Edward Eternal

By J.S. Frankel

For Edward T. Scupper, life has been one long, lonely road. Born in the mid-eighteen-hundreds, for reasons unknown, he stops aging at eighteen. At first, it's exciting to live through the various decades while others succumb to time, but after a number of years, he finds that immortality is boring. Science proves to be the answer, or so he thinks. Edward—Ed—journeys from one city to another in the US in order to find an answer to his predicament. He doesn't wish for death. He only wishes to have a normal lifespan, like everyone else. After numerous searches, he winds up in Portland, Oregon, where he meets Doctor Farhan, a molecular biologist and geneticist who is working on using gene therapy to improve or cure various ailments, including blindness in his daughter, Diana. Ed tells Farhan of his desire to achieve mortality. Farhan promises to help him in return for the scientific knowledge, and a bargain of sorts is achieved. Initially, Ed and Diana don't get along. However, over time, they find themselves drawn to each other, as each of them seeks a cure for their problem, and only Doctor Farhan can provide it. Before long, though, the young couple finds themselves under attack, Doctor Farhan is killed, and the two teens are pursued by hitmen sent by Fester Norton, an elderly tycoon who wants what Ed has got—the secret of immortality—and will stop at nothing to get it!

• Language: English
• Publisher: eXtasy Books Inc
• Release date: May 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781487430160

Book preview

Dedication

To my wife, Akiko, and my children, Kai and Ray. Thank you for your support. I couldn’t ask for a better family. I also wish to thank—in no particular order—Jennefer Rogers, Eva Pasco, Joanne Van Leerdam, Sara Linnertz, Harlowe Rose, Emily Linnertz, Julia Blake, Toni Kief, Trisha J. Kelly, Anna Casamento-Arrigo, Rose Montague, Richard Correa, and to many more fine writers and readers to mention.

Prologue

Queens, New York. Twelve years ago. June eighth. Eleven PM. Gordy’s Lumber Emporium.

The fire blazed almost out of control, its flames licking the sky. The warehouse, a one-story structure that sold wooden beams and joists and prefabricated designs for shelves and desks and what have you, had caught fire about thirty minutes ago.

Now, the fire threatened to spread to other warehouses in the district. Most of the other warehouses were old and total firetraps. It was a miracle that they hadn’t gone up in smoke before.

Some of the other firefighters had already gone around to the back of the building to hit the fire from that area as well as the adjacent structures to douse any stray flames, but the fire still grew in size and intensity.

Harry McMahon, my firefighting partner on this mission, tapped me on the shoulder, and he yelled through his mask, Phil, it’s too damn hot! I’m practically melting, here. We can’t go inside. If anyone’s in there, they’re already charcoal. You know what I’m saying?

It was plain for anyone to see that he was scared out of his mind. Even through the mask, his eyes bulged out in fright, and his voice practically screamed, Let’s go home!

Harry was a hardcore firefighter, a ten-year veteran, one of the best. I’d been on the force for about eight months. He and I had fought over twenty blazes before. It took a lot to frighten him off a fire. In fact, this was the first time I’d ever seen him shaken to this degree.

People might be in there, Harry. It’s our job to get them out.

Job or not, what with all the smoke, it was impossible to tell. No one cried out, so either it was empty, or the occupants had been overcome with smoke inhalation. My partner shook his head. Not a good idea, Phil. I know you’re the ballsiest guy in our department, but that doesn’t mean you gotta get killed over it.

Truthfully, as whacked out as this sounded to someone who wasn’t in the know, getting killed was the only thing on my mind. I might have been the gutsiest firefighter around, but that was because I knew nothing could hurt me. Nothing ever had before, and I’d tried every method in the book.

No, this wasn’t suicide. I never condoned it to anyone or for anyone. For me, this was an out, only because everything else had failed to provide that for me.

On my way to the door, Harry, large and powerfully built, clamped down hard on my shoulder with a ham-sized hand. Phil, I outrank you on this. Fer Chrissakes, I’m beggin’ ya, don’t go in there.

A gleeful laugh burbled out of me. Then stay back. For me, no better place to be!

With that, I shrugged him off and ran inside, my breath rasping inside my oxygen mask. Tank on my back, ax in hand, I charged through the flames and found myself in the middle of the showroom. Everything was on fire, including the ceiling, it grew hotter by the second, and the smoke was so thick that I could barely see. This campfire had turned into an inferno.

