Immortal Read online

  Ethan grinned, but the smile faded as he looked at Carson’s gloves.

  ‘Not for much longer though,’ he observed. ‘Your hands, something’s wrong with them.’

  Carson’s own smile shriveled.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll say,’ he murmured. ‘Looks like our lil’ ol’ gift ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.’

  ‘Where are the rest of you?’ Lopez asked. ‘We need to find them.’

  ‘They’ll be here someplace,’ Carson said. ‘But I ain’t seen any of them yet, which bothers me. They should’ve been here afore now.’

  Ethan glanced over his shoulder to see Zamora still guarding the tent’s entrance. He turned back to Carson.

  ‘We need you to tell us how this all happened,’ he said. ‘We know that you need help, all of you. But if we don’t know how you came to be like this, there’s not much we can do for you.’

  ‘Except run your tests an’ all,’ Carson said. ‘Use us like lab rats.’

  ‘We work for the government,’ Lopez said. ‘Sub-contracted and independent. They only hear what we report back, and right now we’re not going to be sending you to any laboratories. We’ve seen what they might do.’

  Carson looked at Lopez for a moment and then smiled.

  ‘You sure look cute in that there uniform an’ all, ma’am.’

  Ethan saw Lopez raise an eyebrow at Carson as he felt an unexpected lance of irritation.

  ‘Cut the small talk, Carson,’ he said. ‘This is serious. We need to know how this all started.’

  Carson didn’t lose his perfect smile as he glanced in Ethan’s direction.

  ‘Now don’t be gettin’ all jealous on me, mister,’ he said. ‘I was just remarkin’ on how beautiful the lady is.’

  From the corner of his eye Ethan saw Lopez’s features melt into a bright smile.

  ‘We don’t have much time,’ he said to Carson, and pulled from his pocket the old photograph of the men standing around the old cart. ‘Try starting from here.’

  Carson looked at the photograph and his smile turned wistful.

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ he whispered almost reverentially. ‘Valverde, 1862. I ain’t seen a picture like that for many a year now.’

  ‘It was taken around the time of the battle,’ Lopez said. ‘Was it before or after you became infected?’

  Carson looked at her, his features suddenly taut.

  ‘What do you mean infected? You sayin’ I ’ve contracted some kind of sickness?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ethan said. ‘A bacterial infection. We’re not sure yet, but the more you can tell us the more likely we’ll be able to help.’

  Carson nodded.

  ‘That would kind o’ make sense,’ he said thoughtfully, looking again at the photograph. ‘That was taken a few days after the Battle of Glorietta Pass, after we were cut off from our main force at Fort Craig when the Confederates began their retreat toward Arizona.’

  Ethan nodded encouragingly.

  ‘Okay, tell us how it went down.’ Carson, one hand resting on his thigh and leaning on the other with his elbow, gestured to the re-enactment preparations outside.

  ‘We were based at Fort Craig originally, down in Confederate Arizona, when the rebels marched up to try an’ take the fort out of our hands. Turned out that their commander, a man named Sibley, reckoned our walls were too heavy to be breached by assault so he turned north and went on by with his men over the Rio Grande to the ford at Valverde. We, that is myself and a small company of the New Mexico Militia under Lieutenant Ellison Thorne, were sent out to reconnoiter the enemy and try to find a weakness after a planned attack on the rebels using mules loaded with explosives backfired, literally. The mules came back home and blew up inside our own goddamned lines.’

  ‘And they were still heading north at that point?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘To a degree,’ Carson said. ‘But they got themselves caught up with Union forces guarding the ford, who we then began supportin’. Afore you know it, there’s a battle in full swing as the batteries opened up on each other.’

  ‘And you guys went into battle?’ Ethan guessed.

  ‘We surely did,’ Carson nodded, ‘but the rebels had organized themselves right tight, and they broke our lines and forced us into a retreat toward the fort. We lost five hundred men that day and our commanding officer, Edward Canby, lost a lot of respect, though he earned it back in the days and years to come.’

  ‘So you’re back at the fort,’ Lopez said. ‘Besieged?’

  ‘No,’ Carson replied. ‘We hit the rebels as hard as they hit us. They went north, looking to raid Santa Fe for supplies. We were sent to follow, and where possible harass them. We were in the field for almost a month when our two armies came up against each other in late March at a place called Glorietta Pass.’

