His eyes refused to close.

The deafening pop from the huge gene gun seemed louder every time—like the backfiring of an eighteen-wheeler. The sound was followed immediately by a faint discharge of smoke from the barrel.

Sebastian cried out and rolled off the conveyor belt in obvious agony, clutching his face. Blood instantly seeped out from between his fingers and spewed through multiple punctures in his neck. He lay on his back on the corn kernels, his body jerking spasmodically as jets of scarlet sprayed the equipment and soaked the floor beneath him. Then he lowered his hands and pressed futilely against the skin over his carotid arteries as if knowing that was where the wounds were mortal. The thousands of gold pellets embedded in his face were like an obscene Seurat painting.

Shrieking in pain, Sebastian began picking at the pieces of searingly hot gold microshot. The pellets, used for inserting the DNA plasmid into the kernels, were cooking him alive. Blood continued spurting from his neck while his gold-pockmarked face smoked from the embedded metal.

He writhed on the floor, screaming and pleading for help, gurgling on blood that had seeped inside his mouth and down his throat.

The handsome German, an obsessive weight lifter, was already a corpse whose head and neck were virtually the same golden color as the corn surrounding him.

Edwin snapped off the video playback. Sebastian’s gruesome remains, for a moment frozen on the screen, faded into black.

He had seen enough of the scientist’s bizarre death—especially now that he had the first inklings of an explanation for the man’s behavior—an explanation provided unknowingly by Dr. Lou Welcome.

Chapter 36

CHAPTER 36

Lou and the others spent an endless day searching for Notso in the cornfields. The dogs Stone had brought in barked excitedly a couple of times, but then quickly fell silent.

“Rabbits,” their handler said.

After three hours, George’s spirit was broken. His plea for a chopper was brushed off as being fruitless with the corn being as dense as it was. He continued going through the motions of a search, scuffing through the tall stalks and grumbling about Frankencorn. But it was clear he was spent, and in great despair about having to report his cousin’s probable death to his aunt.

Not unexpectedly, Cap was a giant, forging ahead tirelessly over ground they knew they had covered before. Lou found himself wondering how different the man’s life would have been had he simply been allowed to live it. Still, over the years, the two of them had been to countless AA and NA meetings together, and not once had he heard Cap complain about his lot. A power of example he was called by most of those who knew him.