Seed of Evil

by Greig Beck

  “Like your opinion on something, Doc.” Kehoe paused. “Where to?”

  “Where? Ah…” Mitch might have made them take it back outside but he could see the worry on the sheriff’s face. He looked around. “In the surgery room.” He went and pushed another door open, which had a steel bench inside and was a pristine white.

  Kehoe and Deputy Anderson carried the thing in and hefted it up onto the bench. Kehoe then flipped the cover back. He didn’t say a word, just looked from the thing to Mitch with his arms folded.

  “Holy shit.” Mitch lifted a hand to it, then stopped. He moved to a shelf and grabbed some disposable gloves, then tossed the box to Kehoe. He pulled them on and approached the thing.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Kehoe snapped on the gloves and went to the other end of the creature. He carefully reached along the spiked and splintery-looking neck and lifted something. Mitch craned forward and saw it was a dog collar.

  “I believe this is, was, Buford, Harlen Bimford’s faithful old hound.” Kehoe looked up. “It attacked him.”

  Mitch peered inside the shotgun wound in its side. He snorted softly. “Even the organs look petrified.” He looked up. “You said this thing was alive?”

  Kehoe nodded. “According to Harlen. It attacked him and he had to shoot it.”

  The sheriff peeled off his gloves. “Over to you, Doc.” He nodded to his deputy and they headed for the door.

  “Hey, wait a minute. You can’t drop this on me and then just back out.” Mitch began to follow them.

  Kehoe turned at the door. “You’re the coroner as well, Mitch. Plus, the closest thing we’ve got to an onsite forensic pathologist. It’s got to be you.” He went out. “Let me know what you find.”

  The door closed behind them and Shelly came in, watching them go for a moment. She turned. “I used to date Pete Anderson.” She dragged her eyes away from the young man to alight on the deformed dog. “What’s that?”

  Mitch’s sigh turned into a groan. “Right now? Just more work.”

  *****

  Mitch washed his hands, dried them on a towel, and turned back to old Buford’s body. He had needed to use an electric bone saw during the autopsy, and on completion still had no idea how a biological entity could reorganize itself so completely.

  Mitch suddenly had a hunch, grabbed the saw, severed the stomach and intestines, and set to opening the now leathery bag of a gut. He laid them open and sorted through their contents.

  “Phew.” He grimaced and held his breath as the gases rose from the pile—in amongst the mush was dog food, some of Harlen Bimford’s shirt, and also plenty of liquid. But there was no flesh in the stomach or the intestines that might have belonged to Hank Bell.

  He sighed. “So, I can rule you out as a suspect.”

  Mitch used a large syringe to take a sample of the liquid and placed it under his microscope.

  “Hmm.” He enlarged the view and adjusted the overhead light—sure enough, there were the tiny flecks of the flora he had seen in the water sample from the mine pool.

  “Well, well, well.”

  He looked back over his shoulder at the hound’s deformed body and remembered what his friend, Greg, had told him—that the people seemed to be undergoing some sort of transitional process. He continued to stare at Buford—was this the end stage? Or were there more changes yet to occur?

  Scientific curiosity gnawed at him. He wondered whether the animal had been up to the mine and had swum in or drunk the water. Or had he ingested the water flora somehow, somewhere else. Harlen might know, he guessed. Or he might not.

  A rustling from behind made him turn to see Willard the greasy black rat chewing on the edge of his newspaper. Willard stopped and stared back at him through the bars of his cage with tiny red eyes like polished glass.

  “Wasn’t my idea, buddy.”

  Mitch had come back into his office a few days back to Shelly announcing the rat had been caught. Thinking back now, he couldn’t remember whether he said he wanted him caught or caught and taken away. So the rat, Willard, had taken up residence. For now.

  Mitch continued to watch the little animal for a moment before he slowly turned to where he had set up his testing station and racks of test tubes. One of them still contained the greenish water he had collected from the mine pond.

  He turned back to the rat. “Hey, Willard, want to finally be useful and help me with a little experiment?”

