The Stone Man - A Science Fiction Thriller (20 page)

“The bloody statue thing that’s been smashing up half of the country, it’s the only fucking thing that’s been on the TV!”

“Haven’t had it on. Didn’t want to risk attracting attention. I’ve been very, very quiet ... had to be SAFE!”

(There’s another pause, and I remember the confusion Paul and I shared here. We did not expect this. I speak next.)

“There’s … there’s something very big going on right now. And we think—well, we know—that it involves you.”

(There’s a loud intake of breath. I can still see his wide, terrified eyes. He doesn’t say anything.)

“We thought … you could tell us …”

(Silence.)

“You don’t know, do you?”

(Silence.)

“When you say ‘disaster’ … do you mean for you? Or do you mean disaster for … everyone else?”

“Don’t know. Don’t know.
Please
…”

(There is a loud, slapping sound of hands on thighs, caused by Paul slapping his own and standing. There is a stomping sound as Paul moves, and he speaks next.)

“THIS thing, THIS fucking thing—”

(Sound from the TV is suddenly heard as Paul turns it on, the steady sound of helicopter blades interspersed by occasional remarks by the on-the-scene commentator. The live feed is from high above, as always, although initially there is no visual other than an immense cloud of smoke in the middle of what could possibly be an urban centre. This goes on for a while, as evacuation updates pan across the tracker bar that runs along the bottom of the screen. The camera zooms farther suddenly, and although it is still shown at a distance, the unmistakable shape of the Stone Man appears from the smoke, unmistakable and unstoppable.)

“WHAT do you know about THAT thing—”

(There is a loud crash, so loud the audio distorts, as the glass coffee table goes over. Patrick has just leapt to his feet, striking it hard enough to upend it. He doesn’t even notice. He speaks next, his voice barely a whisper, strained and soaked in horror.)

“What … what …”

“It’s okay, just talk to us, and we—”

“It … it walked through a building … what is … the building didn’t stop it from ...”

“Okay, calm down a second and we—”

“I’M NOT SAFE! I’M NOT SAFE! I’M NOT SAFE! I’M NOT SAFE!”

(There is flurry of movement followed by a popping sound on the recording, and it ends.)

***

The Dictaphone flew out of my hands as Patrick smashed past me. I was unprepared, surprised, and off-balance, as well as being barely able to stand as it was; I tumbled aside like a pathetic bowling pin as this half-starved, older man knocked me down. Paul lunged over to grab him, but his foot connected with the corner of the upended coffee table as he did so, and he tripped, slamming onto the floor for the second time in five minutes. Patrick flung open the living room door, fled through it, and was out of sight along the hallway, still gibbering. We made it to our feet as we heard the front door opening, and reached the hallway ourselves just in time to see Patrick’s pale body disappearing out of the house and onto the driveway. We lumbered after him, jostling against each other in our efforts to catch up, and reached the front door at the same time as Patrick was halfway across his driveway. In a second he would be out of the gate.

As it turned out, that didn’t matter. As he ran through the gate and out onto the street, we saw Patrick jerk upright suddenly, as if he’d been shot. His whole body then suddenly went utterly limp and buckled sideways, like a marionette with all of its strings cut.

Paul and I stood frozen in the doorway, shocked, and then Paul half-ran, half-limped over to Patrick’s unconscious form on the concrete. I shook my temporary freeze off and followed, but even close up I couldn’t see Patrick thanks to Paul’s bulk blocking him from sight. I suddenly had a very bad feeling indeed; this was all very familiar, and I couldn’t think why.

“What … what the hell …” said Paul, looking down at Patrick in amazement. I started to ask what was wrong, and then I heard it, and remembered where I’d seen this before.

“
GCCAATTGAATTTGGCCCGTTAACTCAGG ….
”

Patrick’s eyes were open but vacant, devoid of thought, and in this too he was exactly like the guy in the green vest I’d seen jump on the Stone Man back at the transport museum in Coventry. The same staccato, rapid-fire gibberish over and over, coming from Patrick’s mouth this time, low and steady. Paul looked up at me in confusion.

“What the hell is this? Is it the bang on the head?”

“No … I’m afraid not. Something else is at work here, I think. And it’s pretty worrying. This is long-range stuff.”

“This is to do with the Stone Man? It must be twenty miles away still, at least.”

“I know. Look, let’s get him inside, then I’ll tell you all about it. We can prop him up in the living room; I don’t think he’s going anywhere for a while. Then we’ll have a cup of tea and try to figure out what’s what. We need to calm down.” Paul nodded in response, then looked down at Patrick and sighed.

“Poor bugger,” he said. “Something’s messed him right up. Sounds as if he didn’t even ask for it either.” He paused, then touched Patrick’s arm, surprisingly. The touch was quite tender. “I shouldn’t have put the TV on. I was just … so frustrated. Being like this, and him freaking out, and not even knowing a bloody thing about the Stone Man, when all those people have died … I just snapped. This is my fault.”

He was being hard on himself. Whilst I agreed that putting the TV on was a dumb move, I could understand his frustration. I squatted down opposite him, and hooked my hand under the still-babbling Patrick’s shoulder.

