“A delta-P (ΔP) incident describes a critical situation where a marked pressure difference exists between two confined spaces, threatening to trigger a sudden and violent movement of matter from the high-pressure area to the low-pressure one if the barrier separating them fails or is opened. This abrupt transition can generate devastating forces, capable of causing irreversible damage or even instant death for anyone nearby.”
“I'm going to cut my balls off...” Alain thought as he listened to the pounding rain hammering the roof of the ambulance. His head was buried in his massive hand, uselessly massaging his temples that threatened to explode if the pelting of drops on that damn sheet metal didn't stop soon.
“Come on, for fuck's sake, let me handle it, damn it!” his colleague cursed from behind the wheel of the stationary vehicle.
Alain raised his head, about to ask him to repeat - it was hard to hear him under the racket of rain on their truck, and those damn BEEPS from the heart monitor were giving him a migraine - but his brain managed to decode just as he opened his mouth. He looked for a few seconds towards the windshield, observing the dancing shapes through the water spurts that the wipers were struggling to clear: they were facing an old, half-demolished brick wall that almost surrounded the isolated old wasteland where they had stopped.
He thought he heard the guy lying in front of him grunt, which snapped him out of his moment of absence. He hesitated to unplug the heart monitor, but decided to raise his voice instead:
“I already told you, we give them twenty minutes! You know that, for Christ's sake!”
“You and your rules...” Jovian lamented, eyeing him through the rearview mirror.
“Rules are what separate us from murderers!” he retorted. “If this poor bastard can't survive twenty minutes in the ambulance, they couldn't have done anything at the hospital anyway!”
“Seriously! Your damn conscience...” the driver shot back, turning towards him. “Look at his age! We're taking a burden off society if we do this! And if he survives the twenty minutes, then what? We rush to the hospital? And our money, gone? I need that cash, as much as you do, you know that, right?”
Alain shook his head in disapproval: it was already extremely risky to hide out with a dying man in the middle of nowhere, so if they started smothering him with a pillow, giving him a shot full of nice round air bubbles, or even if they had a heavy hand with the morphine, how long before they got caught?
“And besides,” whispered a voice in his head, perhaps his conscience, if he had any left: “you're not really killing them. It's just natural selection, sorting. Yeah, like the nurse at intake, doing triage, 'put him in intensive care!', 'him, a bed in the hallway', 'her, straight upstairs for an x-ray!'. If the sick can't fight for twenty lousy minutes, then they wouldn't have made it on the operating table. You're saving the taxpayers money. And you're making a little on the side, of course, but nothing's free in life.”
“He's still got five minutes,” he stated firmly over the barrage pelting them from the gray sky.
“You're such a pain in the ass...” the other mumbled.
But they didn't have to wait that long: just moments later, the dying man let out a final death rattle, muffled under the din of the storm, and the heart monitor flatlined.
“About fucking time!” Jovian exclaimed.
Alain turned red with anger hearing this remark: he wanted to grab Jovian by the collar, insult him, hit him, but he held back: he had thought exactly the same thing.
“You calling the family?” his colleague pressed on.
The corpse in front of him was that of an old man who had apparently had a heart attack less than an hour ago. It was his wife who had called emergency services, and Bianca had answered: as agreed in these situations, she had paged them and given them a half-hour buffer before logging the call in the system. When they'd arrive at the hospital with a stiff, no one would question them. Anyway, they were all already swamped, the beds were all full to bursting: Alain was sure that in these cases, they were rather relieved. They'd each get their cut, as agreed, but it was always the one who called the deceased's family who got the round-up of the loot. Again with his damn rules...
He pulled his phone from his pocket without bothering to answer him, and dialed the number Bianca had given them, as agreed. The old woman picked up on the first ring, which made his heart clench:
“Mrs. Aubry?” he asked.
“Hello? Yes? Who's speaking?”
The trembling voice of his interlocutor tightened his stomach.
“I'm a doctor at the hospital, ma'am-”
“What's that?” she interrupted. “I can barely hear you!”
He looked up: the downpour was still in full force with no sign of letting up, resonating throughout the cabin.
