by Phil Cocker
Andrews golf course, a low, gentle arch with low level brick walls either side. This one had had bollards placed in the centre of the path at either side to stop cars getting over, and a handrail fitted to deter anyone from wanting to jump off it. This had been done when the retail park was built. The Farmer had been given a new access road, which ran alongside the small tributary, slipping under the new bypass that took the bulk of the traffic to and from Preston.
“Why did he ask those questions about your Dad?” Tom held his arms out wide, attempting to touch both handrails as he crossed over the little bridge.
“I don’t know.” Eric replied angrily, then apologised. “Sorry, mate.”
“It’s OK” Tom said. “But he sounded like he knew him.”
Eric sighed deeply. “Yes, it did.” He didn’t know what it meant.
“You don’t think your Dad was in some sort of trouble do you?” Tom was now skipping sideways alongside his friend as he tried to keep up.
“I hope not.” Eric slowed down a little. “But I don’t know.”
“And how come he knew about that Portugal thing.”
“I know.” Eric stopped, realisation coming over him. “I’ve only told you, and I don’t think you’ve told anyone else, have you?”
“No, no one at all.” He shook his head violently at the accusation.
“They wouldn’t have bugged the Bench, would they?” Realising how ridiculous that sounded as he said it out loud. “So the only other way was for them to have tapped my computer.”
“Wow!” Tom stopped hopping about. “That’s like serious spy stuff.” He thought for a second before smiling again. “Cool or what?”
“More what in this case.” Eric raised a concerned eyebrow at his friend. “Why have they been watching what I’ve been surfing on, unless it was a general tag on anyone who looked at that report?” His mind raced through the possibilities. “In which case what else have they been tagging, and why is that so important?”
“So it’s like someone putting the word bomb in an email.” Tom nodded to himself. “That word gets tagged by that place near London and they follow it up with the CIA.” Tom’s excitement at the thought was clear to see.
“A nice conspiracy theory, but I can’t see why they’ve picked this story about the teenager in Portugal,” Eric thought for a second, “unless there was something strange about what happened.”
They were both silent for a few seconds, deep in thought of the implications.
“So, you’re being spied on, by real spies.” Tom was in awe of this prospect.
“Looks like it Mate, and I think they we’re also spying on my Dad.” Eric wasn’t getting any answers, only more questions. “And for some reason that I don’t know yet, someone killed him.”
Conspiracy.
They raced home along the Sustrans cycle path that ran along the first Tramway in the UK, bringing people in from the outer villages near Bamber Bridge into Preston. Eric and Tom had used this route many times on their bikes to get to and from the city centre shops. The tree-lined avenue climbed gently way from the river, before levelling out to run between the two relatively new housing estates till it reached Wateringpool lane. As they crossed the lane, they stopped and looked both ways, with Eric making doubly certain that there wasn’t a large black MPV lurking nearby, as he was almost certain that Mr. Jackson would be watching.
He had described his plan with Tom as they’d made their way back, stopping whenever anyone walked past, even people they knew who were merely exercising their dogs, or jogging on this warm sunny afternoon along the tramway. Once home, the barged in through the back door, sliding their rucksacks across the kitchen floor, before racing up to Eric’s bedroom and switching on his laptop.
Eric clicked in the search field and types thunderstorms no sound.
The fan whirred a little louder as the request was instantly turned into a readily recognisable list.
“There’s too many hits.” Tom said as scanning down the long list of answers from the search engine. “And it looks like there’s no connection between the words you used.”
“Yes, I know.” Eric added in lightning death, to the search field and clicked on Go.
This brought up a whole host of options again from rock albums lyrics to a health and safety guide on electrical substation working practices.
Eric jumped to page 2, frustrated at not seeing what he wanted. He scanned the headers of each subject and was just about to try another search when something caught his eye. Freak lightning causes death to child in Albert, France.
“Look!” Eric waggled the mouse over a story.
“Open it.” Tom added excitedly.
They quickly read the article on a website titled The End is Nigh!
The page flashed a garish advert at the top stating that Eric was the 1,000,000th customer and had won “$50,000 – just click here to receive.”
Below that were the main banner and a host of smaller stories. Reading through the blurb they realised that it was a conspiracy website stating that the NSA in America was working with NASA to fly secret shuttle missions and had been testing advanced technology to control the weather. This was initially dreamt up during the cold war, and was to be deployed as part of the Star Wars program of satellites that had been launched to constantly monitor what was happening on the planet below. They did so with far more diligence when passing over the countries that were part of the former Soviet Union.
Eric and Tom had covered some of the political problems during the Cold War in their Modern History lessons when Mr. Hart gave them a lengthy overview of the syllabus to be covered that year. Since then, he’d taken them back to how WW1 started with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, which had been far less interesting.
The Boys continued to skim over the first couple of pages before they came across what they were looking for: the story of the accidental murder of a teenager in France. The story stated that this was clear evidence of the secret weather altering technology weapon being tested with catastrophic consequences. This happened in October last year when a lightning strike killed a 14 year old boy from Werchter in Belgium whilst his school was looking around the Newfoundlander s memorial.
“Oh my god!” Tom exclaimed. “Weren’t we there at that time?” He had been sat on the edge of Eric’s bed reading the story over his shoulder, but the more he read, the more he drew closer to the screen.
“I know.” Eric was also in shock. “This one happened within a day of us being there.”
“How come we didn’t see anything on the news?” Tom asked.
Eric had the same question running through his head. He snapped his fingers as he got the answer, “Because that was our 2nd day there.” He took his phone out of his pocked and flicked back through the diary. “Look, Monday we did the Newfoundlander s memorial and battlefields. Tuesday, the day the kid was killed, we went to the British Memorial and museums in Albert.” He paused for a second. “That was the day we finished early cus it looked like it was going to pour down.”
“Oh yes.” Tom slapped a hand on his forehead.
“Then, we went to Ypres on the Wednesday, and Euro Disney on the Thursday.” Eric continued the calendar of events. “Friday we were traveling home. And that’s why we never saw the news. By Saturday it was the weather storm that was the news, with one tragic death. We would never have associated that with where we had been, as the media had started to turn their attention to the change in the global weather patterns, not just a single storm.”
“But this website is saying that it was this secret weather creating device thing that had killed the kid.”
“I’m not actually too sure about this weather controlling device, as the website does seem to push these conspiracy theories a little too much.” Eric pondered. “And it if is that, then how does that storm and this device tie in in with what happened to my Dad two years ago.” He paused. “An
d also where do the Hooded people fit into it all.”
“Ah, very true.” Tom sounded despondent, losing his enthusiasm when his line of thought was broken. He was struggling to tie together the connections apart from one. “But even so, we were there, and not too far away.”
“We were.” Eric said, lost in thought. “So, if it wasn’t this secret weather thing, what was it?”
“Now, that is a question.” Tom added. “What could do a similar thing to kids in France and Portugal?”
“Yes, and why did they always occur when I was nearby?”
Battle Won.
Friday morning arrived, and the boys had got no closer to an answer to the questions raised.
“Sleepover tomorrow?” Tom confirmed as he dashed away to the last lesson of the week.
The second half of the week had progressed without any further developments. Tom and Eric had poured over websites, but nothing else had been found. School was the usual mixture of lessons and breaks, with them going through all the information they’d found so far, comparing ideas and thoughts as each one came up with something new.
The investigation into the attack on Eric had even gone quiet, with them not seeing Mr. Jackson around school for a couple of days, which both boys found very intriguing.
“Yeah, see ya after class.” Eric called down the plain cream corridor. He stood in the centre of the school complex, just inside the main entrance. This was a