The Stone Man - A Science Fiction Thriller (26 page)

“How temporary?” I asked, sounding more desperate than I would have liked. It was like having my head in the hangman’s noose and thinking that I'd seen someone coming towards me, carrying a pair of scissors.

“Until this is over, and we know what the hell is going on. Once it is, and we do, you’ll be rewarded for your services to Queen and country and given full, exclusive rights to the truth … or our version of it. You’ll be edited by us, but we’ll work with you, not against you, and you can even admit that you’d cooperated with the military to help bring this threat to an end. Someone has to take this to the press, after all; the overall facts can’t be covered up. The public already knows about Caementum. The world knows. They want answers, and they will have them, even if they’re only the ones that we deem appropriate. And, as a sweetener—and to make sure that you are, in turn, working with us throughout all of it and not against us—I’ve been ordered to inform you that you’ll be our voice on this. You’ll be a hero, Mr Pointer. We need you fully onside; this is our way of ensuring your cooperation whilst keeping you happy.” She looked at Paul. “And you’ll be paid too, don’t worry.” Paul raised his eyebrows at me. It wasn’t an entirely unfair deal.

“What if I’m scooped in the meantime?” I asked, feeling intense relief but wanting to check all of the bases. I knew that it was unlikely, and as I stood there and thought about it, it occurred to me that this offer could potentially be an even better result. The same story, but with endorsement by the military, and at the highest level? And access to exclusive information, even after it had passed through the army PR filter, would add an extra element to the whole thing.

“Highly unlikely,” answered Straub, looking at her watch. “Anything anyone could possibly put together so far would have nowhere near the insight that you already do, and even if something happens in future that you’re somehow outside of, we’ll make sure that you have enough extra juice to blow away anything that anyone else might have. Trust us.” I didn’t have much choice. “Either way, gentlemen, that’s just the sweetener. Go against us, and unfortunately you won’t have much of a future. I can’t stress that enough. Understood?”

We nodded again, but more quickly this time.

“Right,” said Straub, “here’s what you need to know about the plan. I’m telling you this so that you can just focus on keeping track of Caementum and telling us anything that we might need to know, rather than worrying about what’s going on. It’s this simple; we are going to put C.I. Four into the path of Caementum, or rather,
near
to it. This is being done with his full cooperation, as far as you or anyone else is concerned.” She paused for objections. At that moment, we didn’t dare offer any. “If it passes him by, then we, and you, will continue to monitor it, whilst we examine C.I. Four alongside One, Two and Three and try to make any connections. Being perfectly frank, we’ll also be running some tests on you two at some point. Nothing painful, I promise, but our boys will have a lot of ideas they’d like to try out on you both, I’m sure. You understand, we
have
to stop this thing.” Outside, we could hear the sound of engines, and running feet. There was also a light clanging of metal; something being unloaded. We didn’t look, our attention riveted on Brigadier Straub. “If it doesn’t, well … then we wait and see.” That statement in itself raised a lot of questions, but neither Paul nor I said anything just yet.

“We know from tests on C.I. One that doses of adrenaline should get C.I. Four physically mobile—” she said, but I interrupted her.

“He’s awake? I mean, he’s aware?” I asked, shocked. Perhaps there was hope for Patrick—or Blondie as he was to us then—after all.

“No, no,” said Straub quickly, shaking her head and looking towards the window. Her walkie-talkie crackled, and she lifted it to her mouth. “Straub here, I’ll be there in a moment. Just get everyone in position, and let me know when the remote centres are up.” She placed the walkie back on her hip, and carried on talking to us. “I said he’s mobile. He’s not aware, but can stand, and be led. Imagine someone with extreme autism—or similar—so much so that they were lost in their own heads. You couldn’t really communicate, but you could take them by the hand and lead them to where you wanted them to go. Temporarily, we can recreate that—only for a few minutes or so—using an adrenaline injection to give us that option.”

The autism/brain pattern link again,
I thought.

“As far as the world will be concerned, he’s a member of our team, and a volunteer,” said Straub. “We can sort the details out later. No one will know that he wasn’t of sound mind.” She stared at me, daring me to challenge her, but I didn’t. What could I say? She knew who she was dealing with; she knew that I would have done the exact same thing.

“And if he’s killed?” asked Paul, his voice dangerously flat. I looked to see him staring at Straub with worryingly unguarded dislike. She didn’t miss a beat, however.

“Every precaution will be taken to avoid that possibility, Mr Winter,” she said, poker face still perfectly intact.