“I'm sorry,” he resumed, lowering his eyes back to the corpse, “the signal isn't very good in this wing of the hospital. It's about your husband, I regret to-”
“Oh my God!” came the heartbreaking voice. “It can't be! Oh my God...”
“I regret to inform you that despite all our efforts, your husband did not survive a massive myocardial infarction. There was nothing we could do in the state he was...”
He stopped mid-sentence: it was pointless, she wasn't listening anymore. He could barely hear himself speak, between her hysterical crying and what the clouds were pissing down on them. He let her catch her breath, trying to ignore his teammate's heavy gaze. He remained stone-faced as he heard her blow her nose, cry again, then sniff loudly, before finding another tissue. He waited for her to start controlling her sobs before starting the important part:
“Ma'am, once again, my deepest condolences, please know that your husband did not suffer, the end was peaceful for him. Now, I know this isn't the best time, but we must move on to discussing the funeral arrangements. We need to transfer the body to the funeral home as soon as possible for hygiene reasons, you understand? Had you and your husband discussed end-of-life preparations?”
“What?” she croaked, incredulous. “I don't understand...”
“Great,” he thought, “I can sell them the whole package...”
“If I may,” he continued, “I know a very rigorous and respectful funeral home, we can take care of the details for you, ma'am.”
“I... no, listen, I can't afford... Can I see him first? I need to think... Lord, I never imagined having to think about all this so soon!”
Alain gritted his teeth: when they had arrived at their house, he had quickly inspected the old place and had doubts about the depth of their wallet, but he had hoped they might have some wads of cash hidden under their pillow. Usually, they offered to cough up at the first phone call, already talking about selling the car, or even the house, but this case seemed poorly set up.
“Do you have any family we could contact?” he tried. “Children, perhaps?”
“No,” she sobbed, “it's just us... Even the house is rented, what am I going to do?”
He held back a sigh: what were they going to be able to squeeze out of them? Their commission was already miserable, considering the risks they were taking, so when families took the bare minimum service at the funeral home, it barely covered the gas for going off route. Couldn't Bianca find a filtering system too? Spot the numbers coming from rich neighborhoods?
'You live', 'You live', 'You die'...
He saw his partner making big gestures out of the corner of his eye, asking why things were going south. He tried to ignore him and fixed his eyes on the body right in front of him. He stared blankly at the oxygen mask before interrupting the widow's sobs:
“Listen, if you're short on money, and you hadn't prepared for this tragedy, I can offer you an alternative that won't cost you a penny.”
***
Alain was daydreaming in his car, watching the sun slowly set through the clouds still heavy with tears. He had turned off the ignition of his old car a good five minutes ago, trying not to hear the rain that was now just a whisper. However, he wasn't yet ready to cross the white gravel driveway to his house: it was his only break of the day, and he knew that the moment he opened the door, he would be assaulted by a whole other range of problems to deal with. He sighed, squinting at the fiery sky, promising himself he'd get off his ass at the first appearance of purplish lights reflecting on the drops on his windshield, when a shrill ringtone made him jump:
“Hello?” he growled, bringing his phone to his ear.
“Alain!” came a voice from the other end of the line. “How's my favorite poker partner doing?”
“Well, well, well…” he replied, “if it isn't good old Romuald. It's not often we hear you in such a good mood. You must have something to ask!”
“What are you on about!” the other retorted, feigning outrage. “I'm just checking in on you! How are you?”
“Better than yesterday and worse than tomorrow,” he said sarcastically.
“Good, good! How's work? Did you finally get that well-deserved promotion?”
“Here we go,” Alain thought. “What are you trying to pawn off on me this time, you bastard?”
“Romuald, cut the crap. Tell me what you want so I can tell you to go fuck yourself.”
His interlocutor burst out laughing, then resumed in a serious tone:
“I've got a little one-day job for you, it's at the Luminous Lagoon-”
“No,” he cut in.
“What do you mean, no? I haven't even told you about the job! It couldn't be simpler!”
“I know damn well what it'll be, and the answer is no, Romuald.”
He felt a surge of anger overwhelm him, and he realized he was gripping the steering wheel with his free hand as if trying to strangle it.
“Just a tiny dive, that's all!” the other continued. “You're the only one who can handle it, you know that! That's why those idiots will pay you a fortune! It can be done this Sunday...”
