“Of course not,” Bob said. His voice, his living room, everything, seemed very far away.
“I will be in touch shortly. If you need anything, call your son’s office. They will put you in contact with me. I know this is terrible news, but your son would want all of us to remain strong and hunt down those responsible. Again, please do not speak about this with anyone. Can I count on your cooperation?” Cochran asked.
Bob managed a noise that sounded almost like a “Yes.”
Cochran said, “I will see you soon,” and the line went dead.
Bob let the phone fall in his lap, working at piecing together what he had just heard. The only thing he knew for certain was that his son was dead. Why he believed the man on the other end of the phone, he couldn’t say. He believed the news nonetheless. His son was dead. He pushed his way past the questioning eyes of Belinda and stumbled out the back door, heading for his truck. He needed some time to process this, and he’d be damned if he was going to cry in front of his wife.
Now, surrounded by his son’s corn, he finally succumbed completely to the anguish that had been struggling to explode since he dropped the phone. He screamed at the night sky. His howls echoed up and down the rows of corn that his son had promised would change everything. He could still hear Bob Jr.’s voice, saying, “Dad, trust me, these seeds, they’re gonna revolutionize how the world farms. This corn, it’s special. Really special. Get it in the ground. You’ll see.”
Bob believed that genetically modified seeds would save the world. He believed this even more than he believed in his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And both were absolute truths. God had given Man the tools to feed himself. This was a fact.
Bob had no doubts. None.
Genetically modified seeds would save us all.
So Bob couldn’t get his son’s seeds in the ground fast enough. He’d watched the corn as it grew, nurtured it, handling everything personally, from the irrigation duties to spreading fertilizer. Getting close to being ripe, it didn’t look any different from the regular corn he knew. Same ears. Same leaves. Same stalks. Kernels near bursting with a deep neon yellow.
Maybe that was the point. Maybe there was no difference. And right now, he didn’t know, he didn’t understand, and he didn’t care. His son was dead. He rocked back and forth, until toppling over, face on the ground, dirt spilling into his open mouth. He sobbed. Gasped. He grabbed at the soil, let it run through his fingers.
He was not aware that when he sucked in yet one more gust of air to scream into the dirt, he inhaled a small number of microscopic fungus spores, which stuck to every wet surface they encountered. The inside of his mouth. His throat. His lungs.
They went to work, sending tiny, hairlike filaments deep into the tissue.
And started to grow.
When Bob’s outpouring of agony had passed, when he could regain control, when he could gather all the strings of his pain and pull them even closer for a while, he swallowed, spit out some of the soil that had found its way into his mouth, and went back to his truck to drive back home and tell his wife their son was dead.
CHAPTER 5
“He pukes back there, both of you are cleaning it up,” Sandy told Edgar and Charlie.
Axel had been trying to get the Mace out of his nose and throat the whole ride into town while Sandy followed Highway 100 north as it wound along the Mississippi River. He’d been using his T-shirt as a snot rag, and for a while it looked like he had everything under control, but the guttural retching sounds he made while trying to take a deep breath worried everybody in the car.
Edgar and Charlie hated Sandy and being stuck in the backseat with a vomiting Axel made it worse. Charlie was still pretending to be dazed and confused from the Taser, but Edgar was taking out his anger on his youngest brother. “You fucking puke in here, Axe, I’m gonna kick the living shit out of you. Swear to fucking Christ.”
Axel didn’t act like he’d heard anything. He sat in the center, leaning over, one arm flat out against the clear, bulletproof partition, eyes screwed tight.
Sandy pulled to a stop at Parker’s Mill’s only stoplight, at the intersection of Highway 100 and Main Street. At this time of night, the intersection was utterly empty.
Located fifty miles east of Springfield, Parker’s Mill had around a thousand citizens. Not too many of them were Bible-thumping evangelists like the Johnsons; they were mostly decent folks who sometimes got out of line. Some were more prone to finding trouble than others.
Main Street marched east for three blocks, with a few banks, a church, a car wash, a couple of gas stations, a combination video store and karate studio. The police station was two blocks down. The few other commercial buildings clustered a block or two along Main Street included a Moose Lodge, more churches, a library, a volunteer fire department, a Stop ’n Save grocery store, an empty hardware store. Every building and light post was covered in red, white, and blue bunting in preparation for the big Fourth of July Sweet Corn Jubilation.
It went without saying that Parker’s Mill lived and died with the corn.
Only Edgar noticed that instead of turning right and heading to the police station, Sandy kept going north along Highway 67. He tried to get his brothers’ attention. They ignored him. A mile later, she turned left on Highway 104 and they crossed over the river.
Edgar couldn’t hold it in anymore and said, “I don’t know what you think you’re pullin’. It ain’t gonna work.”
Sandy didn’t answer, and turned off immediately after crossing the river, into the Fitzgimmon driveway. This was a long dirt road that wandered through the scrub along the river.
Edgar said in delight, “Oh, I get it. It’s that time of the month, right? You’re on the rag. Making you all screwy. Cause you, you have no idea what your fuckin’ doing, do you?”
When the road abruptly turned into the foothills, the cruiser’s headlights found a gate in the middle of the road. Beyond it lay the Fitzgimmon farmhouse. It was set back from the gate about fifty yards, surrounded by a dozen or so oak trees at least a hundred years old.
Sandy got out and found the gate locked. It didn’t surprise her. Purcell didn’t trust anybody outside of his own family. She waited a moment, knowing he’d damn well seen the headlights and was watching her, probably through a scope.
The porch light flicked on, and in the glow, the house didn’t look like it had been painted or repaired since it had first been built, right around the time the trees had been planted. Purcell’s rail-thin silhouette appeared in the doorway.
At least it wasn’t obvious if he was carrying a firearm.
Sandy took that as a good sign.
Purcell was something of a dark legend in town. Everybody had heard about him, but few had seen him. He didn’t like to leave his farm unless it was an emergency. He coaxed corn and soy out of the thin soil that covered the slanted creek beds and rolling hills. He lived off his own well, grew his own food, and crapped in his own septic tank. He sent his wife to the Costco once a month for staples like flour, coffee, and Pop-Tarts.
Everybody in town had their own stories. The only thing they agreed was that Purcell had done time. The stories ranged anywhere from six years in the easygoing county jail or ten years in nasty San Quentin. Beyond that, they said he was a gunrunner. He used his farm as a hideout for drug shipments. He’d found Jesus. He was in the witness-protection program. He was plotting something evil with Charlie Manson. He was ex-CIA.