The Stone Man - A Science Fiction Thriller (44 page)

After she’d been taken away, and our sight line to the front door was clear again, we saw the last, remaining soldier emerge from the house. He was moving very slowly, and seemed unsteady on his feet. In his arms was what looked like, at a distance, some sort of parcel. No-name ran up to him, and we could see them talking; the officer’s body blocked us from seeing what the soldier was carrying, but we could see from the back of the no-name’s head that he was looking down at it. They both stood very still for a moment.

Straub approached the pair now, and we saw her gently put her hand to her mouth, but only briefly. She then took her hand away and spoke to both of the men, but we could see that she was staring at the parcel in the first soldier’s arms as she did so. No-name took the parcel, and headed off in one direction, whilst Straub remained and spoke to the soldier. It seemed personal, sincere; she even put one hand on his shoulder briefly. He nodded, seemed to take a deep breath, then straightened up sharply and saluted her. He then began to head towards the personnel transports parked behind us. As we watched, no-name approached Straub again; the parcel was gone. They stood talking, but my eyes drifted towards the soldier who was heading in our direction. His head was down as he walked, and walking very slowly at that. Whatever had happened in there, it had clearly been deeply traumatic for him, and I didn’t think it was the stabbing of his comrade.

“Jeeeesus,” breathed Paul, sitting back in his seat. “Did you see the state of that soldier? I hate to say it ... but that could have been us. Guess we were lucky we only went in the first time.”

I didn’t answer, but instead looked from the soldier to the still-talking Straub in the distance. The walking soldier was beginning to veer towards the transport on the opposite side of the street, parked several feet behind us. If I was going to do anything, I needed to do it now whilst it was easy.

“I’ll be back in a second,” I said to Paul, and climbed down from the jeep before he could reply. I sprinted across the few feet between us and the soldier, and stopped just in front of him.

“Excuse me,” I said quietly, and the soldier jumped slightly at the sound of my voice. He’d been so lost in thought that he hadn’t even noticed me standing there. “Andy Pointer, special adviser to the Caementum project,” I said sternly, holding out my hand. I’d thought that title up on the spot, but in hindsight it probably wasn’t necessary. I was world famous, after all, for the little that now seemed worth. The soldier stared at me for a second, and then took my hand in a limp handshake. He was young, very young, I could see; twenty-one at most. His face was pale, and his blue eyes squinted at me from under his blonde eyebrows. I realised he’d be staring into the sun slightly; it was getting late in the day by now, and I could see from my lengthening shadow that the sun would be shining right over my shoulder and into his face. I moved sideways slightly to oblige, and his eyes relaxed slightly as my shadow covered his eyes. I chanced a brief glance over his shoulder at Straub; she was still in conversation, and the two vehicles she’d brought with her were starting their engines up, one about to carry the latest extracted target to its rendezvous, presumably screaming all the way until they sedated her.

“Sorry to ask this of you, my friend, as I can tell you’ve had a rough experience just now,” I said, trying to sound officious but sympathetic at the same time, “but I need to get the quick lowdown of what just happened whilst it’s still fresh in your mind. It all helps, I assure you.”

Dazed, the soldier blinked at me, and then turned his head in a lazy motion to look at no-name. Before he could say anything or turn back, I shut down that train of thought for him

“It’s okay,” I said, “I have full clearance, I assure you, and I don’t think your commanding officers would be too pleased about being bothered right now. Just give me the quick rundown and we’re done here.”

I look at it now and wonder why I was asking. Was there any point, other than my own curiosity? It wasn’t to help make more money; I had more than enough, and I was only risking Straub’s further anger when I’d already dodged a major bullet on that front. But I needed to know. Curiosity is one thing I’ve never had any trouble feeling.

“She … she was on the floor,” the young soldier muttered, eyes flitting in any direction other than mine. “She was upstairs, in the front bedroom. Curled up … making these little noises …” He rubbed his face quickly with his hand, and carried on, seeing it happening before him again. “She was shaking, but she wasn’t responding to us. The corporal kept asking her name, trying to get her attention … and then he got in close … and her hands were out of sight, like, tucked in front of her. He shouldn’t have gone in close, but it was … she was a woman in a nice house …”

He turned, and looked back for a moment, shaking his head. I checked again; Straub was still busy.

“When Carter touched her, she must have been waiting,” he said, looking at the house, perhaps even at the window of the room where it had happened. “Waiting until he was right over her, because when she pulled the knife ... he didn’t have time to move. She buried it right in his guts. Right up to the hilt, man, and pulled it out again. You shouldn’t pull out a knife once it’s in you, you know. Makes it worse.”

“So I gather,” I said, trying to get him back on track. His shock would easily lead him off down all sorts of side avenues if I let it.

“She didn’t start screaming until she’d done it,” continued the solider, now turning to me with a look of confusion on his face. “Like ... like she knew … she knew she’d used her only trump card, and realised it hadn’t really done anything. But I could see it in her eyes, man, even before the screams, I saw her face when she stuffed that knife into Carter. She’d lost it. She was way, way gone. That was why it made sense when I saw …” His voice faltered, and he sniffed inwards through his nose.

“Saw what?” I asked. This was the crux of the thing, not the stabbing. This was what had really gotten him messed up. He looked at the floor when he spoke again.