“Romuald?”
“...plus, this time I'll come with...”
“Romuald?”
“...you, like in the good old days. You'll make two months' salary in a single day!”
“Romuald?”
“What!?”
“Are you finished?”
“Uh... Yeah, I've...”
“Then go fuck yourself.”
And he hung up.
He got out of his car, now furious: why did he have to call him? That clown had really pissed him off, on top of an already particularly shitty day. He crossed his yard, passing a wheelbarrow full of water and now unusable sand: he had started building a small wall a few weeks ago, but the next day the first cloud had appeared on the horizon, and since then he had never been able to come home with dry pants. He took off his shoes before opening the door - he could already imagine the scolding that would ensue if he dirtied the house with muddy footprints - and entered to leave that damn rain behind him. At least, until tomorrow morning.
“Dad?” a voice immediately called from the kitchen.
He didn't have time to answer before a small shadow pounced on him; not a goblin, no, but a little brunette head.
“How's my little doll?” Alain exclaimed as he let himself fall to the floor under the assault of hugs from his only daughter.
“How many lives did you save today, Dad?” she responded enthusiastically.
Alain remained silent: not because he was looking for an answer, he had learned to lie in eight years of marriage, but because he was listening.
“Are you okay, Camille?” he worried.
The kid was breathing hard, more than usual, it seemed to him. He stared at her, slowly transmitting his growing fear. Was it because she had run to meet him? Kids that age could jump around all day without getting tired, real nuclear batteries...
“How long have you been out of breath?” he asked. Then, he raised his head towards the stairs and shouted: “LÉNA!!”
Camille jumped back and her worry threatened to turn into tears.
“Don't worry, sweetie,” Alain whispered, taking her in his arms. “Did you have a stomachache today? Any unpleasant sensations, or fatigue?”
She shook her head, buried in his shoulder, but that wasn't enough to reassure him: “Kids that age are supposed to be healthy,” he grumbled.
They heard footsteps rushing down the stairs, and Léna appeared, a look of horror on her face.
His wife, who was about to celebrate her forty-ninth birthday for the second time, was the elder of the couple; yet, she had the physique of a forty-year-old. She hadn't gained a size since they had met, a little over fifteen years ago, and she had started dyeing her hair at the first appearance of white: sometimes, he wondered if it wasn't stress and worry that were eating her up. He had let worries whiten his skull without flinching for the past six years, since they had adopted Camille.
“Bad pick, you moron...” a voice in his head said, and he bit the inside of his cheek to punish himself.
“What's going on?” Léna inquired.
“Did you notice anything unusual today? Disorientation, fatigue, confusion?”
She froze for a few moments, her eyes blank, probably trying to recall each of her interactions with her daughter.
“No...” she finally replied hesitantly. “Well, I don't think so...”
Alain sighed and turned his attention back to his daughter: apart from her wet eyes, she looked fine. Her breathing seemed normal. He placed his fingers on her wrist: her pulse was regular.
“She's fine,” he finally said, “I must have worried for nothing.”
He kissed Camille on the forehead and went to embrace his wife: he noticed her dark circles barely concealed under her makeup, and suddenly the fear he had felt for his daughter faded to give way to anger, which must have been his default emotion.
“Tough day?” he thought bitterly. “Too many files to sort at the mayor's office, while I risk my fucking life to provide for us?”
He felt he was about to say something stupid if he stayed near her any longer, so he excused himself, grumbling that he had to feed Tom.
He crossed the kitchen to get to the garage, grabbing a can of cat food on the way. He skirted his wife's yogurt pot, a small city car a bit more recent than his wreck on wheels but so slow that it had to gather momentum to climb the hill that separated them from the city center: they used to have a superb convertible back in the day, which he had bought thanks to his underwater diver bonuses. But that was ancient history: sold for half price to pay the hospital bills.
“It's not the kid's fault...” he said out loud, startling himself.
So why was he angry?
He leaned over the old metal bowl and opened the can, which immediately attracted the animal still soaked to the bone.
“I know damn well why I'm angry.” he thought. “Fucking Romuald...” he added aloud.