“And if it happens anyway?” asked Paul, shifting on his feet. “You know nothing about this thing yourself, as you’ve already said. You’re working under intense, what was the word you used, fog? You’ve no idea what could happen, so how the hell do you intend to ‘take precautions’ with something beyond your understanding?”

“The brief answer, Mr Winter, is that we don’t have any other options right now,” said Straub, almost absently, looking at her watch again. “The country is in chaos, and people are dying. That’s the long and short of it. And off the record again, if it means risking the life of a man who, as far as we can tell, is an irreversible vegetable in an attempt to potentially stop this thing, then we are going to do that. Unless you have any better suggestions, which with all due respect I doubt seeing as we have a team consisting of the finest scientific minds in the world working on this. Now, if you have any more questions, this is your last chance to ask them.” She moved her hands behind her back, and looked at us both.

Despite the situation, I couldn’t help but be impressed by Straub. She was formidable, of that there was no doubt, but she was also well spoken and efficient in a no-nonsense way that was the total opposite of the way I went about my affairs. I was direct too, but I was messy and chaotic. True, this was her at work, and therefore maybe we were seeing a head on her shoulders that wasn’t present at other times, but even so, I wished that I could turn it on like that when I wanted. Paul, I could tell, was less impressed.

“Just one from me,” he said, that look still on his face. “What are you going to do if he is killed and it’s broadcast live to six billion people? Who explains that one away? You?” Straub didn’t bat an eyelid.

“It won’t be a problem, Mr Winter,” said Straub, shaking her head slightly. “We’re clearing the local airspace as we speak. The immediate area has been evacuated, and our men are preventing anyone from entering for the time being. We can only do so much, but I think it’s enough. And I do assure you; we’ll look after him. We want Caementum stopped to save lives; we’re the good guys in this. Remember that.” Her walkie-talkie buzzed again, and Straub listened into it.

“Roger that. On my way,” she said, and then lowered the walkie. “Right then, gentlemen, if I can just ask you to wait here until you’re sent for. You might as well get comfortable, as I’d say that you have a good twenty minutes or so until you’ll be called. I’m going to ask you not to root around in here anymore, and these men here heard me ask that, if you get my meaning. If you need anything, ask my men, and by that I mean water or a toilet break.”

“Hang on, though, what are you actually wanting us to—” I started to say, but Straub held up a hand.

“Sorry, Mr Pointer, I did give you a chance to ask questions, and I think I’ve already told you enough about what is going to be requested from you. You’ll get the finer details shortly. Someone will come for you. I’ll speak to you later.” She turned, and the guards saluted her as she walked out of the door.

“Bitch,” muttered Paul under his breath.

***

Chapter Five: The Coming of the Stone Man

***

 
I remember that time so well; it was so torturously dull that I couldn’t forget it if I tried, whilst simultaneously being unbearably tense. Can you imagine? What an awful combination.
God,
it went on forever. The TV was now just news without any new footage, so it looked as if the military had in fact cleared the airspace just as Straub had said. There was speculation that something big was going down, and apparently the government had issued a statement about a ‘stoppage attempt involving electromagnetism that required civilian clearance in a five-mile radius’. It was good, but I doubted everyone swallowed it. Even so, the world was in the dark.

And of course, the case was the same regarding the Stone Man in general; I look at the TV now, and try to remember a time when we knew nothing about it, when we were still living in the blessed ignorance that we’d enjoyed before that hot summer weekend over a year ago. Now we know what it wanted.

And even with that knowledge—along with the other parts that we learned the hard way—people are still going to die.

***

Paul flicked the TV off; I didn’t mind. It was showing us nothing, after all, and the endless speculation was just annoying. We were nearing the twenty-minute mark, and we’d barely spoken a word, with me laid out on the sofa and Paul slumped silently in the armchair. Blackjack was not, pardon the pun, on the cards; I was embarrassed to talk to Paul after Straub gave the game away, and Paul clearly wasn’t in the best of moods with me, given the silent treatment I’d received since Straub left. In fact, when he finally spoke, it wasn’t to me.

“Guys, I need to use the toilet. Boss lady said I could go, so I guess one of you two escorts me?” He was referring to the guards, who looked at each other; one then turned to Paul and nodded without a word. Paul got up and walked out of the door that the guard had opened for him. The guard then followed him out, and I heard their feet heading up the stairs. As I lay there quietly, it struck me how we were already treating this house as if it was our own, how we were already treating Blondie ... Patrick ... like he was an afterthought. Presumably, he’d bought this house, worked and saved for it and earned it; yet here we were, and here we
still
were, in part thanks to Paul and I using him like a bargaining chip in order to stay at the heart of things. But we were also trying to help; I keep telling myself that even now, but of course I’m never convinced.

