The Stone Man - A Science Fiction Thriller

by Smitherd, Luke

  I couldn’t blame them. I would have liked to have sacked it off myself by then, if not for the fact that the teacher woman’s story corroborated the impossible account of the chav … it made me think twice, or at least give me enough desire for an explanation to warrant me staying longer. My stomach rumbled, and I began to think about where the nearest chippy was that I could dash to—even though it meant I would lose my place at the front of the crowd—when the temperature suddenly dropped by about twenty degrees.

  Everyone there suddenly started chattering, and looking at the sky, even though the sun above was still blazing down. It was freezing, impossibly cold under that still-blue sky, and I was more covered than most of the other people due to my jeans. I hate to think how cold the summer-dressed people there would have been. Goose bumps covered my entire body, and I saw couples and friends suddenly and instinctively huddling together for warmth, some laughing, some looking confused. Even the cops shared a concerned look. I found myself remembering what the chav had said about the cold, how the temperature around him had inexplicably dropped, and suddenly I had a brief flash of belief; he was right. I tried to remind myself that this was the age of people like David Blaine, street performers who prided themselves on their ability to freak people out by making them believe the impossible, and took a deep breath. I noticed that my heart rate had still picked up dramatically, though.

  Then the cold suddenly cut off just as quickly, and almost unnoticed in the moment of relief—everyone around me breathed an audible sigh and started to laugh, delighted that the heat was back again—the Stone Man took two steps forward and stopped.

  Everyone who was directly in front of it, albeit eight feet away, shrieked and leapt backwards. One or two people at the back fell over. The steps had not been quick, or slow; they were about normal walking pace. The Stone Man had come to a stop with its feet side by side, like it had only meant to take two steps and no more. It was now completely still again, and nervously giggling people had already started to step back into their original position. The police inside the barrier had backed away, but one had already gathered his wits and was politely taking charge, telling people to calm down. The council man was impotently demanding to be let back through the crowd, but no one was paying any attention.

  Then the Stone Man began to walk.

  ***

  Time to crack open the mini Jim Beam here, I think. I don’t really like it, but then I’m not mad on half of these, and I’ve decided to polish them all off. Bollocks to it. I’m even tempted to turn on the TV and watch it all live for myself; I can pretty much hear everything from next door’s TV anyway. In fact, let me turn it back on so I can properly describe it to you.

  There. Not much has changed since I started this. There’s the lake, there’s the barrier, there’s the vehicle blockade beyond that. That barrier must be, what … three or four hundred metres in diameter? Pretty pointless, really, but I guess it’s just to mark out the extra-restricted area. The soldiers are only there now to stop any approaching people from interfering, should any idiots try to get inside the barrier, but that would just be a precaution. The evacuation would have begun some time ago, and hell, it wouldn’t have taken long. There’s hardly anybody left in Coventry now anyway, except maybe on the outskirts, but I guess they’re taking no chances. There’s also the very slim chance—to their minds—that someone might get through, someone who might be … you know. Needing to be put down, for obvious reasons. Slim odds, as I say, but they have to take that precaution. That would be a turn up, eh?

  Even the helicopter shot that they’re showing on screen is clearly being taken from a great distance away, an obvious fact even though the camera is zoomed in as much as it can be. You can only just make out the lump in the middle of the lake, the hulking figure at the heart of it all. The tanks outside the barrier seem a bit pointless; they’re only gonna move anyway, and the soldiers alone would have kept any people back.

  There’s people watching this who must get a real kick out of it. Probably the majority. They all know what it means, and it’s still a circus to them. Fuckers. Fuckers! I owe them nothing. Nothing. Geez, I’ve only had one slug and I’m already getting maudlin and bitter … hardly a surprise though, eh? Ah, I can’t handle my booze anymore. Might as well leave the TV on anyway, whilst I’m here. It’ll provide a nice backdrop, a bit of context, as it were. I’ll just turn the sound down. Can’t stand this arsehole presenting it. I’d have done a much better job. They’d ask me to come on, too, if I hadn’t turned my phone off.

  That shot is so far back it’s almost pointless. Nowhere near as good as the one during the Second Arrival, the one from the roof of the Old Fire Station building. They showed that one over and over. Of course, after the Second Arrival, the Old Fire Station isn’t there anymore; ditto most of the surrounding city centre. No one was allowed to inhabit buildings around that space, no one ever rebuilt the ones that got demolished, and then they flattened them all anyway. Safer, they said. They paved it all over. There was a square mile in the centre of Coventry that no one was allowed to enter for a whole year, unless they had high-level military clearance. I was allowed in, of course. The ban was officially lifted once they figured out was going on, but the lake and the barrier around it were guarded more closely than the White House. And I mean that literally. I can still get inside that if I want to, as well. Heh. Still makes me feel smug, amazingly. Paul might have said I was a nice bloke, and I’m not sure that I agree (you hear that? Nice bloke, someone said) but it can’t be said that I don’t have an ego. Here’s to you, Pauly-boy.

