Transformation: Moreton Scientific Investigation Series by Rob Nesbitt

Author:Rob Nesbitt [Nesbitt, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nezzy Design Publications
Published: 2024-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

Thirty-Seven

Watching the monitor during his late morning break, Bob French hoped a giant rat would appear, so he wouldn’t have to go down the vertical shaft into the maintenance tunnel. Ironically, Bob suffered from musophobia, and although it wasn’t the ideal occupation for someone with a fear of rats, Bob kept his extreme aversion hidden from his colleagues. He’d managed the phobia all his life, but the size of the new strain discovered in the sewers had him considering the unthinkable. After thirty-five years in the same job, Bob had never taken a day’s sick leave, but he was giving it serious thought, especially if one of the oversized rodents appeared on the monitor.

The remote sewer camera under Gore Road, just around the corner from where he was about to start, had recorded footage of giant rats. It made him go cold thinking about it, and after Ron Logan saw Bob’s video evidence, a full-scale cull had been carried out with bait laid throughout the local sewer network, killing several hundred normal-sized rats over the last couple of days. What if hideous mutations were still scurrying through the network, and what if the poison bait didn’t affect them as no large rat corpses had been found? Bob tried to stop thinking about rats crawling over him as it wasn’t doing his blood pressure any favors, imagining their large, pink-clawed feet digging in, razor-sharp teeth gnawing flesh, and worst of all, the tickling sensation of whiskers brushing against his skin. He shuddered from head to toe.

“Are you going to stare at that screen all day, Bob?” said Katie, one of the inspection crew, pulling on a set of waders. “If we’re going to get this finished before the rush hour, we need to get our skates on,” she said.

Bob sighed, opened his locker, and pulled out the sliding rack of kit hangers.

“You sure you don’t want me to come down?” said Ginger, a tall, thin lad with a shock of red hair who joined the department straight from college.

“I'd love to swap places with you, my old son,” said Bob with a grunt as he wrestled to get his feet into the waders, “but you know the score. Off limits to rookies. They’d have my guts for garters if you so much as put a toe down that access shaft. You’ve got the most important job, our surface man today, so no sloping off to have a sneaky smoke while we’re down there. Understood?”

Ginger nodded and took the chair in front of the monitor, pulling on the comms headphones.

With the body cams set to record and transmit and the remote sewer camera vehicle already lowered to the bottom of the shaft, they began the slow descent down the metal ladder linking the surface on Victoria Park Road to the large maintenance tunnel eighty feet below.

Two-thirds of the way down, Bob looked up.

“You okay, Katie? Why have you stopped?”

“I’m fine. Just turning my cap lamp on. Seems darker than normal down here.”

Bob looked down at the concrete platform at the shaft's bottom twenty feet below.

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