Paul stood by the boiling kettle, looking out of the window onto the small rear garden. He seemed to be examining the lawn bric-a-brac that Patrick had presumably set out himself; there was no evidence so far of anyone else living here, or of an immediate family. Neither of us said anything, using the pause in proceedings to try to get ourselves under control and breathe easily for a moment (getting Patrick back inside in our physically depleted state had been a considerable effort) as well as to avoid our first mutually thorny argument. Eventually, the kettle’s button clicked back into place and the steam stopped.
“Take sugar?” asked Paul with his back to me, picking up the appropriately labelled jar nearby and removing the lid.
“Two,” I told him, “Not a lot of milk.”
“Uh-huh.”
I wondered how this was going to go. His reaction outside was clearly one of disagreement, but he hadn’t committed to it; he was either open to suggestion or one of those men who needed their tea to fortify them before an unpleasant task. I, however, was resolute. I had too much at stake. I was prepared, my mind ready.
Paul handed me a mug, and leant back against the opposite counter. The silence continued a moment as he took a small sip from his mug, closed his eyes appreciatively, and then gestured towards me theatrically with a free hand. Go on then. It signified reluctance, but willingness to have it out, because this was a matter worth going through the hassle over.
I thought I knew one other thing, though; I was getting an idea of Paul’s style, and this was part of it. To him, letting me go first was a passive aggressive move. Letting me go first was his way of both giving up and establishing control; granting permission to speak. I’d obviously pissed him off, and he wanted to win. I usually missed this kind of thing, even when it was at its most obvious, but unfortunately for Paul, I’d seen this exact behaviour nearly every day for a whole six years under a former editor of mine. I knew these mannerisms well, because they’d made my life hell on a daily basis, even when for a long time I couldn’t figure out why. Then one of his former co-workers drunkenly told me (at the always disgustingly lavish publishing group annual Christmas party) that these little games of dominance were a running joke back at his old office. He’d told me what it was I’d been missing, and how best to handle it. So far, Paul had been running the show, I felt, and that had been fine. I didn’t think he’d been doing it on purpose, but here he was. Now he was potentially going to derail my plans, and had just made it clear—unwittingly—that he was going to actively try to do so.
“No, no,” I said, “after you. The floor is yours.” Paul looked mildly surprised, and I knew my guess had been right. He hadn’t expected me to see his hoop, hadn’t expected me to refuse to jump through it. He rallied quickly though, and as he began to speak I felt a hint of satisfaction; not so much for catching Paul out, per se, but for spotting it at all. These things were usually beyond me.
“Right. I say we wait,” Paul said, flatly. “He’s clearly locked into the Stone Man in some way, same as we are, and he knows that something bad is gonna happen. We take him to it—even if we can—and we hurry that ‘disaster’ up, whatever it is. We have no idea whether moving him out of here might actually make things worse; you saw what happened when he tried to leave the house, or the immediate area at least. We came here for answers, and there are none, not yet anyway. If there was some obvious way that we could help, fine, we could then do that. But there isn’t, and we’ve been told quite clearly that the one thing we could do will cause ‘disaster’. We wait it out, and our consciences are clean; anything that happens is out of our control.” He finished speaking, stared at me, and sipped from his mug again. It was a convincing argument, but I wasn’t worried. I had a few of my own.
“Okay,” I said, returning his gaze, “well, we both know we can’t take him farther away—take him up to Scotland or whatever—as that just prolongs all the destruction and draws the Stone Man farther across the country. This guy is the source, and the Stone Man will follow him. But we take him to it—risking this vague and possibly made up ‘disaster’ that he’s foretelling—and that destruction stops. And we’re still there to get our answers.”
“If there are any. And you’re assuming the destruction will stop.”
“What do you mean?”
Paul shrugged, and pointed out of the window.
“Say we take him to the Stone Man, and whatever happens, happens. Presuming that it doesn’t bring about the end of the world, how do we know it’s not just going to head off to another target? How do we know somebody else doesn’t automatically become the source?”