  Right, anyway. Bloody Jim Beam … awful. So, Millennium Place, when it was still Millennium Place. The Stone Man, beginning to walk. Everybody excited, oohing and aahing … and for a moment, it was something great, like everyone knew that the world would be wanting to know about this, one of the most amazing street tricks ever, pure YouTube fodder, and in Coventry of all places! I felt the same, that I was lucky to be there; everyone was immediately caught up in it all. For a few moments, it was just a great thrill. Then the guy in the green vest got involved, and suddenly, we all knew different. It all went to shit from there.

  ***

  Immediately, a cheer went up; I cheered too. It just looked so incredible, how the stone before us could move and bend without any visible joints or creasing. It seemed like it somehow compressed when it needed to, and then stretched out afterwards without any sign of how it could bend; you could almost guess that it was some kind of rubber, if not for the complete lack of rippling and the way it hadn’t had any give at all under the woman’s blows. It was stone, you could see it was actual stone … and yet there it was, ‘knees’ bending as the legs moved, the arms swaying slightly at its sides with no visible lines where they met the shoulders. It walked with its head up. Hell, you could feel the weight of it as each of the tree trunk sized legs came down. I remember that vividly. It may sound weird, but the Stone Man walking was one of the most incredible things I, and the people around me, had ever seen. Everyone was looking at each other, open-mouthed, laughing and gasping and shaking their heads, all thinking the same thing; how the hell do they make it do that?

  I remember seeing clips of a street performance in … I want to say Barcelona. I don’t know. A giant egg in the middle of a town, which later ‘hatched’ to give birth to … was it an elephant? I can’t remember, but I do remember the footage of some woman riding on it, and everyone there just being amazed. And it was amazing, no sign of puppeteers or wires. It even spewed water over the people, for God’s sake! I think it went on for a few days, meeting up with different aspects of the show that were planted across the city. It was wonderful. All I could think though, whilst seeing the Stone Man walk, was that by comparison the puppet elephant looked like a piece of shit.

  Everyone in the Stone Man’s path jumped back to let it pass, even before it had reached the edge of the barrier. The police looked a bit dumbfounded, and moved forward uncertainly, half expe
cting it to stop once it reached the tape. But it didn’t. To everyone’s surprise, it just kept going, pushing into the barrier and dragging it forward like it wasn’t even there. Everyone started cheering again, expecting the whole barrier to be dragged along with the Stone Man or for the police to stop it somehow. The former would have happened, too, if not for the quick thinking of one officer. Perhaps he thought that whichever performer was inside the Stone Man couldn’t see what they were doing, or was thinking that the barrier was only going to become a hazard if it were dragged across the square, or even that he didn’t want to ruin a potentially good bit of public performance; either way, he unclipped one end of the barrier tape, sending it retracting back rapidly into the opposite pillar that it had been drawn out of and effectively ending the problem. The crowd cheered again, the officer smiled sheepishly—there was no law being broken, after all—and the police followed after the Stone Man to see, like everyone else, what was going on.

  It began to pass through the crowd, who moved with it, and the people on the opposite side of the circle surged in to follow. It was setting off in the direction of the huge transport museum that lay at one end of Millennium Place, and I assumed that it was heading for the entrance. I snapped a quick picture of the scene, then scurried after the Stone Man myself, following the incredible walking statue and the laughing mob that walked alongside it.

  People were actually keeping a safe distance from the Stone Man when I drew alongside them (managing to snap a few pictures over their heads as I did so, some of which came out very nicely) creating a gap of four feet or so; despite the fact that we could all see it walking easily and freely, everyone could feel the weight in its steps, and didn’t want to risk getting caught under one of those feet. And they all probably would have gone on this way for the next few moments if it wasn’t for the guy in the green vest.

  Out of nowhere, this guy who had been with a couple of girls, drinking out of little hip flasks that they could keep out of sight of the cops, dashed forward from the pack, laughing. The girls who were with him cheered. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen, wearing a pair of deck shoes with half-length combat trousers and the aforementioned green vest. He started to shout something, but couldn’t get the words out for laughing as he ran alongside the Stone Man, avoiding its legs. He then suddenly leapt sideways, grabbing onto its shoulders and hoisting himself up as the girls cheered again. A yell of dismay went up from the crowd, thinking he was going to ruin the spectacle somehow, but it turned into a scream as Green Vest immediately went totally limp and slipped off the Stone Man’s back.

  He landed like a sack of wet meat, not even attempting to break his fall. I can’t decide which was worse; the sick thud as his head hit the concrete, or the audible snap as his leg broke under his own bodyweight. Three quarters of the mob screamed again—the loudest came from his female fan club—and stopped, turning to look at the fallen boy. The remaining quarter gave him the briefest of glances, then carried on after the Stone Man, most of them still actually laughing. The police immediately rushed over, one already calling on his radio for medical assistance and one kneeling next to the boy, asking if he knew his name and where he was. I moved in close myself, stunned but concerned. Amazingly, the boy was still conscious, and not even crying out in pain. His eyes were open but far away; not wide eyed, just distant, and his lips were moving rapidly. As other people began to crowd in, the other two police were ordering everyone back, and one, thinking ahead, radioed for backup to follow the Stone Man. Even in all the chaos, he’d realised that something was off. The boy hadn’t simply fallen; something had happened to him.

