Leaving Laloup at the entrance, Alcouffe signalled to Tatou, who took point as they entered the darkness.
The tunnel descended quickly, the sloping ceiling passing beneath the canal. Water fell from the stonework above them, creating a stream that flowed into the depths of the earth. Ankle deep in the water, the cold penetrated Taine’s boots.
“I thought heat was supposed to rise,” Lompech grumbled under his breath. “The cold is seeping up from my feet. If we spend too much longer in this water, I think my balls will freeze off.”
Taine pulled the collar of his jacket closer as an icy drip trickled down his neck. He’d been in tunnels before, but something about this one was sending shivers up his spine. “What is this place?”
“A quarry. It’s where they got the stone to build the canal and the town. There are hundreds of tunnels down here; the town’s built on top of it.”
“Are there other entrances?”
“A few. The town barred them all up before I was born. After a group of teenagers got lost and died down here.”
“I guess that explains why the place feels like a crypt,” Taine said.
“Let’s hope it’s not ours,” Lompech Junior replied.
Jules turned the maggot specimen over using a stylus while Godefroi’s niece, Sandrine, steadied the dish. It looked like a hairy caterpillar. Jules prodded it again. The creature’s bristles shot up, sending out a spray of tiny filaments.
Startled, Jules jumped back, knocking over an open can of Coke and sending it spilling across the benchtop.
“Merde!” Sandrine yanked her hand back, and shook her finger.
“Did it get you?” Jules righted the Coke can. Black liquid dripped off the bench.
“No, it’s nothing. A shock, only. I did not expect it to move.”
Jules grabbed at Sandrine’s wrist, turning her hand over and examining her gloved finger. Barely visible, the tiny fibres clung like thistle fluff to the latex. A charge effect? Or were the quills barbed, like a porcupine’s, so they slid into a victim easily but needed three or four times the force to pull them out?
Carefully, Jules curled Sandrine’s glove off, dropping it into a stainless steel waste container. Taking a magnifying glass, she looked closely at Sandrine’s finger. A few fibres had penetrated the glove. Surely, the maggot quills were just for protection. They had to be too small to inject eggs? But the tip of Sandrine’s finger was already streaking red.
Sandrine paled. “I’ll rinse them off…”
“I think it’s too late.”
Sandrine used her free hand to point to the line of lab benches under the window. “Jules, the… tiroir… the drawer, three from the left. Scalpels.”
Jules ran, leaping over the puddle of Coke, to the drawer, ripping the packaging off a sterile scalpel as she returned. At the bench, she hesitated.
“We don’t have any anaesthetic.”
Sandrine shook her head. “My uncle said Benoit lost his foot,” she said calmly. “It’s okay, the scalpel—”
Jules didn’t wait for Sandrine to finish her sentence. She sliced the pad off Sandrine’s finger. Blood welled. Drawing in a breath, Sandrine grimaced. She let the wound drip into the specimen container for a few seconds, then closed her hand to stop the flow.
“I wouldn’t recommend taking to crime,” Jules said. “I think your fingerprint is going to be a dead giveaway.”
Sandrine smiled weakly.
“Let’s keep an eye on it for a bit. Where’s your First Aid kit?”
“There. On the wall.”
The kit included a box of Doliprane. Jules checked the side of the box for the active agent. Paracetamol. She handed a couple to Sandrine, then took out a gauze bandage and covered the wound.
“So how did you end up here teaching school, Sandrine? Most people can’t get away from their hometown fast enough.”
“Oh, I tried to get away. I got as far as Lyon. After my doctorate, I worked for a private research organisation: companies who couldn’t afford to set up their own laboratories outsourced work to us. It was a great – a lot of variety. I was there five years, but then, I didn’t get a good peer review. One of my male colleagues found my presence in the lab distracting.”
It was a story Jules had heard before.
Sandrine shrugged. “So I left and became a teacher. Now I am head of the science.”
“Top of the glass ceiling, then.”
Sandrine grinned. “Exactement. I have my own lab, and my students are wonderful.” She lifted the bandage and smiled. “And it looks like I still have all my fingers.”
“Let me see.” Jules lifted the gauze, and blew out a slow stream of air. The skin around the wound was pink and healthy. There were no signs of any burrowing maggots. Jules replaced the bandage, and taped it down. “We can’t keep cutting off bits of people who get infected. We need to find a way to stop them.”
“Maybe we can kill them with some kind of pesticide, but I suspect the sheath protects them.”
“Plus, spraying people with pesticide isn’t ideal.”
“That too.”
Jules took another look at the maggot.
Damn!
The Coke had splashed in the meat container, contaminating the sample.
“Careful,” Sandrine warned as Jules checked the maggot with the stylus, this time prepared for it to move. But the creature didn’t budge.
“Maybe the maggots don’t survive a long period outside a host?” Jules suggested.
“It’s easy enough to test that theory – we’ll use the maggots growing in the flap of skin you just cut off my finger.” Jules had to admit, the woman had sang-froid. “Unless it was the Coke?”
Sandrine frowned. “Cell rupture caused by phosphoric acid?”
“Or citric or carbonic acids. Or a combination of all three?”
“I don’t believe it. Surely, those acids are too weak to cause any real damage.”
Jules agreed it was unlikely. It was an urban myth that Coke could dissolve a nail or strip the enamel from a human tooth. But soda drinks were a recent invention, at least as far as the peluda was concerned. An urban myth to kill a myth? The idea was so far-fetched…
Jules stripped off her lab-coat, throwing it over a stool. There was only one way to check.
Sandrine looked up. “Dr Asher? Jules? Where are you going?”
“Back to the alley where the woman was killed.”
After descending for about twenty minutes, Tatou led them left into a tunnel while the water continued straight across into some culverts. At least now they were in the dry. They continued along the stone corridor until a large opening appeared, heading off to the right. A cavern. In Taine’s night vision goggles, the entrance resembled a colossal green and black maw.
They crept forward. At the cavern entrance, their backs against the rock, Alcouffe motioned to Taine that he should look first, pointing two fingers to his eyes, and back to the entrance.
Of course. Taine was expendable. Still, he may as well find out what they were up against. He took a breath, raised his weapon, and eased into the grotto.
Cripes. The cavern wasn’t man-made. Wreathed with rocky outcrops, it was hung with the same hairy crabs that had burst from Benoit’s mother’s stomach. Like fairy lights at the mall at Christmas, they were hanging from the walls, the roof, squeezed into cracks in the rocks, everywhere. The ground though, was littered in rubble, a mound rising in the centre, stark against a green background… Bones. Heaps of them, like waste from an abattoir. Taine identified a few skulls: rodents, dogs, sheep, horses, and human....