SNAFU: Unnatural Selection

by Christopher Golden

  “You are Sergeant McKenna of the New Zealand Defence Force, yes?”

  “You know me?”

  He waved his raised hand. “I looked you up. Made a few calls. I am Lieutenant Alan Alcouffe.”

  “Lieutenant? So those were your guys pointing bullpup assault rifles at me earlier?”

  Alcouffe shrugged. “Yes, we are armed. The gendarmerie départmentale is a division of the French military.”

  “Why am I being held?” Taine asked. Arnold wasn’t going to like this. Out of sight and out of mind, the major had said.

  “Because we need your help.”

  Taine shook his head. “Sorry, I’m off duty.”

  Alcouffe folded his arms across his chest. “Sergeant McKenna,” he began, while Godefroi translated for Lompech, “what we require won’t take long. A few days at most. You do not have to help us, but you should know that we have the right to detain any person suspected of terrorism for up to 96 hours...” His let his voice trail off.

  “Terrorism!” Jules said. “But that’s crazy. We’re not terrorists.”

  Taine took her hand. “I’m listening,” he said. The last thing they needed was be labelled as terrorists.

  Alcouffe smiled. “The woman you saw die in the street today,” he continued, “the thing that killed her was not… human.”

  Jules’ nostrils flared. “We’re well aware of that!”

  “And what do you think it was, Dr Asher?” Alcouffe said. “In your professional opinion?”

  Taine frowned. So Alcouffe had checked out Jules’ biology credentials, too.

  “It was some sort of parasite,” Jules was saying. “Like a wasp larvae or a flatworm, although I’ve never seen this particular organism before. Its use of a… um… human substrate might have been accidental, though. Tetanus is like that – normally a soil bacteria, but if gets into the human body by accident, say via a rusty nail, it can be fatal.”

  “Jules,” Taine said softly. “This wasn’t an accident. The parasite got in by injection. It was deliberate.”

  “Then, what are they trying to imply? That you and I injected that poor woman with the parasite? The boy, too? But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would we have helped them if we wanted them dead? And more to the point, what possible reason could we have for wanting them dead?”

  “We know it wasn’t you who killed her,” Godefroi said.

  “Good! Then we should be free to go,” Jules said.

  Alcouffe sighed. “Sergeant McKenna is correct when he says the killing was deliberate. But you are correct, too, Dr Asher, which is why we also need your help.”

  Godefroi nudged Lompech. The butcher stepped forward, holding a stainless steel meat dish containing the remains of Benoit’s foot, including the tiny needle.

  Alcouffe went on. “The woman was attacked by a peluda, a rare animal capable of shooting lethal quills. Village records show it’s not the first time the animal has appeared in the village. It came from the Huisine River—”

  Jules dragged her gaze from the shrivelled flap of skin. “Hang on, hang on, back up a bit. Peluda. Is that what la velue means? You can’t be serious. Isn’t that like a Greek manticore?”

  Alcouffe nodded. “Something like that,” he said slowly.

  Tugging at the hem of his jacket, Godefroi took a deep breath. “The peluda is a dragon, Mademoiselle Asher. It has appeared before, the last time killing seventeen villagers, including two children. We can’t let it happen again.”

  “But it’s a cryptid.”

  Taine arched a brow. She was speaking English and still he didn’t understand.

  “A cryptid is a myth,” Jules explained. “A creature whose existence is based on anecdotal evidence. Bigfoot. Chupacabra. The Loch Ness monster. There’s no hard evidence these creatures actually exist.” She turned to the others. “Surely, you can’t believe—”

  “What about a taniwha?” Taine said quietly. “Would that be a cryptid, too?”

  Jules eyes widened. She clamped her mouth shut.

  Taine looked at Alcouffe. “So, why us? You have the body, and the boy’s testimony – why not call in your military?”

  The lieutenant adjusted the cuff of his uniform. “I would like nothing better than to see a couple of Leclerc tanks roll in, a compagnie of soldiers, a batterie—”

  “You haven’t called it in, have you?” Taine interrupted. “Because you know they won’t believe you. A dragon who preys on women and children? You’d be a laughing stock. It’s a fairy tale.”

  Alcouffe ignored him. “Until we know more about the creature, we feel it’s imperative this be kept quiet.”

  “The villagers already know,” Taine said. “Today, at the café, they wouldn’t help.”

  “Legends and hearsay,” Alcouffe replied, stepping to the window. “There have been stories. But add a dead woman, and a lame boy, and people will want to know if there’s any truth to those stories. We’ll be overrun by tourists and sight-seers looking for fame and getting into danger.”

  Taine nodded.

  “How did you keep people out last time?” Jules asked.

  “The last time was five hundred years ago, Mademoiselle Asher,” Godefroi said. “There was no Internet in the middle ages. No mass media. We posted people at the outskirts of the village and had them tell visitors we had the plague. It was close enough to the truth. Nobody came.”

  Taine’s mind raced. Armies dealt in hard intelligence. Facts. The French army would fling any report about a dragon back in Alcouffe’s face. The lieutenant had no choice but to protect his community with the resources he had available. It was a choice soldiers knew well enough. But as far as Alcouffe was concerned, Taine was expendable. Deniable. Taine knew Alcouffe could pull it off, too. It would be simple enough for Alcouffe to suggest Taine had taken it upon himself – to avenge the French bombing of the Rainbow Warrior for example. A foreign national, a soldier and suspected terrorist, if Taine died – if anyone in the operation died – he was the perfect scapegoat.