“Done now,” I said. “He might still be fine, we don’t know. At least we don’t have to worry about him doing anything stupid and hurting himself, and hey … it leaves our options open, doesn’t it?”

Paul stopped in the action of putting his hand underneath Patrick’s opposite shoulder to help pull him upright.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I just mean that we have to decide whether we’re going to try to take him to the Stone Man, or sit here and wait. And this way, with him like this, well … it means we have a choice, right?”

It made perfect sense to me, but Paul just stared at me for a long time, his eyes examining my face.

“What?” I said, tersely. I wasn’t having any more of this. What I’d said was absolutely true; we did have a choice to make, and regardless of anything else, Patrick being like this made it easier. Fact. We had a job to do, and Patrick was in no state to make choices now (not that he exactly was before). The responsibility was now ours, like it or not. Why couldn’t Paul see that?

Either way, he suddenly waved it off with his hand.

“Not yet. You’re right; tea. We both need a cup. Let’s get him inside and have some bloody tea.”

***

I badly wanted to shut the kitchen door for two reasons. One, in the unlikely event that Patrick was in any way aware of our presence, I didn’t want him to overhear this conversation, and two, more importantly, it would drown out the now incessant drone of his constant babbling in the living room. It was maddening, every syllable clipped and fully enunciated. It was obvious to us both why it wasn’t an option though, as we had no idea if Patrick might suddenly come to at any minute and attempt to run away again. Basically, we just wanted to keep an eye on the guy.

Paul stood by the boiling kettle, looking out of the window onto the small rear garden. He seemed to be examining the lawn bric-a-brac that Patrick had presumably set out himself; there was no evidence so far of anyone else living here, or of an immediate family. Neither of us said anything, using the pause in proceedings to try to get ourselves under control and breathe easily for a moment (getting Patrick back inside in our physically depleted state had been a considerable effort) as well as to avoid our first mutually thorny argument. Eventually, the kettle’s button clicked back into place and the steam stopped.

“Take sugar?” asked Paul with his back to me, picking up the appropriately labelled jar nearby and removing the lid.

“Two,” I told him, “Not a lot of milk.”

“Uh-huh.”

I wondered how this was going to go. His reaction outside was clearly one of disagreement, but he hadn’t committed to it; he was either open to suggestion or one of those men who needed their tea to fortify them before an unpleasant task. I, however, was resolute. I had too much at stake. I was prepared, my mind ready.

Paul handed me a mug, and leant back against the opposite counter. The silence continued a moment as he took a small sip from his mug, closed his eyes appreciatively, and then gestured towards me theatrically with a free hand.
Go on then.
It signified reluctance, but willingness to have it out, because this was a matter worth going through the hassle over.

I thought I knew one other thing, though; I was getting an idea of Paul’s style, and this was part of it. To him, letting me go first was a passive aggressive move. Letting me go first was his way of both giving up and establishing control; granting permission to speak. I’d obviously pissed him off, and he wanted to win. I usually missed this kind of thing, even when it was at its most obvious, but unfortunately for Paul, I’d seen this exact behaviour nearly every day for a whole six years under a former editor of mine. I knew these mannerisms well, because they’d made my life hell on a daily basis, even when for a long time I couldn’t figure out why. Then one of his former co-workers drunkenly told me (at the always disgustingly lavish publishing group annual Christmas party) that these little games of dominance were a running joke back at his old office. He’d told me what it was I’d been missing, and how best to handle it. So far, Paul had been running the show, I felt, and that had been fine. I didn’t think he’d been doing it on purpose, but here he was. Now he was potentially going to derail my plans, and had just made it clear—unwittingly—that he was going to actively
try
to do so.

“No, no,” I said, “after you. The floor is yours.” Paul looked mildly surprised, and I knew my guess had been right. He hadn’t expected me to see his hoop, hadn’t expected me to refuse to jump through it. He rallied quickly though, and as he began to speak I felt a hint of satisfaction; not so much for catching Paul out, per se, but for spotting it at all. These things were usually beyond me.

“Right. I say we wait,” Paul said, flatly. “He’s clearly locked into the Stone Man in some way, same as we are, and he knows that something bad is gonna happen. We take him to it—even if we can—and we hurry that ‘disaster’ up, whatever it is. We have no idea whether moving him out of here might actually make things worse; you saw what happened when he tried to leave the house, or the immediate area at least. We came here for answers, and there are none, not yet anyway. If there was some obvious way that we could help, fine, we could then do that. But there isn’t, and we’ve been told quite clearly that the one thing we
could
do will cause ‘disaster’. We wait it out, and our consciences are clean; anything that happens is out of our control.” He finished speaking, stared at me, and sipped from his mug again. It was a convincing argument, but I wasn’t worried. I had a few of my own.

“Okay,” I said, returning his gaze, “well, we both know we can’t take him farther away—take him up to Scotland or whatever—as that just prolongs all the destruction and draws the Stone Man farther across the country. This guy is the source, and the Stone Man will follow him. But we take him to it—risking this vague and possibly made up ‘disaster’ that he’s foretelling—and that destruction stops. And we’re still there to get our answers.”