Taine crouched, reaching for the woman’s pulse, but the café owner, more pastries in his belly than on platters at the counter, yanked him back. “Touchez pas, monsieur. Do not touch!”
Taine shook him off. “This woman needs an ambulance!”
“No one will touch her, monsieur. She is cursed.”
English. That was unusual. In Le Mans, on the tourist beat, most retailers spoke at least some English, but La Ferté-Bernard was small, just a few thousand inhabitants, and this café was mainly for locals.
“Did you not hear her say la velue?” The man spoke in gestures, too. “Can you not see le piquant in her back?”
Piquant? What’s a piquant?
Taine scanned the woman’s back. There, where red locks met the top of her sundress, a slender quill was embedded in her shoulder blade, the skin at the point bloated and red. Taine stooped to pull it out, then paused, his mind racing. Poison? That didn’t make any sense. This was France, the centre of civilisation and culture, not the African jungle. There were easier ways of administering poison than using a dart. Although darts mean the shooter had to be close…
Taine’s head whipped up. He checked the lane for the shooter. The rooftops. Trees. No one.
He turned back to the woman. Jules was bent over her, speaking softly.
“Touchez pas, je vous dis!” the café owner bellowed.
Ignoring his jabbering, Jules tilted her head toward the woman, the cheerful bob of her pony-tail incongruous with the gravity of her expression.
The woman’s skin rippled in waves as if someone was reading Braille from the inside. Foam bubbled at her mouth and dribbled onto the sun-bleached stones.
“What is it?” Taine asked.
“I don’t know. It’s… if I didn’t know better, I’d—”
With a rasp, the woman’s skin burst, splitting like an overripe tomato, grey-green pulp spilling onto the ground.
The remaining customers shrieked, all politeness evaporating in the late summer heat as they toppled tables and upturned chairs in their haste to get away. Serviettes fluttered. A can of Coke bumped across the path, dark liquid fizzing out.
What the hell?
Thousands of tiny organisms erupted from the corpse, the green mass swarming across the flagstones. Taine slammed Jules against the stone wall and out of way. The creatures scuttled towards the canal and over the edge. A few disappeared down a drain, dropping between the iron gratings. Within seconds they were gone.
Taine stepped back, releasing Jules.
Not poison then. “What were they? Some kind of crab?”
“It looked like… a crustacean of sorts,” Jules said, her voice shaky. “Oh my god, that poor woman. I think… I think she’d been incubating them. Taine, they ate her from the inside out, like wasp larvae gorging on a caterpillar.” Shivering, she wrapped her arms about herself.
Closing the distance between them, Taine held her, looking over Jules’ head at the woman’s body – now a carcass. Only skin and bone remained.
A movement caught his eye. A single spawn flopped in the puddle of spilled Coke, then stilled. Gently putting Jules away from him, Taine crouched to examine it. Smaller than a fingernail, it was shaped like a single fish scale and covered in hairs.
Footsteps.
Coming at a run.
The shooter? Taine spun, placing his body in front of Jules as a man dashed around the corner, a child in his arms. Spying the dead woman – more clothes than corpse – the man cried out, slowing and crumpling to his knees. “Non, non, non…” he babbled.
The café owner picked this moment to shut up shop, his belly wobbling as he hastened to wind in the awning. It closed with a snap.
“Hey,” Taine said. “You can’t just leave. These people need help!”
“C’est fermé,” the man said, slamming the bi-fold doors. It didn’t need translating.
Leaping forward, Taine grabbed the handle and shook it.
“Taine!” Jules called. She glanced at the child. At what he’d missed.
In the skin between the boy’s toes was a tiny quill. Who fires a dart that small? That low? And at a child?
Streaks of white were spreading over the child’s foot. Wormlike swellings snaking beneath his skin.
The man’s eyes boggled. He drew in a breath and lurched backwards, letting the child roll onto the path. “Non,” he breathed. “Non!” He scuttled backwards a few steps, then turned and bolted.
“Hey! Come back,” Taine shouted after him.
Jules grabbed Taine by the forearm. She’d gathered up the boy. “Taine. Let him go. Whatever these are, we need to stop them from spreading or we’ll lose him too.” She yanked the silk scarf from around her neck, handing it to him. “Use this as a tourniquet. Make it tight.”
Taine seized the gauzy fabric and tied it around the boy’s mid-foot, using a spoon to twist the fabric until the skin around it was white with pressure. The boy screamed. Jules held him tight.
“Sorry, kid,” Taine whispered.
He lifted the child out of Jules’ arms, their eyes meeting, fingers touching as they passed him. Then, hugging the boy to his chest, Taine ran. At the corner, he looked left then right, searching the shopfronts for the ubiquitous green cross that signalled a pharmacy. There were none.
Any other time they’d be everywhere.
Taine thumped the nearest door with his elbow. No answer.
He tried the next. Nothing. Had the curtains twitched?
Jules caught up.
“Jules, we need an ambulance, the fire brigade, an auto-shop, anywhere with a first aid kit.”
She was fumbling with her cell phone. “I’m looking… my French isn’t that good.”
It didn’t matter. Whoever Jules contacted would not make it in time. The boy was in danger of being consumed from the inside. In the few minutes it had taken reach the square, the boy’s toes had swollen to plump purple grapes, the skin stretched so thin it was almost translucent. Taine had to do something now.
There!
M. et Mme Lompech. Charcuterie-Boucherie.
It would have to do. Taine sprinted across the square and into the store, the door rattling behind him as it closed.
“Bonjour, mons—” said the wide-faced woman behind the counter. Taine didn’t wait for her to finish, barrelling past her into the rear of the store, where a man –presumably Lompech – was at work. Taine shouldered him aside, thrust the child on the bloodied butcher’s block, and snatched up a cleaver. The child squealed, and kicked out his feet, desperate to escape. Then, he caught sight of his foot. It was as ugly as an engorged leech, the grey skin mobile. The boy screamed again.
“Mais, qu’est-ce que vous foutez là?” the butcher shouted.
The wife appeared at the door, her eyes sweeping over Taine, the boy, and the cleaver. She started to yell.
Taine didn’t have time to explain, and even if he did, he didn’t know the words.
He raised the cleaver.
But the butcher wasn’t about to go down without a fight. Solid as a ship’s mast, and his face the colour of polished cherry, he lowered his shoulder, and charged. All it took was a neat side-step to send him sprawling. Lompech skittered into a sack of flour.
Taine turned his attention back to the boy. Raised the cleaver again.
“Non!” the wife shrieked.
Lompech was back on his feet, readying himself for another charge.
“Look, there’s no choice,” Taine yelled.
Lompech’s face hardened.