  Ethan dimly recalled details from his school days and military-service lectures. ‘The Gettysburg of the West,’ he said. ‘A Union victory, that pushed the rebels south back to Arizona and Texas.’

  ‘That was the one.’ Carson nodded. ‘Trouble was, when the battle was won, myself and six other soldiers were still positioned a half-mile south of the Confederate forces. When they began their retreat we were forced to flee afore them. There wasn’t much quarter given to captured enemy troops, especially those from the victor’s ranks, and we none of us were willing to chance moving out and round the enemy’s flanks. We couldn’t be sure of avoiding their pickets, so we pushed hard for the Rio Grande.’

  ‘What happened?’ Lopez asked.

  For a brief moment, as Carson spoke, Ethan listened to the sounds of marching troops outside the tent and felt as though he had been transported a hundred fifty years into the past.

  ‘We didn’t make it,’ Carson replied. ‘Secondary Confederate forces, snipers and wagon trains were trying to link up with the retreating main force and cut us off afore we could cross the river. We kept runnin’ south, barely keeping ahead of them. In the end we were tuckered out and were on the verge of surrendering when we came across some caves down near the border. We decided to take our chances and went in just as deep as we could go.’

  Ethan leaned forward eagerly.

  ‘Where were they?’

  Carson sighed, glancing at the entrance to the tent.

  ‘Thing is,’ he said quietly, ‘if’n I tell you, it’s as likely I’ll be killed.’

  Ethan gestured to Carson’s gloved hands.

  ‘If you don’t tell us you’ll die anyway,’ he pointed out. ‘There’s nothing left for you to lose, Lee.’

  Carson looked at his hands and shook his head briefly before speaking.

  ‘The caves were near a place you’ve probably heard of. It’s called Carlsbad.’

  Ethan and Lopez exchanged a glance of surprise.

  ‘Carlsbad Caverns?’ he echoed. ‘Everyone’s heard of them. How come we don’t already have tens of thousands of people wandering around who are a couple of hundred years old?’

  Carson smiled mischievously.

  ‘Because they’ve never set foot in the caves that we hid in,’ he said. ‘We were there for three days living off the water inside and the mosses growing there. Most people don’t go that far into the caves or stay there for as long because it’s so hard to get in. But the real reason is that the exact location of the caves is kept secret from the public.’

  Ethan raised an eyebrow.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘Park rangers and such like, I guess,’ Carson said. ‘We haven’t been back since 1986 when they found the entrance. Poor old Hiram Conley went looking for Tyler Willis to find a cure for all o’ this.’

  ‘Why didn’t the rest of your comrades help him?’ Lopez asked.

  ‘Because they’re living in the past,’ Carson muttered. ‘They’ve all seen their families die of old age, seen their loved ones become a part of history. They ain’t so much revelin’ in their immortality as enduring it.’

  Ethan considered for a moment what Lee Carson had said. The fact was, h
e’d never even thought about how it might feel to live forever. Everyone else would grow old and die, but an immortal man would live on, abandoned time and time again by those he loved until he might well become the loneliest individual ever to have lived. He might even crave the solace of death itself. Ethan had certainly felt that way just a few years’ previously, when Joanna Defoe had vanished without trace from his life somewhere within the dark and dangerous alleys of the Gaza Strip.

  ‘And none of them have thought to break the cycle?’ Lopez asked. ‘Just go ahead and search for help like Hiram did?’

  ‘Old man Ellison won’t let them,’ Carson replied. ‘He reckons it to be safer to stay out in the Pecos than mix with people.’

  ‘More than that,’ Ethan said. ‘Hiram Conley was already wounded when he met Tyler Willis at Glorietta Pass. A fresh musket ball got pulled from his shoulder, before the body was abducted from the morgue.’

  Carson stared at him for a long moment.

  ‘You’re sayin’ he was shot by one of his own? One of us?’

  Ethan shrugged.

  ‘Can’t imagine who else would have done it. You could be in danger by being here, Lee. We need to get you someplace safe before you’re found.’

  ‘Is there any way we can identify the others?’ Lopez asked Carson. ‘Anything about them that makes them stand out, that they can’t conceal?’