He had known that guy forever, it was him who had initiated him to scuba diving: he found him the construction sites, provided him with the equipment, and all he had to do was jump in the water and work. Back then, he loved it: alone in the darkness of the ocean, time and the universe stopped. It was like being reborn with each descent into the obscurity. He didn't feel the crushing weight of thousands of tons of water above him, on the contrary: he felt like he was floating, as if in a bubble. He left his worries on the surface and felt like a new person, a pure being - not the one he had become since he had hung up his gear and was killing retirees to ensure his own. It was his world.
If he had given up his job, it wasn't because of Camille, it was long before that. It was because of what had happened. Or rather, what hadn't happened to him. It was Romuald who had called him that night: he had his head in the toilet, the day after his bachelor party. He knew he was going to abuse the mixture of pastis and Get 27, so he had refused the job - who cared, because he was getting married, and he already had enough money to show off to his in-laws. At the time, he often worked with the same team, but they had to do without him this time to weld the feet of an oil platform. In the morning, they had descended to three hundred meters deep – “It's three hundred fucking tons trying to flatten you,” Alain often explained, “and you can see as much as you would up an asshole!” - and while the future groom was still vomiting green in the early evening, the team had returned to their lodging for the night: a ten-ton steel tank with three tiny rooms, located on the oil platform. The installation allowed divers to work several days in a row under the same pressure conditions - thirty-one times the earth's atmosphere - without suffering from decompression sickness: indeed, since the human body is mostly made of water, it is very difficult to compress it. Only air bubbles, like the nitrogen we breathe thanks to oxygen tanks, are compressed and dissolve in the bloodstream. If the diver resurfaces too quickly, the small bubbles regain their initial size and can kill him instantly. Thanks to a pressurized air bell, they could ascend from the deep-sea construction site to the oil platform and their pressurized living quarters to rest and resume work without going through ‘decompression stops’ which consist of ascending very, very slowly to the surface so that the gases evacuate naturally through the lungs.
Except that none of them would resume work the next day: no one knew exactly what had happened, and no one will ever know. The team had come up with the bell, had moored to the chamber, and then, poof. The chamber wasn't pressurized.
The air from the bell, compressed in a capsule thirty-one times too small, was put in contact with a tank and air thirty-one times less tight. All its contents were transferred to the chamber through a fifty-centimeter diameter pipe in less than a tenth of a second.
Including the divers.
Alain thought about it every time he poured the cat food into the bowl.
Tom rushed to the slimy mush, and the sound of lapping made Alain nauseous.
He thought back to the Luminous Lagoon: it was a thermal resort for the rich, located by the sea. It offered services each more stupid than the last, like seawater baths. These idiot tourists paid their spa entrance to relax in a seawater pool.
By the sea.
The city also pumped water to desalinate it and send it to the drinking water tower. But those pinheads, to save pennies, had requisitioned a pipeline system that once served to transport oil inland. He himself had cut the pipe, a hundred meters from the coast, and the seawater treatment system shared it with the spa. Except that these financiers couldn't see beyond the end of their noses: even if they had saved on the pipeline installation, the pipe was ten times too big for their use, and the pumps were too specialized: after seeing Romuald's first maintenance bill, they had decided to do without maintenance and pray that they would never break down. Except that, if that asshole was calling him, it was because a part had probably given up the ghost.
“Two months' salary in one day.” he had told him.
Even if he needed money, the mere idea of putting on a diving suit again made his balls shrink: he preferred his lucrative activity in the ambulance.
“Life’s a bitch…” he said to Tom who was now grooming himself. “I'd like to be able to lick my own asshole sometimes too.”
Outside, the rain intensified, as if the sky itself was tearing apart. Alain paused for a moment, observing the deluge through the small grimy window of the garage: in all the time he had lived here, he had never seen a storm last like this, pulsing from fine drizzle to furious downpour. The drops drummed against the roof with an almost personal fury, as if the heavens were sending back his anger. A shiver ran through him, not from cold, but from a diffuse sensation, a premonition that something was brewing.
