t have to see my own reflection in the bathroom mirror.”
“Why’s that?”
“You’ve never seen Poltergeist?”
“No, never.”
“We’ll make it the opening feature for our movie night, then. Anyway, it’s been good to talk to you. See you tomorrow.”
“See you.”
Jazmin locked her bedroom door and took the joint over to the window. Perhaps this and a gentle romantic comedy was what she needed.
The spider in Betty’s jacket pocket let out a hiss of dissatisfaction, and curled into a ball to sleep.
TWELVE
After the breakfast meeting, Captain Anna sat with her head in her hands. She had expected the vote to be a total landslide. Surely none of them could want more spiders running around. She thought that Cameron – for sure – would want to use the Prospero again, but that thing was his baby. He’d fire it up and play with it every day if he could. Both Betty and Roger had been in favour of another drilling, and they were the opposite of Cameron in terms of motivation. Another drilling meant more work for them, and they would normally do anything for an easy life.
Kurt hadn’t been so much of a surprise. He wanted more samples to play with. And Claire obviously hadn’t changed her mind from the previous day. So that had left just her, Jazmin and Bobby voting against another drilling. So, the next morning, the Prospero would once again go spinning down into the ocean to bring up god knows what sea monsters lay below.
She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Jazmin. “You okay?”
“No, not really. I’m sure it’ll be fine, though. I just…I didn’t expect this when I accepted the job, you know? Fossils, sure. Rocks that look normal to us but are somehow endlessly fascinating to Kurt and Bobby and Cameron – and, I guess, you – absolutely. Hell, maybe even oil, should we be so lucky. I didn’t expect monstrous undead spiders.”
Jazmin slid into a seat next to her. “We’re out on the frontier here. We shouldn’t know what to expect.”
“Yeah, I know. I just…I guess I expected the discoveries to be boring. And actually they’re terrifying. And now things are getting weirder. I honestly didn’t think Betty and Roger would want to go drilling. For them, the longer that goes between drillings then the happier they are. They only really have work to do every time we fire it up. Don’t get me wrong, when there’s work that needs doing, they do it and they do it well and they do a thorough job; but all the same, they’d rather there was no work to do and they could sit on their backsides listening to music and watching movies.”
“Does Betty seem to be acting unusual to you?”
“How do you mean?”
Jazmin nervously played with her fingers. “She, uh, came by my room last night. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was friendly, and kind of flattering, but it was just…I don’t think she’d said more than twenty words to me before now.”
“I see. What did she want?”
“I dunno. She made it sound like we could just hang out and watch movies, but there was definitely an undertone of something else there, if you follow me.”
Anna shrugged and took a sip of coffee. “Maybe she likes you.”
“Claire seems strange, too.”
“That she does.”
“The other day she was practically climbing th
e walls because she was so scared of the tarantulas running around. Now, she’s the one pushing the lead to light up the Prospero and potentially bring up a whole damned horde of the things.”
Anna rubbed her eyes wearily. “That I had noticed, too.”
“You think something strange is going on, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. Do you think that the Prospero could have brought up more than just the spiders?”
“How do you mean?”
Anna kicked back from her chair and started pacing the length of the table. “I don’t know. It’s just...everyone acting out of character so suddenly. Could some weird gas have been released when the geodes cracked, or something? I mean, carbon monoxide or something. Well, not carbon monoxide, but you know what I’m getting at right?”
Jazmin shook her head. “I’m with you that something downright weird is happening here, but I’m not sure it’s down to something like that. We need to talk to people, find out what’s going on.”
“You’re right. I’ll try and get a hold of Betty, see if we can have a word with her in my office. She’ll probably think I’m going to give her a scolding for trying to chat you up last night, so we may be able to catch her off guard.”
“Okay.”
***
Betty shuffled into Anna’s office, lit cigarette in hand. “You wanted to see me, Captain?”
Anna sat at her desk, playing with a pen. Jazmin stood just behind her, looking nervous. “I absolutely do, Miss Harper. Don’t panic, though. I’m going to see everyone today; I just want to do so individually, so as no-one influences each other.”
“Huh. Okay. What’s on your mind, Captain?”
“What’s your reasoning behind wanting to use the Prospero again?”
Betty looked confused for a moment before replying. “We need to bring up more of the geodes.”
Jazmin and Anna flashed a glance at each other.
“And why is that so important?” asked Anna.
“It’s why we’re here isn’t it?”
“We’re here to test the Prospero and to examine any rocks or other material it unearths. Why do you think the geodes specifically are so important?”
“Because of the spiders.”
“You think this is a case of animal welfare?”
Betty shook her head and her eyes glazed oddly. “I don’t know. Look, I just…feel…we need to bring up more stuff. What if the spiders we found are just the proverbial tip of the iceberg? We need to know what’s down there, Captain.”
Captain Anna walked around her desk and stood directly in front of the engineer. “What’s going on Betty?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s going on, Betty?”
“I told you: nothing. We’re here to do a job, and that’s what we should be doing. We need to bring up more of the spiders.”
“Bullshit. You’re bone idle, Harper. You don’t do shit unless you have to, and now you want to give yourself a shit ton of work so you can bring up a load of rocks you’re not interested in? I don’t buy it for a goddamned second. You don’t want to fire up the drill. You want to smoke weed and watch horror movies in your room until your shift is up.”
“I’m on a long shift. Nothing for me at home.”
“Whatever. My point remains. So, once again, who is ‘she’ and why do we need her so badly?”
Betty’s eyes glazed over, she balled her fists and thrust her face into Anna’s. “Go fuck yourself, Captain.”
Anna struck Betty across the face with a crack, and Jazmin gasped. “Stow that shit, Betty. Get yourself to your quarters. I’m calling an evac for you immediately. You’re obviously ill.”