  Carson raised a gloved hand and pointed to his own eyes.

  ‘We all have these eyes,’ he said. ‘They’re cataracts, but they don’t solidify so they can’t be removed. All of us suffer from them.’

  ‘You need to contact the others for us,’ Ethan said, ‘and bring them here so we can speak to them.’

  Carson glanced around nervously and was about to speak when a deafening blast of gunfire crashed through the tent as though a thousand artillery pieces had opened up at once.

  39

  Ethan flinched and instantly hit the ground, rolling as the blast roared in his ears. He glimpsed Lopez disappearing in the opposite direction and he saw, through the flaps of the tent, the ranks of soldiers outside, their artillery pieces spewing flame and gray smoke.

  Lee Carson leapt past Ethan and smashed Zamora out of the way as he bolted out of the tent.

  ‘Carson, wait!’

  Ethan leapt to his feet and rushed outside in pursuit. A thick bank of rolling cordite smoke drifted across the ranks of the soldiers now marching away from them across the open field, Carson having vanished amongst them.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ Zamora demanded, getting back onto to his feet.

  ‘He bolted,’ Ethan said. ‘Get out there and find him!’

  Lopez joined Ethan, surveying the wide, deep ranks of men now marching across the fields as another deafening artillery volley rang out.

  ‘We’ll never find him in that!’

  Ethan saw a small number of soldiers falling onto the grass, emulating men killed in the advance.

  ‘He could end up dead if his comrades are here and they’ve seen him talking to us,’ Ethan said. ‘Take the right flank, I’ll take the left. Try to get to the front lines and pick him out before he passes!’

  Ethan broke into a run, dashing past men twisting and falling as imaginary musket balls plowed through their flesh. If the bullets were fantasy, the thick clouds of choking smoke were not. Ethan’s eyes began to stream as the dense and swirling fog hung on the heavy air, ranks of soldiers marching stoically through to the sound of rolling drums.

  As he sprinted around the Union army’s left flank, he saw ranks of Confederate troops closing head-on, shrouded in their own clouds of smoke and with hundreds of bayonets glittering in the sunlight. He cursed, realizing that when the advance became a general charge and melee their chances of finding Lee Carson in the confusion would be drastically reduced. He turned right as he reached the front rank, jogging down the line and peering through the dense lines of troops. Men glanced at him as he moved past, expressions of surprise on their faces as he ran directly in front of their muskets.

  ‘To the front, fire!’ The bellowed command of an officer rang out, and Ethan instinctively ducked as the front rank’s muskets whipped up and a blast of smoke and noise billowed over his head. In quick order, the second and third ranks let fly with their musket volleys and then the commanding officer, still astride his magnificent palomino, raised his saber high in the air.

  ‘General charge!’

  There was just enough time for Ethan to utter a curse and then, with a thousand war cries, the Union army broke ranks and charged, bursting from the clouds of smoke and thundering across the field. He dodged left and right as they rushed at him from out of the gloomy fog, as at the same time the rebel troops opposite broke their line and charged in response.

  Ethan turned and ran with the Union forces, looking left and right for Lee Carson through the confusion and noise. His eyes lit upon a man perhaps twenty yards away, running with his rifle held in gloved hands. Ethan changed course, smashing sideways through the ranks of charging soldiers, stumbling over and around them to a volley of irritated shouts and curses.

  He saw the gloved man glance in the direction of the shouts, saw Carson’s features flare with recognition. Ethan shouted out above the noise, ‘Carson, stand still! It’s too dangerous!’

  Carson ignored him and accelerated into a sprint. Ethan raced after him when suddenly a huge figure loomed up on his right, his rifle raised high so that the butt was aiming at Ethan’s head. The weapon smashed down toward him as he caught a glimpse of a drooping gray moustache and furious eyes sheened with a misty glaze. Ethan recognized the man he’d seen leaving the elevators at the Hilary Falls apartments. He dodged right, under the man’s charge and the wildly swinging rifle as he drove his shoulder into the man’s chest. The man’s bulk slammed hard into Ethan’s shoulder, spinning him aside as the big soldier charged through. Ethan whirled and slammed down onto the grass, rolling and covering his head as Union troops dashed past or jumped over his body. He struggled to his feet and saw the big man vanish into a dense tangle of screaming bodies as the two armies smashed together in the center of the field. The sound of clattering bayonets and clashing swords rang out, a flickering sea of metal flashing across the field amidst roiling blue and gray uniforms.

