Everything that passed beneath the eaves of the jacaranda died. In droves, they died, and all at once each fall, as the last of its periwinkle blooms gave up the ghost and drifted down to the hardening earth.
Why did they die? Nobody knew the answer to that question, and once it was discovered and publicised, no person was willing to walk close enough to cut the thing down. Attempts were made using robots, remote controlled vehicles, and in several cases, explosives, but electronics selectively (seemingly based on whether they might be used to harm it) ceased to operate within a quarter mile of the great tree, and the bombs all graciously refused to go about their business and explode. Even a controlled burn refused to singe even its most wayward branches.
To make things worse, the jacaranda stood in the middle of a once well travelled nature reserve well known for its veritable labyrinth of interesting hiking trails.
The tree hadn’t always been so passively murderous. It had started a few years ago, when all at once a couple hundred hikers, dog walkers, their dogs, and a pair of park rangers suddenly went toes up by way of sudden, identical, and unexplainable brain aneurysms.
At this point, you understand, the only link that was made was that all of these people had in recent memory attended the nature reserve. The government closed in on the place with an uncharacteristic and remarkable alacrity, shutting it down to the public and sweeping through the place in full nuclear PPE.
In a three month investigation, they found nothing to explain the deaths. No exceptional levels of radiation, no dangerous poisons, and certainly no explanation as to why it would be that all of these people died in the same moment. What they did find was a lot of dead wildlife scattered throughout the park; birds, bugs, and beasts of every local variety. The reserve remained closed to the public and all was quiet for nine months.
Then it happened again. Around a quarter of the scientists and officers who had entered the area had suddenly dropped dead, it was two days earlier than last time (affording for strong winds agitating the blooms) but all at the same moment, 33 people dead, gone, and beyond all help. That's when they realised that it was the jacaranda.
So it stands there. Yesterday they tried to blast the roots of the thing with a firehouse attached to a tank full of strong acid, but if salt, napalm and weed killer didn’t work, I very much doubt this is going to do it.
My son and his girlfriend went in there on a dare. Idiots.
It’s October.
Does anyone have any ideas?
