The Stone Man - A Science Fiction Thriller

ISBN-13 978-1482643473

ISBN-10 1482643472

First Published Worldwide 2012

Copyright © Luke Smitherd 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the purchaser.

All characters in this publication are purely fictitious, and any

resemblance
to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Proofreading by www.novelproofreading.com

Books By Luke Smitherd:

Full-Length Novels: 

The Physics Of The Dead

The Stone Man

Serial Novellas

The Black Room, Part One: In The Black Room

The Black Room, Part Two: The Woman In The Night

The Black Room, Part Three: The Other Places

The Black Room, Part Four: The End

Novellas

The Man On Table Ten

For an up-to-date list of Luke Smitherd’s other books, his blog, YouTube clips and more, visit www.lukesmitherd.com

At the time of writing, the following people wrote a nice Amazon.com or co.uk review of my last book, or sent a kind e-mail. Thank you so, so much. As someone new to this game, those meant everything. I’m only using the names you put on your Amazon reviews, as these will be ones you’re happy to have associated with my work … I hope:

Paul C. Gomez, BonFire, Amy Glavasich, Malika H, Shelly Olmstead, Sharron, Janet Farley, Huwbat, adamb1980, Miss Sl Orr, VB, Bloodrush 78, mstlh, F. Hughes, scrooby1, Spiritman “unicorn175”, chrisinamsterdam, Daisy, Chezisme, VAN, Guy Beauchamp, T, Russell Jones, against nat, Suzan J, purplejuice, D. Maccauley, Neil Harris, Mr Keith J Lawrence, Red, Fishtoys, Sarah, and A King.

Sincerely, they kept me going with this. Hope you like this one too.

READ ON AFTER THE AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD AT THE END OF THIS NOVEL FOR A
FREE
SAMPLE FROM THE BEGINNING OF ONE OF LUKE SMITHERD’S OTHER BOOKS,
THE BLACK ROOM, PART ONE: IN THE BLACK ROOM

The Stone Man

All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

—George S. Patton

Every single person I was with would have done what I did.

—Sal Giunta, on receiving the Congressional Medal Of Honour

One thing you will discover is that life is based less than you think on what you’ve learned and much more than you think on what you have inside you from the beginning
.

—Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart, quoting Mark Helprin

He’d never stood one single time to prove the county wrong

His mama named him Tommy but folks just called him Yellow

Something always told me they were reading Tommy wrong.

—Kenny Rogers

When the danger is far away, or at least not immediately imminent, the instinct is to freeze. When danger is approaching, the impulse is to run away. When escape is impossible, the response is to fight back. And when struggling is futile, the animal will become immobilized in the grip of fright.

—Bruce Schneier

Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself.

—Bo Diddley

Part 1:

All the Time In the World

Chapter One: Andy at the End, The Stone Man Arrives, A Long Journey Begins On Foot, And the Eyes of the World Fall Upon England

***
 

The TV is on in the room next door; the volume is up, the news is on, and I can hear some Scottish reporter saying that it’s about to happen all over again. I already knew that, of course, just like everyone watching already knows that ‘The Lottery Question’ is being asked by people up and down the country, and around the world.
Who will it be this time?

That was my job, of course, although I won’t be doing it anymore. That’s why I’m recording this, into the handheld digi-dicta-doodad that Paul sent me after the first lot of business that we dealt with.
To get it all out if you need to
, he’d said (he knows I find it hard to talk to people. He thought talking to the machine might be easier. Plus,
getting it all out
now gives me an excuse to use it after all; feels strange holding one again, as if my newspaper days were decades ago instead of just a year or so).

I didn’t really know what he was talking about, back then. It had hit him a lot harder than me, so I didn’t really understand why I’d need to talk about it. Eventually I got it, of course … after the
second
time.

That was worse. Much worse.

This room is nice anyway, better than the outside of the hotel would suggest. I actually feel guilty about smoking in here, but at this stage I can be forgiven, I’m sure. Helps me relax, and naturally, I’ve got the entire contents of the mini bar spread out in front of me. I haven’t actually touched any of it yet, but rest assured, I expect I shall have consumed most of it by the time I finish talking.

I just thought that I should get the real version down while I still have time. Not the only-partially-true, Home Office approved version that made me a household name around the world. I'm not really recording this for anyone else to hear, as daft as that may sound. I just think that doing so will help me put it all in perspective. I might delete it afterwards, I might not … I think I will. Too dangerous for it to get out, for now at least.

