Stone Army

by J. D. Weston

  But as she began to tell her story to the lazy cop behind the counter, the men’s voices in the back room grew louder.

  “I ran all night,” said Gabriella.

  But the voices. She singled out one in particular then stared at the door in disbelief.

  “That voice.”

  “Madam?” the cop prompted her.

  But Gabriella began to step backwards, moving away from the desk, away from the cop. Even before the door handle turned, she knew who would step through the frame.

  “Madam,” called the cop, standing from his chair, confused by her reaction. “Où allez-vous?”

  Three men, all bearing smiles, emerged from the back room. But the look on the desk officer’s face and his raised voice had caught their attention.

  The first man, a senior policeman with a gut larger than his deputy’s, switched his confused look between Gabriella and the second man, who was wearing black pants and black boots, and cocked his head to one side.

  “You,” said Jones.

  “No,” said Gabriella, shaking her head. She bumped into the door, struggling to open it.

  “Get after her,” shouted Jones.

  Man number three leapt into action.

  Barging through the doors into the bright daylight, Gabriella looked left then right and found an opening in the forest. Behind her, as she ran, the doors crashed open and the third man gave chase. Tears leaked from her eyes and streamed across her face, pushed back by the wind. With her arms pumping as hard as they could, Gabriella prayed for the warm lick of whatever it was they had injected into her to rush across her muscles.

  But nothing came but fatigue.

  A gunshot rang out. The bullet found the bark of a tree and ricocheted off with a high-pitched whine. But Gabriella kept running. Soon, the only sound she could hear was the dull beat of her heart. She focused on one step after the other, leaping over logs and streams until the trees grew so dense she had to slow to cut a path between them.

  Thick bushes sat at the feet of tall pines. The ground was a carpet of dry pine cones and scattered with leaves of autumn colour. Stopping behind a thick trunk, Gabriella calmed her heart and listened to the movement around her, forming an image in her mind of her hunter.

  The heavy footfalls slowed to a stop. She imagined the man with his gun held out before him, sweeping the rows of trees for a sign of her. As the footfalls came closer, Gabriella prepared herself. The muzzle of the gun emerging from behind the thick pine trunk was the sign she needed.

  With two hands, she reached out, twisting the gun and disabling the man’s hands with his finger stuck in the trigger guard. A shot fired off and a small pile of leaves exploded on the ground beside her. The first blow the man threw was with an elbow. With his hands stuck on the gun, it was all he could manage, along with a sweep of his legs to knock Gabriella off balance.

  But Gabriella was ready for the move. Using every ounce of energy that remained in her tired body, she ducked from the elbow and fell forward, pulling the man down as he swept his leg across. He came down hard on top of her, but momentum kept them rolling until they came to a stop with Gabriella on top, one knee on each of his shoulders.

  She eased her knee forward onto his neck, squeezing his windpipe. With his hands still locked on the gun, Gabriella gave everything she had to close the man’s airway, pulling his arms up and away and her knee down, hard on his throat.

  The choking sounds and rustle of dead leaves fell quiet and the silence of the forest resumed. The man’s hands fell limp, allowing Gabriella to release the gun.

  A single shot to his head confirmed he was dead.

  Breathless from the exertion and tension, Gabriella fell sideways to the ground, lying beside the man she had just killed.

  Tears formed in her eyes and the harder she fought them, the more they formed until she relented to the emotions that had built up over the past two days. She curled into a ball and wept. Alone in a forest with nowhere to go and no-one even looking for her, she pitied herself. Even the birds in the treetops ceased their singing. The occasional branch flicked as a squirrel leapt to another tree. But no other sound followed.

  Until, someplace far off, somewhere behind many trees and across a carpet of dead leaves and dried pine cones…

  That voice called out.

  Being a man of healthy routine and good habits, Harvey parked his bike in the detached garage, turned it around and killed the engine. He stepped off the bike, pulled off his helmet and slipped it into the soft helmet cover. Then he pulled the drawstring tight and hung the bag with the helmet inside on a single hook on the wall.

  He entered the house through the back door as he always did, and scanned the room. It was a subconscious glance rather than a thorough investigation. Practice had taught him to leave items on surfaces perfectly square with their surroundings. Any movement or variation would stand out and catch his eye.

