He had never, in all the long minutes and hours of his days, seen a sight like this.

The yard was all torn apart, as if a great hand from above had reached down and unzipped the dark earth. He walked over to the crack nearest him and eased over, his knee and his whole leg tense. Doc craned his head to see how far the hole went, and realized there was no bottom to see, just darkness leading down and thick, twisted roots and stones and things he wasn’t sure he actually did see.

What he did recognize was the same source of all his and the town’s troubles, that red-stained poison that the Viscerol plant had cursed them with...