  There was nothing I could do for this kid, and the ambulance was on its way. I knew that I’d only be a hindrance anyway, and better trained men than I were already looking after him, so I decided to head back after the Stone Man. As I turned, however, I caught a bit of what the boy was saying. There were no words; just an endless stream of syllables, nonstop gibberish over and over that I then realised were individual letters. He wasn’t even slurring them either, as you would expect after a blow to the head like that; he was enunciating them perfectly, and in extremely rapid fashion.

  “GCCAATTGAATTTGGCCCGTTAACTCAGG….”

  I barely had time to register this before one of the police came aggressively close to me, asking if I were deaf. I didn’t bother to respond, turning to chase after the mob along with everyone else who had stopped to look at the boy. I would later find out that the boy never regained awareness.

  The Stone Man was continuing towards the transport museum, and the people inside were clearly visible through the large, thirty-foot-high glass-and-metal latticed windows that covered the front of the building, almost pressing against them to see what was causing the commotion and crowd. A couple of them were laughing in astonishment, amazed by the wizardry of what they were seeing. Presumably, like me, they thought the Stone Man was heading for the transport museum entrance. This was not the case, of course. As we all drew closer it suddenly became apparent that, on its current trajectory, the Stone Man was going to miss the entrance by several feet, and was in fact in direct line with the glass frontage instead. As it drew a few feet closer, this was apparent to everyone, and a murmur of uncertainty began to emanate from the surrounding mob; nervous laughter and a few comedy Uh-oh! sounds as the Stone Man came within eight feet of the first window.

  Seven feet, six feet … the murmur became a swell of laughter and excitement, people thinking Surely not, but … I found myself caught up in it, laughing, feeling the thrill of imminent destruction but knowing it wouldn’t happen. Five feet, four feet … the laughter became laughing words, people hooting and whooping as the Stone Man marched on without any sign of slowing whatsoever.

  Three feet, two feet … the crowd stopped following at this distance, faced with a wall of glass, and the screams started; fun screams though, like people approaching the first big drop of a roller coaster, frightened and excited but fearing no real harm. The people on the other side of the glass suddenly started backing away, the same mix of uncertainty and excitement reflected on their faces. A foot away now, and the screaming suddenly pitched into sudden, genuine shock as everyone realised that the Stone Man wasn’t stopping at all, the people on both sides of the glass freezing as hysteria took over. This was happening so fast, and no one had to time to consciously process the excitement that turned into horror as the walking statue smashed straight through the glass wall of the transport museum without missing a step, effortlessly snapping the metal frames that held each enormous pane in place.

  Everyone inside scattered like ants, gasping or crying out in surprise as they staggered or leapt backwards to get out of the Stone Man’s path, as well as to avoid the spray of glass and metal that skittered across the floor. The people outside stayed frozen in place, stunned and silent now, as the three remaining police (one had stayed with green vest) ran past, radioing for assistance and shouting at us to stay outside. As a reporter, I admit my first instinct should have been to follow, regardless of whatever the police had said; the path of the Stone Man was where the story lay, but if I’m being honest here (and why the hell not?) I was as stunned and frozen as the rest of them, unable to comprehend what I was seeing. If this was really a performance of some sort, it had just gone way further than a mere piece of street art. My mind whirled with attempts at an explanation; perhaps the transport museum was in on it somehow? Impossible, I thought; this was far too uncontrolled and dangerous. Or maybe something had just gone wrong? That seemed more likely, but if so, then it had gone very wrong.

  The Stone Man was now several feet inside the atrium, and to my astonishment I saw it bounce aside an on-display Jaguar XK8 as if it were made of Styrofoam. The side panel, where the Stone Man’s leg had struck it, crumpled like tinfoil. Understand, the Stone Man hadn’t kicked the car; it had just kept on walking like the car wasn’t there, and had hit the car en route as a result. As the Jag bounced to the right, it struck a middle
-aged couple who had moved behind it when the Stone Man first smashed through the glass. The car hit them with a heavy thud, and both of them went down with a cry of pain. Two of the police, obviously just reacting without thinking—wanting to prevent further destruction and injury—ran in and leapt onto the Stone Man, perhaps intending to weigh it down, but both their bodies immediately went limp upon impact and they also fell, just like Green Vest. Again, they made no attempt to break their fall, and landed heavily and mercilessly onto the tiled atrium floor. Anyone who hadn’t seen the strange effect that touching the Stone Man had upon Green Vest saw it now. The synchronised physical reaction of both men made it far more clear and disturbing than before. At least they hadn’t broken anything on impact, unlike Green Vest, even though one of them had slightly caught the backward motion of one of the Stone Man’s legs and had been bumped several feet away. Almost certainly, he would have suffered internal injuries. They lay there as several people unfroze and rushed over, along with the third cop who had turned up—presumably help had arrived for Green Vest—and was shouting about ambulances, but I could still hear the two downed officers; they were speaking quietly, rapidly and precisely through the noise, just like Green Vest.