Seed of Evil by Greig Beck (great reads .txt) 📕

pulled up out front of Bimford’s soda and drug store to see his deputy, Pete Anderson, waiting out front. The young man waved and briefly looked back over his shoulder in through the glass window before heading toward the cruiser.

Kehoe nodded. “What is it, Pete?”

“Wish I could describe it. But I thought best if you see yourself.” He turned and put a hand on the door.

Kehoe followed him. “Is Harlen okay?”

“Yeah, he’s fine, just a little shook up.” Anderson pushed open the shop door, making a small bell tinkle. “Harlen, it’s me again, Deputy Pete. I’ve got the sheriff here.”

“Dan, is that you?”

Kehoe followed the voice. “I’m here, Harlen, how you doin’?”

“I’m okay, I guess.”

Kehoe found the man sitting in a chair. Across his knees was a cracked shotgun, and the man’s shirt was all torn up.

Kehoe’s brows knitted as he looked the old man over and slowly reached out a hand. “Take that for you, Harlen?”

Bimford handed over the shotgun.

“What happened?” Kehoe asked.

“Aw, goddamn Buford attacked me.” He stared straight ahead. “Least I think it was him.” He looked up at the sheriff, his eyes glassy. “Had that dog eight years. He loved me. And I loved him.” His eyes welled up. “I shot him. Had to.”

“Where is he?” Kehoe knew the man’s dog, Buford. He was one of the not very bright hounds that just wanted to bark at squirrels, lay by a fire, and beg for food. And Harlen was right, it adored him and would never have attacked him.

“This here is what he shot.” Deputy Anderson went to a tarpaulin spread over a lump half hidden by some of the racks and drew it back.

Kehoe stood and stared for ten seconds as he tried to make sense of the thing. The creature was basically dog-shaped, but instead of fur it looked to be covered in splinters.

Where the head should have been was just a chunk of something that was ragged and open like a split log, and spiked teeth went from the tip all the way down the gullet that extended even down into the muscular neck.

Around the outside of the neck and embedded into it was a dog collar just showing.

Kehoe looked along the animal’s body—there was a fist-sized hole in the shoulder, and inside the torso he could see even the muscles and internal organs had the same fibrous, woody texture.

He looked up. “What the hell happened to him, Harlen? How’d he get like this?”

“I don’t know, Sheriff. He looked kinda strange last night before bed, but he slept all through. When I woke up, I couldn’t find him. Then this thing jumped out and attacked me.” Harlen suddenly looked hopeful. “Hey, maybe it ain’t him.”

Kehoe carefully touched one of the sharp teeth that looked more like a long rose thorn. He remembered the attack on Hank and the shard they found stuck in the body—could this thing have done it? he wondered.

“You say Buford was okay last night?” he asked.

“Seemed a bit tired but he looked fine,” Harlen replied wearily.

Kehoe nodded. The timeline didn’t match up. He got to his feet and kicked the dog’s body with the toe of his boot. It was hard, solid, and definitely dead.

Harlen sniffed wetly. “Maybe that thing attacked Buford. And ate him.”

Kehoe nodded but glanced back at the familiar collar. “We’ll take care of it.” He patted the man’s shoulder and thought he felt a sport of hardness under his shirt. He gently took hold of the man’s collar and carefully peeled it back. He saw Harlen had some sort of pebbly rash there.

“You feelin’ okay, Harlen?” He let the collar go and wiped his hand on his pants.

Harlen looked up. “I probably just shot my best dog so not really, Sheriff.”

Kehoe nodded. “Okay, we’ll take care of this. But I want you to do something for me. I want you to go and see the new doctor in town, and today, okay?”

The old man nodded distractedly.

“Good man.” Kehoe turned to his deputy. “Pete, let’s get this out of here. It goes in your trunk.”

CHAPTER 22

Mitch sat at his desk with a strong light bent over a muscle-strainingly thick encyclopedia of North American plant pollens, spores, and seeds. He had used the high-resolution microscope camera to take images of some of the flora and fauna he found in the water sample, and there were several of them giving him trouble tracking down their description in the book.

Unfortunately, they seemed to be the ones that might be giving the water its odd, deep green hue.

“Could that be a seed?” he asked the quiet room as he spotted something else interesting. But it seemed far too small, and even with his top magnification, it stayed only dust-speck sized.

He did remember from Cindy’s gardening days that some varieties of epiphytic orchids created seeds that were only 1/300th of an inch or just 85 micrometers. Microscopic when you consider that a typical grain of salt is nearly four times bigger at around 300 micrometers.

But this seed was even smaller than that. Mitch sighed, rubbed his eyes, and sat back. This seed, along with the spores, was beyond his encyclopedia’s capabilities. There were several good botanical universities he could send the samples off to get a definitive answer. But there was also the next best, and far faster option—ask Doctor Google.

He uploaded the image of the spore and seed and ran a search on them. After a few seconds, it found a near-perfect match, for the spore at least. As Mitch read, his brows came together.

“You gotta be shitting me.”

There was an article published in the Frontiers in Plant Science where a team of scientists from the Paleontological Institute and Museum at the University of Zürich had found plant spores that pushed back everything we know about the evolution of plants.

They had found angiosperm-like pollen fragments that dated back to the Middle Triassic, approximately 240 million years ago, that suggested flowering plants may have evolved much earlier than originally