  Taine’s grip tightened on the armrest. The safest option would be for him to sit quietly in custody for four days. Wait it out. Taine almost smiled. He couldn’t do it. Already, he was chaffing to do something. Sit on his arse in a French jail while someone else did the dirty work? Yeah, right. Defending lives was what soldiers did, what he did.

  Still, Jules didn’t deserve to be dragged into this…

  He turned to her.

  “I’ll be careful, if you will,” she said.

  Taine smiled. He should have known.

  Stepping away from the window, Alcouffe clapped his hands together. “Excellent!”

  But Taine wasn’t done with him. Getting to his feet, he stepped forward until his face was almost touching the lieutenant’s. “Yes, we’ll help, but I want your assurance that, whatever happens to me, when this is over, Dr Asher is allowed to go home.”

  Alcouffe’s gaze slid to the window.

  “Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, yes,” Godefroi said quickly. “Les assurances. You have them. Tell him, Alan.”

  Alcouffe turned back, his eyes narrow. “I give you my word.”

  Pushing to her feet, Jules smoothed the fabric of her shorts then took the meat dish from Lompech. “Right, if you boys are done proving who has the most testosterone, I’m going to need a lab.”

  Godefroi led her to the door. “My nièce is the chemistry teacher at the Lycée Robert Garnier,” he said. “She will show you.”

  * * *

  Taine slung the rifle over his shoulder. Fixing the radio earpiece into place, he looked around the room. Dressed in full riot gear, men were stuffing electrolyte drinks and cereal bars into their pockets. Taine did the same, also adding a bush knife to his equipment. Two M67 fragmentation grenades remained on the table.

  “You are familiar with them?” Alcouffe asked.

  Taine picked one up, testing its weight in his hand. “The New Zealand Defence Force uses them, yes.”

  “
Then they are for you. My men are not trained to use them.”

  Taine clipped the grenades to his belt. “When do the rest of your team turn up?”

  “This is all of us,” Alcouffe replied.

  “Five men to slay a dragon? No wonder you wanted my help.”

  The Frenchman glared. “Right now, three of my men are following the crab creatures through the pipes and waterways under the town. They volunteered for this task even though they risk being stung by barbs and eaten alive. They have no idea where the crabs will lead them, and no idea what they will find.” He took a step forward, until Taine could feel the man’s breath on his face. “They are some of the bravest men I know.”

  Adjusting the strap on his shoulder, Taine nodded. “Better one brave man than fifty cowards.”

  Alcouffe stepped back, studying him. After a moment, he gestured to one of the gendarmes. “This is Guy. He speaks English.”

  Guy stuck out a hand to shake Taine’s. “Guy Lompech, Sergeant McKenna. Enchanté.”

  Broad for a man in his twenties, something about the soldier struck Taine as familiar.

  Taine raised an eyebrow. “Lompech?”

  “Yes, yes, he’s the butcher’s son,” Alcouffe interrupted. “We don’t have time for aperitifs and chatting. This is Bruno, over there that’s Thierry, and the short one is Pascal Le Cannu.”

  Carrying a grenade launcher, Le Cannu acknowledged Taine with a handshake. “My tailor is rich,” he said, grinning.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “My tailor is rich. Le Cannu is learning English,” Lompech explained.

  “Oh, right.” Taine smiled at Le Cannu. “That’s great.”

  “Please, how do you call this?” Le Cannu said, patting the weapon at his hip.

  “A grenade launcher?”

  “Grenade launcher, yes. I have the grenade launcher,” the gendarme said in halting English, the word grenade more like gargling than speech.

  Taine gave him the thumbs up. “Very good.”

  It was: a grenade launcher was what was needed for killing a dragon, although how useful it would be in a tight space was debatable. But there were no others available, so Taine would have to make do with the hand grenades. About the same firepower, less to carry.

  Alcouffe went on. “Only Lompech speaks English. The rest, no. Or only a few words. You’ll have to use hand signals.” The lieutenant broke into French. Taine heard his name, and the words soldat néo zélandais…

  “Are you familiar with le clarion, Sergeant?” the butcher’s son asked. Taine’s confusion must have shown because Lompech tilted his head towards the rifle. “Le clarion, the bugle. It is what we call the FAMAS.”

  Taine checked the gun over. Safety, single fire, automatic, and a tiny trigger guard which meant gloves were out of the question. New Zealand’s Steyrs had a larger guard, but maybe its penetration was superior to the Steyr. Taine hoped so; seeing as they were off on a dragon hunt. He pointed to the trigger. “Squeeze this here?”

  Lompech chuckled. “That is all you need to know.”

  One hand on his earpiece, Alcouffe help up a hand for silence. “It’s Tatou. They have found something.”

  Twelve minutes later, the soldiers had gathered on the outskirts of town, nine of them now, including Tatou, Rossi and Laloup. They were standing knee-deep in the canal at the entrance to a tunnel disappearing into the wall. Blackened and slick with slime, the opening was gated with a solid iron grating, now hanging on an angle, the lock broken off.

  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.