Butterflies

Unfortunately that chrysalis, or several actually, had already hatched, and just as unfortunate it wasn't an "anyone" that received those high doses that didn't alarm anyone. That Swallowtail, as large as it was, wasn't large relative to us, but that radiation taken through the food chain did cause harm of a sort.

A mutation had occurred and rapidly within those caterpillars within their chrysalis. A mutation carried off easily because of that Swallowtail's own remarkable metamorphosis. Seven of them changed and seven emerged. Seven adult butterflies joined together for the long trip South. Resting, as it happens, in the forest where John was now standing.

A Lepidopterists, or that entomologist like Ms. Everett, might have understood what was happening to those Swallowtails. She understood butterflies in many ways since she specialized in the collection and study of those and other insects. She understood it would be an anomaly.

With a scientific background and a questioning mind, Ms. Everett would have desperately wanted to know what was happening to these few monsters, but she wasn't there. No one was around that morning as John's body, within minutes, began mounting a silent defense against another microscopic unknown.

John's white blood cells found the first few invading cells of that Swallowtail and a chemical alert within his body was issued immediately. Something foreign had registered and was now under attack. Each cell of that butterfly was identified as alien and the battle began.

Those first few fights, carried on silently by John's own defenses, won easily. For an analogy that battle took the same course as the beginnings of a cold or flu virus. It was and wasn't a virus because nothing on Earth evolved the way these mutated genes did. It just acted like a virus. Something almost like a cold for want of a better analogy.

Unfortunately, like a cold, it was the speed of their alien divisions and that infection which began turning the tide against John's defenses. At first John's body won those fights handily. Within the first hour that changed and by the time John had ended his morning in the forest that battle would have been called a draw.