‘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, he’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.