The Stone Man - A Science Fiction Thriller (43 page)

And Paul, to my astonishment, closed his eyes, sighed, and then began to laugh hysterically. He fell back in his seat, tears streaming from his eyes, and shook his head as he giggled like a child. And to my further astonishment, after a moment I was caught up in it and had joined him, slumping in my seat and losing it, cackling like a loon. He was right. What else was there to do? What other response was there? And it was hilarious, when you looked at it; we’d blagged the British Army, after all, and now we were busted, sat in an army jeep surrounded by the same guys that would probably be taking us to a military prison. After all that had happened, all we could do now was wait for our judgement as we sat and watched, our usefulness at an end, our bartering position totally gone. When you thought about it, the most sensible thing we
could
do was laugh. Officer no-name simply sat back in his seat and waited, ignoring our hysterics and watching the houses at the end of the street as the military transports’ engines idled behind us.

We still hadn’t fully subsided by the time that Straub arrived, but the sight of her certainly calmed us down. Her jeep pulled up near ours, and two additional, larger vehicles that had arrived with her drove past us and pulled up near the houses at the end of the street. One, I noticed, was similar to the vehicle that had taken Henry away. She and officer no-name exchanged salutes, and I saw that David was with her now as well. They spoke with no-name quietly, a few feet away from our jeep, and we couldn’t really hear what was being said.

As we watched, Straub then listened to her walkie-talkie, and seemed startled by what she’d heard. She immediately turned to David, who looked equally startled, but then waved off whatever she’d just told him and began to dial into his mobile phone. He then hurried away to make the call. Straub turned back to no-name and gave some instructions, and no-name moved away and started barking orders to various soldiers. They’d already disembarked from the transports, and had used the spare time before Straub’s arrival to quickly sweep the rest of the street for civilians. I’d already assumed that they wouldn’t find any; none of the houses had cars in the driveway, on a street where the average car quota for each house would have been at least two. These people had clearly all hit the road as soon as the evacuation had been announced, not waiting for the government sweep or to be taken to holding centres. One simply couldn’t be subjected to that kind of thing, could one? The soldiers began to take positions outside the five houses at the end of the street, forming small teams. One house, I’d noticed—and I couldn’t have been the only one who did—had the upstairs curtains drawn. None of the others did.

There was no car on its driveway, however, but the garage was closed, and there may have been one inside. Either way, I was sure that particular house was the one, and it was nothing to do with any pull or signal; it just had that air of foreboding about it. Those closed curtains, to me, said it all.

Straub approached us in the jeep, her hands behind her back. Her face was blank, as inscrutable as ever.

“Gentlemen,” she said, quietly, and we nodded back, in wide-eyed silence. She turned for a moment to look at the assembling soldiers at the end of the street. “Here we are,” she said, still not looking at us. “Target Two …” She trailed off, and I could see nothing in her face to suggest exactly why. She turned back to us. “And I gather that your abilities are, for the time being at least, neutralised?”

Again, we nodded. She nodded back, the eyes in her blank face quietly reading ours.

“That’s a shame. We do have some more possible options, though, options that we were quite close to bringing in when we couldn’t get hold of you, Mr Pointer.” Seeing our surprise, she carried on. “As you know, several others came forward after the First Arrival, and two or three accounts checked out in a similar way to yours, at least in terms of correlation with energy readings et cetera. Not as strong, or as dramatic as yours, but worth investigating, nonetheless. Of course, many more have come forward since your account became well known in the media, but they have to be dismissed, naturally. But the few we have … they might hold promise if, in fact, you two are cut off altogether in the event of a Third Arrival.” She looked back down the street again, and audibly sighed, pausing. “I don’t like being lied to, Mr Winter, and I know that’s what you did. I didn’t even need to check the energy readings to know; when I thought about it afterwards, it was obvious from the way you led Mr Williams straight out of his house and onto the street. You didn’t even think about your story, did you?” She looked back at us now, and we still sat in silence. Was this an introductory speech before our punishment, or something else? I barely dared hope it was the latter.

