Power of Tension Blogfest

Check out the Power of Tension Blogfest at Cally Jackson Writes and Rachel Morgan Writes! I'm entering an excerpt from the middle of my hard SF/horror short story "The Rookery":


Danika pointed to something in the wall, looking at me pointedly over her shoulder. I recognized the crescent shape, the smooth bit of dome. Portion of an eye socket and skull. Human. And then we heard the noise and she snapped the bolt rifle up, ready.

I know. Hard vacuum. Sound’s impossible. Past the end of the wall and the opening it created, a hallway led off the great room toward a lonely emergency light by the airlock. Then a shadow moved in the light cast by the opening, and the noise started again.

A series of clicks, followed by a chorus of soft, crooning calls. Kee-ah, kee-ah. Two clicks, and the crooning stopped. Danika touched the stone with one hand and glided slowly toward the end of the wall. Her toes dragged, bringing her to a stop as she peeked around the corner, over the rifle’s sights.

“Payge,” she whispered over the intercom, “see where the hall is, there?” Indicated the next emergency light. “Gap’s about two meters. Come up here and on my mark, go. Don’t look, just go.”

Claire shot me a wide-eyed look. I crept alongside Danika and gathered up my feet underneath me, waited. When her hand moved, I kicked hard and shot across the gap between the brown wall and the stone hallway the ‘steaders had cut. I couldn’t help it, I looked as I went.

Too much to see in the second I saw it: a mass of slithering limbs, three small bat-winged flyers eagerly hopping and flapping, their reptilian, toothed jaws open in anticipation. Their tentacled master held a treat just out of their reach: a human arm, torn off at the shoulder.

Feedback welcome!

Got the Made of Awesome blogfest starting Friday too!