“That doesn’t even make any sense. If anyone could be the source, then why would it pick someone halfway across the country?” I asked, feeling myself starting to become a bit angry. I don’t really know why; something about the guy was rubbing me up the wrong way, but the last thing I wanted to do was be the first person to lose it whilst letting him keep that passive expression on his face. I wanted to see it break, to see that practiced composure fall away. It was obviously something he’d mastered, but I thought I could crack it.
“Maybe he was the first one it found. The first … I dunno, appropriate person.”
“You don’t think it might try a bit harder to find someone a bit closer?” I asked, adding a bit more scorn than I felt to my voice. Was I winning? I thought I might have been.
“Why does it need to hurry?” said Paul calmly, not biting. “It’s got all the time in the world. It can’t be stopped. It must know, or whoever sent it must know. A hundred miles, ten miles, it’s gonna get there in good time. Plus, look at what just happened; this guy tried to run away and the poor bastard is a babbling vegetable in the front room. He couldn’t even run to the other side of the street, don’t you see? He’s trapped. He got shut down when he made a bolt for it. So why should it need to hurry? Blondie wasn’t going anywhere. Distance doesn’t matter to the bloody thing, time doesn’t either. They only matter to us.”
A good comeback, too. But I had the trump card.
“You do realise, though, that if we just sit here and wait … any deaths that happen between now and the time it arrives? On our heads. Our heads, Paul. We could have stopped this early—”
“You don’t know it would stop—”
“And you don’t know it wouldn’t,” I carried on, refusing to be interrupted as I’d let him have his say. “As I was saying, if it turns out that we could have stopped this early, but all we did was just sit back and wait whilst it smashes through umpteen more buildings, causes umpteen more riots and heart attacks and religious suicides and fights, then when people ask us why we didn’t do anything and we say ‘Well, we had no guarantee that it would have stopped it,’ they’ll lynch us. Because I tell you for a fact, and you know this, if we do nothing it definitely will keep coming. If we take him to it, it might stop.”
It was my turn to shrug now, this time as if to say You tell me which makes the most sense. Paul was still staring at me without a word, so I pressed on.
“Plus, what happened to all this talk about saving the day? That could be us. We’d be the guys that stopped it in its tracks.”
“Or the guys that brought about disaster. We don’t know what it wants!” There it was; the first trace of annoyance. I was getting to him.
“But we know what it’s doing,” I said, putting my hands in my pockets, leaning more now, relaxing. “Wrecking the country. Causing people to die.”
“And what will it do to him if we try to take him towards it? Look at him now. That happened when he tried to move thirty feet. What happens if we take him more than that?”
“He’s already gone, Paul.”
“Are you kidding me? What the hell do we know about it? We don’t know if that effect lasts, or anything. You’d risk doing him damage on an assumption? What the fuck is wrong with you?” asked Paul, putting his mug down now and looking openly pissed off. “He didn’t want that thing to find him, he knew it’d
cause something bad even if he didn’t know what that might be, and you want to take him right to it?”
“I’m trying to save lives, Paul—”
“What about his?” said Paul, his voice rising. “He’s already nearly had a seizure because of us. You want to go the whole hog and risk killing him by pushing him even farther out of the area?” Paul’s hands were spread now, and he was gesticulating rapidly as he spoke. I realised again how much bigger than me he was, and how I didn’t actually know very much about this man, or what he was capable of. Still, I was angry now myself, and I wanted my goddamn answers. What he was saying didn’t even make any logical sense.
“It’s coming here regardless,” I said. “We can’t take him farther away, and we know it’s coming here. The end result will be the same; it will get to him. One way takes longer, and risks lots of lives. The other way is quicker, and risks just one. His. Plus, Jesus, I mean we could even keep an eye on him on the way. Check if he gets worse or whatever. Paul, you know what I’m saying makes sense. Why are you arguing with me on this?”
