A Plague of Hearts by Patrick Whittaker (best large ereader .TXT) 📖

‘My knickers!’ she howled. ‘How dare he steal my underwear!’
Her voice was a hurricane, an explosion of words, a barrage of raw emotion.
The March Hare fought a strong desire to curl into a ball. Again and again, his eyes were drawn towards the Queen’s breasts, swaying in tandem like a pair of drunken sailors. The nipples were rogue moons trying to escape the gravitational pull of her chins.
She turned, presented him with a view of a white mass streaked with varicose veins. Her buttocks quivered, parted momentarily, leaving the March Hare with an image of the sky splitting in two.
Shaking off the remains of the house from her foot, the Queen strode off into the distance, dust and thunder following in her wake. As she receded into the distance, tranquility began to fill the breach left by her passing.
The Mad Hatter threw off his hat and stood up to watch her go. He had never in his life seen such an awesome and wondrous sight.
‘I feel,’ he said, with some pride, ‘that I have just created the greatest work of art this world has ever known.’
Stubbing out an illicit cigarette, Private Roy Dawson of the President’s Own Regiment looked down nervously from his lofty perch. He had never been comfortable with heights and there was something about a watchtower which made him feel especially vulnerable. Beneath him, the Presidential Bunker sat like a concrete toad. Searchlights swept across its featureless back and forayed into the surrounding scrub, highlighting barbed wire and ditches of stagnant water.
Beyond the bunker, a mist rolled along the Tired River. It reminded Dawson of a spectral army marching to damnation. He was not often inclined towards fancy, but at times like this there was little else to occupy his mind. It had been a quiet, disturbing night, filled with rumours and a sense of unease. Before he’d come on duty, the mess room had been abuzz with whispers of a momentous battle and a resounding defeat which had allowed the Spadishers to break through into Hearts. If such tales were true, then the Duke of Pancreas was only hours away from Enigma.
He looked beyond the Tired River and gazed with fascination at an odd cloud formation. It was lower and denser than the few wisps of cirrus drifting across the sky, and it was going in entirely the wrong direction. In fact, it was approaching the Bunker.
Could it be smoke? he wondered, lifting a pair of field glasses to his eyes. Stars swept before him as he moved the glasses in the direction of the cloud. Something white loomed on the horizon. Excitedly, he adjusted the focus and was startled to find a face looking back at him.
Giant eyes blinked. Veins as thick as pylon cable radiated from pupils bigger than the moon. Dawson felt his knees give a little. His ears were filled with the roaring of his own blood.
‘The Queen!’ he yelled, pointing towards the face. Suddenly he felt foolish. Letting his field glasses drop, he looked around to see what effect his pronouncement had produced. In the watch tower next to his, the sentry waved but seemed otherwise unconcerned.
Dawson peered into the darkness and examined the white mass. It was drawing closer with alarming speed. With his naked eyes, he could make out arms and legs and a black triangle which could not be mistaken for anything other than what it was.
Almost without thinking, Dawson hit the panic button. As sirens rent the air with their shrill screams, he offered up a silent prayer that he had not just made the biggest mistake of his life. A firing squad was no way for a soldier to end his career.
Doctor Ormus swore long and softly. From his hiding place beside the Tired River, he had spotted the Queen of Hearts almost at the same moment as Private Dawson. He’d been lying behind a fallen oak, a walkie-talkie in his hand, awaiting instructions from the Mad Hatter.
And though he immediately identified the pale apparition as the Queen of Hearts, he could not know that she had flattened Mrs. Pogue’s, thus destroying the Mad Hatter’s radio equipment.
Beside him, Julie and Lisa were watching the approaching giant. Neither recognised the dead Queen, but it was beginning to dawn on them that what they were seeing was not normal.
Three gerbils who had been hiding in a nearby hedgerow with the Mock Turtle broke cover and stood in a huddle, each waiting for one of the others to offer a suggestion. Fortunately for them, the guards in the Presidential Compound were too concerned with the approaching Queen to continue their usual pattern of sweeps with the search lights; otherwise the three rodents would have been picked out in stark, merciless detail.
Ormus waved frantically at them, but he could not catch their attention. Across the river, sirens howled and Blue Shirts poured from the Bunker’s sole entrance. Orders were shouted. Artillery men worked with hasty efficiency, manipulating their anti-tank weapons in the direction of the Queen.
No-one was sure of the range. The Queen did not stay in one place long enough for them to judge her distance, and there’s something about a giant, naked woman which destroys all sense of perspective. Unless they knew her exact size, it was impossible to say how far away she was.
Worse than that, many of them now recognised her as their Queen.
Ormus swore again.
‘Oh boy,’ said the Cheshire Cat, strolling by with his tail in the air. ‘Will you just look at the dumplings on that?’
