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?”
“That’s true. I mean, they cut us off from one of the Blue targets earlier on, but maybe, if it were here, then when we were so close to it … no … wait … that can’t be it, because we’d have still been able to feel the other Blue target after they cut us off on the street.”
“Well, maybe it’s because even a cut signal can be picked up when it’s near to an active signal?” I suggested, feeling myself disappear into the endless possible complexities and being grateful.
“Mm,” agreed Paul. “Makes you wonder. What do you think they’ll do with the next targets, then? The military, I mean.”
“How do you mean?” I asked, also realising that we both believed that the Stone Men would be back a third time, even though the Second Arrival wasn’t yet over. We still hadn’t looked at each other, and yet we sounded now for all the world like two dull Sunday league spectators discussing the team, rather than witnesses at the scene of an infanticide. It was shocking, yet easy. I was right; sometimes, some people really can just do what needs to be done.
“Well … do they take them to the Stone Men, like Henry?” asked Paul. “Or …” he lazily made a fist and pointed two fingers out of it, then cocked his thumb and snapped his wrist backwards with a quiet explosion sound from his lips. A child had died just recently, a few feet in front of where we now sat, and in those few minutes it was just another thing, “… right then and there?”
“Guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens with that Blue that stopped,” I said, and then we were silent for a while. Whether it was the weight of the day, or knowing how the other was feeling, having been party to the same awful scenes, the silence was an easy one this time. We sat that way until Straub came to dismiss us, upon which we shook hands and simply went back to our lives. Again, it would have been good to have some nice parting words, but none were needed; we weren’t capable of them anyway. A shared glance and a nod of the head said it all.
Wait; ‘went back to our lives’? No. We tried to, at least. Even then, before we left—Paul in one jeep, and me in another heading for the airport—I knew, and I think Paul did as well, that once the numbness of the last part of that day wore off, going back to our normal lives would not be possible.
I was right. I just had no idea how of how much so.
***
Part 3: In the Dying Moments
Chapter Eight: Andy Returns Home, The Heavy Price of Fame and Fortune, Paul Gets Back To Nature, and Negotiations In the Dark
***
Time didn’t pass quickly. It dragged, and painfully. Even though I was back in New York, and again finding myself pressed for interviews and comments on the latest Stone Man happenings (despite being left out of the government version of events this time, which I was glad of, but more on that shortly), I found that I wanted none of it. It was an unusual sensation for me, actively deciding to avoid the limelight, but I found myself doing it. I had calls from the New Yorker and Times to write pieces for them—once upon a time, these were dream offers—as my stock seemed to have temporarily re-risen in the light of the Stone Man and his associates returning, but I stalled. I just wanted to be out of the way for a while. I rented a penthouse on the Upper East Side and didn’t leave for several weeks, alternating between the balcony in the day and the shared swimming pool at night. I found it peaceful in there, floating quietly in the darkness (I preferred it with the lights right down) and seeing the moonlight shine gently through the ceiling windows. I drank a lot, ordered in every night, and gained a stone in weight.
I spoke with Paul often on the phone, and he sounded even worse. If we had been numb in the aftermath of Target Two, that blessed period had worn off for us both. I’d been mildly affected by Patrick’s unpleasant death, whereas Paul had been haunted. I’d now moved up to his previous level, it seemed, whilst he was exploring new ground. He sounded terrible.
“She moved out yesterday,” said Paul, slurring his words. He’d been drinking as well. “Mother’
s. Gone to Mother’s. Probably best, really. S’not much … not much fun around here.”
“Not this end either,” I replied, and I meant it, despite sitting naked in my bathrobe and nursing a scotch. There was a long pause, and that was fine, because most of our phone conversations went this way. Long pauses. Just being there with someone in the same boat was enough. “How’s … work?”
“Dunno. Didden … didden go in today. Don’t think’m goin’ back.”
“They’ll fire you.”
“S’ok. Fuggem.”
“I’ll send you some money. I’ll look after you man. Fuck it, I’ll send you a million.”
“Ta.”
He was okay for cash though, I knew. He’d been compensated again by the government for our assistance, as had I, but I wanted to. He’d earned that share. We both bore the burden of our guilt.
The Blue that stopped had disappeared shortly after it halted, as had the other two once their respective targets had been delivered (and the subsequent removals carried out). They’d correlated the estimated time of the child’s death with the time that the Blue had stopped. All the signs pointed to the fact that killing the child had stopped that Stone Man’s advance.
Of course, the general public didn’t know this. I only knew because I’d spoken to Doctor Boldfield personally, once I’d been brought in again for a second round of testing. He’d been reluctant, but I reminded him that I had been granted full disclosure by his superiors, and so he opened up.
The public had been told that, again, the targets had felt their connection and brought themselves forward of their own accord, knowing full well that there was a possibility of their deaths. They were hailed as heroes, especially Target Two, who had tragically lost her daughter to cot death the day before, and bravely came forward despite her grief. Even though Target Three—the child—was not stated as being an infant. Instead, the public was told that Target Three’s family ‘had requested that their relative’s name not be disclosed’.
Either way, this time the government admitted that their initial diagnosis of a weak heart for Patrick had been wrong, and that the mere presence of the Stone Men near whomever they were trying to communicate with—the specific people they had come to see—was fatal. They did assure the public, though, that work was being done to prevent this, and that they had made many promising breakthroughs in their research.