Hey! Anyone here?

My voice echoed over the room. No answer, only the sound of the flames clawing the air and the pop-pop-popping of wood. Fires like these were usually caused either by carelessness or faulty wiring. At that point in time, it didn’t matter. Let the investigators and the insurance claims boys figure that one out. Not my problem.

My problem was getting into this and not getting out of it. The flames would feed on my flesh until nothing was left, and any pain incurred would be worth it. I’d been alive far too long to let burns or acid or whatever worry me.

In a series of slow and careful movements, I took off my gas mask and tank, then I shucked my uniform and let the fire come. The pain came with it as well, searing my nerve endings shut.

Then the pain receptors shut down. In those few moments, I felt nothing, heard nothing, and I figured this was the end, so let’s have at it, and...

Help.

Crap, why does someone have to ask for help now? There went kill-myself plan two-hundred-whatever. The voice called again, weakly this time, and I followed the source to where a middle-aged guard lay trapped under a pile of timber. His face was bloody and swollen by the heat. His eyes were also swollen shut. Who’s there? he called out, coughing.

Fire department, I replied, feeling resigned to the situation. I had to help out. It was part of my job. I’d been so close! Ah, well, my time would come, just not today. What’s your name?

Howard Morton. I... I can’t see. My eyes... the heat...

That was a help, in its own way. What happened?

As I heaved the timber off him, I noted his condition. Outside of some second-degree burns to this hands and legs, he’d live. Skin grafts would help—those, and time. Yeah, time was on my side, too, not that it meant anything.

He got to his feet with my help. On duty, he said between coughing fits. Fire... it started in the lunch-room, spread. Maybe someone forgot to put out a cigarette. Spread... I couldn’t get out.

You’re getting out now.

I helped him over to where I’d dropped my oxygen tank and mask, and I helped him on with them. Breathe deeply and regularly. Can you breathe, Howard?

He nodded.

You can walk, right?

Yeah.

Good. I helped him around to the rear exit, swatting away balls of flame that dropped from the ceiling. The heat was increasing, and the ceiling shivered. Any moment now, it would collapse. We’re out of here. C’mon!

Then Howard the guard passed out, so I hoisted him up in the classic fireman’s carry. From there, I tiptoed quickly through the fire the rest of the way and laid him down in the alleyway, away from the conflagration. He was still breathing. He’d make it.

Voices came from the street. Damn it, they would have to show up, and they were coming my way. No time, so I left my human cargo there and pulled a dirty blanket from the refuse pile over him.

Hey, someone’s there! Phil, is that you?

Double crap. They’d seen me, and couldn’t Fate ever favor me for once in my life? Rhetorical—it couldn’t. My cover was blown, so I made for the sewer.

Hurry... hurry! With a mighty jerk, I got the manhole cover off and quickly slid inside, pulling the heavy metal lid back into place. Once on the ladder, I dropped to the ledge below and stayed silent. Voices from overhead filtered down to me.

Hey, this guy’s alive. Get the ambulance...

Good, Howard would make it. That meant I was in the clear, and so I began the walk through the sewers back to my apartment. It was also in Queens, not that far away.

A few rats kept me company as I made my way along the ledge, along with an innumerable amount of roaches and other life forms. The stink of the sewer engulfed me, making my nose hairs wilt, and then with a sense of irony working overtime, I told myself not to worry. They’d grow back.

As well, my burns had begun to hurt, and then they segued into a ferocious itch, a sign of regeneration. They’d heal. They always did. They always would, and with it, my immunity would increase exponentially.

All that meant was that using the same method of self-disposal wouldn’t work. If I ran into another fire again, it wouldn’t injure me nearly as much.

Healing was the greatest gift I’d been given. Ageless, immortal—those terms applied as well. People would call it a gift. Maybe vampires called it a gift. I didn’t know. I’d never met one.

In my case, I called it a curse. Always the same age, immune to any disease, impervious to any harm known to mankind.

In the past, I’d held a number of jobs, many of them dangerous. Munitions transport driver, firefighter, soldier, deep-sea diver and salvage expert, fighter in the ring, and more. I’d broken all of my bones at least once, and many times, I’d broken multiple bones. They reformed in a matter of minutes.