  Ethan sprinted after the big man, cursing his heavy jacket and pants as he shoved his way through writhing bodies and drifting whorls of smoke, searching for Carson once more. He could see the distant figures of the crowd watching from the edge of the field, and knew that if Carson made a break for it he would be seen almost immediately. He had to stay with his army until they broke off the battle.

  A Confederate soldier appeared in front of Ethan, raising his musket and shooting a wiry-looking man in a Union uniform. The Union soldier made a show of clasping his stomach in agony, then toppled onto the grass, his rifle falling by his side. Ethan whirled as someone rushed at him, and he saw a short, podgy man in Confederate dress with a flushed face take aim and fire his musket directly at Ethan’s chest. A cloud of smoke billowed into Ethan’s face, his eyes watering and a sudden terror rippling through his belly at the sight of a weapon discharged at him from point-blank range. He stood rooted to the spot, his hands instinctively flying to his chest to search for injuries.

  The smoke cleared and the Confederate soldier stared at Ethan in outrage.

  ‘Hey, you’re dead! That’s cheating!’

  Ethan took one stride forward, grabbed the rifle’s stock and yanked the man holding it toward him, as he punched his other fist straight into the rotund soldier’s face. The soldier squealed, grabbed his nose and rolled away onto the grass as Ethan tossed the rifle at him and squinted through the rolling smoke.

  A large man, the same soldier who had barged past him, got down onto one knee amid the endlessly running and screaming soldiers and lifted his rifle, taking careful aim. Ethan realized that he was aiming into his own troops and suddenly spotted Carson in amongst the mayhem.

 
; ‘Carson, get down!’

  Lee Carson turned, looking straight at Ethan for a split second before the man with the rifle fired. Ethan saw the bullet hit Carson in the chest. Carson flew backwards from the impact and toppled over two men engaged in a bayonet battle behind him. Ethan sprinted forward as the big man ran past Carson’s body, lying among hundreds of others on the grass. Ethan slid down beside Carson and saw thick blood matting his shirt. Carson’s eyes were infected now with fear, as though he were once again a twenty-year-old kid. He grabbed Ethan’s shirt and gritted his teeth.

  ‘I’m done bad, ain’t I?’ he gasped with a conviction Ethan couldn’t deny.

  ‘You’re going to be fine,’ Ethan assured him. ‘Hang in there.’ But Carson’s face had turned a pale and sickly white, his gaze drifting as he lost focus on Ethan. ‘Stay with me, Lee!’

  Carson focused briefly, still gripping Ethan’s shirt, his voice a ragged whisper. ‘Saffron Oppenheimer,’ he rasped. ‘Let . . . you . . . kill . . . her.’

  Ethan held Carson in his arms and struggled to hear his words over the chaos of the battle around them.

  ‘What? What about Saffron?’

  Carson’s reply was an inaudible rasp as his grip on Ethan’s shirt weakened and he sank back onto the grass. Ethan saw that the blood staining Carson’s shirt was no longer flowing, and he realized that the man’s heart had given out.

  The cries of battle turned to a sudden flurry of gasps and exclamations that filtered through the soldiers around Ethan as they realized that Carson was not acting.

  ‘He’s been shot!’ a trooper shouted. ‘Somebody’s got a real gun!’

  Panic erupted around Ethan as men began shouting and running from the field. Ethan lurched to his feet and sprinted in pursuit of the large man who had shot Carson. The realization that somebody had actually been killed raced through the ranks almost as fast as Ethan was running, and the soldiers began breaking away from each other, dashing for the safety of their tents.

  Ethan saw the officer on the big palomino, swinging his sword at men around him as though swatting flies. As he swished the weapon at a nearby Confederate soldier, Ethan grabbed his wrist and with a yank and a twist hauled the officer out of his saddle to land with a thump on the grass in a tangle of limbs. Ethan grabbed the saddle and hauled himself up to survey the chaotic battlefield, taking the reins and turning the horse full circle.