  The iron fire tools had been moved.

  Standing in the doorway, he studied the fire iron from fifteen feet away, thinking back to the fight he’d had with Gabriella. Had he moved them? Or hadn’t he returned the iron to its place? But his confidence in his own methods far outweighed his doubt. Any discrepancy in the iron’s position would have been noticed when he left the house with Gabriella.

  With one quiet and smooth motion, he pulled the gun from his waistband and armed it, releasing the slide as quietly as possible. Even from the doorway, he could see the door to the bathroom in the hallway was slightly ajar. Another sign.

  He stepped into the room, closing the kitchen door behind him, and walked through the hallway.

  With the gun aimed at chest height, Harvey snatched the door open.

  But nobody was there.

  He glanced into the bedroom. The wardrobe had been ransacked. The drawers had been pulled out and emptied onto the floor. The contents of every box and bag was strewn across the bed.

  A flash of light pulsed behind his eyes. Inside Harvey’s gut, something stirred. The familiar feeling of his inner beast opened its eyes.

  A dull thud came from the kitchen. It was the sound of the kitchen door closing.

  “Gabriella?” said Harvey, trying hard to control the rage growing inside him.

  But no reply came.

  A shape passed by the kitchen window, quick and dark. Standing in the bedroom, Harvey traced the runner with his Sig. A flash of black against the bright sun behind, as the intruder passed by the living room window. Harvey continued to track him from the hallway. Then, as the muzzle of the gun lined up with the bedroom window, he fired.

  Glass shattered and fell to the floor, and the moans of the intruder squirming on the ground came through the broken window.

  Rolling his neck from side to side, feeling the click of bones, muscle and the release gases in his joints, Harvey made his way outside.

  He slid the Sig into his waistband, stepped outside the house, and found the man lying on the ground beside Harvey’s wood shelter, a small wooden lean-to frame he’d built the previous summer to keep his supply of wood dry. Inside the lean-to was the neat stack of firewood Harvey had been maintaining, along with an axe and a hatchet.

  With one hand on the man’s collar and the other on his belt, Harvey hoisted him into the air and slammed him into the wall of his house. The intruder’s back bent across the wood pile. Fuelled by rage, Harvey held the man in black high above his head with his toes scratching the concrete ground. He slammed the man’s face into the brickwork over and over until he could hold him no more, and let him drop to the ground.

  A boot to the man’s ribs rolled him onto his back, where Harvey could study his bloodied face. But he didn’t recognise the man with one swollen eye, a broken nose and a claret-stained beard.

  “Who are you and what are you doing in my house?” said Harvey, with his boot on the bullet wound in the man’s shoulder.

  But the man failed to respond. He made no effort to talk. Instead, he moaned at his injuries and stare
d up at Harvey with his one good eye.

  “I’ll ask you again. Who are you?” said Harvey.

  But the man only smiled. The beginnings of a laugh came out but it was drowned in a cough thick with blood.

  Hoisting the man to his feet, Harvey forced him against the wall inside the lean-to. He pulled his knife from the sheave on his belt, and put the blade against the man’s throat, before searching his jacket and finding a wallet.

  There was a European driver’s license with the name Frederick Shaw.

  “Tell me what you’re doing here,” said Harvey, tossing the wallet and the license to the ground. “You’re not a burglar. You’re looking for something.”

  No reply came.

  “You came to the wrong house, Freddie,” said Harvey. “You just pissed off the wrong guy.”

  He dug his thumb into the bullet wound, savouring the man’s face twisting in agony. Spittle flew from Freddie’s mouth as he fought the urge to scream. So Harvey dug harder, searching inside for the taut feel of tendons until he heard the scream he was anticipating.

  The scream came and Freddie’s knees buckled.

  “You’re going to tell me what you’re looking for,” said Harvey.

  But still, he received no response other than a dry smile and a weak, bloodied laugh.

  Harvey grabbed the man’s arm, lay his hand flat on the wooden frame of the lean-to and, with one slick arc of his arm, he stabbed the blade through the man’s hand, fixing him to the wood. A growl came from the very depths of Freddie. His breathing was short and shallow as if he were hyperventilating.