  The rat stared back, its nose twitching.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” He crossed to the test tube rack and also grabbed up a small stopper. Crossing back to the rat’s cage, he used the stopper to draw up some of the greenish fluid and then squirted it into Willard’s drinking water.

  After a moment, the entire mixture was green, and the rat’s nose twitched as if it had a life of its own and soon pointed toward the water. Willard went and immediately drank some of the fluid.

  “Good boy.” Mitch smiled then quickly went to a notebook and jotted down some observations and the time. He turned, pulled out his phone, and took several pictures of the small animal.

  He pointed with his pen. “Okay, Master Splinter, let me know if there are any changes, okay?”

  The phone rang, and Mitch lifted it while keeping his eyes on the rat. “Mitch Taylor.”

  “Mitch, Greg.” Greg Samson didn’t sound his usual cheery self.

  “Hi, Greg, everything okay?” Mitch asked.

  “Hey, thanks for throwing me down the rabbit hole. By the way, I don’t care what you say, I’m coming to Eldon,” he replied.

  “What, why, what happened?” Mitch asked.

  “I did as you asked and made some gentle little requests into the CDC to some of my old buddies. I got a few documents, but for the most part everything is classified and well above my, or my contacts’, paygrade. But we did get some hits.” He scoffed softly. “You ready for this?’

  “Yes and no,” Mitch replied. “You’re scaring me but go on.”

  Mitch heard what sounded like pages being folded or turned. Then Greg exhaled.

  “Okay, they managed to obtain some research notes and photographs from the afflicted group that was brought in from Eldon, Oakland Count, Missouri, in August 1977…”

  “Wait, that’s what they called them? Afflicted?” Mitch asked.

  “Yep, it’s in their notes.” He went on. “There were eight families and several individual children whose parents had vanished. Plus, some adults with children missing and unaccounted for.”

  “Where are they now? Still there?” Mitch asked, intrigued.

  “Maybe they are, but there’s no record of where they were taken in any of the documents I was given. My contacts will do some more digging, but don’t hold your breath,” he replied. “Mitch, you remember when I said that the DNA samples you gave me exhibited something that might or might not have been transitioning from plant to animal or vice versa?”

  Mitch gripped the handset, hard. “Yes, of course. How could I forget?”

  “Well, that transitioning moved on considerably in these afflicted people. It was some sort of contagion that seemed to work on both the cellular and genetic level, altering the DNA structure completely. And Mitch, it does it at an unprecedented and escalating pace.”

  “What is it? Describe what you’re looking at.” Mitch felt his heart racing in his chest.

  “I’ve got photographs. Not great resolution given they were taken in the seventies, but at least they’re in color.” He sighed. “Jesus, Mitch, these poor souls, they aren’t even human anymore.”

  “I don’t… I don’t understand what that means.” Mitch felt a throbbing headache coming on.

  “There’s pictures of some of the kids here with things growing out of their backs that look like coral. Some look like small creatures covered in splinters, and others are just covered over in what looks like shell carapace,” Greg replied.

  “A nightmare.” Mitch straightened. “Exactly like Buford
.”

  “Who?” Greg asked.

  “A dog in town. It attacked its owner, and it had changed. It was deformed by all these extraneous growths, internally and externally.” Mitch tried to get his head around that alteration happening to a human. “Horrifying.”

  “Yeah, it is, but that’s not the worst of it,” Greg replied. “This is gonna sound crazy, but it looked like some of the adults were transitioning into, and I’ll read what they’ve written here: arboreal entities.”

  “Arboreal entities…” Mitch laughed but with little humor. “Trees.”

  “Mitch, I’m looking at the transitional pictures of humans that are turning to wood. And the last few pictures have notes attached that say the subjects were still alive. And the worst thing was they were carnivorous—apparently, they needed the nutrients from flesh and blood to survive. That’s your damn nightmare right there.”

  “Holy shit.” Mitch couldn’t get his head around it.

  “Hold a minute.” Greg sounded like he leaned away, then came back. “I’ve taken a picture of this last photograph and am sending it to your phone, right, now.”