“In the corner of the room, right next to the wall. Nobody had really looked inside it because, I dunno, we were more worried about her, and
there was no sound coming from it
. That was the thing, if we’d heard something we would have looked, but it just seemed empty. I took, like, just a glimpse, and didn’t see anything at first, so we thought it was just her in the room. We thought the thing was empty because … no sound. We never thought it could have been because …”

“Because what? Wait, wait. What was empty? What was in the corner of the room?”

“The crib. The crib was in the corner of the room.”

I thought of the parcel, and of the size of it, and of the second Blue Stone Man suddenly stopping walking, and hoped as an awful, sick feeling began to grow in my stomach that the connection I was making was wrong.

“After they’d taken her out, I just had a second look,” the soldier said, his voice cracking as he spoke. “And, you know, no wonder everyone had missed it. The pillow covered most of the view, you see. She’d used a pillow.
That’s
why it was so quiet.”

I looked at Paul in the jeep, and upon seeing the expression on my face, the one on his changed from an annoyed
What
the fuck are you doing
to a worried
What’s happened?
I could only shake my head, slowly.

“How could she do that, man?” asked the soldier, a pleading tone coming into his shaking voice as tears sprung up in his eyes. He was looking at me for an answer. “I know she’d gone crazy, I—I mean, I mean, I know like, if this thing is coming for you it makes you freak out but, but … why do that? How do you do that? Huh?”

I thought I knew, but I couldn’t say it. This was too much, and I suddenly just felt very, very tired. This whole day, this whole business … insane. Like the woman. Did she know, then? Some kind of connection between mother and child, knowing that not only was she a target but that her child was too? I think about it now—I’ve thought about her a lot in the time since, thought about her and Patrick and fucking
Henry
, that fucker got me the worst, fucking
bastard
—and I think that maybe her course of action wasn’t insane, even if
she
was. A giant, unstoppable, stone murder machine coming for me and my child? It would only take one of us, I think, had I the chance of a say in the matter. But, again … who can say?

The soldier was scrutinising my face now as tears ran down his, a burning need for an answer written all over his expression, and I just couldn’t give him one. I was so
tired
. I even nearly shrugged, a combination of fresh bitterness and exhaustion, but I managed to stop myself.

“Okay. Okay,” I said quietly, patting the young man on the shoulder. His expression didn’t change. “Thank you, I know that … I know that was hard. Good job. You can … carry on now. Thank you.”

The soldier stood there for a second, then it seemed to penetrate that he was done. He nodded slightly, and turned to go, but as he walked away, he began to speak again, facing me and walking slowly backwards as he did so.

“Even if she thought it was right, though? Even if she thought it was the right thing to do … how the fuck did she do that? How the fuck did she
do
that?” It was a totally rhetorical question this time, but suddenly, unbidden, an answer popped into my head.

“Some people …” I started, realising that the rest of my sentence (
are crazy
) wasn’t right at all. I thought about it for a second, and corrected myself.

“Sometimes … some people can just do what needs to be done.”

The soldier almost scoffed, but it came out like a sob, and his forehead crinkled some more. He was several feet away now.

“
That
needed to be done?”

This time, I did shrug.

“That’s not really the point, is it?”

The soldier shook his head, spat on the floor, and turned fully around as he walked away, still shaking his head. My legs felt hollow, and I staggered back to the jeep. As I fell into the seat, I was very aware that I’d only slept for an hour in at least the last twenty-four of them. The events of that horrendous day seemed unbearably heavy, even worse when looked back upon, and I was too tired to force them away. I put my palms into my eye sockets and began to breathe heavily, just to give myself something to focus on, and Paul, God bless him, gave me a moment to do so. He must have been full of questions, but he waited. A
good
guy.

Eventually, I took my hands away from my face and sat up, staring at the house.

“Is it okay to ask?” said Paul. He wasn’t being facetious.

“Yes, yeah … yes,” I sighed, gently raising my hands and nodding. “Woman stabbed the guy with the wound. Blue Stone Man coming for her baby too, or she thought it was anyway. She, uh … she decided she wasn’t going to let it take it.”

Paul nodded slowly, looking down the street to where Straub was talking to several other uniformed men and David, who had reappeared and seemed to be trying to butt in.

“If she was right … that might explain one of the Blue ones stopping,” said Paul. I was a little shocked. I was the brutally practical one, not Paul. But here he was, not batting an eyelid at the news, and already onto the science. He was speaking slowly, lazily, in a detached, emotionless manner, but even so it was surprising. “No suicide, but an early target killing nonetheless … and they were walking side by side. I don’t think the other Blue’s target was past Birmingham. I think their targets were at the same place. Hell … same genes, after all.”

I joined him in rationalising; it was a welcome retreat, and suddenly it was easier than ever. It was an almost physical sensation, that shift in my head, as I somehow snapped myself away from the jaundiced turmoil that was going off inside me, old mental habits taking over like unused muscles getting back into the game. Anything was better than having to deal with what we’d seen today, and I wasn’t used to engaging with depth of feeling at the best or worst of times. Fuck it, fuck the lot of it. The story was what mattered. Always the story.

“They could get the rough time of death,” I muttered quietly. “Correlate it with the time the second Blue stopped. Plus, as you say … they were walking side by side. The odds of another target being on the exact same trajectory … pretty slim. Maybe. I dunno. The signal did feel different when we got close, did you notice that? Before it cut off? Could that be because there were two of them in the same place?”