He wanted to go back inside, gulp down some pastis until he could hear nothing but the blood pounding against his temples, when his gaze was drawn to a dark stain spreading in the corner of the wall. He wanted to take a closer look, but that corner of the garage was nothing but a sculpture of useless junk and tools threatening to collapse. He didn't know why, but his heart started beating faster. He wanted to step over the half-finished bowl, but he sent the bowl flying with a clumsy heel: he received a splash of cat food on his leg, and he couldn't suppress a gag as he imagined the ground mixture of flesh and brain stuck to the walls of the pressurized chamber, on the oil platform.
“Fucking cat,” he growled.
He moved a pile of tires, grunting, and squatted down - his knees cracked like two gunshots - to inspect. He had barely touched the wall with his finger when he recognized what it was: mold. His anger rose a notch, and he let out a curse that was muffled by a blood-curdling scream:
“CAMIIIIIIIILLE!!!!”
***
The universe was spinning in slow motion around Alain. From the corner of his eye, he could see his wife, almost frozen in time, screaming into her phone as she tried to remember how to make a call; yet he couldn't hear a single sound coming from her mouth. On the tiled floor, Camille was clawing at her throat until it bled, her eyes rolled back; that, on the other hand, he could hear clearly, deep within his skull. A high-pitched, irregular whistle, like a kettle about to explode: the sound of her breathing penetrated him so deeply that he felt his eardrums might tear. But his eyes were fixed on something else, right next to his daughter's head: a puddle of vomit. He could see its contours with incredible clarity, and he was simply hypnotized by the contrast of colors against the cold, white tiles. He could almost distinguish, or imagine with his eyes, a wisp of smoke rising from it.
“Metabolic crisis, old chap. Hospital, now,” said a voice in his head that went almost unnoticed.
But Alain didn't move. On the other side, Léna had finally managed to dial the emergency number, and he vaguely saw her lips moving; his eyes still riveted to the stain on the floor: he imagined the person who might be on the other end of the line: Bianca.
A scene unfolded before him, as if he were glimpsing the future while everything had stopped around him: he saw the paramedics take his daughter on the stretcher and shove her into the ambulance like a small loaf into an oven, while he was still motionless, unable to move. He saw the ambulance speed away from the neighborhood, sirens blaring, before changing direction and making a detour through the forest. The sirens would fall silent as the driver parked in the recess of the brick wall, driving over their still-fresh mud tracks: Jovian.
He would have a predatory smile on his lips.
“Are you going to give her twenty minutes, you bastard?” Alain thought. “Or are you just going to unbuckle your seatbelt, get in the back and put a pillow over her head?”
He now saw himself in the emergency room waiting area. Jovian slowly shaking his head in front of him.
“We couldn't do anything,” he would have said.
And then, that fucker would have handed him a card. Alain took it in his mind, and there, he even felt the contact of the cardboard between his fingers, the edges slightly sinking into his skin, it even hurt.
He saw the card of the funeral home they knew so well.
“Give her the premium service, Alain, you owe her that much.” Jovian's voice echoed in his head.
“Sorry man, we couldn't do anything...” the voice resumed, then burst into laughter.
It was the smell of vomit finally reaching his nostrils that gave him the slap he needed. Rage rose in him like water under pressure, and he leaped at his wife:
“NO!!!” he yelled, tearing the phone from Léna's hand.
She jumped, and her incomprehension turned to raw terror when she laid eyes on her husband: he was red-faced, eyes wild, and foaming at the mouth.
“We don't have time!” he managed to lie, “I'll take her myself!”
He grabbed his daughter and cradled her in his arms: time had started to flow normally again, and he realized that the little girl's chest was rising and falling at an alarming rate. He barked at Léna, an incomprehensible growl more like a rabid dog than a human, but she managed to guess that he wanted her to open the door. He rushed outside, while his wife grabbed the car keys, knocking over all the other key rings from the small clay bowl. He dashed down the now almost flooded driveway. The rain lashed them violently as if ordering them to turn back and return inside: the drops slapped Camille's now expressionless face, her eyes half-closed, cleaning the small orange trickle coming out of her mouth.
Léna overtook him and unlocked the car. She opened one of the back doors, and Alain gently laid his daughter on the back seat.
“Give me the keys!” he bellowed.