Betty let out a strangled noise and reached into her pocket. When she withdrew her hand, Anna screamed and fell backwards. The vile, white tarantula on the engineer’s palm threw up its front legs and flexed its teeth in a show of aggression. It tensed its back legs and leapt onto Anna, crawling rapidly up her chest.
Acting quickly, Jazmin ran to Betty, span her around, and socked her hard across the jaw. Betty’s head snapped back then forward almost straight away, and Jazmin saw stars as the engineer connected with a headbutt across the bridge of her nose. Staggered, Jazmin grabbed Betty and threw her hard to the floor. She skidded and screamed as the bare flesh of her neck came into contact with the office’s electric radiator. She slapped a hand to the burnt area and looked around confused. “What? What the fuck?”
Anna screamed as the tarantula scurried up her chest and towards her neck. Grabbing hold of some papers that had fallen from her desk in the scuffle, she batted it away. It fell onto its back and skidded along the floor. Quickly righting itself, it ran across the floor back towards Betty. Betty let out a scream at the thing’s approach and kicked her legs out at it. In her panic she missed again and again, until suddenly – with a squeal and a crunch – Jazmin’s boot struck down and pulverised it.
Anna gasped for breath and pulled herself into a sitting position against the desk. Betty held her hand against the burn on her neck and groaned. “Where the fuck did that thing come from?”
Jazmin lifted up her boot, showing smashed chitin and a strange grey, black powder. She had been expecting goo and gore, but it was as though the thing had turned to a fossil again – it was just smashed rock on the inside. “You’re kidding right? What the fuck were you doing bringing that thing in here?”
“What? What do you mean? I didn’t! We were talking and then…did one of you hit me?”
THIRTEEN
Betty clambered to her feet, still rubbing the burned spot on her neck, Jazmin wiped her boot clean on the carpet, and Anna staggered to her chair as the three women tried to make sense of what had happened.
“Do you remember coming to my room last night?” asked Jazmin.
“Kinda. I mean, yeah, but…until you mentioned it, not really. It’s like you reminded me of a dream I had.”
“Did you see the spider go into your pocket?”
“What? No. Eww.” Betty shakily lit a cigarette. “I’m just glad that’s two down, two to go.”
“They must have some sort of mesmeric influence,” said Jazmin. “I mean, you don’t remember coming in here, you don’t remember visiting me last night, you don’t remember throwing the tarantula at the Captain?”
“I did? Uh…sorry about that.”
Captain Anna waved the apology away. “If this is true, then anyone else who voted in favour of using the drill again could be under the influence of the spiders. The spiders must want more of them up here, and the best way of doing that is to use the Prospero. That’s why so many people wanted to use it. Shit…so that means…”
“Who voted in favour of using it?” asked Betty.
Jazmin helped herself to one of Betty’s cigarettes. “You, Kurt, Roger, Claire and Cameron.”
“So all of them are under the influence of the spiders?”
Anna shook her head. “We don’t know that. They might just want to use the drill again for reasons of their own. Betty, what happened to make you come back to your senses? When we killed the spider?”
“No. I remember seeing Jazmin step on it. I don’t think that made much of a difference. It was…”
She rubbed at the sore, burned spot on the back of her neck. “When I hit the radiator. It was like a slap to the face, or being dunked in ice cold water. It just snapped me out of it. I remember clearly coming to the office because you called me…then everything is like a half remembered dream…then I burnt myself on the radiator.”
Anna rubbed her eyes tiredly. “I don’t want to go around the rig burning everyone who voted against my decision. That will look very bad on a CV.”
“We’ll try Kurt first. He’s a big guy, and once we’ve tried him, well…he might be helpful in snapping back the others,” said Jazmin.
Betty rubbed her face. “Seriously, did one of you hit me?”
***
Anna, Jazmin and Betty marched into the laboratory where Kurt
and Bobby were working. The two geologists were surprised to see them all together.
“Oh. Hello, ladies,” said Bobby, looking up from a microscope. “What can we help you with?”
“We need a word with Kurt.,” said Betty, lighting a cigarette.
“Uh, okay…you probably shouldn’t smoke in here, though.”
Kurt looked up from his desk and Anna and Jazmin straight away noticed the oddly glazed look in his eyes that Betty had had before attacking them with the tarantula. They heard Betty’s breath catch as she realised how she must have looked to them both. Anna crossed her arms and stood in front of Kurt.
“Why do you want to try drilling the area again?”
“We need to bring up more samples. Those other spiders are long gone by now. I’m sure there’s no danger.”
“I didn’t mention anything about there being any danger. How about I say okay but we hold off on it for a day or two? Really make sure these other spiders are good and dead.”
Kurt bolted to his feet. “No! You can’t do that! They need more of their kind. We need to rescue them now!”
Anna gave a nod to Betty and she stabbed down on Kurt’s hand with the lit end of her cigarette. Kurt yelped in shock and pain, grabbing his hand. “What the fuck did you do that for?”
“Kurt, how would you feel about holding off on another drilling for a few days?”
“Jesus, Betty…what the fuck? What? Why would I care about that? We’ve still got loads to do here. Those geodes have waited for a few billion years! What’s another couple of days?”
Anna clapped him on the arm. “It’s good to have you back, Kurt.”
***
“Jesus fucking Christ what the fucking fuck did you do that for?” demanded Cameron, clutching at the cigarette burn on the back of his hand.
“Tell us why you want to use the Prospero again.”
“Because it’s my life’s work? Jesus fuck, Captain…”
“You still want to use it?” asked Jazmin.
“Yeah, of course. I want to see what else is down there! Am I the only one who realises that we made a scientific and historical fucking breakthrough yesterday? And now you’re kicking in my door and burning me with cigarettes? What the hell is going on?”
Tempest Outpost Page 6