Immortal

66

Ellison Thorne peered up from the shelter of the cave, and Ethan watched as his craggy face screwed up in fury, his big hands clenching and unclenching around the handles of his pistols as he bellowed back in reply.

‘You’re sure one cowardly tyke, Mister Oppenheimer.’

A distant laugh rippled down toward them from far above, the old man obscured now by the mercenaries working their way down the ladder.

‘A determined one,’ Oppenheimer replied. ‘You’re the ones cowering in a cave.’

‘Why don’t you come down here and join us?’ Ellison Thorne thundered back. ‘If’n you’re hankerin’ so bad to be here?’

No reply came, and Ethan turned to Ellison Thorne.

‘He’s already murdered one man,’ he said. ‘He’ll have no problem killing Lillian Cruz.’

Ellison squinted up at their attackers for a long moment, and then made a decision.

‘We don’t take orders from you, Jeb!’ he boomed. ‘We’ll decide how this goes down!’

Oppenheimer’s voice echoed down at them in reply.

‘You’ve got five minutes before we finish this for good!’

Ethan and the rest of the soldiers withdrew into the cave to see Lopez hurrying to join them.

‘Kip’s not good,’ she said. ‘He’s bleeding out and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

Copthorne, McQuire and Cochrane all looked to Ellison Thorne, who in turn looked at Ethan.

‘If’n that man gets hold of what’s in these caves, you say he’ll destroy the human race?’

Ethan nodded.

‘He’ll only let a certain few people have access to the drugs he’s going to develop using the bacteria in your bodies. Those people will become biologically immortal, just as you are, while the rest of the world will be prevented from raising families. Oppenheimer, and people like him, will rule without end over the population.’

‘But we’re dying,’ McQuire said. ‘Whatever this thing is, it doesn’t last forever.’

‘It will, once Oppenheimer’s had his chance to genetically mess with it,’ Lopez said. ‘Imagine a man like Oppenheimer being able to rejuvenate himself: young, fit, immortal and in control of a drug that every human being on the planet would kill to acquire. The world will be ruled by a dictator class with him at its head.’

Ellison Thorne turned away and rubbed his temples.

‘If’n we get deep enough into the caves they won’t be able to follow,’ he said quickly. ‘We can get ourselves sorted and come back out fighting.’

‘You’ll never be able to do it quickly enough to prevent Jeb from killing Lillian Cruz,’ Ethan said. ‘She’s innocent in all of this.’

‘So are we!’ Ellison shouted. ‘We didn’t ask for this, but how can we now surrender it just because of one man’s greed?!’

Ethan spoke quietly.

‘Because this isn’t about just you, or us, or Lillian Cruz. The simple truth is that people like Jeb Oppenheimer think they can control everything and they can’t. Sooner or later, the science of this bacterium will be lost, or stolen, or leaked. No matter how hard they try they won’t be able to prevent it from reaching the public domain, through a disgruntled employee or maybe one of those heroic whistle-blowers who leaks these things to the public for no financial gain, or maybe even through a population-wide revolution. It happened in the Middle East, the people toppling their dictators one after the other.’

Lopez stepped forward.

‘When that happens,’ she said, ‘and it will, then we’ll have an entire population of people who will never die. Can you imagine what will happen when the population rises so fast that the resources dry up, when there’s no more water, no more food, no more fuel? When people will kill each other for a morsel of food or a sip of water? One day, this will not result in a human population that lives forever. It will end our species, completely. We will all die.’

Ellison Thorne stared at Ethan and Lopez for a long moment, and then looked at the other soldiers.

‘What the hell do you think?’

McQuire, Copthorne and Cochrane exchanged glances, and then they nodded slowly. As they did, a voice came from behind them.

‘I agree too.’

Ethan turned in surprise as Kip Wren limped toward them, using his rifle as a cane. His right thigh was bandaged with a makeshift tourniquet.

‘You’re in no condition to be standin’,’ Ellison said.

‘Well I am standin’,’ Kip Wren replied. ‘But I’m all played out, and I don’t intend to spend my last sweet seconds sitting on my ass back there. You ever remember that old sayin’ we used to live by during the war when we din’ know if we’d ever see our homes and families agin?’

When none of the soldiers replied, Kip Wren spoke for them.

‘The greatest act of courage a man can make is the surrenderin’ of his own life for others, when nobody will ever know of his sacrifice.’

Ethan felt a rush of emotion as he heard the words, thought of countless comrades in the Marines and in other units who had served and died to protect democracy and the way of life that he and so many millions of others cherished. Through the world wars and countless other conflicts, souls far too young to die had sacrificed themselves upon the altar of freedom for the benefit of generations they would never meet. Ethan wondered briefly just how many heroes had anonymously given their lives throughout the history of mankind, their courage lost in time.

A sound from Misery Hole caught his attention, and he saw dozens of black-suited soldiers drop into the floor of the chasm and dash for cover behind rocks and fallen branches around the mouth of Lechuguilla Cave. Ethan and his companions crouched down behind cover as they watched Lillian Cruz being manhandled by the soldiers nearby, and the white-suited Jeb Oppenheimer appear at the bottom of the ladder, protected by an honor guard of his men. Ellison Thorne watched the gathering troops for a long moment, struggling between the desire to live and the altruism that Ethan suspected ran strongly through his veins. The big man finally sighed and looked at Kip Wren.

‘What d’you propose?’ he asked. ‘That we bring the whole damned cavern down on top of ourselves?’

Kip Wren grinned against the pain wracking his body, and from his pocket produced a stick of dynamite that looked almost as old as he did.

‘I’ve got me an idea, and I think you’ll like it.’