He stood up and snatched them from her hand. He went around the car and plunged into the driver's seat, barely taking the time to close the door behind him. He jammed the key into the ignition with difficulty, missing the slot twice while screaming obscenities. Meanwhile, the drops pounded against the chassis as if trying to get in, covering the sound of Camille's ragged breathing. He managed to start the car, and without thinking, he engaged reverse to back out of his driveway, nearly running over his wife. He swerved into the street, coming within inches of hitting the neighbor's car, and made the engine roar as he headed towards the hospital, leaving a bewildered Léna still in the driveway.
He left the neighborhood at seventy kilometers per hour above the speed limit, which would have earned him a place in the newspaper if he had crossed paths with the cops. He ran two red lights but had to slam on the brakes at the third when he saw a van coming: the rain, like a malevolent entity, had poured a layer of water on the asphalt, and he had to swerve when he realized his brakes were simply useless on the slippery road. His daughter was thrown against the door, and he let out a scream of rage.
“Jovian, if you touch my daughter, I'll kill you!!” he yelled, completely mad.
He finally spotted the hospital in the distance, or rather luminous ghosts dancing through the increasingly thick curtain of water. He slammed his foot on the accelerator, and he realized he was still in his socks: who gives a fuck.
He took the path he knew so well, which he had traveled many times, but never with such urgency. The tires screamed as he crushed the brake pedal in front of the emergency entrance; he stopped ten meters too far, frightening a nurse on a cigarette break. By the time he got out and extracted his daughter from the car, he had already been joined by two alert staff members.
“Six-year-old patient, severe metabolic crisis. Affected by oxidative phosphorylation. Currently on Coenzyme, Carnitine, and Riboflavin.”
These words had come out of his mouth on their own, and he was completely dumbfounded. How was he able to be so detached while talking about his own daughter? He didn't even realize that the two emergency workers had taken Camille from his arms, and when he finally came to his senses, he was sitting in the waiting room. He was wearing his work shoes that he kept in his locker, and two hours had passed according to the wall clock.
***
Night had fallen for a good hour, the sun swallowed by the waters off the coast. No beautiful photo of a sky awash in fiery colors, no midnight swim under the stars: the daily execution had taken place in private, hidden from the world by a thick, gray veil.
Alain tapped nervously on his steering wheel, parked in front of a fence topped with barbed wire. He scrutinized the gate with its charming inscriptions such as ‘NO ENTRY’, ‘VIDEO SURVEILLANCE IN OPERATION’, and ‘PROPERTY OF LAW ENFORCEMENT’, his stomach in knots: this place scared the living shit out of him.
He had taken a winding dirt road that climbed along a hillside and had strayed from all civilization to reach ‘the farm’, lost in the middle of the forest. He wanted to restart his car and escape from here, return to the hospital and stay with his daughter for the night, but what the doctor had said kept playing on loop in his head:
“Camille is stable, but we'll keep her under observation for the night. She's out of danger, but the progression of her illness is worrying...”
No, not that. What came after, what he had said while averting his eyes and fiddling with his stethoscope:
“Alain, management has turned a blind eye for a while because you're one of us, but they're starting to pressure me to discharge Camille first thing tomorrow morning: the late payments... I'll do what I can to keep her a bit longer, but you need to find a solution quickly...”
But Alain hadn't taken it lying down: he couldn't remember the details, driven by a madness he didn't yet know he possessed, but he had a vague memory, tinted with a red filter, of screaming in the hallways until management intervened. He hadn't left before making sure he'd shared his opinion on how the big shots in suits had treated a patient, a parent, and an employee. And all of this, passing the message through an intermediary, a poor doctor who must have been on his second consecutive shift.
“Bunch of motherfucking sons of bitches in suits...” he muttered.
No, he knew he had to stay: it wasn't for him, but for Camille. If he wanted to catch up on his payments even a little, he was going to have to shake some trees. And even if it was the last tree he wanted to bark at, he didn't have much choice.
All thanks to Mrs. Aubry and her late husband.
He was jerked from his reverie when a beam of light blinded him through the fence. He blurted out an expletive, something like “fucking hell!” and the gate slowly slid open into the night. The light danced, inviting him to enter.
