Chapter Eight: Jennifer Richardson

He was all I ever thought about. He was my everything. My heart fluttered every time he looked at me. All I wanted was to impress him, but he never seemed to notice. He actually seemed to be irritated by it. It was so frustrating. I felt bad I had missed the fact he was impaled when I found him. I had only checked his pulse. He could be dead because of me, but fortunately I had the privilege of bandaging him up to make up for that. I had made my way back to the storage room to salvage anything more I could find, while Lisa looked in the wrecked skeleton of the bridge to see if Xero, the shipboard AI was still online. I was looking for some of the lab equipment that would be necessary for survival in the long term. I found the armored case of files containing blueprints for the equipment, which was fortunate, because the majority of the equipment was broken, the Bio-scanner being the only functioning tool. I got to thinking about everyone else. Was I the only one who noticed that Dr. Miles was the only crew member nowhere to be seen? Lorries, Taylor, Freeman and I had all been relatively close, and Lisa had been a short distance away, while Andrews had been up and walking when I had exited the ship with the first pack of medical supplies. I returned my focus to the task at hand and carefully maneuvered the dishwasher sized scanner down and out of the ship. I nearly dropped it a couple times, but I managed to keep hold of it through the process. Andrews and Dr. Miles could make good use of the scanner, so I knew they'd appreciate it.

I looked out at the wreckage, our makeshift shelters were shabby and looked unstable. Something odd caught my eye near the campfire. A patch of grass growing in the middle of the dirt, lush and green. It should have been torn up by the wreckage like everything else, because otherwise it would have had to have grown six inches in a day. As soon as I had the scanner resting safely on the ground, I made my way over to investigate the patch of grass, pulling my knife from my belt to get a sample.

Before I could get one however, the ground erupted in front of me, revealing a large, open mouth inches from my face. The dirt gave way beneath my hands and I let out a scream as I tumbled in. I was immediately squeezed by the slimy, warm throat of whatever had just eaten me. I desperately shoved my knife into the side of the throat, viciously wiggling it around to make room for my arm to do more damage. Once I did, I slashed and dug at it, my lungs burned because of the lack of oxygen, which made my struggle even more desperate.

Suddenly I was blasted with warm air as I was spit out, apparently I was more trouble than it was worth to eat. I wiped goop off my eyes before opening them, and sitting up. I found myself at the feet of Damian, Victor and Dr. Miles.

"Anyone got a towel?" I said, half seriously before Victor held out a hand and pulled me to my feet.

Dr. Miles scoffed haughtily, "It'd take more than that to help you hon."

I sighed and followed them back to camp, dripping with slime.