The Stone Man - A Science Fiction Thriller (50 page)

It’s not an invasion.
It’s a breeding program.
 

I won’t be the only one to work this out of course, as I say. Far smarter minds than mine have been working on the Stone Man situation since the very first one touched down in Coventry many months ago, and they’ll have figured this out too, but maybe they have a few tricks up their sleeve as well. Who knows? I can only hope so, for all of our sakes. I think there are tough times ahead for our country, either way. No reports yet of arrivals anywhere else in the world either, so I can only assume there’s only one point on our planet that they can arrive at, or one point at least that is the easiest place for them to do so.

I’d better get the map and see if I can make some headway. In a way, it’ll make my … job that much easier. I mean, if I can help give other people a death sentence, it’s only fair I’m prepared to do the same for myself, right?

Done. No joy. They’ve shut me down properly this time, it seems. That screaming ... oh, it is terrible. I will not falter before it.

I’ve let Straub know. Yeah … and I’m stalling again, aren’t I?

I’m not a noble man, and I haven’t done many noble things. Would I be doing this if not for that arsehole Henry? I don’t know. But I am doing it, at least. This one last thing.

Christ. Ah …
Christ.
I can’t do this. I can’t do this. Oh Jesus.

Dignity … for once in my fucking life. Please. Oh ...

Right. Right. I’m going to stop this recording, and then I’m done. I don’t have any grand last words, and if I waste any more time trying to think of some then I might change my mind. But I
am
going to do it.

And that’s the big surprise for me in all of this. When it really counts, some people can just do what needs to be done … but it turns out I’m one of them. And I’ve been a coward all my life. Who knew? I’ve always—

No. Doing it again. I’m going.

... ’Bye.

***

Paul sat in the middle of a field, alternating between looking at the blackness of the sky and the blackness of his phone’s switched-off screen. It wasn’t really
his
phone (that was in his opposite hand, still receiving signal despite his rural surroundings, and providing his up to-the-minute news feed) to be precise; he thought of it as
Straub’s
phone, the government issue one that was to be left on at all times. It had been switched off ever since he finished with his call to Andy on the landline phone.

The hours since had been spent pacing, crying, shouting at no one, sending cryptic messages to close friends and not responding to any of the concerned replies he’d received back. It wouldn’t have been the first time lately that they’d had cause to send them. Paul’s friends had been worried about him for many months.

After a long time, he’d had to get out of the house, to find some kind of release. He’d been nervous as he headed for the door, concerned about the barriers arriving early, but based on the timescale of the Stone Men’s previous visits, he’d still felt that he had a few hours yet before the Blues arrived and they all began to walk. Then he wouldn’t be going anywhere, and he wanted his freedom for as long as possible. Plus, he thought he’d
feel
any change on that front. At least, he told himself, if he suddenly got zapped whilst driving, then he wouldn’t know anything about what would come next.
Probably a six-car pileup,
whispered a voice in his head, but he ignored it. He was a desperate man now, and that desperation was growing.

He’d headed west out of Sheffield, after wrapping himself in several layers and stopping to grab a torch as he left the house. He’d intended to be outdoors for as long as possible, and the sun was already setting by the time he’d left. Paul didn’t much fancy spending his last few hours alive nursing a broken leg, courtesy of an unseen rabbit hole.

After about half an hour, he’d found himself driving through the beautiful fields around the Ladybower Reservoir. He could appreciate the area based on past experience; at the time it was far too dark to see anything outside of his headlamp beams. This would do. Driving became a pain anyway, constantly having to wipe the tears from his eyes and clear mucus from his nose, his chest heaving steadily all the while. He’d had to park the car at an almost forty-five-degree angle, as there was no space between the road edge and the steep grassy embankment. The road had been very narrow, but not too winding at this point, and with his hazard lights on in the night other drivers would have plenty of time to avoid him. Plus, what would the police do? Give him a ticket? It wasn’t exactly something he would have to worry about.

As he’d got out of the car, his breath fogging in the chill February evening, he’d slipped his hands into his pockets for his gloves. He’d felt the weight of Straub’s phone in there for the umpteenth time, fingered its edge gingerly.

She can wait. Bugger her. They can all wait. Half an hour, it’s not much to ask.

He’d slipped on his gloves, grabbed the torch from the passenger seat, and turned it on. The powerful floodlit beam had revealed a low road barrier on the opposite side, a small ditch beyond that, and a wooden fence. Easy obstacles to clear, even for a man of his size and low fitness, and then he would have free access into the sweeping, open fields beyond. A place to sit. A place to be as much in the open air as possible, to feel himself and the earth breathe.

The thought had given him pause. What the fuck was he doing here? How had he ended up like this, desperate and wanting to sit in the mud because it somehow made him feel alive? A year previous, on the same month, he’d been celebrating his mate Rich’s fiftieth. Holly had been there too, of course. They’d drank and laughed back then, and watched Mick and Jenny’s kids and half-jokingly talked about some of their own. But this year, as he stood outside with the night air stinging his cheeks, he’d thought that maybe that was the last time he’d ever felt really, really good. Paul then found himself thinking how he’d had no idea what was coming. How he never could have known. How he would become another person entirely, shaped utterly by forces outside of his control and events in which he had played no part in the planning. He’d stood in the road and wanted so, so badly to go back to that past version of himself and warn him, but of course, he couldn’t. The old Paul would still just get up on the next Monday morning, maybe even treat himself to a nice fried breakfast, drive to work whistling along with the radio, duck into the toilet for a cheeky half hour with that day’s tabloid, and then maybe think about finally getting some work done by 9:45 a.m., blissfully and totally unaware. Unaware of the time to come when he would be stood in the dark, weeping and thinking existential thoughts and forced into planning his own suicide.

