‘That could be harder than you think,’ Lopez pointed out. ‘They’re experts at living out here and can probably move undetected far better than we can. Following them unobserved will be tricky at best, impossible at worst.’
Ethan shrugged, striding toward the top of the ridge.
‘Maybe, but at least there’s no chance of them knowing we’re here ahead of them. The greatest weapon we have right now is surprise. As long as we’ve got that, there’s no chance of them finding us first.’
Ethan climbed the last few steps and reached the top of the hill to come face to face with a bayonet pointed unwaveringly at his face. Ethan looked past the bayonet and the gaping muzzle of the long-barreled rifle and straight into the eyes of the big man he’d last seen at Sedillo Park, fleeing the scene of Lee Carson’s murder. Ellison Thorne.
Lopez walked straight into his back as he froze, the steel of the bayonet scant inches from his face. For a brief moment he thought that Ellison might simply pull the trigger, but then his gravelly voice growled in the darkness.
‘Sound travels a ways at night, specially when you’re jawing like old women.’
Before Ethan could react, four more men appeared from where they were crouching amongst the scrub, their weapons trained on Ethan and Lopez. He could see that they were carrying pouches of ammunition, water bottles and leather sacks filled with what looked like sticks of dynamite.
‘You’ll be droppin’ your weapons now,’ Thorne said.
Ethan didn’t move.
‘We’re not carrying,’ he lied smoothly. ‘How did you get here so fast?’
Soft chuckles of disdain rippled through the men as they looked at Ethan. Ellison Thorne smiled coldly.
‘You’ve never heard of horses then?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Plenty for the takin’ if’n you know where to look. Much better than that noisy old bucket you came clattering out here in.’
‘We’re not here to hurt you,’ Ethan said quickly. ‘We already know who you are.’
‘That so?’
‘Your name is Ellison Thorne,’ Ethan said. ‘Your companions here are Nathanial McQuire, Kip Wren, Edward Copthorne and John Cochrane. Every last one of you was alive in 1862.’
There was a silence on the hillside as the men stared at Ethan. One of them, a young man whom Ethan assumed was McQuire, spoke up.
‘How’d you know that?’
‘Tyler Willis,’ Ethan answered. ‘Hiram Conley went to him for help when something began happening to him, when he began aging. Lee Carson wanted to do the same, didn’t he, but you wouldn’t let him because you know that Jeb Oppenheimer at SkinGen is hunting you. The man’s insane, wants to patent the bacteria that caused this and sell it to the wealthy elite while the rest of the world is forced to cease reproducing.’
John Cochrane spoke over the barrel of his rifle.
‘You sayin’ this is bacteria we’ve got?’
‘You don’t know about that?’ Ethan inquired.
‘Doesn’t matter what we don’t know,’ Ellison Thorne cut across them. ‘What we do know is that we need to get back to where this all started, and you’re in our way.’
‘Doing that doesn’t make any sense,’ Ethan protested. ‘If you don’t know what’s happened to you in the first place, then running back to those caves might not do anything for you at all.’
‘It’ll do a damned sight more than standing here listenin’ to your balderdash, boy!’ Ellison boomed, losing patience and turning to Copthorne. ‘Bind them up good, Corporal, then we move out!’
Ethan saw Copthorne hesitating, as though he wasn’t sure that by following Ellison’s order he could be sending himself to his doom.
‘I don’t know, Ellison,’ Copthorne said. ‘What if there’s a bit of truth in all he’s sayin’?’
Ethan didn’t wait for Ellison to answer.
‘There’s more to this than just all of you,’ he said urgently. ‘Jeb Oppenheimer is an old man himself. It’s not going to be enough for him to just arrest his aging. He’ll be like all of you, frozen in time as you were back in 1862.’ Ethan looked at Copthorne, guessing his age. ‘I’d bet that being stuck aged sixty or so for a century and a half isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it?’
Copthorne raised an eyebrow. ‘You wouldn’t believe the goddamned arthritis, and—’
‘Better alive than dead,’ Ellison Thorne cut his corporal off with a sharp glance. ‘We don’t have time for this. Sooner or later we’ll be tracked down, and out here we’re sitting ducks. Either you’re in or you’re out.’
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ Lopez said. ‘There’s a bigger problem. Jeb Oppenheimer’s plan is to genetically modify the bacteria that you carry, so that it can rejuvenate the carrier instead of just delaying their aging.’
A moment of silence fell over the soldiers as they digested this new piece of information.
‘Is that true?’ Kip Wren asked.
‘As far as we can tell.’ Ethan nodded. ‘A drug that inhibits aging would be valuable enough, but Oppenheimer’s not doing this out of the kindness of his heart. He wants to be young again and will stop at nothing to achieve it. His plan is to stop his own aging in its tracks, before working out how to reverse it. If he succeeds…’
Nathaniel McQuire figured it out quickly enough. ‘He’ll make sure that only people like him, the rich and the powerful, will have the drug.’
‘And everyone else will grow old and die,’ Copthorne said. ‘I’ll be damned.’
Ethan took a pace closer to Ellison and looked up at the man who towered over him.
‘You’ve got a chance to do something more, something better with your lives than just exist. If this bacteria gets into Oppenheimer’s hands we’re all dead regardless. But if we can shut the caves down, hide them from existence, then Oppenheimer won’t be able to finish his crazed little scheme, and from what I’ve seen he’ll be dead before the end of next year. Problem solved.’
Ellison Thorne glared down at him.
‘And when you shut those caves down, what happens to us?’
Ethan held his gaze for a moment before speaking.
‘You die,’ he said finally, looking at the other soldiers, ‘and countless millions of others live. You’ve already lived the lives of three men each, and whatever bacteria is in your bodies or whatever Jeb Oppenheimer might achieve, it’s too late for you to reverse what’s begun. Hiram Conley was mummified overnight after he died. None of you can survive much longer. It’s your choice: save yourselves and maybe risk Jeb Oppenheimer locating you and sacrificing the lives of millions of people, or sacrifice yourselves for the chance to stop him.’
Lopez moved to stand beside Ethan. Ellison Thorne was now silhouetted against a horizon glowing with the first light of dawn.
‘This is your chance to stop running,’ Ethan said, ‘and start fighting back. This is your chance to do the right thing, Ellison.’
The soldiers looked at each other for a long moment, before looking at Ellison Thorne. Slowly, the big man lowered his rifle.
56
‘Hands up! Stay still!’
The desk sergeant reacted instantaneously, a heavy-looking pistol whipping from its holster to point directly at Saffron Oppenheimer as she strode through the doors of the station as though it belonged to her. She raised her hands above her head as through a door poured a frenzied mass of officers. Before she knew it she was face down on the cold tiles, a thick forearm pinning her neck and chest to the ground as cuffs were snapped around her wrists. Pain bolted through her shoulders as she was yanked to her feet and hustled past the front desk and into the depths of the police department, surrounded by the black-shirted bodies of the police officers.