“I should have seen it at the time, and it’s to my great professional shame that I didn’t. I, like everyone else, expected to find another target in the same mental shape as the last one. I allowed myself to be … distracted, I suppose, by what we
did
find. Rest assured,” she said, turning back to the preparing units at the bottom of the road, and taking a few steps in that direction. She obviously didn’t want us to see her face as she said this next part. “Even if you hadn’t been ‘cut off’, as you say you have been, you wouldn’t be going in this time. I’ll be honest; despite my words in Edinburgh, and your blatant insubordination, and you
knowing
what the consequences would be … in that situation, I think it worked out for the best. I think I’d rather it went down the way it did. That
one
time.”

I didn’t need to ask why. My skin went cold as relief washed over me.

“Thank your lucky stars—for the rest of your lives—that it went off without a hitch up there, gentlemen,” said Straub, her voice growing slightly colder. “Believe me. You have no idea. And also believe that if you ever lie to me again, regardless of the outcome, that it will go very, very badly for you. I can write off your behaviour once—
once—
as you
are
civilians, after all, and witnessed a very traumatic incident with C.I. One that, in hindsight, you shouldn’t have. I can see how that would have clouded your judgement, and I would be a liar if I said that I didn’t understand your reasons. But that allowance has passed, and will not be given again. I’m not going to bother repeating myself. Try it, and see what happens.
My
conscience will be clear.” The sweep units all appeared to be ready now, and so she raised her walkie again, and spoke into it. “Wallace, proceed when ready.”

As Paul let out a quiet but long breath of air, slumping in his seat and putting one hand to his forehead (whether this was from relief, or from dismay at seeing the beginning of another extraction, I’ll never get to know) the shout went up at the other end of the road, and the units moved forward as one to surround each house. The probe had begun, and Straub stood with her back to us to watch. She seemed far more relaxed than before for some reason. Given that we were still hours ahead of the time it had taken for the second energy spike to occur, there was a strong likelihood that Target Three could be taken directly to their relevant Stone Man in the same manner that Henry had been. Thus the second of the day’s tasks could be wrapped up quickly and efficiently, and this had seemed to ease her tension whilst on a mission. It was a simple extraction job after all, and after two successful rendezvous (Patrick and Henry) she had to be more confident that it was a straightforward process. They must have known all the units were unlikely necessary, but they were taking no chances and it would also be a quicker way of searching several houses at once, I suppose. I almost felt compelled to remind her that there was a still a third Stone Man that we couldn’t neutralise without knowing where Target Three was (
Not we,
I had to remind myself.
You’re out of the loop
) and worse, we didn’t know where it was going once it got past Birmingham.

As if she’d read my thoughts—so much so that it was eerie—Straub spoke without turning around. What she said was big news indeed, almost as big as the Stone Man returning in the first place, but I didn’t know how awful the truth behind it would be. Yet.

“I received a report, a few moments ago, about the third Caementum, the other blue one. I assume you’re interested to know.” She sounded airy, almost casual. I wondered if she’d had much sleep. “It stopped moving around two minutes back. Just stopped dead. If you know anything about that, I expect you to tell us. I don’t think you do—I believe you about being cut off, the dismay is plastered all over your face, Mr Pointer—but if you even have as much as a snippet of anything about that, pass it on. It could be important.”

Paul and I exchanged a glance, and shook our heads at each other.

“Not me,” said Paul, directing his comment at Straub. He slowly sat up, almost excited at the possibility of hope for the remaining targets, but not believing it. “What about the other one? Is it still coming?”

“Unfortunately so,” said Straub, genuine regret in her voice. “The two Blue were definitely on the same path, up to a certain point at least. They were walking side by side—Coventry is a hell of a mess—but when one stopped, the other just carried on, like it had been on its own all along.”