  Mitch reached for his phone and in just another second it pinged with a message from Greg. He opened it, and before him was a picture of several people huddled together holding onto each other and between them fibrous-looking roots intertwining their group.

  On the face of the person closest, he could just make out the expression of agony or torment. It was as if they were all being trapped within this petrifying form for eternity, and they knew it.

  “I’ve seen this before,” Mitch breathed out.

  “Where?” Greg asked quickly.

  “The museum here in town,” Mitch replied. “Apparently, a group of these petrified statues were dug out of the mine or a tunnel offshoot, over 100 years ago. You know what? When I first saw them, I knew the details were too perfect.”

  “I want to see them,” Greg whispered.

  Mitch cast his mind back. “The museum curator thought that they were statues carved from some sort of unidentifiable petrified wood. And that someone had taken them into the mine or the caves there, long, long ago. But what if they weren’t statues at all? What if they were infected people who walked in there and spent the last days of their lives turning into these things down in the darkness?”

  “Mitch, that’s it, I’m dropping everything and coming over. This is the most confounding thing I have ever heard of.” Greg’s voice sped up. “We should also inform the CDC, and not just my buddies but the formal channels. Let them—”

  “No, we can’t.” Mitch sighed. “No CDC, not yet anyway. The mayor here is adamant we do not involve the authorities until we know more. He told me last time, in ‘77, it nearly devastated the town. Besides, there’s only been a few outbreaks, and we think we have it under control.”

  “Bullshit, we bring them in,” Greg urged. “They have far better resources than we do.”

  “They do, but we don’t call them in yet.” Mitch rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Just remember, this is my home now, and I’ve got to work with these people.”

  “Fine, I get it, you don’t want to lose your job. But I’m still coming over,” Greg replied. “The address you gave me for the medical practice you’re working at is all I’ve got. So, I come there first?”

  “I won’t be here,” Mitch said.

  “Okay, so, where will I meet you?” Greg sounded confused. “Don’t freeze me out of this, Mitch.”

  “No, I need your help. But we keep everything low key from now on.” He turned away from the desk. “I need to see an expert, and someone who seemed to have a lot of knowledge about these events.”

  “Who, where?” Greg asked.

  “Red Rock, Oklahoma. I’m going to try and track down a Nightbird. You can meet me there,” Mitch replied.

  “Sounds intriguing. Tomorrow afternoon?” he asked.

  “Yep, call me when you get in,” Mitch replied.

  The pair exchanged a few more details, and then Mitch hung up. He was glad Greg would be joining him. The guy was a rock, a clear-headed thinker, and would also be damn good company. And right now, he felt he needed the support.

  He stood thinking for a moment more before a rustling from the cage on the shelf behind him drew his attention.

  Mitch walked slowly toward the cage and stared in at the small animal—the once greasy-looking fur of the dark rat was now spiky-looking toward its rear and the head was partially obscured by a lumpy protrusion over the brow.

  From its back, things like branches of coral extended, and on seeing Mitch so close it leaped at the bars of the cage, making the entire enclosure rattle.

  “Whoa there, little guy.” Mitch took a step back.

  The rat had stopped its inquisitive sniffing and the ever-twitching nose had also stopped moving. It simply sat glaring at Mitch, its body pulsing in and out with fast breaths.

  “Transitional,” he said, repeating Greg’s analysis. “And what will you transition to, Willard?” he asked and leaned forward.

  The rat’s response was to leap at the cage bars again. Mitch could see that the cereal grains he had given it were now largely untouched so he went to his office icebox, took out his ham sandwich, and pulled free a slice of the meat. He went back to the cage and dropped it between the bars.

  The rat set upon it instantly. Mitch lowered himself down and watched Willard devour the meat. It held it in its tiny hands and he saw that the mouth that had once had normally ratty chisel-shaped incisors at the front now looked like it belonged to some sort of viper.

  After another moment, the entire piece was gone.