I used to wonder why they’d admitted that the targets had died, but given time to think about it, I don’t know if they had much choice. They couldn’t be one hundred percent sure that there had been no witnesses on Henry’s and Target Two’s (Theresa Pettifer’s) streets; with Patrick, they had hours to evacuate each home—waiting for the Stone Man to come to them—whilst, more importantly, making sure they’d cleared the immediate area. With the Second Arrival, the whole idea was to save time, to end the destruction early, and they were operating on the assumption that the streets had been cleared by people evacuating themselves. It wouldn’t do to say that the targets were just people who had been killed in the panic or whatever, if someone had footage of them being dragged screaming from their homes by armed soldiers. I often wonder, even now, what would have happened had they not lived alone. I asked Paul about this once, in another phone call. He was sober, for once.
“What choice would they have? They’d have been taken care of as well.” He was sober, but extremely flat. I could barely hear him.
“You think?”
“Yeah. The only reason we haven’t been shut down is because we still might be useful. We’re loose ends, Andy. Dangerous loose ends. But we’ll be all right until they come back again at least. Then we’ll know. We’ll know if the lap dogs, the hunting dogs, can still hunt. Or if we’re people with dangerous information that are now surplus to requirements …”
“No, no, we’re done with that. We’re already useless. We’re cut off.”
“We were cut off at the base, but we still got a good start. We might still be able to do something before they cut us off again, or maybe they’ll be able to do it instantly. But if it’s the latter …” He trailed off, and then sighed. His voice was almost a whisper, but that wry humour was still there, even if it had been twisted into laughing at the bleakness he seemed to see all around him. “I reckon we’ll be taken out behind the shed and dealt with, old chum,” he finished.
“No way. No. I can’t see Straub allowing that.”
“Really? What’s the one word you’d use to describe Straub overall?”
I had it instantly, but I didn’t want to say it. It meant Paul might have a point.
“Professional.”
I returned to New York after being in the UK for more tests, but it didn’t feel like home anymore. Nowhere did, but I kept thinking of Coventry, and what it must be like since the Second Arrival. As you’ll of course know, and as I mentioned earlier, they’d dug up Millennium Place after that and filled it with water, making a large man-made lake that dropped off to around six feet deep in the middle. The hope was that it would somehow disrupt whatever technology or force they were using to transport themselves in and out; appearing twice in the same spot led most to believe, including the top boffins, that Millennium Place had been the best or only place for them to appear. It wasn’t much, but at this point the country would try anything.
I’d seen the footage on the TV. It was shocking, even for me, and I’d been there up close and personal the first time. The surrounding city centre had been pretty much levelled, and it hadn’t really finished being rebuilt after the First Arrival. The two Blues walking together in the rain had, along with the original Stone Man, created two new paths of destruction in different directions, almost at opposing compass points, and the new damage combined with the half-finished repairs from the First Arrival made local people say enough was enough. The city centre became a ghost town, with people abandoning their homes entirely. Even the outlying areas cleared out as well—who wants to live near ground zero of a seemingly unending cycle of destruction—and the families with children were the first to leave. Once the kids were taken away, the city was doomed to a slow death. The more people left, the more businesses died, and so the exodus increased.
As far as the government were concerned, this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. They’d wanted to quarantine the city centre entirely, and once the population of the city centre had been reduced to just a few stubborn elderly folk, homeless people, and desperate looters (anything of worth was long since gone), they declared the area as quarantined and stationed guard posts around the perimeter, clearing out the last few remaining residents.
This all happened in a space of three months. The population of the city as a whole dropped from just over three hundred thousand to four thousand, scattered around the outskirts.
That was when I decided to go home.
I don’t know why; I just wanted to. Being in New York was only making me worse; it wasn’t my home, and what was the point of being there if I only stayed in the apartment? I just wanted to go back. I didn’t want to be another one of the people who’d abandoned my city. I thought of Henry, and how he’d refused to be scared.
I wondered if it had been him who had changed things for me. Patrick hadn’t gotten to me too badly, but he’d been barely human when we found him. Henry’s dignity had been deeply, deeply affecting, but the realisation that it took Henry’s actions to put the death of another human being into perspective—when that death had happened right in front of me—filled me with a self-loathing that I couldn’t even begin to describe. I spent hours a day lying on my back, a bottle in my hand, staring at the ceiling and wondering what the hell was wrong with me, then drowning in a maelstrom of guilt, and then the cycle would repeat.
I even found myself, in my crazier moments, trying to flex my mental muscles in the same way that I did when I locked in to the Stone Man’s pull. It’s hard to describe, but it had been like a shift, a switch-flick in my brain; I wondered if maybe I could do it again, before t
hey arrived, to catch them before they had a chance to destroy anything. It would make me the hunting dog again, the point-man for murder, but at least I could save even more lives in the process. I was desperate, desperate to find some kind of worth in myself, changing my moral stance constantly in my head in order to be able to hold it up. I had to stop thinking of the targets, think of the people, the people, the people. The logic was all there—had been there before—but it didn’t help.
I never picked up on any signals, but I’d sometimes sit in the living room with an open map in front of me, drinking and flexing my mind, flexing my mind. All that happened was that I got drunk, and the black fog around me increased. So I decided that I could do all of this just as well in Coventry, and booked a flight.
I rang Paul to tell him, but he didn’t really react. He just murmured an acknowledgement of my plan, and said nothing. I asked what was wrong, but meant what was more wrong than before. He didn’t sound drunk.
“Wife’s gone,” he muttered. I started to tell him I already knew, that he’d told me she was temporarily at the Mother-in-law’s, but then I realised what he meant. It was inevitable, I supposed. She’d been pushed far enough before, but now, he would be unreachable. People would only stick around through so much, I thought.
“Do … do you want to come to me? Stay with me for a bit?” I asked.
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