  Harvey collected the hatchet from where it hung between two four-inch nails. He ran the blade across Freddie’s shoulder as if deciding where to place the first cut.

  Freddie’s eyes opened wide, fearful of the hatchet and the lunatic who wielded it. It was a sign Harvey had seen a hundred times before a hundred confessions. He dropped the blade to the man’s elbow.

  “Elbow or shoulder,” said Harvey. “Your choice.”

  The confident arrogance had vanished from Freddie’s demeanour. He searched Harvey’s eyes for a sign of weakness, a sign that he wouldn’t go through with it.

  But Harvey offered no such sign.

  “I’ll decide then, shall I?”

  Harvey swung the hatchet back, but just as it reached the apex of the swing, Freddie spoke.

  “The girl.”

  Harvey stopped. But he held the hatchet high, mid-swing.

  “What girl?”

  “The girl that came here this morning.”

  Harvey didn’t reply.

  “We know she came here. Our dogs picked up her scent.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  But Freddie just laughed. This time, it was loud and with renewed confidence.

  Harvey completed his swing of the hatchet and buried the blade into the man’s shoulder.

  A wild scream rang out, and as Harvey lined up for his second swing, the agonised yelp evolved into another laugh. It was the laugh of a madman.

  Freddie closed his eyes, laid his head back, and smiled up at the sky.

  It was only then that Harvey noticed the wood pile. The top row was missing four logs, something Harvey almost never let happen. Only one row was taken inside at a time. Never one or two logs. Never half a row. Always a full row.

  Freddie caught Harvey staring at the wood, and once more, his laugh filled the small space in the lean-to.

  An image of the living room came back to Harvey.

  He’d opened the kitchen door.

  The fire irons had been moved.

  The open bathroom door.

  The blazing fire.

  The logs should have burned down to coals. But there was a blazing fire.

  As the realisation of what Freddie had done hit Harvey, Freddie erupted into uncontrollable laughter. Harvey stepped back and looked across at the house.

  Smoke had begun to billow out of the windows and orange flames licked at the curtains.

  The beast inside Harvey woke from its slumber. A surge of power pulsed behind his eyes. Sharp talons of the beast gripped his insides and, in a rare state of uncontrolled anger, he swung the hatchet back and aimed at Freddie’s chest.

  But it was too late.

  The side of the house exploded in a shower of bricks, splintered wood and angry flames.

  “It’s just you and me, Doctor Farrow,” said Kane, as he lowered himself into the seat and released the microphone button. Farrow’s hands slid from the glass and hung limply by his sides. Somewhere on his face was an expression of hate, camouflaged by wonder, intrigue and a lack of understanding.

  “Why?” said Farrow. “Why have me create all this and then moments before we finish, you destroy it all?”

  “I’m not destroying it, Doctor Farrow. I thought that much was clear.”

  “If you kill me, you won’t stand a chance,” said Farrow. His voice had lost its urgency, as if his heart had resolved to his new prison. He spoke in gentle tones. “Only I know how to finish the project.”

  “The project is finished, Doctor Farrow,” said Kane. He laid his hands on his lap and stared back at the doctor, offering him a look of compassion and disappointment. “Tell me straight. Where’s the undiluted SFS?”

  “I told you, I don’t know. She must have stolen it when she escaped,” said Farrow. But his expression betrayed his own deceit.

  “Don’t take me for a fool,” said Kane.

  “You’re wrong. I’ve been nothing but faithful to you,” snapped Farrow. “Even when you erupted into your little tantrums, shoved people around and set unrealistic expectations, who do you think stood by you? I defended you when the rest of the scientists and technicians threatened to leave. Who do you think kept this project alive? And now you repay me with this? A glass prison?”

  “Be careful, Mr Farrow,” said Kane, and he smoothed his lock of grey hair back into place.

  “No. No, I damn well won’t. If this is how you treat the people that help you, then I’ll have nothing more to do with you. I’ll have nothing more to do with the project. You can’t use it. It’s still untested. We still have weeks of research to do.”

  “The drug works, Doctor Farrow. We’ve seen it time and again. How much longer do I have to wait?”