Even Paul had agreed that Straub’s plan was the only thing to do, and I believed that too … but I still knew that it wasn’t really right. We hadn’t treated him correctly since we arrived. There’d been no respect, but it was too late to change that.

Patrick had already been taken away on a stretcher by two men in medical-looking clothes, presumably for his adrenaline injection, or to be examined and then prepared for it. I guessed they wanted to get as much data from him as they could before the Stone Man arrived, in case this all ended with his death. The medical guys had looked at me and Paul on the way in; they’d stared at us like lab rats. Paul had given them the finger. To my great relief, once Patrick was out of our immediate vicinity, the effect of the pull was suddenly greatly reduced. I assumed it was something to do with his current catatonic state, as taking him a distance of about a hundred feet from the house—they’d taken him inside the largest tent, the one furthest away—certainly wouldn’t have been enough on its own to dull the pull before. We’d been suffering from it when we were fifteen miles away. Regardless, I was incredibly glad when it happened; the feeling of relaxation was overwhelming, even if the pull had only reduced to the level that it had been at when I was in Sheffield. In comparison to the last few hours, it was barely noticeable now. I can only assume Paul felt the same.

Earlier, we’d been watching the proceedings through the window. It had been interesting, for a while. Soldiers scurrying here and there, and two tent-like canvas structures being erected in the middle of the street (after men with surveying equipment made complex calculations regarding placement and distance). It wasn’t just soldiers on the streets, either; people in civilian clothes with laminated passes on lanyards around their necks could be seen every now and then, sometimes supervising the delivery of equipment into the tents and exchanging what I assumed was data by showing each other readouts on handheld tablet computers or laptops. Occasionally, one would gesture towards the house in mid-conversational flow, and I thought we’d be getting a visit; we didn’t, however. There was a constant buzz overhead, loud even inside the house, of helicopters hovering, and this along with the unending stream of orders being relayed by soldiers with megaphones meant that I was glad to be indoors. It was just too bloody loud out there.

The overall atmosphere outside was clearly one of intense, fevered labour. The only people who seemed to be keeping their cool were the few stationary, rifle toting soldiers that we could see, as well as the three figures that stood outside the first tent; Straub, and two men who were clearly her superiors. They were wearing dress uniform, and looked older than her. The fact that they were so much taller than her as well made Straub look, at this distance, like a child. Even so, her demeanour didn’t seem to change. Brigadier Straub was no fawning underling. I’d half-expected to see the Home Secretary or even the Prime Minister here, but I suppose you didn’t introduce the top man into what could well be a highly dangerous situation, in the same way that the president and the vice-president never travel on the same plane.

I sat up and rubbed my face, suddenly feeling very tired. The long walk the day before, the drunken night’s sleep, the long ride, the run through Sheffield, the drive over here, the intense stress put on my body by the crazy psychic feedback or whatever the hell it was … it had all added up. And now that the latter sensation had dulled—which had been like turbocharged caffeine hooked up to a power station—I felt like I’d just been rudely woken up, only to realise that I needed a whole extra night’s sleep. I had to be careful. The last thing in the world that I wanted when the Stone Man arrived was for me to be anything other than one hundred percent. I had to be switched on and focused.
Eyes on the prize,
I told myself.
You miss a thing and Hugh Hefner is inviting some other hack up to the Playboy mansion.
I smirked at myself, but even so, the sky really was the limit, providing I didn’t do something to screw it up.

I slapped my cheeks lightly, and stood up, taking a deep breath and cracking my knuckles as I wandered over to the window again. It was nearly time, I knew. I realised that the activity outside had come to a standstill, and as I saw what they were doing I knew that it was confirmation of the very real feeling in my bones; I understood that there was only about ten minutes left.

There was still noise outside from the helicopters and buzzing radio chatter, and now and then someone in civilian dress would scurry from one tent to the other, or hold up some sort of sensory device in the middle of the road. But the two lines of soldiers were another thing altogether; my first thought was of the Arch of Swords at a wedding, when the bride and groom leave the church flanked on either side by the groom’s comrades. There were no swords here though, and even if there had been, the distance between each soldier and the man facing him was easily twelve feet. Plus, they weren’t shoulder to shoulder with the man next to them either; there was about five feet in between each man in their respective lines. Either way, they had formed a channel to flank the Stone Man from the house over the road (which presumably would be no longer standing in ten minutes’ time) right up to the end of the driveway. It was clearly an adaptation of the walking circle they had employed previously to surround the Stone Man for whatever reason. Even if I didn’t already know it—if I didn’t already feel it so much that I could almost
see
it, half-picturing it the same way that I could almost see Patrick through the wall of his house—it was clear that the lines of soldiers in front of me marked the Stone Man’s path.