  A chaotic metabolism in flux needs fuel, Mitch observed.

  In response to that food, the rat’s body seemed to balloon, and the coral branching from its back grew another inch into wing-shaped structures. He observed them filling with blood.

  “What are they for, little guy?”

  Mitch turned away to gather up a few things for his trip. He quickly did an Internet scan of Red Rock and of some local hotels he could potentially stay at, and then stood thinking about what else he would need or should do.

  “Oh.” He let his bag and folders slide back onto the desktop and snatched up the phone.

  “Hi, Karen.” He wanted to sound calm and upbeat even though he felt a pall of doom being pulled across them. But just hearing her voice made him feel…good.

  “Hi back,” she said. “Watcha doin’?”

  He smiled. “Just heading out of town for a few days, medical conference.”

  “Sounds boring, where is it?” she asked.

  “Probably will be.” He smiled brokenly. “It’s in Red Rock.”

  She chuckled. “Really? Red Rock? Have you been there before?”

  “No, have you?” he asked, now wondering whether he should have told her somewhere else, more medical conferency sounding.

  “Well, great sunsets, good hiking, and the best food in the state at the Red Rock Canyon Café. But it has a population of only around 290 people, so it’s very quiet.”

  “Quiet is good; it is a work thing, you know.” He checked his watch. “Wish you were coming. That’d make it less boring,” he said and felt his face redden at the forwardness of the suggestion.

  She didn’t reply and he immediately regretted saying it. “Sorry,” he added.

  “Don’t be,” she said softly. “I like you, Mitch, but let’s just take it slow, okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Can I see you when I get back?” He held his breath.

  “Okay. And one more thing.” She sounded like she smiled. “Wish I was coming too.” She rang off.

  Mitch looked skyward. “Thank you.” He gathered up his gear again.

  On his way to the door, he cast a glance at the rat and paused. “What am I supposed to do with you? I can’t exactly let you loose, can I?”

  Mitch quickly went to the icebox, grabbed the rest of his sandwich, and then dumped the entire th
ing in through the top of the cage.

  “That’ll keep you going until I get back. And when I do, I’m gonna make you a star.”

  He then threw a fire blanket over the cage, hopefully damping down the smell and sound in the event Shelly poked her head in. He peeked in again and saw that the rat was glaring back at him, but this time its once beady, red eyes now glowed yellow.

  “Yeesh.” He dropped the blanket back down.

  Mitch Taylor took one last look around and then went out the door fast.

  *****

  The silence of Mitch’s office was soon broken by the sound of scrabbling, and then a grinding, followed by a metallic plink. After another few moments, there came another, and then another.

  One by one, the bars of the cage were being broken off or bent away. And then the fire blanket was moved aside.

  CHAPTER 23

  The taxi turned off Fir Street at the huge luminous green sign that glowed even in the sunshine and announced they’d arrived at the Perry Holiday Inn.

  Perry was the closest town Mitch could get to Red Rock, and given they were only a few miles from the town center, it’d do just fine. Mitch thanked the driver, tipped him, and then stepped out into blistering sunshine.

  “Ouch.” He flipped his collar up from the burn. He squinted and turned slowly. Across the road was an Exxon gas station and then beyond that, miles and miles of flat, dry, and scrubby land.

  He knew he was taking a gamble as he had no way to locate the ancient Native American, or even find out if he was still alive. But he knew being here in the place that was the reservation of the Missouria Otoe Native Americans, and the last place he had be known to inhabit, then if he wasn’t here, he probably wouldn’t find him anywhere.

  Mitch hefted his single bag onto his shoulder and headed into the inn’s gleaming marble and glass reservation area.

  The man’s grin behind the counter was a mile wide and he was greeted like an old friend, and immediately given a room upgrade when he identified himself as a doctor.

  As he waited for his room key, his phone buzzed, and he grinned when he saw the name.

  “Hi, Greg, you got here okay? I’m at the Holiday Inn, where are you at?” Mitch was handed his room key, nodded his thanks, and turned to look out through the glass doors.