He got out of his car and slipped on his raincoat: the rain had calmed a bit, but it cast a mysterious and oppressive veil around him. He set off reluctantly, and his guts twisted into a new knot as he entered the confines of ‘the farm’.
“Alain!” called out a tall man with skeletal features, his face hidden by his hood and the dark, distorting mask of night. “Why such a late visit, at night? Have you come to see how our dear Mr. Aubry is doing?”
***
The man advanced with a nonchalant step along the rain-battered path, putting Alain's nerves to the test: try as he might to keep his eyes fixed on his boots sinking into the mud, it didn't stop him from seeing them out of the corner of his eye.
“Mr. Aubry has already found his place, but I'll surely have to bring him in if this deluge doesn't stop soon,” the other man said casually.
They continued to trudge through the field, laboriously approaching the large white building with barred windows. The curtain of pearls formed by the rain on his hood made the shadows of the night dance all around him, and he had to resist the urge to look up when he thought he saw movement in one of the cages surrounding them.
“Calm down, old boy,” he thought. “This isn't the time to lose your marbles...”
Yet, his stomach was tightening more and more.
“It's not that different from what you see in those fucking ambulances...” he continued in his head.
But he kept his eyes riveted to his shoes.
They turned right, following the path, now skirting the plot of land consumed by the forest: there, in the darkness cast by the wet branches, one could make out the contours of silhouettes, protected from the rain and prying eyes. The man pointed to a cage almost at their feet and seemed to be explaining something, but Alain wasn't listening: the pestilential odor of the black, swollen form under the iron bars had reached his nose, and he was trying his best not to vomit all over himself.
“Fuck, what am I doing?” he lamented.
They didn't have much farther to go: they had reached the pond – Alain felt his heart beat faster as he involuntarily visualized the two half-submerged cages with their overflowing contents – and they only had a few steps left to reach the lab.
“And here we are,” said the man, stopping on the path as Alain bumped into him. “Our newest resident.”
Mr. Aubry swayed slowly in a rudimentary cage with rusty bars, a few meters from them. With his whitish skin and still-hollow belly, he looked like a ghost from the hills. The rain trickled down his naked body to his feet, watering the grass a few centimeters below. The rope tight around his neck was tied to the horizontal bars serving as his roof.
Alain swallowed, his legs beginning to tremble: the corpse, apart from its typical scalpel scar from the forensic doctors, simply looked asleep. Nothing like the others on the farm, here for days, even weeks. One could believe he would open his eyes at any moment. That he would wake up, slowly raise his arm to point at Alain with his bony finger:
“Yes,” he would say, “it's him. He's the one who killed me! May he burn in hell!”
And suddenly, the sound of the rain seemed to stop and time froze. Alain's heart raced as he felt heavy gazes all around him. Accusing looks. He could almost see the empty eye sockets, blacker than night, glaring at him with rage and hunger.
“This one will serve as a study subject for my doctoral student,” announced the man, making him jump.
Alain snapped out of his stupor, mumbled gibberish in response, and they entered to take shelter in the forensic anthropology lab.
They hung their coats on the hooks under the harsh light of the halogen lamps. They were in a small room serving as a break room, and it was the only remotely cozy place in the building: there were a few photos, mugs or water bottles emblazoned with various exotic landscapes, and children's drawings taped to a small fridge.
“Can I offer you a coffee?” asked the man.
Alain, his eyes still on the fridge, remembered the time when the appliance had broken down for a good week and Byron had simply started storing his meals in the cold room at the back of the laboratory.
“No thanks, Byron,” he replied, imagining him stirring his coffee with a human bone.
The man, in his sixties, almost resembled the cadavers he studied on his operating table, with his pale complexion, balding head, and hunched back. Byron, in charge of the ‘body farm’, studied their decomposition under various conditions to assist law enforcement in their investigations. Some bodies were buried, others submerged, or simply deposited on the ground. However, they were almost all enclosed in cages to preserve them from rodents and various predators: only insects were welcome to aid in his research.
The mere idea that one could get up every morning to go observe increasingly putrefied bodies made Alain sick. And in a way, it scared him a little.
“And your doctoral student,” Alain asked in a low voice, “is she around?”
Byron simply shook his head and slowly crossed the break room to head towards a corridor. Alain guessed he should follow him – he had learned to understand this old eccentric over time – and they traversed the laboratory.