I’d obviously had to come here in disguise (amazing how much a pair of subtle sunglasses and a baseball cap let you get away with in summer) and it’s a good job that I did. They’d already be up here, banging on the door, screaming about the news and telling me what I already know. Thanks to my disguise, I can sit quietly in this designer-upholstered, soft-glow, up-lit, beige yuppie hidey-hole, with Steely Dan playing in the background on my phone’s speakers (sorry if you aren’t a fan) and remain undisturbed, until … well, until I’m done. And it’s time.

This is for you as well, Paul; for you more than anyone. You were there for all of it, and you’re a key player, not that you’ll ever actually get to hear this.

Well,
actually
, you weren’t there at the start, were you? I often forget that. Which, of course, would be the best place to begin. Heh, would you look at that; I just did an automatic segue. Still got all the old newsman moves. Slick …

Sorry, I was miles away for a moment there. Remembering the first day. How
excited
those people were. Everybody knew it was something big.

Nobody was frightened. Not at first.

***

It was summer. Summer meant more people out shopping, eyeing up the opposite sex, browsing, meeting friends, having outdoor coffees and watered-down beer. In Coventry, the chance to do this (with the sun out, and not a single cloud visible in the sky on a
weekend
no less) was as rare as rocking-horse shit, and so there were more people out and about in the city centre than at pretty much any other time of the year. I sometimes wonder if this was the reason that particular day was picked; attracted to the mass of people perhaps? Or maybe it was just sheer chance. The day certainly couldn’t have been more different the second time; smack in the middle of October, with the streets abandoned by every living soul due to heavy rain. But that first day, you couldn’t really have had any more people in the surrounding vicinity without there being some kind of riot.

I was stuck indoors for the earlier part of that day, and that was just fine by me. One, because I’ve never been a person who enjoys being out in harsh sunlight (makes me squint, I sweat easily, I burn easily, I can’t stand it when my clothes stick to me … need I go on? Sun worshippers doing nothing but sitting in sunlight; I’ll never understand them) and two, because I was interviewing a local girl group (‘Heroine Chic’; I shit you not) who were just about to release their debut piece-of-crap single. And it was
awful
, truly awful (I don’t mean to come across as someone’s dad, but it really was an assault on the ear drums. Middle-class white girls talking in urban patois. Exactly as bad as it sounds) but, at the time, I was still just on the right side of thirty-five, and so considered myself in with a chance of charming at least one of the trio; a stunning-looking blonde, brunette and redhead combo in their early twenties whose management were clearly banking on their looks to get them by, rather than their output. None of us knew it back then, but even that wouldn’t be enough to help ‘Get Into Me’ (again, I shit you not) crack the top forty. Two more non-charting efforts later, Heroine Chic would find themselves back in obscurity before fame had found them; of the six of us in that room, including their enormous security guard and their wet-behind-the-ears looking manager, only one of us was destined to be known worldwide. None of us could have ever guessed that it would be me.

Not that I didn’t have high hopes of my own in those days, lazy—but earnest—dreams of a glorious career in my chosen field. Obviously, the likes of Charli, Kel and Suze weren’t going to land me a job at
Rolling Stone
, but I was starting to get good feedback on freelance pieces that I’d written for the
Observer
and the
Times
, and was listed as a contributor at the
Guardian
; I’d finally started to believe that in a year or two, I’d leave behind the features department at the local rag and then make my way to London to start shaking things up. I actually said that to colleagues as well:
I’m gonna shake things up
. That’s how I often find myself talking to people, using sound bites and stagey lines to make an impression. Not only does it make small talk more bearable—having a backlog of canned material ready to go at any point—but I used to think that it would help me make an impression. I now know that the impression it gave would have been that I was a dick ... but I still do it out of habit. I can’t help myself.

As the interview drew to a close, and their manager started making ‘wrap it up’ signals whilst looking nervously at his smartphone, the girls and I posed together for a brief photo by the office window. They pouted, and I grinned honestly, enjoying the moment despite receiving zero interest from any of them. I’d had high hopes for the brunette, but any attempts at smart banter that I’d made were met with a polite but confused smile. It appeared that Suze was the brains of the trio, but, ah … blondes. Not my thing. To be fair, it appeared that I was not Heroine Chic’s thing either. I made myself feel better by putting it down to the age gap.

They left with an all-too-casual goodbye, their bouncer blocking them all from view as they made their way to the escalator. I pocketed my Dictaphone and texted my friend Kevin, telling him how I’d gotten both a phone number and the promise of a date from Charli. I’d even considered adding that she’d silently licked her lips over her shoulder at me as she’d left, but decided that’d be too much, and the wind-up would be blown. Kevin was gullible, but not
that
gullible.