Paul didn’t respond, and instead stood there with his jaw set, and then looked out of the window again. He then turned back, and I was a bit taken aback. He knew he didn’t really have a point to argue, and was angry about having to admit it … but it was clear that he was really just angry with me in the first place.
“When he collapsed just now,” he said, voice dangerously even, “you didn’t even think about him, did you? Straight away you were on to the next stage, the next best thing we can do to get pissing answers or whatever. You almost seemed … glad. You knew he had nothing for us, and so him ending up like this was clearly a, a, a blessing or something, because you could get him to the Stone Man. You didn’t even think about him for a second.” He took a deep breath, suddenly, and I wondered if it was him trying to keep himself upright again or whether it was his way of keeping himself calm. I hoped it was the former, and even began to try to see, in my peripheral vision, anything I might need to grab as a weapon that I could defend myself with.
“Hold on, Paul,” I said, realising something and holding up a finger, “I didn’t hear you saying ‘Oh, I hope he’s all right’ when we were getting visions of him sprawled out on his sofa. You wanted answers yourself, and that’s all you thought about. So don’t give me the good Samaritan routine. You turned on the TV, you made him run out in the street.” I was on a roll. “I think this is you feeling guilty. I think you feel guilty because you caused this, and so even though what you’re proposing makes no sense, you’re saying it to try make up for your guilt. You want to keep him away from the Stone Man for as long as possible because he was scared of it, even though it’s just delaying the inevitable. Well there’s more at stake than your conscience here, and I’m not gonna let other people die because you feel guilty for—”
I didn’t really see Paul move, because I’d been lost in the euphoria of my own steadily growing realisation for a second. To my eyes, he was just suddenly on me, grabbing me by my collar with both hands and bending me backwards over the countertop, face pressed right into my own. His breath was right against my mouth, pushing out between his gritted teeth.
“Listen to me, you little twat,” he spat, shaking me slightly as he spoke. I couldn’t move, as his superior body weight had me pinned in place. “You don’t have a fucking clue. I don’t like, I really don’t like what I saw outside. You’d have fed him into a fucking cement mixer if it meant you’d get more information. You were like a hungry fucking dog. And I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let you do that. That’s a man in there, a man. Remember that. Remember …” As he trailed off, I thought he was struggling to find the right words, but when the silence continued, and his eyes began to dart slightly around my face, I thought he looked lost for a moment. Suddenly, he let go, and stepped back, not taking his eyes off mine. There was a long pause. I didn’t even straighten up.
“That …” he started, and then looked at the floor. I still didn’t move. He didn’t speak. There were a few moments of silence. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m sorry. That was too much. I didn’t mean all that. It’s been a fucked up day, and feeling like this, my nerves, they’re just … I’m just …” He trailed off again, and I wondered what the hell was going on. He suddenly looked up.
“I’m sorry, yeah? I’m sorry. You just … don’t forget that’s a human being in there. That’s all,” he said, and then turned and grabbed his mug, turning the tap on to rinse it out. I didn’t know what to say, but I knew something was expected. I slowly straightened, corrected my clothes, then felt my neck for any scratches. I’m not a man used to violence—I hadn’t been in a fight since school—and that had been shocking.
“Well …” I began, lost now myself for words. “Okay, fair point, but … Jesus …”
“No, I know, there’s no excuse,” said Paul, back still turned. “It’s just I’m, I’m stretched so thin by all this. I just want it to be over. I can’t stand feeling like this, my body’s just …” He clenched his free hand into a fist, tight, shaking.
“I know, mine too,” I said, and it was true. I could almost understand, to my surprise. But that was too much, and I would tell him so. “But I did … I suppose I did forget that. I just got carried away, and we’re so close to the truth, but … no, you’re right. Look … don’t worry about it, okay? Just don’t do that again, okay? You’re a lot bigger than me. Not very fair.”