  “The drug works during physical activity, yes. But what about the dormant hosts? You saw what the girl did. Who knows what else she’s capable of? We need to test it. We need to research and we need to make adjustments to the formula. You can’t just inject people with it as it is. Not in the real world. There’s too much uncertainty. And what is it you plan on doing with it anyway? You never did say. You can’t sell it to the military. The research would never stand up.”

  “I’m not selling it to the military, Doctor Farrow.”

  “So who?” said Farrow. He began to pace the room. “Just let me out. Let me finish the job.”

  “Did I ever tell you about the time my father locked me in the cellar, Doctor Farrow?”

  The doctor stopped pacing. He stared through the window, incredulous at the remark.

  “What does that have to do with this? You’re killing people, Kane. If this gets out into the wrong hands, there’ll be chaos.”

  “I was an only child, you see. We lived on an old farm. It was a dream of my father’s, I think, to have all that land. All that space. My mother went along for the ride. Back then, they did that, didn’t they? Wives. There was no equality. If the woman spoke up against her husband, she’d be beaten. At least in our household, that’s how it was. You see, my father was quite mad, I think. He was never diagnosed, but the signs were there, in hindsight. And me, a boy with all the time and space to exercise my curiosity as boys do, I was fascinated by the circle of life. How the birds ate the seeds my father planted, no matter how much it infuriated him.” Kane smiled at the memory of his father’s temper. “Then, through some kind of magic, the droppings of those birds would spread the seed. Somehow, through the mir
acle of life, that seed had sustained that little bird, given it energy and all the things it needed to live another day, and still, it had the power to bring more life, growing a new plant wherever that little bird happened to drop it. Quite fascinating. Don’t you think, Doctor Farrow?”

  “I’m a scientist,” replied Farrow. His voice was low and calm as he pictured the little boy in Kane’s anecdote.

  “So I trapped one,” said Kane. “You know the trick? A box held up with a stick and a piece of string. I sat there all day waiting for one to come along. And I nearly gave up too. But it’s amazing what a little willpower can do.”

  “You caught one?” asked Farrow.

  “I wrung its neck in my tiny hands, just as I’d seen my father do with the chickens. I felt the life leave its tiny body and I held it up to see it in the fading sunlight. I marvelled at how light it felt. How delicate life is. I sneaked back to my room and used a small kitchen knife to open it up. How wonderful life is, Doctor Farrow. It’s a miracle how all those tiny organs fit into that little body.”

  There was a pause as Kane relived the moment when his life had changed. But, feeling Farrow’s eyes on him, silently waiting for the next part of the story, he continued.

  “Curiosity got the better of me, I’m afraid. It wasn’t long before I was opening up the feral cats on the farm. I was fascinated by the intricacies of their bodies, but naive to think that my parents wouldn’t notice the smell of their rotting corpses in my cupboard.”

  “Your father found them?” asked Farrow.

  “My mother found them. But being the devoted wife she was, she went straight to my father. She was fearful I was turning into a monster.”

  “And were you?”

  “No,” said Kane. “I was never a monster, Doctor Farrow. I was just a boy who was fascinated by the physical body. My father locked me in the cellar for three days straight with no food or water. No sunlight. Only the rats to keep me company. That’s where it all began, Doctor Farrow. So when you talk about your research and what our little creation can do to a man’s mind, I already know. I already know the possibilities of the human mind. I realised it on the seventh day of being locked in that little cellar. The curious rats with their tiny claws and teeth woke me every ten minutes. And the darkness, Farrow, darkness like you’ve never experienced before. They say your eyes adjust to the dark after time. But not when that darkness is total. When you’re so far underground that your fingertips are bleeding from scratching at the walls and the door. Your forehead is swollen from trying to end it all, just to stop the incessant rats and torturous squeals and bites. All you want to do is say you’re sorry. Seven days, Doctor Farrow, that’s how long it took. When my body was at its weakest, my mind was broken, and death hung over me licking his lips, that’s when I found it. That’s when I found the strength to get out. That’s when I became the man I am now. With nothing but a few meagre slices of stale bread that I had to share with the rats and a few cups of water from the drain, I found the strength to break free.”