Once, during a stint as a stuntman during the silent movie era, I got smashed by a steam engine that had to be doing around sixty miles per hour. That was in Ride The Rails, a western made for a company called Metrone Pictures.

It starred Tom Max, one of the big stars of that era. He and I were both six-one, with slender yet muscular builds, but he had a classically chiseled and handsome face, with blue eyes and dark hair. Black Irish all the way. In comparison, I looked ordinary, average—in short, totally forgettable.

That was the way things went. I didn’t mind. He got the fame and the money. I got the busted bones to prove my glory ten times over as well as decent pay.

I don’t know how you do it, Tom had remarked to me on the set one day.

He sat in the star’s chair, sipping from a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette. Yesterday, you got tossed off a horse onto your neck. It should have killed you, but this morning you were fine. And just three hours ago, that steam engine smashed you off them rails there.

He pointed at a nearby railroad track where a steam engine sat, idling. I mean, Jesus, Percy, I heard your bones break, and here you are, fresh as a daisy!

He slapped me on the shoulder and leaned over to whisper in a confidential manner, What’s your secret?

Good food and plenty of bed rest.

The director’s voice came from a small rise that led to a waterfall. Hey, Percy, I need you to stand in for Tom! We got a cliff-jumping scene coming up! Get ready for a swim!

Call that my cue. I got up to leave, and Tom started laughing. Percy, you are something else, something crazy.

Percy Feldon—that was the name I’d gone by at that time. It was a challenge to come up with aliases year after year, but luck was usually on my side. Back then, no one asked for references, unlike in modern times...

A squeak underfoot brought me back to the present and alerted me to the presence of another rat. I’d stepped on its tail. Sorry, pal.

Its dark, beady eyes glared red at me, and then it scampered off. At least it had a home to go to. Then again, I did as well, one of many I’d purchased over the past decades.

I wondered what the fire department would say when I didn’t show up for work tomorrow. Poor Phil, he must have been completely eaten by that fire. He gave his life in performance of his duty.

Wrong on that end. I’d given up my life a hundred times over. Yet, I was still here. And my name wasn’t Phil. My real name was Edward. But they didn’t have to know that.

As I trudged along the dank, smelly confines of the sewer, my injuries continued to heal at an accelerated rate. Once I got back to my apartment, the burns were practically gone. I shucked my ruined clothes and bundled them up in a garbage bag.

After that, I took a shower and then sat back to get some rest. I never slept that much, but sometimes, my mind got tired, and when it did, it drifted back in time to where it all began...

Chapter One: Way Back When

Marlon Ridge, Texas, eighteen-eighty-seven. Ten-thirty AM. Summertime.

Edward, get your Sunday best on. It’s time to go!

My mother’s voice rang out from downstairs. I was in my room, trying to read through my books, swiping sweat from face, and not into getting ready for church. I’d never seen the good of going, but my mother was a God-fearing woman, and she went to church every Sunday, pulling me along with her.

Get your Sunday best on. Wash your face, shine your shoes, it’s your turn with the Lord, and He has to hear your voice.

I could hear my mother’s words in my head. To her way of thinking, this was our time together, and it gave me a break—or so she said—from my chores around the farm.

In reality, it was an hour of boredom, followed by lunch in the church’s backyard—and lunch always tasted bad. It was a pot-luck kind of arrangement. Everyone brought something, but it seemed as though they always brought their worst.

Today was the traditional day of rest, a break from the usual. Ours was a hardscrabble kind of life, especially so after my father, James Edward Scupper, had passed away three years ago.

I’d been fifteen then, and from the time I was old enough to know who he was, I’d always thought my father was invincible. He was the kind of man who’d work hard all day, milk cows, bail hay, drive his team to market, and he’d never complain—that was my father.

Invincible—or so I thought—until a copperhead went and bit him when he went into an arroyo to round up a milk cow that had wandered off. He managed to make it back to our farm with the cow, and then he collapsed. We called a doctor, but there was nothing he could do.

After the funeral—and after all ten guests had left our house—my mother turned to me with a tear-stained face. Edward, your father’s in the arms of the Lord, now. We have to make do on Earth without him.