“I know, I hate that shit. It’s not right. My temper sometimes … I’m sorry. Look, you are right. It’s getting to him one way or the other, and we might as well try to shorten it and save some lives. You’re right. You’re right. The needs of the many and all that. But like you said … we keep an eye on him on the way, okay? If he starts to get worse, we bring him back. We don’t kill him, trying to save others or anything, I’m not going to kill a man. Fair?”
“Fair.”
“Right.” And with that it was done, and we both knew it. Maybe not better now, but almost. He put the mug on the drainer, then turned off the tap. He still hadn’t turned around, and now he put both hands flat on the edge of the sink and leant his weight on his arms, looking into the garden. He sighed. “Poor fucker, eh?”
“Well … we don’t know what’s going to happen. He might be all right once he meets it.”
“Mm. D’you believe that?”
“I don’t know.”
The babbling from the other room filled the silence.
“Let’s get him in the car then.”
***
We made it five minutes down the road before Patrick was sick, and then his body began to spasm. That was enough. To this day I have no idea what would have happened if we’d gone further. No one does. Hell, it all might have turned out totally different if we had, when I think about it. But I can’t think about that. Everything that happened afterwards, happened. The sergeant. The Nottingham woman. Sweet Jesus. Fuck it, I’m opening the Sambuca.
We turned around, and took Patrick back to the house. To wait.
***
The next few hours were strange. We didn’t want to watch the TV—all it was showing was Stone Man reports anyway—and we didn’t need to. With the Stone Man this close, and with the amplified connection that Paul and I had created, we could easily feel it making its way towards us. We deposited Patrick back on the sofa, and Paul fetched a deck of cards from the car, holding them up without a word for my assessment of the idea. I nodded, and he opened the pack. I rooted around in the kitchen drawers for some matches, found some, and suggested Blackjack. Paul gave me a silent thumbs-up, and we played for the next few hours, switching dealer every time Blackjack was dealt. I even found a few cold beers in the fridge, and with my hangover long forgotten, we cracked them open. The only sounds in the room were Patrick’s babbling, and occasional double taps on the now-upright coffee table to signal a hit to the dealer. It wasn’t awkward, despite the way it might sound; in a way, it let us both know that we were closer already. Silence w
as acceptable now, and to have time to sit and wait after such constant stress was almost relaxing, or as relaxing as things can be when your whole body is freaking out. I guess it’s true what they say about people bonding in crisis situations. We weren’t quite picking out curtains together yet, but we had taken a step forward, at least. I wouldn’t say it was pleasant—the situation didn’t allow it to be that—but it was at least a welcome respite for the time being.
Sometimes Paul got up to stretch his wobbling legs, and went out into the garden for some air. I found myself listening to my Dictaphone recordings in these breaks. They made me feel strange.
The light from outside dimmed further as the hours passed—we hadn’t opened the blinds, didn’t see any need to—and the late afternoon turned into early summer evening, the sun sitting lower in the sky. Shadows lengthened, and Paul’s pile of matches steadily outgrew my own. I liked playing Blackjack as a rule, but Paul seemed to have a better handle on the tactics than I did, sometimes sticking when I thought it insane and hitting when I thought it meant his certain downfall. More often than not, he turned out to be right.
I was deciding which way to go on a hard sixteen (Paul was the dealer on this one, with an upcard of nine showing) when we both became aware of a sound from outside. It was low and steady, but still sounding far away. We strained to listen, but couldn’t quite make it out over the sound of Patrick’s constant chatter. I moved to the window, and Paul joined me.
“Helicopter,” Paul said. “News or military, but either way … everyone’s coming.”
“Yep,” I said, looking over at Patrick’s wide-eyed and unseeing face. Were we responsible for that? Would it have happened eventually anyway? “It’s, what … at least an hour away yet?”
“I think so.”
“So I think we’ll be getting a visit soon. There’ll at least be people close enough—authority people—that we can try to talk to. Didn’t the Home Secretary say that they’d be doing house-to-house checks well in advance of each evacuation?”
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