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

high. It seems that you’re duties have proved too much for you after all. You are hereby stripped of your command until such a time as I decide what to do with you.’
‘Look, you remember the Knave’s trial, what happened then? The Queen must have been given some magic mushrooms, and now she’s after your blood. She keeps screaming something about you stealing her underwear.’
‘The Queen is dead, General.’
‘So was Shadrack! But we brought him back to life. Someone must have done the same to the Queen.’
‘But we’ve got the technology to do that, General. Who else on this planet is capable of resurrecting the dead?’
‘Doctor Ormus,’ said Peregrine Smith. ‘Before we parted, I left him with a half-finished orgone generator.’
‘I think,’ said the Panda, ‘that I had better go see for myself.’
The Queen of Hearts looked down upon the world and roared with the sheer delight of power. Naked she may be, but there was not a man in the entire world who could bend her to his will. With thighs that dwarfed oak trees and hands that could lay waste to whole towns in seconds, she was in effect a goddess, an obese juggernaut with frightful breath and the will to crush any and all opposition.
‘Behold!’ she cried, slamming her foot into the Tired River which bubbled and eddied between her toes. ‘A Queen for all men and all time! Call me Mother or call me Whore, none shall resist my fatal allure. I am every woman you ever dreamed of. Look upon me and know what it is to dread!’
A 35mm shell thudded into her abdomen and tore apart her womb. Blood and flesh rained upon the river. She felt no pain, only shock and resentment. For a moment, she stood motionless, unable to quite believe that she had been so cruelly and savagely penetrated. It was a feeling of rape, of hideous defilement.
Phlegm rose in her throat. She spat it out and immersed a gun emplacement in mucous. The three Blue Shirts who were manning it ran around blindly, their eyelids glued together. Two of them vomited; the third sank to his knees and cried like a baby.
With a ghastly wail the Queen of Hearts bent suddenly forward and brought her fist crashing down upon the Compound. The concussion deafened anyone within fifty yards of the impact. A watch tower went tumbling end over end through the nearby woods, throwing its occupant through the air. He was dead before he landed.
On the roof of the Bunker, a soldier took aim with his bazooka. The Queen scooped him up and crushed him between finger and thumb. She flicked his remains into the bushes.
A rocket barrage was unleashed upon her. Great chunks of meat spewed from her left thigh. Flesh blistered. Blood fountained through the air and onto the Bunker. Again, the Queen lashed out. She scooped up three machine gunners and pulped them into a meat ball. She tossed the meat ball at the rocket launcher.
This was too much for the artillery men. They turned and ran unthinkingly into a hail of machine gun bullets.
Elsewhere, Blue Shirts had begun to desert their posts in droves. Some tried to climb the fence, forgetting that it was electrified. They fried. Others fled through a gap created by the Queen’s left foot. They ran straight into a mine field and were torn apart in a series of explosions. One made it to the River before becoming aware that his arms were missing. Fainting with shock, he fell into the icy waters and drowned.
‘Gaze upon me and weep, you worthless dregs!’ cried the Queen. She knew she was dying, but this only steeled her determination to wipe out as many Blue Shirts as possible. She’d teach them to usurp her authority, to claim her Kingdom as their own. For too long, she’d had to bear their arrogant presumptions, their claims that they were the Aristocrats of a New Order owing no allegiance to the Royal House of Hearts. Now they were going to pay for it.
‘Where’s the Panda?’ she demanded, tearing at the Bunker. Her hands bled and her nails broke, but she had the satisfaction of seeing chips of concrete come flying off. She gripped the sides and tried to lift it. There was a slight movement. ‘Where’s the Panda? Where is this glorious warlord of yours, this brave and noble warrior who will lead you to world domination? Why does he not show his face? Why does he not fight and die with his men?’
The answer was that he had shown his face just long enough to absorb what was going on and be scared witless by it. So now he sulked about his Campaign Room, screaming at the walls, exalting them to bear witness to his betrayal.
He was thrown to the floor as the Queen again took hold of the Bunker. She jockeyed it to the left, then the right. Mounds of earth peeled from its side. She was reminded of the day her last tooth had come loose and she’d pulled it out with her own hands.
Groaning mightily, she tensed her back and wrenched the Bunker from the ground. The sudden lack of resistance sent her toppling onto her back. As she fell, the Bunker slipped through her hands and sped through the air like a monstrous bullet. It arced into the night sky, briefly eclipsing the moon before plummeting towards the side of a nearby hill. Just as it dawned on the Panda that he was in free-fall, the bunker fell to earth and he was dashed to pieces against a map of the world. His intestines formed a new continent; his brains obscured the North Pole. Like many a dictator before him, the Panda ended his life with more drama than dignity.
The Queen’s head hit the ground with a sickening thud. The impact created a tremor that was felt three miles away in Enigma. The Tired River grew frenzied as her legs thrashed about in the water. All around her, a cloud of dust rose to cover the satisfied grin that seemed to split her face in two.
On a perfect summer’s night, the Queen of Hearts died once more. Her last thought was that she had just dreamt the loveliest dream of all.