‘Get out of here!’ snapped Ormus, taking an angry swing at the Cheshire Cat. The blow did not connect. Even as his arm swept round, the Cheshire Cat vanished.
‘Bloody animals! We should cage the whole lot of them!’
‘My, my,’ said Julie. ‘I’d never thought I’d see you get so flustered over a woman, Doctor. Not even a naked one.’
Ormus gave her a look of daggers and acid. ‘This is the Mad Hatter’s doing! I’m supposed to be his Second-In-Command and he told me nothing about this! What the hell does he think he’s playing at?’
‘What do we do now?’ asked Lisa. ‘Whatever that thing is, it’s coming our way.’
Before Ormus could answer, a hideous bellow drove through the night. ‘WHERE’S THE PANDA? I WANT THE PANDA!’
‘It’s the Queen,’ said Julie.
By now, shock waves could be felt running through the ground. The Queen’s every step produced a minor tremor. The waters of the Tired River became agitated; waves slapped against its banks, here and there spilling over in plumes of foam.
The gerbils were shouting at each other. Their squeals could just be heard above the sirens and the thunder of the Queen’s footsteps. One aimed his rifle and fired; it had no effect.
Meanwhile, the Blue Shirts had finally grasped the situation enough for someone to give the order to fire. Shells whistled through the air. They exploded a hundred yards in front of their intended target. The Queen did not even seem to notice. The next volley landed closer, but still she did not falter.
Tonight was her night. She was going to have some fun.
*
The Panda did not like entering the Weapons Laboratory. Situated in the lowest level of the Bunker, the lab had originally been conceived of as an armoury. It was to have been piled high with bazookas, cannon and flame throwers - articles the Panda could relate to.
It was a mistake handing this over to Smith, he told himself, examining a crystal pillar that ran from floor to ceiling. Several such columns stood side by side in front of a contraption that looked like a well-polished oil drum. The pillars were as thick as his arms and glowed a faint green.
How much has this cost me? he wondered. Why did I let that idiot scientist talk me into giving him so much of my budget?
The walls of the room were lined with black glass. They curved outward, giving an impression of being surrounded by giant televisions. In each corner, a spider-like machine slowly rotated, each one flexing and unflexing an array of titanium legs.
The Panda made no attempt to understand the paraphernalia surrounding him. It was alien technology, a hundred times more advanced than anything his planet had produced in the days before Smith.
A circular platform dominated the middle of the room. It supported a hollow plastic tube which reached up to the ceiling. Big red letters on the tube spelt out Trans-Actuality Relay Transmission System.
Peregrine Smith sat in his wheel chair beside the column. For him, this was the centre of the world, the heart of everything he had worked for in the years following his supposed suicide.
Anything or anyone inside the tube could be transported quite literally from here to eternity. A similar but far more advanced tube had been his gateway from Earth.
It was, he reflected, unfortunate that the President refused to see any potential in the system beyond his its immediate application as a weapon. Maybe when the war was over, he would be allowed to follow his own course. A course that might just lead him back to his own planet.
TARTS worked. Alice and Julie were proof of that. But the system was unrefined. Had either of the girls not been in perfect health, they would have been left seriously ill. Smith knew that if he entered the machine, it would kill him. There was much to be done before he could safely return home.
The Panda suddenly cocked his head. He darted a questioning look at Smith. ‘What was that?’
Smith shook his head. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’
‘A sort of rumbling noise - like an earth tremor.’
‘It’s the devil riding out to claim your soul.’
‘I don’t have a soul. And that’s official.’
Smith was ready with a retort, but he was cut off by the urgent clamouring of alarm bells.
‘So,’ said the Panda, ‘it seems as if you might have been right about the devil after all. I wonder how long it will be before somebody bothers to tell me what’s going on.’
‘I suggest,’ said Smith, ‘you order this level sealed off.’
‘Nonsense. This Bunker’s impenetrable. Anyone trying to get to us wouldn’t get as far as the perimeter fence. And if it comes to it, we can always use your machine.’
‘Out of the question. If we focus the beam at this close a range, we’re going to get feedback and blow ourselves to Kingdom Come. Besides which, it will be another hour before it’s built up a usable charge.’
General Cartier stormed in. ‘We’re being attacked.’
The Panda was neither worried nor surprised. His intelligence sources had already told him that the Red Orchestra was going to launch an assault in the near future. His one emotion was disdainful amusement. Did Ormus and his men really think they could defeat him with a handful of rifles and shot guns? ‘All right, General. We’ll just hold them off for now. In the mean time, get in touch with the palace and have the Palace Guard come out and attack them in the rear. I want as few casualties amongst my Blue Shirts as possible.’
‘This isn’t the Red Orchestra, Your Excellency. It’s the Queen of Hearts! She’s about a mile high and heading this way!’
‘Judging from your remarks, General, I would say it was you who was a mile