They first passed a small room resembling a control room: multiple dials and numbered indicator lights could be seen, used to monitor and record the temperature and humidity around the cadavers. They then walked along the analysis room, a large space plunged into shadow where one could make out autopsy tables, microscopes, and all sorts of intimidating instruments. To their left was the cold room.
They turned to finally stop in Byron's office: nothing more than a cubbyhole with a table, a chair, and a small bench where towers of books threatened to collapse and bury him at any moment. Byron sat at his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out an envelope which he placed on the desk.
“Here's for our arrangement,” he announced in a flat tone, “but it's the last one I can take.”
Alain's mouth went dry. He grabbed the envelope, a bit more roughly than he would have liked, and examined its contents: it was indeed the agreed sum, but the hospital bills were so high that it felt like he was holding mere scraps of scribbled paper.
“Am I really going to do this?” he thought. “Am I going to stoop this low?”
“Listen...” he croaked.
“I can't, Alain. Look at this rain outside: almost all my study subjects are affected. The last one was for my new doctoral student, who's going to do a thesis on ligature marks and bone trauma, and tomorrow morning we'll be struggling to find a place to bring him in somewhere, I know it.”
“No, you don't understand...”
“I told you, Alain,” he replied like a teacher with a difficult student, “they imposed a doctoral student on me, my budget is affected. I can't take out money as easily anymore. Moreover, this rain has been going on for days, and I already don't have room to shelter my current study subjects, I simply can't take another one for a while. You should-”
“I want more money,” he cut in severely.
Byron looked up and eyed him suspiciously. His eyes gleamed under the industrial neon lights, and Alain was all too aware of all the silhouettes of prisoners scattered across the fenced grounds. Byron understood what he was asking, no doubt.
“You've fucked up, you sad bastard,” he said to himself, blood pounding in his temples. “But it's too late to turn back now.”
He imagined Byron getting angry, jumping up and confronting him: all the cages on the farm would open, and his army of the undead would slowly march towards the laboratory. Would he end up in one of the cages, too?
“Don't lose your cool, old man...”
“I hear what you're asking me?” Byron said cautiously.
“Our arrangement isn't exactly legal,” he replied in a trembling voice unlike his own. “If I wasn't here to talk to the family, you wouldn't have any bodies, and no job. But you diverting part of your research budget to procure corpses, that wouldn't please your superiors. I need money immediately.”
He couldn't believe he had gotten himself into this situation: was he this desperate?
Byron stood up silently and positioned himself near the door. He replied with a calmness that chilled Alain to the bone:
“Alain, although I put myself in a delicate position to keep my job here, I'm not stupid. I have no proof, I don't know if I'm right, but I suspect something is going on with these corpses. Statistically, I've been receiving too many since you've been here. If my intuition is really correct, then it's an irony beyond words that I devote my life to helping solve murders; but retirement isn't far off for me, and my research will be what remains of me. In the end, I'm convinced that all of this will be justified.”
“You're right, Alain, if our arrangement were to be disclosed, my career would take quite a hit. But if I'm right, then you have much more to lose. You would end up in prison. So don't come talking to me about blackmail. I know what you're going through, I know your situation. So out of respect for your daughter's health, I won't say anything. A man must do what he has to do to protect his family. But I'm going to ask you to leave now, and to consider that our agreement ends tonight. I want nothing more to do with you.”
Alain simply lowered his eyes and let himself be guided towards the exit. But inside, his rage was boiling. Who did this asshole think he was? He wanted to grab him by the collar and stuff him into one of his fucking cages, in place of a stiff. He would come every Sunday to watch him rot slowly in the rain, with a few beers and his camping chair, until that son of a bitch turned back to dust.
“No, you bastard,” said a voice in his head, “it's you who should be put in a cage.”
“But I need money, damn it,” he replied. “For Camille...”
He took the path back in the other direction, this time alone; although accompanied all along by dead gazes filled with judgment.
When he reached his car, he had his phone to his ear, taking the rain while he waited for the ring. When his interlocutor picked up, Alain's voice had regained its confidence:
“Romuald, it's me. How much does that diver job pay?”
***