18. The Purple Mushroom

The silence that followed the fall of the Queen of Hearts was as unnerving as it was profound. It was not a total silence. From the Presidential Compound and its surrounding mine fields came the heart-clawing cries of the injured and dying.
Though the sky was beautiful and the surrounding corn fields were crowned with the glory of ripening corn, the only thing that seemed to matter was the perdition that existed in this one small area of Hearts. It was as if the gaze of the whole universe was focused upon the Compound.
Half a mile away, a column of dust marked the spot where the President’s Bunker had come to rest.
The Mad Hatter arrived on his penny-farthing, breathless and jubilant. He found Doctor Ormus sitting under an apple tree with Julie and Lisa. Their pallid cheeks and blank expressions painted a clear picture. They were in shock.
Dismounting, he left his bicycle on the ground and went over to inspect the Queen. Already her flesh had begun to turn blue and sink into itself. Her face was a rigid mask, dominated by an inane, malicious grin.
This then was his vengeance upon the House of Hearts for their betrayal of his country. He removed his hat in a gesture of half-hearted respect.
‘I’m sorry, Your Majesty. But you’ve merely reaped what you yourself had sown. This is what you get for abdicating your responsibilities to a ruthless tyrant.’
From across the Tired River, a burst of machine gun fire marked the arrival of a band of Red Orchestra fighters. It was a brief, unanswered volley aimed at nothing in particular. The few Blue Shirts who had survived the battle unscathed and had not fled were in no mood to continue the fight. Demoralised, they either surrendered or waited quietly to be noticed.
With the Panda dead, neither side felt any sense of purpose.
The Mad Hatter bowed to the Queen of Hearts. There were footsteps behind him. He turned to find Julie approaching with a pistol in her hand. Tears had etched twin tracks through the dirt on her face.
‘Where’s the March Hare?’ she asked in a voice that was barely a whisper.
‘Gone home.’
‘Did he know you planned to use the Queen like this?’
‘No, my dear. He was as surprised about it as you are.’
‘I hate you for what you’ve done.’
‘A Royalist? I’m surprised there are any left.’
‘I’m not a bleeding Royalist. And I don’t give a damn about the rights and wrongs of what’s happened tonight. But you’ve killed Peregrine Smith and destroyed TARTS, and now I’m stuck here the rest of my life, and it’s all down to you. I really want to kill you for what you’ve done.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Julie. She turned her back on him and walked back to Ormus and Lisa.
The Mad Hatter ran after her, caught her arm. ‘Do you think I wanted this? Any of this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know what I’ve done?’
Angrily, Julie pulled away from him. ‘Do you?’
‘I’ve saved this planet from being destroyed.’
‘Nobody was going to destroy this planet. Not even the Panda would be that crazy.’
‘So I should have just left him alone with the most devastating weapon of all time and trusted to his good will?’
‘You know what I think?’ said Julie. ‘I think you don’t give a damn about this planet. You don’t even care about your country. You’re in cahoots with the Duke of Pancreas, aren’t you?
‘What’s in it for you, Mr. Mad Bloody Hatter? A peerage? A share of the booty? Maybe you’re hoping the King of Spades will appoint you as Governor?’
‘Before you go calling me a traitor, look at the facts. The Duke of Pancreas is encamped on the far side of Enigma. If I hadn’t ended this war, he would have done it in his own way. Thousands of innocent people would have suffered. Is that what you want? Would you like to see an entire city laid to waste?’
Julie spat at his feet. The look on her face said it all. They were worlds apart; they always would be.
Wordlessly, the Mad Hatter walked away from her and remounted his bicycle. There was still much to be done. For the Mad Hatter, the night was far from over.
*
The March Hare despaired of ever returning to a normal life. Whether the Mad Hatter’s plan worked or not, the morning would clearly see Hearts under foreign rule for the first time in recorded history. The Kingdom was washed up.
And serves us right, he decided. We’ve no-one to blame but ourselves. All along the way, we’ve had chance after chance to overthrow the Panda, or at least curb his powers. But we couldn’t be bothered. It was too much trouble. He led us into this war, and we just followed like sheep. So now we’ve thrown away everything - our heritage and our history. Even our self-respect. The House of Hearts is going to become just a memory.
Would things be better under the King of Spades? he wondered. Perhaps being vanquished would