He’d set off, crossing the road barrier and the other obstacles with less ease than he’d originally expected due to the bulky layers he was wearing, but still feeling a slight sense of calm as he felt his boots squelch into the soft, wet grass. The torch had lit up a path directly ahead of him; it revealed thick patches of dry shrub grass here and there, and a few small, leafless trees scattered randomly around the expanse. Up in the distance, there was the base of a large hill, one that a quick scan revealed went on in both directions for some way. He’d flicked the torch off for a second and given his eyes time to adjust to the light. Once they had, he’d actually grinned as he saw the stars above. That was what he’d wanted; to be out in the open, and for as long as he could allow it he could tell himself that he wasn’t trapped at all, that all of this was his to wander around in. Just for a while.

He’d decided to walk until he found somewhere dry to sit. Then, he’d told himself, he would call Straub, and they would take things from there. He’d know, after all, when the barriers were up. He was certain he’d feel it.

That had all been several hours ago, and he’d crossed over four fields in the meantime before coming to rest on a stile. It formed a perfect seat; the stile itself forming the base, and the fence slats acting as the backrest. He’d cried a bit when he sat down, then stared off into the sky once he’d done so, thinking about, of all things, Sheffield United, and the realisation that if they ever got back into the Premiership then he wouldn’t be around to see it. That had nearly set him off again, but instead, he’d had a thought that made him smirk in the darkness. Even without the Stone Men’s arrival, he didn’t think he’d have lived to see
that
.

Paul had been sitting on the stile ever since. He wasn’t frightened of the dark; he never had been, even as a child. He’d always been one of those kids whose sense of adventure far outweighed his fear. All he’d been feeling since he’d sat on the stile was a strange sense of calm, one that only shifted into panic whenever he thought about having to call Straub. Even though he knew they’d all be walking soon, he waited. At first he’d justified it with anger (
I’ve done enough, it’s cost me enough, and now I’m losing everything
) and then with logic (
I’ll feel it when they start to walk and Straub can have a chopper here in twenty minutes, or a guy with a gun. I’m allowed this last time, surely?
) but even when he’d felt the vibration slam through his bones that let him know his Stone Man, at least—the one coming for him—had set off, the phone remained unused. After a while he’d quietly stopped trying to justify it to himself, and somehow, that felt okay to him. The more he pushed the thoughts away, he found that he felt calmer still. The only thing that felt bad was the idea of calling Straub. That brought everything back when he thought of it, and so he did it less and less. He was aware of a strong sinking feeling though, of a dropping of his chin; as Paul remained sitting on the stile and more time passed, he began to find that, for some, anything could be given up as long as it wasn’t one’s life. He was surprised.

He was aware of the cold, but thanks to his many thermal layers, he thought he could handle it and sit there pretty much indefinitely. The thought had great appeal; his own quiet little space, alone with his thoughts. He wondered how much space he’d have, eventually, once his barrier was up, how much room to wander and breathe (of course, though, he told himself, that it wouldn’t come to that, that he’d call Straub first. Eventually. He just wanted a bit more time). He let the thought linger for a moment. Just how big was the inside area of a barrier, after all? His mind instantly skipped to his last frame of reference, going through the available evidence and finding the best piece instantly.
Patrick
. How far had he gotten outside of his house, before he ran into the barrier in a blind panic and trapped himself in the spider’s web? About forty feet, maybe? Maybe fift—

Paul jumped to his feet, electrified.

Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Surely … surely …

He hardly dared to believe he might have something. Even if he did, it was so miniscule, so … so
barely there
as a chance, that he couldn’t hang his hopes on it, couldn’t allow himself to even consider salvation, as it would be beyond cruelty to do so and it then turn out to be wrong. He was a drowning man who had seen a small shape on the horizon, unsure what it could be and uncertain regardless that it could reach him in time. But the shape was there, nonetheless. They didn’t know everything about the Stone Man, and the variables were immense, so there had to at least be a chance that he was right …

He began to pace back and forth at speed, rubbing his face and babbling his thoughts out loud, unaware that he was doing it. His fingers twitched and his breathing became rapid—almost to the point of hyperventilating—as he checked and double-checked all the Stone Man facts that he knew, or thought he knew. He paced as he tried to poke holes in his own realisation, testing it soundly yet desperately hoping for it to pass, like a man of lapsed faith confronted with a miracle. As he did so, and his idea began to stand up more and more against it all, his feverish excitement grew, despite his best attempts to contain it.

This could work. This could really WORK!

But Straub! He would have to convince Straub to … to what? Paul realised that yes, he had the vague shape of a plan, but that was it. No logistics, no
details
. If he were to even have a ghost of a chance of convincing Straub, he would have to have the whole thing perfectly laid out, with as many variables covered as possible. He checked his watch; nearly 11:00 p.m. He’d delayed so long already, and they were walking now. He knew he couldn’t wait much longer, but he had to get his story straight. His life might depend on it.

Paul turned his smartphone onto its note writing function. He began to get it all down on electronic paper with frantic hands, actually beginning to sweat despite the cold. His quivering thumbs drove him mad as he did so, and several times he had to stop and let out a scream of frustration to the night sky. His attempts to get his adrenalized body to put his mind’s desires on record via a precision instrument were torture, and yet he didn’t notice the small, steady flow of tears that streamed down his face and froze his cheeks in the chill night breeze. The madman’s smile on his face was desperate, and his eyes were wide white-and-red circles in the dark.