I was done for the day—I’d only come in for the late afternoon interview, with it being a weekend—and it was approaching five, so the temperature would soon be dropping nicely into that relaxing summer evening feel that I actually like. I had no plans, and flatmate Phil had his brother over for the weekend. He was a good guy, and his brother a good guest, but I didn’t particularly want to be stuck at home listening to the two of them endlessly discussing rugby. I decided that I’d maybe find a beer garden and have a read for an hour or so.

Once upon a time, this would have been that magical exciting hour where you’d text around and find out who was available for an impromptu session. Nowadays, everyone was either married and booked up for the weekend, or starting to think about getting the kids fed, bathed, and in bed for seven. Being single at thirty-five and living with a thirty-nine-year-old divorced university lecturer could sometimes get lonely, and I’d been forced to find ways to adapt. Fortunately, there were still a lot of people who were up for doing stuff, but getting schedules to meet was difficult. I got through a lot of books back then; nowadays I can’t remember the last time I read a book.

I grabbed my bag and headed out of the building, thinking about possibly getting a bite to eat as well—although I intended to have something healthy, as lately the gym hadn’t really been graced with my presence, and it was starting to show—and for some reason, I decided to stroll towards Millennium Place.

It used to be a big open-air space, a modern plaza designed for concerts and shows of all kinds. This would have been excellent for the city, were it not for the fact that it had a built-in Achilles’ heel in the form of a raised series of lighting strips in the floor. These looked fantastic at night, but technical issues created by this unusual flooring meant that none of the imagined concerts could ever happen (genius). None of it’s there anymore, of course; after the Second Arrival they dug it all up and put a small lake in its place, to see if it made any difference.

For some reason I was in a good mood and—in the words of the song—having ‘no particular place to go’, I thought I’d take a look at the summer crowds at Millennium Place, and then decide my destination from there, giving me time to work up an appetite. I people-watched as I went, passing barely dressed young couples who made me feel old and think about past opportunities of my own. I was not the settling-down kind then, nor am I now—just as well, really—but I still think about those opportunities and what might have been. I found myself humming a tune I didn’t recognise, and pondered what it was as I rolled the short sleeves of my shirt up farther, wishing I’d opted for shorts and flip-flops instead of jeans and on-trend boots. As I gently cursed myself for dressing that way, for making such a middle-aged and futile attempt to impress the Heroine Chic girls, thought triggered memory and I realised that I was humming ‘Get Into Me’. I laughed out loud—I remember that distinctly—as I turned the corner and saw Millennium Place fully. When I saw what was going on, the laughter trailed off in my throat.

I suppose that I must have heard the commotion as I’d drawn closer; I’d been so lost in thought that somehow it didn’t really register, or possibly I just subconsciously wrote it off as the usual summer crowd sound. But this was different. Around two hundred people were gathered in a cluster near the centre of Millennium Place, and there was an excited, confused buzz coming from them, their mobiles held out and snapping away at something in their midst. Other people were hanging back from them, getting footage of the crowd itself. That was the other reason I wanted to get into the big leagues, of course;
everyone
was a reporter in the digital age, and local print was shrinking fast.

I couldn’t make out what was in the centre of the crowd, standing at a distance as I was, but I could see other people on the outskirts of the plaza having the same response as me;
what’s going on, whatever it is I want to see it
. Don’t misunderstand me, at this stage it was surprising and intriguing, but nothing really more than that; a chance for hopeful people to capture some footage that might go viral. You have to remember, none of us knew what it really was at that point. I assumed that it was somebody maybe doing some kind of street art, or perhaps a performance piece. That in itself was rare in Coventry, so in my mind I already had one hand on my phone to give Rich Bell—the staff photographer—a call, to see if he was available to get some proper photos if this turned out to be worth it. Either way, I walked towards the hubbub. As I got closer I could hear two people shouting frantically, almost hysterically, sounding as though they were trying to explain something.

The voices belonged to a man and a woman, and whilst I couldn’t yet make out what they were saying, I could hear laughter from some listeners and questions from others; my vision was still mainly blocked by the medium-sized mass of bodies, but I could see that there was something fairly large in the middle of them all, rising just slightly above the heads of the gathered crowd and standing perfectly still.

I reached the cluster of people, now large enough to make it difficult to get through (to the point where I had to go on tiptoe to get a clear view) and that was the moment that I became one of the first few hundred people on Earth to get a look at the Stone Man.