“A mistake, then?” I asked, thinking fast. What the hell could that be about? “Two of them following the same signal by accident, maybe? One realising, or its controllers realising, that it wasn’t needed?”

“Possible,” said Straub, watching as the soldiers—their brief attempt to communicate via megaphone to anyone inside the houses at an end—now lined up police-on-a-drugs-bust-style battering rams and opened the houses themselves. They began to file into each house quietly but efficiently. They weren’t going in heavily, once the initial destruction of the houses’ front doors was complete, but I was still deeply glad that we’d taken the path that we had with Henry. I wouldn’t want him to see this in his home. “It would make sense. My gut feeling is that it’s a suicide. Someone who didn’t handle the fear in the same way that Mr Williams did, and worse even than Target One. If I’m right, and they’ve got the job done early themselves, we get to see what that stationary Blue does next as a result. We couldn’t take the risk of terminating a target early ourselves, but now it’s happened on its own; we’ll see then, does Caementum reset and go after someone else, in which case we have a larger problem, or does it go home like its predecessor, in which case the problem is, temporarily at least, solved? Time will tell, and hopefully soon. And we’ll know what happens if the targets die early.”

“If it’s a suicide,” said Paul, “maybe they did it for that reason. To help.”

“Again, possible,” said Straub, nodding, but sounding slightly bored by the exchange now. We weren’t relevant any more, and our insights weren’t valuable. She’d only brought it up to check if we knew anything, after all, and it was clear that we didn’t. She had more important things to worry about at that moment in time. “We won’t know unless a note comes up in a police report, but even that’s extremely unlikely. We don’t know where it was going, after all, and the number of suicides related to Caementum’s appearance are comparatively sky-high anyway.”

We could hear the reports beginning to come in over Straub’s walkie. Three of the five houses were announced to be clear, and shortly after that a fourth house was also announced to be empty. As the silence continued from the fifth house, and the soldiers didn't reappear, I began to feel uneasy. I obviously wasn’t alone, as Straub spoke into the walkie.

“Unit three, report,” she said firmly, and after a pause the walkie crackled into life. It would have been hard enough to hear the soldier on the other end as it was, due to the shaken, quiet voice he spoke in at that moment, but the screaming in the background made it even more difficult. It was a woman.

“Unit three departing … uh … escorting …” The voice paused for a second, and carried on. “One civilian, escorting one civilian … immediate medical assistance required, Carter has been stabbed, he’s coming out now.”

The confusion only halted Straub for the briefest of moments.

“Roger that, unit three, assistance on its way, take the civilian to transport as instructed.”

Straub hurried off without looking at us again, barking orders, and Paul stood up in his seat to get a better look at the house. We were parked perhaps eighty feet away.

“What the fuck …” he said, straining to see, and I followed his lead. As we watched, three soldiers hurried out of the front door, two holding a man up between them. The one in the middle—presumably Carter—was holding a heavily bleeding wound in his stomach, his face contorted in pain. A stretcher was already being rushed over to them, and Carter was quickly escorted away, but already the remaining soldiers were emerging behind them. You could hear their arrival before you could see it, as the screams of the woman carried far more clearly once she’d been brought downstairs. They had their target.

She was of average height and build, but even with her hands secured behind her back, it took three of them to escort her as she thrashed and screamed in their grip. She had long black hair that was frayed and sticking out in various directions, and wore what was probably her about-the-house clothing; a baggy red hoodie and non-matching navy blue jogging bottoms. From here I could see the stains on them. Her feet were bare, and her eyes went rapidly from screwed up shut to manically wide eyed, opening each time she had enough air back in her lungs to let out a fresh bellow. Her face was bright red, and her skin was slick and shiny with tears. She was the most hysterical-looking person I had ever seen. The soldiers’ faces, the ones who were dragging her out of the building, were determined but also pale, as if they’d seen something awful in that house.