The tent nearest the house, a few feet back from the end of the driveway, now had some sort of Plexiglas covering across the front of it. I couldn’t see Straub and the two men in dress uniform anymore, so I put two and two together. The perks of leadership, or simply looking after vital personnel? I didn’t know, and doubted that covering was anything other than a precaution against radiation or whatever, but either way I hoped to be inside that tent when the Stone Man got here. I thought I would be.

The toilet flushed upstairs, and after a pause I heard the feet descending again. Right on cue, the radio of the guard still in the room crackled. I found out his name as he answered:

“Taylor.”

As ever, I couldn’t understand the noise that came back, not at a distance at least, but this time I did pick up one word that, to my surprise, chilled me rather than thrilled me.

“… approaching.”

Corporal Taylor looked at me and, expressionless, jerked his head towards the door. My presence was clearly requested elsewhere. Taylor opened the door, and led me into the hallway, where Paul and his guard had reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Had the call, have we?” Paul asked. Not directed at me; at Taylor.

“This way, sirs,” said Taylor, gesturing with his hand towards the door, wanting Paul and I to walk in front of him. We did so, and Paul put his hands on top of his head as he walked, fingers laced together and resting on the back of his skull like a man being marched out to face the firing squad.

“Knock it on the head, will you, Paul,” I muttered, quietly. “We want to keep these people sweet.” I instantly regretted the words as soon as they’d left my mouth. I knew what would come back the other way. I was surprised when it didn’t.

“That’d be a good cue for me to say ‘I bet you do’ or something catty like that, wouldn’t it?” he muttered back, unsmiling. I didn’t have a response, as Paul opened the door and stepped outside. The light had really dropped now, the sky just beginning to turn a beautiful orangey pink. From far away, we heard a distant, booming crash. The Stone Man was approaching, all right. One of the guards moved in front of us to lead. To reach the tent we had to move through the line of soldiers, but the gaps among the men were more than wide enough for us to pass through easily.

“Don’t worry about it,” muttered Paul, still looking straight ahead, and I felt a burden heavier than I realised slip from my shoulders. I was surprised that his opinion had bothered me so much. “I won’t say I’m not disappointed, but l also won’t say that you weren’t right to play things close to your chest. You don’t know me from Adam. Although, it does make me feel like a bit of a dick when I think about me going on in the car. You know, about saving the day and all that. You must have thought I sounded like a bloody kid.”

“No, no, I didn’t think that at all—” I began to protest, but at that moment we’d passed around the back of the tent and in through a rear entrance. I hadn’t expected it, but I supposed it made sense to go in from the back if your bomb shield or whatever was across the front. Before we were more than a few steps inside, we were searched. Paul protested, but caught my eye and stopped; he knew I was right. We
wanted
to be in here, after all, so we had to play it their way. They already had my bag and laptop. I wasn’t too bothered about losing those; I had backups of my contacts, and there was nothing too personal or vital on the laptop.

Inside were several computer stations, and one that looked like some kind of satellite or radar display. The noise didn’t lessen any once we were inside, either. The tent was filled with the constant chatter of personnel (mainly civilian-dress types) along with the many large industrial fans that were placed here and there to keep the computer equipment cool and working at maximum efficiency, as well as various computer alerts, update notifications and sat-phone calls ringing and pinging away. Despite the noise being so chaotic, the hurried activity going on within the tent was anything but; everyone seemed to be going about their business at pace, but with ruthless efficiency. It was impressive, to say the least.

I spotted Straub over at one long console, standing behind a seated row of three civilian-dress types. Next to her, as before, were her two superiors. We were led over to them, our guards saluting her and the other two men in dress uniform as they turned.

“Here they are,” she said to the other officers, who simply nodded silently in response. Straub then addressed us. “It’s almost time, gentlemen. You must be excited; particularly you, Mr Pointer,” she said, without smiling. I considered the question; in a way, I still was, but now that I thought about it, I found myself feeling scared. Now the moment was here, the one I’d been waiting for that would give me the answers I so desperately wanted … I suddenly found myself thinking about the word Patrick had used.
Disaster
. To dismiss it entirely would obviously be foolish, even if it was the word of a terrified, hysterical man, because we knew
nothing
about the situation here. He wouldn’t be scared for no reason, would he?