Immortal

71

Ethan lunged forwards and caught Saffron as she toppled sideways from the impact, her eyes wide with shock and disbelief and her face suddenly pale. He lowered her down as gently as he could, pushing fist-sized rocks out of her way before setting her down. He let his hand fall on one of the rocks as he spoke to her.

‘Don’t panic,’ he said desperately. ‘Keep your heartbeat as slow as you can, so you don’t bleed too quickly.’

‘It’s a stomach wound,’ Oppenheimer cackled, moving closer. ‘She’ll leak the contents of her gut into her bloodstream and die from blood poisoning. You’ve got about five minutes before it’ll be too late to save her.’

Ethan let go of Saffron’s body and turned to glare at Oppenheimer. For a moment he considered simply doing what the old man said, but suddenly he was overcome with an intense desire to deny the old bastard what he wanted once and for all.

‘Go to hell,’ he uttered. ‘I’d sooner die.’

Oppenheimer glared at Ethan.

‘Get up there and collect those crystals or I swear I’ll shoot you where you stand.’

‘Do it,’ Ethan said. ‘You’ll never get them, not from me and not from Saffron. You’re finished, Jeb, totally finished. At least let Saffron live even if you kill me.’

Oppenheimer turned slightly and pointed the pistol at Saffron again.

‘Do it, you cretin, or I’ll shave another few minutes off her life.’

Ethan looked down at Saffron, who stared up at him through her pain and shook her head vigorously. Ethan looked back up at the crystals and then turned, swinging his arm to hurl the rock in his hand up into the cavernous vault of the chamber. The rock smashed into the ceiling above and instantaneously the giant flock of bats screeched in unison, spilling from the chamber’s roof in a screaming black avalanche of wings and teeth. Ethan ducked down as the bats raced past in a thick black fog and blasted into Jeb Oppenheimer as they raced for the cavern exit. Ethan heard the old man curse and drop his cane as the bats slammed into him, the pistol firing a wild shot in Ethan’s direction.

Ethan launched himself forward and crashed into Oppenheimer, pinning the pistol between them as they smashed into the rocks. Oppenheimer gagged in agony as sharp stones stabbed through his dirtied suit and punctured his skin, flecks of saliva and mucus spilling from his mouth as he cursed and scratched at Ethan’s face with his nails. Ethan pulled away from the attack, keeping hold of Oppenheimer’s gun and twisting it from his grasp. The old man cried out in fury, reaching down to one foot with his free hand. Ethan glimpsed a small knife that Oppenheimer grabbed from a sheath at his ankle and whipped around toward Ethan’s flank. Ethan reached out for the blade but he couldn’t move quickly enough to block the blow. Something grated against his ribs and vibrated through his flesh as the blade plunged hilt deep into his side with a dull thud. He jerked away from the blade and rolled off the old man as he grabbed the blade’s handle. Oppenheimer scrambled to his feet, the pistol still in his grasp as he aimed it between Ethan’s eyes and glowered down at him as his chest heaved for breath.

‘Nice knowing you,’ Oppenheimer cackled, and squeezed the trigger.

‘Grandpa!’

Ethan glanced behind Oppenheimer, to see Saffron on her feet and looming behind Jeb. The old man whirled in surprise, just in time for Saffron to catch his gun wrist in her left hand and twist it violently upon itself. Saffron’s shrill scream of anguish echoed through the chamber as she yanked Oppenheimer’s arm down and brought her knee up into his elbow. A crack like the snapping of a twig echoed through the cavern as Oppenheimer’s arm broke mid-joint, the pistol clattering to the rocks at his feet.

Ethan, pain searing his body, watched as Saffron glared down at her grandfather as she held him by his broken arm.

‘My grandmother would have hated what you’ve become,’ she hissed at him.

Oppenheimer, his voice tight with agony and fear, pleaded with her.

‘This is worth it, Saffy,’ he croaked. ‘Every step of this journey, it’s worth it.’

Saffron twisted his arm harder, provoking a squeal of pain.

‘Not for me.’

Saffron drove her knee into Oppenheimer’s gut. The old man’s eyes bulged as a blast of foul air spilled from his lips. Saffron spun on her heel and pulled hard, hauling his wiry body over her shoulder. Jeb Oppenheimer screamed in pain as he was flipped over her body and plunged backwards into the pool, Saffron’s weakened legs buckling as she fell on top of him and clasped her hands around his throat.

