The next morning Ben Goodman started to dissect one of the birds he had recovered from the Davies farm. It was one of the ones that he had requested be plucked and it looked good enough to eat. On the outside at first glance he could see nothing wrong with the bird, baring a couple of bruises from hen pecking. Besides that it seemed to be a good specimen. Using a sharp knife he put a nick in the chickens skin and pulled it back to reveal the white meat. All looked normal until he cut through the surface. What should have been muscle mass was something else entirely. Instead there seems to be a network of deep red tubular growth, not at all what he expected.

With a practiced hand he dislocated a leg popping the ball from the joint easily and inspected the bone. It gave him no clues so he proceeded to cut the bird in a Y pattern exposing its innards. The carcass seemed riddled with some kind of parasite, it looked to be feeding on the birds flesh while taking the place of any functioning parts. It was like nothing he had ever seen before, more flora than fauna

Picking up the phone he searched the filling cabinet for the Davies number. Whatever was going on in his clinic must be thirty thousand times worse on the farm. 'The farm will have to be quarantined' Ben thought to himself as the phone rang out and he redialed.

Twice with no answer and Ben was starting to worry, he looked at the samples sitting on the bench. So far as he knew it only affected chickens but there was nothing to say it couldn't jump species. Had he exposed himself to something inadvertently, he didn't think so but like so many illnesses they were invisible until the symptoms started to show. The thought of a parasite eating at his insides made his skin crawl and the more he thought about it the more he could feel his insides moving.

Whatever damage had happened was done now, so grabbing a clean scalpel he went back to work on the carcass. Whatever it was, it was still working postmortem as thin red tubes branched into new territory. They crept across the dead flesh sending new suckers into the muscle like roots. It was resembling a chicken less, as a plant like growth formed around the corpse.

Pulling on gloves and using tongs Ben pulled at one of the tendrils. It flicked wildly in a lashing motion, before it slowed to a slow sweeping movement, as if searching for something. A sudden bust of activity caught Ben off guard as a the tendril wrapped around the tongs and a puff of something filled the air making him choke. He began to cough involuntary, his lungs burned as they were deprived of oxygen and his body screamed in pain. Within minutes he was losing consciousness and not long after his lungs were no longer his to worry about.