As I hugged her to give her some kind of solace as well as to condense and rationalize and sort out my feelings for my father, I understood how central religion was to her. Whenever some tragedy occurred, she always brought the concept of God into it.

Unlike most of the other kids and families in our area, I’d never been religious. Most of the other kids I knew believed as their parents did.

Here, they didn’t have much of a choice. God and family went together in this area, and Pastor Willems, a short and rotund hellfire-and-damnation kind of preacher, always thundered about losing one’s soul if they didn’t believe.

The Lord is your God, and if you don’t believe in him, he will cast you into the pit where you will dwell forevermore with those who have been unredeemed!

That was usually the way he started off his Sunday sermons. He got more wound up as the sermon moved along. All those unredeemed meant anyone who wasn’t Christian and white. I’d never understood that way of thinking, either.

Marlon Ridge was a small town about twenty miles west of Houston, population four-hundred-thirty, mostly ranchers. We were lucky. My father had been one of the better ranchers in the business, so we always had a little extra, and that had tided us over in hard times.

After he died, though, I had to take over, and while I preferred reading to working on the farm, duty called. With my mother’s help, we managed to eke out a living. Today, though, was Sunday, so no work, only church.

Which I wasn’t so keen on.

A knock on my door disturbed me. Come in.

The door opened, and my mother hesitantly poked her head in. Short and round, built like a beer barrel with thick legs, she wore a flowery print dress and a large, floppy hat. Edward, you’re not dressed, yet. Aren’t you coming to church today?

I’m a little tired, Ma.

She gave a huff. Edward, have you thought about the state of your soul?

First, it was God, and now it was the state of my immortal soul. Anytime I didn’t feel like going to pray to an invisible deity, she’d never fail to mention the condition of my allegedly ageless and indestructible soul. If it was that omnipotent, then missing one day in a house built to worship an invisible deity wouldn’t hurt. It seems to be doing okay.

Her eyes flashed, and not with happiness. Edward Thaddeus Scupper, you are going to wind up in the jaws of Hell if you’re not on the side of the most holy!

We argued, but in the end, she left, and I had the house to myself. It was eleven in the morning. A hot summer’s sun shone brightly overhead, so I went for a walk along the arroyo that lay about half a mile from our house. Beyond that was a creek. It never had a name, but I used to go swimming there from time to time.

A swim would do me good, wash away the sins of my week and cleanse my soul. That thought made me laugh as I descended the embankment. Halfway down, though, I tripped on an outlying root and fell into a pile of scrub brush.

Everything inside me shouted Mistake! when I looked at what was there—a diamondback rattlesnake. About five feet long with a heavy tan body along with somewhat dark, diamond-shaped patches on its torso, the snake lay coiled up, but its tongue flicked in and out, as if expecting company.

I wasn’t the company that it had been expecting. They usually fed on smaller animals, like deer mice and rats. However, they were known to be defensive and lashed out at anything they perceived to be a predator.

In this situation, I was both predator and prey.

Shoot.

I slowly backed off and the snake reared up, its tongue flicking faster now. It was going to strike any second, and...

Ow!

Its fangs sank deeply into the exposed area of my leg, drawing little blood at first. Pain flashed through me, and my eyesight blurred. With what was left of my strength, I picked up a nearby rock and bashed the snake on its head. It let go and fell back. Angered beyond belief, I kept smashing it, heedless of how many more times it bit me.

Finally, with a cry of triumph, I hurled the rock away and fell back, waves of weakness knocking me down. I’d killed that diamondback, but it had killed me, too. My breath hitched in my lungs, and my consciousness wavered in and out.

My immediate thought was that I was going to die out in the sun, burned to a crisp, fodder for the animals that might pass by. Coyotes, probably. They enjoyed a good steak. That was to be my fate, and I accepted it.

I felt sorry for my mother, though. She’d done her best to raise me right from the time I was little, and now... now, it was all done. Darkness settled in. This is the end. This is where God takes me. I’m sorry I didn’t go to church.

A moment later, I took back that thought. This might have happened, anyway. No way to know. Leave a deity out of it. My fault, and mine alone.

My eyelids grew heavy, and my body weak. This is it. This is...

Minutes or hours later, I awoke. It had to be hours because it was dark. I’m still alive? How?

Getting into a seated position took some initial effort, but as I sat up, a curious feeling of strength and