Ethan dragged himself up onto his elbow to see the old man thrashing hopelessly in the water, his white suit weighing him down and his broken arm useless by his side as he sank below the surface in Saffron’s furious grasp. Above the thrashing water of her grandfather’s desperate death throes he could hear Saffron crying, and then the water fell still beneath her, expanding ripples drifting out toward the distant reaches of the chamber. Saffron stared down at the roiling surface of the water and cradled her bleeding stomach. Ethan struggled over the pain in his side, and clambered up the rock face beside him to regain his feet and limp across to her. He looked down into the pool, where Jeb Oppenheimer sank slowly away to sprawl motionless on the bottom, staring up with wide, lifeless eyes.

‘I’d say this pool’s been contaminated,’ he said.

Saffron nodded and then fell sideways. Ethan managed to catch her in one arm, his other hand still on the handle of the knife wedged in his side.

‘We need to get out of here,’ he said quickly, and turned them both toward the cavern exit.

Saffron was breathing heavily as she struggled to keep moving through the low, awkward passage, and Ethan could feel thick blood flowing warmly from around the knife still wedged in his side. He tried not to think about what damage the steel blade might be causing inside him, forcing himself onward one step at a time toward the dim light ahead from the cave entrance.

Another blast of noise from explosives thundered down the passage, a shock wave hitting Ethan and a fine mist of particles stinging his face. The cavern ahead was filled with thick smoke, and he could hear the occasional crack of a rifle as he staggered toward the light.

He instantly saw John Cochrane lying halfway between the cave entrance and the last line of defense, sprawled on his back and staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. Half of his forehead was missing, his ear hanging from his scalp in a web of tattered fronds of skin and bone. The cave entrance was littered with bodies and fallen chunks of rock.

Lopez saw him coming over her shoulder as she lay with her pistol propped up on the rocks.

‘We’re pinned down!’ she shouted. Then she saw their wounds. ‘Are you okay?’

Ethan nodded and managed to struggle up alongside her before both he and Saffron collapsed, breathless and sweating, in the darkness. Lillian Cruz dashed across to them, her eyes wide as she took in their injuries. Lopez saw the knife in Ethan’s side, and her skin turned pale as she looked at him.

‘Jesus, Ethan, we need to get you to a hospital.’

‘We need to get out of here first,’ Ethan said, his own voice a raspy whisper in his ears.

‘They’re still trying to blow the entrance to the caves,’ Lillian shouted above the crackle of gunfire. ‘We can’t hold them off much longer.’

Ethan looked across at Ellison Thorne. His shoulder was stained with crimson blood where a bullet had hit him, his features tight with terminal defiance. Nathaniel McQuire appeared uninjured but he was clearly exhausted, his face smeared with soot and scratches from the blasts of the explosives. Edward Copthorne was lying unconscious alongside them, several patches of blood on his clothes betraying multiple bullet wounds.

‘He ain’t stayin’ with us much longer,’ Ellison said, and gestured to the cave entrance. ‘It’s time we end this, for once and for all.’

Ethan nodded, one hand clutching the blade impaled in his side as he looked at the cave entrance. There, he could see sticks of dynamite piled loosely around the sides of the cavern, connected by a fuse wire that ran to a simple detonator lying beside Edward Copthorne’s inert body.

Ethan crawled to his knees and picked up his pistol from where it lay beside Lopez.

‘We’re ready,’ he said.

Lillian Cruz helped Saffron to her feet and Lopez stood up with her rifle held at port-arms, bayonet fixed and ready. Ethan looked down at Ellison Thorne one last time as the big man picked up a handful of dynamite sticks and cradled them in his arms, a cigarette lighter in his big fist.

‘Who was holding the camera, Ellison?’ he asked. ‘They’ll still be in danger, they’ll need help.’

Ellison Thorne smiled. ‘Not now they won’t,’ he said.

Before Ethan could challenge him again, Ellison lit the dynamite in his grasp in a fizzing cloud of sparks and blue smoke. Lillian prodded them all toward the edge of the cave entrance as Ellison staggered to his feet, holding his lethally blazing explosives and nodding once at Ethan. Ethan turned and hurried toward the light, squinting through the smoke and aiming his pistol ahead as they burst out into the vertical shafts of sunlight beaming down to the bottom of Misery Hole.

A single soldier was squatting amid boulders right in front of Ethan, fiddling with a pack of C4. Ethan aimed and fired a single shot, the round snapping the man’s head sideways as though he’d been clubbed with a baseball bat. He saw Lopez fire a round at a man further up the slope, hitting him squarely in the chest and taking him clean off his feet to land with a thud on his back.

Ethan split to the right of the cave entrance with Saffron and Cutler as Lillian and Zamora hurled themselves in the opposite direction.

Ethan shouted out as he crouched down with one arm across Saffron’s shoulders and Cutler shielding the pair of them with his body. ‘Get down, now!’

Ethan glimpsed dozens of mercenaries all aiming assault rifles at them, when the cave entrance exploded as Ellison Thorne’s dynamite ignited.