Seed of Evil by Greig Beck (smart books to read TXT) 📗

He spun back.

He waited, concentrating so hard he felt his unblinking eyes begin to burn. His hand went to his hip, reaching for his gun that wasn’t there anymore, but old habits never died.

What big predators lived in these parts? he wondered. Were there cougars, bears? He continued to stare, frozen to the spot; there was something moving in there, he was sure of it.

He’d done night-time incursions before, but then they had night vision goggles, and he’d been armed and armored up to the teeth. Now he had nothing but his wits.

“Hel…”

Mitch was about to call again but suddenly realized he didn’t feel like making any noise, and certainly not venturing any deeper into the mineshaft. He didn’t like the odds.

I’ll come back with a light, he thought as he backed up a few steps, keeping his eyes on the impenetrable darkness of the mine mouth.

As he made his way back to the car, he saw a knocked down sign: “WARNING – No swimming, no bathing, no drinking. Ground water contaminated. By order of the Eldon city council, Oct. 1978.”

Mitch exhaled; it was a year after the outbreak. He turned back one last time to let his eyes run over the mining grounds. He changed his mind—he didn’t think he would come back with a light. In fact, he didn’t think he’d want to come back at all.

CHAPTER 05

Ben Wainright had watched the young doctor depart from his window. He was so young, so full of confidence and energy. He had been like that once.

He sat down slowly in his chair and felt the weight of the aged flesh settle on his bones and the heavy burden of guilt on his conscience.

He sat there staring down at his desk, seeing nothing as his mind took him back again to Eldon in 1977. Back to the very first case.

*****

“I’m sure it’s just the flu, Mary. It’s the start of the season after all.” A young Doctor Benjamin ‘Ben’ Wainright smiled reassuringly at the woman who hung on his every word as if he had just climbed down from the mountain with a stone tablet under each arm.

He knew that in a small town the local doctor’s opinion mattered and was only one step below that of the Lord. Therefore, his job was to soothe nerves as well as heal wounds.

Mary Hepworth was widowed and struggled to look after her ten-year-old son, who now sat silently, staring straight ahead. The boy had presented with symptoms that he’d been seeing quite a lot lately—listlessness, sleepless nights, loss of appetite, and unlike a fever-heat, the kids had the opposite in that their core temperature was on the low side.

The only worrying symptom he couldn’t account for was a roughening of the skin on the back, thighs, and hands. Right now, those tiny hands grasped the armrests of the chair and to the naked eye only looked a little darker than his normal skin tone.

“Aspirin, orange juice, and early to bed.” Wainright smiled as the woman nodded and helped her son to his feet.

Wainright turned to a large jar that held plastic-wrapped lollypops and lifted out a red one and green one.

“Billy, which one?” He held them out.

The boy didn’t even turn.

“Billy?” He moved them in front of the boy’s face.

The boy’s hand lifted slightly but then hung in mid-air for a moment before he wrinkled his nose and shook his head. He dropped his hand and turned away.

“Hmm.” Wainright kept the reassuring smile on his face, even though a kid refusing candy was a huge red flag. “When was the last time he had a good meal?”

Mary seemed to search her mind for a moment. “Yesterday. No, the day before when he had a cookie, but that’s all.”

“Okay, you’ve got to try and get some food into him. He needs his energy to fight this bug, and a cookie is not going to do it.” He looked down at the kid. “Will you help your mom out there, Billy?”

Billy nodded dreamily.

“Good boy.” He tussled the boy’s hair and felt a few tiny, hard lumps on his scalp, but put it down to the kid also needing a good bath. Wainright then shook Mary’s hand. “And call me in a day or so to let me know how he’s getting on.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Mary guided the boy to the door, and he opened it to let them out.

Wainright caught sight of his waiting room and was surprised to see it full of anxious-looking parents with their children, and a few adults by themselves. Whatever it is, it is going around, he thought. He closed the door and quickly jotted down some notes.

The days rolled on, and then the weeks. The first flurry of parents bringing in their children dwindled and then stopped. He wanted to believe that the bug or whatever it was had burned itself out. But the thing was, he hadn’t seen a single one of the people who presented with the original symptoms.

Zero follow-up was too good to be true, and then his receptionist, Margie, told him that the local schools were only half full—those kids were probably still at home.

Still.

Curiosity and a local doctor’s desire to care for his community overwhelmed him.

“If the mountain will not come to Doctor Wainright…” he got to his feet and packed his leather doctor’s satchel, “…then Doctor Wainright must go to the mountain.”

Ben climbed into his sky-blue Plymouth Duster and groaned, immediately wishing he had parked in the shade. He quickly wound down the window to release some of the furnace-like air from the interior. He would have done the same on the opposite window but couldn’t be bothered reaching across.

One day, they’ll have machines to do that for us, he mused. He pulled out and enjoyed the breeze chilling the perspiration on the back of his neck.

It was a short drive to the Hepworth place. Though the tarred road ended a while back, the